David Thomas: “I will be short. It is a real honor to be here this evening to talk about the introduction of this bill, a bill for…”

“I will be short. It is a real honor to be here this evening to talk about the introduction of this bill, a bill for which we have waited a very long time, and worked a very long time. I thank the chairman and the ranking member. We worked very hard on this bill to get it into conference and worked very hard through conference. Since we started formulating policy, we have worked on a number of issues. There have been changes. Many things have remained the same because the policies need to be the same. The issues are the same. We have had to move forward. We still need a comprehensive policy. That is an important issue because now, as we read in the paper, there are questions as to why we are not going to affect the gas prices tomorrow or the day after. We are talking about down the road. We are talking about where we will be over a period of time. This is a policy. It is very important to remember and to understand as we talk about the changes that will eventually take place in the kind of energy we will use, in terms of renewables, in terms of alternatives. We will be moving there, but we are not there. Alternative energy creates now about 3 percent of what we use. It will be much higher than that, but it won't be higher than that next year or next month. We have to make sure what we are using now for energy can continue to be maintained and that we will find new ways of dealing with the energy.…”