María Elvira Salazar: “let me first say my colleague from North Dakota does an incredible job in terms of leading our country with a voice that…”

“let me first say my colleague from North Dakota does an incredible job in terms of leading our country with a voice that stands for fiscal discipline. When he talks about the mountain of debt that we are continuing to build in this country, and passing on that mountain of debt to our children and our grandchildren, the American people deserve more of this Congress and more of Washington, DC, and more of this President. I look forward to his continuing leadership on this issue to try and bring about fiscal integrity and fiscal honesty to the United States of America. The American people deserve no less than that kind of candor and integrity from the Senate. I rise today to talk about an urgent issue which we all ought to be very concerned about in the United States of America. That is the issue of energy. Last year, this Senate put together a bipartisan template on the National Energy Policy Act of 2005 which may go down in our history as being one of the most important achievements of the 109th Congress. Notwithstanding the fact that we put together energy legislation that did some great things for conservation, that stood out for renewable energy, that said that new technologies were part of how we could lock in the future of our Nation's energy independence, we have had many opportunities to move forward and to continue to address the issue of energy. Yet we have not done that as a Congress nor as a Senate. Six months of this year have already passed.…”