Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1582, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express concerns that I have heard from many stakeholders regarding the Make America Healthy Again Commission. For short, this is called the MAHA Commission. Their report will be coming out tomorrow.
The concerns that I have heard from food and agriculture stakeholders center around the difficulty that they have had getting meetings with the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS Secretary Kennedy is the Chair of the MAHA Commission.
Many people fear that the contents of this report will not be based on sound science, that it will be based on opinions and fears instead of scientific consensus.
When I met with Secretary Kennedy before his confirmation--and that is a traditional thing to do--we discussed things like pesticides, genetically modified crops and other important components that come together to ensure the United States has the largest and safest food supply on the globe, and how all those things center on making the life of the farmer producing food as easy as possible. Now, Secretary Kennedy agreed that these tools farmers use are necessary for that food supply.
The MAHA report should be based upon sound science. I believe that Department of Agriculture Secretary Rollins and EPA Administrator Zeldin have had robust input on this report and that they would advocate for the 2 percent of Americans that feed the other 98 percent and the tools that are used to produce the food supply that feeds America.
We want to remember that we have the reputation of producing food so that the expendable income of--the average family in the United States spends roughly 10 or 11 percent of their discretionary money on food-- the cheapest of any consumers in the world.
So I want everybody to know that I am watching this report closely that is coming out tomorrow, and I hope it reflects what Secretary Kennedy told me when I met with him in my office and he stands by his word.
I hope there is nothing in the MAHA report that jeopardizes our food supply or the livelihood of farmers or jeopardizes the food supply--to emphasize--for the 98 percent of Americans that buy and depend on the food that the 2 percent of Americans that are farmers produce.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
Mr. President, as you know, in its final days in office, the Biden administration gave California--the liberal State of California--permission to export its far-left electric vehicle mandate to the entire country. This week, this Senate will end California's mandate madness.
Now, I listened to some of the Democrats' arguments on the floor yesterday. There was a lot of huffing and puffing going on about the sanctity of the Government Accountability Office and about the filibuster, which, let me
What nobody who tuned in heard is what these California rules would actually do to our country. Why not, Mr. President? Isn't that why Democrats are really so panicked? Isn't that why Democrats and Joe Biden waited until after the election--after they lost the election in the House, the Senate, and the White House--to spring this whole thing on the American people? They were losers going out the door, and they said: We are coming after you, the American people, with our leftist dreams.
Isn't that why they spent months coordinating this release with their allies at the GAO--so they could avoid or at least try to avoid Senate scrutiny under the Congressional Review Act? Isn't that what they were really up to? Well, it is what they were up to.
So why are the Democrats so darn desperate to talk about anything and everything except what these punishing rules will actually do to America, American workers, and the American economy? Let me tell you why.
California EV mandates ban--ban, ban--the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks. No more in America--gas-powered trucks. Can you imagine that in Oklahoma or in my home State of Wyoming? They threaten--the Democrats want to threaten the freedom of every American to choose what they drive. That is what this is about.
EVs currently make up 7 percent--7 percent--of the U.S. market. Even in California, they account for only 20 percent of vehicle sales. And do you know what else? The sales are stalling. They are stalling out. People don't want these. Even with the big government subsidies, people don't want to buy these things. Yet California's radical mandates require that by next year--it is coming; we are already into May of this year. By next year, by January, all vehicle sales in the State of California--35 percent of them have to be electric. That is 6 months from now, 7 months from now. By 2035, it would be 100 percent of vehicle sales in California have to be electric, with big penalties if it doesn't meet that.
For the people that are making the cars that people don't want to buy, this is a whole new meaning in California of fantasyland. That is what we are dealing with here.
America can't meet these impossible standards--not next year, not in 10 years--and the American people don't want to meet those standards.
For carmakers, the consequences are severe. If you don't sell enough electric vehicles--California is saying to them and to the other States that sign on to this--even when Americans don't want to buy them, too bad. In California, these people will pay a fine of $20,000 per vehicle--$20,000 per vehicle because people don't want to buy what the government says they have to buy.
There are ways to avoid this fine, and one way is limiting the sales of gas-powered vehicles. Well, that is rationing. That is what we are seeing. The Democrats want to ration the sales of gas-powered vehicles to live in their fantasyland of everybody driving an electric vehicle.
The harms of this mandate extend way beyond just carmakers. The Democrat mandates would cost the economy about $100 billion a year-- $100 billion. The impact would be about 330,000 jobs lost.
The Democrat mandate would punish hard-working families. Prices would be higher. They are trying to buy these regular, gas-powered vehicles, but there would be fewer for sale. They would bury small businesses under crushing compliance costs.
In my home State of Wyoming and in rural States like ours, farmers and ranchers would suffer, both from EV's limited reliability and, clearly, from the limited range. People drive long distances in Wyoming to school, to the grocery store, to work.
Every American citizen would lose options, whether you live in California or not.
So you have the California EV mandates. The Democrats don't want to talk about that part of it. They are expensive, they are expansive, and they are economically destructive. They would hurt our economy, hurt our workers, and hurt the pocketbooks and purses of Mr. and Mrs. America.
This isn't just a California problem. It is a nationwide assault on gas-powered cars in America. The California mandates cover over 40 percent of all new cars in the country. They span 11 States, including big-population States--New York, New Jersey, here in the District of Columbia. All of them signed onto California's radical attempt to set a new national standard. So it is not just a California standard. Everyone is impacted.
The California Senators--the Members of this body--they actually brag about this overreach of this mandate on EVs. The junior Senator from California says he is ``very proud'' that his State's liberal agenda can control the country.
How many Members of this Senate--certainly on this side of the aisle--want to share the pride of California's liberal agenda controlling the country? The American public on election day rejected the liberal agenda of California--whether it comes to electric vehicles, whether it comes to open borders, whether it comes to sanctuary cities and sanctuary States, or their efforts to defund police. People have rejected, all across the country, the liberal agenda controlling our country.
So Democrats have this delusional dream. They want to eliminate gas- powered vehicles. The rest of us, we live in the real world. And that is what we are doing here today, because in the real world, gas-powered vehicles keep our farms running, keep our ranches growing, keep our businesses thriving, and keep our economy moving.
The Congressional Review Act provides the Senate a swift and permanent solution. With a simple majority here in the Senate, Congress can kill these rules and ban similar ones forever--not just the Senate, the House as well.
And the fight goes beyond party lines because it is not just about Republicans and Democrats. It is about common sense. It is about control. The House of Representatives voted on this. They wanted to end these punishing mandates.
How did the vote go? Well, every Republican voted to kill the mandate. Thirty-five House Democrats voted to kill this mandate, including Democrats from the State of California who realized just how impractical and expensive and impossible it would be to comply with what the Biden administration tried to force-feed the American people after they lost the election, lost the Presidency, lost the House, and lost the Senate.
A New York Democrat who voted with the Republicans and with these 35 other Democrats said: ``Out of touch with reality'' is what these California mandates are--``out of touch with reality.''
Even the junior Senator from Michigan, a Democrat, campaigned and won an election in 2024 against EV mandates. Well, we will see how she votes today on the floor of the Senate, after she campaigned last year in Michigan against the EV mandate.
Will she be against them today when we vote on this? Time will tell. She actually told voters: ``Drive what you want.'' We will see today if she really believes that, or if she says: Drive what you want, but you can only buy what I am demanding that you buy--an electric vehicle.
We will see it in the vote today.
Senate Democrats now want to force-feed electric vehicles to everyone in America. So Democrats are claiming the Congressional Review Act doesn't apply. They don't want to talk about the policy. They want to say: Well, the Congressional Review Act shouldn't apply.
These last-minute objections by Democrats are very flawed. What they are citing is a nonbinding observation--an observation--by the Government Accountability Office--an observation that said, for the first time in history, an Agency-submitted rule wasn't a rule. That is what they are saying. The argument collapses under scrutiny.
The Environmental Protection Agency submitted these rules as rules to Congress this year, after being released by the Biden administration in his final days in office. That is a fact. No one disputes it. The Democrats don't dispute it. They know what happened. They know they are trying to sneak one through. They know it.
Under the Congressional Review Act, that makes these rules subject to review--period, end of story. They are subject to review.
The GAO has no veto power over this body, the U.S. Senate--not a veto from the Congressional Review Act, not a veto under the Senate rules, not a veto under Senate precedent. They have no standing.
More troubling, the GAO's actions suggest bias because leftwing bureaucrats in the GAO rushed a response in only 13 days to prop up the mandates. How do we know that? Because we know they colluded with Senate Democrats to do so.
When Republicans challenged the GAO's observations, Senate Democrats turned to scare tactics now about the filibuster. It is ironic since every single Senate Democrat has either voted for or campaigned for eliminating the filibuster.
This Senate vote on the California EV mandates is not about Senate rules. It is about the Democrats' delusional dream to eliminate gas- powered vehicles forever. That is what they want. What their complaints are is a smokescreen to save a pillar of their Green New Deal.
You know, years ago, Congress created a fast-track procedure. It was actually in 1996. That is when the Congress passed the Congressional Review Act.
This week, the Senate must decide: Do we uphold our rights under the Congressional Review Act, or do we give the GAO a veto over Congressional Review Act now and forever?
Our decision is going to shape the future of the Congressional Review Act. Americans have spoken. They have rejected EV mandates in November at the ballot box. The House has acted in a bipartisan way, with 35 Democrats joining all the Republicans. And it is now up to the Senate to stop these EV mandates from taking hold on our Nation.
I want to thank my colleagues who led the effort: Chairman Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska, and Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
Together, we are going to reject this far-left cheerleading for more regulations, and we are going the protect consumers. We are going to protect affordability, and we are going to protect the authority of this institution.
It is time to end this California mandate madness.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant 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.
The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. President, Republicans are continuing our work on a reconciliation bill that delivers for the American people. And if I had to summarize this bill in one phrase, I would say it is about building a stronger America.
A stronger America is a safer America.
Last week, I discussed the importance of strengthening our border security, something we are addressing in our reconciliation bill. Today, I would like to discuss another aspect of that bill: strengthening our military to meet today's and tomorrow's threats.
The world has grown increasingly unstable in recent years. America's interests, our allies, and, worst of all, American servicemembers have come under attack. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran and its terrorist proxies have all grown more brazen.
Meanwhile, the previous administration regularly telegraphed weakness on the world stage and put investing in our military on the back burner.
There is never a time when we can afford to let our military readiness slide. But above all, at this time of increased instability, it is vital that we ensure that our military has the resources it needs to deter our enemies and defend our country.
ADM Samuel Paparo, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, last year called deterrence ``our highest duty.''
He said:
Let me just repeat that:
That is the kind of military we need to secure with this bill.
Our aim is to reverse the trend of underinvestment in our military, to rebuild our military capabilities, and to ensure that our adversaries will think long and hard before attacking us--in other words, peace through strength.
One area where that is especially critical is in our strategic competition with China. Leaders of the intelligence community testified this year that China represents the most comprehensive, robust military threat to U.S. national security. Its designs on Taiwan are obvious, and its brazen actions, from cybertheft and espionage to its aggressive territorial claims and its harassment of American pilots are alarming.
But we have allowed China to outpace us in building new military capabilities. China produces two submarines per year for every 1.4 submarines built in the United States. China can build naval surface warships three times faster than we can. And in the defining technologies of tomorrow's wars--space, AI, hypersonics, and cyber-- China is gaining quickly or already has an edge.
Republicans' reconciliation bill is about reestablishing the U.S. advantage in all those areas. We are going to invest in shipbuilding to expand and enhance our fleet. We will restock our munitions stockpiles and expand weapons production. We will modernize our nuclear deterrence and build a Golden Dome for missile defense here at home.
Our bill will expedite the delivery of innovative weapons to servicemembers on the frontlines. It will enhance the readiness of our military units and modernize infrastructure at depots and shipyards. And it will make improvements to servicemembers' quality of life.
To be clear, the investment we are making here in this bill, while critically important, is no substitute for robust annual defense funding levels. But it will help us catch up after years of the Biden administration's deprioritizing defense investments.
We can't afford to let our military readiness slide any further. We need to reverse the current trend and put our national security on a better trajectory for the future, and that is what our reconciliation bill will do.
A stronger America is a safer America, and that, Mr. President, is what Republicans intend to deliver.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant 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.
The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. President, so 100 days into Donald Trump's Presidency, America is plagued with deep problems. Donald Trump's trade war is sending prices up and up. Republicans are on the brink of taking away people's Medicaid. Trust in American leadership is in decline on the world stage. But what are Senate Republicans focusing on today? Today, Republicans are going nuclear to appease the fossil fuel industry and, at the same time, erode away the institution they profess to care about.
