On the recordJanuary 22, 2015
I wish to take a couple of minutes to talk about the pending business--the TransCanada tar sands pipeline. I think it is helpful to start out by recognizing that we actually haven't had a global energy bill in the Senate going back to 2005. So it has been about 10 years since we have truly looked at our entire energy policy in this country and set a new course for what we should be doing in the future. Despite the fact I think bumper stickers are a little dangerous, I thought it would be helpful to at least try to encapsulate the general direction we should be going--the short and sweet of what lens we should be viewing our national energy policy through. I think if I had to boil that down to a simple and concise statement, what I would say is simply fewer imports and cleaner fuels. So as we look at different proposals over the course of this upcoming Congress, I think it will be very helpful, particularly on the energy committee and on the floor, to view these projects through that lens. Oddly enough, we are not dealing with a major energy policy as the very first thing the Senate considers as its pending business. We are dealing with one single project put forward by TransCanada, an international corporation, that has spent millions and millions of dollars over the last few years lobbying Washington for this particular project.…
