Political Quotes

“Again, first of all, I appreciate my colleague, one whom I have gotten a chance to know. I look forward to working with him on some issues down the road. I want to take this time to kind of reject the premise that nothing has been done. In the debate a little while ago, I mentioned the 15 or 20 bills that had passed the House in a bipartisan manner. These were signed into law, a lot of the hydroelectric extensions in H.R. 2122 and H.R. 2292 to extend the project of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission involving the Cannonsville dam. Hydroelectric power is clean, renewable. I can go through a whole list of things that were done. As I said in debate earlier, just because we don't put the stamp of ``Paris'' or ``climate change'' on a piece of legislation doesn't mean that it is not going to help reduce our carbon exposure. In fact, our country has the largest reduction of CO<INF>2</INF> of any industrialized nation from 2015 to 2018. Having said that, I also would readily admit, and the Chair has heard me say this many times, that in 2019, our emissions went up. But that was because we have a thriving economy with more manufacturing. So this debate is still very important. This amendment suggests that the measures that the Obama administration were putting in place to meet the commitments in the Paris Agreement were affordable. A lot of us would reject that premise when you look at the cost per kilowatt hour of major generation, baseload versus the green.…”