Veterans' Administration (Executive Calendar)
Mr. President, I am here on the floor because we are in a moment of crisis for our veterans. It is a moment of profound historic challenge to the Veterans' Administration, and what we need from Members of this body--and I am encouraged by the response so far-- is a call to action. We need a plan for accountability. That is our job--to hold responsible officials who have the obligation and opportunity to serve our veterans at a time when Elon Musk and Donald Trump are slashing and trashing our Veterans' Administration, with real-life impacts on the healthcare and disability benefits that are afforded to our Nation's heroes. It is a disgrace, it is shameful, it is unacceptable, and we need to muster the courage and fortitude on the part of this body to call it out and call it off.
That is why I am here, and it is only the beginning of a plan for accountability that will include others--my colleagues coming to the floor this week and next--as well as hearings that we will organize, shadow hearings--not necessarily formal hearings of the committee but hearings that we will have on aspects of this challenge that call for us to highlight the need for action.
We are going to come to the floor as well to seek unanimous consent on measures that will stop the degrading and decimation of the Veterans' Administration. It is illegal. It is immoral. It is immoral because we have a solemn responsibility--I don't need to make a long speech to tell my colleagues about this responsibility. We recognize it rhetorically all the time. I am here not to make a speech but to have an impact.
Next week, we are going to be voting on the next VA Deputy Secretary nominee, Paul Lawrence, and I just want to be really blunt. I voted for Doug Collins to be VA Secretary. It was a mistake because Secretary Collins has not been forthcoming with facts. He has not been transparent. He has not been responsive to us or to veterans and his employees who are asking questions about what the future of the VA will be given the firing of 80,000 members of the VA workforce, projected, in the next few months without a plan, without a strategy, without any forethought about what its real-life impact will be.
I voted for Doug Collins, and I regret it. I apologize for it. I am not making the same mistake with Paul Lawrence. There is no reason to believe he will be any different--not to mention any better--because he is the Deputy. I have respect for their service in the military, as I do for anyone who has worn the uniform, but I cannot--I cannot--vote for Paul Lawrence. I hope my colleagues will be as vigilant as I am seeking to be in voting against him. I will oppose his nomination.
Since taking office, this administration has shortsightedly shortchanged and systematically betrayed our veterans with policies that are against their interests. The goal here: save money so that tax cuts can be financed--tax cuts for the billionaires and millionaires that populate this administration and drive its policy.
They fired already 2,400 VA employees, many of them high performers. They have been promoted to provisional positions because they have been high performers. They are in those provisional positions for a time when they would become permanently in those positions, but because they are provisional, they have been fired; likewise, the younger members of the workforce who have just been recruited for positions that are open and where their talent is vitally needed. They are the future of our VA, younger VA employees who want to make a career of it, want to serve fellow veterans.
Thirty percent of all the fired workers are veterans because 30 percent of the workforce there is veterans. In fact, the newer employees may be veterans in a higher percentage. We are terminating the future workforce of the VA--again, simply to save money to finance tax cuts for Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires and the ultrawealthy.
Now, the workers who have been fired are in positions of healthcare and disability benefits processing. So what is at risk here is literally the everyday medical needs of our veterans. They are physicians, thousands of them; nurses; schedulers; counselors; the janitors who make sure the facilities are clean. The surgeon who goes into the operating suite can't do it alone; he needs his team. We are firing his team as well as the medical care providers.
On the disability benefits side, the increase in workforce that took place in recent years is to deal with the PACT Act increase in applicants for disability benefits, our veterans who have been exposed to burn pits and toxic chemicals. They are in need of screening, advising, consulting, as well as care and treatment.
We had bipartisan support for the PACT Act. The law is dead letter if it is implemented haphazardly, and we are betraying the goals and the trust we sought so proudly to espouse when we passed that PACT Act that recognized the sacrifice veterans are making--and their families--when they have cancer or hypertension or diabetes or any of the diseases that can result from exposure to those toxic chemicals.
VA Secretary Doug Collins has claimed falsely that there will be no impact to veterans' healthcare and benefits as a result of the administration's malign directive.
At the end of the Biden administration, the VA was delivering more benefits and more healthcare to more veterans than ever before as a result of the success of the PACT Act, for toxic-exposed veterans, and trust in the VA was at an alltime high.
We are risking the healthcare and benefits to veterans not just now but in the future because the credibility of the VA will be decimated, along with its workforce.
The cancelation of contracts eliminates another source of resources for our veterans. VA employees are the ones delivering healthcare. VA employees are the ones processing the PACT Act benefits.
I am disappointed and dismayed that so many of my Republican colleagues are seeking to minimize or diminish the human impacts of these cuts, firings, freezes--the cuts in funding, the freezes in hiring, the firings of employees who are there now--even at a time when there are 40,000 open positions. The VA is recruiting to fill them-- 3,000 surgeons, 6,000 nurses, thousands of counselors and schedulers-- open positions. At the same time that it is trying to recruit people to fill those positions, it is firing the workers who have similar or the same positions right now. It makes no sense.
But the human impacts are what trouble me the most. To my colleagues or anyone who claims there are no impacts, go host a veteran townhall in your State. Talk to the local VFW or American Legion or any of the other veterans service organizations. Go visit a local VA medical center or clinic or talk to employees who work there. When you meet face to face with your constituents, the immediate impacts of this administration's malign directives, whether it is out of malevolence or simply malign neglect, will become apparent, and either way, it is unacceptable.
I invite Secretary Collins to actually come to a townhall--make it Connecticut; make it anywhere--a townhall where you will meet face to face with a group of veterans who will tell you what these cuts, freezes, and firings mean in real life to the services that are supposed to be provided to them and will be denied because of these directives.
Let's be clear: The one behind this is Elon Musk. The one who is directing these cuts, freezes, and firings is an unappointed, unelected billionaire who has never contemplated wearing the uniform of this country, not to mention helping or serving our veterans in any way.
Elon Musk, you come to a townhall with veterans. You face them and tell them that they can't have the medical care they need and deserve to treat cancer or hypertension or any of the diseases or illnesses that result from exposure to toxic chemicals or burn pits.
I attended a veterans event last week. I talk to veterans all the time when I am back in Connecticut. I know firsthand what these cuts, freezes, and firings mean to them. The impacts caused by Musk and Trump--heartbreaking, heartless cuts and other damaging directives--are being felt in every corner of my State of Connecticut and every part of our country.
I just want to read a few sentences from Sioux Falls Live, a newspaper in South Dakota:
I hope those words will echo in this Chamber. It is not right. It is not right. These veterans in South Dakota have a right to be angry, not to mention concerned and worried not just for themselves but veterans across the country.
We heard that a VA hospital in South Dakota is at risk of losing nearly 20 percent of its staff as a direct result of Trump and Musk's illegal and indiscriminate reduction-in-force plans.
Now let me read you an excerpt from an article in the Spokesman- Review that contained interviews with some of the VA employees that Collins illegally fired. VA employees like Ricky Noschese who worked at Lovell Federal Healthcare Center.
Here is what Ricky Noschese--I apologize for the mispronunciation-- Ricky Noschese says about that Federal health center where he supervises a team of technicians in charge of keeping equipment running at the hospital--another corrective. He supervised them.
Lovell serves 90,000 patients a year, including veterans, Active-Duty servicemembers, and their dependents:
With the support of his boss, Noschese wrote a detailed four-page document to justify his employment. He described how he had helped save taxpayers more than $10 million by using nearly two decades of experience as an HVAC technician to identify efficiencies and find cost-effective ways to extend the life of air-handling units.
He was head of a 12-person team responsible for ensuring clean water, fire safety, and other essentials required to maintain the hospital's accreditation.
Noschese and his bosses hoped he would be exempt from the mass firing, but after they sent the justification memo up the chain, they got a curt, simple, stark response: The document was too long. He should sum up his position in no more than three sentences.
Noschese was told a member of hospital leadership did that, but it made no difference. He had to turn in his badge and go home.
Now I tell you this story in some detail because it shows that efforts to eliminate waste when they are draconian and cruel and indiscriminate actually create more costs. Laying waste to the VA with across-the-board cuts without careful, selective consideration actually raises the expense, as it will in Noschese's job where there is nobody to do that excellent work based on his experience and expertise; and, ultimately, the costs will be higher as a result. But Elon Musk, apparently, doesn't care, nor does Doug Collins.
Take disabled veteran Megan-Richelle Cole. She worked at Lovell, managing the supply of medications and ensured patients so that they would receive only the best drugs, not
Let me read a few more lines about her:
Let's be clear: This administration's actions have a real lasting impact on veterans' care and benefits despite Secretary Collins' blatantly disingenuous claims that there have been none, there will be none. Elon Musk should know what those consequences will be, and Secretary Collins should be transparent with the administration and with us.
These heartbreaking and heartless cuts will destroy lives and livelihoods. VA Secretary Collins, Musk, and Trump are prioritizing a ``fire first, analyze later'' mindset and strategy at the expense of the very people they are supposed to serve--people who served and sacrificed for us: America's veterans. It is unconscionable. It is unwise and ineffective. It is immoral.
I will say this in closing: Nobody is claiming--certainly, I am not-- that there isn't waste that we can eliminate, that fraud or abuse shouldn't be pursued. In fact, if this administration were serious about fraud and abuse and waste, they wouldn't have fired Mike Missal, the inspector general, whose service under both Democratic and Republican administrations has been exemplary.
He has been saluted and praised in Republican administrations, as well as Democratic, by my colleagues on the Republican side, as well as ours, but he was fired inexplicably, inconsistently with the goal of eliminating waste and fraud. It belies their claims and pretensions to want to eliminate abuse and fraud and waste to fire the watchdog who would call it out, investigate it, and refer it for prosecution as he has done saving tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers and benefits for veterans.
