Rob Portman: “I am here on the floor to talk about the legislation that is now before this body. We just passed the motion to proceed…”

“I am here on the floor to talk about the legislation that is now before this body. We just passed the motion to proceed to the energy legislation, and we just heard about the legislation from my colleague from Alaska and the Presiding Officer's colleague from Alaska: Senator Murkowski, who chairs the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The legislation is a good package. As she said very well, it both helps in terms of the economy and jobs and in terms of the environment. Who wouldn't be for that? It also has a whole series of proposals with which to do it. The ones I am going to talk about tonight are the energy efficiency proposals that she talked about. In particular, I am going to talk about a concern I have that the legislation that was offered tonight took out part of our energy- efficiency package, which we hope to add later by amendment, but I want to talk about why it is so important to add it back in. The legislation on energy efficiency is something I have introduced with Senator Shaheen, of the great State of New Hampshire, for 9 years now, going back to 2011. Some of it has gotten passed over time, but most of it has not, so we are, once again, bringing it up. The legislation is entitled the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, which is why we commonly call it Portman-Shaheen, because it is shorter. Our legislation has been voted on by this body before. Back in 2016, it passed the U.S. Senate.…”