First, the facts: This week, Senate Republicans want to use a measure known as the Congressional Review Act--CRA for short--to repeal three vehicle emission waivers from California. These waivers have been used for decades and are vital for helping keep our air cleaner, our kids healthier, and to lessen our reliance on Big Oil.
Republicans have tried to get rid of California's emission waivers for a very long time. The fossil fuel industry--which knows it is in decline, which knows that clean energy is not only the cleaner wave of the future but the less costly wave of the future--but the fossil fuel industry hates them, hates
But what was made crystal clear today on the Senate floor through parliamentary inquiries I made to the Parliamentarian that the Senate Parliamentarian has advised both sides, Democrats and Republicans, that legislation to overturn these waivers does not--does not--qualify for expedited consideration under the Congressional Review Act. That means any legislation to repeal these waivers should be subject to a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
The Senate Parliamentarian, as we know, plays a vital role in keeping this institution whole. It is thankless work. Parliamentarians' advice and judgment on rules and procedures of this institution is indispensable to both parties. So Republicans face a choice: Do they adhere to Senate precedent, as they have long claimed to do, and find another way to pass their repeal or are they going to plow ahead, overrule the Parliamentarian, do the bidding of Big Oil, and further eat away at the Senate in the process?
Well, today we have our answer: Senate Republicans are going nuclear. Let's be very clear, to override the Parliamentarian and to use the CRA in the ways the Republicans propose is going nuclear--no ifs, ands, or buts.
And don't take my word for it. Let me read a quote from Leader Thune from just a few months ago when he was asked if he would advise his party against moving to override the Parliamentarian, Leader Thune said this:
Again, Leader Thune himself said: Overruling the Parliamentarian is akin to killing the filibuster, and that is just what the Republicans are proposing to do today.
Just yesterday, Leader Thune admitted that this step could ``create precedent for the future'' and what an awful precedent.
And in his first address as Republican leader, Leader Thune stood right here in the Chamber--I sat and listened--and promised that ``one of my priorities as leader will be to ensure that the Senate stays the Senate.''
Well, what happened to all of that? What happened to all the preaching we hear from the other side about norms and rules and precedent? Apparently, when the rules suit them, Republicans will preach about protecting precedent. But now that the rules are inconvenient, when they stand in the way of their ideological goals, Republicans say: Away with them.
Shameful. Shameful.
Republicans don't need to take the Senate down this road. They have other alternatives at their disposal. If they want to repeal these waivers, bring legislation to the floor. Have a debate. There is nothing that prohibits that. That is what should be done in the kind of regular order our Senate Republicans professed they were going to restore when they got here, when they got the majority here in January.
Make no mistake, this is not a narrow assertion of congressional authority, as Leader Thune claimed it was. Today, Republicans set a new precedent that cannot likely be reversed. Moving forward, Congressional Review Acts will be weaponized like never before. Today it is all about California emission waivers; tomorrow, the CRA could now be used to erase any policy from an Agency that the Trump administration doesn't like at a simple majority threshold. They could go after permits for oil and gas drilling; some on the other side wouldn't like that. They could eliminate healthcare innovation waivers that States use to get care to people through Medicaid and the ACA.
They could even use the CRAs to make it even harder to form a union. They could go after Agency actions that protect access to reproductive care, like making it harder to access the medication mifepristone. They could go after rules that protect access to reproductive care.
All of this and more could now be done at a simple majority threshold with an expanded CRA. And all that would need to happen is for Donald Trump to choose an Agency action or policy he doesn't like, stamp it with a label ``CRA,'' send it over to the Congress, and Republicans will bow in obeisance and repeal it at a simple majority threshold.
This, in other words, is a backdoor strategy from Republicans to make Project 2025 a reality. And mark my words, many of our Republican colleagues are going to not like having to vote on CRAs that Trump wants, and we will be able to get votes on them because of what the Republicans are attempting to do today.
It is the legislative branch ceding authority over to the executive if we go forward with this, and Republicans should tread carefully. What goes around comes around.
If Republicans are willing to overrule the Parliamentarian and highjack the CRA in a way that it has never been used before, they will not like it the next time they are in the minority. That is for sure.
So this is a sad, shameful, disappointing day for the U.S. Senate. Republicans will come to regret the ill-considered step they take today, mark my words. And our country, the health of our children, the health of our communities--the whole country--will be worse off because of what Republicans have done.
Mr. President, now, on reconciliation, it is no secret how awful the Republican tax bill is. For weeks, we have said their bill shows that billionaires win; American families lose. Last night, the nonpartisan CBO proved that to be quite accurate.
The CBO's nonpartisan analysis shows that this bill would decrease household resources by 4 percent for the bottom 10 percent of Americans while increasing household resources by 2 percent for the top 10 percent of the country. To be clear, this bill would hurt the most vulnerable Americans, and the most benefits would only reach the top wealthiest--trickle-down economics, if there ever was one.
This bill hurts American families. They are the losers of this bill. American families will lose healthcare. They will lose food benefits. They will lose jobs. They will lose money. Bottom line: American families lose; billionaires win.
Mr. President, and finally on the SALT deal, yesterday Donald Trump came to the Capitol to deliver a message to New York House Republicans:
That is what he reportedly said, his words.
Less than 24 hours later, we are learning that New York Republicans have all bowed to the king and caved in obeisance to Trump. New York Republicans are showing, once again, that their loyalty does not lie with the volunteer firefighter in Bay Shore or with the teacher in Riverhead or even with the small business owner in Suffern. No. Their blind loyalty lies with Donald Trump.
The so-called SALT deal is a humiliating failure for New York Republicans. New York Republicans settled for barely half of what they wanted on SALT and barely a fraction of what Trump ripped away from them in the first term, and they are doing it because they are scared of the President and no relief for the marriage penalty. So if there is a firefighter and a teacher married to one another, nope. Being married hurts them in the SALT deal the Republicans made.
New York Republicans settled for SALT caps forever and a double tax on middle-class New Yorkers: our cops and firefighters, our teachers, our small businesses, our construction workers in the Hudson Valley, on Long Island, and across the State. I mean, even if New York Republicans did nothing, New York would be better off at the end of this year when the SALT cap would have expired.
This SALT deal leaves in place a penalty for married couples. A couple who are paying both taxes face the same limit as a single individual, even if they are paying double the taxes. This is one of the biggest issues facing middle-class families, and New York Republicans are leaving it in place. It is barely 20 percent of the New York Republicans' own SALT bill that they wrote.
One Republican Congressman-- Mike Lawler--said last year:
Well, clearly it must not have been that essential.
New York Republicans have said for months that they had one job they were sent to Washington for: to get rid of the SALT cap. With this SALT deal, so-called SALT deal, they have failed everyone back home.
New York Republicans' capitulation to Trump on SALT is a slap in the face to Long Island, the Hudson Valley, New York City, and the hard- working, middle-class families across New York and across the United States.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. President, I will be making a quick presentation here and then Senator Ernst will follow, and I just want to compliment her for all the effort she has made to stand by Ukraine and make sure that this war ends in a way that is honorable and just. And we can stop the killing but do it in a way that we don't have future wars because we made a mistake here.
So there are so many things going on in the world right now that are very dangerous. You have Iran close to a nuclear breakout. You have the war in Russia and Ukraine. It is killing 5,000 people a day. Only God knows how many people are actually being killed or wounded, hard to track, but it is just massive. It is a major land war in Europe, and we thought those days were behind us.
We have threats from China. We have got all kinds of things going on in the world. So my advice is, when you have a hard decision to make, make sure you look at it through a moral clarity lens. Make it simple. Russia is the problem, not Ukraine. Ukraine didn't invade Russia; Russia invaded Ukraine.
We need moral clarity on all these issues. Iran is not trying to have civilian nuclear power; they are trying to build a bomb. We need to take them at their word as to what they intended to do over time. They intended to destroy the State of Israel, purify Islam, and come after us. That is what they say. They write on their missiles ``Death to Israel,'' and they call us the ``Great Satan.'' They have 600 pounds of highly enriched uranium--60 percent. That is enough for six or seven or maybe more bombs. They went from 60-percent to 90-percent enrichment in less than a month.
They have one civilian nuclear reactor. How much uranium has been used to run that reactor enriched by Iran itself? Not one gram. Think of all the fuel needed to run the civilian reactor from Russia. So they are trying to stockpile weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb; and they lie, cheat, and steal, and we catch them all the time.
So some moral clarity here. Iran with a nuclear weapon is not only unacceptable, it is the biggest threat to the planet, as I see it. The Arab nations want a nuclear weapon of their own.
And Israel--one Holocaust is sufficient. This is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. It happened a few days ago. During that war, there was an effort to annihilate the Jews. Founding the State of Israel in 1948 was a significant world event. And there is a saying in Israel, ``Never again.'' They actually mean it.
(Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)
How about moral clarity from the United States here? We are with Israel. If Israel has to use military force to destroy or degrade the nuclear capability of Iran, we should be with them. I am glad we are trying to find a peaceful solution to the uranium problem. If you can get Iran to dismantle their nuclear program, then that gets us to where I want to go. But they have to dismantle.
Right now, there are discussions between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States and Europe about how to end this war. Putin, in my view, is playing us all. President Trump called for a 30-day cease-fire. Ukraine said yes; Russia said no. President Trump urged Zelenskyy and Putin to go to Istanbul--I was over there--and meet to have direct talks. Zelenskyy went; Putin didn't.
So there was a call a couple of days ago between President Trump and Putin. The Russians now are supposed to submit a terms sheet about what it takes to get a cease-fire. That is supposed to happen in a few days. They are talking about going to the Vatican and having direct negotiations. I am for all of that, but I don't know about how. I think most people feel like I do. We have given Russia plenty of opportunity to find an honorable and just end to this war. They are not interested, and they are not going to change until we up the ante.
So we need moral clarity here. Putin is dragging this out. He believes he is winning on the battlefield. I don't believe he is. He is defying every effort that has been earnest by President Trump to find a solution to this war. President Trump says he wants to stop the slaughtering and the killing. He is right to do so. But this is a time of decision-making. This has gone on too long with too many games being played.
I will tell you in just a minute what the Senate can do. But what we need when it comes to Russia-Ukraine is moral clarity. When President Trump focuses on an issue and takes a firm stand, it always works. He is standing up to China and the world who has been ripping us off on trade. He has a policy now that whatever you charge us on tariffs, we are going to charge you. It is called reciprocal trade. He has imposed tariffs on China.
Everybody in this body goes home and talks about how China rips us off. Trump is actually doing something about it. China steals our intellectual property, they manipulate the currency to get them a trade advantage, and that needs to come to an end.
When President Trump focuses on fixing a problem--righting a wrong-- he gets good results because the world now is calling Washington wanting deals. I think you are going to see a lot of good trade deals to right the wrong of trade abuse because President Trump stood up and insisted we get a better outcome.
The border. When he got in office, one of his top priorities was to fix a broken border. Look at what has happened. The lowest daily number of border encounters fell to less than 200, the lowest in history. He turned it all off because he was firm and resolved with Mexico and others. His border policies have worked. He has shut down a broken border, literally, in months because he had the desire and the will to do it, and people responded. And we are getting a great result at the border because of his determination and his will to do so. We went from 7,200 in March down to 200--that drop is amazing--because of his policies.
China, I just talked about. He is taking China on, and I am hoping we can reach a deal with China that will level out the trade playing field. China is talking to us; we are talking to China. The world is responding to President Trump's tariffs. We are going to get a bunch of good trade deals. And I very much appreciate that.
What did he say about Iran?
That is moral clarity. You can understand that, no matter where you are at on the planet:
We are in talks with Iran. Whether or not they achieve a result, I don't know. I don't mind trying. I do know this: Time is not on our side. President Trump said we are going to end the nuclear program one way or the other. When he said it, I think the Iranians believed it; and when he says it, I believe it. And the best chance to stop the Iran nuclear program is with President Trump's leadership.
Moral clarity, again, regarding Russia and Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor. Russia must end this bloodbath now. He has talked about ending the bloodbath. I am saying, from my point of view, Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine, like every other Nation, is not perfect. But they have fought like tigers.
In 1994, 1998--I can't remember--they gave up 1,700 nuclear weapons, the Budapest Memorandum. In return, Russia, the United States, Great Britain promised territorial integrity. They gave up 1,700 nuclear weapons with a promise from these countries they would be safe territorially.
Russia has violated that promise numerous times. They are constantly
Putin is trying to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms. If he gets away with it, if he is seen to having been rewarded for, you will get more of this. There goes Taiwan. Russia is the aggressor. Russia must end this bloodbath. That is my view of this situation.
