Paul Ryan: “First off, Mr. Speaker, I would like to celebrate the fact that we are here in this well talking about this motion to go…”

“First off, Mr. Speaker, I would like to celebrate the fact that we are here in this well talking about this motion to go to conference, and I want to compliment our chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Spratt, the gentleman from South Carolina. And I mean this in a very sincere way. The budget process doesn't work if you don't have a budget, and I want to compliment the gentleman from South Carolina for making it 2 years in a row for actually bringing forward and getting through a budget resolution. It looked like it wasn't going to happen. We won't be supporting it, but the fact that the budget chairman is keeping the budget process intact speaks very good to this institution, good to the process, and I want to compliment the gentleman from South Carolina for doing that. Now, on to the motion to instruct. Everyone agrees, Mr. Speaker, that we need to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. But frankly, if we really want to move forward with greater energy independence, we should increase our petroleum supply by increasing our domestic production of oil. The motion accomplishes just that.”