Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now resume legislative session.
The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that will take place, during today, about S.J. Res. 10, which is a resolution that my colleague Senator Heinrich and I have filed to challenge President Trump's day-one declaration of a U.S. energy emergency.
And you will hear from a number of our colleagues today, expressing the basic point that the declaration is a sham. There is, in fact, no emergency, but it has been declared so as to gut various environmental laws passed by Congress, still part of U.S. statutory law, in order to advantage certain kinds of energy--i.e., oil, gas, and coal--and punish other forms of energy--wind, solar, et cetera.
I am very, very happy to have the support of my colleague Senator Heinrich, who is the energy expert on the Democratic side in this body, and very, very happy to have so many colleagues who will be speaking on this matter today on the Senate floor.
President Trump took a number of actions on his first day in office, and many of them got a lot of attention. One that didn't get so much attention was his decision, on day one--on day one--to declare that the United States was in an energy emergency and, therefore, we needed to bypass environmental laws.
I want to dig into the sham nature of the emergency declaration and then explore why President Trump actually has done this, and, finally, conclude with a request to my colleagues that the article I branch should not just roll over and play dead when a President
So let's first talk about the claim that President Trump has raised that the United States is in an energy emergency.
This is a chart that shows U.S. energy production from 1950 until essentially today. The chart goes through about 2023 and does not include the 2024 numbers. But I am proud to stand here and tell you, especially as one who has supported many of the policies that have led to this growth in American energy, that America is producing more energy today than at any point in the history of this Nation. America is the leader in the world in energy production, and for the last few years, we have been an energy surplus nation, producing more than we consume.
You will see that the chart includes different kinds of energy--oil, gas, coal, renewable--but the direction of the chart shows steady increase in production.
Let's go into the kinds of energy we are talking about here. In 2024, America produced more natural gas than at any time in the history of this country. In 2024, America produced more petroleum than at any time in the history of this country. And in 2024, America deployed more renewable energy than at any time in the history of this country. In fact, in 2024, more than 90 percent of the energy added to the Nation's energy grid was from renewable sources--wind, solar, and battery storage.
The United States, recently, in the past few years became--there may be a technical term for this, but I call it an energy surplus nation. We produce more than we consume. That moment happened in 2019, when our production started to outpace consumption. In every year since 2019, that surplus has grown, and the surplus in 2024 was at record levels. And it is a good thing to produce significantly more than we consume.
Why is it a good thing? Because we are able to sell energy to others, reducing our trade deficit.
I participated with Senators in lifting the ban on export of crude petroleum a few years ago, and that plus exports of liquid natural gas have helped us with our trade deficit. But more directly related to this moment in time, the export of American energy has also helped us help other nations that are reliant on energy from petrol dictators. The nations in Europe that had to rely on Vladimir Putin, nations in other parts of the world that have had to rely on Iran or Venezuela, now, increasingly, are able to access U.S. energy.
I was in Finland over the weekend, visiting Virginia Guard troops exercising with the Finnish Army. Finland is importing liquid natural gas from the United States and using it for their own energy needs and also for the energy needs of other European nations.
So where is the emergency? More oil than ever, more natural gas than ever, more renewables than ever, and a record surplus of production over consumption.
Where is the emergency? The emergency is not in the energy sector. The emergency is Donald Trump self-creating an emergency, because Donald Trump in other actions taken in the first week of his administration has gone full tilt to challenge energy projects that are creating jobs and lowering prices all across this country.
Donald Trump and his administration are attacking wind projects. They are attacking solar projects. They are attacking clean energy projects that aren't oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. And by doing so, they are reducing supply and likely raising prices on American consumers.
There are a number of projects in Virginia, as an example, that have benefited from tax breaks that were included either in the Inflation Reduction Act, for clean energy projects, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, for rollout of electric vehicle charging, for example. President Trump's administration has attacked those projects, has put them on hold, and the Virginians who were intending to invest billions of dollars hiring people to build these projects are now uncertain about what they can do.
Why would a President declare an energy emergency and then attack homegrown clean energy projects in my State and elsewhere? And that is exactly what President Trump is doing.
Why would he do that? Well, we don't have to speculate about the answer. We know the answer.
In the summer of 2024, President Trump held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with the CEOs of major oil and gas companies, and they reported upon the substance of that meeting. And here is a headline from the Guardian, and other publications carried the same news: ``Trump promised to scrap climate laws if U.S. oil bosses donated $1 billion'' to his campaign.
One of the oil executives at the meeting quoted Donald Trump saying: ``You'll get it on the first day.'' Oil and gas will get preferential treatment on the first day, with end runs around environmental laws passed by Congress that are still part of the statutes we take an oath to implement in our jobs. And, in fact, the oil and gas guys did get it on the first day.
What did the Trump fake energy emergency deliver to those he had promised to support? Here is what was delivered in the emergency order. The President said: There is an emergency, and so we need to bypass laws passed by Congress. We need to bypass the Clean Air Act. We need to bypass the Clean Water Act. We need to bypass the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act.
Because of this fake emergency that he has created out of thin air, we need to take all of these laws that Congress has passed--many of which have been in statute, like the Clean Water Act, for more than 50 years--and we need to give energy producers and transmitters the ability to bypass these laws in order to produce and transmit energy.
It is interesting, though. When you read the Executive order, it talks about energy production, but you have to go to the last section of the order to read what ``energy'' means. And President Trump is calling for a national emergency and bypassing all of these laws, if you want to produce using oil or gas or coal or nuclear or hydro, but not for wind, not for solar, not for clean battery storage. If your homegrown American low-cost energy is wind, solar, and battery storage, you don't get to bypass environmental laws. You have to comply with the letter of the law as Congress intends. We are only giving a break to the guys who supported Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry.
Donald Trump is so willing to give away the farm to Big Oil and Gas that he even, in the first provision in the emergency order, said: We also need to bypass property rights. He encouraged Federal Agencies to make aggressive use of eminent domain to produce fossil fuel energy.
Those watching understand what this means. Eminent domain is the government taking the land from private property owners, and there is a set of rules in the Federal Code about when you can use eminent domain for energy projects, but Donald Trump has said: You know what, if you want to do oil, coal, and gas, you don't have to follow the rules. You can even take people's private property by bypassing the rules for oil, gas, and coal--but, of course, not for wind and solar, not for wind, solar, and battery, the clean energy that has been 95 percent of the power added to the grid just last year.
So we know what the game is. ``You'll get it on the first day,'' Big Oil, and they did. And Donald Trump is now giving them an E-ZPass lane to speed by clean energy projects that are lower cost and cleaner because he told them he would do it if they supported his campaign.
This is no emergency. It was declared for a corrupt purpose, and it is an unacceptable effort to undermine laws passed by the article I branch. And so I am on the floor with my colleague Senator Heinrich-- and I am going to yield to him in a second--to just ask Congress: Be Congress. Be the article I branch. If a President can just stand up and make up an emergency and then gut laws that Congress passed, what is to stop President Trump from making up another emergency and gutting other laws? What is to stop any President, Republican or Democrat, from fabricating a complete emergency and using it to gut laws that Congress has passed?
You know, if President Trump doesn't like the Clean Water Act--I happen to like it. I don't think it is perfect. But the Clean Water Act has
And if he has decided that these laws have outlived their usefulness, well, he has got two Republican Houses. He can introduce a bill to repeal the Clean Air Act or repeal the Clean Water Act. That would be the right way to do this, not invent a bogus fake emergency and unilaterally gut these laws.
But the President has got a problem. If he introduced the bill to repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, not even Republicans--some Republicans would--but not even Republicans would support it. In two Republican Houses, he would have zero luck in repealing these laws that have protected the public health and the environment. So his attitude is, Wow, I could benefit my Big Oil cronies by repealing these laws, but that is a nonstarter in the article I branch. So why don't I kick the article I branch to the side, create a fake emergency, end-run them, and that is how I benefit my cronies.
Congress should stand up against this and vote for S.J. Res. 10 because it is the right policy, and we shouldn't gut these provisions, except by doing it in the course of ordinary legislative business, should that be the will of the appropriate majority of both bodies. That would be the way to do this.
So I am asking my colleagues to stand up and support S.J. Res. 10. This would be horrible policy. But more than a horrible policy on these laws, it would also set a horrible precedent, a precedent that a President of either party can invent a sham emergency and then grab away from Congress powers that Congress has under article I.
Let's not be sheep in this place. Let's not have this be the ``Silence of the Lambs,'' just doing whatever Donald Trump says he wants to do, with the article I branch not saying or mumbling a word, not willing to issue a peep, not showing a backbone, not showing a voice. We have got a backbone; we have got a voice; but more importantly, we took an oath to a Constitution that gives Congress certain powers. We should not let the President trample on those powers.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Virginia for bringing this resolution to the floor.
And it was a little less than a year ago, I met with workers at several manufacturing facilities in New Mexico. These are the workers who are making the solar and wind technologies that are generating record quantities of clean, affordable, American-made energy. And at a groundbreaking ceremony for Array Technologies, at their factory in Albuquerque, I met with over a dozen New Mexicans, and they told me about the impact of our investments on their lives, their abilities to support their families.
I talked with folks like Ramon Romero, who joined Array Technologies as an entry-level machinist, worked his way up to have a career as a production manager.
I met with Daniel Beltran, who explained how Array's expansion has created new job opportunities for himself and many others in his community. He told me that the company's growth has been ``life- changing'' for him.
And I met with Ray Muddaluri, who spoke about how significant a role Array has played in supporting her growth as a young professional and her ability to serve her community.
Here is what every one of those New Mexicans had in common: They were able to create better lives for themselves, better lives for their families, because of the jobs that were available for them. This is what I mean when I say these industries, these clean industries, are creating careers that New Mexicans and other Americans can build their families around in their home communities.
And thanks to the investments that Democrats made in the last few years, we have seen record growth in new American manufacturing facilities. More than 400,000 new jobs have been announced across the country as a part of this ``Made in America'' clean and affordable energy manufacturing boom. In New Mexico, we celebrated the first wind towers coming off the line at Arcosa Wind Towers, a new factory in Belen. It was a shuttered plastics factory. And now Arcosa's workers are creating the huge steel towers. They are heading straight to the SunZia Wind and Transmission Project, a 3\1/2\ gigawatt project. That project, SunZia, brought in more than $20 billion to States like New Mexico and Arizona in capital.
And when it comes online, it is going to generate more clean power with its wind turbines than the Hoover Dam. It is the largest ever built clean energy project in the Western Hemisphere. America is actually building big things again. So these projects have enormous scope.
But our affordable, American-made energy boom is already under threat because of the uncertainty that President Trump has foisted on the energy sector.
And if you are thinking about opening a new factory, like Array or Arcosa did in my State, you don't know what your tax structure will be after the Republicans take up their Trump tax bill. If you are trying to site and build a new transmission line, the Federal Agencies and the staff that you work with just had their expert staff sacked, making it hard to get a permit when no one is on the other end of the phone.
And thanks to Trump's so-called national energy emergency, many of the lowest cost, 100-percent clean additions to our grid can't get permits.
Make no mistake, Americans' electric bills are going to go up. I am going to say that again: Americans' electric bills are going to go up because Trump and his loyal Republicans are picking winners and losers on the power grid.
That is why I am joining my friend and colleague Senator Kaine to force a vote to put an end to all of this before any more damage is done.
And I want to be clear about something, and certainly Senator Kaine raised this point, but America is the world's leading energy producer. And before Trump injected all of this uncertainty, our country was producing record quantities of both conventional and clean advanced energy. There is no energy emergency. It was made up to skirt the law. It was made up to favor some sources and not others.
But if Trump gets his way, his faux declaration may very well create a real emergency, an energy emergency and an economic emergency.
I also want to be clear to my colleagues across the aisle that this clean energy phenomenon has created 400,000 jobs around the country. But most of them--most of them--are in Republican-led States. This is not a red States or a blue States issue. This is about good-paying, blue-collar, skilled jobs in all of our States.
So what is at risk because of all of this? Let's take a look. In North Carolina, there is a new nearly $13 billion--with a ``b''--$13 billion Toyota battery plant, which will employ 5,000 workers.
Where are we getting our batteries now? We are getting them from China. This is progress. This is putting Americans to work to make batteries here.
In Louisiana, First Solar announced a billion dollars for a new solar energy project that is projected to create 700 new jobs, making that technology here, not being dependent on China.
In Kentucky, Ford is building a new battery plant, which will employ another 5,000 workers and manufacture batteries here instead of China.
In Georgia, an estimated billion dollars in projects to modernize the power grid--and our power grid needs a heck of a lot of modernization. We are going to have more and more demands on this grid in coming years, especially with the growth of data centers and AI--a billion dollars sidelined to upgrade that power grid in Georgia.
Do we really want all these jobs to disappear because President Trump
And among other things, Trump's so-called national energy emergency declaration would allow his administration to use eminent domain, one of the most controversial powers that a government can have, to take private land for oil and gas infrastructure at the expense of our American jobs and livelihoods.
As we speak, President Trump's chaos and incompetence are jeopardizing and fueling the real energy emergency in our country. Trump's plans to eliminate dozens of advanced energy tax credits, those have unleashed more than $165 billion in private sector capital, moving into over 1,000 factories and expansions across the country.
The President has also halted many of the Department of Energy's loan guarantees, which will further jeopardize the U.S. energy manufacturing expansion and will lead to higher energy bills for millions of Americans.
This is blatant hypocrisy, as Trump's favorite billionaire ``bro'' Elon Musk actually took a $465 million Federal loan guarantee from that same Department that literally saved Tesla from bankruptcy in 2010.
And when these massive, multibillion-dollar construction projects stall, it is not Trump's billionaire friends who will suffer; it is everyday Americans who work in these factories. It is all the families who will be stuck with higher electric bills.
I want to emphasize something that my colleague from Virginia raised. More than 90 percent of the electricity generation projects currently in line to connect to the grid all across this Nation--in red States and in blue States--waiting interconnection are clean energy projects. They are wind, solar, storage, nuclear.
Just last year, 93 percent--93 percent--of new electricity generation was carbon-free. That is a record. We added 52 gigawatts--50 nuclear power generating station quantities' worth--of solar, wind, and storage to the grid in the last year alone. There is a reason for that. In addition to being clean and carbon-free--and many of the big companies that procure energy care about that--these power sources are cheaper, they are faster, they are less capital-intensive than older technologies, like coal-fired plants or gas turbines.
Put simply, clean energy is the cheapest electricity on the grid. You can see it right here. Onshore wind and solar are by far the cheapest. We have combined cycle natural gas.
Guess what? You can't get a gas turbine these days. If you order a combined cycle natural gas turbine today, you are going to wait 3, 4, 5 years before that is actually delivered, without permitting.
Nuclear is great. I hope we build more of it, but we have to get the cost down. It is 18 cents a kilowatt hour, average.
If we don't plug these clean sources into the grid, especially at a time of surging demand, the outcome is obvious: Prices will go up. And it is not physically possible to stand up enough costly gas plants to keep growing power demands and keep prices down. As I said, the wait times to just get a turbine is 4 or 5 years.
If Trump has his way and he keeps blocking American-made clean energy projects, we know that significantly higher energy and electricity costs are on the way. Is that what we want to do? We want to impose on working families that are already struggling to pay for eggs--if they haven't crossed that off their grocery list already--the rising cost of milk, groceries going through the roof, rent payments going up--we are going increase their electric rates because that is what this fake emergency is going to do.
A couple of weeks ago, an Alabama utility company sent a letter to customers saying: Sorry, you owe us another $100 because what we credited you based on the law is no longer valid. Trump's EO took that away, so pony up. Write us another $100 in your electric bill this month.
That is just the tip of the iceberg.
Advanced groups who do the analysis, folks like the Rhodium Group, have looked at what his crusade will mean regarding American clean energy investments and electricity costs. And they say that, on average, American families' electricity bills could go up by nearly $500 a year as a result of these actions.
Trump's war on American-made clean energy is going to kill thousands of jobs in the skilled trades. Huge construction projects are going to get stalled. The biggest winner in all of this is going to be China. China wants to become even more dominant in the global renewable energy marketplace. They will happily take the private investment that could have gone to the United States and take those jobs back overseas. The biggest loser from this is our economic competitiveness, our national security, our families.
Trump has claimed that his so-called natural energy emergency order is needed to unleash more American fossil fuel development. He is also wrong about that. Not only is our production--13 million barrels a day on average; a little over that--not a record-producing number, but oil and gas executives will tell you the truth.
Look at what ConocoPhillips' CEO said in response to a question about this: Would he really increase production with the gloves coming off? He said, ``Not really.'' Why is that? Because American oil and gas production is already at a record high, and it is not economically advantageous to push production further. I know this firsthand because we are producing more oil and gas in New Mexico than most other States combined, with the exception of one.
Clearly, we need to put an end to this stuff that will fuel a real energy emergency, kill thousands of jobs, and raise electricity costs on American families. The most important decision of our energy future--worth hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment, factories, thousands of high-quality jobs--remains in the hands of our Senate Republican colleagues.
If you want to have an ``all of the above'' approach, if you want to continue to bring down energy costs, if you want to protect jobs for hard-working Americans in our States, and to help America remain the global leader in energy production, I would urge you to vote in support of this resolution and against higher electricity bills.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise today in support of my colleagues'--Senator Heinrich and Senator Kaine--resolution. I appreciate their part of the presentations, but I strongly support this resolution. I want to also acknowledge one of many reasons we vote for this resolution is because it is also Senator Kaine's birthday. I think nothing would be a better birthday present for my friend of 40, 45 years than having this body make a firm statement about being against rising utility costs.
The resolution--I know they both spoke on it extensively--would repeal President Trump's flawed and misguided national emergency declaration.
We all know on the first day in the midst of signing Lord knows how many Executive orders, President Trump declared a ``National Energy Emergency'' and issued an Executive order titled ``Unleashing American Energy.''
Let me be clear. Frankly, I have some fights on this side of the aisle because I actually support all of the above in terms of our energy mix. Part of that does mean LNG--and for national security reasons, to make sure we ship it to our partners in Europe.
It also means we need to bring more of these energy jobs back here to America. I was at a fascinating presentation yesterday with the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion. Commonwealth Fusion is a company out of Massachusetts, but they are making a major development in Virginia. We have been talking about fusion since the seventies. Those kind of jobs ought to be here in America, and they can provide an abundance of energy.
But if you actually read the President's Executive order, you will see he is not really about promoting energy security. He is interested in, frankly, only favoring certain parts of the energy sector. I think that is a huge mistake.
I have the honor of having been the chair of the Intelligence Committee. I
It is terribly important that the United States remains in its role now as being the world's energy leader. But the truth is, China has also made this kind of commitment. In certain ways, China--although they are still using, many times, coal-based power--they have made massive investments in renewable energy.
Today, China is the world's top supplier of long-duration energy storage batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Just last year, China added 357 gigawatts of solar and wind generation. That is nearly 100 more gigawatts of renewable energy than the United States added.
That is why Congress said: We have to catch up. In a very bipartisan way, with both the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, we made a record set of investments to incentivize the build-out of a 21st century energy economy here in the United States so we can actually beat China in these fields.
Unfortunately, the President's ``Unleashing American Energy'' Executive order is actually attempting to rein in or potentially reverse much of the progress that has been made. His Executive order actually calls for the pause of any disbursement of funds lawfully appropriated and obligated by the Inflation Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That unlawful withholding of funds, which already has been rejected by the courts--I know my colleague from Virginia has already said this--really jeopardizes a whole lot of large-scale manufacturing projects around the country. I don't know if Senator Kaine mentioned, but a number of those projects are in Virginia. We worked years with our Republican Governor to try to get these projects funded. They include things in solar, in wind that are extraordinarily important. They were funded because they would support this growth of American energy.
This is printed on both sides of the paper. I will cut to the chase.
The fact is, what President Trump did on that first day by putting out this Executive order which denies the fact that America is already the energy leader in the world--we need to make additional investments in cutting-edge additional energies where China is making these investments--solar, wind, battery. I am a big advocate for small modular nukes, both efficient and fusion, which I have talked about.
A lot of that comes from blending the infrastructure bill and the IRA. Why in the heck would we put a halt on all of that? Why in the heck would we cut back on cutting-edge energy investment in the United States? Why would we cut back on American energy jobs?
I am all for the natural gas jobs coming out of the Presiding Officer's State. I am all for ``all of the above.'' Why restrain us though in areas where we have some catching up to do?
I think about fusion again. We are going to spend about $800 million--hopefully--in some of this legislation. China is spending about twice that amount. If we want to truly create the ample sources of energy that is needed in the United States, if we want those jobs to be in America, if we want to think about a National security regime where we are the leader in the world in cutting-edge energy, then we have to support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution to overturn this phony national energy emergency. If we don't and we give up on these projects that have been vetted--some for years--then we, frankly, are going to allow our national security to fall behind China, because I can assure you--I get classified briefs on a regular basis-- China is not giving up in investment in all these new domains. China is pedal to the metal on the ``all of the above'' energy strategy. That should be our strategy, as well.
I urge all my colleagues to support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution. I look forward to that vote later today.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss our continued efforts to reverse the Biden administration's regulatory overreach, specifically as it relates to energy. This includes our efforts to work with President Trump to unleash America's full energy potential and truly make our Nation energy dominant--not just energy secure but energy dominant. Energy security is national security, and so it is vitally important for our country.
We have worked diligently in the Senate to swiftly confirm President Trump's Cabinet officials, and we continue to do that. We made it a priority to ensure that the President's Department heads are in place as we work to empower the United States to produce more energy from all of its abundant and affordable coal, oil, and gas reserves.
The key to this effort was confirming Doug Burgum of North Dakota--my State--as Interior Secretary, Chris Wright to be Energy Secretary, and Lee Zeldin to serve as Administrator of the EPA. We look forward to working with President Trump's newly established National Energy Dominance Council, chaired by Secretary Burgum and vice-chaired by Secretary Wright.
We also continue legislative efforts to get our country back to energy dominance.
Soon, the Senate will vote on my resolution to nullify the Democrats' natural gas tax rule, using the Congressional Review Act. We will be voting on that today. This new tax was mandated by the Democrats in their so-called Inflation Reduction Act. It should have been called the Inflation Acceleration Act. Not only did it increase spending for their Green New Deal, it also put taxes on things like natural gas. No wonder, under their watch, inflation went up to 9 percent. That hits low-income, hard-working Americans the hardest of all. So we are going to change that.
This tax actually puts a fee on emissions from facilities that produce natural gas. It starts at $900 a ton and goes up from there, eventually up to $1,500 per ton. So essentially what you are looking at is putting a 5-percent-plus added tax on natural gas. Now, think about that. Everybody uses natural gas to heat their homes or to cook their meals and for many other purposes as well. So it is a tax on every consumer, and it is regressive. It hits low-income individuals the hardest.
