Political Quotes

“let me begin my commending my friends, Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall, as well as my friend, Mr. Lampson, who is managing the bill this morning. My amendment is pretty basic in what we are trying to achieve. I want to note that the former Speaker of the House, who, as you know, is recovering from surgery and is not able to be with us, is one I have worked with on this amendment. But this is an amendment that deals with infrastructure, as noted by those that are arguing for this bill which we all support. Our focus is infrastructure and research, affecting infrastructure of biofuels. If we look back to when we passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 through Congress, we included a renewable fuel standard of 7.5 billion gallons by the year 2010. Due to passage of this increase, which essentially doubled the amount of biofuels established under the renewable fuel standard, we have seen a tremendous amount of growth in investment in the biofuels industry in Illinois, my home State, as well as across America. Currently, there are 110 ethanol plants in production, with 70 more under construction, producing today 5.2 billion gallons of ethanol as well as biodiesel. Our farmers are seeing $4 a bushel of corn, as well as $7 soybeans because of the increased demand for biofuels.”