Keith Ellison: “Let me just lend my voice and agree with you. I do believe that the oil companies do not need any more help from the…”

“Let me just lend my voice and agree with you. I do believe that the oil companies do not need any more help from the American taxpayer. It's time to repeal these tax breaks and credits, and I am glad that we have done so. I just want to say that the 110th Congress, this Congress that you and I came in as freshmen, as majority makers, really has been productive in the area of energy. I am so glad that within the first 100 hours, and I know Congressman Klein, you will remember the first 100 hours, that we passed a bill to repeal tax breaks to the big oil companies and to incentivize production of clean and renewable sources. And then, of course, it was just last year that we passed the bill for CAFE standards. So many Congresses, so many years passed where we had no CAFE standards to speak of, no increases in the CAFE standards. Now we are at 35 miles per gallon. I think we should look at this not as some great victory but as a start down the road of progress. And then again today we passed this I think historic bill and it signals change. It signals change. It signals that the United States Congress is serious about our renewable future. It signals a change that we can have a future where we can have air that we can breathe, where we can be at peace with our environment and not warm up the globe to the degree that no life can live on it, or that the changes in the world temperatures will be so drastically changing that we can't sustain life as it exists now.”