Political Quotes

“The Senator is right. I am glad he mentioned this as well because I happen to also represent a State that has a tremendous petrochemical industry. Of course, that is because the Mississippi River is there, as well as the great finds in the 1950s and 1960s for gas. So when big companies--particularly petrochemicals but big manufacturers--look around in the world to where they go, one thing they look at is the tax rate. But that is not the most important thing. The other thing is to make sure they can find the skilled labor they need. They need cheap energy costs because they cannot produce steel competitively, for instance, if we don't have cheap energy. So a lot of these companies came to Louisiana in the 1960s because we had cheap energy. That changed, and a lot of them left. Maybe we did other things to drive them offshore. You know what is happening today. Because of this $2 gas, they are all coming home. You should see the building we have going on. That is why the Texas unemployment rate is the lowest in the Nation. I know the Governor would like to take all the credit for this. My Governor likes to take all the credit for this too. They are two outstanding Republican Governors, and they may be pretty good, but it is the low price of energy that is driving this. That could happen in Colorado, it can happen in Illinois, if we just support the oil and gas industry in a balanced way, instead of choking it off.…”