Political Quotes

“I have spoken on this earlier in the week. I will not spend a great deal of time today. Thanks to the majority leader, we will have two votes this afternoon on items that I think are representative of critical problems in our country. The first is a vote on an amendment by Senator Feinstein and myself that eliminates payment to the largest refining and oil companies in this country to blend ethanol, which they have honestly admitted--and they sent us a letter saying it--they don't want. The second is on whether we will subsidize, with Federal tax dollars, additional pumps to use ethanol. The reason the votes are important is because the way we get out of trouble as a nation is a couple of billion dollars at a time. We have a Federal mandate that says X amount of fuel has to be blended with ethanol every year. That will rise to 22 billion gallons in 2015. So there is no reason for us to pay somebody to blend it when they already have to, and we have seen the shift in the industry from small entities to the very large. When this program started, it was about less than a billion dollars in cost. It will now be, on an annualized basis, around $6 billion. While we are running a $1.6 trillion deficit, we need every penny we can get. So I am thankful this has been brought up. But it begs the larger question--actually there are two. One, can we trust markets--real markets--to work more effectively than Washington mandating and dictating policies?…”