Comprehensive Energy Legislation
Pallone (D-NJ): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have been here for about 20 years now and I have been through various crisis in the 1970's with energy and gas prices and of course one that we just faced within the last year or so. The bottom line is that we need energy dependence. We can't continue to depend on mid east oil. At the same time we have a global climate crisis. Anyone who denies it is kidding themselves. What we are doing here in the House is coming up with a bill that will probably come to the floor within the next two weeks that tries to achieve energy independence and also addresses the problem of global warming, but at the same time creates a lot of jobs because as we move towards renewables, whether it be solar, or wind, or geothermal, there's a lot of jobs in research and development. There are jobs in actually building those facilities. There are jobs in trying to create more energy efficiency. And these jobs that would be created, these are the kinds of high technology jobs, if you will, as well as construction jobs, that we really need because a lot of people are out of work and are not working in similar industries. Their activities can be basically transferred to these new kinds ever job opportunities. So I want to stress that this energy bill is a job creation bill. Thank you.
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