John Ensign: “first of all, I was in the meeting with Senator Snowe before Christmas. This is not the formula that we had agreed on in…”

“first of all, I was in the meeting with Senator Snowe before Christmas. This is not the formula that we had agreed on in those meetings. Second of all, the formula that she says will benefit the warmer States is not accurate. It is not historically accurate. It is not accurate with regards to the contingency funding. Contingency funds were released in January. There are 29 States that will be worse off under the Snowe proposal, if this money is put through the regular formula, the warmer States benefit. The whole formula was set up so that mostly colder States would benefit from the first dollars, and then if dollars are added, the warmer States would benefit. But the way this amendment is set up that is, in fact, not what happens. We have a budget point of order. People have to know that we are not voting on cloture on the bill or cloture on a motion to proceed to the bill, but we are actually voting on a budget point of order. This has been described as a mild winter. There is plenty of evidence for that, especially on the east coast. I think the only two States that could arguably say it has been a harsher winter than normal are Oregon and Washington. And most of the rest of the country has had a fairly mild winter. The point that somehow the Northeast needs this more because they have more higher heating expenses isn't true. Electricity in most of the country now is generated by natural gas.…”