Pelosi, Peterson Remarks at Press Availability on Energy Legislation

WASHINGTON, June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson held a press availability this
afternoon following their meeting with House Republican Members in the
Speaker's office to discuss the American Clean Energy and Security Act.Below
are their remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be visiting with you this
afternoon with the very distinguished Chair of the House Agriculture Committee
-- a person who has been very successful in my view in negotiating provisions
in the energy bill that we're working on now.

As you know, we have a bill that unifies our country and our industries that
says: "We are going down a path of change and transformation and we're doing
it together."

Representing the industries in our country that are energy intensive and what
they use is for us an economic issue to create clean energy jobs in America,
to keep us number one in advancing green technologies. It is a national
security issue -- to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it's a health issue
-- to reduce pollution in the air, and it's a moral issue for us to pass on
God's beautiful creation to the next generation in a responsible way.

To that end, we have had a wonderful collaboration to build consensus and a
critical part of that has been the leadership of Collin Peterson. We just
stepped out of the meeting which is still going on because we knew you were
here waiting, and I have to go to the unveiling of my Republican colleague
Jerry Lewis' portrait. So I wanted to come out to present to you Mr. Peterson
and for him to give you his appraisal of how things are going.

Thank you for your leadership, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Peterson. Thank you Madam Speaker. We in agriculture believe we will
have a significant role in getting to energy independence in this country.
We've been working on that with the Farm Bill and the historic inclusion for
the first time of the energy title. And what we've been working on with Mr.
Waxman has been to massage the part of the bill that affects agriculture in
terms of whether we can develop the next generation of bio-fuels, and we can
have an offset program that we believe works for agriculture because we are a
little bit of a different animal than some other businesses in this country.

So we had long discussions and a lot of work has been done, especially over
the weekend, but we have now resolved all of the issues including the bio-mass
issue, which was still hanging us up this afternoon. So I think we have
resolved everything, and from my perspective, we have an offset program which
is going to work. It's going to provide carbon reduction and it's going to
provide credits to industries that need it and that is what we were after. We
were after getting a program that was workable, that made sense, that farmers
would be responsive to and we got that worked out.

We also had this problem lingering from the 2007 energy bill regarding this
international land use, which I had talked to the Speaker about, which I think
she will remember before we voted on that bill. We've been trying to work on
that the last year and a half, and that has been resolved as international
indirect land use is out of the bill and that is a big issue for those of us
in agriculture that have a lot of ethanol and a lot of biodiesel like I do in
my state. We were a leader on this and we were the first state to have a
mandate on ethanol, the first to have a mandate on biodiesel. When I was in
the legislature, I set up the first loan guarantee program to get ethanol
going in Minnesota.

We have been doing this a long time. We have a lot of experience and this RFS
had to get fixed if we were going to get the investment that we need into the
second generation of ethanol. And we believe that the changes that were made
here, with the work that I was able to do with Mr. Waxman, will get us in a
position where we can get the investment going and get this industry up and
running. We're very close in a couple of places to have commercial cellulosic
ethanol production -- possibly within the next six months. It's been some of
this uncertainty over the RFS that has held up some of this activity that's
going there.

So we think there are a lot of positive things in this for agriculture, and I
think we're going to see the groups coming on board in support of this in the
next day or two. I intend to support this bill, and we thank the Speaker for
her patience in dealing with us. I know some of the Members of our Caucus get
a little frustrated, but we speak a little different language, have a little
different culture than some other people.

But, like what happened with -- you can ask Mr. Rangel on the Ways and Means
Committee during the Farm Bill -- it really helped both committees to
understand where we're coming from, and the same thing has happened between me
and Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey and the staff of our committee and their
committee. We now have a much better understanding of where each other are
coming from, and I think a better base to work off of and so its been very
positive from that point of view.

So, I'm glad to be here and I think we've got a good outcome.

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. If you could just imagine
how proud I am of the work of our chairmen and this collaboration that we've
had among our Members and of the leaders of their committees.

We have said when we passed the Farm Bill with the energy title in it that, as
Mr. Chairman said, the first time that we had an energy title that, "America's
farmers will fuel energy independence" and indeed with this bill, it takes us
much closer to that place.

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