He has served both Republican and Democratic administrations, and there is nothing partisan about anything that I have said here, about the impact on veterans, the cruelty, and deeply heartbreaking consequences of these actions.
My Republican colleagues should join us when we begin next week with floor speeches and unanimous consent requests and the hearings--shadow hearings--that we will conduct and other actions that we will undertake in this call for accountability--a call for action.
Nothing partisan should deter them from joining us. This responsibility is one that we share in this body to highlight and call out and call off the Musk-Trump disastrous and disgraceful cuts in benefits and healthcare for our veterans.
We are hearing from veterans, and again, I encourage my colleagues to hear more directly, immediately, personally from them. I invite Secretary Collins to join me in a townhall as soon as possible.
I invite him again, as I did in a letter recently, to appear on April 2 before a shadow hearing we will conduct in this Capitol. He can explain himself. He can tell me why I am wrong but, most important, he can answer to our Nation's veterans who deserve and need better from this administration.
America's veterans deserve nothing less than for every single Member in this body to call into question these damaging policies. They deserve nothing less than the gold standard in healthcare, as well as full and complete benefits of the PACT Act and in every other respect, the respect and responsibility that we have. To disrespect them is un- American.
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.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Executive Calendar)
Mr. President, the bill that Senate Republicans have brought to the floor today and which we will vote on sometime soon is the latest example of the ``great betrayal'' in action.
On the campaign trail, Candidate Donald Trump promised that he was going to help Americans deal with their pocketbook issues, kitchen table issues, and he said that on day one--day one--he was going to bring prices down; that he was going to bring down costs for American families. Well, costs are going up, and President Trump and Republicans are taking actions that will raise those costs on the American people even further, and today's bill is exhibit A.
I want to take a step back and put this bill that we are considering today in context. You know, one of the infuriating experiences that so many American consumers have is the mountain of junk fees they face. These are hidden fees that are sometimes in very fine print in contracts. They are all these fees that get added to their bills, where they really have no idea what additional value they are getting for those fees because often there is no additional value for that fee or that the additional value is minuscule in comparison to the fee they are being charged. So people pay these fees and grind their teeth and essentially get ripped off. We also see many predatory lending practices, where financial interests prey on those who are living paycheck to paycheck.
So, years ago, after the financial crisis of 2008, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--also known by its shorthand CFPB--to help protect American consumers from a whole range of predatory practices. Senator Warren was one of the people who thought of establishing that important consumer protection Agency. Now she is the ranking Democrat on the Banking and Housing Committee, on which I am privileged to serve.
Since its creation, the CFPB has gone after all sorts of fraudsters, all sorts of con artists, all sorts of people who try to find different ways to cheat American consumers out of their hard-earned money. They have been successful, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They have returned over $21 billion to American consumers who have been cheated out of their hard-earned money. In other words, they brought lawsuits to go after these fraudsters or changed practices in order to make sure that people could keep more of their hard-earned money. That includes $71 million that was returned to my constituents in the State of Maryland who were ripped off.
Along the way, the CFPB made some powerful enemies, and many Republicans have been trying to dismantle the CFPB for years. Now they have Elon Musk to help do their dirty work.
In one of the most corrupt bargains in American history, Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has turned around and given Elon Musk the keys to many Federal Agencies. Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with making the Federal Government more efficient and has everything to do with rigging the government to serve people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else in America. In fact, one of the great examples of that is that they went right after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
I find it just gross that the richest man in the world would go after a Bureau whose purpose it is to help return money to American consumers who have been cheated out of their hard-earned dollars, but that was one of the very early targets of Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies.
Now, apparently, that wasn't enough. It was not enough just to go after and try to dismantle that Agency. That step and the one we are dealing with here in the Senate today is an effort to go back and undo some of the important consumer protections that the CFPB put in place under the Biden administration.
One of those protections was a rule that is in place now to prevent banks from charging consumers exorbitant fees when a consumer overdraws their account balances using a debit card.
So how does this work? Well, let's say you have got your debit card. You go into the grocery store. You are going to buy some groceries for the family. You use your debit card to pay, and you overdraw your account. Now, some of the biggest banks in the country will typically charge you $35 for each of those overdrafts no matter how big your overdraft amount is. So you overdraw your account by one buck, $35; by 5 bucks, $35.
The average overdraft amount is $26. So you can see on each one of those transactions those banks are making a hefty return. In fact, it is like a loan with an APR of 16,000 percent. And it happens time after time. In other words, you leave the grocery store. You go pick up your kids at school. You go to a local convenience shop. You get a cup of coffee. You pay with your debit card, and--boom--you get hit with another $35 overdraft fee. And on and on and on.
In fact, every year, some of the biggest banks--Wells Fargo and Chase--make over $1 billion from consumer overdraft fees. And some of these banks have built an entire system to try to maximize the amount they get from their consumers through these overdraft fees. If you look collectively at the banking system, this is a $5 billion-a-year rip- off.
So if you look at the people who are being primarily hit by this, not surprisingly, it is people who are living paycheck to paycheck--in fact, many of the people who Candidate Trump said he wanted to look out for when he was campaigning in the last election.
If you look closely, you will find that 79 percent of overdraft fees are charged on about 9 percent of accounts. These are accounts where people have an average balance of around $350. So these big banks are preying on the people who literally are going paycheck to paycheck. And for those households, the average hit every year is about $225 in exorbitant fees. So you make a tiny miscalculation, and you get hit hard by these predatory practices.
Last year--this last year--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-- the one that Elon Musk and DOGE are trying to shut down as we speak-- last year, they developed a rule to help protect consumers. It was something many of us had pushed for years, and we were glad to see them do it.
The rule was pretty straightforward. It would cap the overdraft fees at $5 a time instead of $35 a time. And it would also require banks to be transparent in their pricing and their overdraft penalty structure so that consumers would know and have eyes wide open as to what penalties they were going to incur. So you wouldn't have people inadvertently hit with 35 bucks for a cup of coffee, 35 bucks when you go pick up some more groceries.
This has become a way for some of the biggest banks to rip off consumers, especially those who are going paycheck to paycheck, as I said, to the tune of $5 billion.
So that is the rule. That is what the CFPB did, pretty simple measure: Make sure that consumers don't get ripped off and not even know they are being ripped off sometimes until they know about the overdraft fee.
What Republicans have brought to the floor today is a proposal to override that consumer protection bill to allow those banks to continue to collect $5 billion from American consumers, so many of them who are living paycheck to paycheck.
Everybody should know that that is what is going on here. We have got the richest man in the world trying to shut down an Agency that was created to help protect consumers, and here in the Senate, we have Senate Republicans trying to overturn a consumer protection rule that saves working people a little bit of money and makes sure that they don't get slammed for making a small overdraft on their accounts.
I urge my colleagues to vote to uphold the consumer protection law that was adopted. If you want to vote yes to protect the rule, you vote no on this effort to overturn it. I urge my colleagues to vote no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Maryland for his excellent presentation.
This is an issue which people with little money in the bank never think about. People who are living paycheck to paycheck don't have a big savings account, don't have anywhere to turn. They are the ones who are penalized by the discussion we are having today and certainly ought to pay attention to this debate.
It is hard to believe that recent polls show that consumer confidence in the economy has dropped to its lowest level in 12 years. This comes after President Trump made campaign promise after campaign promise to lower prices on day one. Remember that? He said: We are going to ``make America affordable again.'' But working families in America have not seen any relief; actually, just the opposite.
A month ago, President Trump, turning to his billionaire buddy--the unelected Elon Musk--tried to, in Musk's description, ``delete'' the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
I know a little bit about that Bureau. I was one of the original sponsors of the legislation creating it. The idea was to have one Agency of government on the side of the consumer that was willing to look out for rip-offs and to fight, if necessary, to protect the consumers.
Of course, that is the last thing in the world that Elon Musk and Donald Trump want to see. They are the folks who want to make sure that the big banks and the big corporations are not held accountable, so off they went with their DOGE operation for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This Agency stood up to Wall Street to protect consumers when they had nowhere else to turn. And, now, today, hard to believe--hard to believe--my Republican colleagues want to go a further step to strip consumers of protections that went to the benefit of the big banks. They want to gut a rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would cap overdraft fees.
Currently, consumers are charged on average $35 in overdraft fees per transaction. So you write a check for one of your expenses, and it turns out there is some miscalculation along the way, and you don't have the money in your checking account to cover it. That is an overdraft. Well, the charge for that overdraft is $35 currently, on average. It doesn't matter how big or how small you overdrew your checking account.
If a consumer purchases a product one cent over the amount in their checking account, an extra $35 is tacked on to the transaction in overdraft fees.
According to the Federal Reserve, nearly 40 percent of Americans would have trouble covering an emergency $400 expense. Forty percent of Americans do not have more than $400 in cash available to them. For those households, a $35 overdraft fee would be the difference between just making it or falling behind a little bit that day.
The CFPB's rule would cap these fees at 5 bucks unless the bank can demonstrate that its costs to run overdraft services are actually higher. This would save Americans up to $5 billion a year, from $35 on average to $5 for
The rule only applies to banks and credit unions that have more than $10 billion in assets. That is about 130 of the biggest banks. So the community banks--the ones which you probably do a lot of business with--that sponsor the hometown Little League team or help support local charities, this rule would not apply to them. The bank has to have a value of more than $10 billion in assets to be covered by this $5 limitation.