Let's look at history and see what happens when you have moral clarity and see what happens when you lose it. September 27, 1938. Here is what Chamberlain said:
That was his view of what Hitler was doing. Why do we care? We don't know these people. We don't speak their language. That is not exactly moral clarity in the face of Nazi oppression:
We know what that small country was. It led to the slaughter of 50 million people. It enticed Hitler to keep going, and Hitler told you what he was going to do. He wrote a book. Chamberlain, obviously, didn't read the book, and he didn't have the moral clarity to confront the Nazi regime. And a lot of people died.
September 30, 1938:
A paper signed by Adolf Hitler that he waved to the world. Less than a year later, the world is on fire. This is what happens when you don't realize what is going on. You misread evil. You think Hitler is something he is not. This is an example of not having moral clarity. It leads to a worldwide war.
Russia, the Soviet Union--this is an example of moral literacy, President John F. Kennedy:
He was talking about Berlin--moral clarity to the Soviet Union. He stood up for freedom, stood against the Soviet Empire.
And along comes my favorite, Ronald Reagan:
How clear could you be? On the other side of this wall is an evil empire that moral clarity, over time, brought the Soviet Union down to its knees.
Russia today, Putin's Russia, is an evil country oppressing his own people, harassing his neighbor, wanting to take things that are not theirs, wanting to recreate the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire. And they are using every terrible tactic in the military book--bombing civilians, killing people by tens of thousands.
So when it comes to Putin, we need to have moral clarity, as Reagan and Kennedy had with the Soviet Union. It is not enough to give speeches. These were great speeches. But what we did against the Soviet Union is we built up our military. Ronald Reagan went to ``Star Wars'' and they couldn't keep up. We not only opposed the Soviet Union rhetoric, we opposed it in capability.
What do we do now with Putin? How do we end this war? I am not out to humiliate Russia or Putin, but I am out to end this war soon--not later but soon--in a way not to start another war.
When we left Afghanistan dishonorably and disgracefully, it set in motion a belief that the United States will not stand by its allies and we are apparently weak. I believe that. And the Presiding Officer of the Senate understands what happens when politicians get it wrong. People like him, in his old job, pay a heavy price. They go all over the world fighting these guys because when we pulled out of Afghanistan, every jihadist was on steroids. Putin licked his chops and went into Ukraine and Iran, kept enriching, and sort of the rest is history. That was a horrible decision, and we are paying the price for it today.
To my colleagues, Republican and Democrat, if we don't get Ukraine- Russia right, it will be worse than Afghanistan. If it is seen, when this is all over, that Putin was rewarded for his aggression--I am not trying to humiliate Russia, but I am trying to make sure they are not rewarded in a way that China will be enticed to take Taiwan or Iran will believe we are all talk in the West when it comes to their nuclear capability, isolating Israel even further.
Speeches are important. Moral clarity is the right lens from which to look through regarding aggression and evil. But we have to do more than talk.
I appreciate President Trump's earnest effort to bring the parties together, to find a solution we can all live with, to keep an independent, sovereign Ukraine and end this war sooner rather than later. It is clear to me after all these months, the earnest efforts by President Trump are not being equally met. I think Zelenskyy is ready to make concessions to end this war. Putin seems to be more talking and less acting.
What can we do to up the ante? What can we do in the U.S. Senate to change the equation? What can we do to persuade Russia to get to the peace table?
We can impose bone-crushing sanctions on Putin's Russia. And he has earned that. I hate it for the Russian people, but it is now time to increase the cost of this war on Putin.
The sanctions packet that we have put together has 80 cosponsors. Do you know how hard it is to get 80 Senators to agree on anything? Eighty of us--and the number is climbing--are ready to impose sanctions on Russia if he does not come to the table and earnestly seek peace-- Putin.
And these sanctions are geared toward China. There are tariffs in these sanctions on any nation that buys Russian oil and gas from the shadow fleet. Putin's war machine is propped up by China and India buying Russian oil at a massive discount to keep the war machine and Putin running.
So what have we decided to do here? Focus on those causing the problem, not just Putin; focus on his customers.
Most of Europe has weaned themselves off of Russian oil and gas. That is a major advancement. But it is now time to let the Chinese know: If you want to be a normal country, act normal. If you want to have a better relationship with the United States and Europe, help us. Don't fuel the flames of a bloodbath. Don't buy cheap oil from a despot because you can with impunity. Those days of buying cheap oil from Putin with impunity are coming to a close.
We are going to act. And how we act and when we act will be a political exercise among the body, talking to the White House, and talking to our allies.
To China: I would like a better relationship. We have a lot of opportunity to grow our economies together. But if you keep supporting Putin and fueling his war machine, you will never have a normal relationship with the U.S. Senate.
To our friends in India: Watch what you are doing.
To my colleagues: Seldom do we have a chance to speak with one voice at such an important time. The entire world is watching the U.S. Senate.
I just got back from T rkiye with Secretary Rubio, who invited me to go. He allowed me to speak to every Foreign Minister of our NATO allies, talking about the Senate bill, telling them that the Senate is an independent body and that we are moving down the road to holding Putin accountable.
The world is watching the Senate in a way I haven't seen since I have been here. We have a chance, my colleagues, to help end this war. We have a chance to push Putin to the table. And if we fail as a world, not only does this war continue, but we are going to start new wars.
I have never been more proud of this body than I am right now. We have come together in a bipartisan fashion. There are a group of House Members who will take the Senate bill and sign a discharge petition. What does that mean? It is coming to the floor of the House no matter what.
So we stand ready. I am going to talk to the majority leader, talk to all of
We have sat on the sidelines too long. We have watched too many people get slaughtered by Putin. We have put sanctions on, but they haven't worked the way they should.
What we are doing in the Senate is a game-changer. It will affect China, which provides the most fuel to Putin's war machine in a dramatic fashion.
To China: I don't want to do that. I will, if I have to. I want you to help us in this war. I am not looking to punish or destroy your economy or hurt our economy. I am looking to get a result here.
But I will end where I started: If we have to, we will.
President Kennedy said: ``We shall pay any price and bear any burden.'' He was right.
President Reagan said: ``Tear down this wall''; end this evil empire.
Sometimes, freedom comes at a heavy price. The Ukrainians are paying that price, and I am so proud of them. They are fighting like tigers, and they are dying by the thousands. And they are not going to quit no matter what we do--nor should they.
This is a moment of reckoning. This is a moment that matters. All of us got to the Senate, and it is not an easy path to take to get elected to this body. But now you are here, and you have a chance, my colleagues, to make a real difference, to make this world safer and more peaceful.
Let's not shirk the responsibility history has put upon us. This is a historical moment. Let's rise to the occasion like those before us. Let's have moral clarity when it comes to Putin. Let's do more than talk. Let's act.
I will yield to Senator Ernst, who has been a champion for getting a good outcome for Ukraine and the world.
I very much appreciate all you have done in this cause.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague and great friend, as we work on this together.
I really appreciate your leadership. Thank you for allowing me to join you on the floor today as we show our support for your bill, Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025. Thank you, Senator Graham.
Folks, last week, President Trump showed the world that American leadership is back. He brought home the last living American hostage, delivering Edan Alexander from Iran-backed Hamas and reuniting him to his family after nearly 600 days. He stood with our partners in the Middle East to strength the historic Abraham Accords. And he delivered a strong message to Vladimir Putin: End the war.
Today, I stand in support of a sovereign Ukraine and echo the President's call to Putin to stop this bloodbath that never should have happened.
This is an issue that not only affects a close partner under siege but also the strength of the United States of America and the security of the free world.
Let's be clear here, folks: China is watching; so are Iran and North Korea. And, of course, Vladimir Putin is watching too. They call it the ``new axis of evil'' for a reason.
I personally witnessed and experienced the growth of the U.S.- Ukrainian relationship when I visited Ukraine, in its waning days of Soviet control, as part of an agricultural student exchange program. This was in 1989.
I had the privilege of living with a Ukrainian family on a very small collective farm. As we got together, there were a number of us Iowa students on that exchange. Again, it was an agricultural exchange. We came together, each of us with our families, in a group setting, one of the very first nights that we were on that collective. Again, with the premise of an agricultural exchange--we were farming tomatoes, working with the cattle and the hogs--a very small, small collective. We came together, and the Ukrainians wanted to ask us questions. So all of us American students, all of us from Iowa, we sat down with our Ukrainian families. We expected to talk about agriculture--Iowan agriculture versus Ukrainian agriculture. Much to my surprise, the first question that came from our Ukrainian counterparts was not about how we raise corn or soybeans in Iowa. It was not about the types of machinery that we use on our farm. But the first question the Ukrainians asked us was, What is it like to be free? What is it like to be an American? Because in 1989, those Ukrainians were living under Soviet socialist rule. They could not travel without having the permission of their government.
My family did not have a telephone, and if they wanted to use the collective manager's telephone, they would have somebody listening in on the conversation. They would have to know the purpose of the telephone call, whom they were calling, why they needed to make a telephone call.
This was 1989, and I learned a lot from that exchange. I saw a Ukrainian people who were desperate to break free of socialist economic structures and authoritarian restrictions on freedom of movement, the ability to have your own employment, and on freedom of speech.
Two years later, Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union and broke free.
Later--many years later--in 2003, the United States is involved in the war in Iraq. I was a soldier in 2003 during Iraqi Freedom. I was a transportation company commander, permanently stationed in Kuwait.
My transporters ran convoys from the ports in Kuwait up to Iraq, delivering goods for our warfighters. So I got a little subcamp in Kuwait, outside of Camp Arifjan. Half of that subcamp, called Camden Yards, was occupied by American forces. My soldiers and I lived on that subcamp. The other half of the camp was occupied by other forces. Those other forces were Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukraine is not part of NATO. They were not required to support the United States of America in Iraq. But Ukraine, of its own volition, sent their soldiers--and not just as support elements. They were there as combat forces.
Again, I was a transporter. We ran convoys in Iraq. The other half of that camp that I lived on, they were Ukrainian engineer forces. They did road clearing.
I think back: How many American lives did those engineers save from their road-clearing efforts, clearing bombs so they wouldn't be detonated by my drivers--Ukrainian forces, combat forces?
Today, Ukraine is fighting its own war. And I will remind everyone, the United States does not have forces involved in the Russia-Ukraine war--none, zero, none.
Today, Ukraine fights not only for its own survival but for the very principles the United States was founded on. When America leads, the world is safer. When we disengage and when we retreat, like we saw for the last 4 years under the Biden administration, chaos fills the void.
Russia's aggression has already cost too many innocent lives, about 5,000 lives every single week. Those are too many innocent lives, folks, which is why I support President Trump's efforts to get a peace deal done now. Vladimir Putin cannot keep tapping the United States of America along.
I vow to keep working with my colleagues to equip the President with all the tools necessary to hold Russia accountable, including sanctioning Russia and its supporters if they continue to drag out these peace talks and carry on with the needless bloodshed so this war that never should have started can come to an end.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks before the vote starts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the action that we are seeing in the House of Representatives today that will lead to action here in the Senate and asking our colleagues to reverse course on this reconciliation bill that I think is going to have unbelievable economic consequences to our economy.
Trillions in red ink that are alarming credit agencies and bond markets, spiking billions in energy project costs, and driving up prices and burdening States with billions of dollars of new healthcare that they can't afford.
Instead, they should be focusing on protecting healthcare coverage, lowering costs for American families, and
Even now, 5 years later out of COVID, we can still see the effects of the pandemic. That time changed the way we live and took a toll on our economy. The U.S. economy lost 23 million jobs at the start of the pandemic, leading to a recession in early 2020, and thanks in no small part to well-designed, bipartisan fiscal policies by both Congress and the Biden administration, the recession that started was the shortest in history, lasting only 2 months.
Coming out of it though, the combined effects and impacts on our supply chains and durable goods caused inflation to spike to 9 percent by June of 2022. Again, well-designed fiscal policies by the Fed helped get that inflation back down in just 1 year to 3 percent by June of `23 and continue to lower and hover just above 2 percent.
We need, though, to continue to make progress on inflation and costs--costs that impact everything from clothes, cars, food, computers, you name it, and costs may be getting even more expensive because of the impacts of the tariffs, and they are making their way onto our shelves.
The last thing American families need is to be saddled with even more financial restraint, particularly as it relates to Medicaid and the policies in the reconciliation bill. More than 72 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid, making it the single largest insurer in the United States.
It is critical that it remain a critical part of our healthcare system. Depending on the State, the Federal Government covers somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the cost of insuring people with Medicaid. While Medicaid is administered jointly by the Federal Government and, in most States, about two-thirds of the funding for the State Medicaid program is Federal support. So make no mistake about it, cutting Medicaid at the Federal level is going to have a dramatic economic impact on States. It is the largest source of Federal funding for States.
