Home Heating Emergency Assistance Through Transportation Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this act. It is really just common sense, is it not? And I think it best exemplifies how America handles crises. They adjust. They make an adjustment.

This certainly could be called a heated debate because we are trying to make sure that our constituents have that ability, to heat their homes during one of the longest winters. We don't use the term ``polar vortex'' back in Pennsylvania. We just call it winter.

It has been a long, long winter, and we are looking at the adjustment that would take place. It is just about transportation. It is about allowing these people that deliver this energy, this propane to these homes.

In Pennsylvania, we have over 180,000 people who rely on the delivery of this product to keep their homes heated. That is not a difficult thing to understand. I think for this body to be able to just on the run--on the fly, as it were--make sure that our constituents have the ability to heat their homes, this is so fundamentally basic, and it is just common sense.

So I thank the chairman for bringing this bill forward. It makes sense to everybody back where I live, as they bundle up and continue to worry about when spring is finally going to get here.

We are able to release that now, change the transportation laws a bit, just so they can get there, and we are saying let's do it until May 31. Let's not do it the way we are doing it now.

Chances are, by May 31, that crisis will be gone, but the ability to get propane to their homes is very critical right now.

So I thank the chairman and ranking member for what they are doing. We are doing things that make sense for the American people, and every single American citizen benefits from this.

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