On the recordJune 14, 2011
We do accept the amendment with reservations. I want to say to my friend from Nebraska, he's been working very hard on this amendment, particularly in the last 5 hours. But we had a debate about this in the full committee. Ms. Kaptur offered an amendment that restored funding for the REAP account. It was my intention to zero it out because I do want to reduce the number of Federal programs that are out there. The full committee did restore it. I'm not sure what $2 million in that account will do. I do support renewable energy, but I will say that there are dozens of programs and dozens of research channels available to people for renewable energy, particularly in the rural area. So I want to say to my friend from Nebraska and from Minnesota that we'll accept the amendment, but you need to keep your eye on us because it's not a program I particularly like. And I'm very serious about eliminating as many programs as possible. So we need to continue talking about that. I yield back the balance of my time.
