Peter Visclosky: “I will be brief. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) and I are pretty close, but I will respectfully oppose his…”

“I will be brief. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) and I are pretty close, but I will respectfully oppose his amendment for a couple of reasons. One is that the program that is subject to his amendment is coordinating programs with other countries. We're not, by definition, sending jobs overseas to other countries. The theory of the program is to provide technical assistance for activities to help prime markets for clean technologies in major emerging economies, and the theory of the program is also that it can bring home lessons learned from other experiences and share them at the national, State and local levels. I say I reluctantly oppose his amendment and that we are very close because I have great concerns over any number of these types of programs at the Department of Energy. I have expressed my displeasure to the Secretary, among others, that if we are going to invest our taxpayers' money--our money--in these endeavors, we ought to be very discreet as to how those moneys are spent to develop markets in the United States of America and, God bless, the rest of the world. So I will in this instance take the Department of Energy at its word, and that's why I would respectfully oppose the amendment.…”