Political Quotes

“I will debate this issue. This issue is about supply. I don't care who's responsible. This issue is about bringing more supply into the market. When a barrel costs $128 versus $58, this is what you get: You get gas prices that were at $2.33 when this Congress got sworn in to prices today that are $3.80 because we will not expand our supply. Now, if you add climate change, my friend from Oregon is a good friend of mine, and I know he's concerned about climate change and global warming and a cap-and-trade system, conservatively, that's going to add 50 cents to a gallon of gas to comply with climate change. So today the average price $3.80, plus 50 cents, $4.30. Now, I think yesterday in Chicago without the climate change gas tax increase, it was $4.50 a gallon. So the debate is when are we going to say that it's okay to do these things? When is it okay that we can take coal and turn it into liquid fuel? When is it okay to go off the Outer Continental Shelf and harvest those billions of barrels of oil, those trillions of cubic feet of natural gas? When is it going to be okay to say let's continue to move aggressively in cellulosic and biofuels, coal-to-liquid, OCS, wind, and solar? In 20 years, we're going to increase our electricity demand by 50 percent. We have to bring on more supply. We have to bring on more baseload supply because in rural America, which I represent, in over 30 counties it takes 2 rac{1}{2} hours to drive from one part of my district to another.”