Jack Kingston: “liberal extremists in Washington want to adopt the California approach on energy and make it national policy. That is…”

“liberal extremists in Washington want to adopt the California approach on energy and make it national policy. That is kind of a head-in-the-sand approach. They do not like coal, they do not like oil, they do not like nuclear power. They want everybody to be driving cars that have windmills on top of them or something like that. I am not exactly sure where their reality lands. But the reality is, in California, demand for energy exploded over 30 percent, and yet they would not allow new power plants to be built. As a result, they had the same pollution-causing, outdated power plants now owned by the government. Well, does that not make us feel comfortable? Mr. Speaker, the time is not for partisan sniping. The time is to say, gee whiz, maybe California did make some mistakes. It is probably not good to model national policy after them. Let us be realistic. We do need alternative energy sources. We do need research. We do need conservation. But guess what? We cannot get off of oil tomorrow. We have to keep refineries open. Mr. Speaker, I hope that the Democrats will join the Bush administration in looking for a solution.”