Political Quotes

“Madam President, we are not at this moment without votes on this important legislation for lack of effort by the distinguished Senator from Louisiana. She has been extraordinarily determined, as she was with her earlier small business legislation which she fought through to a success, and I am sure this will be fought through to a success as well. One of the ways in which our friends on the other side are seeking to harass and impede this important piece of legislation is by putting on unrelated amendments--particularly poisonous unrelated amendments, including the one Senator Rockefeller just spoke about--to completely gut and strip the authority the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized EPA has to protect us from the hazard of carbon pollution. Underlying this procedural maneuver which would interfere with this significant jobs-related bill is a fundamental disagreement about whether our atmosphere is being affected by the carbon pollution we have been pumping into it. I would submit the facts are entirely on one side of that debate, and the polluters are entirely on the other. It is only in a building such as this in which so many special interests have such sway that the debate has the currency it appears to have achieved. Much of what is happening is nondebatable. Scientists know--not from theory but from observation, from calculation--what the range of parts per million of carbon dioxide has been in the atmosphere for 8,000 centuries.…”