Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I think the chairman outlined it well. This is a thoughtful amendment to the underlying bill. Senator Shaheen and I are delighted to accept it and support it, but also to say this sort of fits a part of the overall energy efficiency effort we did not cover in the legislation, which is these nongovernmental organizations that own buildings, where they do not have the ability to get the kind of market-based support that is in our legislation. This is faith-based organizations, but it is also Boys and Girls Clubs, and it is all kinds of different groups that are interested in doing efficiency retrofits. They need a little help. This gives them a match. Significantly, what maybe we have not focused on earlier is the fact it is paid for. So we are not talking about any impact on the deficit. It is deficit neutral because they went out of their way to try to find good ways to reduce spending at the Department of Energy to have the offsets. Having a local match is important because that gets the local buy-in. I think that is important, that it be a full match. But it also does give them access to some of this expertise we talked about earlier to be able to have more energy efficiency and also ultimately to save energy in this country but also save money for those nonprofit organizations. So I commend my colleagues, Senator Klobuchar and Senator Hoeven. Senator Hoeven wants to come over and speak on this legislation.…”