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"Senator Jim Bunning and his Senate Republican colleagues have put millions of Americans in the cross hairs of their extreme ideology. By blocking the unemployment benefit extension, Republicans have ripped away federal unemployment benefits from over a million jobless workers who will become ineligible in March. How many homes will be lost because of this unbelievably callous act? How many children will go to bed hungry because Bunning was more interested in cheap theatre than governance?"

"With this bill, we force America’s health insurance industry into the same market that we want all American industry to be in: the free market competitive system. This is simple. Insurance companies should not be able to monopolize the health insurance marketplace," Congressman Garamendi said. "For 65 years, the insurance industry has used the anti-trust exemption to collude against consumers, fixing prices and raising rates well above inflation. Enough is enough."

"When almost every other industry colludes at the expense of consumers, we call it a crime. When the health insurance industry colludes, we call it business as usual," Congressman Garamendi said. "This legislation removes one of the most damaging weapons in the insurance industry’s arsenal: the ability to manipulate the market together behind closed doors. In my eight years regulating the insurance industry in California, what I learned above all else is that you can’t trust the insurance industry to regulate itself. Insurance company executives will scratch and claw their way to maximum profit, and they don’t care who gets hurt along the way."

"Standing here on these beautiful rolling hills, it’s encouraging to remember that the exhilarating breezes produced by nature here are capable of providing clean power to 74,000 Californians – nature providing opportunities to protect nature," said Congressman Garamendi, a member of the House Science and Technology Committee. "The Shiloh II project is precisely the type of clean technology project that Congress should promote. Environmental protection and job creation aren’t just compatible; with the coming climate change calamity, they’re intimately linked. Like Shiloh II, we must prioritize clean energy projects that green our planet and our wallets."