Mike Conaway: “we have an hour's worth of comments today about an issue that there is little debate, and that is that we have got an…”

“we have an hour's worth of comments today about an issue that there is little debate, and that is that we have got an energy problem in this country. How do we continue to power the factories and the plants and the office buildings, hospitals, our homes, our cars? How do we continue to use energy? Where do we get that energy from? And at what cost? There is not a lot of debate these days that we are in fact too dependent on imported foreign oil and natural gas, and that is a national security issue that I suspect the folks at the Pentagon chew on every single day. It is an issue for factory owners and businessmen and women all over this country as they look at ways to reduce their energy usage, as they look at ways to reduce their costs, their input costs on the product that they are trying to manufacture and sell to others. That is an issue to every family in this country as they decide how to pay for gasoline for their automobiles and home heating oil and natural gas to heat their homes or electricity to heat their homes. Energy should have a central front in our debate, in our actions, particularly in this body.”