What are some of the banks that are involved? JPMorgan's profits last year were $54 billion--JPMorgan, $54 billion; Bank of America's profits, $25 billion; Wells Fargo's profits, $20 billion. Let me draw a distinction. In 2024, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo both charged more than $1 billion in overdraft fees. However, Bank of America has capped its overdraft fees to 10 bucks. They still made incredible profits to the tune of $25.5 billion. When you crunch the numbers, the big banks' arguments that they absolutely need to charge people these outrageous fees just don't hold up.
That is why I am voting no on this offering to oppose the resolution that would overturn this rule that caps overdraft fees and helps everyday Americans.
I do want to commend the banks that are at least trying to help the consumers. Citigroup and Capital One have ceased overdraft fees, and Bank of America has capped its overdraft fee at $10, underscoring how banks can continue to operate profitably--very profitably--without relying on these fees.
So I am going to oppose this offering by Senator Scott of South Carolina on this overdraft lending fee. I think when it gets right down to it, you have to ask yourself: Is it really costing the banks that much money for an overdraft? If it is, they can charge the consumer. But to automatically penalize them in this way is fundamentally unfair for a lot of people who are struggling. You can talk a lot about the cost of a dozen eggs, but I will tell you what, even a dozen eggs doesn't cost a $35 fee that has been the usual charge in penalty for anyone who overdraws their account. So if you are on the side of the consumers and the families who are struggling with the cost of living, oppose this effort by Senator Scott of South Carolina.
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, this is an overdraft speech. It is about a commonsense rule that lowers costs for millions and millions of Americans, while carefully targeting, really, the most egregious abusive overdraft practices in the financial industry today.
Banks have long offered overdraft services to allow their customers to make purchases or even pay a bill, even if they lack sufficient funds in their account, while sometimes charging a fee for this service. But in recent years, banks have exploited this practice, charging customers billions of dollars in deceptive fees. A recent study found that more than half of all the people who overdraw their checking accounts and paid a fee could not recall consenting to the overdraft service for which they are being charged.
Moreover, we know the customers who are being charged overdraft fees are overwhelmingly folks who are low-income, who work really hard and don't get that much pay, and a $20 overdraft fee just further pushes them into a financial trap, into this cycle downward of financial instability that is hard to pull out of.
Too often, banks have been found trying to game the system, and this is really problematic. They try to game the system to impose fees on customers--even when they shouldn't be charged in the first place--by orchestrating transactions improperly or delaying deposits customers make into their accounts.
Just think about this. They can time your deposit with the time it hits your account. You think you can deposit a check and pull money out, but the way they rig the system is to create a gap in which you are actually in overdraft when technically you have already made that deposit.
Meanwhile, these fees generated enormous amounts of revenue for banks while most customers don't even know they have opted into this system.
Opponents of the rule argue that it could restrict access to emergency credit. We all are supporters of this idea of emergency credit. They think that this is an example, they say, of government overreach and that it is going to hurt banks' revenue model. Let's be honest. This isn't about protecting consumers; it is about protecting this massive, new profit line for big banks.
For years, I have fought against what is a predatory practice. I have introduced legislation to crack down on exploitative overdraft fees that banks charge consumers when they make a purchase or pay a bill that they don't have sufficient funds for in their account, trying to stop the games that banks play to make it more difficult for people to avoid the overdraft fees in the first place.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been instrumental in cracking down on banks charging surprise overdraft fees, and many banks have said ``You are right. This is a bad practice. We should stop'' but not all of them. So last year, the CFPB finalized this rule to curb illegal and predatory practices. The rule lowered most big-bank overdraft fees from $35 to $5, saving consumers in America--American hard-working citizens--saving them $5 billion a year. On average, it delivered $225 a year in savings for the average household. Think about this. It is about protecting households. There is still a consequence if you overdraft, but it can't be these usury rates.
The overdraft rule did not ban overdraft fees outright or go after small community banks and credit unions, which were exempted from the rule. It simply requires banks to either reduce their rates or comply with Federal banking laws when charging high credit fees.
Several financial institutions that I have mentioned, like Capital One and Citibank, have already eliminated overdraft fees and continue to provide overdraft protection. They are showing, to their credit, that it can be done and not somehow mess up their business model. You don't need to take advantage of consumers to make money. Meanwhile, though, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase each earn over $1 billion a year in overdraft and NSF fees--nearly four times more than the next highest bank.
Some banks are showing ``You know what, we don't want to jerk over the customers,'' while others, to the tune of over $1 billion a year, are still taking advantage of some of our most vulnerable and financially fragile Americans, who are working hard every day to try to get out of poverty traps, yet banks take advantage of them and send them back.
Perhaps most egregiously, in 2024, Navy Fed took nearly as much as the biggest banks from its servicemembers, veterans, and other customers. They took $725 million despite a dramatically smaller customer base, clearly showing that they were trying to take advantage of our veterans, our servicemembers, and others. Who will stand up for them? Who will say ``You are not going to do predatory practices on our servicemembers, on our veterans''--dramatically more than other banks that eliminated these practices.
For those who are most affected by overdraft fees--those folks living paycheck to paycheck, who are part of the 64 percent of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and are often minutes to hours away from having the money necessary to cover expenses that lead to overdraft fees--this rule is a lifeline to them and their families.
I was proud that New Jerseyans wrote in to the CFPB sharing how these predatory practices were impacting them. Allow me to read from a New Jerseyan from East Orange, my neighbor. They wrote:
By the bank--
One anonymous servicemember from Carteret, NJ, wrote:
This is a New Jerseyan who is playing by the rules who is frustrated because of practices that are clearly predatory and that take advantage of folks who are living paycheck to paycheck, and they are a servicemember.
Another servicemember from Manchester Township was erroneously charged and then overdrawn from his business account from Wells Fargo.
Here is a servicemember, a small business person, getting screwed over because they don't have the protection this rule would provide.
To rescind this rule in order to further enrich a small handful of abusive banks and their shareholders that allow this to happen at the expense of working families, at the expense of veterans, at the expense of servicemembers, is despicable.
This body shouldn't be on the side of big banks and their further enrichment; they should be on the side of veterans and servicemembers and Americans struggling, working paycheck to paycheck, especially when certain banks have shown they don't need these usury fees to make enormous profits. Where is the moral value in that?
Instead of lowering prices and protecting consumers, I now see Members of this body who I know the values they speak to. Some of my colleagues on the Senate Republican side want to raise these prices on Americans and allow these banks to prey upon servicemembers, veterans, and working Americans. This is all while the President and Elon Musk have continued their onslaught and attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has returned billions of dollars to American consumers.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis to protect Americans from predatory practices and fight discriminations in the financial sector.
I wasn't here in Washington, but when the banks needed a bailout, we were here for the banks. I don't know if we charged them overdraft fees, but are we going to stand up for consumers now?
The CFPB has returned to the American consumers $19.7 billion in compensation, canceled debt, and other relief--$19.7 billion. I know firsthand the difference that the work of this Agency has made for American families. I saw it in my time as a young lawyer taking on slumlords in Newark. Hard-working people who could barely afford rent, who worked 50, 60 hours a week, barely affording rent, fighting to put food on the table for their kids, and one improper practice at a bank can throw them into financial crisis--predatory practices, scams, exploitation, which some banks have stopped doing.
I don't understand that this is even an issue here. This rule is to help consumers. This rule is to help veterans. This rule is to help servicemembers. This rule is to help the Americans who are struggling because the top 50 percent of our country has done extraordinarily well in the last economies under Republican and Democratic Presidents, but the data is clear that the bottom 50 percent of our country is working harder and making less. And we want to advantage the big banks that have record corporate profits.
I won't back down from this fight to save the CFPB, to save those who fight to defend consumers from being screwed over by big institutions. Look, I know what it is like in my family story to fight. I know what it is like to be up against insurmountable odds from my family stories. I know what it is like to be searching for someone who will stand up for you when you are doing everything right in this country, when you are working hard, when you are playing by the rules, when you are serving in your community, when you are coaching Little League, when you are trying to help on your block. I know what it is like, when you are volunteering at your church, to turn around and have some big, impersonal, distant bank screw you for their profits.
It is time for this body to do the right thing. This is not political. This is not partisan. This is, who do you stand for? At a time when people are cynical about all of Congress--they don't feel like anybody is fighting for them--who is going to stand up today and say: I fight for the little guy. I fight for the small business. I fight for the working servicemember.
Who is going to stand up? Who is going to stand up?
I know where I stand, and I encourage my colleagues to preserve this rule that stops predatory big banks from savaging the financial lives of too many Americans.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am honored to follow my friend and colleague from New Jersey, whom I salute for his passion and his eloquence. And thank you to Senator Warren for her leadership in bringing us together today and to my colleagues who are rising today in opposition to S.J. Res. 18, which seeks to undo the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's overdraft fee rule.
Now let's be very clear: This overdraft rule never should have been necessary. If big banks were doing the right thing and playing fair with their customers, this rule would never have been necessary. Taking that fee from $35 to $5 simply reflects what the possible cost is of overdrafts rather than banks, in effect, making money on overdrafts, which are commonly the result of people not having enough money in their bank account. And that is commonly the result of people being poorer than they want to be.
I suspect that most of this administration hasn't had an overdraft fee recently. I am guessing--I think it is an educated guess--that Elon Musk has not had an overdraft fee recently.
Overdrafts hit people who are living paycheck to paycheck, people who are at the bottom rung of our economic order through no fault of their own--often the result of discrimination and denial of rights that others are fortunate to have.
But put aside the inequities of this rule or the overdraft practices that it tries to ameliorate, the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau is, in effect, the watchdog or the top cop in the beat of preventing consumers from being scammed as they are by overdraft fees.
