Marcy Kaptur: “I thank the gentleman for yielding and would merely echo his comments and say that Mrs. Blackburn's amendment is…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding and would merely echo his comments and say that Mrs. Blackburn's amendment is well-intentioned. I think we have already met the goal in our subcommittee. We are $50 million--million--below last year. It is important to keep your eye on the context. The context is, in the last 10 years--well, a little more than that. Since 2003, our country has spent $2.3 trillion on paying for imported petroleum--$2.3 trillion. When you look at the budget deficit, ask yourself why this country has lost economic muscle inside our borders. Our meager $34 billion tries to compensate for that $2.3 trillion of loss. With oil at $100 a barrel now, we could lose, probably in the next 20 years, close to $10 trillion of economic activity related to the import of very expensive petroleum. So what we try to do is to fund critical projects in this bill to help us crawl our way back to energy independence in this country, all the while cutting all our accounts. I think you can't cut the future off. You have to recognize the context in which you are operating. So I think you are well-intentioned, but I think you are misfocused and I think you are missing the bigger--excuse the analogy--elephant in the room here, which is that we are losing wealth and losing strength economically because of these incredible imports that have just catapulted over the years. In 1998, we began importing over half of what we consumed in petroleum. It is simply unsustainable.…”