Press Conference with Sen. Cantwell (D-WA; Sen. Cornyn (R-TX); Sen. Craig (R-ID); Sen. Domenici (R-NM); Sen. Ensign (R-NV); Sen. Klobuchar (D-MN); Sen. Schumer (D-NY); and Sen. Sununu (R-NH), Subject: The Clean Energy Tax Stimulus Act of 2008

Statement

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SEN. CANTWELL: Next we're going to hear from Senator Klobuchar.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Senator Cantwell, Senator Ensign and everyone here for their leadership on this issue.

Every year I go around and visit the 87 counties in Minnesota, and I can tell you that energy comes up everywhere I go. Gasoline prices. They see this as a challenge, but more and more in our state, regular folks are seeing this as an opportunity. You talk to 10 employees at a solar panel factory in Starbuck, Minnesota, who actually left their jobs because they saw a future in renewable le energy. They did have me jump up and down on the solar panels to see if they would do hail damage. And I can tell you they don't. You see it in Pipestone, Minnesota, where they have so many wind turbines now that they opened up a bed and breakfast with a simple package deal that you go there, you stay overnight, and in the morning you wake up and look at a wind turbine.

You see it in a suburb in the Twin Cities called Maple Grove where, in a suburban shopping mall, they've actually put up a wind turbine for one of our energy companies.

And so people in our state are very excited about this. At the same time, they're very concerned about what's been going on with the Production Tax Credit, which has been really a game of green light-red light, over the years, with the investment lagging about eight months before every time that Production Tax Credit is going to go off.

And that's why I am so excited to be a part of this coalition, bipartisan coalition, here to say that we need to look to the future. We need to have long-term investment in energy so that these opportunities that people see really come true, and that we can really move to a clean energy future and invest in the farmers and the workers, of the Midwest and the South and the Southwest and all over this country, instead of the oil cartels of the Mideast.

Thank you very much.

(Cross talk.)

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