Political Quotes

“North Dakota is an energy powerhouse, and our late-night producers work around the clock to ensure homes and businesses in the Midwest have affordable and reliable access to power when it is needed most. But the PTC, the wind production tax credit, is creating artificially low prices in markets for power generation. Qualified wind projects are receiving up to 2\1/2\ cents per kilowatt hour from the taxpayer. These subsidies distort the market and are forcing out the critical coal-fired baseload generation we need to keep the lights on. Since Congress established a wind production tax credit in 1992, wind power has been able to transition from an emerging technology to a multibillion-dollar industry that is clearly commercially viable. That is why we worked on a bipartisan agreement in 2015 to phase down and sunset the wind tax credit at the end of 2019. We had an agreement to do the phaseout, and the wind industry agreed to it. I worked with Senator Thune and AWEA, the American Wind Energy Association, and others to do it. And they agreed. We had an agreement. That is why we are opposed to extending the PTC and offer an amendment to strike it. We saw what happened in California over the summer, and we can't afford to have blackouts and brownouts during the coldest of winter weather months.…”