This, of course, has a disproportionate effect on small oil and gas producers in States like mine, in North Dakota, Montana, and other States. It hits small businesses the hardest. Of course, ultimately, it is paid by consumers.
It will impact the energy bills of consumers across the country who, as I said, are already struggling with high inflation because of the Biden administration.
Today, the United States is the world's largest oil and gas producer, and at the same time, we have led the world in emissions reduction.
Here is a stat I am going to talk about for a minute, and it is important to focus on this because at the very same time that the Biden administration is putting additional taxes and fees on natural gas, we are reducing emissions from natural gas.
Since 1990, we have reduced emissions from methane by 20 percent. Now, that sounds pretty good, right--a 20-percent reduction in methane emissions since 1990. But think about this: In that same time, we have doubled how much natural gas we produce. So we have doubled the amount of natural gas we produce and still reduced overall emissions by 20 percent. Remarkable. Remarkable.
Biden's and Democrats' response to that is, well, gee whiz, let's raise taxes on everybody that uses natural gas.
Obviously, not only does that drive up prices, it curtails production. Instead, what we need to do is support
We are also working with the Trump administration to replace the Biden administration's rules that closed off access to vast areas of taxpayer-owned energy resources. That includes both offshore and onshore.
For example, in my State, the Bureau of Land Management's--BLM-- public lands rule essentially enables environmental groups to lock away Federal coal, oil, and gas reserves under the argument that they are somehow undertaking conservation. The reality is, in North Dakota, for example, this Biden administration--what they call their Resource Management Plan closes off leasing to 45 percent of the Federal oil and gas acreage in our State and nearly 99 percent of Federal coal.
But it doesn't just end there. When they close off those Federal lands from development, they also impact everybody else because Federal minerals are often colocated in our State and other States with privately owned minerals under non-Federal surface acreage. Their Resource Management Plan prevents other mineral holders and owners, private owners, from exercising their private property rights and limits the ability to develop minerals that are owned by the State, by the Tribes, and by private individuals.
That is why I am working with Senator Cramer, Congresswoman Fedorchak, and Secretary Burgum to overturn the BLM's Resource Management Plan and maximize access to North Dakota's energy resources. That approach is not just important in my State, it is vital for energy-producing States across the country.
This truly is about taking the handcuffs off our energy producers and empowering them to increase supply and help bring down prices for American families and businesses.
There is an energy component in every product and service we consume, and when we make energy more plentiful and bring down that price, that helps reduce inflation. When we bring down energy and make it more plentiful, that helps us grow our economy, create more jobs and opportunities, and, in fact, not only provide for national security through energy security but help our allies as well so that they are not dependent on Russia or on OPEC or on Venezuela or anyone else--any of those bad actors--for their energy because they can get it from the United States.
All these things go with producing more energy. All those benefits, all those things go with truly making America energy dominant. That is absolutely what President Trump and that is absolutely what Republicans intend to do.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. President, President Biden liked to be able to say over and over again that we are producing record amounts of oil and gas. Some of my Democratic colleagues have even come to this floor in the last couple of days and have said: We don't have an energy emergency.
Those two things together are kind of a message going out to the American people: There is nothing to see here. Move along. Everything is fine on energy.
But if you talk to electricity-generation companies, regional distribution networks, and ask them ``How are things going with electricity generation? How are we doing with capacity?'' they will give you a very different story.
The feeling is, when you walk into your own house and flick on the lights and the lights turn on, you are like: Yeah, the lights are fine; there is no emergency. But if you talk to the electric company behind it and say ``Two years from now, what does it look like for capacity for you?'' they will probably shake their head and say ``We have a problem coming.''
Now, we can either deal with that problem 2 years from now when we are having brownouts and don't have enough electricity or we can deal with it now. I would rather deal with it now so we don't have the challenges ahead.
How do you do that? Continue to be energy dominant in, actually, the energy that we are producing here in the United States and to be able to make sure that we are producing truly ``all of the above'' energy but we are actually producing energy at a price Americans can afford and at the amount Americans need.
If we are going to be the world leader in AI, if we are going to be the world leader in data centers, if we are going to be world leaders in innovation, you can't be that if you don't have the power behind it. You can't be that if the price continues to go up, up, up for continuing subsidies.
Under the Biden administration, the price of gasoline went up 30 percent--30 percent in 4 years. Under the Biden administration, in 4 years, the price of electricity nationwide went up 28 percent. Every American feels it. When we pay our light bill, when we put gas in our car, we feel it.
So now the question is: What do we do about it? How do we actually engage to be able to make this better?
Well, there are multiple things that we can do. We have already started some of those already. Quite frankly, President Trump, in his earliest days in office, stepped in and started the process of turning around some of the policies to increase more American energy so we can begin to bring prices down and availability up, because sometimes it is not just about price; it is making sure, 2 years from now, we are not running out and we are not having brownouts all across the entire Nation in our electric grid.
So there are a couple things President Trump did right away. He actually changed all the cancellation of leases in Alaska to actually drill in the area literally set aside, decades ago, for drilling. That is an area that should be a no-brainer, but the Biden administration stepped in and said: No, we are not going to allow anyone to drill in the area set aside for oil exploration in Alaska. They canceled that.
President Trump canceled the mandate for electric vehicles, not because he hates electric vehicles. There happens to be a guy who hangs around him a lot that runs a company that sells electric vehicles. The problem is not electric vehicles. The problem is the mandate to try to force Americans to be able to shift to that when we don't see that in the grid.
Quite frankly, the electric grid is not prepared, even, for Americans to be able to do all-electric vehicles, and frankly, most Americans aren't either. If you talk to Oklahomans in rural areas and say, ``Are you willing to have an electric vehicle when it is 35 miles to the next town from where you are and to be able to take the risk?'' they are not.
And even for a lot of our farmers and ranchers that will say, ``Well, there is an electric pickup out there,'' if you ask the question, ``How far does that electric pickup go if you are towing a trailer?'' the answer you will get from the manufacturers is 80 miles. Do you know what? Our farmers and ranchers need to go a little farther than 80 miles with their vehicles.
So there are a lot of issues that are out there. To be able to take the mandate away and say, ``Let people choose what vehicle they want to be able to choose,'' we think is a better option, and, quite frankly, with our grid not prepared for the strain on that long term, it is a wiser option for everybody in the process.
Decisive action has taken place on the issue of drilling in Federal waters. President Biden, literally in the final hours of his administration, put a ban on actually drilling on 625 million acres offshore. So 625 million acres that have oil and gas in them, President Biden just banned it.
Well, President Trump flipped that and said: No, we are going to allow that to be able to happen--quite frankly, as every other President has on that.
So these are basic things the President can do and has done, but what do we, as Congress, need to be able to do?
We have engaged in several areas already. We have chipped away at what we call the methane fee that has been put on. Every single homeowner that has a hot water tank that uses natural gas--or even if their electricity that is
We have also now voted on, quite frankly, a regulation that was done by the Biden administration at the very end of their time that was intentionally designed to be able to raise the price of offshore oil drilling, where they intentionally placed a new fee on any company that is drilling offshore. That could be $1 million per well. The reason for that is to try to block more development offshore on that.
What does that actually do? That doesn't decrease the need that we have in the country. It increases the number of imports that are coming into our country. So we are buying more from Saudi Arabia, more from Venezuela, rather than actually producing from our own jobs and our own locations.
I don't have a problem with ``all of the above'' energy. In fact, I have had this conversation with multiple people in this body. I am willing to put the Oklahoma portfolio for energy against any State that is here, as far as our use of renewables versus fossil fuels. Forty- five percent of the electricity produced in my State today is done with wind. We do wind, solar. We do hydro. We do oil, gas, coal. But we are working to be able to make sure that we can actually produce electricity that is needed for manufacturing and for our homes. That shouldn't be a difficult issue for us. That should be what it is actually all about.
Quite frankly, the frustration that we have had is this has been a challenge for energy companies just to produce energy in the last 4 years. This is something that should be normal. America needs energy. Every single American needs energy. Every person sitting in this room or watching this right now is using energy. We need access to that. So let's find the best ways to be able to do it.
A couple of things that we are working on right now: One is that I have a bill dealing with what we are talking about, with the tax treatments that we are all debating right now, as well, on this floor, called Promoting Domestic Energy Production Act. That act is very straightforward. It treats oil and gas companies the exact same way for taxation as every other manufacturer is treated.
Now, a lot of Americans may say: Well, they are not treated the same now? No. When Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act--which was bizarrely named because, actually, inflation spiked after that, with all they put into it. When the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, it created a new tax on oil and gas companies, specifically designed to be able to reduce new wells coming into America and increase the price of oil and gas. That was the design of it because their goal was, if they could make it so expensive to get gasoline, then more people would actually run to an electric vehicle, and they would buy an electric vehicle.
Well, guess what is happening. The more expensive gasoline is definitely happening, but more and more people aren't running to an electric vehicle. They want to be able to choose. And that is a pretty fair option for them for that. So the bill that I have actually moves us back to treating oil and gas companies the exact same way as every other manufacturer is treated in our tax policy.
There is another bill that is not just an oil and gas bill. It is called the ALIGN Act. This handles what we call bonus depreciation. When a company actually buys a big piece of capital equipment, they are going to pay their tax that year on it, but they have to decide, for that big piece of equipment, how many years it takes to be able to depreciate the value of that. The ALIGN Act just says: In the year that you bought it, you can also depreciate it, and you can take it off your taxes.
Now, this doesn't change the amount of income coming into the Federal Treasury one bit. You are either going to have it over several years or you are going to have it over one year. It doesn't change the amount at all, but it does make a huge difference to that business, in the year they do a big capital investment, that they also get to write that off on that same year.
Well, I think it is just good policy to be able to say: Let's incentivize every manufacturer to be able to do additional manufacturing. Our economy needs it right now because, when they do more manufacturing, that is more jobs in the country. And for energy, that means more pipelines, more capabilities to be able to move energy at a cheaper rate. Those are commonsense things that don't hurt our deficit as a nation but actually benefit our economy and benefit jobs.
Energy policy should be just commonsense conversation. It shouldn't be political. It should be: What do Americans need? And we should look beyond just today that the lights are on. We should at least look 2 years in the future to say what is about to happen in the country with our electric grid, anticipate the problems that are coming, and make changes in policy here to make sure we don't have an emergency there.
So let's declare the American energy emergency. Let's fix it before we have the challenges that are coming in just a few short months.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
(The remarks of Mrs. Fischer pertaining to the introduction of S. 750 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to address the Senate while seated when necessary.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, well, to this great Senate body and to all of you, I will speak from my heart. I won't have hardly any notes, but I will speak from my heart about something that I think is absolutely key to Emerald City, and that is all about energy.
Absolutely, I am an energy guy. I am from an energy State. In my backyard, two-thirds of the population of this entire country is within a rocks' throw of West Virginia. If we don't watch out, we are going to awaken to a situation, as far as energy in this country, that is really, really, really bad. I believe this with all my soul.
Secretary Burgum is a really good man, and I always called him ``the pick of the litter.'' I think President Trump's nominees are absolutely great, but with all that being said, I think about Doug Burgum--our Secretary of the Interior--a guy that is supersmart, really, really experienced, compassionate, and has an unbelievable knowledge.
Now, with all that being said, if we could just go back to just this, we could think about Chris Wright. Chris Wright gets it. He knows what we need to do, and if you just step one step further, I would just say just this: President Donald Trump understands it. He knows exactly just this, and this is all there is to it: Energy is everything. It is everything right now.
It solves the inflation bubble. It insulates us from the standpoint of wars all over the place. Why in the world do we in America need to blow our own legs off and turn China loose, India loose, whomever it may be? That is what we are doing.
I am an absolute believer--and you have seen it in West Virginia, if you are paying attention. I am an absolute believer to embrace all the energy forms. We did 100 percent.
But if you believe today that we can do without our fossil fuels--our great fossil fuels--and absolutely if you think we can do without them today, I say you are living in a cave. You are absolutely living in fantasyland.
Absolutely, if you don't believe that today--a year and a half from today--that we are going to have a crisis in this country, off the chart, as far as electricity, you need to wake up because that is what is coming.
Now, let me go one step further, and let me just say just this: Let's just say we awaken to an opportunity of AI, data centers, whatever it may be, industry, manufacturing, whatever it may be. Do we want to say: Nope. We can't do that. We can't do that because we are going to be in a situation with our grid and with our energy production in a year and a half from today. I promise you, a year and a half from today, we are going to be in a situation that we are going to have to decide: Are we going to have opportunity and jobs and manufacturing and AI and data centers--are we going to have that--or are we going to choose with our electricity amounts that we have--we are either going to be able to support industry or we are going to have to support homes.
For God's sake of living, we don't want to go and get cold. We don't want to be hot in the summer. We don't need a choice between industry and our homes. What we need to be doing is exactly what I am saying. We have got to realize that energy is the key to everything here. That is all there is to it.
You know, it does solve all the things that I have already said, whether it be inflation or the war situation or our national security and on and on and on, but there is something else that it does. And it just goes just simply just this: We have a $37 trillion--none of us has any comprehension what a trillion dollars really is. None of us has any comprehension--can possibly imagine what a trillion dollars is.
We have got a $37 trillion deficit. How are we going to get out of it? Please tell me. Please tell me how are we going to get out of it? First of all, what we should do is mind the store. That is what we have got to do. Mind the store. That is the first thing you have to do.
That means cut as much waste as we possibly can. But after we do all of that, I will bet you this in every way. See, I am a business guy. I am not a politician. You can tell by the way I talk. For crying out loud, I am a business guy. With all that being said, I have never seen--never have I seen a situation to where you can cut your way out of a problem.
We will absolutely have to mind the store. President Trump is dead on point. The DOGE is absolutely real, and we can absolutely make a real dent, but it won't be a dent nearly big enough. At the end of the day, the only way you can truly get your way out of a mess--mind the store, and it grows. That is what we have got to do. You have got to grow revenue.
Say what you want, but at the end of the day, you have got to grow revenue. How are you going to grow revenue in America? For God's sake of living, the last thing on the planet that anybody would ever want to do is raise taxes. That would be the worst thing we could possibly do. That would kill us in every way imaginable.
We need to be supportive of President Trump's tax cuts. We absolutely need to grow revenue one way. This is the only way to do it in West Virginia. You won't hear me all the time just standing up on a soapbox going on and on, but really this is a West Virginia guy that is telling America and telling the world just this: We sit on so much energy it is off the chart. Why can't we be Saudi Arabia? I mean, for crying out loud, it absolutely is the answer, period. If you want to grow revenue in this country, absolutely it will start with energy, and it will end with energy. That is all there is to it.
Think about this for just 1 second: Every single country in the world--the gigantic countries or the real small countries--every country in the world today, the people will live longer and the people will be healthier if they have more energy--guaranteed. Every single country in the world, the more energy they have, the longer their people live, and the healthier they are.
Absolutely just go back and think just one more thing: Civilization only progressed--only progressed with abundant, cheap energy, and now it is abundant, cheap, clean energy. America produces the cleanest energy on the planet. Our coals are so clean it is unbelievable compared to China's coals or other countries.
Absolutely our natural gas is so good, it is off the chart. Embrace all the alternatives. All the wind, all the solar, embrace them all, but for gosh sake of living, you cannot--you cannot--forget the very thing that God above gave us in our fossil fuels.
So with all that being said--I didn't even look at the notes--but I would just say to you just this: We have a real opportunity in America today, a real opportunity to move forward in a way that absolutely can solve a lot of the riddle. The riddle is tough.
The riddle is tough, and absolutely when you step back from it and you think about, Well, what are we going to do? Here is a guy that has come to you not as a politician. I came to you not as a 40-year-old, you know, aspiring to someday being the chairman of some committee. I came to you with white hair as a 73-year-old because of one reason and one reason alone: I meet up with being a patriot. I am the real deal. I challenge the media all the time: Tell me something that, knowingly, I have told you is not true. They can't do it because I am going to tell the truth.
My parents taught me that. It is not OK to just tell anything and say: Oh, it is just politics in my world. It is not. I am telling you from my heart as a business guy and absolutely as a West Virginian but first and foremost as an American: I love you with everything in me. I love this country with every single thing in me. I want nothing but goodness.
I don't want one thing for me--nothing. I don't want the next hot tip. I don't need the next perk. I don't need the next invite. I don't want a thing for me. I am telling you, energy is our ticket. It is everything. It always has been everything.
Now, we have got to do something about it. America, you have got to listen to me on this one. We have got to do something about it, and we have got to do something about it right now. I mean, there is a bad day coming, and it is coming right at us like a freight train. Let's do something about it, America. God bless each and every one of you. Thank you so much for having me.
Mr. President, I will follow these guidelines correctly and make sure I do.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. President, the American people are being told once again not to trust their own eyes. Democrats are telling them not to worry about their soaring electricity bills, telling them to ignore rolling blackouts. Republicans are just fearmongering, they say. But, of course, the reality is that Americans have seen the power shortages. They have paid the higher bills. They have felt the weight of the past 4 years of the failed policies of the Biden administration, and we cannot ignore the resulting crisis anymore.
The power grid is buckling, energy demand is exploding, and the very people who created this mess are now telling us, quite audaciously, that there is no emergency. Why? Well, they claim that the United States is producing more energy than we have in American history, but what they conveniently omit is that we are consuming more energy than at any time in American history, and we are expected to need much, much more within just the next few years--much more than we are producing, much more than we ever have produced.
So it is not enough to just look at how much we are producing relative to what we have produced in the past when you don't take into account the demand, what we need, and what we need is going way, way up.
Now, according to Goldman Sachs, artificial intelligence alone--just artificial intelligence, nothing else; not population growth, not any other uses, household or industrial, of energy--just artificial intelligence alone is likely to drive a 160-percent increase in data center power demand by 2030. The largest data centers can consume more power than 700,000 households. That is equivalent to the energy use of a city of 1.8 million people.
But there is no emergency, according to them. According to the sponsors of this resolution, this is just a handout. It is a handout to Big Oil, as they characterize it.
Now, good luck with that. Try telling that to the American families and businesses that struggled during the January 2025 polar vortex when the U.S. power grid was pushed to its absolute limits. Electricity demand hit historic
It is not Big Oil that will suffer in the winters if we fail to keep the power on.
Across multiple power market regions, electricity demand during that event set new single-day records, as heating demand across sectors spiked. In response, grid operators had to rely heavily on dispatchable generation--primarily coal and natural gas--to ensure system reliability and stabilize supply during the extreme event.
Now, during that time, coal-fired powerplants dramatically increased their electric power output--that is, those coal-fired powerplants that have not yet been torn down at the demand of Democratic-backed policies. In many regions, coal capacity factors soared above 80 percent, far exceeding typical winter levels.
On the other hand, wind and solar were challenged by unfavorable weather conditions. On peak days, wind and solar generated only 3 percent and 0.2 percent of the incremental electricity needed to meet demand.
But what exactly are Democrats worried about? What is their concern amidst that very emergency? If that is not an emergency, I don't know what is. What is it they are worried about? Not grid failures. Not surging energy costs. Not the reliability of our power supply. No. No. They are concerned that President Trump is making things worse by canceling the wind and solar projects that failed to generate enough power to meet demand at those peak moments when it was so badly needed.
They are using the same old playbook that they always have: Do anything to prevent President Trump from getting a win regardless of whether his policies might actually bring relief to the American people, which, of course, they would.
I have spent my career fighting against unchecked Executive power. I authored the ARTICLE ONE Act to curb the abuse of Presidential emergency declarations, requiring congressional approval within 30 days. But let me be clear. This is not an abuse of those powers--not by a mile; not at all; not in any way, shape, or form. It is a real emergency, and if President Trump's declaration were put to a vote today, this Chamber would affirm it.
Congress has had countless chances to fix this problem and failed every time. Republicans have fought for years to reform our outdated permitting laws, only to be met with Democratic resistance at every turn. NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act--Democrats treat these laws as if they were sacred texts, untouchable even when they are clearly broken; a sacred text that can't be not just repealed but even amended meaningfully to avert the disaster that they have created--especially created in the hands of the previous administration.
Now, at this moment, we hear that they are ready to play ball. Now and only now do they say: Oh, yeah, we need to deal with this. Now, if that is true, great, but let's see. If Democrats are serious about fixing it, now is the time to prove it. Until Congress acts, how can anyone really blame the President for stepping in to address this emergency? Which it is, which it has become, which it undeniably is. In some cases, an emergency can be created by the government itself or at least severely exacerbated, and that is the case here.
His Executive order tells Agencies to do exactly what Congress has neglected to do for years, exactly what Congress has been unable to do--in large part because Democrats have resisted that, getting back to the sacred text theory of these same laws that have become part of the problem.
However, rather than working with President Trump and Republicans in a productive way to try to make energy more accessible for Americans and more reliable and, of course, remain affordable, Senate Democrats are forcing a vote on a resolution to terminate President Trump's declaration and reinstate the restrictive energy policies from the Biden administration's Green New Deal.
Look at where those policies have left us, where they have put us, where we are, and where we are headed. Energy prices increased by 30.54 percent, gasoline prices increased by 30.5 percent, electricity prices increased by 28.55 percent, and natural gas prices increased by 33.3 percent.
Meanwhile, Democrats' message to American families is clear: Pay more, expect less.
That is the sort of gospel of scarcity, the idea that we have to live off of scarcity because that is what they demand because government wants it that way for reasons that only they can fully articulate but that the American people do not find persuasive.
This is a problem. The United States is, in fact, in an energy emergency--not because of a lack of resources but because the Biden administration's unrelenting regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production in blind adherence to the climate cartel has put us in this position.
Now, President Biden's Executive orders--including orders he issued on his very first day as President of the United States back in January of 2021--pausing all new oil and gas leasing on Federal lands, where nearly 25 percent of U.S. oil production occurs, significantly hindered U.S. energy independence.
Even after courts mandated the resumption of these leasing programs essential to our energy development, Secretary Haaland slow-walked the process, offering the fewest acres for lease since World War II and holding a record-low number of offshore lease sales.
The chilling effect of the Biden administration's anti-production policies is as undeniable as it is indefensible as a matter of public policy. Oil companies are withdrawing from investments in Federal lands due to the uncertainty created by erratic leasing decisions and hostile regulatory policies.
Now, let's remember, of course, this is made more severe by virtue of the fact that the U.S. Government is not just the largest landowner in the United States, but it owns around 28 percent--between one-quarter and one-third of all land in the United States. We compound that by giving enormous discretion to Federal land management Agencies, to the executive branch, and then you put in place an administration that wants to preach and live by the gospel of scarcity, and that is a recipe for disaster.
Biden's EPA contributed meaningfully to the problem as well. The Biden EPA introduced methane fees starting at $900 per metric ton in 2025 and increasing to $1,500 over just a fairly short period of time. That imposes significant financial burdens on producers, particularly small operators.
