Political Quotes

“I want to thank my colleague from Rhode Island for the eloquent description of what the underlying bill does. I tend to agree with his description on how critical this legislation is. I am surprised at the tone, though, when we already have multiple rules, regulations, statutes on the books that talk about import and export. I am surprised at the tone when we talk about the danger of producing these materials in this country when right now we're not producing many of them, and we are entirely reliant upon those with whom we compete globally and militarily to attain these. I would suggest to you that while well-intentioned, that this matter is, in fact, already taken care of under existing law; but let's not forget the underlying purpose of the bill. It's about jobs. You want to talk about the middle class? You want to talk about the economy? You want to talk about the western half of this country where over 40 percent of many of those States are owned by the Federal Government, where people who are elected by nobody within the State are making decisions about permitting? You want to talk about permitting times and how long it takes to do that? By the way, did you hear that if it isn't grown, it has to be mined? The purpose of this bill is to put people to work and put us back in control of supplying those minerals for the building industries, the communications industries, the manufacturing industries, all of that.…”