Time & Perspective Quote by Cathy McMorris

A single sentence that does three jobs at once: assigns blame, widens the timescale, and makes urgency feel bipartisan. By reaching back to "the 1950s", Cathy McMorris turns energy policy into a long, slow negligence story rather than a debate about any one administration. That date isn’t neutral; it evokes the postwar boom, the birth of mass suburban living, and the infrastructure-first confidence of mid-century America. The subtext is pointed: we built the modern energy-hungry lifestyle decades ago, then failed to modernize the systems that feed it.

The phrase "little has been done" is strategically vague. It sweeps up complex histories - the oil shocks of the 1970s, deregulation fights, environmental regulation, the rise of renewables, pipeline wars - and compresses them into a tidy indictment. Vague language is a feature here, not a bug. It invites agreement from almost any listener who has ever paid a utility bill or watched gas prices spike, while leaving room to define "prepare" in whatever policy direction the speaker wants next.

"Current or future energy needs" also frames energy as inevitability rather than choice. It subtly sidelines demand reduction and climate constraints in favor of a supply-and-security story: more capacity, more reliability, more domestic control. In a political context, that’s a permission slip for big projects - drilling, transmission lines, nuclear, export terminals - wrapped in the rhetoric of overdue adulthood. The power move is emotional: it turns policy into a belated responsibility, and positions the speaker as the one finally willing to plan.