Now, lest anyone led by the Democratic talking points might be tempted to look at this and say ``Oh, but they are businesses. They can afford it. Suck it up. Just deal with it,'' that is not really who pays for this, no. These things get passed on. The wealthy folks--at least the wealthy folks who own these businesses--they are not the ones hardest hit by this. Those hardest hit are American families, particularly in low- and middle-income brackets, those who, like so many Americans, live paycheck to paycheck. It is those people whose way of life, whose livelihood, whose ability to afford life is so dramatically affected by these regulatory intrusions into the marketplace. Those are the people who get hurt, and that really is a problem.
Meanwhile, as our domestic production slows, our reliance on foreign oil increases. In 2023, we imported 1.3 million barrels per day from OPEC, up nearly 50 percent from 2020 levels. Meanwhile, critical mineral dependencies on foreign nations--particularly China--threaten everything from titanium in pacemakers, to cobalt in batteries, to copper in transmission lines and antimony in semiconductors. The absence of just one of these minerals would devastate the sectors they serve. Yet the Biden administration, with its vast discretion as it invented and reinvented Federal regulations and as it presided over this Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations--laws put in place by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats--can make those things much worse, and it did make those things much worse, and the American people, hard- working Americans, are paying too high a price.
The American people are done. They are done with Joe Biden's failed policies. Over 77 million Americans voted
Senate Republicans will not let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer. They have created and exacerbated an emergency. President Trump is addressing it, as the law allows him to do. We will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results that the American people justifiably expect, demand, and truly do deserve, because the facts are undeniable. America is in an energy emergency because of the Federal Government and specifically because of the previous administration's failed policies.
Instead of embracing abundant, affordable, and reliable energy, Democrats--again preaching and living by the gospel of scarcity to which they are so closely wedded--are doubling down on a radical agenda to make everything, from gasoline to electricity, more expensive for working families.
Remember, as the price of those energy inputs goes up, so, too, does the price of everything else because it becomes more expensive to make, to process, to buy, to sell, to transport all of those same things.
Instead of learning from those failures, Senate Democrats are trying to block President Trump from taking action to fix it. What? Are they too afraid that their own policies will be exposed as the source of a significant amount of the problem? You will have to ask them about that. But one could certainly make that argument, and it certainly appears to many that this is the case.
They are standing in the way of relief for American families, hoping that if they delay long enough, the American people will simply accept high costs as the new normal. Only in Washington could you light the house on fire and then act shocked when someone else tries to put it out. Make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here.
We refuse to let that happen. We applaud President Trump for taking action to address an emergency created by our own government--presided over, directed, embraced, and now defended by the Democratic Party.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. President, I join my colleague from Utah, the chairman of the Energy Committee, in speaking today in clear opposition to S.J. Res. 10, which would terminate the energy emergency that has been declared by President Trump.
I think my colleagues here on both sides of the aisle know that I am not afraid to suggest when I think that the President may be heading in the wrong direction. But, folks, on this one, he absolutely, positively clearly hit the mark, and I think that the chairman of the Energy Committee has outlined in pretty good detail how that has come about.
We know that our country is blessed with extraordinary-- extraordinary--assets. We have the potential to become the world's leading resource superpower. But in order to do that, we have to be able to produce more energy domestically, and that means we have to be able to extract more minerals. We have to be able to build more transmission lines. We need to be able to overhaul what is clearly a broken Federal permitting process. And we can do this. We can do this in a way that is cheaper, that is more reliable, more clean, really, than any other nation in the world. But we have got to kind of dig out now from where we have been over these past 4 years, where we saw setback after setback for resource-producing States like mine, the State of Alaska.
Let me give you a little detail in terms of what we are facing in the State of Alaska--a State that, again, is known for its resource wealth. But right now, in the south central part of the State, we are on the verge of importing LNG to meet the needs of some 75 percent of our population during the colder winter months.
I will just repeat that. Alaska, the place where everybody knows we have got extraordinary oil resources--we have extraordinary natural gas potential, not only in the North Slope but down in Cook Inlet. Well, Cook Inlet reserves are on the decline, and we are actually talking about importing LNG from Canada. That ought to just be considered a nonstarter for anyone who knows and understands the extraordinary potential for resource development that we have in our State with the wealth that we have.
Right now, in some of our remote communities across the State, residents are truly in what I would describe as an energy emergency. They might not use that term anymore because they have just gotten so used to the fact that they are paying so much to keep their lights on and to keep warm. We have residents in many communities that are spending up to one-half of their incomes on energy just, again, to keep the lights on and to keep warm.
Think about what that means when you are spending half of what you make for just the basic necessities. It means that you have less to feed your family, to educate your kids. We have got communities where power costs 10 times the national average, where gasoline can easily exceed $10 a gallon, and that includes diesel as well.
And those costs, of course, impact everything--everything--because you have got to move your food, your goods, usually by airplane, sometimes over the water, sometimes you are able to drive it. But when you are paying this much for diesel, for gasoline, for avgas, it impacts everything. So it is not unusual to go into a village store, and if you can find a gallon of milk, see that it costs 18 bucks a gallon.
I do my comparison shopping by checking the prices of a box of Tide. People need to be able to wash their clothing just for sanitary purposes. Almost in every village that I am going to, you are looking at prices over $50 a box--$50 for a box of Tide laundry detergent--and it is not because Tide is any more expensive than anything else. It is just the reality of what we are paying here. So I think we have got an energy emergency when it comes to affordability.
Right now, in our State, we have an oil pipeline that is one-quarter filled. We have this pipeline that has been pumping oil safely from the North Slope to delivery down in Valdez, going to other parts of the country for refining. That oil pipeline was completed in 1974 and has been producing for America ever since. But right now, it is about one- quarter full.
That pipeline starts in, again, one of the most geologically prospective regions on the Earth. But what is happening is you have Federal Government control that surrounds most of the lands there, and it has led to decreased opportunities to expand production up there and a pipeline that, again, is about one-quarter full.
I mentioned the benefits of oil here and talked about natural gas, but we also have known deposits of about 50 critical minerals, the building blocks of our modern society and our national security. We have just about everything that our Nation needs to break its deep dependence on China, to be able to rebuild our supply chains. But if you can't access it, you can't produce it, and we can't benefit from it.
When we try to build a road from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District--this is explicitly provided by a 1980 Federal law--we did this as part of a grand compromise. The road corridor was in exchange for the creation of a massive national park and preserve. But we can get that project approved in one administration, only to have the next one come in, reopen it, ignore the law, and then make a political decision to reject it.
And then, here in Congress, we run into a partisan wall with some less interested in the rule of law than the whims of the very same environmental groups that pushed this resolution.
And then, meanwhile, what is happening when we are not able to produce in our own home States, China is cutting us off from its mineral exports, including the gallium and the germanium that we could produce from the Ambler District, if only the Federal Government would uphold its promise to allow Alaskans to responsibly access it.
So, yes, when I look at my home State, when I look at Alaska, I do see an energy emergency--I see several, actually--and I see even more reasons to be concerned nationally.
As the chairman of the Energy Committee just noted, electricity demand is growing, and yet we can't permit new powerplants or build transmission
And, you know, I guess I am listening to some of the arguments that are being presented here, and maybe I would feel differently if my home State was producing more than 2 million barrels of oil per day, as some are. But we are not, and it is not because we can't. It is because we have been denied the opportunity to do so. And that is why I am very thankful for President Trump and the administration for the focus that they have given to the State of Alaska with a specific Executive order to allow us to unleash Alaska's energy and resource potential.
I have shared with the Secretary of the Interior, as well as the Secretary of Energy, that we need to stop treating energy like it is some kind of an evil or a bad thing. We need to recognize that it is good. When I was chairman of the Energy Committee, we had a little bumper sticker, and I summed up my whole policy with ``Energy is good.''
I haven't deviated from that policy. Energy makes us stronger, makes us less vulnerable, and it is an asset, not a liability, like we have seen it treated as such. We need to be unleashing our resources, including--including--all of our renewables, because that is all part of the energy basket as well. So it is not an either-or in my view. It is all of the above. And that is good for our economy. It is good for our security. It is good for our geopolitical power.
America's resource production is good for the global environment because, when we are producing our resources--where we stop paying countries that have little to no environmental standards, no interest in reducing their emissions, and that often rely on child or slave labor and that, frankly, don't even like us--so why not seize the opportunities that we have here, benefit our own people, our own economies, and, again, benefit the global environment as well.
So if an energy emergency helps us figure this all out, then I am good with that. And if it helps us take the Federal sanctions that we have seen placed on Alaska and return my State to the heart of our national strategy for resource production, then that is also good. I think we will all be better off.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today in support of S. J. Res. 10, which would terminate the misguided national energy emergency that President Trump signed on his first day in office.
It has been 37 days since President Trump declared, for the first time in this Nation's history, a national energy emergency. This is an attempt to throw red meat to the base of the Republican Party and to seem like Donald Trump is the oil and gas President.
But there is no evidence to support that. In fact, the evidence we have points in exactly the opposite direction. This emergency was declared despite the fact that the United States is producing more oil than any other country ever in this Nation's history. And we have been doing that for the past 7 years.
The emergency was declared despite the fact that the United States is in the midst of a clean energy boom and a manufacturing renaissance. We generated 17 percent more electricity in 2023 than the high point of the first Trump administration. Clean energy jobs are growing at twice the rate of the economy overall. And this emergency was declared despite the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal headline noted after the election: ``Trump's Oil and Gas Donors Don't Really Want to `Drill, Baby, Drill.' ''
They are very happy to lock in demand for the long term. But increase supply and potentially undercut profits? Not so much.
So we find ourselves with an emergency declaration in search of an emergency. But it is not without consequences. President Trump has assumed vast power for the executive branch through this emergency designation. He is encouraging the use of eminent domain that could literally allow the government to take your land away. He is waiving away key protections for clean water. And he is suggesting that a timeline of just 7 days is sufficient for public comment on projects that could cause irreparable harm to historic and cultural resources.
President Trump campaigned on ``lowering the cost of everything'' and he promised:
Voters responded to those promises, and Americans do want to see lower energy costs. I am all for that. I focused, as Governor, on how we could address the high energy prices in New Hampshire. We permitted two gas pipelines through the State--both gas coming from Canada. And we negotiated a deal with our largest utility company that lowered rates 16.5 percent.
I am all for lowering energy costs. We absolutely should be talking about that. But let's take a step back here, and let's talk about what President Trump's energy policies actually are and how they affect the American people. In the first 37 days, we have seen the Trump administration cut off funding for solar, wind, and clean manufacturing projects that are cheaper and faster to build than fossil fuel infrastructure. We have seen him halt energy efficiency programs and we know energy efficiency is the cheapest, fastest way to deal with our energy needs.
He has prepared a 10-percent energy tax in the form of tariffs on heating oil, propane, gasoline, and other energy we import from Canada. And that hits New Hampshire really hard because of the energy sources we get from Canada. I talked about the two gas pipelines that come down from Canada. And because we have so many households that burn No. 2 fuel oil to heat our homes and because it is cold in New Hampshire at this time of year, that hits us really hard.
He has fired more than 1,000 workers at the Department of Energy, including those who were keeping State energy programs and weatherization up and running to respond to emergencies and to help folks like we have in New Hampshire stay warm this winter.
And tomorrow, what we expect is that Senate Republicans will roll back a commonsense fee on venting or flaring of methane rather than capturing it for productive use. If that passes and the President signs it, it will cost the taxpayers $2.3 billion over the next 10 years, effectively lighting money on fire to save Big Oil a few bucks.
In New Hampshire, as in other States, President Trump's actions have sown chaos and uncertainty. They are raising costs for families, for farmers, for small businesses, and for town budgets.
For example, the tariffs that are set to go into effect--and I understand the President has now decided he is going to wait until April--but they could mean about $150 to $250 more for the average family in New Hampshire who are using heating oil just to keep warm through the winter. President Trump's efforts to cancel promised funding for electric charging infrastructure in New Hampshire harms our travel and tourism sector, particularly in northern New Hampshire where ski areas and other outdoor recreation drive our local economies. A recent study found that the State risks losing an estimated $1.4 billion in overall economic impact if we don't build up our charging infrastructure.
One small business owner in Barrington, in the seacoast of New Hampshire, told me that he has nearly $3 million in projects. Those projects are on hold this year, including work for school districts with the State and with other customers to install solar projects that provide long-term taxpayer savings. They are on hold because of what President Trump has ordered.
Farms and local shops across rural areas of New Hampshire are nervous about receiving promised reimbursements for energy-saving work through the Rural Energy for America Program, the REAP program. At least one business owner at Seacoast Power Equipment has been covering interest with the bank until his grant--which he has a signed commitment for--is actually paid out. Of course, this is affecting his bottom line.
Then we have Super Secret Ice Cream in Bethlehem, NH, the northern part of our State--an award-winning small business that provides the best ice cream you have ever eaten. They were gearing up to install solar panels using $15,000 in Federal funds. Now that project is on hold. Many family-owned
Then we have the town of Peterborough in the western part of New Hampshire. They plan to use funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to enhance much-needed workforce development. But, of course, they have had to wait far too long for Federal approvals.
And in rural towns like Berlin in the northern part of our State, residents eagerly signed up for federally funded projects that will insulate and add solar arrays to their manufactured homes. This is a real solution to their high utility bills. But these projects are now on hold because the contractors are uncertain that they are going to be paid.
I could go on, as I know my colleagues could, but since we have people waiting, I want to close with a point of agreement. In his Executive order, President Trump stated:
That makes sense to me. I agree with that. But, unfortunately, that is about the only thing he said related to energy in the past 37 days that does make sense. Lowering energy costs, creating good jobs, and increasing America's economic competitiveness in the world--those ought to be things that we can all agree on. But if we give up our leadership on clean energy now, the People's Republic of China, who President Trump claims is our greatest competitor--and I agree with him on that. I just don't understand how the Trump administration policies are allowing us to be competitive--but China is going to be more than happy to fill the void for its own economic advantage.
I think we should also agree Americans deserve clean air, clean water, and a chance to have a say in what happens in their communities.
I want to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on these goals. That work starts by ending this disastrous, misguided emergency declaration and by stopping the chaos. I hope my colleagues will join me in voting to restore Congress's appropriate role in setting energy policies that benefit the American people by supporting this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here to join my colleagues in objecting to President Trump's fake energy emergency, which is part of the Trump continuing strategy to hurt families and help billionaires-- in this case, the fossil fuel billionaires who put at least $100 million into getting him elected, probably a good deal more because so much of the money was dark money. We don't know. But there is every reason to believe it was multiple hundreds of millions of dollars spent to get him elected and it is payback time for the big donors.
Tough bounce to the families whose bills are going to go up as a result.
How are families bills going to go up? For starters, renewables are less expensive than fossil fuel. When you add them to the mix, the grid runs on a cue, and it takes the cheapest sources and puts them in the line. And as you demand more and more electricity, you finally get to the more expensive energy sources. And inexpensive renewables coming in drives out the expensive fossil fuel from the top, and it lowers energy costs overall.
So when you stop doing that, the most expensive plants have to come back online, and that will raise utility bills but, most importantly to Trump, profits for fossil fuel billionaires.
We make ourselves, with this, more vulnerable to the OPEC fossil fuel cartel, the oil and gas cartel. They raise prices by manipulating international markets. The American oil and gas companies follow up. Even if they don't need to make that much money, they will follow the OPEC prices. As a result, they have declared the biggest profits in the history of humankind at the expense of American families both at the fuel pump and at home on their electric bills. It doesn't matter to this administration. It is a win for the fossil fuel billionaires who paid good money to get this administration in, and families will be hurt to help the fossil fuel billionaires.
Another one is LNG export. What happens in the natural gas market when you take our natural gas, liquefy it, and send it offshore someplace else? It doesn't go into the pipelines here in America. It pinches the supply available to Americans, which raises prices for Americans, unless you want to repeal the economic laws of supply and demand.
So over and over and over again, these pro-fossil fuel, mega donor policies hurt American families, raise families' electric utility bills, and provide huge benefits back to the big donors who spent good money to get him into office.
Who gets hit the most when you attack solar and attack wind power?
Well, here are the top solar States by installed capacity. Start with California. Obviously, it is the fifth biggest economy in the world, but the next four are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. There are a lot of red voters in those States who are going to pay the price for this bad policy. Look over to wind. The top State is Texas, the next is Iowa, the next is Oklahoma, and the next is Kansas. Again, red States will pay the price for this donor-oriented policy.
The Trump administration doesn't even concede that solar and wind power are energy. When they use the word ``energy,'' they only mean fossil and nuclear. They have literally defined solar and wind out of the energy mix by a process of vocabulary magic.
So we are headed for a bad place, and consumers are going to pay--all to make big fossil fuel barons even richer than they are.
The shame here is that there actually is an emergency out there. There actually is an energy emergency out there, and the energy emergency is happening because fossil fuel emissions are changing the weather and the natural systems of the Earth so that the risk of weather disasters, whether it is wildfire or flooding, is getting so bad that property insurers can't keep up. So we are having a crisis in property insurance markets that is fully developed in Florida, and California is not far behind.
What the chief economist for our mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, has warned of is that the property insurance crisis morphs into a mortgage crisis because if you can't get property insurance on a property, guess what else you can't get on a property--you can't get a mortgage on it. And the mortgage crisis devolves into a property values crash because if you can't find buyers because nobody can get a mortgage on that property, your property's value just collapsed. Then that morphs into a nationwide economic crash on the scale of 2008. That is what they said just about coastal property values. Now we have the wildfire risk coming along side by side--the evil sibling.
So is there an emergency? Yes. It is coming on, and it is coming on soon enough that the Fed Chair, in testimony just over a week ago here in the Senate, said: After a decade goes by, there will be regions of the United States of America where you can't even get a mortgage any longer.
What is that going to do to property values and people's homes? By the way, if that is the case for 10 years out, markets are going to start to move sooner. So this is a problem that is on us now. We have a real emergency coming. It is going to clobber us economically.
Our friends on the Republican side don't want to listen to us because of all the fossil fuel money that goes into their party. The President doesn't want to listen to it because he got paid so many hundreds of millions of dollars in political funds to get himself elected. But nature's rules can't be repealed by man. This is coming on. We ought to be prepared for it.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am pleased to follow my colleague and friend from Rhode Island and to join with the Senator from Virginia, Senator Kaine, in supporting S.J. Res. 10, which is a joint resolution to terminate President Trump's illegal Executive order declaring an energy emergency.
It is not only nature's rule that is being violated, as Senator Whitehouse just said so eloquently; it is also this Congress's rule. In effect, the President is flouting and defying this Congress--this independent, separate body of the U.S. Government--in the money that has already been appropriated for projects that will help avoid an energy emergency in the future and reduce the prices of energy for American families.
To the families of America, let's just be very clear. President Trump is illegally withholding appropriated funding for for projects in your communities and your neighborhoods, not only projects to increase energy efficiency but also to strengthen the electrical grid that brings electricity into your home and projects to build out America's clean energy infrastructure that will avoid pollution in your neighborhoods.
This funding freeze sweeps a range of programs having nothing to do with unleashing American energy, whatever President Trump thinks it is--we are talking about funding for clean drinking water projects that will enable better drinking water for your homes; brownfield remediation so that businesses can be developed in places that now are polluted; heating assistance for low-income households during the end of this winter--causing confusion and consternation across the country.
But make no mistake, if this funding is withheld, the projects and the needs and the challenges don't go away. There will still be a need to clean up those brownfields, to deliver through the electric grid, to make energy efficiency real in communities and neighborhoods, but you will pay. Your taxes will be increased at the State level and the local level, and those projects will become more expensive. So there is a double and triple whammy here. Increase the costs now and in the future for projects that are absolutely essential to the health as well as the energy efficiency of our country.
The Republicans say they are for an ``all of the above'' approach to energy, but then they turn around and they attack renewables. They say they are for cleaning up brownfields, but then they support this kind of Executive order that is illegal and also stymies or stops that brownfield remediation.
Like all of the actions by Executive order President Trump has taken in his first month of office, it isn't actually solving the problem; it is exacerbating it. It is lining the pockets of his billionaire buddies--in this case, oil and gas executives--at the expense of everyday Americans. If there is an energy emergency, it will be created by President Trump--it won't be solved by him--and congressional Republicans will be complicit in it.
There is also an effect on jobs. In fact, thousands of jobs are threatened by this Executive order. Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act by Executive edict threatens 400,000 new jobs that have been announced since August of 2022. Connecticut alone has around 50,000 workers in the clean energy sector. All of those jobs are at risk. They are threatened by President Trump's attack on the industry.
To my colleagues across the aisle, make no mistake, this is going to affect your constituents as well. Studies have found that a majority of clean energy jobs created during the first full year after the Inflation Reduction Act passed actually were in the South, in Republican States. Jobs in clean energy are not in one State or just blue States; they are across the country. Eight out of ten congressional districts that received the most funding under these laws were represented by Republicans.
It shouldn't be a partisan issue. It is, as we say all the time, an American issue. We stand ready to work with anyone who wants to lower costs for consumers and support domestic energy production by building on historic investments made by the Infrastructure Investment and JOBS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, but President Trump's order in no way helps; it simply harms that effort.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. President, the United States is in an energy boom. Our Nation has never produced more electricity or oil and gas than we are producing right now. This ``all of the above'' approach to energy using everything--including solar, wind, and geothermal--is keeping energy prices as low as possible for working families but at the same time is recognizing that climate change is real and moving toward a clean energy future.
Excluding coal, the United States produced more energy than any other country in the history of the world in 2023. It appears that some in this administration are determined to undo that progress.
Despite American leadership in energy, the President signed an Executive order on his first day declaring a national energy emergency. That sounds dramatic, almost theatrical, because it is meant to be. Let's call this political theater for what it is--an attempt to accelerate oil and gas projects while at the same time holding back our renewable energy.
Of course, there are things that we need to be doing to keep energy cleaner, prices lower, and to cement American energy independence.
For starters, we need to increase energy production. We need to meet our energy future by streamlining the permitting of our new energy projects--of all of our energy projects--while at the same time being mindful of the environmental impacts and giving impacted communities a public forum. We need to upgrade our grid. We need to increase clean, domestic, critical mineral production. But that is not what this Executive order will do. In fact, it won't do a single one of these things.
They claim we are in an emergency, an energy emergency, but they continue to block Federal wind and energy permits. They claim we are in an emergency, an energy emergency, but then they ship oil and gas overseas. They claim we are in an energy emergency, and yet their actions would cede complete control of what eventually will be an enormous global market in renewable energy to China.
The administration has also fired thousands of government workers who play vital roles in American energy--all in the name of government efficiency and giving tax cuts to the ultrawealthy.
Listen, I am all for making the government more efficient. I have worked on that most of my public life. If you want to seriously look at how we spend money and where we can actually cut fraud, waste, and abuse, I am game. But hastily, almost randomly firing Department of Energy employees or letting go 300 workers who maintain our nuclear security and safety--I don't think that is the way to do it.
