Jim Inhofe: “I was not here when the Presiding Officer spoke last night; however, I am familiar with the amendment that is here. Let…”

“I was not here when the Presiding Officer spoke last night; however, I am familiar with the amendment that is here. Let me share with some of the Members here. I hope they don't look at this amendment as just part of the amendment that was defeated yesterday. We talked about biofuels. There are a lot of people here who are supportive of biofuels. I am supportive of biofuels. In fact, we are very active in Oklahoma right now in developing various biofuels. We are one of the leaders in the Nation, and we actually have a lot of plants located in my State of Oklahoma. This is not that issue. It is not whether you believe biofuels is something we are working toward in the future. We are. We all know that. This is whether we should take our very scarce defense dollars--in this case, the dollars that would otherwise go to the Department of Navy--and put them into subsidizing the private sector in building these plants. What we are looking at now is to either retrofit or build biofuel refineries. This is interesting because right now I have a list of about 100 different biofuel plants--many of which are in my State of Oklahoma--that are not subsidized by the Federal Government, and there is no reason for these to be subsidized by the Federal Government. This is something that can be done. If you look at the Navy and the problems they are having right now, I think people realize their operation and maintenance funds are stretched to the maximum.…”