Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, this is a fairly simple amendment, and it is a commonsense amendment. While the technologies could also be used that this amendment will plus up for natural gas or oil, I will focus my attention on coal because that is what happens in my district predominantly. Over the last several years, as many of us know, there have been numerous burdensome regulations on the coal industry and industries that burn coal. The very least we can do is to make sure that coal-fired power plants and others dependent on coal, among those most heavily targeted, have the technologies necessary to meet the standards being imposed on them. In recent months, I have had many conversations and discussions with a number of folks in southwest Virginia, but also folks at the Department of Energy, about ways that we can better do the research necessary to make clean coal technology available. One thing is very clear. There is a future for coal, and it lies in many ways in the technologies being researched and supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy Research. We would love to get parity. This amendment doesn't bring us to parity, but it gets us a little bit closer. My amendment would simply add $45 million for fossil energy research and development from the energy efficiency and renewable energy account for the purpose of aiding clean coal technology.…”