Political Quotes

“more than a year ago Senators Shaheen and Portman worked on an energy efficiency bill--a good bill. That was more than a year ago. That bill was, as I have indicated, good, but during the past many months, through the energy committee and the work of Ron Wyden and others, that bill was improved greatly. Ron Wyden was chairman of that committee at the time, and they did so many good things with that piece of legislation. We had six cosponsors--three Democrats and three Republicans. This bill would create 200,000 jobs, and it would help our Nation's energy proficiency significantly. So I moved to proceed to the bill in September, this past September-- and we have been through this a number of times, but I will repeat it very quickly. We were held up from doing that for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the junior Senator from Louisiana wanting to take away the health care for our staffs. That threw a few roadblocks in the way. So without going into detail, we never got that done. But Senators Shaheen and Portman, as I have indicated, did not give up. They worked hard to incorporate 10 separate bipartisan amendments into this bill. So the bill was good last September, but it is terrific now. As a result of that, we improved the number of people who were willing to support this legislation. We went from 3 and 3 to 7 and 7-- 14 cosponsors of this bill.…”