It is the largest component expenditure across all States--more than K-12, more than higher education, more than transportation--and somehow, in an economy with great inflation, you think the idea is to make it more expensive for Americans to get health insurance and cover their costs and impact the economy?
The bill that is now being cobbled together is a serious attack on Medicaid. As an assault, they will continue to have ripple impacts on the economy. It undermines the Medicaid program, shifting the burdens to the State, and it makes the entire healthcare system more expensive for everyone.
Medicaid provides financial support to the healthcare sector, stimulates local economies--spending that does have a multiplier effect. Every dollar spent generates more than $1 worth of economic activity. Medicaid drives employment in the healthcare sector, it generates State and local revenue, and it saves money for the enrollees to spend on more items--not healthcare.
But reductions in the Medicaid funding, especially as large as $715 billion, will take a toll on States, on jobs, on revenue, and it will increase the financial burden on individuals and families.
So it is important to remember that direct recipients of Medicaid are not just individuals with coverage. They are a payment system. They are the benefits of a healthcare system, hospitals, doctors' offices, pharmacies, nursing homes. And so when you cut that funding, you are cutting those businesses and those opportunities. The impact on the State economy would be greater than the loss of Federal Medicaid funding because of the ripple effects of the costs across the State.
The Commonwealth Fund estimated that, collectively, States' gross domestic product could be cut $95 billion smaller than the total economic output lost, and that could be even deeper.
So imagine every State now having $2 billion more costs because of Medicaid. The additional loss in individual income would mean that State and local revenues would decline by $7 billion. This would make it harder for States and localities to balance the burden of Medicaid.
And our constituents would also see more far reaching impacts as they struggle to provide healthcare. Today, 49 States, plus the District of Columbia, are all part of the system and counting on these providers and the funds. But this bill even eliminates the ability for States to adjust the revenue in any way that would be helpful for them to deal with this crisis. So this is an extreme approach to cutting American citizens off of the healthcare.
But think a bit about it for a second on the work requirement--also almost like a surveillance of U.S. citizens, trying to make them prove that they are eligible. Let's be honest; the provisions are not designed to cut down on waste. Rather, their primary objective is to prevent people from signing up for Medicaid coverage. In Arkansas, the casework requirement led to disenrollment of 18,000 people in just 4 months. And in New Hampshire, the complexity and administrative burden of the work requirement caused 17,000 beneficiaries to receive coverage termination in just 1 month.
Today, Georgia is the only State that has a work requirement for Medicaid. And instead of expanding Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, it allows individuals and households that have income up to 100 percent of the Federal work poverty to get coverage if they work for 80 hours a month. The results are not good. A report found that Georgia's model cost taxpayers--taxpayers, not these individuals--cost the taxpayers $87 million and enrolled only 6,000 people, about 75 percent fewer than had been projected. So I ask again, what policy is this that saves money?
It makes healthcare more expensive for the rest of us. Nobody defers their healthcare costs. They are just going to show up at the emergency room. Just because we are cutting spending, it doesn't mean that the need magically disappears. States will have to find their way to make up for these shortfalls. A Kaiser analysis found that the House reconciliation bill--if it is enacted, the State of Washington would need to spend 30 percent more per Medicaid enrollee to make up the difference.
We don't have those resources. The same will be true of every State. For example, Louisiana would have to spend 50 percent more per Medicaid enrollee to make up the difference, translating into an 11 percent increase in the State taxes if they had to do that. Now is not the time to force our States to jump off of a cliff just because we won't live up to our Medicaid obligation.
I know the President used the f word, but what is real here on the Senate floor--I am not going to say it--but you are making a mess out of Medicaid, and we should stop them.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all time is expired.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
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 legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 69, nays 31, as follows:
The motion was agreed to.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Relating to "Federal Motor...
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, let me describe what I think is going on here on the Senate floor. Today is an unusual and interesting day.
What we understood the plan was, was that the majority was going to move to the Congressional Review Act regarding the California clean air rule in an effort to overrule the Clean Air Act rule for the fossil fuel industry, which the majority so diligently serves.
The problem with that is that the Parliamentarian has ruled that the Congressional Review Act does not apply to the waiver that California gets, allowing it to do its own clean air standard. So they had a problem. The problem was that Democrats were going to make a point of order saying: Hey, you can't do that. We have argued this matter. We both went before the Parliamentarian. We made our case. We filed our pleadings. We got a decision. In our view, it was not even a close call of a decision. But that is in our view. And what you are really doing here is, for the fossil fuel industry, going nuclear, overruling the Senate Parliamentarian to accomplish a legislative task--to amend, basically, the Congressional Review Act--and then open the door for that to undo a 30-year tradition of California and other States like Rhode Island being able to operate under better clean air standards and the vehicle emissions standards than the Federal Government may be willing to accomplish.
So that is where we thought we were. Now, what is happening is that we have gone to a different CRA, this one having to do with hydrogen vehicles. The minority has 5 hours. There is a total of 10 hours, evenly divided. I suspect the majority is not going to use much of that time. But the minority has 5 hours to talk about what is going on.
We are now in the 5-hour debate period on the hydrogen vehicle CRA, as the majority moves toward making its play on the California clean air standard.
This is a slight bump in the road for them, but our understanding is that there is a new plan. The new plan is, at the conclusion of our 5 hours, to make a new point of order that allows them to do the California CRA effort and create a new way to get around the terms of the Congressional Review Act.
The predicament for them is that the Congressional Review Act, as a law--passed by the Senate, passed by the House, signed into law by the President--says: In the Senate, which is where we are, when a committee is discharged from further consideration of a joint resolution, which is where we are, all points of order against the joint resolution are waived.
They intend to create a Senate exception to that. We expect the Parliamentarian will say, when they offer this point of order, based on the statute, based on the law, well, that is not in order. Then they will go nuclear on this. They will bring everybody back to, by a simple majority vote of 51, overrule the Parliamentarian as to that new point of order.
The purpose is to create a point of order that allows a bypass of the Parliamentarian's decision--a very sound one, a clear one, in my view, based on precedent, law, history, tradition, all of it--that the CRA effort to undermine California's clean air standard does not work under Senate rules.
In a sense, this is like a double nuclear option. They are going to overrule the Parliamentarian to create a new point of order under the CRA that will amend, in effect, the CRA. It will make the law regarding this no longer effective because they will come in and overrule the Parliamentarian.
And, then, even though the Parliamentarian's ruling is that you can't use the CRA to go after the California waiver, they don't have to overrule that directly because they will have, by overruling the Parliamentarian, created this little end-around.
So I guess this is a demonstration of how many hoops the Senate majority is willing to jump through for their fossil fuel supports.
And it ends at the same point, which is the purpose of the exercise. It ends with the Parliamentarian being overruled, and it ends with an attack on California and other sovereign States' ability to require cleaner air and lower vehicle emissions in their States.
Now, why does that matter? Well, obviously, if you are the fossil fuel industry, one of the things you sell is gasoline, and one of the things that the California clean air and emissions standards do is to require the auto industry to make automobiles more efficient--maybe even make them hybrid, maybe even make them electric. And whether they are more efficient or hybrid or electric, it all ends in the same place for the fossil fuel industry, which is: We can't sell as much polluting gasoline, and we want to sell more gasoline, and we don't like clean air standards that get in the way of us selling as much gasoline as we want to.
So we are here through this complex parliamentary rigmarole to overrule the Parliamentarian to get around her ruling that the Congressional Review Act only covers rulemakings, not the California waiver and other things. One of the problems with that is that--you know, if you give a mouse a cookie--it doesn't stop here; it opens the Congressional Review Act, which was very specifically designed to address rulemakings within a period of time after the conclusion of the rulemaking. And this would allow essentially anything you could put into the Federal Register to be submitted to Congress for Congressional Review Act review, no matter when it was done. All you have to do is re-up it with a submission and send it in to Congress, the California waiver being an example of that in the sense that it has been around for about 30 years now.
So one of the Congressional Review Act's limitations was it had a brief time window in which you were allowed to come to Congress to disapprove a rule, and that time period is now blown to smithereens if they go through with this parliamentary scheme.
The second thing is, it had to be a rulemaking; that it added a process at the end of the Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking, when the rule was finally enacted into law as an Agency rule. You always had the ability to go to court and sue and say that the Administrative Procedure Act was violated, it is arbitrary and capricious, was a violation of the law or whatever. This gave it political extra opportunity, which was to jump straight to Congress and just ask us to disapprove it. You don't have to prove, then, that there is anything wrong with the rule; just, politically, we don't like it so we are going to jam it.
And so, when you expand beyond just APA rulemaking to essentially any Executive decision that can be dumped into the Federal Register to create a submission that can then be brought here, you have opened a massive, massive array of Executive actions to Congressional Review Act disapproval.
As my colleagues have said, it could be as simple as a lease, as simple as a permit, as simple as a license. Essentially, any Executive decision since the passage of the Congressional Review Act can now be brought here on a purely political basis and--boom--blown up.
If my colleagues on the other side don't think that we will use this if they do this, they have taken leave of their senses. Of course we will. They are about to create a new Senate in which the CRA can be used for an immense array of purposes, well beyond what the actual law says.
(Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)
They don't have to be doing this. Let's be clear. They do not have to be doing this. There are other ways to serve their fossil fuel industry friends in the industry's desire to attack the vehicle emissions standards, the clean air standards. There are a whole bunch of them. One, they could do it administratively.
In fact, in 2019, the Trump administration withdrew a previously granted Clean Air Act waiver. And to do that, it made findings per a Clean Air Act process--administrative findings per a Clean Air Act process--as to the three criteria established under the Clean Air Act that determine whether a waiver application gets granted or denied.
So they already tried that once. They know that that is an avenue. Why did they not want to do that? Well, for starters, it is amenable to challenge if it is done unlawfully, if it is done arbitrarily and capriciously--the magic words of administrative mischief. And you end up in a forum like a court where you have to defend your facts, unlike here where all you have to do is have a majority and ram it through. So they didn't want to do it administratively, but they could have, and they already tried in the last Trump administration.
What else could they have done? Well, this is California's Clean Air Act standard. They could have gone and negotiated with the sovereign State of California and the other sovereign States that have attached themselves to the cleaner standard of California, which includes Rhode Island. This could be done through a regular process of negotiation.
We just had the Administrator of the EPA in the committee this morning for a lively exchange, and he repeatedly talked about how interested EPA was in cooperative federalism; that the Federal Government has to be a real partner with sovereign States; that we shouldn't be lording it over the sovereign States; they have expertise and interests of their own and cooperative federalism means that the Federal Government and the State governments should work as partners to accomplish goals.
Well, that was pretty rich, while EPA is trying to roll a sovereign State that is the fourth biggest economy on the planet without any hint of negotiation or cooperative federalism or effort--because when you are negotiating, the other side gets a vote, too, and you have to come to an agreement. And it is much easier to come here and have your friends in the Senate do your bidding in the Senate without any standard other than: Do we have the votes?
But they could have done it that way. There is a totally clear path to negotiate with California--say: Hey, circumstances have changed in this way or that. We have new policy issues that we want to argue to you, and let's try to figure out if we can work this out.
Nope. Didn't even try.
The other way to do this would be to go back and actually change the Congressional Review Act, right? It is a statute so we can amend it. And we could go through the process of amendment and say: OK, we don't want the Congressional Review Act to be limited to rulemakings any longer. We want to open it up to more stuff. And we could have a conversation about what should and should not be included in an expanded gateway to the Congressional Review Act. The House would have its say. You would end up doing what we call around here regular order. And in the Senate the minority--because you would have to get through cloture, the minority would have a chance to make our points. And you could do an amendment using regular order. Again, they would have to listen to us, and they would have to pay attention to facts.
Now, all they have to pay attention to are interests--and the fossil fuel interest is their dominant interest--and votes, do they have the votes. And those make it easy to choose this way, to go nuclear in the Senate rather than do the work either of amending the Congressional Review Act by law or negotiating with a sovereign State in ordinary Federal-State cooperative federalism or pursue that Clean Air Act administrative process that they had begun back in Trump 1.
Again, the reason not to do all those three is you can't just roll everybody and do what the fossil fuel industry wants. So here we are. This is because
And the price is going to be very, very high because, in my recollection, there has never been a legislative outcome in this body determined by overruling the Parliamentarian. We have gone back and forth on nominations, but on a legislative outcome which changes the Congressional Review Act and which allows an attack on a statutory waiver in the Clean Air Act for the State of California--those are legislative in their effect. And so, to me, that is not the right way that we should be going about this.
