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By Meghan Pierce
The New Hampshire Union Leader, June 7, 2011
PETERBOROUGH – Republican Congressman Charlie Bass met with the Peterborough Rotary Club Monday for lunch and a discussion on green energy, jobs, the federal budget, and the debt ceiling.
Bass, a Peterborough resident, who was a member of the Peterborough Rotary Club many years ago, said he was home this week to push green energy jobs in New Hampshire and to attend funeral services for former Governor Walter Peterson,
Peterborough has been known for many industries since it was founded 270 years ago, including agriculture, leather and textiles and in the 1980s it was home to more than 20 technology-based magazines, Bass said.
"Now the question is, 'Where do we go as an economy,'" he said. "As a state we don't have oil, gas, coal, but we do have biomass."
In New Hampshire 86 percent of the energy used is produced through propane and oil which has to change, Bass said.
Bass said, New England Wood Pellets in Jaffrey, which he co-owns, offers a carbon-neutral energy source, while his friend Dean Kamen's DEKA Research and Development Corporation in Bedford is working to create new technology needed to support alternative energy sources.
It's the ingenuity of companies like these that have kept unemployment low in the state despite the recession, Bass said. Unemployment in New Hampshire is currently under 5 percent, he said.
In Washington D.C. Bass said he is working to ensure federal funds are supporting new technology and companies that "honestly" need financial support to produce results in the field of alternative energy. "It's the technology I want to ensure is supported."
Bass told the Rotary members he is mounting his campaign for reelection and asked them to give him another term. Before he was voted out in 2006, Bass served in Congress for 12 years. Since winning his seat back in 2010, Bass said he has found Washington anything but boring.
Despite the bi-partisan gridlock that is holding up passage of the federal budget and a decision to raise or maintain the debt ceiling, real debate and discussions over these vital issues finally began last week, Bass said.
"They are speaking pretty frankly about what each side needs and what they have to have," Bass said of Congress members and President Barack Obama.
The U.S. Senate on the other hand has neither produced a budget nor approved the budget presented by either Congress or the President, he said.
The Republican-crafted House budget is proposing $6 trillion in federal spending cuts, Bass said.
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