Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague and friend from Ohio for leading this important discussion on this very important and somewhat scary week. Mr. Speaker, I love the opportunity to tell the story of North Dakota. You know, a lot of people think of North Dakota these days as just an oil-producing State out there somewhere in the Wild West. While we're the second-leading producer of oil--and we're rather proud of how well we do it--long before that, even long before North Dakota was one of the 10 top producers of wind energy, long before that North Dakota was producing electricity by burning coal. In fact, for decades, North Dakota has been generating electricity burning coal. In fact, at the current burn rate, there's an 800-year supply of lignite coal under our prairies. Prior to being elected to this great institution of the people's House, I was a public service commissioner for 10 years and carried the portfolio of coal mining in our State. I got to oversee the data collection, the pre-mine permitting, the permitting of the mine, the inspections of the mines, the releasing of the bond at the end of the life of the mine. North Dakota companies mine over 30 million tons of coal every year, Mr. Speaker, generating about 5,000 megawatts of electricity. Currently, we have about 120,000 acres under permit for coal mining in our State. It's very important to North Dakota, as it is to the rest of our Nation.…”