So there are a bunch of problems with what is going on here, but to understand the floor machinations we are about to go through--the overruling of the Parliamentarian to create an end-around so we don't have to overrule but can only violate the order of the Parliamentarian on the CRA--you really have to understand the baseline story here. And the baseline story here is that this is the fossil fuel industry in action. It may look like it is a majority and a minority in the Senate having an argument. No. It is the fossil fuel industry in action, trying to create a shortcut for itself so it can sell more gasoline and pollute more and ignore all the States that have joined with California to demand cleaner air for their constituents.
The fossil fuel industry essentially runs the Republican Party right now. The fossil fuel industry hates this clean air standard because it sells less gasoline in the States where the clean air standard is there. And it sells less gasoline in other States because it is hard to market both a clean vehicle and a dirty vehicle side by side. So to get to the enormous number of States that are with California on this and to sell into their markets, they have to make more efficient vehicles everywhere so that everybody enjoys the benefit of spending less on gasoline, getting better vehicle mileage, and having cleaner air.
So it actually works out pretty well for everybody except--except-- the fossil fuel industry, which, of course, wants to sell more gasoline, period and end of story. And what they have is a willing Senate majority that will basically do whatever it is that they want, and they have an executive branch that has been infiltrated by fossil fuel interests and is now essentially run by fossil fuel interests.
In my previous ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, I have described--I am probably not going to get this perfectly right because I am going from memory here, but there is a kind of wasp that injects its larvae into another bug; and as the larval wasp begins to grow, it takes over the neural system, it takes over the command and control system of the other bug. So the other bug is still alive. It still looks like the other bug's shape and size and all of that. It doesn't look any different than a regular other bug, but it is being driven from inside by the larval wasp, which tells it to go do things that then create a place where the larval wasp can grow, can nest, can feed, whatever it needs to do.
It takes over the bug from the inside and takes over command and control, and steers it around. That, to me, is a pretty good analogy for what the fossil fuel industry is doing with the U.S. Government right now.
All of their front groups, all the machinery they created over the years to propagate the fraud of climate denial and to exert wild political influence all over the country, all of that just slots right into positions in government that are taken over by people who say, you know, that the concern about climate change is crud, climate change is a religion and not science.
They speak utter nonsense. It is like the worship of Baal back in Biblical times, bowing down to fossil fuel and doing whatever it is the great god Baal wants.
Well, things didn't work out too well for the priests of Baal, if you followed that analogy, but that is where we are. And what all of this overlooks is the coming storm.
When the President pretends that climate change is a hoax, he disables government's ability to prepare for a coming storm. When the executive branch sensors the use of the terms ``climate change,'' demands that they be struck from government documents, that prevents the executive branch from preparing for the coming storm.
When the executive branch--as we heard just today in the Environment and Public Works Committee--goes around and terminates grants based on a heresy hunt, where they are looking through the grants for language they don't like--like ``equity,'' there is a bad word; ``inclusion,'' can't have that; ``climate,'' definitely worth terminating a grant over that--they are destroying the programs that would help communities prepare for the coming storm because they have the word ``climate'' in them.
They even went so far in the executive branch as to have an Executive order on energy that refused to include either solar energy or wind energy in the definition of ``energy.'' Like, you can say what you want about whether you like solar or whether you like wind, but all you have to do is go to a solar facility or go to a wind facility, and you can see the electrons coming off of it.
The idea that that is not energy, that is not just a violation of law and common sense, that violates the dictionary. But that is how far the fossil fuel industry wasp will drive the Trump administration bug to ignore the coming storm.
What does the coming storm look like? Well, let me start.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use a larger than usual graphic in order to show an old page from the New York Times.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, now this is always good to remember because it wasn't always this way with President Trump. Here in 2009, there was a full-page ad in the New York Times. President Obama was getting ready to send a crew to Copenhagen for the COP, the climate change conference, and business leaders spoke up about that, saying, as business leaders, here is what we have to say:
Well, that is kind of the point here, and I will get into, in a moment, what some of those catastrophic and irreversible consequences look like.
And it goes on to demand that the Obama administration show leadership on climate change:
Signed by Donald J. Trump, chairman and President; Donald J. Trump, Jr., EVP; Eric F. Trump, EVP; Ivanka M. Trump, EVP; and the Trump organization.
So there have been times when the Trump family understood what climate change was all about, understood the catastrophic and irreversible consequences that were looming, and were willing to say so.
But in between came exposure to politics, exposure to the power of fossil fuel on the Republican side and the understanding that if you really want to make it in Republican politics, you have got to do whatever the fossil fuel industry wants, whenever the fossil fuel industry wants it. That means we are ignoring some pretty serious warnings.
One of the earliest warnings came from Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac is not a green organization. Freddie Mac is a huge mortgage company, a federally chartered giant mortgage company. And as a giant mortgage company, it has a very distinct interest in the mortgage market.
And what did the chief economist for Freddie Mac warn? He warned that climate change was making coastal properties uninsurable. Climate change was making coastal properties uninsurable, either because sea levels were rising and they would flood or because storms were worse and there would be more damage by hurricanes and massive rains or because, who knows, they would lose access to the fresh water in their wells because of the infiltration of salt water underground. There are all sorts of ways in which climate risk hits coastal properties.
So the chief economist said: Here is how that works. The climate risk disrupts the insurance industry as to certain properties--meaning, those properties also can't get a mortgage any longer.
Freddie Mac is a mortgage giant. It knows what is needed for a mortgage. What is needed for a mortgage is an insurance policy. No insurance policy, no mortgage.
So now you have got properties along the coast that are at risk, that can't get insurance and can't get a mortgage. What happens to the value of those properties? Well, it goes down, he predicted. He predicted a coastal property values crash as a result of that cascade from climate risk to uninsurability to no mortgages.
And the coastal properties values crash he predicted was going to be so severe that it would look like 2008--that mortgage meltdown--all over again, and he stands by that testimony. In fact, he came when I was chairman of the Budget Committee to reiterate it.
Something else has changed in the meantime, though. It is not just coastal property risk. Ask any of our Western colleagues about wildfire risk and about what is going on in areas that have wildfire risk that the insurance company can't figure out, can't predict; and, therefore, it backs away from.
We are seeing that all across the country. The coastal property values crash warning now has an evil sibling: the wildfire adjacent property values crash warning. And either one of them, or both, could create that cascade from uninsurability to unmortgageability to crash in property values to nationwide recession.
He is not alone. A little over a month ago, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Chairman Powell came and testified in the Banking Committee. What did Chairman Powell have to say? He said that in 10 to 15 years, it will be impossible to get insurance or a mortgage in entire regions of the United States; exactly that cascade--climate risk, uninsurability, can't get a mortgage, property values crash.
Here is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, also not green, just a guy who is interested in dealing with risk to the financial system, and he is saying: Here it comes, buckle up. We are going to see that in 10 to 15 years.
Well, if we are going to see that in 10 to 15 years, who is looking at that now? Investors are; insurance companies are. You can't wait 10 to 15 years for the effects of entire regions of the country that can't get mortgages to start to be felt. That is going to start to happen now, and, in fact, it is. Look at the high-risk areas in the country.
Here, we see things like--from our Budget Committee work--these are nonrenewal rates around the country. And you can see in high-risk areas--Florida or coastal, California for both coastal and wildfire, that nonrenewals are spiking up in areas of climate risk.
What is nonrenewal? A nonrenewal is when your insurance company says to you: You know, thanks for all the premium you paid all these years, but your piece of property has now become uninsurable. We can't manage that risk any longer. Therefore, you are fired. Go find another insurance company.
Well, that is a big mess.
Then we go onto First Street, which took some of this data and others and started predicting forward. This is where home values are headed because of climate change.
You can see in these darker red areas, you are looking at actual reductions in home value, right? Not your home is your castle and it is always going to be valuable but, actually, the value of it goes down.
Some of the marks go as much as 100-percent loss of value. Eighty percent is this color. Sixty percent is this color. And you can see it speckled throughout the country. Places where, in the time of a 30-year mortgage--in the time of a 30-year mortgage, you are going to see property values actually go down--the property values crash that was predicted by Freddie Mac and the loss of mortgage availability that was predicted by Chairman Powell.
Here is another one: Where do insurance premiums go in the next 30 years? Well, in a lot of places, like down in Florida, we have already seen double, triple, and quadruple. An average home insurance payment in Miami Dade County is $17,000 a year. You look down here at Miami, and it is in the dark zone where it is supposed to go up 300 percent. That is a quadrupling, just so you know.
So if you are at $17,000 now and you are going to quadruple in 30 years, that means you are going to end up--do the math. I am not doing it right now in my head, but let's say it is $70,000 a year, right? Quadrupling $17,000--$68,000 a year.
If you have a property that has a carrying cost for the buyer of $68,000 a year, how valuable is that property? What is the present value of that liability that comes with the property? It is a huge liability, and it knocks down the value of the property.
So that is why the home value evidence that First Street collected here relates to the insurance premium expense. You don't just lose the value of your house when your property isn't mortgageable any longer and you can't find anybody to buy it other than a cash buyer; you also lose the value of your house when the carrying cost of your home insurance becomes so great that nobody wants to buy into that annual $68,000 liability.
How much would you pay to have to write a $68,000 check every year? Not much. It would have to be a pretty darn nice house to cover that. And for a lot of people, that just erases the value of the home, which is why we get there.
So, First Street, their estimate was that climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in U.S. residential real estate value by 2055 due to these concerns that they put on the chart. And they are not alone. It is not just Freddie Mac; it is not just First Street Foundation; it is not just Fed Chair Powell.
Here is the Mortgage Bankers Association. You think that is a green group? Fat chance. But they do care about mortgages, and what they say in their report is:
That kind of tracks with Jay Powell saying there are going to be whole regions of the country where you can't get a mortgage any longer--even with government help, even with insurance, it just doesn't work any longer.
So when an advocacy group like that for the mortgage bankers is giving this warning, it might be worth paying attention to. It might be worth not just dismissing it: Oh, climate change is a hoax. None of us need to worry about that.
The Economist Magazine, also about as ungreen as it can be. And the Economist Magazine--this is a cover story. If you can't read it, it says: ``The next housing disaster,'' and it is a house on a piece of land that is being eroded by seas.
Like those mortgages--
Because those prices have fallen as insurance rates climbed--
Here is the punch line:
Another way they say it in the article is this:
That is that coastal value crash risk; not the wildfire one, just flooding--
Again aligning with what First Street predicted--changes in Americans' home values because of climate risk uninsurability and unmortgageability.
Mr. President, $121 billion to $237 billion is a pretty big hit on those homeowners whose properties have lost that value.
Globally, what they say is that we are looking at a $25 trillion hit to global real estate markets. The largest asset class on the planet is real estate, and it is looking at a $25 trillion hit. Yeah, let's ignore that and believe the fossil fuel-funded White House that says it is a hoax. That makes a lot of sense.
Obviously, if there is going to be a property values crash and if mortgages are going to be in the center of it, that is not great for the banking industry. Why? First of all, the banking industry makes a lot of money off of mortgages.
Also, if you have a mortgage on your books as a bank, the liability-- what the owner owes you on the mortgage--gets offset in your solvency determination by the value of the collateral that you hold against that liability. The collateral is the value of the home.
What happens to a bank in a region where the value of the home has fallen by half? What happens when the homeowner owes more money than the property is now worth? That hits the bank's loan-to-value ratio. That is a determinant of bank solvency.
So, guess what, this is not just me saying this; the International Financial Stability Board just did this report in January giving a warning to the global banking system: Look out. Buckle up. Climate risk is coming. Uninsurability is coming. Unmortgageability is coming. You need to plan to stay solvent through and survive that crisis.
So I will tell you, this is a very technical report done by very technical people. The Financial Stability Board is, again, not a green organization, but they do have an obligation to look forward and predict risk, and they are predicting this risk to the global banking system.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, during Trump 1, by the way, issued this report--``Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System''--saying that climate change poses systemic risk to the U.S. economy across multiple sectors ``simultaneously and within a short timeframe''--this is coming at us--undermining the U.S. financial system's ability to sustain the economy.
Let me read the opening sentence from the report, from the executive summary:
Precisely as the other experts argued.
Risk to insurance, to mortgage, to property values crash, to economic collapse.
On the next page, they say among findings of the report:
Let me say a word on systemic risks because it sounds like a pretty dull term. It is not like apocalyptic risk, catastrophic risk; it just says systemic risk. What does that mean? That means that the whole system takes a hit. That means that the damage is not contained to the sector where the damage is happening.
