Political Quotes

“I also know there has been a tremendous amount of energy going on trying to defeat this amendment in the last day, and there are a lot of comments being made on the floor. I do want to first of all say in response to comments from someone whom I greatly respect, the Senator from Tennessee, who has played an incredibly important role in moving forward on some important foreign policy issues, that I would caution that we call support for manufacturing--whether it be autos or others or supply chains or materials manufacturing--somehow a bailout when we are talking about protecting American jobs--I would point to the fact that there is a very important company, Alcoa, in Tennessee that just received an advanced technology vehicle loan. I was proud to author that loan program back in 2007 in the Energy bill. They make aluminum, as we all know, and they are retooling to be able to benefit from Ford Motor Company's policy of moving to aluminum to take 700 pounds out of the F-150 truck to make it more energy efficient. Alcoa is benefiting, a Tennessee company. I don't consider that loan a bailout any more than I consider any other loan programs we put together for manufacturing a bailout. But I would suggest that we have literally millions of jobs across our country connected to the supply chain, whether it is autos, whether it is dishwashers, whatever it is that we are making.…”