Political Quotes

“I just hope that we all recognize that it is getting towards evening here in Washington, D.C., and there are some folks that do go off and go to bed or call it a day. The gentleman from California has worked diligently in this Congress for more than 20 years, and I recognize that and appreciate it. As I move forward here on the energy policy, I wanted to reiterate this equation so that the point on ethanol efficiency, Mr. Speaker, does come home in a clear way. It is this: We have more corn available to us domestically now than we had as an average over any time in the last 20 years that I can come up with for records. It works like this: In 2007, we produced 13.1 billion bushels of corn. I believe that is the largest crop ever. Out of that, we exported more corn than we had ever exported before, to foreign countries, just shipped it off in the form of grain. We exported 2.5 billion bushels of corn. That left us 10.6 billion bushels left, and out of that we took 3.2 billion bushels and produced ethanol with it, around 9 billion gallons of ethanol. And, we get to add back in--that left 7.4 billion bushels for domestic consumption, which is real close to the average available for domestic consumption over the last 6 to 7 years, but half of the corn that went off to be produced into the 9 billion gallons of ethanol gets added back into the formula because it goes back into high-quality animal feed.”