That is like 2008 all over again. We had that set of bad mortgages, but when that set of bad mortgages--when it became apparent that that was fake and phony and that there was not real value there, it didn't just harm the mortgage holders, it took down entire investment firms, and that crash cascaded out through the entire economy.
Those of us who were here in 2008--I can remember the financial agony of Rhode Islanders when that recession hit so hard and so suddenly. I can remember the people who were at the Treasury and at the Fed who were supposed to prop up our economy in a state of absolute, sweating panic about how this crash was going to wipe out the U.S. financial system. That is what systemic risk is. It means the whole thing goes down, the whole system.
So it sounds like a pretty mild term, but if you are familiar with economics, you know that is one of the scariest words in the economic lexicon.
What else have we here? We have Deloitte--not very green, either--a big consulting powerhouse. Here is what they say about continuing to fiddle around on climate change, pretend it is a hoax, censor the term, and act like idiots about a true coming risk with abundant warnings about the risk. They say that we have a range of outcomes. By 2070-- that was their target period--they said that if we can start getting climate right, if we can start addressing this problem before these systemic harms happen, then what is going to happen is the global GDP will increase by around $40 trillion; i.e., the world will be better off financially by $40 trillion by our making the right decisions to get climate change right. That is one outcome.
The other option is that we continue goofing off. We continue fiddling around and lying about climate change or believing the lies about climate change. We continue ignoring the evidence. We continue ignoring what we are seeing with our own eyes in the insurance industry in regions of the United States right now, already.
Go around Florida and talk about property insurance and tell me what you hear, because I am pretty sure I know because I have been there and heard it.
The other is a $180 trillion hit to global GDP, which means there is a $220 trillion swing that will come to pass in the lives of children now. The world can be $220 trillion poorer or $220 trillion richer depending on whether we continue to screw up responding to climate change, ignore it, and listen to the worst people in the world to listen to--the fossil fuel industry, which is wreathed in conflicts of interest on the subject, crawling with conflicts of interest, infested with conflicts of interest, and eager to shove those conflicts of interest into our politics with lies and dark money, secret influence. It is one of the fouler things that have been done, what has been done in our Congress by the fossil fuel industry.
If Deloitte is right, that $220 trillion swing is a hell of an outcome for people who will be alive then--all because we won't make good decisions now.
Potsdam Institute says that climate change losses by 2049 could hit $38 trillion and then get bigger after that.
So, again, we are dealing with a sooner window than 2070, but we are dealing with very, very, very big numbers--$25 trillion hit to the global real estate sector; $38 trillion hit from lost agricultural yields, labor productivity, and infrastructure; $220 trillion globally, depending on whether we get this right or continue to be fooled by those with the worst conflicts of interest.
Recently, Allianz, which, by the way, is the biggest insurance company in the world, a trillion-dollar company--two things about the insurance industry and Allianz in particular. The insurance industry needs to predict accurately in order to price its insurance correctly. So, first of all, they are making like trillion-dollar bets on what the future is going to look like. They are not just lying to make up stuff so that they can sell more gasoline next year in California and Rhode Island and other States; they have to look out.
When they do look out, not only do they have that huge bet that they are placing on what the world is going to look like, what risk they are insuring, they are actually under a fiduciary obligation. They can be sued by their shareholders and by their members if they are not doing proper due diligence and getting it right.
So when the insurance industry is doing signals like this, it is worth paying attention. The insurance industry is under a fiduciary obligation to get it right, the fossil fuel industry has a massive conflict of interest to tell us stuff that is wrong, and we are believing the fossil fuel industry? It is madness or it is politics or worse.
Well, here is what the Allianz board member wrote:
Sound familiar? Fed Chair Powell used almost the exact same language. They are seeing the same thing.
This is a systemic risk. Remember what I said about systemic risk? Here is a board member of the largest insurance company on the planet, with a trillion dollars at stake, saying that this is a systemic risk that threatens ``the very foundation of the financial sector''--just like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission report threatened, just like the International Financial Stability Board warned.
This is a systemic risk that threatens ``the very foundation of the financial sector.'' How? He continues. If insurance is no longer available, ``other financial services become unavailable'' too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged.
This is the same deal that the chief economist of Freddie Mac was predicting. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property.
Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch.
He also points out in his article something that I hadn't paid attention to. I was looking at the ``insurance to mortgage to property values'' crash. But what he points out is that, if you go to the financial sector, big wheeler-dealers in the financial world do big deals and transactions, and very often those transactions depend on an insurance component to make the deal work. And in areas where the risk involved in that transaction is uninsurable, then the transaction can't happen any longer.
So it is not just mortgages and the mortgage market that are imperiled by this insurance risk. It is the whole swath of other financial transactions, which is why the title was ``An End to Capitalism.'' That is what we are dealing with.
There is a lot more that I could go through. Here is my current binder on the economic risks of climate change, which includes these articles and more. I have circulated it to Finance Committee members. I have circulated it to Budget Committee members. I have circulated it to Environment and Public Works Committee members. I don't think anybody really wants to read it because, in this place, the fossil fuel industry gets what it wants, whatever it wants, whenever it wants. And the fossil fuel industry does not want the Senate or the House paying any attention to these looming risks, to these storm warnings that are coming.
I have been through small insurance collapses in Rhode Island--two of them. One was a banking insurance--State-backed banking insurer--that failed just as I was coming in as a new Governor's legal counsel. And as we saw this beginning to fail, he asked me to handle the issue. So it was a handful of an issue, I will tell you, because we knew that the insurer was going to fail, and we knew that all of the insured banks would no longer be able to honor their accounts. And we knew that about a third of Rhode Islanders had money in those various banking institutions and that they would lose access to their funds until we sorted this out. And it happened the day that the new Governor was sworn in.
I can remember preparing the needed papers to take over the closed institution in an all-nighter in a law firm and, in the morning, running the papers up to the Governor's office through the cold weather of a Rhode Island January as the guns were firing, signaling the start of the new administration--the ceremonial guns of probably the Newport Artillery Company.
And on day one, we had to close all of these banking institutions, and I spent the next many months of my life trying to figure out how to get them back, get depositors repaid, and clean up the insurance system.
So I know that when Ernest Hemingway was asked, ``How did you go broke?'' he said, ``Gradually, and then all at once.'' That is how these insurance crises happen.
The Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation went broke gradually and then all at once. It was just a matter of days from steady state status to complete calamity, and we had to dig our way back out of it.
The next one was workers' compensation insurance--that too, gradually and then all at once.
Like the California FAIR Plan, we had a backstop insurance entity that, if you couldn't get insurance in the regular market, you would go to the State entity, and then your risk would be farmed out to all of the other companies--which is fine if it is 2 or 3 or 4 percent of the market. But when that company starts to have a huge share of the market and huge losses, the insurance companies look around and say: Wow, we are going to own our share of those losses. I don't want to do business here any longer.
They came in, and in a matter of a day or two, every single workers' comp insurer in Rhode Island had said: We are out of here. We are done. We are closing.
And we had until the end of their policy to stand up a whole new workers' compensation system that paid for itself and was fair to workers.
Between those two things, I don't think I have ever worked so hard in my life. But we solved both of those problems.
Now, you may say: Well, that is just a little problem in a little State. Yes.
Many years ago, my father set up Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict in the Defense Department. He was the first SOLOC, as they called it. And one of the things that people in Special Operations really didn't like was being told that what they were doing was low intensity.
Mr. Whitehouse, when it is you that is being shot at, it is not low intensity. We have got to get rid of that name.
So small fights can be brutally intense fights, and these were small but brutally intense situations in Rhode Island. And the lesson to me is really clear: These things happen gradually and then all at once. And we are well into the gradual part of what climate change is doing to insurance markets, and the cascade from that into mortgage markets and into property values and into economic recession is now entirely predictable--indeed, predicted by essentially anyone who is, A, paying attention to this, and, B, not on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry.
So when we are messing around with Senate parliamentary procedures, when we are actually threatening--maybe cooler heads will prevail-- threatening to go nuclear, threatening to overrule a ruling of the Parliamentarian just to run a political errand for the fossil fuel industry to help it sell more gasoline, we are doing two really evil things at once: We are doing real damage to this institution that will be very hard to walk back from; and, two, we are indulging an industry with a massive special interest and a massive conflict of interest that is simply out to sell more gasoline and that wants us to ignore the risk that its emissions are creating in the world.
And we are now, in this building, so overwhelmed by that fossil fuel political influence infrastructure--all its dark money running through super PACs, all its lies being spouted out by phony front groups, all of the fake scientists making up stuff that isn't science but sounds good because it was cooked up on Madison Avenue to sound good. And now they have actually infiltrated the office of government, and they are running the U.S. Government from the inside with a view to making sure that nobody pays attention to the climate harm.
And I will close with a different point, which is that I have spent my time so far on the floor talking about how a corrupting industry has used its influence in Congress to steer us away from paying attention to a massive economic risk that numerous expert voices have warned us is in peril--and not just expert voices but many who are under a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders.
We had in the Budget Committee the CEO of Aon, which is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. He is their U.S. CEO. He came in to testify and give that same warning. Over and over and over again, we are getting that warning about the economic peril that is looming, where we are now in it gradually, and we are waiting for ``all at once'' to happen.
And I talk about that as an economic matter because this is the ``House of Mammon,'' where the worship of the fossil fuel god Baal and money is the No. 1 thing that we do. So I am speaking in the terms that the Senate and the House most pay attention to, which is money--money.
But know that behind the economic peril is real natural disaster, is real tumult in the natural systems of the Earth that have allowed our species to develop for 20,000 years in a relatively safe harbor of limited atmospheric carbon, a healthy climate range, moderate storm activity, and a robust ecosystem around us where that security and that safety have allowed the ecosystem to flourish.
And it happens in a million small ways. One of my favorites was the red knot. There is a bird; it is called the red knot. It lands in Delaware every year, and lots of them land in Delaware every year, and they come to Delaware every year because the horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay come ashore to lay their eggs. So it is like social hour for horseshoe crabs, but it is also feeding frenzy for birds that like to eat the horseshoe crab eggs.
But here is the deal about the red knot. I bet you don't know where they come from to get to Delaware Bay for that moment when the horseshoe crabs are laying their eggs. They come from
Imagine how long it takes to fly from Brazil to the east coast, to Delaware, in a jet plane. These little birds, they do it on their own. They are not big. They are about that big. And they fly all that way on their own.
It is such an arduous journey that their bodies actually metamorphose a bit during the journey to make it possible. It is one of the miracles of creation that this little bird can make that astonishing journey and have the physical changes to its body that take place during that trip make it possible for that little bird to make that journey.
And the reason that species makes it and survives is because, in God's great ecosystem, they have figured out that if they land at this time in this bay, the food will be there for them. And if we screw that up with fossil fuel emissions so that the schedule of the horseshoe crabs' egg laying goes off and those red knots come all the way from Brazil and there are no eggs there for them--they are too late; they are too early--that is how populations crash.
That is just one tiny example. That is one thread of this beautiful interlocking natural planet that we have, and there are a million more such threads that put the world together that we take for granted.
Behind the looming economic risk is a disruption of the Earth's natural systems that goes well beyond just economic harm.
It means that the creek where your grandfather taught you to fish and where you want to teach your granddaughter to fish isn't going to have the fish in it any longer. Can you put a price on that? No. It means that the water flowing out of the Himalayas--fought over between Pakistan and India forever--becomes less because there is dramatically less glacier in the Himalayas to provide the glacial flow down into those rivers.
And now you have a conflict between those countries over that most elemental need of humans--water. Can you put a price on that risk? Coastal homes all over the world are being lost to sea level rise.
After Superstorm Sandy, I walked the beaches near Matunuck, RI, and there was a man standing on the shore near his house. His house was tipped over because the storm had eroded the foundations of it, and he was looking at his house. They spent time going into it. It was tipping over. It was dangerous to go in, but they were getting out as much stuff as they could.
I asked him: Tell me the story of this house. It was a nice old house, been there a long time. He said: Well, I remember being here as a baby. It was my grandparents' house. They came here in the summers. It was beautiful. We had all this beach in front of us. We even had a lawn in front of us. The thing I want most in my life is to be able to pass this home on to my grandchildren; to have that family tradition, generation after generation after generation, to be able to come to this beautiful place and enjoy this beautiful shore and continue this glorious family tradition.
How do you put a price on that when that is taken away because we are too damned lazy and indolent to clean up the fossil fuel industry's mess when they won't do it?
