Jim Costa

Our current energy policy is bankrupt.

But we must take other steps, such as increasing conservation, developing an ethanol industry, and increasing CAFE standards if we are to make our country safer by cutting our reliance on foreign oil.

As a matter of fact, if you do not take into account, as Congressman Ross just stated, the Social Security surplus, our fiscal deficit, ladies and gentlemen, is over $700 billion today.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.