John Myers: “Mr. Chairman, this subcommittee has long been a supporter of the renewables, including solar, wind, geothermal…”

“Mr. Chairman, this subcommittee has long been a supporter of the renewables, including solar, wind, geothermal, everything. We have long been a supporter. But no item, no appropriation in this budget has increased as much as solar has. Solar alone, not all the other renewables, just solar, since 1991, in the last 5 years, this committee has increased the appropriations for solar research, including what we even cut out here this year, by 93 percent. Name any other item we have in our bill other than waste management and environmental cleanup that we have increased that much. None have we increased as much as we have solar. This committee this year heard a lot about corporate welfare and how often we heard it yesterday about the reactor, ``Oh, this is corporate welfare. We are helping some utility some place or General Electric or Westinghouse build a reactor,'' for our country, hopefully, someday or someplace overseas that we might be able to sell one. Call that corporate welfare. So our committee this year got to examining just where are the solar dollars going.”