Our office has even heard from a private company that worried that the Federal employee responsible for managing their permitting process is about to be fired, placing the entire success of their project at risk. They help bring energy to our local communities. This will stop them dead in their tracks and raise prices for households at the same time.
America's energy economy is booming, in large part because of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act--bills that make historic investments in American-made energy.
These bills have created more than 400,000 good-paying jobs. Yet there is an effort by some in the Congress--mostly Republicans; I should say all Republicans--and the administration to slash and impede the progress that we have made, even though an estimated 70 percent of the benefits--the jobs, the investments, the increased energy--are going to red States.
Cutting funding from these critical pieces of legislation is going to hit our rural communities the hardest, where it could provide the greatest benefit. It will shrink county government revenue; it will force layoffs; and, ultimately, it will increase the cost of energy.
Clean energy isn't just some liberal boogeyman. It is not some notion. In fact, most of the energy that is ready to go as we expand our capacity--it is ready to go--is clean and affordable.
Solar, wind, and storage, they make up 95 percent of the capacity of new energy ready to connect to our grid. Wind generates 10 percent of our electricity now and will provide much more affordable renewable energy if more permits were made available.
Withholding funds already appropriated by Congress through these laws
Some in Congress, some Republicans, have introduced their budget which strips critical services for Coloradoans while adding $4 trillion to our national debt, all primarily so they can give tax breaks, which more than half go to the ultrawealthy who, at least many in Colorado, don't even want them.
I put an amendment on the floor that would strip any provision from their budget that would raise energy costs for Americans. How can people be opposed to that? Yet every Republican voted against it. I think they are putting politics over people.
We are able to keep energy prices low for working families because we use everything: oil, gas, geothermal, wind. So rather than limiting energy sources, proclaiming a false emergency, or firing critical government employees, let's meet the moment and usher in a new energy future that helps everyone, a future marked by a resilient energy grid built by American innovation that delivers low-cost, reliable energy for every Coloradan, for every American.
If this administration is looking for a bipartisan roadmap on this, we have one. We should pass permitting reform that streamlines review for all energy projects, not just oil and gas. We can build a modern electric grid that will reduce energy prices for all.
Let's continue supporting emerging technologies like advanced geothermal and nuclear so that we can remain dominant in the markets that are emerging.
And let's stop picking winners and losers. The vast majority of new electricity is coming from low-cost solar, wind, and energy storage. Let's follow the law and let the investments in energy from the past few years go to the communities that need them.
Let's cut the nonsense. This isn't an energy emergency; it is an emergency opportunity. This administration's actions certainly would cause an emergency for many Coloradoans and American working families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague from across the Potomac River, Senator Kaine of Virginia, and also Senator Heinrich of New Mexico for bringing this resolution before the U.S. Senate.
We are now witnessing in realtime two of the most corrupt bargains in American history. One of those corrupt bargains is the one that President Trump made with Elon Musk.
Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump President of the United States--$280 million--and President Trump has handed the keys of Federal Agencies over to Elon Musk. He even appeared at the Cabinet meeting today with other members of the Cabinet that went through the advice-and-consent process of the U.S. Senate. Elon Musk didn't do that, but he did spend $280 million to help elect President Trump.
And now the actions that Elon Musk is taking are designed to rig government Agencies to do the bidding of people like Elon Musk and other billionaires. In fact, we have been reading more and more about the billions of dollars of Federal contracts that Elon Musk has gotten and more to come. Just within the last 48 hours, we are talking about an FAA contract for Starlink.
This has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it did, you would not start by firing all the inspectors general across the U.S. Government whose job it is to look out for waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, what you would do when you get rid of the inspectors general is open the door to waste, fraud, and abuse.
So we should be on full alert here in the U.S. Senate as to what is happening.
As others have said, we are also watching them claim to make savings, which actually they have had to change their, sort of, tally board every day because of misrepresentations. But they do want to clear the way to provide tax cuts to very, very wealthy people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else in America. And, of course, the House just passed a budget resolution to set up that process last night.
So that is one corrupt bargain that is playing out right now, and thousands of patriotic Federal employees around the country who do the people's work are being fired based on lies. I say ``lies'' because they are claiming they are firing them based on performance, only to find out that these Federal employees are coming forward with glowing performance reports as part of their most recent assessments. So that was a lie because that was the standard that had to be met, even if they had to make it up.
All these cases are now finding their way through the courts. We have over 60 court proceedings. Many Federal judges have issued temporary restraining orders to put a halt to this rampage of illegal activity.
The other corrupt bargain is the one that brings us to the Senate floor today because it was in May of last year, during the campaign, that Candidate Trump promised the Big Oil executives that he would deliver their wish list if they spent a billion dollars to return him to the White House.
So much has happened since then, I think some people forget, but here is the Washington Post headline from May 9, 2024:
The story describes how the CEOs there were stunned--stunned--when he went on to say:
And as the article indicates, among the things he promised to scrap were the efforts to develop more clean vehicles, more electric vehicles, and to develop more wind energy. So he promised to provide more opportunities for the big oil companies while harming their competitors in the clean energy industry.
He promised he would do all of this on day one. He also made another promise as to what he would do on day one. He promised the American people he was going to lower prices on day one. We all know that that is just not happening. Prices are going up. Grocery prices are going up. Rents are going up. Home prices are going up. The price of eggs is through the roof. So President Trump is not delivering on that day-one promise.
He is delivering on his promise to the Big Oil executives to issue that order that has made it even easier for them to produce, when they are already producing close to maximum current levels.
In fact, as my colleagues have said, for the past 6 years in a row, the United States has been producing more crude oil than any other nation at any other time ever, ever. In fact, the last administration actually approved more oil and gas leases during those 4 years than Donald Trump did during his first term in the White House.
And there is plenty of room to grow. Under existing leases, about half of U.S. oil and gas leases are currently not being used.
So here he issues an Executive order to allow even more to move forward, even when a lot of potential is still not being tapped, but doing it in a way that will negatively impact the public health, sacrifice clean air and clean water.
That is only half the problem. That is half the problem because what President Trump is doing is not only giving a blank check to the big oil companies, he is also sabotaging clean energy in the United States of America. They, of course, provide competition to the big oil companies.
So by throttling and sabotaging efforts when it comes to solar power or wind power or electric vehicles, you are actually producing less overall energy. You are actually giving the big oil companies a competitive advantage. That means prices go up, not down.
I can tell you that in my State of Maryland, people are feeling the impacts of higher electricity prices. We need to generate more electricity. We have got data centers coming onboard. AI consumes a lot of energy. So why in the world would President Trump be trying to cripple the clean energy industry?
Well, that is what he told the Big Oil executives he would do: He is going to crack down on wind power.
I will tell you that solar and wind energy are among the cheapest forms of energy in the country. And at a time when American pocketbooks are tight, renewable energy will help keep energy bills down.
In fact, renewable energy is expected to save Americans $38 billion on electricity bills by the year 2030 and produce more than 350,000 jobs in America. So why is President Trump trying to sabotage bringing that additional energy onto the grid and to Americans?
In Maryland, we are planning investments in offshore wind that will create 2,600 local jobs and power over 718,000 homes. That is wind power energy. That is what Donald Trump is trying to sabotage.
So if you really want to create more energy and you want to reduce energy prices, you wouldn't be doing what Donald Trump is doing when it comes to putting the screws to clean energy production.
I do want to mention one other way in which this is really going to harm America's interests, and that is, it is going to open the door even wider to our adversaries who are competing in the space-- principally China. We spent a lot of time trying to improve our supply chains, develop supply chains for minerals that we need to develop electric vehicles, and by sabotaging this sector, we are opening the door to China just to run into this market and leave us behind.
That is not ``America First''; that is America in retreat, just as it is America in retreat for us to vote with Russia and North Korea at the U.N. General Assembly the other day, against the people of Ukraine and freedom-loving people around the world.
So, Mr. President, I hope we will support this resolution. I hope we will ensure that we can develop our clean energy sources that will produce more energy supply for the American people and help lower prices.
I know, back in May of last year, Candidate Trump told the big CEOs that not only was he going to help them develop more but he was going to help them by hurting their competitors in the renewable energy industry. That is no way to conduct an energy policy for the United States of America.
I urge my colleagues to support the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. President, it has been almost 6 weeks--maybe a couple of days beyond 6 weeks--of the new administration of Donald Trump and his second term. It is a lot different than his first term. I was here for that occasion as well.
What we have found is unique is a blizzard of Executive orders issued by President Trump from the beginning of his administration. Among those Executive orders was his declaration of an energy emergency-- energy emergency. It turns out that claim is not based on fact. There is no energy emergency in America.
Under the Biden administration, we saw record deployment of wind, solar, biofuels, batteries, oil, gas, and nuclear. In fact, the United States is producing more power than ever. Last year, the United States of America produced more oil than any other nation in the history of the world. Yet President Trump continues to insist that America is on the verge of nationwide blackouts and that clean energy will raise prices. It is simply not true.
So what is the reason for the President to try to mislead the American people? The short answer is that he wants to give handouts to his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. Before Elon Musk showed up with his multibillion-dollar fortune, it was reported that then-Candidate Donald Trump invited fossil fuel executives to Mar-a- Lago to ask for--hold on to your seats--a $1 billion campaign contribution--1 billion bucks.
Now that he is in office, President Trump is doing everything he can to keep those billionaires happy. That means tax cuts for the ultrawealthy--which is on its way, I am afraid--opening up Federal lands and waters for drilling, and, yes, declaring this phony energy emergency.
Why is he doing it? Declaring an emergency grants the President additional statutory authority. Donald Trump is using these authorities to fast-track pipelines and drilling in the Gulf of--may I say it?-- Mexico. But there is nothing in this declaration to support fossil fuel's cleanest competitors: wind and solar.
If Trump doing the bidding of billionaires wasn't bad enough, his so- called emergency will also raise the electric bills of thousands of families. Wind and solar are the cheapest energy in the world, and those cheap prices get passed on to the families who take advantage of them.
I know personally. A few years ago, my wife and I made the decision to install solar panels on the roof of our home. Our home project gave union workers in my community a good-paying job, and it was just one project contributing to hundreds of thousands of jobs created in the Biden administration.
Since Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act was enacted 2\1/2\ years ago, more than 1\1/2\ million Americans have installed solar panels. Was it a good idea? Well, I compared the electric bills I had been receiving in my home before and after the solar panels. Before the solar panels were installed on my roof, my monthly bill was about $115 for electricity. Now it is $15 because of the solar energy.
Every one of these installations also helped to create good-paying jobs for electricians, carpenters, and other workers, and supplying those panels created thousands of new jobs at factories around the country. But President Trump is not impressed. He wants to eliminate those jobs.
We have an opportunity to undo the harms of one of President Trump's many lies today. I want to thank Senator Kaine of Virginia for leading this effort. We need to raise up American workers, lower utility bills, and put America back on track to lead the world on clean energy.
I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine measure.
Mr. President, on January 6, 2021, a solemn constitutional proceeding was disrupted when a mob of thugs, egged on by President Trump, attacked and trashed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a Presidential election.
The grim result of that insurrection was the subsequent death of 5 law enforcement officers and injuries to approximately 140 others, many of whom are still paying the price to this day.
It came as a shock when, on the first day of Donald Trump's Presidency, he issued a blanket pardon for those who had been convicted for that January 6 attack on the Capitol.
We all saw the videos. We all saw the photographs. Here is an illustration of one of them.
Listen to what President Trump said about 1,600 pardons at a recent press conference when he was asked: Why did you pardon all those people who attacked the police officers at the Capitol Building?
He said:
The American people overwhelmingly disagree with the President, and they disagree with his decision. In fact, 83 percent of them oppose the pardons that he gave. That includes 70 percent who lean Republican in their voting.
Despite this overwhelming opposition, the Justice Department has now broadened the scope of President Trump's pardons for January 6 rioters to include separate charges stemming from searches conducted during those investigations. I will describe a couple of them to you.
Federal prosecutors recently dropped explosives and firearm crimes being pursued against two January 6 defendants pardoned by President Trump: Daniel Ball and Elias Costianes.
Ball and Costianes had both been charged in separate proceedings with illegally possessing weapons that law enforcement discovered during the January 6-related search.
Ball had been accused of throwing an ``explosive device that detonated upon at least 25 officers'' during the Capitol riot and of ``forcefully'' shoving police who were trying to protect the Capitol.
Ball was barred from possessing firearms because of his prior criminal
President Trump says that poor man was assaulted by the police. Does it sound like it? Remember, President Trump told us Ball and his fellow rioters were the actual victims. No wonder so many of the January 6 perpetrators have shown a stunning lack of remorse.
Just last Friday, just a few days ago, a number of these pardoned individuals decided to hold their own press conference outside the U.S. Capitol to announce their intent to sue the Justice Department for prosecuting them for this--dangerous individuals, including former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, who had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before the Trump pardon; Proud Boy Ethan Nordean, who had been serving an 18-year sentence; Dominic Pezzola, the first rioter to breach the building on January 6, who was serving a 10-year sentence for stealing a police riot shield and using it to break a window. I will bet you saw that video. I did.
The group paraded through the Capitol after the press conference, following the same route they took on January 6, 2021. They posed for photos, chanting as they did that day:
After the press conference, Mr. Tarrio was even arrested again outside the Capitol for assaulting a female counterprotester.
Tarrio also posted video of himself stalking Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, former police officers who had defended the Capitol on January 6. Tarrio was following them through the lobby of a hotel where the officers were attending a conference. While Tarrio followed them, he was calling out at them that they were ``cowards'' and telling them to ``keep walking.''
Does this sound like a man ashamed of his actions on January 6 and full of remorse? Does this sound like an innocent victim of assault? No. This sounds like a man who now thinks he is above the law with his Trump pardon and expects to be bailed out by President Trump for every crime he decides to commit.
In another horrifying turn, the same hotel that I discussed earlier where these rioters were stalking policemen had to be evacuated after someone claiming to be MAGA emailed a threat about four bombs--two in the hotel and one in Officer Fanone's mother's mailbox. After listing the names of several of the conference attendees and singling out Officer Fanone, the email said they ``all deserve to die.''
These are men and women in police forces who risked their lives for Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 6.
The perpetrator of this tweet claimed to be acting ``to honor the [January] 6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump''--his words.
These are just last week's updates on the January 6 rioters President Trump pardoned. The list of crimes committed by these thugs just keeps growing longer and longer.
We must be clear that these individuals are a threat, and the more power and freedom they are given, the more danger they pose to our democracy and the law enforcement officers and families of those officers that they are harassing.
Just this month, dozens of January 6 offenders joined forces on social media to compile and publicize the identities of at least 124 individuals who had been involved in their convictions, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI agents. The post, which has received at least 60,000 views, included names, photos, disparaging remarks, and demands for accountability.
In January, another pardoned January 6 defendant who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, Ryan Nichols, Sr., identified in a Twitter post ``officers in the DC Jail who need to be investigated for corruption and abuse,'' adding the names and LinkedIn profile photos of two DC jail employees.
This is stalking and harassment of law enforcement men and women who were assigned to this Capitol to protect us. The men and women who bravely defended the Members of this body deserve better than this, and we should honor them for their heroic efforts on that day, not excuse the rioters who attacked this Chamber and the ideals it represents. Government employees should not fear for their safety or that of their families for simply doing their job.
I hope that all of us, regardless of our political persuasion, will finally agree on one thing: Violence has no place in a democracy, and Donald Trump's pardon of these 1,600 January 6 attackers is not only an insult to the Capitol Police who risked their lives to stop them but has emboldened these convicts to harass these officers and their families.
The question for the Senate is simple: Whose side are you on--the police or the rioters'?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. President, I want to state the obvious: The United States has real energy needs. We have to produce enough reliable energy to make utility bills affordable for families and to bring online the advanced manufacturing and data centers that are powering our economy and will power our economy into the future.
We are seeing this in Arizona. The demand for energy keeps going up. It is going up rather quickly.
Now, here is the good news: The United States is producing more energy than ever before.
We are using everything at our disposal. We are finally bringing the manufacturing of solar panels and batteries and wind turbines back to America. Now, that creates great-paying jobs across the country, jobs that you can actually raise a family on, jobs that are in places like Arizona and Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas. We are investing to develop new technologies to produce even more energy.
Now, for years, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have raised very legitimate concerns about the need to reform our permitting processes to cut redtape and unleash American manufacturing.
Well, Mr. President, here is the bad news: President Trump is now throwing redtape around our energy production, which will raise utility bills and send American manufacturing back overseas. One of his first actions as President--one of the first things he did--was to block approvals of new wind projects on Federal land and then freeze loans and freeze grants for clean energy projects. He is making permitting harder or impossible. That is the opposite of what my Republican colleagues--your colleagues--wanted done.
Now, he also wants to change the definition of energy to only include fossil fuels.
Mr. President, it is 2025. We all need to live in the real world. More than 90 percent--get this: 90 percent--of new energy production connected to the grid last year was renewable energy. And it takes 3 or 4 years just to build a natural gas powerplant.
There is no good reason to block wind projects, to block solar projects that, by the way, are already underway to bring more energy to American homes and businesses.
President Trump, what he is doing is he is trying to pick winners and losers. When it comes to energy, he wants to decide, and the winners are fossil fuel companies and China. And the losers, Mr. President--the losers--that is everybody else. That is you. That is your family. That is your business.
And families especially--families--are going to face higher utility bills. And manufacturers, they are going to lose the support that they were relying on. And workers are just going to see their jobs go back overseas.
You think China doesn't want to make more of this stuff and sell it to us? Of course, they do. They will be happy to do that, and we will pay the price. They would love to see President Trump drive clean energy manufacturers that are in America out of business.
China would want us to cancel our manufacturing plants and cancel these energy projects. We should not let this happen.
We have got an opportunity this week to turn this around. So I am going to be voting for Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's effort so that we can focus on our energy future.
Now, fortunately, there is so much that we agree on: the need to modernize our power grid, to bring manufacturing back to America, to create
Now, some of it will require us to cut some redtape and make things more predictable and efficient for utilities and for energy producers. Me and many of my colleagues, we have shown that we are willing to work on these reforms on a bipartisan basis. So let's do it.
And Mr. President--not you, but the President of the United States-- let's reverse the shortsighted targeted attacks on our energy supply. If we do that, I know that we can work together and continue to expand the amount of energy this country has at its disposal and bring down the prices for American families and American businesses.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Terminating the National Emergency Declared With Respect to Energy
Mr. President, I wanted to come down here and talk a little bit about energy with my colleagues in the Senate today, and part of the reason why is that as you know, Mr. President, and others know, the President of the United States has declared an energy emergency, and he did it on the day he was inaugurated here in the Capitol, on a day when he had lots of comments about the fact that God had saved him so that he would be there to be inaugurated--that this was going to be the greatest moment in American history, and that we had an energy emergency because there was an insufficient production of oil and fossil fuels.
As anybody who reads the newspaper in America knows--and there may not be anybody left who has access to a paper, but I encourage you to do it; it is a lot better than what you are reading on Twitter these days--the United States has actually produced more oil than we ever have produced in our history. In fact, last year, with the Biden administration, we produced more oil than any country in the history of humanity.
The same is true for natural gas. The same is true for LNG exports. The United States produces more oil than any other country in the world. We produce more natural gas than any other country in the world. We are the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas, which, by the way, has been incredibly important recently because we have allowed our allies in Europe to get off the Russian oil that they were on and replace that with liquefied natural gas produced by American citizens, exported by American citizens, to break the back of Putin's ability to restrain Europe's participation in the war, because we were able to replace half their energy. I am so glad that we were able to do that.
And we are also the world's leading producer of renewable energy, as well, and we have seen a huge amount of growth in solar, a huge amount of growth in wind, and I like to think of Colorado as the place that started an awful lot of that.
We are both a producer of fossil fuels and a producer of renewables. We know it takes everything to drive this economy, but we want to do all of this in a way that is cognizant of the very real climate issues that our globe faces and that our country faces.
The good news for the United States is there is no country in the world that is better positioned to lead the transition of our energy economy in this world than the United States of America. We are the wealthiest country in the world. We have the biggest and most abundant supply of fossil fuels and nonfossil fuels. We are less corrupt than almost any country on the face of the planet, and especially less corrupt than economies that are dominated by petrochemicals and by oil and gas around the world. We are the innovators in the world. We have a commitment to the rule of law. All of that puts us in this incredible position to lead.
I believe, 30 years from now or so, we are going to be in a place where we are able to say, not just to the American people but to the world, that we are at net zero from a carbon point of view and that we were able to get there through American technology and through American leadership and American ingenuity and American exports; that we took a strategic approach; that we had a plan that made sense; and that we captured, along the way, every--every--molecule that we could find of fugitive methane from oil and gas and from agriculture and from landfills; that we said yes to wind and solar; that we said yes to nuclear and yes to geothermal; that we said yes to investing in emerging technologies, like hydrogen, like carbon capture, and like the carbon dioxide removal bill that I have with my friend Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, which just goes to show you that you can have a bipartisan approach; that we can move to a position of real leadership that can help us create an economy again that America, when it grows, it grows for everybody, not just the people at the very top--because we have got good energy jobs that are concerned with the production of oil and gas and the production of all those other forms of energy.
By the way, just on that point--and I will be brief here because I know my colleague from Massachusetts wants to speak. On that subject, this Senate is about to get rid of the commonsense methane regulations that were passed in the last administration that are based on the work--that fee based on the work--that we had done in Colorado, working with industry, as the last administration did to create certainty, to create predictability, to send a message to the world that we want American gas to be the cleanest gas of any gas in the world.
And having us capture that fugitive methane is a hugely important part of that. We are saying no to that now. We are saying yes to the air pollution that is going to result. We are saying yes to the climate pollution that will result.
I say to my colleague from Massachusetts while she is here, I take no pleasure--and the President knows this--from the fact that Donald Trump is our President. I regret that he is our President, but he is our President. And one of the ways that he got to be our President is that he was elected twice.
And, in fact, more people voted for him this time than voted for him last time. I regret that. I am sorry for that, and I think there are lots of reasons for that.
But I think one of the reasons for that is that there is a mythology out there that the Democratic Party believes that we are going to turn fossil fuels off yesterday; or that we are going to turn fossil fuels off next week; or that we don't respect the men and women who work in our energy fields or in our energy processing across the country.
If there are Democrats who feel that way, I disagree with them, because the worst thing we could do at this moment when we have the energy abundance that we have, when we have the economic freedom we have, when we have the lack of corruption that we have--the worst thing we could do is elect a climate denier to be President whose most creative approach to energy was Sarah Palin's shopworn ``drill, baby, drill,'' which is what he announced under the dome of the United States Capitol the day he was inaugurated President and said--completely untruthfully--that we were in an energy crisis, when what we have is an energy abundance and no excuse--no excuse--for not leading the rest of the world in making sure that this transition on net-zero carbon is accomplished and that we do it in a way that protects our economy; that we do it in a way that protects our national security; that we do it in a way that recognizes the contribution that people have
And to the extent that the failure is a failure of the Democratic Party to make clear our position, I want to own that failure and that responsibility. It is not Donald Trump's fault that he was elected. He ran; he won. We own some of the fact that he got elected. And I think on this issue, we have not communicated clearly to the American people what we believe.
