And I want to have the people who are your counterparts feel the same way when they think about their jobs versus the jobs that are connected to our Department. Whether they are people in research and technology who do work with other agencies or they are folks who are delivering services to important folks and constituencies around the country. And to send this message, and to make sure that in the years ahead, that this Department and its efforts become the envy of the rest of Federal Government and people in the private sector, and the state and local governments as well. The reason I think it s going to happen is simply because the issues that we work on suddenly emerged on the front pages, on the TV news shows, and in the discussions that go on every day between family members, between people at their jobs, and so on. Because energy suddenly is no longer something people take for granted.
Affordable energy is no longer something people take for granted.
Access to energy and reliability of energy services is no longer, as the folks in California have learned, something you can take for granted. Energy which is environmentally safe in its delivery is no longer something people realize that we can take for granted. And, so, I think the men and women who are working, whether it s in the labs, or in the Department in Washington or in Germantown, or in our many other facilities around the country, are going to find that the respect for the labors that they engage in to be increasing as we move forward into developing a federal energy policy. One of the President s first comments to me when we met and talked about this job, and I was being interviewed for it, was his statement that at the very top of his list of goals in the first year of his presidency was to develop a National Energy Policy. And then a very hardheaded and realistic assessment of at least where we will be if things stay the same in terms of the production, both domestically and through importing, of the energy that we need to meet that demand.