Maria Cantwell

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses.

Forty percent of our energy use is in buildings and these facilities, I equated, to the next phase of efficiency.

So Alaska could play a very valuable role for our country that way.

One of the reasons the legislation that Senator Murkowski and I have supported is the next step we think is it is really targeting smart buildings.

I also appreciate that Senator Cantwell pointed out the fact that we're not just talking about these unique, small situations in Alaska, but that this really does represent the way that we are going to transform the electric grid and the…

I have to be honest, when we had our hearing in Washington, DC, and the Mayor promised Copper River salmon, he had my attention.

Those kinds of things are going to transform, in the next couple decades, how utilities are perceived and how they work.

I mean, I am pretty sure in 20 years, 25 years, we are all going to be in the energy business.

Senator Cantwell. Well, Madam Chair, thank you so much for this invitation to come to Cordova.

And you are behind the cut--okay. I will just take that as a 'yes,' that you are behind this particular cut.

So you are saying that the extension of the mandatory sequester is not a cut to Medicare?

Women cannot be discriminated against by their employer who wants to cherry-pick various aspects of women's health.

The United States has a huge opportunity for other parts of the world that are so energy inefficient and whose grids are so elementary to take and create the smart grid and smart building platform for the future.

I think we are getting a letter today from all the former leaders of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy... saying not to gut the EERE office.

So if we want to keep being a leader, we need to keep our investments in R&D and deployment going.

So we are where we are today with over 370,000 workers in the solar industry, and one out of every 50 new jobs in the United States in 2016 was created by the solar industry.

NextGen is paying dividends, and so if we get to this point where we don't get there on this discussion, we hope that we'll keep making progress on the implementation, just as we did under the last extension bill.

The Basic Health Program (section 1331 of the Affordable Care Act), which I authored, is an innovative, State-run plan that is delivering high-quality and low-cost health care to more than 750,000 low-income Americans and counting.

My colleague from Louisiana has said there are things that are working, and that the States should keep them if they want to.

European consumers have far more robust consumer protections than we do in the United States, and we don't understand why that should be.

I just feel like the airlines are basically leaving too much of this to interpretation at the gate level.

We're going to tell you how you can and can't operate to protect consumers and the traveling public.

If you want us to legislate that, we will, because we're not going to run into the same situation.

I was also there when, last year, or 2 years ago, we put an FAA bill together and we didn't give flight attendants the same rest time as pilots.

It is still no excuse for dehumanizing the aspects of passenger travel and just making them part of someone's business plan.