And as a result of that, once again, our children and grandchildren have a climate denier in the White House, even though a majority of the American people believe that climate change is real and that we should be doing something about it.
And those of us who are advocates on this, on this side, have to be very clear--much clearer, he said poorly and unclearly--but let me say again--have to be much clearer about what we stand for, which is for a transition that makes sense and that science commands and for the respect of people that are working in the energy industry no matter what part of the industry they are working in.
And the fact that Donald Trump--even when oil is at $73 a barrel at his inauguration and we are producing more than we have ever produced in the history of mankind for the United States--thinks we are in an energy emergency or he claims that we are surprises me not at all.
Since he said he was going to drive prices down, the price of eggs are so high today as we meet here, you need a mortgage practically to buy a dozen eggs in the United States of America.
We can do better than that, and we can do better than his ``drill, baby, drill'' energy policy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Colorado for your energetic leadership in this area. I am very grateful for your voice on this and for the work you do for the people of the country and, also, for everybody around the world. We have got to deal with this problem; so, thank you.
I rise today in support of Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution to terminate Donald Trump's Executive order declaring a national energy emergency.
I just want to start by being clear about what is going on here. Donald Trump promised to gut our environmental laws if Big Oil CEOs gave him a billion dollars for his campaign. He was quite open about this. How could he do that? Well, he has figured it out. He declared an emergency that he has focused on that emergency will give him a chance to pay those oil executives CEOs back.
Now, this order is not a serious attempt at lowering anyone's energy costs. And you know how I know this? Because a true strategy to lower people's costs would include clean energy sources like wind and solar, which this order deliberately excludes.
So what does this Executive order do? It lets big oil and gas companies off the hook on following our environmental laws and regulations. And those are the rules that make sure that you have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.
Why would Donald Trump do this? It is simple. He does not care about lowering anyone's costs or helping create good jobs. All he cares about is his rich as hell--those were his words--his rich as hell donors and helping them make more money.
Let's be clear. Energy prices are too high. Americans are feeling those high prices. Energy prices have been on the rise for the past decade. And last year, one-third of Americans had to cut back on necessary spending in order to pay their energy bills.
Americans are looking for real solutions. And that is why Democrats got to work and passed the biggest climate package in the history of the world to unleash American innovation and to support a clean energy future.
Now, America is producing more energy than ever before, including through offshore wind projects off the coast of Massachusetts, and we are creating good jobs while we are doing it.
Clean energy jobs are now over 40 percent of all the energy jobs in the United States. They are growing twice as fast as other industries, but Donald Trump is now trying to unravel all of that progress. Why? In order to please his big oil and gas donors.
And this sham will have real consequences for our communities-- raising energy costs and cutting American jobs.
Look no further than Somerset, MA, to see what is happening. At Brayton Point in Somerset, there is an old coal-fired powerplant that closed down years and years ago. But a private company called Prysmian had decided that they want to turn part of this plant into a factory to build undersea cables to support American offshore wind farms. They want to build the cables so we can bring that power in and use it, that clean power in and use it here in the United States.
That project would be transformative for Somerset. It would create about 250 to 300 good manufacturing jobs and would deliver more than $10 million in annual tax revenues. That is a big deal for a small town.
So for the last few years, local officials and our Massachusetts Federal delegation has been working hard with the Federal Government to help turn that idea into a reality.
But last month, the company suddenly announced they are ending the project. No more jobs, no more tax revenue. And why? Because of Donald Trump's attacks on clean energy. Somerset's experience is just one of the experiences felt by many communities all around this country. Yes, Somerset will bounce back. But Donald Trump is cutting jobs and raising energy costs on communities all across this country just to please his oil and gas donors. And it is communities like Somerset that are paying the price for that.
Make no mistake: We will fight back, that is why Democrats are here today. That fight starts with ending this sham of an Executive order.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. President, here is the question: Do we pursue the 20th century energy vision featuring dirty, expensive fossil fuels, or do we pursue the 21st century energy vision featuring inexpensive and clean, renewable energy?
Trump's energy emergency declaration is about one thing: He is choosing the strategy of dirty, expensive fossil fuels. You know, he asked the powerful, big oil companies to contribute a billion dollars to his campaign, and now he is paying them back at the expense of the American people. Families lose; billionaires win.
The plan. The plan features giving fossil fuel companies the power to seize public lands. It features giving fossil fuel companies the power to skip environmental assessments, environmental assessments that show how their projects will poison the air, pollute the water, kill wildlife, and despoil our ecosystems.
It is the plan of giving fossil fuel companies the power to bypass the public comment period so the public can't weigh in about the terrible ideas the fossil fuel companies are putting forward.
The public can't weigh in about the drilling rigs and the leaky pipelines and the export terminals polluting their communities. This is not government of, by, and for the people; it is government of, by, and for the oil and gas companies. Families lose; billionaires win.
This emergency declaration is certainly a sham because renewable energy costs less than fossil fuel energy. The International Renewable Energy Agency found that the cost of new wind or solar is at least 30 percent cheaper than the cost of running most fossil coal plants. So it is no surprise that in 2024, 94 percent of the new energy on the grid came from renewables, from harnessing the power of the sun and the wind.
Prioritizing expensive fossil fuels over cheap renewables drives up the price of energy that families pay on their bills every month. That is Trumpflation.
Exporting more fossil fuels mean families pay more at the pump, and they pay more to heat their homes. That is Trumpflation.
And burning more fossil fuels intensifies climate chaos and wildfires and
Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies make even bigger profits. Families lose; billionaires win.
You know, this is not a red State or a blue State issue. Since August 2022, investments from the Inflation Reduction Act have created more than 400,000 clean energy jobs with more than half of those jobs in red States. In fact, 19 of the 20 Congressional districts at the top of clean energy investments are represented by my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle.
What are the top three States overall of clean energy job growth? Idaho, Texas, and New Mexico--two out of those three States represented by Republicans in the Senate. For wind energy, it is Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Illinois--four out of five States represented in this Senate by Republicans. For solar energy it is California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona--three out of five of those States represented by Republicans.
So this is not a blue versus red situation. Nearly 3.5 million Americans now work in the clean energy field, more than a million of those jobs in red States. And it is estimated that these investments will continue to create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.
Prioritizing fossil fuels will kill this job growth for working Americans. So this strategy, this energy emergency strategy, this is an energy strategy in which families lose; billionaires win. And there are far fewer good-paying jobs for Americans.
And, by the way, prioritizing fossil fuels is helpful to China.
If we have a national energy emergency, we shouldn't be fueling our competitors by selling our energy to China to make their economy run better. If we have an emergency, we shouldn't cede the future of clean energy and all the jobs it will create and the less expensive energy it creates to China. We would want to make these products here and export them to the world, not have to buy them from China, helping China's economy grow at the expense of our own.
This phony national emergency declaration comes down to this: Do we want families to win or do we want billionaires to win?
Let's come together, red States and blue States together, and say: We want these jobs. We want this clean energy. We want this less expensive energy for America because we are fighting for the families, not for the billionaires.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, there are just two issues: One is about the policy, the energy policy, that the Trump administration is announcing, and we can have a debate about that. I am in full support of the comments that my colleagues have made. But there is another issue that, in many ways, is more important, and that issue is whether this U.S. Senate will accede to relinquishing its authority as a separate and independent branch of government to a President who tries to seize that power by claiming a phony emergency.
What justifies this action, as far as President Trump is concerned and legally, is the assertion that we have an ``energy emergency.'' And by invoking that term, he is saying to Congress: Get lost. This needs immediate attention that only the Executive can give. And getting lost means that we don't act as an independent branch of government and fulfill the constitutional responsibility we have to be separate, independent, and a check and balance on Executive power.
That is a separate question from whether Members agree or disagree with the ``drill, baby, drill'' policy, but it is fundamental to the well-being of our democracy. Congress, in the past, has never come close to relinquishing that authority. And whether you are a Democrat or Republican, if you are a U.S. Senator, you have to defend the institution, not because it is good for me or you or any other Member of the Senate, but it is good for America. We rely on that system of checks and balances.
So the question is, Is it an emergency? And as my colleagues have laid out, no, we have never had more production of power in our history. We are exporting power. The power situation is not an emergency. There is power abundance.
Now, second thing, as many of my colleagues are saying, there are real consequences because, essentially, what the President is doing is going all in on fossil fuels and casting aside the opportunities that come--economic opportunities as well as cleaner climate opportunities-- with clean energy. I am not going to repeat all of the information provided by starting with Senator Kaine, but it is true. And, you know, selling out, as some of my colleagues say, to the fossil fuel industry--the President was reported to have said ``get me a billion''--what I don't understand is why you would kill jobs in the clean energy sector that is producing cheaper power and good jobs. There is no justification for an Executive or Member of Congress doing that.
The other final point is that we are having this bizarre debate about whether there is a climate situation caused by carbon emissions. Reality is, we all know it is happening. We are all victimized by these wild weather events.
And there are only two explanations that explain the actions of the administration: One is they just favor fossil fuels no matter what. There is a lot of truth to that. The other is, there is a lack of confidence on the administration about the capacity of the American people, the American innovators, the American entrepreneurs to take full advantage of solving the issue of climate change by building out clean energy, by doing efficiency.
That really, really works. And a confident person, a confident country doesn't deny problems exist. They acknowledge them, face them squarely, and then solve them. And in the process of doing that, they all end up better and have a stronger economy as well.
So there is no emergency. We must stand first for the separation of powers and the authority of Congress and not allow us to be stripped of that by an Executive; and, second, we have to have a wise policy that is going to create jobs, be sustainable for our economy and for our future.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, there is an issue that I have spoken about so often on this floor, and it is one that should concern each and every one of us; and that is the issue of human trafficking and sex trafficking that is happening in this country. And what we have learned is that today in the United States a child is either bought or sold for sex every 2 minutes. Now, think about that and think about the harm that is happening to children because of this amount of human trafficking and sex trafficking.
What we also have learned is that, globally, this has turned into a $150 billion-a-year business. This is something that we also have learned affects every town, city, and community in our Nation. It is pervasive.
In Tennessee, my home State, there were 1,170 reports of human trafficking through November of last year, and that is according to the data we have from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. Now, that number was actually down from the number in 2023, which had been 1,432 reports, and that was because of the effort that our Governor, Bill Lee, the Tennessee General Assembly, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations made into fighting this human trafficking and trying to bring an end to what truly is modern-day slavery.
But, unfortunately, what we saw as we looked at the data was that last year's total of 1,170 was still 62 percent higher than the number in 2019. So as we have looked at this in recent years, what you have seen is an explosion of human trafficking and sex trafficking in this country. While we know that human trafficking has been a problem over a period of time, the concern is this heinous crime and how it has exploded in the recent past.
Now, there are some reasons and some contributing factors to the escalation numbers, and one of them is during the Biden administration, basically they surrendered our southern border to cartels and gangs and criminals and traffickers. Many of us have been to the border. We saw what was happening on the border during the Biden years. And as a result of the inaction that
Just this month, earlier this month, authorities charged eight Venezuelan illegal aliens in Middle, TN, for trafficking women across our border for the purpose of sexual exploitation. That was eight Venezuelan illegal aliens. After entering our country illegally, the criminals conducted their operation out of Nashville motels between 2022 and 2024. And like so many criminal illegals in our country--no surprise--they are tied to the violent gang Tren de Aragua, which has plagued cities across this country with organized crime.
All too often these traffickers target not only vulnerable women, they also target children. According to our TBI data, there were 514 reports of children being sex-trafficked in Tennessee in 2024. That is 1 year, 514 reports. That was more than twice the number of reports of adult sex trafficking.
The report also notes that there has been an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors who were trafficked into our country and exploited. This should come as no surprise. Under Biden, hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children have reached our southern border, while many more arrived with adults who falsely claimed to be their relatives. Although Biden had a responsibility to place these children with vetted sponsors, his administration, obviously, did not do that. We have learned that they lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who face the threat of abuse, trafficking, and sexual exploitation.
Thankfully, after 4 years of failure under the Biden administration, President Trump is working to secure our border, to protect our communities, and to bring human trafficking to an end. And there is so much more that Congress can do to support this effort.
Last week, I introduced the bipartisan GRACIE Act, which would require the recording of all Child Protective Services interviews with children and adults. Although 60 percent of child sex trafficking victims in our country have engaged with the foster care system, too often CPS staffers miss the signs of abuse. By recording interviews, we can increase the likelihood that child trafficking victims will be identified and rescued.
Last month, I also reintroduced a package of bills that will do much to combat human trafficking. My SAVE Girls Act would provide States, local governments, and nonprofits with the resources they need to end the trafficking of young women and girls.
My National Human Trafficking Database Act, meanwhile, would establish a national human trafficking database at the Department of Justice and incentivize State law enforcement agencies to report their data.
To help bring an end to trafficking at the border, I also introduced the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would require a DNA test to determine the relationship between illegal aliens at the border and any accompanying child. Now, it is so important to note, I have introduced this bill before, and I did it because during the Trump administration, there was DNA testing. It was ended during the Biden administration. They said it took too much time. I inquired about the amount of time. It took 45 minutes.
What we know from the time we did DNA testing, 30 percent of the children that were DNA tested by border agents shared no relation to the illegal aliens who were falsely--falsely--representing themselves as family members. I think 45 minutes is worth it to save the life of a child.
And my PRINTS Act, which has been reintroduced, would give Customs and Border Protection the authority to fingerprint noncitizens under the age of 14 to combat the horrific practice called child recycling.
Just this week, I also sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that they release the complete, unredacted flight logs from Jeffery Epstein's private jet.
In addition, I also requested Ghislaine Maxwell's little black book and all video surveillance footage from Epstein's residence in Palm Beach, FL. After years of stonewalling by former Director Wray, we still do not have all the necessary information regarding Jeffrey Epstein's crime, who his associates were, and who was involved in his global human trafficking and sex trafficking ring. That is information we need if we are going to bring an end to this practice of human trafficking and also if we are going to bring justice for the women and children that were abused and trafficked during these human trafficking and sex trafficking rings.
It is past time to bring this practice to an end. With these efforts, we can provide this administration with the tools they need in order to bring an end to this practice.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank Senator Kaine for his extraordinary leadership on this.
I think America is at a crucial time on energy policy, and Senator Kaine cuts right to the heart of the debate. Donald Trump wants more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy, and he is willing to pay for those tax cuts by raising your energy bill.
Here is how the flawed idea goes down. Clean energy today is plentiful. Clean energy today is cheap. Clean energy today is generating thousands of good-paying jobs. I was involved deeply in writing the Inflation Reduction Act. I developed this law that created the clean energy tax credit package, and it is making progress in communities across the country.
What Donald Trump is talking about doing--and Senator Kaine has spelled this out--is defying the reality of the marketplace.
For example, we are constantly seeing people in the fossil fuel business saying that this isn't time for ``drill, baby, drill.'' They have been very blunt about saying that doesn't make sense from a marketplace standpoint.
What we want to do as it relates to clean energy is to build on the progress we have made--making sure clean energy is part of an ``all of the above'' program that is technologically neutral and competing in a marketplace with choices.
Under the Kaine legislation, we can have that reality and not the flawed idea that we would somehow benefit from having more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy and somehow that will take care of people's energy situation. It won't. If you go with tax breaks for the ultrawealthy and this program that is based on ``drill, baby, drill,'' it is going to create rising energy costs for working families across the land.
I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine proposal.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise today in support of my friend from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven's Congressional Review Act resolution to block the implementation of the Biden administration's waste emissions charge, otherwise known as the natural gas tax.
Since the day this regulation was finalized last November, I pledged that I would work with President Trump and my colleagues in the Congress to repeal this misguided, anti-energy tax. Today in the Senate, that is exactly what we are working to do.
We must recognize that we are in a critical moment for American energy. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation has found that over the next 10 years, due to a rise in energy consumption and the early retirement of our existing fossil fuel generation, our country could face major electric generation and reliability concerns.
We must take action now to ensure that our future demand is met, that the lights remain on, our homes remain warm, and our economy keeps moving for Americans all across this country. We can do this by continuing to invest in natural gas.
Over 60 percent of Americans every day heat their homes, their water, or their food with natural gas. Natural gas is responsible for over 40 percent of the electricity generation and fuels more than half of our industrial sector's process heat.
While the natural gas tax fails to recognize this reality, let's look at what is
Natural gas is an affordable, reliable, and clean source of energy vital to our country and our economy. We should be expanding natural gas production, not restricting it. Instead, the natural gas tax will constrain American natural gas production, leading to increased energy prices and providing a boost to the production of natural gas in Russia.
Simply put, repealing the natural gas tax is a win for our economy, a win for our national security, and a win for our environment.
As part of establishing this tax, the Democrats' so-called Inflation Reduction Act ordered the EPA to revise its subpart W requirements in order to facilitate the reporting and calculation of the tax. The EPA's subpart W revisions blatantly disregard and overstep even the partisan mandates of the IRA and would excessively increase the tax burden on American energy under this natural gas tax.
The revised emission factors within subpart W reporting requirements make broad assumptions about oil and gas operations and technologies that will lead to inaccurate reporting for many owners and operators. The rule would not only radically expand the scope of emissions required to be reported by each facility under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, but it also excessively expands the number of facilities that are covered by subpart W and consequently responsible to pay the natural gas tax.
Due to this uninformed and artificial overestimate of U.S. methane emissions, some smaller operators who were once below the waste emissions threshold are now at risk of seeing their reported methane emissions inflated and owing large sums under the natural gas tax.
If not repealed, this rule will arbitrarily increase the costs and burden of reporting under subpart W, motivated by the Democrats' interest in growing the revenues generated by their natural gas tax. This will make it even more difficult and expensive to produce, transport, and consume American natural gas and in turn will hurt both American families who rely on the energy and the environment of the communities we live in.
It is important that we note that our effort today works in tandem with this Chamber's recently passed budget resolution.
As chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I have long intended to stop the natural gas tax, and we will continue to pursue this through the reconciliation process.
Today's vote on the CRA provides all Senators the opportunity to put our vote on record after witnessing the Biden's EPA bait and switch on the implementation of this misguided policy. I encourage my colleagues to support the CRA that is central to our mission of American energy dominance and reject this tax that will bolster our adversaries, increase energy costs on American families, and put our energy future at risk.
I would like to yield, but before I do that, I would like to thank my colleague from Iowa for letting me step in front of her to make my speech. I appreciate that. I know she will be supporting this.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, for over a decade, I have led the charge to expose government abuses, curb reckless regulations, and protect hard- working taxpayers from Washington's overreach.
As my colleagues have so rightly discussed, the actions by the Biden administration made it necessary for President Trump to declare a national energy emergency on day one.
The Biden administration's green energy programs artificially incentivized electric vehicles using billions of taxpayer dollars, with only 60 charging stations to show for it. Folks, that is just one of the many energy-related billion-dollar boondoggles by the former administration.
As chair and founder of the Senate DOGE Caucus, I committed to preventing unchecked bureaucrats from issuing regulations that impose significant new costs and stifle growth. Every day, DOGE is uncovering just how far the Biden administration went to conceal its reckless spending through the Federal Agencies, especially regarding their climate pet projects.
Instead of transparency and objective analysis, Biden's bureaucrats relied on manipulation, inflated so-called ``net benefits,'' and completely disregarded economic reality in their rulemakings. And they were prolific, churning out nearly 110,000 pages of regulations just last year. That is 1 year and 110,000 pages--the highest number ever.
Between November 2023 and January 2025 alone, Agencies issued 50 final rules using shady accounting gimmicks, slapping over half a trillion dollars in regulatory burdens onto hard-working Americans. This included a relentless push to regulate truckers out of business, based on the audacious claim that its extreme emissions rules would somehow create $99 billion in benefits for society.
But here is the reality, folks: These policies make everything more expensive for families, they kill jobs, and they hurt our small businesses.
It doesn't stop there. The Department of Energy cited billions in so- called ``climate net benefits'' and the ``social cost of greenhouse gases'' to justify heavyhanded mandates, ignoring the very real costs passed on to farmers and manufacturers.
For too long, unelected bureaucrats have ignored the voices of job creators and working families, pushing costly regulations while hiding the true impact. This is why my RED TAPE Act is critical. My bill ensures that Agencies can no longer manipulate a cost-benefit analysis to push their own agenda. It requires Agencies to prioritize data- driven, measurable economic benefits, not vague ideological justifications.
While some Federal employees complain about the new directives from the Trump administration, they should take a moment to understand that hard-working Americans who have had to show up to work and take risks to open businesses will no longer tolerate having to foot the bill for regulatory overreach.
I am voting no on this effort to end President Trump's national energy emergency. I support the President's efforts to make energy more available and affordable to power economic growth.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I want to thank Senators Kaine and Heinrich for introducing this resolution and for taking the floor to highlight Donald Trump's energy emergency gimmick.
We Democrats are using every tool available to expose Republican hypocrisy, revealing the so-called energy emergency for what it is. It is a shameless power grab by Republicans to pay obeisance to Big Oil, plain and simple--nothing more, but nothing less.
Republicans are raising prices by excluding clean energy from their emergency, meaning families could see electricity bills go up by $500 a year. Republicans are killing jobs by gutting domestic energy investments that we made, that have created so many new good-paying jobs. Republicans are rewarding China by weakening our economic competitiveness and ceding American energy leadership to our adversaries.
The hypocrisy is simple. On the one hand, they say we need more energy for AI and for everything else, but then, on the other hand, they greatly curtail the cheapest form of electricity we could make, which is solar and then wind, because, really, what they are doing is just hugging Big Oil because Big Oil hates clean energy because they know clean energy eventually means the great reduction of polluting oil and gas and what they put into our atmosphere.
Senators Kaine, Heinrich, and all Democrats will continue to shine a spotlight on Republican attacks on domestic energy in the weeks and months ahead.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise to conclude the debate. I believe the vote will follow these remarks.
I want to thank my colleagues. Seventeen Democrats appeared on the floor to speak on behalf of S.J. Res. 10. I needn't repeat the comments I made at the beginning. I will be very brief.
No. 1, there is no energy emergency. We have established the United States is producing more energy--more oil, more gas, more renewable energy--than at any time in the history of this country and that we are now a dramatic net-energy-surplus nation, as we are producing more and more energy than we consume every year. That surplus is great because we can export to develop both reducing the trade deficit and helping other nations wean themselves off their reliance on petrodictators.
Second, President Trump's energy emergency declaration is a sham. He ignores the facts of America's energy dominance in order to benefit Big Oil because he told them he would do that. Last summer, he said: If you support me for President and invest in me, I will give you rollbacks in environmental laws on day one of my administration.
