Bob Corker: “I was in my home State last week, and I can tell my colleagues that the American people have a very low knowledge of…”

“I was in my home State last week, and I can tell my colleagues that the American people have a very low knowledge of this bill, certainly the vocabulary in it. I think 30 hours that we will spend on this floor talking about a bill that is so important--so important to the environment, so important to energy security, at a time when gasoline prices are where they are, combined with the fact that people care deeply about the environment--is most appropriate, and my guess is that we are going to have a lot of technical amendments using language that most people in this body do not use. We are going to be talking about an auction process that has never been put in place in this country, an allocation process that will be allocating trillions of dollars to people around this country. I think for us to spend 30 hours talking about that so that all Senators are fully aware of what this bill says prior to voting on amendments is most appropriate. I would think that people who have spent a year putting this bill together would relish the time to talk about what this bill actually does and what it says. I look forward to being a very active participant in that. I thank the sponsors for bringing this forward.”