Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding time to me. Madam Speaker, it's been said that leadership is willing to make hard choices, fact-based choices to come up with solutions to solve problems and deliver results. Now, we gathered here last Thursday in this Chamber to hear the President, with a much-touted plan beforehand that he was going to bring forth to the American people that was going to help solve the high unemployment in this country and get our economy back on a competitive basis. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, I sat there and I listened very intently, and I left this Chamber with great disappointment because it's not enough. Furthermore, he is proposing taxes, new taxes, taxes on energy production, American energy production. Now, let's look at the facts of what happened. Yes, we had an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was dealt with. It was a tragic situation, but it has been dealt with. The fact of the matter is we need American energy production to move this country forward. And now what we're seeing with the lifting of the moratorium is this continued de facto moratorium because of slow- walking of exploration plans and permits. Now, what does this mean? If we brought back the permitting process to the same timeframe we had before--without sacrificing safety--bring it back into a reasonable amount of time, let's say 30 days to take care of these permits, in 1 year, the year 2012, 230,000 jobs would be created, new jobs, good, high-paying jobs.…”