Political Quotes

“I rise to oppose the proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. With all due respect to my colleagues on the other side, who I know feel strongly, I feel strongly as well and have been involved with this issue since my time in the House of Representatives, where I consistently cosponsored legislation that would not allow drilling to occur. It is important that we continue to stress the fact that drilling in ANWR will not create energy independence and that we are talking about, even if we started drilling tomorrow, the first barrel of crude oil would not make it to the market for at least 10 years. So it would not affect our current energy needs. There is a real question in all of the debate going on about the concerns that are immediately in front of us. This is not the answer to that. We are talking about whether or not, on the one hand, we risk the environmentally sensitive Coastal Plain for the equivalent of just 6 months' worth of usage or consumer usage in the United States. And this is not something that will be available for use for 10 years. It doesn't make sense to me. I think that in this energy bill, when we are trying to look to the future, we ought not to be going to the past in terms of trying to drill our way to energy security and independence.”