Rob Portman: “I thank my colleague from North Dakota. He has done a great job of talking about the importance of the overall bill, and…”

“I thank my colleague from North Dakota. He has done a great job of talking about the importance of the overall bill, and then these four small provisions we are trying to do tonight. But specifically he made a great point about the importance of dealing with this water heater issue. He feels it every day, because in North Dakota he is hearing from his rural electric co-ops saying: This is crazy. Why would we not go ahead and pass this legislation? In effect, what he just said was: We need to pass this legislation to be able to keep the Federal Government from imposing a regulation that makes no sense for anybody, whether you believe in energy efficiency or not. It makes no sense for anybody. I am hopeful we can get this done. I know we had an objection earlier in the process this evening. I am hopeful we can convince the colleague from Oklahoma who objected that this is commonsense legislation that has to get passed. We have heard from Senator Shaheen also, who has been the Democrat leader on this with me. We also heard from the chairman of the energy committee come January, Senator Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. She is a strong supporter. We have heard from Senator Ayotte, also a Republican from New Hampshire, who is an expert on energy efficiency as it relates to what is called Tenant Star and better building programs. This is one thing that we ought to be getting done here during this lameduck session of Congress.…”