Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I have to say I have been in the Senate for 10 years, and I have tried to get an Energy bill through the Senate during…”

“I have to say I have been in the Senate for 10 years, and I have tried to get an Energy bill through the Senate during all of that time. We have never been able to do that until the Senator from New Mexico became chairman of the committee. What he has produced is a balanced bill. There are many things in it that I don't like. There are many things in it that I am sure every one of us in this Chamber would do a little differently. But we are a legislative body, and people have the right to have differing views and come together in compromises. When we are making the decisions about how we are going to vote on legislation, we have to determine if the good outweighs the bad and if the bad is going to be unchangeable or more harmful than we should allow. I think the good definitely outweighs the bad in this bill. I was going to talk about the MTBE issue. I couldn't talk about it any better than the Senator from New Mexico. People forget that MTBE was a mandate from the Federal Government. It came as a result of a mandate to produce oxygenated gasoline to try to reduce smog in our country and reduce pollution. The manufacturers came forward with MTBE. It is a perfectly safe product if used properly. In fact, it did have the intended consequences of reducing pollution.”