Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. Any proposal to sunset the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program or limit the pipeline of projects that may be eligible is shortsighted and should be rejected. Why? First, the program is a critical one for the American automotive industry and has supported its resurgence. They have issued more than $8 billion in loans to date, and these loans have resulted in the manufacture of more than 4 million fuel-efficient advanced vehicles, supported approximately 35,000 direct jobs across eight States, including California, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee, and saved more than 1.35 million gallons of gasoline. Not too bad. The success has been achieved with losses of only approximately 2 percent of a total portfolio of $32 billion for the loan programs office. That is a lower percent than most banks have on the loans that they make. What we are talking about here is higher level research, higher level investments in technologies that are yet being born. Why else should we reject this amendment? Instituting an arbitrary and immediate deadline for applications to this program would result in the Department losing billions of dollars in loan authority itself. The program currently has billions in loan requests in the pipeline from both automakers and component manufacturers for projects in 10 States.…”