It is under attack by the Trump administration. It has returned $21 billion to consumers. And most relevant to our conversation here today, lowering overdraft fees from $35 to $5 would save households $5 billion annually. That is $5 billion that goes into our economy rather than into the coffers of banks that have over $10 billion in assets and who trick people into paying those excessive overdraft fees; and they earn profit from the most vulnerable families in this country.
I want to focus on one group in particular who are particularly vulnerable--and I say it as a member of the Armed Services Committee and the ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. Servicemembers and their families in particular have a higher stake in this rule prohibiting exploitive overdraft fees.
And the reason is--despicably, disgustingly--servicemembers are often targeted by bad actors and financial institutions for abusive and predatory practices like overdraft fees or that result in overdraft fees.
A Department of Defense survey revealed that 10 percent of Active- Duty and Reserve servicemembers paid overdraft fees two or more times in the
Two or more times, our servicemen and -women have been exploited by these banks in charging fees for overdraft.
For years, servicemembers across the country have filed complaints with the CFPB over these unfair and deceptive practices, like skyrocketing fees.
Just one example: A servicemember in Connecticut filed a claim with the CFPB in 2018 about Wells Fargo's predatory overdraft practices. He reported he had an overdraft protection turned off his account, but Wells Fargo still allowed autopayments to be taken out and then charged $35 rather than denying the payments for lack of funds.
These overdrafts should have been denied, but instead, they went through and cost this servicemember over $60 in unwanted fees.
Now, I know to a lot of Members of this body, 60 bucks is no big deal. Anybody familiar with the young enlisted men in our U.S. military today who live, literally, paycheck to paycheck knows that $60 may be the difference between having the means to get home on leave. It may be the difference between enjoying a weekend on leave.
So the $60 in unwarranted fees that that servicemember paid was a big deal to him. But today, the Republicans unfortunately are shamefully doing the Trump administration's bidding. They are stripping crucial protection away from working American families and our military members, and it is simply and plainly a gift. It is a gift to Big Bank.
We can speculate on what the motives are. They are big banks. They contribute a lot of money to campaigns. But every attack on the CFPB, including this CRA, is an attack on consumer protection, commonsense safeguards that make sure that Americans can avoid being exploited by big and powerful institutions.
Overturning the overdraft rule is yet another giveaway to these big banks and the billionaires who control and run and own them.
I have said before but it bears repeating: President Trump will always help his billionaire friends at the cost of helping you.
Today, I urge my colleagues to vote against this attack on the CFPB. Vote no on S.J. Res. 18.
I yield the floor to my great friend and colleague from Massachusetts Senator Warren.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Connecticut for his work today in defending the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and highlighting again the importance of this work from CFPB to help level the playing field just a little between the billionaire banks and our hard-working servicemembers and families that are living paycheck to paycheck.
I also want to thank Senator Booker for coming here and talking today about how people from New Jersey have been directly affected by overdraft fee abuses and appreciate his work on this.
President Trump and Republicans promised the Americans that they would lower their cost of living. Instead, they are now linking arms with some of the biggest banks in the country to impose billions of dollars in fees on working families.
Today, Republicans are voting to overturn a CFPB rule that prevents big banks like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo from saddling customers with hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees when a customer overdraws a checking account by only a few dollars.
Let's be clear: This rule covers only the biggest banks, those with more than $10 billion in assets. Community banks are completely exempt from this.
All this rule does is ensure that overdraft fees are reasonable. Under the rule, banks are allowed to recoup all of their costs and all of their losses associated with providing overdraft. That is, typically, under $5, which is why the CFPB's rule generally caps overdraft fees at $5. But if the bank can show its costs are higher, then they charge the full amount of their actual costs and losses.
What the banks cannot do is play a game of gotcha in which the bank manipulates the customer's account to hit the customers with hundreds of dollars in overdraft charges.
Today, a handful of giant banks are charging about $35 per bounced payment, squeezing families for far more than what it typically costs to offer this overdraft. And consumers carrying the vast majority of these fees are disproportionately low-income Americans, with the typical customer who gets caught with overdraft fees ending up paying more than $400 a year.
Now, $400 can be the cost of a mortgage payment or rent for someone with a modest income; $400 can be the difference between their kid's medication or just going without; $400 for some families can be several weeks' worth of groceries. This money matters to millions of families.
Altogether, the CFPB rule saves American families up to $5 billion a year. Republicans claim they care about lowering costs, but overturning this rule will make big banks richer and hard-working families poorer.
The Republicans are deeply sympathetic--deeply sympathetic--to giant banks. They worry about poor little Wells Fargo. They shed a tear for JPMorgan's extra billion dollars in profits that they make from overdraft fees on top of $27 billion they make in their other banking services.
Yes, the Republicans worry about those giant banks and that $5 billion that they would have to forgo if they could only charge $5 on an overdraft fee.
Look, banks can survive with limits on overdraft fees. How do we know that? Because they are already doing it. In fact, many banks, including Capital One and Citibank, have eliminated overdraft fees entirely, and they are still making billions of dollars in profits.
No, these fees are about kicking hard-working Americans when they are down.
My constituent April from Massachusetts shared this:
Joan, also from Massachusetts, talked about how insidious these fees can be.
To make matters even worse: These abusive, anti-consumer practices often target servicemembers and military families.
Last year, the CFPB ordered Navy Federal Credit Union to refund $80 million in illegal surprise overdraft fees, which they had charged servicemembers, even when the servicemembers' accounts showed enough money to cover the transactions.
Cracking down on abusive overdraft practices, particularly when they harm servicemembers, has bipartisan support. A year ago, my then- colleague JD Vance and I launched an investigation into another credit union that had preyed on servicemembers with extortionate overdraft fees. I hope to see the same bipartisan concern now and support for the CFPB rule that puts a stop to this squeeze on military families.
Look, finally, I just want to mention: I know that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and on this side of the aisle are concerned about debanking. Now debanking is something that happens when a bank closes someone's account without any real explanation.
Overdraft practices have been the reason for tens of millions of account closures, shutting out far too many Americans from our banking system. So for everyone who has concerns about debanking, consider that the CFPB rule eliminates one of the main excuses that banks have used for debanking their customers.
Look, our job is to lower costs for American families, not boost profits for giant banks. A vote against today's CRA is a vote to protect those families
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Internal Revenue Service Relating to "Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That...
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to the provisions of the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 802, there will now be up to 10 hours of debate equally divided between those favoring and opposing the joint resolution.
The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he would reconsider over 30 rules and policies that protect human health and the environment, calling it ``the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.'' With a barrage of press releases, Administrator Zeldin threatened to replace the central mission of EPA--to protect the environment and the health of Americans--with a newer and more sordid mission: to protect the financial interests of President Trump's Big Oil polluting mega donors.
EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment has guided the Agency for more than 50 years, with bipartisan support. The Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon, and conservative Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush chose administrators like Bill Ruckelshaus and Christine Whitman, who took the Agency's mission seriously.
EPA's bipartisan pedigree and mission matter little to Trump, Zeldin, and their crew of fossil fuel donors.
Administrator Zeldin claims that slashing these protections will ``unleash American energy.'' Huh. In reality, these rollbacks will keep Americans dependent on expensive dirty fossil fuels, while other countries keep moving forward with energy innovation, developing cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient energy. We are deliberately losing a competition.
Trump is exalting an antiquated polluting fossil fuel industry and degrading the lives of the American people.
Administrator Zeldin gleefully declared, ``We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.'' But the protections EPA threatens to roll back mostly relate to keeping air and water clean. In the wealthiest country in the world, does it make sense to increase uncertainty about whether water is safe to drink?
Administrator Zeldin likely can't juice substantially more fossil fuel production, but slashing these protections will unleash tons more pollution--more pollution from oil and gas producers, powerplants, manufacturers, cars and trucks; fewer protections for drinking water, wetlands, and streams.
Coal-fired powerplants will release more mercury into the air we breathe, settling into our water and our soil and eventually finding its way into our food.
We will experience more bad air days like we get in Rhode Island from upwind out-of-State polluters, when the air is thick with soot and other pollutants, triggering asthma attacks and respiratory diseases.
They threaten even to overturn the good neighbor rule that gives States the ability to push back when upwind States foul the air, as happens to us in Rhode Island.
The ability to pollute another State with impunity deliberately is a core thing for EPA to stop, and yet they are caving in to the polluter States.
And, yes, these rollbacks do threaten to remove limits also on carbon pollution from powerplants, oil and gas facilities, and vehicles, turbocharging the ongoing heating of our planet.
Let's be clear: Climate change ain't religion; it is science--and well-understood, established, mature science at that.
My Republican colleagues in this building all have home State universities that teach climate science.
Greenhouse gas emissions--science knows--from the production and combustion of fossil fuels are heating our planet, raising sea levels, increasing the severity and frequency of violent storms, worsening droughts, and causing more intense wildfires. Even the fossil fuel industry's own scientists understood the climate risks of unchecked fossil fuel emissions. Exxon's own climate scientists warned that the burning of fossil fuels was changing our planet's climate and correctly modeled the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures.
When Zeldin testified in January before the Environment and Public
These fossil fuel industry favors will increase costs for American families. The fossil fuel industry spent almost $100 million--that we know of--to boost Trump in the last election and hundreds of millions more on Congress. Trump famously asked industry executives for $1 billion in exchange for delivering an industry wish list, and here is Zeldin producing that industry wish list. But for people who are not fossil fuel billionaires, the growing exposure to hazardous pollutants and the increase in carbon pollution will increase costs.
Tonight, colleagues will talk in more detail about various protections that Zeldin threatens to end and the safety and health policies he is curdling. I will discuss Zeldin's mischief with the social cost of carbon.
