Political Quotes

“I first want to thank my colleague, Representative Hinojosa from Texas, for joining me in this amendment. Now here is an undisputed fact: Today, the United States imports more than 90 percent of our uranium from foreign countries. Some of them don't like us very much. We have an ample supply of uranium in the West and across this country. A lack of supply is not the problem. We import that much uranium for two reasons: First, accidents that happened decades ago cooled interest in nuclear energy in our country, so companies slowed down their production. But here is the second reason: Just as our domestic energy began to recover from these disasters, our own government started dumping into the market excess uranium it has stockpiled. DOE uses the stockpile to raise funds for itself for various purposes--a fact that this Appropriations subcommittee has been concerned about for quite some time. Every time the Federal Government dumps its excess stockpile into the market, it depresses the price of uranium. Depressed uranium prices halt private investment in domestic mining and conversion and hurt American jobs in the West and in the Midwest. Being reasonable folks, the uranium miners have agreed to accept that the Department of Energy can dump into the market up to 10 percent of domestic demand for uranium. That has been the consensus approach since 2008.…”