Political Quotes

“I have a lot of good friends on both sides of the aisle that are addressing this issue, and I really get concerned and I struggle with this. Southern Illinois used to have one of the largest oil fields in the country 50 years ago, decades ago. Guess what? It was all pumped out. To benefit the United States of America, we drilled in southern Illinois. We still have some marginal wells there. They pump about two barrels a day. They are the little seesaw horses that one sees when they drive down the road. My cornfields and soybean fields are just as important as any lakefront beach property. Sometimes I think we get very selfish. We are in an energy crisis. Fuel is at an all-time high. We do not want to drill off the Great Lakes. We had a vote yesterday, where we do not want to drill off of Florida. Heavens, no, we do not want to go into ANWR. So my basic question is: Where do we go? I will say where we go. We are going to the Saudi Arabia sheiks. We are going to pony up our dollars. We are going to be held hostage by Saudi Arabia for our oil. I just do not understand. We can send people to the Moon. We can send people to Mars. We can go all over this world, and we cannot drill safely? So I ask us to bring a little common sense to this and to realize that we have some natural resources. We have places that expended our natural resources for the benefit of our country. Now it is time to make sure that we are energy self-sufficient, not reliant on foreign oil.”