What is the social cost of carbon? It is a measure of the costs of each additional ton of carbon pollution released--increased mortality, for instance, from heat and storms; increased sickness from heat and air pollution; damage to agriculture and infrastructure from droughts and floods; even insurance collapse.
The Biden EPA estimated the social cost of carbon at around $190 per ton, which is consistent with most knowledgeable estimates, and the Office of Management and Budget ordered that this number be used in cost-benefit analysis for regulations as well as in a wider suite of government actions.
This analysis is nothing more than common sense. If the government is considering taking a step that would increase carbon pollution, it should consider the costs of doing so. If it is doing something that would decrease carbon pollution, it should understand and enjoy the economic benefits.
Zeldin is proposing to have the government ignore the facts. He wants to ignore the science, he wants to ignore the economics, and he wants to utilize a social cost of carbon whose value is deliberately and falsely set close to zero. If he succeeds, the Federal Government will no longer accurately assess the true costs and benefits of climate decisions.
This isn't new math or even fuzzy math; this is fake math--fake math to benefit Trump's oil and gas donors, who get to pretend, falsely, that the American people aren't picking up the tab for their industry's carbon pollution.
The International Monetary Fund, which is not a green institution, pegs the costs the public bears from fossil fuel pollution at more than $700 billion every year in the United States alone.
Last Congress, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, I organized hearings on the economic and financial costs of climate change. We heard warnings from economists, scientists, medical professionals, insurance and investment executives, the new Prime Minister of Canada, a former Prime Minister of Australia, and even a former Republican Senate majority leader. Throughout the hearings, witnesses emphasized the systemic economic risks that climate change poses and warned that if we don't shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels, things will get much worse.
``Systemic'' was the word I emphasized in that last sentence. ``Systemic'' may sound like a bland academic term, but a systemic risk in economics is one which threatens to bring down the entire economy, much the way failures in the mortgage market led to the great recession of 2008.
Zeldin's promised rollbacks will have real economic consequences for families. American families will bear increased healthcare costs. Even with an honorably functioning EPA, healthcare costs from fossil fuel air pollution and climate change are estimated to total nearly $820 billion in the United States each year. Doctors appointments, emergency room visits, rehab and home health support, and prescription drugs all strain the pocketbooks of American families. Lost work and school days and reduced labor productivity cost both families and the broader economy.
Last year, the United States suffered a recordbreaking 27 separate billion-dollar disasters, pushing up prices, damaging insurance markets, and burdening the families who were in harm's way. Economic losses from natural disasters reached more than $200 billion.
Climate-related extreme weather--hurricanes, wildfires, and floods-- damages property, damages infrastructure, damages agriculture, and damages supply chains. These recurring disasters are disrupting insurance markets across the country.
Turmoil in the insurance markets bleeds over into turmoil in the mortgage and housing markets. If you can't get insurance on your house, the next buyer can't get a mortgage on your house, and that reduces the pool of buyers and results in plunging property values. If your insurance premium quadruples, say from $2,000 a year to $8,000 a year, your home's value will fall, as the carrying costs associated with owning it have dramatically increased.
Last year, the Budget Committee obtained county-level data for the entire country, showing the evolution of nonrenewal rates for homeowners insurance from 2018 to 2023, and what we showed is that nonrenewal rates were rising--indeed, skyrocketing--as insurers retreat from areas of the country battered by the storms and wildfires that climate change makes both more likely and more intense. While the usual suspects are Florida, California, and Louisiana, nonrenewals are also skyrocketing across areas of southern New England, the Carolinas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, the Northern Rockies, and Hawaii.
We found that nonrenewals increased the most in the counties most exposed to climate risk--not surprising--and also that where nonrenewals were spiking, premiums were surging as well.
Earlier this year, the nonpartisan First Street Foundation took a look at the data we had looked at in the Budget Committee and looked forward and made some prediction about what increasing premiums and declining availability of insurance will mean for property values. They looked at the 30-year period of a mortgage entered into today, and they found that property values will decrease--decrease--in many counties by 20, 40, 60, or even 100 percent. Change in home value due to insurance costs: minus 100 percent. If you are in that category--and there are a few of them and more coming in the future--your home will lose all its value during the period of your mortgage, and you can bet the people selling you that mortgage are going to notice.
Let's not forget that for most Americans, their largest asset is their home. Home ownership is how most families build wealth. So something that is going to systemically reduce home values is hurting Americans. In a future gripped by climate change, the home ownership path to economic security breaks. What Zeldin is proposing will accelerate that danger forward, bringing the inevitable day of reckoning closer.
In Administrator Zeldin's home of Suffolk County, NY, for instance, nonrenewals nearly tripled from 2018 to 2023 and annual premiums have already increased by almost $800. And that is just a taste of what is to come.
By the way, it is not just me saying this. Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned the Senate Banking Committee that in 10 to 15 years, there will be entire coastal and wildfire-exposed regions of the United States in which it will no longer be possible to get a mortgage. That is our future.
When your insurance premium goes up by hundreds or by thousands of dollars, that is Republican climate denial in action. When your grocery bill goes up because orange juice, sugar, coffee, chocolate, and olive oil are more expensive because of climate-related extreme weather, that is climateflation in action.
Before I yield, I will close with one last thought. We are where we are, entering the era of climate consequences, because American politics failed to get this right. Our political system failed because the American political process became corrupted by the big money influence of the fossil fuel industry. Our politics got corrupted, and that is why we have so grievously failed at addressing climate change.
We have Senators here from States whose State universities teach climate
Mr. President, history will look back at us with anger and disgust, justifiably.
I yield the floor to my wonderful senior colleague from Rhode Island.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I rise to join my colleague Senator Whitehouse, the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee and the foremost voice for sensible climate policies, someone who for years has warned us of the approaching dangers of climate change and today once again has demonstrated his great insights-- particularly with respect to the cost to homeowners--of climate change. He is raising the alarm about President Trump's environmental policy and the effect it will have on the health and well-being of Americans. I want to thank him for his leadership on this important issue.
Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his Agency would move to repeal 31 environmental and health protections. This Trump environmental plan will undo restrictions on air pollution from powerplants, cars, and trucks. It would allow harmful discharges into our water systems, relax restrictions on emissions of mercury and other known neurotoxins, ease limits on soot and haze pollution, and the list goes on and on and on.
These rollbacks appear to be a quid pro quo for President Trump's fossil fuel donors, whom he reportedly asked to donate a billion dollars to his campaign last year.
One of Trump's most concerning proposals is the repeal of the EPA's longstanding scientific finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants. After losing in the Supreme Court in 2006, the fossil fuel industry has been out to overturn this so-called endangerment finding for nearly two decades. Repealing it would degrade the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, meaning it could no longer act to curb emissions from vehicle exhaust, factories, powerplants, and many, many more locations. Relaxing these standards will result in more pollutants in our air and in our water.
The fact is, these pollutants are not just numbers on a chart; they are the reason millions of Americans are suffering from asthma, heart disease, and other respiratory conditions. Several studies have shown that air pollution can negatively impact maternal health and lead to miscarriages and low birth weights. These health impacts will particularly harm low-income communities, where the effects are disproportionately severe.
Mr. Zeldin claims these actions will ``unleash American energy,'' but really they will just unleash more pollution on the American people. Mr. Zeldin claims that these actions will drive down costs for American families, but the evidence shows otherwise. Indeed, EPA previously found that for every $1 the country spends to reduce air pollution, it is estimated to yield $30 in economic benefits in return.
These actions will worsen climate change and contribute to more flooding and coastal erosion, which have cost homes and businesses in my home State of Rhode Island millions of dollars in just the past few years.
Mr. Zeldin claims that by rolling back these protections, he is simply giving power back to the States, but we know that pollution does not respect State lines.
We are all in this together to protect our air, water, and human health. The Trump administration is taking us backwards and hurting hard-working families in the process.
I firmly oppose the Trump EPA's misguided plan and will continue to join Senator Whitehouse and my other colleagues in pushing back against this administration's harmful agenda.
Once again, let me salute Senator Whitehouse for his leadership on this critical--indeed, this existential--issue.
I yield the floor to Senator Welch.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues. You know, this issue of the environment is being completely--completely--ignored. Worse than that, the problems we have in our environment are being intensified by what the Trump administration is doing.
You know the EPA mission is clear. It is about protecting human health and the environment. EPA regulations are intended, in some cases, to prevent mercury--that is what I am talking about-- contaminating our drinking water. They protect us--some of those regulations--from toxic gases, soot, and ash polluting out of the air.
They keep lead out of our drinking water and asbestos out of our homes, and they do help fight climate change and prevent premature deaths caused by pollution.
Now, there is a mantra in the Trump administration that regulations are bad--bad. There is not a single Member of this Senate--and that includes every single Democrat--who is not willing to make the most efficient regulations we can have to do the job that needs to be done to protect the health and safety.
If there are regulations that need to be looked at, they need to be revised, they need to be reformed, let's do it. But the idea that the Federal Government would turn a blind eye to active pollution that is produced because it results in profit to the polluters is something not a single Member of this body should ever tolerate--ever, ever, ever.
What you are seeing from the administration is that the repeal of these regulations is not about improving them; it is about giving license to the polluters.
You know, Mr. President, shouldn't the polluter pay for the pollution that a polluter causes? Should large corporations have free rein to pollute our air and water, contaminating the environment, threatening the health and welfare of our kids?
The Trump administration is trying to decimate the Agency that has protected us and the environment since the 1970s. Let me just emphasize: It is not their intention to reform it or to improve it. It is to, basically, destroy it.
That is why the President has fired the members of EPA's Scientific Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Get rid of the scientists is the answer they present as a way of getting rid of pollution. It doesn't work that way.