My point is that as I focus on the economics of this--because that is what people care about in this place--there is a whole other set of costs to mankind and to our Earth that we will be forcing future generations to bear that have nothing to do with the almighty dollar but actually may be worse in terms of humankind and the human spirit.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. President, let me first thank my colleague from Rhode Island. I don't know how many years he has been delivering this message on the floor, but he has become the spokesperson for a cause that we all should share and try to make certain we address the deterioration of this planet that we live on; that our kids, our grandkids, and their children have a fighting chance against elements that they can't personally control. It is up to our generation. And Senator Whitehouse comes to the floor and reminds us on a regular basis about our moral and economic and environmental responsibility.
I thank him for his statement today. I want to join him in that respect.
Mr. President, last month, the Senate Parliamentarian analyzed the GAO's opinion ruling that Senate Republicans cannot use the Congressional Review Act to overturn a waiver granted to California by the U.S. EPA to regulate its own vehicle emissions.
I remember a time in the House and, again, in the Senate when we had a hardy debate here over miles per gallon and what was reasonable. I remember the automobile industry saying that we shouldn't impose a standard that they could never live up to, never produce cars that meet that standard of the higher miles per gallon.
I remember that California stepped out ahead of the rest of the Nation and said: Let us prove we can do it. Our economy is so big, you can't miss it if we succeed or if we fail. And they succeeded. They proved that if you create the right incentives, technology will move in that direction, and it has, successfully, when it comes to miles per gallon.
Now Republicans have decided, with the new President, to attempt to block a California law requiring all new cars sold in the State by 2035 to be zero-emission vehicles. It is an ambitious goal. It is as ambitious as some of the MPG goals they set in earlier times.
That is right. Despite the claims of being the party of States' rights, Republicans want to end the State-level regulation in the State of California. And get this, Elon Musk--the unelected adviser to the President--previously wrote to the EPA in favor of California's waiver. Now he has joined the Republican majority to try to gut the rule.
The Parliamentarian's decision was not one of party loyalty. It followed decades of precedent showing California's Clean Air Act waivers are not subject to the Congressional Review Act.
Despite the Parliamentarian's decision, my Senate Republican colleagues want to override the GAO and Senate Parliamentarian to advance the fossil fuel agenda. It is ``burn, baby, burn; drill, baby, drill.''
Now, I understand using the CRA might be faster than Agency rulemaking or even considering legislation. Think about this. There was a time when we actually legislated on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I can vaguely remember, it was so long ago. Rather than deal with legislation, hearings, and public review, we are all about these shortcut methods, which in some cases are disastrous. In fact, President Trump, in his first term, took administrative action to rescind California's Clean Air Act waivers and can take that path again.
But what Republicans are pursuing today is a procedural nuclear option, a dramatic break from Senate precedent with profound consequences. Let me repeat. Should my Senate Republican colleagues overrule the Senate Parliamentarian, it will have a major long-term impact for the Senate and the legislative filibuster.
This move is unprecedented. The Senate has never overruled the Parliamentarian regarding the CRA or allowing a bill to pass by majority vote. Before, when the tables were turned and the Senate Democrats were in the majority, my Republican colleagues were singing a very different tune about never breaking from the Parliamentarian. Leader Thune, himself, acknowledged in January of this year that overruling the Parliamentarian is ``totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there,'' Leader Thune said, ``People need to understand that.''
If Senate Republicans disregard the Parliamentarian's decision, they would set a new precedent in the Senate, eliminating longstanding guardrails and paving the way for future Senate majorities to overrule the Parliamentarian to achieve its partisan goals. I caution my Senate Republican colleagues from toeing this line and setting the wrong precedent.
As I said, time and time again, there cannot be one set of rules for the Republicans in the Senate and another set of rules for the Democrats. I hope my Republican colleagues will heed my
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, colleagues, today, on the Senate floor, we are expecting to see some outrageous attacks on my home State of California and important provisions of the historic Clean Air Act.
While it is not too late to turn back at this moment, I think it is important for all of my colleagues to know that I will be back here again and again and again throughout this process to make sure that everyone knows what these votes mean, not just for the precedent and procedures of the U.S. Senate but for the health of my constituents in California and about the real threat to human life that comes when California is denied the ability to control toxic air and greenhouse gas emissions.
But before I do, I want Senators and the American people to fully understand what we are about to witness on the Senate floor. Put aside all the procedural back-and-forth--I will get back to that in a few minutes--but overall it is actually pretty simple. Senate Republicans are preparing to vote to overrule the Parliamentarian--the nonpartisan umpire, referee for the Senate--who lets us know what is in order, what is not in order. Senate Republicans are preparing to vote to overrule the Parliamentarian. They will argue that they are not, but that is indeed what is happening here. They want to do that in order to bypass the filibuster in order to gut the Clean Air Act.
As I stand here right now, those joint resolutions that are going to be before us are subject to rule XXII of the Senate and, therefore, subject to the 60-vote filibuster threshold. They are subject to debate. They are subject to amendments. That has already been determined.
In this moment, they are in regular legislation and are subject, as a result, to the legislative filibuster. But if we see what we expect to see happen today, the status of these same bills--maybe later this evening--will be very, very different. If Senate Republicans behave the way that we expect them to, all of a sudden these same measures that are subject to the legislative filibuster and debate and amendments will all of a sudden be expedited procedurally--no amendments allowed, very limited debate.
Colleagues, as I said here yesterday, it is not just the ``why'' Republicans are willing to endanger the health of Californians, it is also the ``how'' they are doing it that is threatening.
A bit of history. In 1967, the Clean Air Act passed this body under regular order by a vote of 88 to 12. In 1990, the landmark Clean Air Act amendment passed the Senate 89 to 11--overwhelming bipartisan support. But today, Republicans are trying to pass these bills to gut California's Clean Air Act authority under a simple 50-vote threshold. They are plotting to overturn the Senate Parliamentarian's determination, plain and simple.
Why is that significant? Well, the majority leader said it himself at the very start of this Congress that when it comes to overriding the Parliamentarian, ``that is totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there. People need to understand that.'' But fast forward to this week, and we have heard all sorts of excuses and explanations and mental gymnastics as to why all of a sudden overturning the Parliamentarian is not akin to killing the filibuster. It is a complete 180-degree shift.
But in one way, I guess, they might be right. No, this isn't the same as killing the legislative filibuster. This actually goes way, way beyond that because, first, they are doing more than going nuclear on the Parliamentarian; they are going nuclear on the Congressional Review Act itself. It is true that the Parliamentarian does not make law. Under the Constitution, the House and the Senate set their own procedures, limited by the requirements set in the Constitution.
For the good of the order and actual functioning democracy, we have all come to rely on the Parliamentarian to call balls and strikes and set the rules of the road. But the Congressional Review Act is a law, and it says that all points of order are waived during a CRA resolution. And that is what we are debating right now, an actual CRA resolution relating to hydrogen fuel.
I oppose this particular resolution, but at least it is following the law and Senate procedure. But what is about to happen is going to be against the law and against Senate procedure.
As I understand it, Senate Republicans are preparing to have this Senate go nuclear not just once but twice. First, we will go nuclear and overturn the rule on points of order during a CRA, which is in the law. Then Republicans plan to go nuclear a second time: to throw out the rulebook and use the CRA against any Agency action that any Agency submits, no questions asked. Like I said, this goes way beyond just the legislative filibuster. So let's play it out a little bit so we are clear as to what this would lead to.
Under this logic, the Trump administration can send an endless stream of nonrule actions to Congress going back to 1996, including vaccine approvals. After all, we have an HHS Secretary with a spotty history as it pertains to the health and safety of vaccines. The administration could send broadcast licenses because you know this is an administration that is not shy about attacking anybody in the community who disagrees with their agenda. We can see the administration send merger approvals--again, not just those that are pending but go back to 1996--and any number of government decisions that apply to President Trump's long list of enemies.
All it would take is a minimum of 30 Senators to introduce related bills, and the Senate would be bogged down voting on Agency actions, large and small, all day long. Is that how we want to spend our days here in the Senate, voting on every vaccine approval because Secretary Kennedy decides to send them to Congress?
And what about the next Democratic administration? All bets would be off. Consider mining permits. Consider fossil fuel project approvals; consider LNG export licenses or offshore leases, IRS tax policies, foreign policies, and every Project 2025 or DOGE disruption or overreach. Every Agency action the Democrats don't like--whether it is a rule or not and no matter how much time has passed--would be fair game if Republicans go through with this and establish this precedent.
So let's take a step back. Republicans are admitting that they don't have the votes to pass these California resolutions under the Senate rules that the Parliamentarian says apply in this case, so they will overrule the Parliamentarian--why not throw out the rulebook altogether?
By voting to go nuclear on the CRA, they are ignoring the law, not just Senate rules but the text of the law itself. By voting to overrule the Parliamentarian, they are saying that the rules are whatever the Republicans say they are, not what the Parliamentarian has determined. The majority here can tell themselves whatever they want, and they can twist themselves into pretzels and knots to try and justify these reckless actions, but despite their smoke-and-mirrors approach to confuse the general public, we are all going to see it today with our own eyes if they go forward.
The majority wants to go nuclear to bypass the filibuster and pass a bill for the first time in Senate history. It has happened for nominations before. It has happened on a few procedural questions before, but never on a bill or three bills--never. And if this happens under a Republican majority, it would actually be pretty ironic that the party who claims to be the staunch defender of the filibuster threw the rules aside as soon as it was convenient.
I have been honest on my views of the filibuster. I do think it needs to be changed overall going forward, but it was my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who fought hard to keep it.
Well, there is about to be a new precedent on the record, unless we step back at the last minute. And it will stand as a guidepost going forward. Democrats are in the minority today. Democrats will be in the majority again some day--maybe later, maybe sooner--but we will certainly not forget what happened here today. History will not forget. California will not forget what is at stake today either.
I yield for now, but I will be back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Padilla for his eloquent speech on this subject.
Today, I want to talk about what is taking place in this Chamber, and I want to talk about it in two respects. I want to talk about what it will mean for the American people in terms of the air that we breathe and the water that we drink--that is the most important thing--but then I want to also talk about what it will mean for this institution, for the Senate; what it will mean for the filibuster; what it will mean for whether things can get passed on a simple majority vote at the behest of the oil industry or any other special interest or whether things in the future will continue to require 60 votes to get through this body.
Let's start with the first and most important thing: What does the repeal of California's clean air waiver--that is, its right to set its own standards for the air that we breathe--what does this mean for the people of California? What does this mean for the people of the United States?
This is downtown Los Angeles in 1955. Now, I don't remember 1955--I didn't come around until 1960--but I do remember air that looked a lot like this when I moved to Los Angeles. I remember days when there were smog alerts. We still have some of those. I remember when it was unhealthy air to breathe, and people were advised not to go outside if they didn't need to, and kids couldn't go out on recess because the air quality was so bad.
But this is what places in California, like Los Angeles and many places in the San Joaquin Valley, looked like just a few years ago--the San Joaquin Valley, where so much of the food in the Nation is grown. These areas have experienced the rapid rise of personal automobiles and expansion of our population--America's West, its suburbs and its cities.
On days like this, you just couldn't walk outside sometimes without hacking. If you had asthma or breathing problems, it was even more severe. And California families, through no fault of their own, were on the frontlines of a health risk unseen since the worst days of the Industrial Revolution pollution. The smog was so bad that in one instance, mass panic broke out in California because there was a belief that there was some kind of chemical weapons attack.
This was, in part, due to these amazing increases of population, but it was also our unique topography. The San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles, the Sierra Nevadas for the Central Valley, they trap fossil fuel emissions and keep smog clouds hanging over our cities where they may not hang over other parts of the Nation. So the San Gabriel Mountains, for those of us in L.A., but the Verdugos and other mountain ranges and the Sierra Nevadas have an impact on the Central Valley.
All that means is that 10 million Californians are living in areas that are under distinct and elevated threats from air pollution. And what that has meant historically is higher rates of respiratory issues like asthma and chronic lung disease. It has meant increased risk of heart disease, chronic headaches, immune system issues, and, most significantly, increased cancer risks.
That is multiplied by us living now on the frontlines of the climate crisis. We have devastating and year-round fire dangers that put millions of other pollutants into our air. So we need, deserve, and reserve the right, as Californians, to do something about our air.
In fact, this is why California became the first State in the Nation to regulate the emissions of automobiles back in 1966 because we understood then, as we do now, the risks that Californians face if we don't take action. Over the past 60 years, since our skies looked like this, California has led on this issue, and now, we are being targeted for it.
What will the cost of that be? By revoking California's right to protect its citizens from dirty air, we face not just dirtier air, but we also face a sicker society. The American Lung Association projected that our Nation moving to zero-emission vehicles in the next decade would generate more than $1 trillion in public health benefits and save more than 100,000 people from premature death.
