William H. Frist: “today we will continue consideration of the Energy bill, as we just discussed. The debate has been very thorough and…”

“today we will continue consideration of the Energy bill, as we just discussed. The debate has been very thorough and robust. Today I expect it to be so as we debate a number of very important issues, but I am confident, very optimistic, that we will have a strong bipartisan bill that will be overwhelmingly supported by this body by the time we complete it at the end of next week. I thank Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman for their tremendous leadership. They started in this session with a bipartisan commitment to produce a bill that speaks to the needs that are so clear and evident to all of us and to the American people. They deserve great credit for working together and working hard through all of these complicated details to come up with a plan that both sides of the aisle will be able to support. I am pleased that during the Energy bill debate we are discussing the importance of increasing our Nation's use of renewable fuels, such as ethanol, which we spent a lot of time on yesterday, as we will today, as well as biodiesel. I am a strong supporter of the renewable fuels standard which will double the use of ethanol and biodiesel over the next 7 years. Increasing use of these home-grown, clean-burning renewable fuels is essential to reducing both our short- and long-term dependence on foreign oil.…”