So as I said, I have absolutely not only no problem, but I am completely--completely--committed to doing anything I can to make regulations to be practical and effective. I am absolutely, adamantly opposed to giving polluters a free rein to make profit at the expense of the health and welfare of the people that I represent and that we all represent.
Nowhere is the Trump administration more clear than their attempt to rescind the endangerment finding, which affirms that greenhouse gases pose a threat to the health and welfare of the American people. That was a finding based on science
You know, it is one thing if you don't like the finding. It is another thing to deny that the finding has a solid basis in fact and science. You can pretend climate change doesn't exist. You can pretend dirty air doesn't exist. You can pretend dangerous water doesn't exist.
You won't be able to breathe it or drink it for too long without finding out that you are wrong. But when you are the President and you have a responsibility to the health and welfare of the American people, that is not a luxury you are entitled to take.
Firing the EPA scientists on the SAB and on the CASAC, that won't change the facts. You can fire the scientists, but you can't change the facts. But it is the preference of the administration to want to blatantly ignore those facts so they can follow through on the President's campaign promise and make it easier for the polluters to pollute.
Mr. President, I oppose--and oppose firmly--the Trump administration's attempts to weaken the EPA. I will always support making it more efficient, more effective, but the mission that the EPA has--an organization started during the Nixon administration--is to protect the health and welfare of the American people. And we can never step back from our commitment to do that.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, before I begin my remarks, I want to take a few
Bob is a paragon of public service--commuting each day more than 100 miles from Connecticut to Boston to serve Massachusetts' small businesses.
For 26 years, Bob has helped small businesses recover from everything from the economic downturn after 9/11 to the great recession of 2008 to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bob is known for giving small business owners his direct cell phone number so that they never have to go through a moment of uncertainty.
His career is a testament to the impact that steady and passionate public service can have on everyday people and local economies.
Everyone who has worked with Bob respects him; and that goes for me, my staff, and all of the SBA employees that he has worked with over all of the years and the thousands of small businesses that he has helped during those years.
Bob Nelson is a small business champion, and because of him, countless business entrepreneurs and communities are strengthening our Nation, creating jobs, and making our economy the envy of the world.
Thank you, Bob--thank you, Bob--for everything that you have done, for bringing a public servant's heart to your work, and for your many years of service making the Massachusetts Small Business Administration district office the best in the Nation.
Mr. President, over the last 2 months, the Trump administration has made one thing painfully clear: They do not have an ``all of the above'' energy strategy. They have an ``oil above all'' energy strategy--oil above the law, above the economy, above the health and wallets of working families in our Nation.
Gas prices are up. Electricity bills are up. Home heating costs are up. Yet instead of investing in working families, Donald Trump is launching a full-scale assault on the very programs designed to bring costs down and create jobs, all while spewing baseless lies that begin in the White House and then spread across his entire administration, but especially focused on his energy policy.
At the Department of Energy, staff have been ordered to draw up a hit list of clean energy programs--programs Congress already funded, programs workers are counting on.
These are not hypothetical investments. These are real dollars that could unleash real jobs and real benefits for communities across the country. And now they are being sacrificed to serve a political agenda that rewards polluters and punishes the public.
Nowhere was this agenda more proudly displayed than at this week's CERAWeek--or as I like to call it, the Olympics of oil--where Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave a speech that would make Big Oil blush. Although, it is more likely that they just turned with a flush because of the incredible way in which they were treated.
Big Oil had a big treat coming from the speech by Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Let's take a moment to fact-check Secretary of Energy Chris Wright's Big Oil-sponsored big lies at CERAWeek in Houston.
Chris Wright said:
False. Chris Wright is wrong. When Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, we invested in solutions that centered smart communities and a livable future. Since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, the clean energy boom has created more than 400,000 new jobs and spurred $420 billion in investments, most of it in red districts; 70 to 80 percent of the funding is in red districts. That is a people-powered economy.
That is an ``all of the above'' strategy. Everyone is included. So if we are talking myopic, look no further than Trump. It is the pot calling the kettle black.
Trump has been exclusively focused on tax breaks for the rich with extensive collateral damage. New reporting shows that more than 50,000 energy jobs have been lost or stalled since Trump was elected and that over $56 billion in U.S. clean energy investments were canceled or stalled in that same time.
If he continues down this road and guts the IRA, he will be driving an estimated 790,000 jobs off a cliff while wiping $160 billion from our economy by 2030 and raising household energy costs by $32 billion over the next decade.
In other words, President Trump and his energy policy are engaging in economic sabotage. So let's continue fact-checking Secretary Wright.
Secretary Wright also said in that speech:
The truth: Renewables powered 30 percent of the world's electricity in 2023. Got it? Not 3 percent; 30 percent of the world's electricity in 2023. And in the first 9 months of 2024, 96 percent of all new electrical generation capacity installed in the United States was renewable--wind, solar, battery--96 percent of all new electrical generation capacity installed, with the majority actually coming from solar. It is the fastest growing, cheapest energy out there.
Big Oil isn't just losing its monopoly; it simply cannot compete. The natural gas industry, they are petrified. Can you imagine if you are saying: Well, we are the only way in the future in which you can have predictable electricity which is generated; natural gas is the answer-- when in 2024, 96 percent of all new electrical-generating capacity was wind and solar and battery storage technology?
If you knew that, for 10 years in a row, the natural gas industry is facing an existential moment, that is what they are afraid of. They are afraid of competition. They are afraid of alternative energy sources. Oil, gas, and coal, they got a tax break for 100 years from the Federal Government, and they were able to squash all of the competition over all of those years.
But when finally we leveled the playing field and the alternatives show out that are nonpolluting, that don't have any greenhouse gases to go up into the planet, that don't warm the planet, all of a sudden, we are hearing: The Secretary of Energy in the Trump administration is lying about that? Because they have to lie. Otherwise, they would have to explain why they are planning on killing hundreds of thousands of new jobs in these industries, which are absolutely bursting at the seams.
But, wait, there is more. Here is what else Secretary Wright said at the SARA conference down in Texas:
Once again, false. False. The fact, however, is that onshore wind is the cheapest source of new electricity in America. It has been for nearly a decade. It beats fossil fuels even without subsidies and costs half as much as new natural gas on average.
Again, existential threat to the natural gas industry--onshore wind beat it in the marketplace every day for 10 years in a row.
So what is Secretary Wright saying? He is saying he is going to lead the effort to kill it and to kill solar--to kill all of it. And building new solar? Well, it is cheaper than running existing coal or building new gas projects in the United States. Solar is winning in the marketplace, and it is frightening to the natural gas industry--just absolutely frightening. It is fossil fuel volatility that has hammered families at the pump and on their power bills, with fossil fuel exports going to the highest bidder abroad. Now, in my home State of Massachusetts, many gas bills are double what they were last year. That is unacceptable.
Let's keep going with the fact checks.
In a pathetic attempt to justify the benefits of deadly pollution, Secretary of Energy Wright said:
Then he said:
Well, let me be clear. In the United States, climate-fueled disasters already kill more than 1,300 people every year. More CO2 doesn't mean more life; it means more floods, more fires, suffering, deaths. There was $300 billion worth of damage between Hurricane
So let's talk about the real tradeoffs. Clean air traded for asthma. Safe homes traded for billion-dollar climate disasters. Lower bills traded for Big Oil windfall profits. This administration has made its tradeoff clear: your future for their profit. That is Trump's art of the deal, and what a great deal for the oil, gas, and coal industry. All they have to do is just raise money for Donald Trump, and in return, they kill the competitors which are killing the oil, gas, and coal industry in the market.
Adam Smith is spinning in his grave so fast that he would actually qualify for a tax break under an IRA. That is how much they are lying about the marketplace and how it is responding to finally the incentives that are there to compete against oil, gas, and coal, which brings us to the Environmental Protection Agency because what is a fossil-fueled agenda without a full-on assault on the very Agency tasked with protecting our air and our water and our climate?
Two weeks ago, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that he is taking more than 30 actions to unravel our bedrock environmental safeguards in a nauseating attempt to shock and awe us into submission. These are the regulations that keep our air breathable and our water drinkable. These are the standards that keep us healthy instead of sick. And all so that their Big Oil BFFs can make a few more big bucks while the rest of us will foot the bill with our health conditions that will be created by these fossil fuels, these pollutants going up into the atmosphere.
These rollbacks are not a revolution for American progress and energy; they are a return to the same, tired fossil-fueled program of the past. For starters, they are attempting to eliminate EPA's authority to regulate dangerous greenhouse gases based on the threat they pose to public health or welfare--known as the endangerment finding.
This finding came from a Supreme Court ruling in my very own home State, which brought the case to the Supreme Court--Massachusetts v. EPA--in 2007, which said something we all know: Greenhouse gases pose an ``actual'' and ``imminent'' threat to people everywhere.
And it doesn't stop there. They are hoping to roll back air quality standards for particulate matter pollution that are projected to avoid 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma over just 6 years. That is all going to get wiped out if they have their way.
We are going to fight them, by the way. We are going to fight them every single step of the way on this dangerous, health-endangering strategy which they are seeking to put on the books.
They are aiming to gut wastewater regulations so coal plants can contaminate the water we drink from and swim in. They are trying to pump the brakes on clean car and truck regulations that reduce harmful air pollutants and save families money at the pump. The list goes on and on.
They are dismantling the Federal Government before our very eyes. This isn't about efficiency; this is about sacrificing the health of our communities for the health of their pocketbooks.
And just like Energy Secretary Chris Wright's speech, we know it is a lie. They aren't making America great again; they are selling America to the highest bidder--to the oil and gas and coal industry. That is what they are doing. They are just selling us out. We must continue to speak up for the truth and continue to fight.
