Joe Barton

I am not asking for the Obama position, I am just asking generally, if you are open to an interim storage proposal.

I support Yucca Mountain as a final repository. So there is no daylight between Chairman Shimkus and myself on that.

I don't know why we wouldn't pass the bill to let the market operate and let people choose. What is wrong with that?

As I understand it, if you have, under current law or old law, 50 employees or less, you don't have all the mandates and you basically set your insurance... based on what you can afford.

I would like to see them helped in some way, if at all possible.

Let's come together. Let's vote for something that we can all be proud of so that we can tell the parents of children with autism that there is hope and there is a future. Vote ``yes.'' Please vote ``yes.''

Lifting the ban would also create American jobs, and like the LNG Permitting Certainty and Transparency Act, it would strengthen America's geopolitical hand globally.

I believe the current crude oil exports restrictions are also standing in the way of real economic and geopolitical benefits.

Legislation like the LNG Permitting Certainty and Transparency Act that passed the House back in January which helps America harness our natural energy abundance by requiring DOE by law to act on pending LNG export applications in a timely…

We have lost 20,000 jobs and yet we have it underneath our feet, and we can't get it because we don't have a place to take it to.

I just think we have to be very careful that we don't do something in the short term which, while it may benefit certain actors in the United States, private industry, in particular in the oil industry, that we, not as my colleague from…

Why wouldn't we be talking about taking this excess light sweet crude and tooling up our refinery capacity to keep it here in the United States?

I think that we can slow this process down.

There is no urgency to do this.

I have been in Congress 21 years, and I have heard colleagues on both sides of the aisle constantly talk about the goal of making our country energy independent.

We shouldn't embrace short-term gains without understanding the long-term costs of our decisions because we can't afford to get it wrong.

Increasing crude exports means increasing impacts on climate change, public health and safety, property owners, and our water supplies.

Shouldn't we consider a fee on exports to ensure all Americans benefit from the exploitation and exporting of the natural resources?

Exports may help oil companies, but will they really benefit consumers?

I believe that we need to answer a host of complicated questions before considering a wholesale dismantling of our Nation's ability to restrict oil exports as proposed in H.R. 702.

This bill is good policy for both economic and strategic reasons.

One point that I want to make is America is a trading county. We don't need to or should we get to zero imports before we export.

Last year when I brought up this issue I was told to go out and educate my colleagues and garner support for my bill. Well, I've done that.

I think if you listen to the witnesses, especially my good friend, Ambassador Gandalovic from the Czech Republic, you will see the absolute positivism of repealing this ban.

This is an important issue for me obviously.