Political Quotes

“I first wish to thank the distinguished chairman of the energy committee and her ranking member for allowing this process to go forward to the point where I am able to call up this amendment. It is a convention here when amendments are called up to ask unanimous consent that the reading be dispensed with, but in this amendment, the effective language is only eight words: ``Climate change is real and not a hoax.'' So I went ahead and allowed the clerical staff to read the whole operative text of this amendment. This is an extremely simple amendment. We are here in this remarkable body in which so much history has taken place and in which so many great achievements have been fought through, many of them with powerful interests and strong arguments on opposite sides. And through that conflict, here in this body, we have been able to generate some of the great compromises and some of the great resolutions that have defined the course of the history of this country. So what a wonderful place this is to have the opportunity to serve. Now, in this great deliberative body, called by many the greatest deliberative body, we have a great issue before us--perhaps as many say, the issue of our time--and that is what our carbon pollution--the excess carbon that we burn when we burn fossil fuels--is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans. There is no factual debate about what it is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans.…”