On the recordJuly 10, 2013
I thank you very much. Now, I don't live out there. I'm from a part of the country that doesn't have one of these, but most of America is covered by power marketing authorities. If you really look at California, if you look at the TVA, regions of the country that have these borrowing authorities, and the way they work is that the ratepayers then pay back, over time, the costs of that investment. We have to invest and modernize our grid. That part of the country is growing, and, frankly, they have been returning dollars at a fairly steady rate. I looked at those figures about a year ago. And with the increase in renewables in the West, there's also a need to alter the grid and its ability to accept new forms of power. That part of the country is growing. The population is just exploding out there. And so, therefore, we're going to have a greater use of power and more of a need to put it on to the system. So I don't see why the gentleman who comes from Louisiana--now, I know you've got a lot of oil drilling down there in the gulf and a lot of us have voted for that, but I don't really understand the purpose of the gentleman's amendment.
