I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak this afternoon on these important issues. It's true that offshore in Virginia is something we've been discussing since 2004. What's interesting is that a lot of the folks said, You don't…

I would ask the gentleman if he doesn't agree with me that we would be much better off as a Nation if we focused on a way to have affordable energy, clean coal technology, and not just have a war on coal, and thus create those jobs that…

Ladies and gentlemen of the House, I too am here to discuss the President's war on coal. The President would have you believe that we must choose between the environment and affordable, reliable energy, but that is not the case. There is a…

I would say it is interesting that the President has taken this action to have a war on coal when his Department of Energy has been investing in some clean coal technology, maybe not as much as some of us would like, but some clean coal…

Let me say briefly that one of the interesting things I note is that when we were talking about this at the Energy and Commerce Committee, Lisa Jackson was in there and we talked about regulating greenhouse gases and how that was going to…

Are you saying it's just as safe as the oil that goes through pipelines in hundreds of thousands of miles already across the United States of America?

Let me follow up on that, if I might, real quick. In one of my counties, when you take away the money that comes from Richmond and take away the money that comes from Washington for education, 70 percent of the tax dollars in that…

Well, it's a war on everything that we hold dear when you get right down to it. Because the truth of the matter is, when you're the number one nation in the world, everybody else wants to be where you are. Right now we're the number one…

That is one of the problems that we see in my district. I have a lot of counties that are really hurting. And it's not because we couldn't have jobs, it's because Washington is getting in the way. Every month we're having layoffs in some…

we are making the citizens no longer have confidence.

I serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee, so most of my time has been spent defending the rights of citizens to have affordable energy--aka coal--and use that.