Political Quotes

“First, I would like to commend Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Kaptur for bringing this bill to the floor. I am a proud member of this subcommittee. Their work is quite remarkable. And it is one of the subcommittees that tries to achieve a harmonious balance of bipartisanship in a very difficult and divided environment. I want to thank them both for that. Mr. Chairman, most Americans may not realize, even though this is an Energy and Water bill, that there are important components of our national security buried within this bill. There is our nonproliferation regimen by which we help secure fissile materials and the technology that could potentially go with the development of nuclear weapons capability and it falling into the hands of the wrong people. This is very, very important work. My amendment seeks to move $25 million from the mixed oxide fuel program and move it into the defense nuclear nonproliferation accounts, such as the global threat reduction initiative and other similar accounts. The reason I am offering this is I am very concerned about the future of the mixed oxide, the MOX, fuel program. So is the Department of Energy. So is the administration. So is our committee. Everyone is very concerned about the potential viability of this program which we have already spent $4 billion of taxpayer money on. This bill currently calls for about $350 million to be spent.…”