And that is precisely what he did.
We can tell that that is what he is doing by reading the exact terms of the energy emergency, in which he sidelines critical environmental laws so long as you are producing oil and gas but not if you are producing wind and solar. If the President really wanted to accelerate energy, he would not leave out wind and solar. Instead, he is doing the bidding of Big Oil by trying to kneecap wind and solar in his energy emergency declaration.
But it is more than the words on a page in the declaration; it is also in his actions. I have many projects in Virginia that have announced with great fanfare--including announced by our Republican Governor--that have relied upon tax credits provided in the Inflation Reduction Act or other incentives in the bipartisan infrastructure law. These are projects all over Virginia--rural areas, urban areas-- creating big jobs to create clean energy that will bring prices down.
President Trump has undertaken a series of actions to put in jeopardy all of these projects in Virginia, to jeopardize the jobs and to jeopardize the energy that would be produced that would lower costs, and he has done the same thing in every State in this country. So we need to reject this energy emergency so that we can have a true energy innovation economy and bring prices down for everyday consumers.
I have listened to the comments of my Republican colleagues as they have argued against my S.J. Res. 10, and they have basically made two arguments.
The first is the argument that they don't believe renewable energy is reliable. So, for that reason, they justify the President's leaving out renewable energy sources in his energy emergency order. To the contrary, 94 percent of the power that was added to the American electricity grid in 2024 was wind, solar, and battery.
Colleagues may stand on the floor and mouth the words that renewable energy is not reliable, but let's look at what the market is doing. The market is investing in these energies because they are reliable, they are American, they are clean, and they are cheap. And I would venture to say that those investing in these sources are more expert about what is reliable and what is not than Members of this body, with all respect.
The second argument that is being made by my colleagues is that they support ``all of the above'' energy, and they use that to argue against S.J. Res. 10. My S.J. Res. 10 is about ``all of the above'' energy, and it is against the notion of leaving out wind, solar, and battery technologies that are driving our green energy economy.
The question is, If you are not opposing, really, because of reliability concerns and you are not really advocating for all of the above, what is the real source of the opposition?
The real source of the opposition is this: People do not want to stand up against Donald Trump. They don't want to stand up against a President who declares a fake emergency. They don't want to stand up against a President who is unplugging jobs in their States. They don't want to stand up against a President whose actions will lead to increased energy costs for consumers. They don't want to stand up to a President who is targeting and reversing investments that they even voted for when they voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law.
At some point, the question to my colleagues is, When will you stand up?
How much do prices have to go up on everyday Americans before you will stand up? How many jobs do you have to lose in your State before you are going to stand up? How many end runs of congressional statutes will you allow a President to take and be voiceless before you stand up?
That is what this is about.
I urge my colleagues to stand up for an American innovation energy economy. Don't let President Trump use a fake energy emergency to kneecap it.
With that, Mr. President, I yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I thank my great friend from the State of Virginia. I thank him for his leadership on this. I thank him for bringing out this very important subject because the American people are being robbed by the fossil fuel industry in broad daylight, and the Trump administration is driving the getaway car.
As the Senator from Virginia just said, in the United States, in 2024, 94 percent of all new electrical generating capacity installed is wind and solar and battery technologies--94 percent. What I am hearing on FOX News and what I hear from the--not ``all of the above'' but-- ``oil above all'' crowd is: Oh, my God, it is terrible what is happening in our country. Look at the war that is being declared upon oil and gas and coal.
Saying that wind and solar and batteries are a war against oil and gas and coal is like saying that the cell phone was a war against the black rotary dial phone. It is not a war. It is the entrepreneurial, innovative spirit in our country that is coming up with new technologies and new ways to solve the problem.
Just like, by the way, the black rotary dial industry, they didn't like it. They didn't like it at all. They had a monopoly, but there is a way to get around it. There was a way to have, out in the marketplace, new ways of generating communications technologies, and now there are new ways of generating electricity--new ways. They hate it. The incumbents hate it. They hate it because they had a bottleneck. It could only be they. It could only be oil, gas, coal. Then, all of a sudden, a new generation of young people arrived, and they say: No. Climate change is threatening this planet, and there are new, innovative ways that we can move.
So what is at the bottom of all of this? The oil, gas, and coal industries are scared--they are petrified--in the same way as the black rotary dial phone industry, in the same way that the horse-and-buggy manufacturer was scared.
There is an automobile now. Oh, no, what am I going to do?
How about getting in the transportation business rather than the horse-and-buggy industry? How about becoming, maybe, an auto dealer in Ohio? How about moving on, rather than being a horse-and-buggy company?
No. No. We are stopping that. We are stopping that. There are not going to be any roads. We are not going to build any roads for automobiles. That would be terrible.
So that is what we have. Right now, we have a war against innovation, a war against nonpolluting sources of electricity; a war against a generation of young Americans who are saying the planet is dangerously warming, and there are no emergency rooms for planets--$300 billion worth of damage in two storms, Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene; $250 billion worth of damage in the fires of LA. That is $550 billion worth of damage in just three incidents, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of what is coming.
So what the young generation is saying is, Can we please install wind and solar and batteries and all-electric vehicles? Can we be smart? Can we think ahead? Can we have a generational response?
And what is happening is the oil, gas, and coal industries are just calling in their chips. They are just saying that they want to kill everything--kill innovation.
By the way, I was the chairman of the Telecommunications Committee in
Just today--this is unbelievable--the Trump administration announced that he wants to lay off 65 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency's staff. Those are our frontline fighters who ensure our water is safe, that our air is clean, and that our land is not polluted with toxins and chemicals. They want to turn the EPA into every polluter's ally. That is their goal. That is what they want to have. That is not what the younger generation wants in our country.
The EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also told the White House that he wants to get rid of the EPA's authority to regulate dangerous greenhouse gases based on the threat they pose to public health or welfare. It is known as the endangerment finding. Do greenhouse gas emissions cause warming that endangers the coastlines? that endanger cities like LA? that lead to $300 billion storms just ravaging through States?
Do you know that the Supreme Court decided 5 to 4? In April of 2007, the Supreme Court said: You must determine whether or not there is an endangerment, EPA; and, EPA, if you make that determination that it is an endangerment, you then have to do something about it.
That is what is ticking them off. No one will tell you.
In a footnote, in his dissent, Justice Scalia said: I am voting no.
Justice Scalia said: What is next--the regulation of flatulence from cows? Where are they going with all this craziness?
Do you know where we are going? Do you know where we went? We went to 94 percent of all new electrical generation capacity in the United States, in 2024. It is wind, solar, and battery technologies. That is where we went because there was an endangerment because you knew what was happening.
By the way, even the IRA that was passed just in 2022 has already unleashed $400 billion of public and private investment. It has created 400,000 new jobs--400,000 new jobs--in the clean energy sector. Oil and gas and coal are petrified. They are the black rotary dial phone of 2025. They can see what is happening. It is change. It is a brandnew era. It is almost as though, somehow or other, they have found enough allies here to lock us into the past--to lock us into the 19th century, to lock us into the 20th century.
Kids don't want to go backward. They don't want to look at the world in the rearview mirror. They want to look ahead to a brighter, better, safer, cleaner future, and that is what is going on. It is threatening the business model of all of these people.
So I directly questioned Lee Zeldin on this exact issue in his hearing before the Environment and Public Works Committee because I knew he wouldn't have the courage or the ability to stand up to the demands of Trump's Big Oil and Big Gas and Big Coal donors because, if these donors tell Zeldin to wipe any policy meant to protect public health and the planet off the books, it seems he is ready to take out an eraser and to hop to it, regardless of the science, regardless of the law, regardless of the well-being of the American people in the long run, especially young people. The Green New Deal generation, they want change. They want action. They want to move the same way we moved from a black rotary dial phone to this. It only took 20 years. It would have seemed impossible to a black rotary dial phone manufacturer, but it happened because you trusted young people to do the work.
What else is Trump doing for his fossil fuel friends? He is taking their money while he costs you your money.
Trump's billionaire oil and gas donors promised him $1 billion last April in a meeting if Trump would take all of the clean energy incentives off of the books--$1 billion. This is all pay-to-play. They raised the money for him, and he delivered a sham energy emergency Executive order that is already forcing working families to pay more in order to line the pockets of those big oil, big gas, big coal donors.
This emergency is a lie. The United States is already the world's largest oil and gas producer. It is the largest exporter of LNG in the world. It is a lie. It is a lie. It is a lie.
Everything Donald Trump says about an energy emergency is a lie to the American people because he has to lie to cover up the fact that oil and gas production is up. But they are so greedy, they want this body and the EPA to kill wind and solar, battery storage technologies, all- electric vehicles. That is how greedy they are. It is not enough that they have their largest production capacity in history, because this is really an excuse for Trump and Musk to rig the rules for Big Oil so they can produce the dirty energy while they easily seize Americans' lands and pollute the air and water.
They want to go on public land now to drill for oil and gas, even though we don't need it. We don't need it.
There is a revolution that if we just let it unfold, it would be 94 percent next year, 94 percent the next year. What they are afraid of is 10 years from now, when everyone says, oh, I love this new world we are living in, the nonpolluting, nongreenhouse gas world of renewable energy.
The real emergency, the real crisis is the climate crisis itself, which continues to turbocharge extreme weather. It is costing lives, billions in damages, sky-high energy bills, insurance rates out of control in all these States that are having these superstorms and fires. Yet Trump is dismantling programs that reduce energy prices, lower heating bills, keep our air and water clean, and create jobs while trying to ram through the dirty energy projects that will do just the opposite.
And what does he want to do? He wants to take out a chain saw. That is what he wants to do. He is taking out his chain saw.
He wants to call this waste, fraud, and corruption, a revolution that creates this incredible economic--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time for the proponent is expired.
Mr. MARKEY.--to chop all of those programs down at the knees. We are going to fight it every single step of the way.
I thank Senator Kaine, and I thank Senator Heinrich for giving us this time on the floor to be able to explain to the American people what is going on.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor again today to discuss my resolution to block the Democrats' natural gas tax, which I will call up right after we vote to affirm President Trump's national energy emergency declaration.
The Biden administration's tax and regulatory onslaught over the past 4 years have driven up the cost of energy and led to a national energy emergency for our Nation.
One of the most egregious examples is a new tax on natural gas, and that is why I am leading S.J. Res. 12, a Congressional Review Act resolution to block this tax from taking effect.
My resolution will rescind the rule implementing the Democrats' natural gas tax that the Biden administration finalized late last year.
Congressional Democrats and President Biden mandated this new tax under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was, of course, the Inflation Acceleration Act, taking inflation all the way up to 9 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency issued its final implementing rule on November 18 of last year.
The EPA's natural gas tax rule imposes stringent methane emissions charges on qualified petroleum and natural gas infrastructure, starting at $900 a ton for emissions in 2024; it then goes up to $1,200; and then, ultimately, up to $1,500 per ton in 2026 and subsequent years.
Unless overturned, this would be the first time the Federal Government has ever imposed a direct tax on emissions. This new charge can equate to an effective tax increase on natural gas on top of other taxes of more than 5 percent.
This will have a disproportionate impact on small oil and gas producers in my home State of North Dakota and across the country, many of which already operate on thin margins and cannot afford the high costs to comply with this onerous rule.
Simply put, this is a punitive tax that will be passed along to consumers and will force energy developers to shut in production. That means higher prices to heat your homes. That means higher prices to cook your food. That means higher cost of natural gas for all consumers. Also, less supply of domestic energy means higher gas bills for consumers and an increased reliance on energy imports.
Instead of new taxes and regulations designed to stifle production, we should be supporting innovation to maximize the use of our abundant and affordable oil and gas reserves.
Our energy producers utilize the latest and the greatest technology, enabling more energy production with the best environmental stewardship.
Today, the United States is the world's largest oil and gas producer, and at the same time, we have also led the world in emissions reductions
Since 1990, U.S. natural gas production has doubled--this is an interesting stat. Since 1990, U.S. natural gas production has doubled; yet at the same time, we have reduced total emissions by 20 percent-- double the output--double the output and a 20-percent reduction in emissions. We have been able to increase crude oil production by 60 percent over the same time period.
When I was Governor of North Dakota in 2000, our State was producing less than 100,000 barrels a day. We took that up to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. This doesn't just happen overnight. It is because we work to provide the regulatory certainty to empower innovation and entrepreneurial spirit to unlock the potential for energy development in our State and in our country.
As North Dakota became an energy powerhouse, our State producers have worked hard to meet the challenges of managing growing volumes of natural gas associated with oil production.
North Dakota producers have endeavored to dramatically increase the targeted gas capture rate from 74 percent to 95 percent over the past 10 years, again, through innovation, through technology--the latest and greatest methods that we have implemented.
Producers want to improve on that rate--and we continue to--but the Biden administration and its Green New Deal allies tried to make it-- and, in fact, did make it--harder to permit the very gathering systems that we needed to capture that natural gas. So they impeded our ability to reduce emissions.
Instead of supporting more gathering lines and interstate pipelines, the Biden administration's natural gas tax will hinder domestic production.
Further, because our Nation generates over 40 percent of our electricity from natural gas, burdensome taxes on natural gas producers will result in more expensive and less reliable electricity, more inflation for consumers across the country as a result.
Also, less production at home makes other nations and our allies abroad more dependent on adversarial nations that have no regard for environmental standards. Think Russia. Think Venezuela. Think OPEC.
At the end of the day, energy security directly impacts our economic and national security. This is about taking the handcuffs off and empowering our energy producers to increase supply and bring down prices for American families and businesses. That is why we are working to roll back the Biden administration's disastrous policies on energy, like this natural gas tax.
I want to thank EPW, Chairwoman Capito, and the 25 other cosponsors of my resolution.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this Congressional Review Act resolution.
I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and the Trump administration to repeal this misguided tax on natural gas, while increasing energy production across the board in this country with good environmental stewardship that will truly make America energy dominant once again.
I yield back all remaining time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
The clerk will read the title of the resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).
The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 52, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 10) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Climate Change
Mr. President, today is a sad and discouraging--even disgraceful--day here in the Senate. The vote that we have just taken signals the utter and complete subservience of the Trump administration and the Republican Party to the polluters of the fossil fuel industry. To the extent that there is any justification for fossil fuel pollution, leaks from pipes and valves and wells that aren't properly maintained by fossil fuel companies are probably the most shameless form of pollution, and yet that is precisely what this vote that we have just taken protects and even encourages.
Let's start, for a moment, with why methane matters.
We are well into a climate crisis. We have been warned about it for decades. The scientists, God bless them, actually got it right. Even Exxon's scientists got it right. And, on the basis of all that science, it then fell to us here in this building, in Congress, to react prudently and sensibly and steer our course away from the worst dangers that the scientists had so well and accurately predicted.
Of course, we did not.
We did not for the worst of all possible reasons, which was improper influence from the fossil fuel industry itself, which was supercharged by the Citizens United decision that allowed the industry to flood unlimited amounts of money into politics and, worse, unlimited amounts of money into politics secretly through front groups and various anonymizing screens so that citizens and the public were deprived of knowing who it was who was actually in their living rooms, on their televisions, telling them lies about climate change. Front groups with phony names like Heartland Institute and Americans for Prosperity shielded the fact that this was a self-interested industry, using political clout of the worst kind to protect its right to pollute for free. Nobody should have the right to pollute for free, but this entitled industry fought to corrupt this body in order to protect its pollute-for-free business model.
Amidst all the pollution that this industry emits, carbon dioxide is the gas that is most discussed. We talk about carbon content. We talk about carbon dioxide limits. We talk about carbon emissions, but methane--methane--actually, is even more dangerous in the short term than carbon dioxide. These
What this bill tried to do was to get the fossil fuel industry--get these big companies--to clean up the methane that they were just leaking into the atmosphere, making a complete mess in really giant plumes. We have been able, recently, to detect these plumes from above, from satellites even. So here is just one satellite image--this is on Google Earth--of one methane plume, and we are allowing immense amounts of methane into the atmosphere. The fossil fuel industry, for years, told the EPA that they were releasing 8 million tons of methane per year. Well, 8 million tons of methane per year, when you consider that it is 80 times as bad as carbon dioxide--that gets you to a pretty big number of carbon dioxide equivalent and a pretty big danger to our national well-being, but it wasn't 8 million tons. The industry did not tell the truth to the EPA.
As it turned out, when the Environmental Defense Fund actually put up a satellite to measure this and then flew airplanes over the plume to get even more distinct clarity out of the signals--it turns out that the fossil fuel industry was leaking 32 million tons of methane into the atmosphere--leaking. This is pipes that they didn't maintain, valves that they didn't maintain, wells that they didn't properly close--leaking. Ordinarily, just to be a good citizen, just to be a decent individual, if you were making a big mess that affected other people, you would stop it; you would clean it up; you might even apologize for the mess that you had made. Not the fossil fuel industry.
But we needed to solve the problem of 32 million tons of methane being leaked by this industry every year. They sure weren't going to do it on their own. They wouldn't even tell the EPA the truth about how much they were emitting. This is natural gas that if it weren't being leaked out into the atmosphere would have gone on through those pipes to an end user. They could have actually sold it. This is an industry that was so lazy and so sloppy and so cheap that it wouldn't even maintain its own equipment to prevent it from leaking and spilling out.
Something had to be done, so we worked with the Presiding Officer's predecessor, who was an ardent advocate for the fossil fuel industry, to get a measure into the Inflation Reduction Act that would deal with the problem of 32 million tons of methane negligently leaked by the fossil fuel industry into the atmosphere because they couldn't be bothered to clean up their own mess and maintain properly their own equipment.
And what did we come up with?
We came up with a pretty fair deal for the industry. The industry was going to get a handout, a government handout, of $1.5 billion to spend in going out and cleaning up the pipes and the valves and the wells that they darned well should have been cleaning up on their own already. It should not take a government handout. It should not take corporate welfare to this industry to have them maintain their facilities safely and properly and responsibly.
But, to solve the problem, we agreed. OK. You have been polluting like crazy for decades. You have been lying about how much you have been polluting. You have been negligent about maintaining your own equipment so that this leakage does not happen, and for that, we are going to reward you with 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars for you to do the work you should have been doing anyway.
That was not that welcomed as you can imagine for me and, say, for taxpayers on Rhode Island, who were on the receiving end of so much of this.
What we got in return for that $1.5 billion government handout of corporate welfare to this industry was a provision that, if they kept leaking, when they kept leaking, they would pay a reasonable fee to give them an incentive to knock off the leaking. When I say a reasonable fee, let's start with the proposition that they shouldn't have been leaking in the first place. The fee, first of all, would only apply to major leaks--300 tons and more. It would only apply to companies that were below the methane leak standards set by their own industry trade group.
So it actually allowed these companies to keep leaking for free as long as they were being as responsible as their own industry trade group said they should be. So this fee would be limited to those companies whose corporate behavior was so bad that it didn't even meet the standards of their own industry trade group, and they could get out of paying the fee by simply using that $1.5 billion or money of their own to go and clean up their equipment and maintain their plants enough that they met the standard of their own friendly industry trade group.
That is what was accomplished in the Inflation Reduction Act--$1.5 billion into the pockets of polluters to encourage them to clean up their mess in return for which they would agree, if they kept at it and were doing worse than their own trade association recommended, then they would have to pay a fee to give them an incentive to knock it off, which by the way, is Econ 101. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is not conservative versus liberal. This is Econ 101.
Even Milton Friedman, the legendary conservative economist, acknowledged that if you are polluting, whether it is dumping sewage in a river or methane in the air, you need to pay the cost of that harm.
Economists have fancy words for it. They call it negative externalities. But everybody who understands that you clean up your own mess understands the morality of that proposition. Good morals here is also good economics.
And why is it important to do that? It is important to do that because, otherwise, you are giving a market participant a subsidy.
Imagine the two factories side by side on the river. One is dumping all of its waste into the river. The other is paying good money to make sure that its waste is disposed of, instead of dumped into the river. You don't want that to happen. So you put the cost of the negative externality--the waste being thrown into the river--back onto that company, and now you have fair market competition again. Otherwise, you have a subsidy to the polluter dumping their waste in the river, and that is not good economics. That is not market economics.
Very often, our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about the importance of market economics: Let the market have its way.
Yes, until it is the big polluters--until it is the big polluters-- and then it is pollute for free. It is subsidize them by giving them the uneconomic, immoral, and unhealthy right to pollute for free.
That is where this deal settled: a billion and a half to the industry into its pockets and free corporate welfare to do what it should have been doing all along, to clean up its mess. And in return, if you are below your own industry standards, you have got to pay a fee.
That is what was undone today. That is what this vote was all about. This vote was all about saying: We don't care if you are the worst performers in this industry. We don't care if you are the most irresponsible performers in this industry. We don't care if you are emitting way above your own trade group's industry standards. Because you are the fossil fuel industry, you get special privilege. You don't have to maintain your equipment. Let the methane roar. Rip it out into the atmosphere. Have at it. We don't care. Oh, and, by the way, thanks for all the money you put into our pockets along the way, into our political funds.
That is where we are right now. This was a really, really despicable act by the fossil fuel industry to have this done here today.
We have been at this for a while. We have known about climate change for a long time. We have known what methane and carbon dioxide and other polluting gases did when they got up into the atmosphere. We are seeing it happen around us.
I will mention particularly what is happening in the oceans because the oceans are a pretty darn honest witness, a pretty darn honest bellwether
You will notice that fisheries are changing. Fish that used to be available to local fishermen are no longer there. They have had to move as the oceans warmed. You will notice that coral reefs are dying off, which are the nurseries of the ocean, which is where so many of the fish that we then later take into our diets are born and nurtured or come for food and sustenance.
You would know that, as the oceans are warming, they rise because heat expands water, and that along our shores, you see that rise.
Here is what is happening in my home State. This is what we are looking at. All of this blue area here--all of that--all of that is land. All of that is land, where people have homes, where people have businesses, where people have investments. And with sea level rising, this is the prediction for what is going to be under water. This is the prediction of what we are going to lose, how the map of my State is going to have to be redrawn so that the fossil fuel industry can keep polluting for free. There is a real cost to this in real people's lives.
This is our historic Providence City Hall. This is an image of what is going to happen. It is going to be like Venice. You will be able to come up to the front steps of it in a boat. That is going to be really expensive, really damaging.
Here is Barrington, RI. It is kind of a bedroom community. It serves as the residence for a lot of people who work over in Providence. It has a lot of beautiful homes there. But look at what happens when the seas rise. It is like hollowed. You don't build a dike around it. It is under water. That is a massive public works project, a massive engineering project, a massive risk. And it is one that is brought on by fossil fuel pollution, by the fossil industry's insistence that it has to pollute for free, and by the harm that that causes in the oceans.
