Ed Markey: “this is a huge moment for this Congress. Inside of the Republican bill that we are voting on is a continuation of the…”

“this is a huge moment for this Congress. Inside of the Republican bill that we are voting on is a continuation of the $35,000 tax break to purchase Hummer IIs, a tax break to buy a Hummer II, $35,000. And then they turn with policies like that and they say, We need more gasoline in America. And they turn to an Arctic wildlife refuge as the first example of where they will go, rather than saying, Well, you know, if our country could put a man on the moon in 1969, if we could deploy the Internet around the world in the last 15 years, if we could craft a human genome, then maybe we could find a way to reinvent the automobile and the SUV so that it would average more than 23 miles per gallon, 1983s average; that is the average we have today. It is wrong, it is immoral for this Congress not to have any fuel efficiency standards for automobiles or SUVs in their bill, to continue tax breaks, giving incentives for Americans to purchase the most inefficient vehicles, and to then turn to the wilderness areas and say, We need the energy. America is great because its people are great, and what makes us great is we are technological giants. We have only 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world, but with our brains, we can make vehicles that are twice as efficient as the ones that we use today, if we put our minds to it. But the Bush administration and the Republican majority are completely and totally opposed to it. They reject it in their legislation today.…”