Political Quotes

“I chair the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and in that capacity, I want to take a couple of minutes to speak against the Toomey amendment. That is amendment No. 115 that would slash, in effect, the biofuels program at the Department of Defense. Of course, we are going to hear that this will save money, that with the sequester and a very tough set of financial circumstances, which the Presiding Officer knows all too well, the argument will be we cannot afford to have this biofuels program in the Department of Defense. My argument would be, we cannot afford not to have this program, and I am going to take a couple minutes to try to describe why that is the case. Right now, the Department of Defense is the single largest user of energy in our country, with annual fuel expenditures in excess of $16 billion. So you have this massive need for energy at the Pentagon-- really a thirst for energy at the Pentagon--and fluctuations in global energy prices have, in effect, enormous effects on defense spending. Every $10 increase in a barrel of oil costs the American military annually an extra $1.3 billion.…”