Politician Quotes

Why? Because we're very well down this process as it is - flawed as it is - and we're counting on getting more power plants on line by the end of 2003 so we have a surplus of power.

Well, we're trying to patch and fix and put a cast on a broken system here. You can call it what you want, but we'll continue to purchase power in a private market.

Well, there's no question that the law passed in 1996 was flawed. It deregulated the wholesale market, meaning the price that the utilities had to pay energy companies for power, but not the retail market.

We're not going to take this sitting down. We are fighting back.

We're going to march on Washington with a host of Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, legislators.

We'll have a public power authority, which will also have the ability to build power or finance power. And more importantly, we'll have more power than our economy provides. All of that will give us leverage we don't have today.

We started focusing on this in earnest late summer and early fall. I can build more power plants. In the 12 years before us, not a single plant of major consequence was built.

We believe you will not have to pay more than the current rate structure proposes - which is, for 50 percent of the public, nothing; for another 25 percent, only a 10 percent increase; and for the remaining 25 percent, a 34 percent increase.

They're the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and they will not do that. They will not pull the trigger.

There's no question that California, in the last three or four years, has been privileged to add disproportionately to the economic growth of America, and to contribute to its technological productivity.

There is only one governor, and his name is Gray Davis.

There are so many scenarios here. We tried to prepare for the worst summer in 40 years and build assumptions based on that. We're preparing for the worst, but we're hoping for the best. And I've told people the end is in sight.

So it was flawed in that it didn't require California to have a first claim on the power plants. It deregulated part of the market, but not all of the market.

Now, in the space of a year, we've spent 450 percent more for power than we did the year before, and bought essentially the same amount of power. This year, that number's likely to go up. That can't go on forever and have us continue to be the economic engine for America.

Meanwhile, people have to join us and fight back against the federal government that has dropped the ball, that is in bed with these energy companies, that wants them to make more money than they've made before.

I'm doing my part, building plants at a record rate, having historic conservation levels. The only people not doing their part is the federal government that is siding with the energy companies against the interests of the people of California.

I know that Duke made a number of demands, including that the attorney general drop its investigation. We have no intention of asking the attorney general to do that.

I have not been briefed.

I don't know why they're doing it. I have to assume that their motives are positive, not negative. But they don't understand the severity of the problem in this state.

I don't know if I would do this if I had to start over again.

Here is my general approach to the energy companies. You have already charged the utilities a 50 percent credit penalty for the power they were buying from you. You're charging us a penalty. You're not going to get two bites of the apple here.

Duke came to us. They volunteered to come to us and made a number of suggestions to some people on my staff. I don't know how I would characterize them, but there have been some discussions going back and forth between Duke and members of my staff.

As the governor of this state, I obviously see the issue quite differently.

You know that I am living proof that the American Dream is real. Growing up, our congressman cut through government bureaucratic red tape to help my mom buy our first house. That's the kind of congressman I'll be.

What I want to do is create more taxpayers, not more taxes.

Two million dollars is only small when you're talking about Washington, D.C.

This campaign was special because we always kept the challenger mentality we had from the start. We managed to keep the against-all-odds, can-do spirit that kept us going when no one thought we could win.

The sooner we rein in the red tape factory in Washington, D.C., the sooner small businesses can get back to creating jobs and helping more Americans find an honest day's work.

The sheer magnitude of Speaker Pelosi's spending spree is mind boggling. Most of us do not use the number 1,000,000,000,000 in our daily lives, so it is difficult to attach tangible value to the figure.

The American people know that we cannot spend our way to prosperity.