Ed Whitfield: “I yield myself 3 minutes. First of all, I would like to say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is a very…”

“I yield myself 3 minutes. First of all, I would like to say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is a very hardworking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and provides great leadership, that we reluctantly oppose his amendment. His amendment is very simple, and it is very direct. It simply says the permit will not be issued until the permit applicant certifies and provides adequate documentation that at least 75 percent of the iron and steel used in the construction of the pipeline is produced in North America, which is a goal that many of us have. I would like to point out a couple of facts here: Number one, this is a private company that's putting up $7 billion of its own money; Number two, in order to keep costs down, it has already acquired all of the steel and iron that it is going to use in this pipeline. Now, some people will say, well, why in the world would it spend over $2 billion buying this material when they didn't have a permit? Well, they filed this permit 40 months ago, and all of the information coming out from the Secretary of State, the Department of State in their final environmental impact statement would indicate that the pipeline was going to be approved. So they bought this material many months ago to try to keep costs down. And I will tell you, from the information that we have, 74 percent of the pipe was milled here in North America. In fact, it's milled in four different locations. Not all of them are in North America.…”