Pete Domenici: “The last time they used to write two was before the Civil War. They wrote one for the South and one for the North. But I…”

“The last time they used to write two was before the Civil War. They wrote one for the South and one for the North. But I told them: Why don't you cut it in four pieces and we will write four of them? Right? But there aren't four countries; there are just the States. So we did the best we could. I think it is a good provision. Now, what else about it? I share with you, right now, on the electric provision that here is the study. So everybody can see it--it is the first time it has been on the floor of the Senate. It is entitled ``Interim Report: The Causes of the August 14th Blackout in the United States and Canada.'' I do not think I will ask that it be printed in the Record. I will refer to it. We have gone through it and we have looked at what they said. Let me say to my friend, it says that the principal reason we had a blackout was that all of the States, with their various utility systems, had what are called reliability standards. Now, I am not a technician, but reliability means something pretty common and ordinary. I can talk reliability at home in an evening with my wife. We talk a lot about this, and she should know what that is. Reliability standards means that you appropriately and prudently load your electric wires so they are not so overloaded that something happens, or that they are clean and they do not have things imposing upon their reliability. This said it was nothing dramatic. It was not that we have an old, wornout system.…”