Roy Blunt: “that whole concept of going where real people live is an important one. When people are facing higher utility bills…”

“that whole concept of going where real people live is an important one. When people are facing higher utility bills every month and a bigger bill every time they fill up their gas tank, it doesn't take long for them to figure out that policy decisions somewhere have changed something--and something that really dramatically affects their quality of life. And then it didn't take long to figure out that those policy decisions in Washington are the decisions that made that kind of difference. When a blackout causes the lights to go out and your refrigerator to stop working, the impact of energy policy becomes pretty tangible and you understand pretty quickly that this is impacting you. That is a prospect that a lot of Americans are facing this summer. It is not theoretical, but in too many places, it is happening and happening over and over again. In late May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation released a report that said that nearly two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts this summer as a result of reliability challenges of the electric grid. Now, that group is a nonprofit regulatory authority that monitors the grid in the United States and Canada and some of northern Mexico. They could see this coming and Americans can now see this happening. They said that it was sobering. They said that it was an understatement, really, in many ways, to see it any other way.…”