Byron Dorgan: “We cannot produce our way out of this problem. We certainly can produce. We had a vote in the Senate about production in…”

“We cannot produce our way out of this problem. We certainly can produce. We had a vote in the Senate about production in the Gulf of Mexico. I supported that. I also support incentives to increase production of oil and natural gas. Yes, I do think we have to increase production and do it in an environmentally sensitive way. We have to do a lot of other things and do them well as a matter of national policy. That is the point of having an energy policy debate on the floor of the Senate. If, in fact, the result of an energy policy debate is to say let the States do whatever they want to do, that is a kind of yesterday-forever strategy. Members of the Senate will, 25 years from now, be having the same debate. The suits will have changed, the names will have changed, and the people occupying the desks in the Senate will have changed, but nothing else will have changed.”