Let me give you a scale on the kind of heat that is going into the oceans, because you have to measure it by something called a zettajoule. If you know anything about science or even engineering, you know what a joule is. It is the unit of measurement of heat energy. A zettajoule is that unit of heat energy with 21 zeroes behind it--21 zeroes behind it. A million has six zeroes behind it. This is 21 zeroes behind it. It is a massive, enormous number.
To put human scale on how massive and enormous that number is, the entire production of energy by the human species on the planet Earth every year is only one-half of a zettajoule. Everything that we run-- the cars, the motors, the furnaces, the boilers, all of it, from India to China, Africa to the United States, the whole globe around--all of our energy production consumption adds up to one-half of a zettajoule.
And for the price of the fossil fuel component of that half zettajoule that we all live on, we are dumping 14 zettajoules of heat into the ocean every year. It is a 30-to-1 ratio. The emissions from fossil fuels into the atmosphere actually magnify the direct heat from the energy consumption.
So if you want to know why the oceans are warming, 14 zettajoules of heat, nearly 30 times the entire energy production of the planet Earth, is going into the oceans. And that does not bode well for us.
With all this evidence out there that the scientists saw, the fossil fuel barons started getting a little nervous. They liked a pollute-for- free business model. In fact, they probably realized that they couldn't compete with clean energy unless they had a pollute-for-free business model.
They knew they needed to get to work to protect their pollute-for- free business model. So they began to set up a comprehensive, covert political operation to protect that pollute-for-free business model.
It actually began with the tobacco industry's front groups. When it became clear how bad tobacco was for smokers' health, how bad it was for people getting secondary smoke, the tobacco industry went into action, and they set up a whole array of phony tobacco-funded front groups that could pretend they were grassroots movements. They could pretend they were science groups. They ran a complicated operation to fend off Congress from doing something about the health costs and consequences of tobacco smoking.
Then along came the U.S. Department of Justice, in a better day, when it was willing to take on hard things, and it brought a lawsuit against the tobacco industry, asserting that that whole array of tobacco industry front groups was a vehicle for propagating fraud; that the message that tobacco was not dangerous was wrong, was false, was flatout fraudulent, and that the tobacco industry knew it.
The case went to trial here in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and the Department of Justice won a thumping victory in a decision that ran a little over a thousand pages. God bless that trial judge who put so much work into listening to all of the evidence and put together such a powerful and voluminous record of the fraud of the tobacco industry, so that when it was appealed up to the circuit court of appeals, it was a slam-dunk win for the Department of Justice in the appeal.
When they tried to get it overturned at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said: Oh, no--no, no, no, no.
So the decision stood. The decision was this. It was actually fairly simple for the thousand pages. The effect was fairly simple, almost biblically simple. It said to the tobacco industry: Thou shalt lie no more. And, by the way, you have to go back and clean up and straighten out the lying you already did. But the real punch was ``thou shalt lie no more.''
So if the tobacco industry couldn't lie anymore about its product, then this whole array of front groups that the tobacco industry had set up was out of business. What are you going to do if you are a paid liar for an industry to try to protect it from Congress?
Well, guess what. Along came the fossil fuel industry looking at a very similar problem: The dangers of its product and the danger that Congress would actually do something to mitigate the dangers of that product.
And, of course, the tobacco industry lying apparatus had a lot of experience in how to look real, how to put up fake science that pretended to be real, how to use Madison Avenue sloganeering to convince people of things that weren't true, how to pretend to be grassroots when it was actually funded by Big Industry. So the fossil fuel industry picked all that up right away, but, of course, that wasn't enough so they actually expanded on that.
Academic researchers who have looked at the fossil fuel industry's climate denial operation have tagged as many as 100 different front groups, all operating ``coordinatedly,'' like a bunch of disinformation keys on the same disinformation piano. When one got badly burned for being too phony, well, you would retire that one, and you would pop up a new one with a new phony-baloney name.
For a long time, they were featuring heroic characters like George C. Marshall and Founding Fathers when they were doing their naming. But it was a massive, massive, massive political operation to deny the reality of the harm associated with the industry's product--exactly like the tobacco industry, although amped up on steroids.
But it wasn't enough just to put the fraudulent information out there pretending, for instance, that climate change was a hoax. Even their own scientists knew it wasn't a hoax. But admitting that it was real, revealing what their own scientists had told them would mean that Congress would come and behave responsibly, put a price perhaps on the pollution, make them obey not only moral commands but economic rules. And that would have put them at a disadvantage. So, instead, they chose to lie and to lie and to lie and to lie.
They also chose to come here and spend money in politics--immense amounts of money in politics. As I said, that all got supercharged by the Citizens United decision. The Citizens United decision said: If you are a big industry, the limits are off. You can spend as much as you want. Go for it.
And in the way in which the Supreme Court administered that decision, they also allowed the unlimited money to be spent secretly from behind masks, through front groups, so that the citizens of this country who are supposed to police our political battles and make informed judgments about our
I make fun that the groups had names like Rhode Islanders for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity, but if you went to look at the phony front group with a ridiculous name like that, you would find that it was located in a post office box or that it shared space with another organization and didn't have any real employees--or that it was one of a nest of related front groups that all shared common space and employees and would change their names like moving the masks place to place to keep up the pretense that this was real.
And the money poured in. The money poured in. And it allowed the industry to be able to go to party leaders and say: If you will get your party members to shut up about climate change, to shut up about the danger of our product, to turn off the voices of, for instance, Republicans like Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island, who hosted the first hearing into the dangers of climate change--shut them up--if you will shut them up and if you will line up behind us, we can give you unlimited amounts of money. We can give you all the money you could possibly need to win races, and we can hide that it is us.
This money can come through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It can come through something called Americans for Prosperity. It can come through something called the Heartland Institute. It can come through, in some cases, multiple hops, like Russian nesting dolls, to hide who was the original donor from the fossil fuel industry.
All of that apparatus, all of that scheme emerged after Citizens United. Our political system is now rotten with fossil fuel money. We have things like super PACs that didn't even used to exist, but they are useful because you can put $100 million into a super PAC and send it into a particular race and just blow up the adversary. And because the super PAC only has to report the immediate donor, you just launder your money through a corporate entity so the name of the fake group is described as the name of the donor, and the real donor--whether it is Marathon Petroleum or Exxon oil or whoever it is--is not available to the public. We, as citizens, are deprived of that most basic piece of information.
So all that money poured in, and sure enough, Republican interest in doing something about climate change evaporated. Bob Inglis was the House Member who had the temerity to insist on continuing to work on climate change. Blasted out of his seat in a primary despite a near- 100-percent conservative voting record.
The signal was clear: If you are in with us, we will take care of you. If you are not, you are out. You are out of the party, even.
So this covert scheme has been operating for a long, long time with lots of shifting front groups. It must cost--it is hard to tell because it is dark money; it is hidden. Some of it, you would repeat it, if you ran it through five different front groups, so it is hard to know what the real number is. But it is in the billions. It is in the billions.
And why does it make sense to spend that kind of money to meddle improperly in politics and prevent Congress from meeting its responsibilities to the American public? Why is it worth spending billions to do that? It is worth spending billions to do that because it saves you hundreds of billions.
The International Monetary Fund is not a green group. It is an economic group. It pays economists to study stuff. And the International Monetary Fund has studied how much harm the fossil fuel industry does to America with this negative externalities subsidy. There are actually two subsidies. There are the direct subsidies, where Congress appropriates money to the fossil fuel industry, like the $1.5 billion we gave them to encourage them to clean up the mess that they are making or like tax advantages so that they don't have to pay proper taxes like other companies. But the big one--the big one--is the pollute-for-free business model, not justified by economics, not justified by morality, not justified by prudent concern over the safety of the planet.
So how much is that negative externality according to the International Monetary Fund? At last count, $700 billion per year--$700 billion per year.
So let's just say you are an industry that gets a government subsidy in the form of a pollute-for-free business model of $700 billion a year. How much is it worth spending to control Congress and fix the politics so that you can protect that subsidy? Well, let's just say, for purposes of argument, that they spent $7 billion a year on influence, on lobbyists, on campaign contributions, on super PACs, on dark money, on supporting the whole apparatus of lies and fake science. Let's just say that that all adds up to $7 billion a year. That means you are making a 100-to-1 return on your investment every single year.
That makes the political operation of the fossil fuel industry its most profitable division. They don't make 100 to 1 out of oil. They don't make 100 to 1 out of gas. They don't make 100 to 1 out of coal. But they make 100 to 1 out of politics if they are spending $7 billion a year in political influence.
So why are these big numbers spent? Why is it sensible, from their point of view, to maintain this entire armada of phony front groups? This is the biggest political influence operation in history, and, boy, is it worth it. What a return on investment you get.
And they have used a whole variety of groups to do it. They have like popup groups that show up for the minute. They have got ones that are completely under their control, like American Petroleum Institute. But that is a little obvious. It has the word ``petroleum'' right in the name.
So they run a lot of money, say, through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers, who don't report their donors, so you don't see. U.S. Chamber of Commerce seems like such a nice group. I have chambers of commerce all around Rhode Island. I love our chambers of commerce. They do a wonderful job.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a virulent enemy to any serious climate legislation. Why? It is hard to know because they won't report. I asked them, repeatedly: How much money do you get from fossil fuel every year? How much money have you gotten from fossil fuel since the Citizens United decision?
They won't say. It is a secret. It is a secret. But it allows the fossil fuel industry to appear politically without having to show their hand.
Well, now, with President Trump in office, sloshed into office on a wave of $100 million minimum in fossil fuel money, the industry is triumphant, and this vote that we just took is this body's tribute to that industry.
We don't care if this is you leaking. We don't care if this is you not maintaining your property. We don't care if this is dangerous. We don't care if you are being irresponsible. We don't care if we already gave you $1.5 billion to clean up your mess. We don't care about any of that. We don't care that the only people who have to pay this fee are the ones who are polluting above what their own industry recommends as a pollution level. We don't care about any of that. You are the fossil fuel industry, and you shall have whatever you want from us, whatever the cost.
There is a problem, though. There is a problem, which is that fossil fuel influence can mess with laws in Congress and does, but fossil fuel influence can't mess with the laws of nature. Fossil fuel influence can't mess, frankly, with the laws of economics.
So where are we right now? We have been through that era when the scientists were giving their warnings, the academic scientists from the great universities, the industry science from Exxon and even from the American Petroleum Institute, scientists in America, scientists overseas, powerful scientific consensus about what was going to happen. Go back and read what Exxon scientists warned about what was going to happen. We are living it right now. They were right. They knew. Exxon knew. The scientists knew. So that was the era, and the scientists got it right. They did their jobs.
Then we did not do our job under the pressure of all of that fossil fuel influence, all those hundreds of millions or billions or whatever was spent to protect the $700 billion annual subsidy on which this industry floats.
So now here we are. We are in a new era in this climate story, and the new
The first place the campaign of fraud and disinformation and political pressure by the fossil fuel industry is crashing into is the insurance industry. The fossil fuel industry is compromising our future with all of these added emissions, including the methane leaks that were given a green light today. The fossil fuel industry is compromising our future by pretending that these climate warnings aren't real.
But the insurance industry has to look at a real future. It can't lie about the future to protect its present profits. It has to predict the future accurately in order to price its product. You can't insure against a risk that you can't actuarially predict.
So insurance companies get pretty expert at knowing how often there is likely to be a storm, how often there is likely to be a drought, how often there is likely to be wildfires, how often there is likely to be flooding, and they get that way because it is their fiduciary obligation to their owners to get it right, to do their very best to honestly get the predictions right.
What is the insurance industry doing right now? They are looking into this fossil fuel future, and they are saying: Whoa, we don't know what to do. We can't insure that. These emissions are making our natural systems--the weather--so weird and so unpredictable that we are starting to have to change the way we do business.
So what are they doing? Well, Florida is probably the epicenter for all of this. It has coasts all around it. It is in the pathway of hurricanes that come from the Atlantic or through the gulf. It is smack in the climate danger zone.
What is happening in Florida? Well, the big insurers are clearing out. They have looked at this market, they have looked at consumers they have served for decades in many cases, and they said: We can't figure this out any longer. These dangers are too hard to anticipate. We can't price this risk. We are out of here.
So little pop-up insurers have emerged that Floridians now have to deal with, and the prices have gone through the roof. Homeowners' insurance prices in Florida are four times the national average. In Miami-Dade County, the average property insurance bill is $17,000 a year. In our inquiries through the Budget Committee, we over and over again heard of people whose rates have doubled and even quadrupled.
Even then, insurers are still pulling out. Insurers are going bust when storms come. Florida has had to step in and back up its own insurance company--it is called Citizens Property Insurance--because there simply isn't enough interest from the insurance industry to provide enough coverage for Floridians without this entity, which has grown to be enormous. The liability of Citizens Property Insurance is more than the entire debt of the State of Florida. This is a big financial anchor hanging on Florida, waiting for disaster to strike. So this is getting real.
After the era of science came the era of influence, and now it is the era of consequences. It is not just me talking about this. Here is April's Economist magazine. You can't see it; I have a larger version of it that I can show you. There it is: ``The next housing disaster.'' What The Economist magazine is predicting in this front-page article is a dramatic shock to the global real estate industry. They are talking about a potential $25 trillion hit to the global real estate industry.
How does this relate to the insurance problem that caused Florida to have to set up Citizens Property Insurance, that caused rates to quadruple, that caused all of these major insurers to have to bail, that caused people to have to count for their home insurance on little pop-up startups that keep going bust, going bust, going bust? It is this: When you can't get property insurance on your home, you can't get a mortgage on your home, which means that if you ever want to sell your home, you can't get a buyer. The only buyers left for you, for your home, are people who don't need a mortgage, people who can pay cash.
Well, if you are a Palm Beach billionaire, you don't care because some other Palm Beach billionaire has all the money in the world to buy your multimillion-dollar mansion for cash. You are done. It is fine. It doesn't affect the Palm Beach millionaire world.
But let's say you are a plumber living in a development outside of Orlando, and the way you afforded your house was with a mortgage. Now your home, your castle, when it comes time to sell it, won't get a mortgage. There is not going to be a billionaire who wants that. So property values crash.
That is the cascade, like dominoes: boom goes the insurance industry, boom goes the mortgage industry, boom go the property values, and then out into the economy goes the harm.
This isn't just Senator Whitehouse talking. This is The Economist magazine. This is the chief economist of the mortgage giant Freddie Mac. This is the chairman of the Federal Reserve telling us just recently that whole regions of the United States in 10 to 15 years won't be able to have mortgages--a whole region without mortgages. What happens to property values in that region?
If he is saying that in 10 to 15 years, that is going to happen, what are investors going to start doing as they are planning for that future? Markets aren't going to wait until the region suddenly says: No more mortgages here. Markets are going to start to take action. Property values are going to start to decline because investors are going to be able to look forward and say: Well, if we can't get a mortgage on that property in 10 years, that property is not going to be very valuable right now.
It cascades into--we even had a hearing in the Budget Committee about how it cascades into the municipal bond market, and there was a terrific article just today confirming our warnings from the Senate Budget Committee about how this cascades to the municipal bond market, because what happens when all those property values go down? The tax revenues of the municipality go down. If that has happened at a time when climate risk is going up and expenditures to maintain and protect infrastructure are going up, you are in a terrible situation for your bondholders because you have less money to pay your bondholders and more expenses. So the municipal bond markets are starting to take action. They are starting to look at this as a real problem. This is real stuff.
The international organization that gives the international banking world warnings about what is coming just did a report on this very situation.
The Financial Stability Board, it is called. And its report is titled ``Assessment of Climate-Related Vulnerabilities,'' 16 January 2025.
And its warnings are that the banking system is imperiled, because, frankly, if you can't write mortgages in whole regions of the country, particularly if you are a regional bank, then that line of business for you is shot. Or if you are a bank whose ratings, whose safety for all the depositors depends on a loan-to-value ratio, that is sort of the coin of the realm for the solvency of banks, if your loan portfolio has collateral from the homes on which you wrote mortgages and the value of that collateral has dropped because of this insurance problem, you can move pretty quickly from being a solvent bank to being an insolvent bank that regulators have to move in and shore up or take over.
And the warnings are serious enough that the Financial Stability Board is warning banks all around the world: Get ready. This trouble is coming. And it is.
So that is the context for this embarrassing display that we saw today in the Senate. Whatever you want for the fossil fuel industry, even if it is the right to leak and pollute and maintain your equipment worse than your own industry recommends, we have got your back. Leak away. Pollute away. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, here is what could possibly go wrong: The natural systems that are being disrupted by these emissions control the weather, and the weather produces climate risk, and the insurance industry has to look forward accurately because it owes that duty to its shareholders. And they look forward and say: Whoops, we are out of here.
And then the cascade begins from insurance to mortgage to property values
So let me go through some of my charts here. Here is a chart that looks at the scenarios for the future with respect to how carbon emissions and methane emissions will endanger our safety. This is derived from all the peer-reviewed scenarios that were provided over the years to the IPCC, the international climate tracking body.
They looked at about 1,200 of them. Of those 1,200 various climate scenarios, there are 11 left--11 out of 1,200 that allow us to get to a pathway to climate safety. Only 11.
They all have two characteristics: They overshoot first, so you need to have carbon capture and, specifically, direct air capture to get us back on the pathway to safety. It is not enough to stop the polluting, you actually have to extract the excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Trump just demolished all the offices at the Department of Energy that support carbon capture, which is a little weird because the fossil fuel industry has depended on carbon capture for rhetorical support of its continued pollution. The argument, roughly, is: Don't worry about us continuing to pollute because carbon capture is going to come along and save the day.
Of course, that rhetoric is not backed up by investment, because over and over again they refuse to actually build carbon capture equipment. It is a talking point, not a real solution that they will put any investment behind. And when regulators try to say, well, think about carbon capture; that will reduce the pollution here of this carbon pollutant. They say oh, no, no, no, that is not a serious technology; we can't do it. It is a serious technology when we are trying to continue polluting, use this as our rhetorical excuse to keep polluting; but if you actually want us to apply it, oh, no, that is a different thing. We are not going to talk about that.
So here they all are. They all overshoot--this one just by a little-- so you need that direct air capture. And the other thing that they all need, they all need a price on carbon. They all need for it to stop being free to pollute. It is now mandatory, if we are going to get on a pathway to climate safety, that there be a price on pollution.
The free-to-pollute business model that the fossil fuel industry defends so virulently is a pathway to disaster. We have to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions or fail. And today was the little canary in the coal mine for how responsible we will be about putting a price on carbon. Because today, we blew up a price on methane, an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, under circumstances in which we had literally paid the industry a billion and a half dollars as a bounty to clean up its own act and then limited the penalty, the methane fee, to only those companies that couldn't meet even their own industry standards.
And you can bet that the industry standards are pretty generous to the industry. Nobody develops standards that are terrible for their own industry. This was their self-imposed industry standards, and only the ones that couldn't meet their own industry standards would pay the penalty. And we just stripped that away. The methane fee is headed for gone.
So if that is the canary in the coal mine of where this body is going to be now that we have to put a price on carbon or condemn our children and our grandchildren to worsening climate disaster and worsening economic disaster, what a signal we just sent. What a shameful, disgraceful signal we just sent.
Here is some of the stuff that is coming our way. Let me start with some of the work that we did in the Budget Committee. We went out and we dug out from the insurance industry information about their nonrenewal rates. What is a nonrenewal rate? Well, a nonrenewal is when there you are, the customer of the insurance company, and it comes time of the year when they renew your policy, send you the new bill, all of that.
But this time, even if you have been a good client, paying your premiums regularly for 15, 20 years, maybe, what comes in the mailbox isn't the updated contract and the new bill for you to pay. Nope; it is a notice saying: You are fired as our client. We are not going to have you as a customer anymore. How many businesses want to tell a loyal customer go away?
This is not ordinary business behavior. It is driven because they can't figure out the risk of your property any longer. So they nonrenew you. They don't want your check any longer. They don't want you as a customer any longer, because your property is now so unpredictably dangerous to them that they just walk away.
And where is it happening? Well, guess what? Florida is at the epicenter. Louisiana is at the epicenter. California, because of wildfires, is at the epicenter. It spreads all across, mostly heavily, coastal areas. But wildfire is catching up--don't worry.
And then this measures the rate of increase. It is not just a question of how many nonrenewals, it is how many more each year, how much is the insurance company increasing its shedding of customers.
So you see it popping up even here in Montana. From Florida to Montana, it is spread all over. And after we did this research, folks came in behind us and did some more detailed research.
So we start with this one first. This took our research and the insurance information that we used, and it also projected climate risk forward. And by the way, there is a lot of this happening. This isn't just like people making this stuff up. There are entire firms that are predicting climate risk for insurance companies, for banks. This is a booming and expert area because people need to know. They need to get it right for investment purposes. So this is how climate change may cause rising insurance rates over the next 30 years.
If you go to, let's say, Miami down here or just east of Phoenix here, you see that the color gets really dark. Here, along the North Florida east coast, the shade gets really dark. And you can't read this on the TV, on the screen, but I will tell you that means a 300-percent increase over the next 30 years.
So let's go back to what I said earlier about Miami-Dade. The average of the property insurance premium is $17,000. When you are increasing by 300 percent, you are quadrupling. So four times $17,000, that is $68,000 every year average from Miami-Dade County, if this comes true.
Now, to get just a little bit mathematically here and wonky, if you look at the present value of a $68,000 charge every single year out into the future, you get a big number, and that number comes right off the value of your property.
If your home is for sale, and let's say it is a $500,000 home, and somebody comes and they will say, well, that is a $500,000 home, I will pay you $500,000 for it. That makes perfect sense.
And then you say, ah, yes, but--but there is this other little consideration, which is that when you buy that home, you are also buying into a huge--let's for purposes of argument say $20,000--annual charge.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
Well, if you are offered that deal, here is a home worth $500,000. Will you pay $500,000 for it? Sure, I will. Here is a home worth $500,000, but it comes with an annual $20,000 cost that you have to carry. Are you going to pay $500,000 for that? Of course, you are not because you are going to bake into the value what the present value is of those $20,000 payments you are going to have make year after year after year just to keep your home insured.
So property values crash when home insurance premiums spike.
And as you see, it is the wildfire and coastal areas that are hardest hit across red and blue States alike. And when those premiums increase and the housing prices fall, here is where home values may decline because of climate change.
How far are we looking forward? We are looking forward 30 years. Why are we looking forward 30 years in this? Because that is how long a mortgage is, in the life of a mortgage.
So here, you see the maps look kind of alike. This one is happening quicker, so the response is quicker; the colors get darker quicker. There is more of the map that is darker.
But this, this is where it really hits home. This is ``Change in Home Value Due to Insurance Costs'' over the 30-year life of the mortgage. And it goes from no change expected at all in all of
So solving for this is a real and ``now'' problem because who is going to look forward 30 years to see where a home will have no value any longer? Banks that are issuing mortgages will. So this isn't a 30- years-from-now problem; this is a ``now'' problem as banks start to look at this information and wonder about putting a mortgage on a property whose collateral value to them at the end of the mortgage will be zero.
