Political Quotes

“You and I took a trip not too long ago from here in our Nation's Capital to a conference meeting in Pennsylvania. We stopped at a little service station, a gas station owned by a veteran out in the middle of nowhere. In rural America, those communities are powered by small businesses. Small businesses can only thrive when they have affordable electricity. The area of the country where you and I live and much of Appalachia is a manufacturing belt, but a lot of that manufacturing has left because of the downward pressure from Washington, D.C., in regulations of all shapes and sizes, and now with a threat to shut down the very source of energy. I know I have had manufacturers that have come to me saying they have been approached by utility companies saying: Can you idle your plant for a day because we don't have enough energy on the grid to be able to meet the peak demand in the dead of winter, in another polar vortex, or in the stifling heat of summer, when seniors and the elderly and the homebound are sitting in their homes either freezing or burning up because they can't get their HVAC systems to work because of the utility prices or the energy on the grid. It is appalling that it has come to this in America. Our allies get it in Europe. China is not necessarily an ally, but it is building a new coal-fired power plant every 9 days. Germany is building coal-fired power plants. Belgium is returning to a higher mix of coal in their energy profile.…”