The natural gas industry--they are threatened by a wind and solar and battery revolution that will generate the electricity we need in our country. Natural gas doesn't like it. They want to kill it.
The oil industry--we put 70 percent of all the oil we consume into gasoline tanks. They don't want to see the all-electric vehicle revolution continue to grow exponentially. They are going to try to kill that, too, so that we do not have that reduction in the amount of oil we put into the cars we drive around our country that spew that pollution up into the sky.
So the oil and gas industry--they go to the White House, they go to Donald Trump, they go to Mar-a-Lago in order to get the protection they need against competition, the protection they need against clean energy, the protection they need against the creation of a million new clean energy jobs in our country that should be our future. And it is what young people want more than anything else. They want that revolution. They are the Green New Deal revolution. That is what they want. They want to see it happen.
Because it is happening, oil and gas are having, unfortunately, this White House, Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, his entire Cabinet, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin--all of them just dismantle all of the protections which have been put on the books over a generation.
This is a historic moment, and all we can say to you, oil, gas, and coal; all we can say to you, Trump White House, is that we are going to fight. We are not going away.
There is a young generation out there that is rising up, and they are not happy with what is happening in this White House. They do not want to see their future sold for campaign contributions from polluters in our country.
So we are ready to fight, and we are going to align ourselves with the young people in our country that want a different future, a better future, a clean future, and that is what we are going to get because we will not lose.
I can't thank Senator Whitehouse enough for being our leader on the Environment and Public Works Committee and for bringing us out here this evening to have this incredibly important, historic discussion about the direction of our Nation.
Thank you.
Would the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts yield for a question?
I would love to have a conversation with the Senator from Rhode Island.
Well, you referenced the value to the fossil fuel industry of being able to run to Congress or run to the White House and throw money around and, as a result of that expenditure on politicians, earn the right to pollute for free and get enormous competitive advantage against clean energy.
The industry clearly spends a lot of money. We know they spent a hundred million dollars getting Trump elected. He asked them for a billion dollars, which could have come through dark money, in order to deliver on this subsidy program they want.
How lucrative do you think the fossil fuel political operation is?
I think it is the most well-financed lobbying effort in Washington, DC. I think they have had an ownership of this building for a hundred years, and they are afraid it is about to slip away. Would the gentleman from Rhode Island agree with me?
I would not be surprised, actually, if the political lobbying and dark money influence operation of the fossil fuel industry was not actually its most lucrative line of business because for the $1 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion spent manipulating our politics, they protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, according to the International Monetary Fund. That is a $100 return every year for every $1 invested. They don't make that much off their tar sands. They don't make that much off their oil wells. They don't make that much off their methane leaks.
You know, the Senator from Rhode Island is wise and precise in his analysis of the agenda of these companies.
The Senator from Rhode Island and I have for 12 years led the effort, along with the Senator from Connecticut, to have offshore wind all along the Atlantic coast, and the Biden administration put in place a plan to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind.
What Donald Trump, what Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, and the Secretary of Interior are now planning is to kill that entire revolution capturing the winds that blew the Pilgrims to our shores, capturing the wind that had the whaling crews go out in order to fuel the energy of the 19th century. But when it wants to be used for the energy of the 21st century, the oil and gas and coal industry say: Absolutely not. We can't allow that to happen.
Why can't they allow it to happen? Because it would replace natural gas-
So what is Donald Trump doing? After receiving tens and tens of millions of dollars in contributions from the natural gas industry, led by Harold Hamm, who promised Trump--the No. 1 natural gas guy in America--that he would raise the money for him in the campaign, well, the payoff, the payback is, kill offshore wind.
So they say ``all of the above''--nah, they don't mean ``all of the above.''
Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, says: People really don't like wind, so we have to make an exception because people don't like wind.
Do you know who doesn't like wind? The natural gas industry. They hate wind. They hate it because it is the competition, because it is working, because it is cheaper, and because it is also cleaner, in the same way the oil industry hates the all-electric vehicle revolution because it kills oil as a business as we move to a renewable way of generating electricity that then powers the vehicles we have in America.
So the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee as usual has just put his finger right on the problem, and it is the money that is sloshing through Mar-a-Lago and Washington, DC, the White House. It is an absolute disgrace, and I can't thank him enough for bringing this up on the floor for a full exposition.
And we welcome our colleague from Connecticut to join the festivities here on the Senate floor.
All three States are downwind States from the pollution of the Midwest, of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio. There is nothing we can do about it, other than breathe in the waste that they don't clean up.
What does that mean by ``downwind,'' just so people can understand it? What do you mean by that?
Well, it means that the prevailing winds that blow over West Virginia, that blow over Pennsylvania, that blow over Ohio, blow over their smoke stacks that have been deliberately built high into the air so that the pollution coming out of the smoke stacks gets caught up in those prevailing winds and ends up falling down in the form of ozone and particulate matter in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, and in Rhode Island. And the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection can do nothing about it because those States have chosen to put it up into the sky above them so that it lands on us.
And it blows into the lungs of the people in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
I yield to the Senator from Connecticut.
A perfect segue to my remarks, if I may be recognized, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, it is the perfect segue to my remarks because ``downwind'' means we are the recipient of their air and their pollution, which are the small particulates. They are often the size of, literally, a quarter of the head of a pin, and the reason that they are so dangerous is that they are inhaled to the very deepest parts of our lungs, where they do the most damage.
And so I am grateful to be talking about the good neighbor rule. That is actually the purpose of my coming to the floor, to talk about the rule that applies to those powerplants and States that are supposed to be good neighbors. And, according to this rule, they would be good neighbors, but the EPA is rolling it back, withdrawing it.
And so I am grateful to be here with two champions, my great friend and neighbor the Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, who has made this battle a constant struggle from his seat on the floor, in meetings, in townhalls, in forums, literally, around the world; and my neighbor from Massachusetts, the author of the Green New Deal, which I was proud to join in its first day and still represents a milestone in environmental advocacy. And we are here today to advocate.
I am joyous, even though saddened by the need to be here--joyous--to be amongst this band of brothers and sisters who are going to stand strong and steadfast against the Trump administration's sellout.
You heard it from Senators Whitehouse and Markey: These rollbacks are a gift. They are literally a payback to the lobby--the anti-environment lobby, the fuel and oil and gas lobby--that has so infiltrated and permeated our government, including, now, the Environmental Protection Agency.
And so let me begin by highlighting for people who care, and that should be everyone. It really should be everyone who has children, who will inherit the mess we are creating. It should be everyone who cares about the planet and what we are leaving for others, our stewardship of the environment.
The EPA is becoming a shell. Literally 65 percent of its workforce has been fired; 65 percent are planned to go. There is no way that the EPA, as a law enforcement Agency, can function with the remaining 35 percent of its staff.
But perhaps most egregiously, the Administrator of the EPA announced, just 2 weeks ago, that he was targeting 31 climate and health protections to roll back. He called it ``the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.'' He said it was the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. In my view, it is a day that will live in environmental infamy. It marks a step back by decades.
And for people who think, well, we need some disruptors like Elon Musk, who is behind these steps to decimate the Agency, disruption can sometimes be constructive, but not when you burn down the house, burn down an Agency, burn down a framework of laws that have been carefully built and reflect not only an intellectual commitment but also a deliberately constructed way to balance the needs of environment and energy and other interests that serve the public.
This administration is destroying that balance. It is easy to destroy things. It is easy to burn down a house. It is much harder to construct it. And this administration is blatantly and malignly and cruelly destructive, firing 65 percent of a workforce that has dedicated itself to caring about the environment and acting on our statutes to protect the environment.
So let's just call it what it is. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are using Lee Zeldin--I am tempted to say he is their puppet; certainly, he is their instrument--to take a wrecking ball to environmental protections that have safeguarded Americans from toxic air and water pollution for decades.
And so, far from ensuring clean land, water, and air for all, Elon Musk and EPA are giving Donald Trump's big polluters a carte blanche to trash the planet--no exaggeration, really. I mean, come right down to it. Let's call it for what it is. The administration is running roughshod over our Federal environmental protection laws, writ large.
I am going to focus today, as I mentioned just moments ago, on one of the rules that EPA is rolling back: the Good Neighbor Plan. And it is appropriately called the Good Neighbor Plan because it is a landmark environmental protection law that literally safeguards Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, and other States of New England against the pollution generated in Ohio and other Midwestern States that is brought by the prevailing winds.
The polluters didn't create those prevailing winds, but, nonetheless, the pollution is carried on them toward the east coast. The funny thing about those little pieces of soot created in fuel-burning powerplants is they have no respect for State boundaries, none.
I don't know why. You know, we have in Connecticut--as Rhode Island and Massachusetts do--strong laws that protect our air and water. And those pieces of soot, the nitrogen, the other pollutants have no respect for our boundaries.
The Clean Air Act, through its good neighbor provision, empowers the EPA to step in when States' emissions are significantly contributing to the air quality problems of another State.
In 2023, the EPA released its final Good Neighbor Plan, which would ensure 23 States meet the Clean Air Act's good neighbor requirements by reducing pollution that significantly impacts downwind States, like Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
Connecticut has some of the worst air quality in the country--let's be honest here--largely due to pollution traveling from powerplants in the Midwestern States. Data shows that anywhere from 90 to 95 percent of air pollution impacting Connecticut on high ozone days originates from outside our State, and it is causing serious harm to Connecticut and our residents. Last year, Connecticut exceeded the Federal health standards for ozone on 23 different days. That is almost a month out of the year.