That is not a good business proposition for them. And from a bank solvency point of view, it hits them at the heart of their loan-to- value ratio based on the value of their collateral. So it puts them in peril as a solvent institution as well.
So banks are going to start looking at this stuff way ahead of 30 years. Indeed, they are starting to look at it already.
So why does the fossil fuel industry need to spend so much money preventing Congress from taking proper action when the science has been so clear forever? The chickens are coming home to roost in the economy through the insurance industry. The insurance industry is not going to listen to fossil fuel lies about what the future looks like when it has trillions of dollars at stake. It is going to continue to get it right, and it is going to continue to back away from risk if we don't solve this.
So this is all deadly real and coming now. Why does the fossil fuel industry spend so much money to block us in Congress from doing this? The reason is--well, there are several. One is the $700 billion subsidy they get every year for being able to pollute for free. But the other is the public is really concerned about this. The public actually really wants climate action. So they have to defeat public opinion. They have to make this body serve them and not the public. They have to make the Senate ignore the American people.
And, of course, you do that with this massive campaign of dark money, political influence, fake science, phony front groups, the whole multibillion-dollar operation.
Because, and I know--I apologize to viewers--you can't read this. So I will read aloud. This is a polling chart with a sample size of around 2,000 people. It is a pretty serious poll. I had the guy whom I know who is a pollster take a look at it, and he said: Yep, this is solid. This is the real deal.
So let's look at what it shows. We will start with the second one down. The second one down right here reads: ``Penalties on high- pollution imports.'' Of the survey, 12 percent of Americans were opposed to penalties on high-pollution imports--12 percent opposed to penalties on high-pollution imports. Support, 74 percent, 74 percent of Americans would like to see our economy protected by penalties on high- pollution imports for, among other reasons, to make sure that our manufacturers have a fair chance when we are not high pollution to make sure that those high-polluting foreign companies pay a penalty in order to come into our market--12 percent to 74 percent. That is a huge margin.
The American public is eager for us to take political action to solve this problem, which is why the fossil fuel industry has to come in here and spend so much money and use so much pressure and get so much influence and put $100 million into Trump's political coffers, plus whatever they did in dark money. They have to do all that because the public is on to what is going on.
Here is another one: ``Reduce carbon pollution across industry,'' 9 percent oppose, 76 percent positive. If my math is right, that is a 67- percent swing between opposed and supported. That is massive public support for reducing carbon pollution.
``Putting carbon pollution limits on big companies,'' 12 percent opposed, 72 percent support--a differential of 60 percent. The American people are really, really leaning into carbon pollution limits on big companies. They would love to see that by a margin of 72 to 12.
And then here is the one that relates to what we have just done today. ``Impose a fee on big polluters.'' ``Impose a fee on big polluters,'' 10 percent opposed--10 percent of Americans are opposed to imposing a fee on big polluters--74 percent of Americans support it. A 64-percent differential, 74 to 10, that is a rout. That is a mandate.
But what did we do just today about that mandate? We just voted down a fee on big polluters, even though it was front-loaded with a $1.5 billion chunk of corporate welfare for them to spend to clean up their messes--shouldn't be the taxpayers' business to get a corporation to clean up its messes on its own, but this is the fossil fuel industry. So that is what we did. We gave them $1.5 billion to take care of their own equipment.
And then we asked: Once that is done, when this fee goes into effect, you are going to have to pay if you are still polluting. You don't have to pay a nickel if you only meet your own industry trade associations' standards. But if you can't even meet your own industry trade associations' standard, there will be a fee.
So 1.5 billion in free corporate welfare for the polluters to clean up their equipment and, in return, a fee on big polluters. You have got to be a big polluter. It is not the little guys we are going after here. And you have got to be worse than your own industry standards. That is the population we were dealing with here.
And we just voted down a fee on big polluters--not all big polluters--in this case, the big polluters who don't even meet their own industry standards for leaks. We just voted that down, even though 74 percent of the public would like to see fees on big polluters and even though only 10 percent would oppose that.
Why do we behave this way in this body? Why do we ignore 74 percent of the American people? Why do we follow the 10 percent who don't want this in a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule, and we have a 74-to-10 vote? Fossil fuel industry influence, plain and simple, because the public--oh, my Lord--they are so with it.
Even something like get really rough here: ``Phase out the burning of fossil fuels,'' 26 percent opposed, 54 support--2 to 1 for something as strenuous as phasing out the burning of fossil fuels.
``Stop new fossil fuel projects,'' 25 percent oppose, 48 percent support--2-to-1 support for something as strenuous as ``Stop new fossil fuel projects.'' That is where the American public is.
Everybody gets that you shouldn't pollute for free. I mean, for Pete's sake, if you go to somebody's house and you knock over your soda, you go get a napkin and you clean up your mess. This is basic stuff. When children make a mess, what do their parents tell them? No, you are not going to the movies. No, you are not doing whatever it is you want until you clean up your mess. Put your stuff away. You made that mess. Clean it up. It is basic responsibility that we apply to children, but will we apply it to the fossil fuel industry? No, because they come in here squirting money all over the place, making threats, and using this whole armada of climate denial front groups to pretend that what is true is actually false.
And, again, if you think that is because some green people say that, no. The insurance industry is saying this because the insurance industry is saying: The risks of climate change are so real, we have to get out of certain markets. We have to quadruple our rates in certain areas. We have to have additional props from State government to stay in the State at all.
Do we have an alternative? Boy, do we ever. We have got a great alternative. And that is why 74 percent of Americans versus 10 who oppose would like to see a fee on big polluters. It is fair; it is right; and there is a real alternative.
You can go to wind and solar. This map is of various sections of the world, and it shows where there is good baseline wind energy to take advantage of.
And here is the good old United States of America--best case situation. We are sitting on a free, renewable resource as the wind blows, and all we have to do is build the turbines to collect it.
And if you like solar, here is how well we do on solar. Boy, you go through the Southwest, that is rich country for solar. We could be truly energy independent with wind and solar--free of OPEC and cartel pricing, free of
With the $100 million that was given by the fossil fuel industry to the Trump administration, what does the Trump administration do?
By the way, to clarify, $100 million reported. Dark money--$500 million? A billion? Who knows. Trump asked them for a billion dollars in that quid pro quo meeting down at Mar-a-Lago. He said: Give me a billion dollars; here is all the stuff I will do for you. And he went through the fossil fuel industry checklist. So we know he got $100 million for it. Who knows what else he got?
But what he said in his recent fake energy emergency declaration--he said that all of this solar and all of this wind potential--he said it is not even energy. If you look at how he defines the word ``energy,'' it is every kind of fossil fuel and nuclear and hydro; no solar, no wind. It is not even considered energy, which is weird because there are a bunch of States in which solar and wind are really big.
Once you get past California, the top three States for solar are all red States. The top States for wind are all red States. I have been to Iowa to look at the wind farms out there. Iowa has the highest concentration of wind power of any State. It has so much wind power that the grid operator in Iowa has figured out that it can treat the wind as baseload power.
There is a common--forgive my term--knuckle head argument that, oh, what happens when the wind stops blowing?
Well, the wind doesn't stop blowing, not everywhere. You may have a still day in one place, but there is enough wind blowing around Iowa that the grid operator--not a greenie but a technician who has the duty to keep the grid up and operating--has determined that they can dial in wind as baseload because somewhere it is going to be operating.
We have enormous, enormous capacity here. Wind and solar are big contributors to the energy portfolio in major red States. There is no logic, there is no sense, there is no integrity to saying that wind and solar aren't even energy unless you are listening to the worst--worst-- voices in the fossil fuel industry, the ones who don't dare to compete with wind and solar because they know it is cheaper.
It is not enough for them to sit on a $700 billion annual subsidy to suppress wind, to suppress solar, to move costs that should be theirs onto the general public. It is not enough to enjoy a $700 billion subsidy every single darn year. Now they have Trump to say that solar and wind aren't even energy--aren't even energy. It has gotten just wild.
Here is an example of the cost. This is a residential area in Los Angeles, taken in the fires that just burned. It is a pretty serious tragedy for those individuals who lost their homes, lost all the treasured possessions they cared about. It is also a tragedy for pretty much everybody in California because there has already been a billion- dollar assessment from the California backup insurance plan, the State plan--the FAIR Plan, they call it--on insurers.
Sorry, guys, need a billion from you to prop up our State plan. And by the way, half of that billion--collect it from your customers.
So all customers are going to pay an extra half a billion dollars from this in California.
California is only the most recent example of wildfire damage. In Oregon, you had entire towns destroyed by wildfires. Good luck getting insurance in those areas.
So the pain is very real. The cost is very real. The damage to markets is very real. It is all to try to keep out the truly low-cost power.
Here are electricity costs over time. It starts here back in 2009. Here we are in 2023. This, the lowest cost, is wind. The next one up, the yellow here, used to be expensive. It used to be the highest. Now it is just an inch above wind as the lowest cost electricity, and it is solar panels. Next up is natural gas. Next up is geothermal.
In this race down here, wind and solar beat natural gas all the time. Again, that is why the fossil fuel industry has to come to Congress with its phony front groups and its super PACs and its dark money and its influence and throw its weight around, because even natural gas loses on price to solar and wind. Now their response is so crude as to get the guy who they put $100 million into the political pockets of to define energy as not even including solar and wind.
Here are some of the threats we have heard. This is from the article I showed you earlier, the front page of The Economist magazine. It is not a green publication. This is about the danger to the world's real estate markets.
It begins by saying, if I recall the article correctly, that what we are looking at is a shock to the largest asset class on the planet from climate damage. ``The impending bill is so huge, in fact, that it will have grim implications not just for personal prosperity''--not just the homeowners, not just the people who have to pay the high insurance cost, not just personal prosperity--``but also for the financial system,'' which aligns exactly with what the chief economist from Freddie Mac said.
This cascades. The insurance market fails, mortgage markets fail, property values fall, and the financial system crashes. That is why the Financial Stability Board wrote this report warning of systemic--that is the magic word--dangers to the financial system.
``Systemic'' sounds like a superboring word, but in the context of economic dangers, it is the most terrifying word there is because it means that the economic danger has jumped the fence. It means that it is no longer the affected industry that is affected when things go wrong; it means that it is so bad that it cascades out across the economy, like 2008, when a bunch of crooked mortgages and a bunch of creepy ratings blew up the whole national economy. You didn't have to have a bad mortgage to be hurt in that; everybody was hurt in that. That is a systemic harm.
Here is how it is going to work, they say. ``If the size of the risk''--this risk to property values from the insurance load and from direct destruction by hail and storms and everything else--``If the size of the risk suddenly sinks in, and borrowers and lenders alike realize the collateral underpinning so many transactions''--the collateral is not just behind an individual mortgage but behind the big tranches of mortgages that are bought and sold behind Fannie and Freddie, which buy huge numbers of mortgages that are all at risk-- ``the collateral underpinning so many transactions is not worth as much as they thought, a wave of repricing will reverberate through financial markets.'' This is what we are spinning towards.
Conclusion from The Economist:
``Climate change, in short, could prompt the next global property crash.'' I don't know how much more clear the warning could be.
It is not just The Economist article; here is the corporate consultancy Deloitte.
Again, The Economist is not a liberal paper. It is not an environmental paper. It is a very conservative, business-oriented paper. The Financial Stability Board is not a bunch of Green New Dealers. It is people whose job is to protect the international banking system.
Deloitte is a corporate consultancy.
``If we allow climate change to go unchecked, it will ravage our global economy.'' How much clearer does the warning have to be?
That talks about the global economy. They looked specifically at the United States: ``For the United States, the damages to 2070''--that is their window looking forward what would be 45 years--``are projected to reach $14.5 trillion''--$14.5 trillion in economic damage in the United States--``a lifetime loss of nearly $70,000 for each working American.''
How many working Americans even have $70,000 put away someplace? They do have $70,000 probably in the value of their home. If their home is in one of these regions where property values are going to fall because of the combination of insurance costs and insurance unavailability, including a change in home value straight to minus 100 percent or zeroing out of the home
It is going to be hard to stop, though, even with all the influence peddling that takes place around here, even with all the political pressure, even with all the dark money threats and all the dark money cajoling and all the dark money inducements, because solar and battery storage are kind of killing it. I mean, this is solar and battery storage in new U.S. generating capacity additions, the stuff that is being added to the grid. Solar is more than half. Solar alone is 52 percent of all the new additions. Look at how many people were employed in that new solar construction. And this administration wants to pretend that that is not even energy? That is how bad the pretense has to be to grovel before the fossil fuel interests, with their big checkbooks, to pretend that solar isn't even energy when it is 52 percent of what was put in last year. And 29 percent was battery storage. You put solar and battery storage together--80 percent. Eighty percent of the new electricity-generating installations in our country was solar and battery storage.
By the way, they play really nicely together because, when the Sun ain't shining because it is nighttime, your batteries kick in. So solar and battery together move into baseload country. It is way cheaper than baseload coal or baseload nuclear or baseload natural gas. And here it comes. Here it comes. Wind is another 12 percent. So, if you add all this up, it is about 93 percent of the new power that came onto our grid or is coming onto our grid in 2025. Ninety-three percent is wind, solar, and battery. Seven percent is natural gas. So we are doubling down on 7 percent and taking the 93 percent and pretending it is not even energy?
That doesn't even make sense, but it shows how ferocious and rapacious the fossil fuel industry is when it uses its political power and its super-PACs and its front groups and its dark money and all of that to demand that we stop defining wind and solar as energy. That violates the dictionary, but that is how their behavior is.
That is why today was so aggravating and so wrong because, frankly, the fossil fuel industry should have had the decency to let this one go. Pick something else. But what they went forward with was a reasonable fee after a $1.5 billion government handout for leaks of methane--a deadly, dangerous climate gas--that they are just leaking.
You could fix it with wrenches. Fix the pipes. Fix the valves. Fix the wells. Just do it. You should be doing it as a good citizen anyway, but then we gave you $1.5 billion in a free taxpayer handout to do what you should have been doing anyway. So now you are up $1.5 billion, and all we asked in return was that, if you are among the worst polluters in your industry, if you can't meet your own industry standards, well then, you have got to pay until you clean up your act.
We give you an incentive to clean up your act. Your fee goes to zero if you only meet your own industry standards for leaks. What could be more reasonable? Yet this industry is so politically rapacious right now that it went after that, and that is what we saw today. That was so low.
It makes me think of this cartoon. I don't know how well you can see it. There are a couple of MAGA folks standing out in front of Mar-a- Lago, saying: ``Boy, we showed those elites who is in charge.'' But who is behind the wall of Mar-a-Lago? All the big special interests, all the big special interests getting what they want--Big Oil right there, front and center; coal right there, front and center. That is what is happening. That is what is happening.
Electric prices are going to go up. Why? Because fossil fuel is more expensive because, when you take the industry that is producing 93 percent of our new additions, there is a reason the market has chosen that 93 percent. They chose it because it is cheaper. It is a better business proposition. Take that out, and what do you have more of? You have more of the expensive fossil fuel plants.
The way this works is that a whole bunch of plants are on the grid, standing by, ready to produce power as demand kicks in. And the way the grid operators do it is they start with the lowest cost providers, the lowest cost energy, and then, as demand grows, they work up the dispatch queue to bring on more and more and more expensive energy sources. So, if you strip out the less expensive stuff--if you strip out solar and wind--and pretend they are not even energy any longer, what happens? The more expensive plants are the ones that run more, and bills go up.
If you look at the wealth of our country in wind capability and in solar capability, we are rich with wind and solar. But if we don't take advantage of those free domestic resources, then we are stuck behind the fossil fuel cartel, behind OPEC.
We saw what happened after Russia invaded Ukraine and market prices spiked to feed the European market. We saw the American companies run up their prices even though their costs hadn't gone up--run up their prices to take advantage of that world market surge--and they made, as a result, the biggest profits in the history of the planet. They gouged the American consumer willfully.
That is a risk that goes away, of price spikes happening in global fossil fuel markets. That is a risk that goes away when we are counting on God's own wind and solar that we have in such abundance.
But when you have got all the special interests packed into Mar-a- Lago, wheeling and dealing--when it is the looters and polluters who are making the decisions--this is what you get. Costs are going to go up for Americans because of the malign influence of the fossil fuel industry in Congress. They just are. It is basic economics, and that doesn't even count the $700 billion worth of harm that the emissions are causing, which are already starting to come home to roost in the insurance market.
Let me show you one more thing, and I ask unanimous consent to use an oversized slide here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
This is oversized because it is big. This was a full-page ad in the New York Times--Sunday, December 6, 2009. Barack Obama was President, and to be absolutely candid, he wasn't doing much on climate. The Obama administration went through a long period of not darned much on climate.
So this full-page ad was taken out in the New York Times:
the advertisement continues--
Signed by Donald J. Trump, chairman and president; Donald J. Trump, Jr., executive vice president; Eric F. Trump, executive vice president; Ivanka M. Trump, executive vice president; and the Trump Organization.
Fifteen years ago, the guy who now says that solar and wind aren't even energy, despite their prominence in the economies and the grids of so many red States, despite making up 93 percent of the new capacity added to the grid this year--that same guy: Please act now. ``It is scientifically irrefutable that
This was before the fossil fuel industry was in the position to put $100 million into his campaign to help him get elected--assuming it is only $100 million. It could be $1 billion. I don't know. They use dark money so well you can't keep track. And $100 million is just what we could count.
But there was Donald J. Trump before, telling Obama: Do a better job, President Obama. Get after this clean energy stuff. It is scientifically irrefutable that we are in deep trouble, and America can lead on clean energy. We can be the best there is. We can create jobs. We can develop the technologies of tomorrow. Do a better job, Obama. Get us there.
That was what he said then.
Now what he says is, solar and wind aren't even energy, and he supports this vote that knocked out a reasonable fee on methane leaks-- leaks, for God's sake--and only the leaks that were from the worst industry participants, the ones who didn't even meet their own crummy industry standards for leaks. These are like the bad outliers who won't even meet their own industry standard and got $1.5 billion in a corporate handout to clean up their own darned equipment, which they should take care of themselves. And then, after all that, they come in and undo the fee. Obviously, President Trump wanted it because Republicans wouldn't be doing that stuff here if he didn't.
So we are back to the looters and polluters being in charge. We are back to immense harm to the American economy that has already started. Just look at the Florida insurance market. You see it coming. The warnings could not be clearer.
When I ran the Budget Committee, I circulated this volume--which I will spare you reading right now--of all of the reports that have come out, peer-reviewed official reports about the economic risks of climate change:
When that happens, the carbon bubble bursts, and you get these massive losses. The losses from the carbon bubble could be a loss comparable to the 2008 financial crisis. That is the carbon bubble.
The insurance risk from a coastal property values crash equivalent to the 2008 mortgage meltdown is another risk. They are separate risks. They could both take place.
There is a third one, which is the wildfire risk, which wasn't part of the original coastal risk report.
So the risks are piling up and piling up and piling up. It really is time that we take this seriously. The danger to the U.S. economy is deadly real. We are already seeing it landing in people's mail slots in the form of the quadrupling of insurance bills and in the form of nonrenewal notices. That doesn't even count the harm that is being done in the real world. I am talking about economic harms here, the things that will hit people in the pocketbook, the things that are going to make the bills harder to pay around the kitchen table, the stuff that is in people's financial lives.
But before I close, I want to remind everybody here that the stuff going wrong goes wrong in the real world in a way that goes beyond economic measure. The insurance harm, the carbon bubble harm, the threat of another 2008-style financial meltdown across three separate fronts--wildfire, carbon bubble, and coastal--all of that just takes a piece of it. But in the meantime, we are also seeing our world turned upside down. We are also seeing changes that are deeply personal.
How do you put a value on a grandfather not being able to take his granddaughter to the creek where he used to go fishing, where his grandfather taught him to fish, and now he can't do that with his granddaughter because it dried up because there is a drought, because the water is too warm for trout to live in it any longer? How do you put a value on that? You can't.
When you are dealing with just the economics of climate change, you are already being fundamentally irresponsible because you are not giving due respect to God's creation.
There are so many miracles that take place on this planet. I went to Delaware to see the arrival of the red knot. A red knot is a bird. It is not much bigger than this glass of water, and it does amazing things. It flies from the southern end of South America all the way up to Brazil, and then it flies from Brazil to Delaware Bay. There is no place to land, if you look at the map, between Brazil and Delaware Bay. This is a small bird flying all of those hundreds of miles, somehow knowing where Delaware Bay is and landing there, timed in God's and nature's beautiful way, timed to land in Delaware Bay when the horseshoe crabs are releasing their eggs.
The horseshoe crabs were all over the beach, and these birds would come in because, in God's grace, somehow they knew to fly from Brazil to Delaware Bay then, and that food source would be there for them so they could fuel up and continue the rest of their journey up into the Arctic.
This is a bird that migrates from the southern end of South America to Brazil, across the ocean to Delaware Bay, and then up to the Arctic every year. A tiny little bird can accomplish that. Hell, I would be tired in a plane flight from Brazil to Delaware, sitting in a seat and being given a soda. These little miracles fly that flight.
If we screw this planet up the way we are doing, then the different life cycles, in this case, of the horseshoe crab and the red knot no longer line up, and when they land, the food source isn't there for them, and that species gets clobbered.
What is the value in money of this heroic little species performing this amazing achievement year in and year out and suddenly finding out that it doesn't work any longer; that they will starve and die because we fouled up the timing of the natural systems that they need to have work for them? Can you put a price on that? No. It is worth zero. It is worth zero.
What is the price of going down off a boat into the water, down towards a reef, and as you fall through the water toward the reef and as it becomes clear what is along the bottom below you, and for the first time going back to familiar spots, you see that the coral is bleaching white; you see that it is so distressed that it can't manage the relationship between the coral polyps and the algae and it bleaches white. It is an alarm signal that something has gone wrong in that coral reef.
If you look at many coral reefs in the Caribbean, it is all white. It is all white, and then it begins to fall apart, and pretty soon, you have rubble. What used to be a vibrant, living coral reef with all the glorious colors and all the interacting ways in which nature makes her magic work--all of that is turned into what looks like rubble in a construction site because the water was too warm, the water was too acidic, the oxygen levels were too low, and all of that died. What is the value of that? The value of that is zero to us here in mammon, where we only care about things that can be assigned a dollar value.
So it ain't just the economic harm that is coming at us. We are doing something that is so grievously disrespectful to this world that God gave us, to the natural order of it that sustains our livelihoods on this planet. Today was such an embarrassing, embarrassing example of our disrespect.
If you had to pick the most unworthy segment of the fossil fuel industry, it is probably the companies that take such bad care of their own equipment that they are the worst leakers in their whole industry. That is the population that we served today after having given them a $1.5 billion handout. And the reciprocal for that was when you are in the worst half, when you are
With that, I yield the floor.
