Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this has been a very interesting debate, and there's been a lot of rhetoric thrown around, some of which doesn't even apply whatsoever in any remoteness to the bill that's before us today. H.R. 1230, which we are debating today, simply tells this administration to go through with the lease sales that were already authorized by a previous administration. In other words, all of these lease sales had gone through whatever process they had gone through. Three of them were in the Gulf of Mexico. One of them was off the coast of Virginia. We are simply saying with this legislation, let's send a signal to the international markets that America is serious about becoming less dependent on foreign oil. And we do that by saying, this administration should go through with these lease sales, which, I might add, Mr. Chairman, we have heard about loss of revenue from the other side of the aisle. These lease sales themselves would provide the general fund with $40 million over the next 10 years. So what we're doing is really kind of ironic: We are telling this administration to do something it should be doing by law anyway. That's what the scope is. So I urge my colleagues to vote on this bill. We can have other discussion on the other bills in the ensuing days.…”