Steve Buyer: “I cannot support the motion to instruct offered by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) because I am not going to…”

“I cannot support the motion to instruct offered by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) because I am not going to permit politics to override substance. The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) was correct that when the gentleman had an opportunity during the committee when he offered a substitute that he did not bring up this issue. When it came to the House floor on the motion to recommit, the gentleman's recommittal motion addressed hydropower, not mandatory reliability standards. And as a matter of fact, many of the Democrats did not support this bill in committee and did not support the bill on the floor. But now, when we go through a blackout, all of a sudden we need to pull this out of the national energy bill and pass this? No, I do not believe we can permit politics to override substance. H.R. 6 is an extremely important bill that the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) has spent a lot of time on. The national energy bill is about a national energy policy. And the United States, as the sole remaining superpower, needs a broad-based and diversified portfolio with regard to our energy sources. So it is about coal, and we need to make an investments in clean coal technology. It is about oil. Yes, we have our imports, but we have to also do domestic drilling, exploration and drilling. It is about natural gas. Boy, have we messed this one up. The Democrats controlled Congress in 1990 when they passed the Clean Air Act.…”