Pete Sessions: “one thing we are about to do today after many objections and difficulties over the years from the Democratic leadership…”

“one thing we are about to do today after many objections and difficulties over the years from the Democratic leadership is to pass a bill that will allow offshore production of oil and gas. It will absolutely positively affect the pocketbooks of American citizens. This is a bipartisan effort, although as one can see from my colleague and his polemic--political polemic--that he just completed, even the Democratic leadership is not comfortable with making progress, but many of the Members are. Before I talk about the energy bill, I want to take a moment to respond. He talked about the war. We had a vote on withdrawal from Iraq. It was 93 to 6 against that. We voted a year later on it again and only 13 Democrats voted for it then. We need to have more bipartisan work to accomplish issues that are important to the American people, and we can do it. But we are being driven by the politics of elections, and I don't think it is healthy for us. That is the way it goes around here, unfortunately. We will continue to proceed. I just want to know how the Senator comes up with this number, 700- something billion dollars of costs for the partial repeal of the death tax. Who knows where that number came from? The Congressional Budget Office which, in my view, tends to overscore, making it higher than reality, said it was $260 billion over 10 years. I submit that even this is a high number.…”