madam speaker , what a day we have had here in the house .  we have talked about energy policy .  and having an energy bill come to the floor of this house is something that we have waited for for quite a period of time .  i want to congratulate the gentleman from texas ( mr. barton )  and our colleagues on the committee on energy and commerce .  as we have had this occur today , it has been quite an effort .  our energy committee , last week we talked about it earlier in the week and we talked about it the past week .  we had about a third of the democrats in the house join us in voting that bill out of committee last week .  they did it because it is a good bill .  and they did it because it is time for us to have an energy bill , and it is the right step in the right way at this point in time .  i know that we have some across the aisle , many who are going to follow the liberal leadership there and walk in lockstep with the gentlewoman from california ( ms. pelosi )  , but i think we are going to see more of the house democrats join us to make this energy bill a reality for the american people .  i would like to remind my colleagues that over the last few weeks we have seen quite a bit of bipartisan support on some of our legislation .  we had 122 democrats vote with us on the continuity of government bill , 50 democrats voted with us on the class action bill , 73 democrats voted with the republicans on bankruptcy reform , and 42 supported our repeal of the death tax and the real i.d .  act .  so we look forward tomorrow to having our democrat colleagues from across the aisle join us as we move forward on our nation 's energy policy .  we have several members who have joined us tonight to talk about energy and to talk about energy policy .  one of those is the gentleman from texas ( mr. hall )  , and i would like to yield some time to the gentleman to talk with us about the energy bill .  i also want to thank the gentleman for the wonderful leadership that he has shown on this bill .  