Three of Connecticut's cities--Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport-- rank within the top 100 most challenging cities to live with asthma last year. That is according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America Annual Report. One of the top 100 most challenging cities in which to live with asthma is a pretty lamentable distinction.
These consequences are cumulative. They mean more hospital visits, more healthcare costs, more missed school and workdays, and, ultimately, more serious illnesses, more premature deaths.
They are the equivalent of imposing second-hand smoke on children or people with asthma or other kinds of respiratory problems.
Zeldin, Musk, and Trump's rollback was touted as lowering the cost of living for Americans--lowering the cost of living. It is going to do just the opposite.
Not only is protecting the environment the right thing to do for our planet; it also benefits America economically. The EPA projected: In 2026, the first year the Good Neighbor Plan was set to be implemented, Americans would see significant health benefits because of this rule, including preventing approximately 1,300 premature deaths, avoiding more than 2,300 hospital and emergency room visits, cutting asthma symptoms by 1.3 million cases, and avoiding 430,000 school absence days and 25,000 lost workdays.
One estimate found that this Good Neighbor Plan would provide over $16.2 billion in net monetary benefits when you count the hospital visits, the lost workdays, the school days, the doctors' treatments-- all that adding to $16.2 billion. That is no bargain for the United States of America. What you may say on day 1, you pay in multiples on day 5 or 10, throughout the year.
Only the Federal Government is empowered to protect the people of the United States who live downwind from these powerplants. Connecticut cannot do it, nor can Massachusetts, nor Rhode Island on their own. It is legally and physically impossible.
But protection is impossible if Musk and Trump, through Lee Zeldin, roll back this rule. And let's be, again, honest about what is happening here. This Good Neighbor Plan rollback is part of a larger pattern and practice to undermine and undercut and eventually eviscerate environmental protections. It is the reason they are firing 60 percent of the EPA's workforce. It is the reason why they are slashing and trashing other Agencies that are vital to environmental protection. It comes as Trump's EPA has moved to cancel hundreds of grants for climate projects across the country.
For every action they take to chip away at our bedrock environmental protection, the world is less healthy. The world is less healthy and our planet is more endangered.
I urge my colleagues to stand in strong opposition to the Musk-Trump- Zeldin shameless attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and on our environment.
I yield the floor.
Would the Senator from Connecticut yield?
Thank you. What I would like to talk about a little bit, if I could, with you and Senator Whitehouse, is this pollution agenda that they have for us in New England, that they have writ large for the whole country as well.
Let's just take solar energy. In 2009, the total amount of solar ever deployed in the United States was 2,000 megawatts. That was it. In 2024, 40,000 megawatts was deployed. It is scaring the natural gas industry. Combined with battery storage, it is just saying that New England doesn't have to import any more natural gas, any more pollution. Slowly but surely, in other parts of the country, they, too, will deploy wind and solar with batteries and reduce the amount of pollution that is sent up into the atmosphere that blows our way on the east coast from the Midwest.
It actually is more economical for us. It is actually a job creator for us because the jobs are actually in New England, not in other States. We are doing it for ourselves offshore, on the roofs of people's homes, out along the highways as we deploy these renewable energy resources. It is absolutely frightening to them.
In the same way--I will add this number, too--in 2009, there were a grand total of 2,000 total all-electric vehicles in the United States. That was all we had from Henry Ford to 2009, 2,000 all-electric vehicles. Why? Because the auto industry said we can't figure it out. It is just too hard.
Then we put the incentives in place. The battery technologies were given incentives. There were incentives to buy all-electric vehicles. Last year, there were about one and a half million all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids sold in America, not just 2,000 total sold a year ago.
So the direction is absolutely vertical. It is just taking off exponentially. And, again, with it goes a reduction in greenhouse gases, especially as each year goes by and more and more of those technologies are employed.
I think that what Senator Whitehouse has done on the floor over and over again, just bringing out the fundamental corruption of how policies are made in the energy and environment sector, it just becomes more and more true as we are only 8 weeks into the Trump administration. But we can see that, almost like an Old Testament prophet, Sheldon Whitehouse has been shining a light on this corruption, and now it has all come to pass.
I can't thank the Senator from Connecticut enough for his great leadership on these issues. We kind of consider ourselves to be innovation States. We are going to figure this out. And as we figure it out, it is absolutely frightening to those States that have been producing energy for generations--good for them and good for their citizens--but if we figure it out as well, we should not be stopped any more than we stopped them in the 20th century. We should be allowed to innovate in the 21st century what they are trying to put in place.
The policies purchased from the Trump administration that block us from those issues, which were not just for ourselves, but like many other things invented in New England over the years, we can export them around the world. We can be the world leader in the development of and then export of all these technologies.
I can't thank you enough, Senator Whitehouse, for your great leadership on the floor.
I am delighted to be joined by all of you.
I would make an observation of my own. I think Senator Blumenthal wants to join in. The observation I want to make is our three States are known for great universities--Yale University in New Haven, CT; Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; and Brown University in Providence, RI. They all teach climate science, and they all teach economics as well.
But it is not just those three universities. If you go across the aisle and check in with our Republican colleagues, with their Republican home States, they have great universities in their own States, including State universities. And their State universities in their home States teach the very climate science that Republican Senators deny on the Senate floor.
I have been through the syllabuses of home State universities for Republican colleagues and gone through the classes that teach climate science, and they teach economics. And you can go to Milton Friedman, the famous free market conservative economist, and what does he say about pollution? He says the cost of the pollution has to be in the price of the product or else it is a big fat subsidy, and it is not market economics any longer. It is a government
The climate science is real. Their own State universities teach it, and the economics is real. Their own State universities teach Milton Friedman. And what they are doing in this building, contrary to what their universities know, is to fight with political power, to keep polluting, and have the public bear all the cost of their pollution-- have the public bear all the cost of their pollution, not be a real market economy--which the price of the pollution, as a negative externality, gets baked into the price of the product--but pollute for free.
This is a huge pollute-for-free scam, running to about $700 billion every year. So no wonder it has taken a while for wind and solar to take off fighting the headwinds of a multihundred billion-dollar subsidy from an industry that gets to pollute for free.
And who bears all those costs? How are your fishermen doing in Long Island Sound as that water has warmed or mine or yours? And that is just one example.
If the Senator from Rhode Island would yield.
I would add a footnote to that important conversation, which is they teach economics, and they teach that those externalities are, in effect, a subsidy if they aren't charged to the consumer and made transparent. But they can also distort the market.
When those subsidies caused consumers to buy cars that are more polluting or to use fuel that is more contaminating to our environment, they also avoid the benefits, the public-interest benefits, of cleaner fuel and better cars.
Just to give you an illustration, for many years, Senator Markey and I crusaded for safer cars--cars that were better built, cars that had seatbelts, cars that had airbags. The industry resisted--almost comically now in retrospect--because once they started installing these devices, once they made cars safe, you know what they found? Consumers wanted safer cars. They also wanted cars that were more energy efficient.
Lo and behold, when they saw the benefits of these kinds of energy- saving and environmentally friendly measures, consumers voted with their feet and their wallets and their dollars.
If we did not have these kinds of hidden subsidies, consumers would vote for electric cars if there were more charging stations, if there were batteries that took them longer distances without having to recharge.
I am kind of surprised that the President of the United States isn't having a showroom on the White House lawn for all electric vehicles, not just for Elon Musk's Tesla. Why not provide that kind of boost and elevation for electric vehicles generally? And the car manufacturers would bet on cleaner cars if they were given the true cost and enabled to enjoy the true benefits of electric cars generally, not just the ones produced by a billionaire--unelected, unappointed official, unconfirmed official--acting, in effect, on behalf of Donald Trump with Lee Zeldin as his instrument to fire hard-working people at the EPA and to roll back rules that benefit consumers.
I thank my colleagues for their colloquy.
I see the Senator from South Carolina, whose time we are intruding on, has come to the floor.
We yield to Senator Scott.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. President, I rise to talk in favor of my CRA on the overdraft fees.
President Biden and his politically motivated junk fee conversation was not about helping consumers. It was about trying to change the conversation away from the devastation that inflation was bringing to kitchen table after kitchen table after kitchen table all across America. The average American, because of Bidenflation, lost $1,000- plus in spending power, devastated by the Biden economy.
President Biden looked for something to change the conversation and it changed something called junk fees. One of the junk fees he talked about was the overdraft fee. Now, some would say: What is an overdraft fee? Your bank account goes beyond zero; you have to pay a fee; your bills are paid. Some people who live paycheck to paycheck use their overdraft option to pay their rent.
So when you start capping these fee structures, you start eliminating overdraft. You start eliminating the possibility of people working paycheck to paycheck to make the decision--to make the decision--to continue to use their resources in the most effective way.
Unfortunately, President Biden's devastating economy has reverberated for years now. This overdraft conversation is a critically important conversation, if you are, like me, a guy who grew up in poverty, single-parent household, who understands the difficulty, the challenge of single moms making those ends meet. I want every single hard-working American to have access to our financial system. That sometimes includes, as it did for us, free checking.
A free checking account is not free, but with the revenue streams coming into the institutions, they can use those revenues as an option to provide free checking for those living paycheck to paycheck.
Overturning the Biden CFPB's overdraft fee structure is good for consumers.
Let me just quote from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that confirmed the overdraft fee caps hinder financial inclusion. As a study stated:
To do the right thing for the working class is to give them all the options and let them decide. Trust them with their own resources. That is in the best interest of our Nation, and that is why I am offering this CRA tonight.
I yield back all time on Calendar No. 27, H.J. Res. 25.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to 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?
Mr. President, 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 bill clerk called the roll.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 70, nays 28, as follows:
The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 25) was passed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to Calendar No. 27, H.J. Res. 25, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
