Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for generously yielding. Mr. Chairman, I'm also from Illinois. And I can tell you, in Illinois there is a very tough economic environment right now. We've got a tough budget. There is a lot of talk about the budget right now. We've got huge unemployment. We've got people who desperately want to go to work. And when I do town hall meetings, when I'm in the 11th Congressional District in towns like Joliet, or when I'm in Ottawa, or Princeton, or some of those towns, I get this from a lot of people: Why can't we just become energy independent? Why can't we just become energy secure? And I think that's a great question. When people look at Washington, D.C., and they say, Washington, D.C., is broken, I think one example of that is the fact that we can't get our act together and do what we need to do to increase oil that we're not pulling in from the Middle East. I mean, it's just very basic. How can we do anything in this Congress if we can't even agree that our partners to the north can bring their oil here for our consumption so that we can come off of that oil we're buying from the Middle East that, in some way, is always going to fund the people that we are fighting overseas and the terrorists that we're fighting? But when we talk about the Keystone pipeline, let me ask you, what does the pipeline mean for the United States and for Illinois? For starters, it means creating more than 100,000 American jobs.…”