Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I rise as a cosponsor of this amendment, and I am glad to be working with Congresswoman Bonamici and my colleague on the Armed Services Committee, Ranking Member Adam Smith. Our amendment simply allows the Department of Energy to continue its collaborative work with the Department of Defense to produce biofuels for the military. The Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of fuel in the world, and this is all about saving money because our military spends about $20 billion a year on energy, $16 billion of which goes to oil fuels. As we have seen in recent years, global oil markets are volatile. And despite massive production increases in the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration, last year, our net imports of petroleum were 5 million barrels per day, with our top five suppliers being Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, and Iraq. That reliance on a volatile, foreign-produced source of fuel puts our national security at risk, particularly when we face dynamic, new threats from nonstate actors such as ISIS, al Qaeda, or individual terrorists who can disrupt oil production and supply lines in new and intimidating ways.…”