Mike Conaway: “This is a pretty straightforward amendment, Mr. Chairman, that would simply require that any effort under the Defense…”

“This is a pretty straightforward amendment, Mr. Chairman, that would simply require that any effort under the Defense Production Act to build a hundreds- of-millions-of-dollars refinery for biofuels could not happen until it was authorized by this body. It is not allowed to stop this from happening. It simply means that the Department of Defense and the Department of Agriculture, who both are funding this misguided attempt, in my opinion, couldn't do that until they bring a business case to this body for consideration. I would think my colleagues on the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee as well as the MilCon Subcommittee would be offended by this backdoor approach to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a project of dubious value. The Defense Production Act is a World War II, post-World War II vintage program supervised by the Financial Services Committee--not the Defense, not the Armed Services Committee or the Subcommittees on Appropriation--but the Financial Services Committee. There is currently a refinery that is being proposed to be joint- funded by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense to build a biofuels refinery. Neither of these agencies' core competencies is in this arena. They each have their own core competencies, and it has absolutely nothing to do with biofuels.…”