Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wanted to engage my colleague from North Dakota because there is a strong base of bipartisan support to do this, and I also believe there is a strong majority community across America that supports this. Don't get it out there so wild that it starts driving up utility rates. Nobody wants to do that, and everybody is opposed to pushing up utility rates. We don't want them to go up. They cannot go up. We cannot afford for them to go up in bad economic times, and I do not want it to happen in good economic times. But if we do this in a balanced approach where we say we are going to have a modest renewable electricity standard, a modest RES that people can work with--and in the bill in committee, we actually had an 11-percent energy standard--we could do 4 of the 15 by conservation, which is prudent as well. This is something we can support. I know this is something which we could see a strong majority of the American public support. This is balanced and it makes sense and it moves us forward. That is why I hope that if we get into this Energy bill this week--it may not happen this week or it may not happen until September--that this is a piece that is in the bill, and it is something we can get done, and the vast majority of the public, if we do it wisely and prudently, will support this.”