Jim Inhofe

You are proposing a rule that you don't have authority to do and to enforce today.

Under existing authorities, can you currently require a State to have gas dispatched at 70 percent of capacity?

Thank you, Madam Chairman, and Administrator McCarthy, thank you for being here.

I do reserve the right to object. I have listened carefully to my very good friend from California, and it affects my decision as to whether to object. The reason the American people are no longer interested in all the hype and all the…

Our point is, I believe the distinguished Senator from California is reserving the right to object. I would ask her does she object.

These bills we are talking about, the first was the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003, then in 2005, the same thing, the Warner-Lieberman...

I think that we need to look at this with each and every increase in energy cost.

Not only did I vote for them, but I was an original co-sponsor of those.

We have to ask ourselves are we doing something to this economy that is not good for us and how can we make positive gains together without damaging our economy.

Since 2009, 7.2 million people have left the work force.

The President once said that his climate policies would make the cost of electricity necessarily skyrocket and I believe him.

The mere fact that it has been rejected by the House and the Senate is very significant.

Is it worth subjecting many in our Country to a dramatically lower quality of life and health for this plan to essentially nationalize our electricity grid? Based on the facts, I would say absolutely not.

Growth in the first quarter of this year was negative 1 percent.

By the way, I have the greatest respect for Senator Sanders.

One out of every six men 25 to 54 is not working today.

They are trying to do this through regulation, Obama is, because he couldn't do it through legislation.

We need to hear from the experts on electricity reliability.

Nationalizing our electricity grid means taking decisionmaking about electricity policy out of the hands of the States, out of the hands of the communities and putting it in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

Even if the President was able to reach an agreement like the Kyoto treaty of the 1990's, it would still have to be ratified by the Senate. The treaty in the 1990's overwhelmingly failed in the Senate.

The reason guys like Tom Steyer have to go to such lengths to make the political issue is because the American people don't want anything to do with it.

I do ask this be made a part of the record.

The whole plan hinges on President Obama's foreign policy prowess. His foreign policy record is a series of empty threats, pivots, resets, missed calculations and lead from behind failures in places like Syria, Russia, Iran, Libya and now…

Even if they were able to do this and pass this, it would not reduce... the amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

The fact that they are now trying to get out from under the mess they are in.