Political Quotes

“I thank the Presiding Officer, and I thank the Senator from Alaska for yielding to me for this purpose and I commend her, as well as the Senator from Washington State, for their extraordinary management of this bill. I am pleased to report that the amendment I have called up and made pending is actually a bipartisan initiative. It is cosponsored by my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, and its purpose is to help school officials to learn more easily about Federal programs and incentives that are available to improve energy efficiency and thus lower costs for our Nation's schools. There are a number of Federal initiatives already available to schools to help them become more energy efficient, but in many cases schools are not taking full advantage of these programs. The reason for that is because they are scattered across several agencies and are difficult to access. I want to make it clear to my colleagues that Senator Warner and I are not proposing the creation of any new programs to help schools become more energy efficient but rather to have more coordination and to streamline those programs which already exist. Our amendment would require the Department of Energy to be the leader of these programs and help schools identify and navigate them, and that in turn would be a great service to our Nation's schools.…”