Rich Neal: “The other day I saw something in The New York Times that gave me hope. The White House had put in solar panels on one of…”

“The other day I saw something in The New York Times that gave me hope. The White House had put in solar panels on one of the sheds out there. And I thought, well, my goodness, they must have some enlightenment down there at the oil ministry. But when I offered an amendment in the Committee on Ways and Means that would have allowed us to have energy companies give tax-free bonds for the purpose of raising money for interest-free loans to homeowners to purchase solar equipment, every Republican in the committee voted ``no.'' I guess they did not get the message from the White House. Mr. Chairman, it usually costs about $11,000 to put a solar panel on a home. It is not pie in the sky. Solar production has grown 600 percent since 1996. So this is something that everywhere else in the world they are doing, but not here, and certainly not in the Committee on Ways and Means, in a committee controlled by the oil industry. We had a chance, if we had passed that amendment, to follow California. They always lead what is happening in this country. Watch and see. San Francisco puts panels on their buildings, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. They will be doing it, and all the rest of the country will be sitting around tied to these oil companies and saying to themselves, why is this?”