So this is really the heart of the question for this body, and that is, What is more valuable to us? Is it the unfettered right to pollute the skies and make them look like this? Or do we want to save about $1 trillion in money we would have to spend otherwise on treating asthma and treating lung cancer and treating heart disease that is caused by air like this?
That electric vehicle requirement can save more than 100,000 people from premature death. So I guess we have to ask ourselves, How much is life worth? What would it be worth to us to be able to live a few years longer?
I suppose the answer to that question depends on, well, what kind of life is that? What kind of health are we in? But I would say a few more years is worth a lot. It is worth a lot. It is certainly worth more than contributions from the oil industry to be able to live a little longer, to be able to live a little healthier.
By targeting California--as this effort is doing--which comprises 11 percent of the Nation, and our goal of decarbonizing our transportation sector, we are selling poison seeds for the future--seeds that will grow to be more asthma and more sickness and more hospitalizations and more death. That is the bleak but blatant reality of what we are debating here today.
If the Republicans go nuclear to repeal California's clean air rules, that is what this will mean. It will mean shorter lives, poorer quality of life because of what we are breathing in the air, and ultimately, when they strike down clean water rules, what we are drinking in our water is going to be dirtier, and the American people are going to be more plagued by a whole variety of cancers.
Now, I mentioned the term ``going nuclear.'' What does that mean? This gets to the second point I want to make today, which is how the Republican majority intends to go about repealing California's ability to set the standards for its own air; that is, how does the Republican majority intend to foist its will on millions of people in other States? How are they determined to overturn States' rights? How are they determined that the Federal Government should tell a State: No, you can't protect your people from air pollution, not to that degree you can't, because we answer to a higher authority and that higher authority is called the oil industry? So how are they going to do it because in this body, for better or worse, it generally takes 60 votes to get things done. That is the filibuster. It requires 60 votes.
To repeal California's law, if you were to take that step, it would require 60 votes. Don't just take my word for it. We asked the Parliamentarian, who is the expert: Does this require 60 votes? Is this subject to the filibuster?
The answer is, yes, it does.
Well, you would think that would be the end of the story, but you can overrule the Parliamentarian, say the Parliamentarian is wrong, and then reduce the threshold to 50 votes.
Now, you might ask: How is that possible? Is the filibuster really that fragile that whenever it is ruled that you need 60 votes, you can simply overrule the Parliamentarian?
The answer is, yes, the rule is that fragile, which means that if Republicans move to go nuclear, to overturn the Parliamentarian, to do away with the filibuster, to do away with California's clean air, they will be setting a precedent that at any time and for any reason, for any State, for any rule, for any nonrule, for any waiver, for any license, for any grant--for any anything--a new majority can simply say: Well, we would like to vote on this with 50 votes. And if the Parliamentarian says it takes 60, you just vote to overturn the Parliamentarian.
So that is the import of what we are doing today, which is we are setting a precedent that the filibuster is essentially now meaningless, because if you can do away with the filibuster to do away with one State's clean air, well, you can pretty much do away with the filibuster for anything and everything.
So that is the momentous nature of what is happening today. The majority here may force Californians to breathe air like that again, and the majority here may decide they are getting rid of the filibuster.
Now, getting back to the underlying merits here, the American Lung Association found that our transition to cleaner air and zero-emission vehicles would result in 13 million fewer lost
Now, since my swearing-in 6 months ago to the Senate, I have had the privilege of visiting communities all over California, talking to Californians who are on the frontlines of this. Yes, some are environmental activists, and, yes, some work on science and climate issues, but there are others, too. They are the people who put food in your grocery stores. They are the people who spend so much of their days outside, breathing the only air available to them. They are the people who will be sicker--some of the people who will be sicker, work less, maybe die earlier, if we let the fossil fuel industry win this week; the people who spend hundreds of hours each month on their hands and knees, making sure that all the rest of us can have fresh berries and greens and other crops that California puts on your plate. I am, of course, talking about farmworkers. I invite any of my colleagues to consider what millions more pounds of smog in our air over the next decade will do to them.
Of course, it is not just farmworkers; it is all of us--all of us who spend time outdoors, all of us who can't help but be outdoors. All of us are going to be breathing in dirtier air, all of us are going to be suffering more sick days, and all of us are going to be plagued by more cancers if we repeal the rules that each State gets to set that has a waiver or wants to join California's healthier air rules. That will be the repercussion.
It used to be there was a bipartisan consensus in favor of cleaner air. It wasn't just Democrats. Richard Nixon, who founded the EPA, Pete Wilson, Ronald Reagan--they all understood the importance of the environment and clean air and clean water. They helped California take the environmental movement and make it mainstream. We got pollutants out of our air and out of our water and out of our communities.
Where is that party now? Where is the party that helped write the Clean Air Act? Where is the party that says Congress should not meddle in what one State is doing to govern itself?
What will happen when you lose the majority and Democrats have the opportunity to follow this precedent? What will happen to your State? We decide we don't like your State's rule on mifepristone or we don't like the fact that your State got a license to export liquid natural gas or we don't like a grant that your State got in transportation or we don't like some rule that benefits your State. Will you argue to us that ``oh, no, you can't overturn the Parliamentarian''? Will that be your argument? Because that fight will be over.
So I will remember where I am today. I will remember what we are doing today. I think we all would and will. I hope it is not the day that we made it easier to pollute California's skies. I hope it is not the date we made it easier to make water filled with more forever chemicals like PFAS. I hope it is not the day we decided that we could eliminate a State's right to control the quality of the air that their citizens breathe or the water they drink. And I hope it is not the day we decided that it was worth getting rid of the filibuster to satisfy the fossil fuel industry.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant 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.
The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, I know that my Republican colleagues like to do what the President asks them to do. They agree with him on virtually everything, so today I am going to make life easy for my Republican colleagues. I am going to ask them to support legislation-- extremely important legislation--that, in fact, does what President Trump claims that he wants to do.
On May 20, just a few days ago, President Trump said the following:
This is what President Trump said a few days ago: I am cutting drug prices by 85 percent. Right now, I am saving--I am saving the whole thing because I did something nobody was willing to do. Other countries pay a tiny fraction of what we do, and I instituted favored nations. We are now going to pay the lowest in the world. We will be the equivalent of the lowest country in the world. People go to London, they go to Canada, they go to other countries, many other countries, because they want to pay their pharmaceutical products--their drugs--at a fraction of the cost. We are going to have the lowest cost of anywhere in the world. No one else could do that but me.
That is President Trump a few days ago.
Well, I don't usually agree with President Trump on anything, but, in fact, on this issue, he makes a very strong point.
In the United States today, we have a healthcare system that is broken; it is dysfunctional; and it is cruel. It is a system which spends twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other major country while 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. And one out of four Americans today cannot afford the cost of the drugs their doctors prescribe, and it is a system where over 60,000 people a year die because they don't get to a doctor on time.
While the current system makes huge profits for the large drug companies, huge profits for the insurance companies, it is obviously failing the needs of ordinary Americans.
So what is the U.S. Congress doing to address this crisis? Well, right now, sadly and tragically, the Republicans are trying to ram through a so-called reconciliation bill, which would deny coverage-- take away coverage--for up to 13.7 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
In other words, in the midst of a terrible healthcare crisis, this legislation makes a very bad situation much worse. We cannot allow that to happen.
So what should we do? Well, in my view, healthcare is a human right. We should do what every other major country on Earth does and guarantee healthcare for all people.
But, today, I want to get back to what President Trump said a few days ago, and what he said is that the American people are sick and tired of paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. And he is right.
Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent, or progressive or conservative, you understand that there is something wrong when Americans can't afford the high cost of prescription drugs, and the drug companies make over $100 billion a year in profits.
Let me give you just a few examples of the current situation regarding prescription drug costs in America. While it costs just $5 to manufacture Ozempic--that is a widely used drug right now--Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic, makes obscene profits by selling this drug for more than a $1,000 in the United States. That drug costs $76 in France, $85 in Germany, and $170 in Canada.
But it is not just Ozempic. Prescription drug after prescription drug costs far more in this country to purchase than in other countries--in some cases, 10 times more.
So what are we going to do about it? Well, I think it might be a good idea for my Republican friends to listen to what the President of the United States said. And, today, we are going to offer my Republican friends the opportunity to achieve the goals that President Trump has talked about.
The problem with President Trump's initiative is that he is mostly just talking. The Executive order that he has introduced and signed does not do what he says he wants to do.
Just don't take my word for it. An expert at Harvard University was recently quoted as saying:
The Wall Street Journal--no great friend of mine--their analysts said the order was ``more bark than bite.''
Since issuing the Executive order, President Trump has gone on FOX News, and while talking about differences in American prices and international prices, he said ``he ended it.''
Good news. It is all over. He ended it. We no longer pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, according to President Trump.
During that same interview, he said that ``drug companies were great.'' The drug companies, apparently, even told him: ``Look, it's time.''
Just yesterday, at a press conference with Speaker Johnson, he claimed he ``is cutting [drug prices] by 80 to 85 percent'' because ``he stopped the scam.''
Well, there you go. Good news, America. The President said it. It must be true because he would not lie. Drug prices are down by 80 to 85 percent.
Does anyone really believe that? Nobody does.
If we want to, on the other hand, do more than just talk, we have got to do something, and the way we do it is with some serious legislation. And that is the legislation that I have introduced today.
If we want to actually lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs in America, we need to take on the pharmaceutical industry in a way that President Trump has never even thought about doing. In other words, we need less talk; we need more action.
And that is why I introduced legislation to make sure that Americans pay no more than people in other countries for the exact same prescription drug. Unlike President Trump's Executive order, my bill doesn't just ask drug companies nicely, please, to lower prices. My legislation makes it clear that drug companies must lower prices for Americans to those they charge people in other countries. In other words, what we are finally saying is, if you are charging the people in the UK $100 for this prescription drug, that is what you are going to charge the people in the United States--not 10 times more.
And the difference between my legislation and Trump's so-called Executive order is that, if the pharmaceutical industry refuses to do the right thing and substantially lower drugs, my bill will allow other companies to sell the same prescription drugs at a far lower cost. In other words, generics can come on to the market and sell the drug for a fraction of the price.
So President Trump says he supports making sure Americans pay no more than people in other countries for prescription drugs. President Trump says:
Well, I am just ever so delighted that campaign contributions have no impact on the Republican Party. It could have shocked me, but there we go. President Trump said it. It must be right.
So the bottom line here is President Trump says he wants to lower the cost of prescription drugs in America by 80 to 85 percent. I agree.
President Trump has issued an Executive order which he says will do that. It will not do that.
The legislation that I have introduced has real teeth, and it will do that. So, today, I call upon all of my colleagues, especially my Republican colleagues, to support this legislation, because I know President Trump has said that the huge amount of money that the pharmaceutical industry gives in campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans doesn't have any impact on the Republicans. They are prepared to stand up to the drug companies. So that is great news. I am delighted to hear that.
So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 1818, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
I appreciate the ranking member's interest in addressing drug prices, and you absolutely have to lower the cost of prescription drugs. And we absolutely have to acknowledge that there is a tension. If we do not incentivize the development of new types of drugs, we condemn ourselves to continue to die from diseases for which there are currently no cures.
And I say this as a guy who has practiced medicine--or graduated from med school in 1983. Let me put it that way.
When I graduated from medical school, one of the most common surgeries was taking out a portion of somebody's stomach. I don't mean your belly. I mean your stomach, where the food goes down after you swallow it. This is how I talk to medical students--because of peptic ulcer disease.
And there came along a medicine called cimetidine. It just changed the landscape. And we went from a surgery being most common to one which was rarely performed in 6 months. Cimetidine, which is now called Tagamet, which is now sold over the counter--just a measure of innovation, which if we had not had that innovation then, a most common surgery would still be removing a portion of somebody's stomach because of bleeding ulcers.
More tragically--it is pretty tragic when you lose part of your stomach--when I was a resident in Los Angeles is when the HIV epidemic came out. And all of these men--they were all men--20 to 30, came in with something that we didn't even know what the disease was. We didn't have a way to diagnose it. So we called it the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. And they all died. They all died.
And I remember saying to one of the older physicians: Why do we even bother treating them, because they all die?
But because there was an incentive for companies to come up with cures, they did it. And they stopped dying, and they began living.
That doesn't happen accidentally. It happens because there is incentive to bring a drug through expensive studies to the market. By the way, I recently had a doc tell me, who treats HIV positives, that if a patient takes their medicine, they die when they are 88 of Alzheimer's or a stroke or something else, but they should not die from an AIDS-related cancer. That is the power of innovation, and that is the power of incentivizing innovation.
I could go down a list of other drugs. Melanoma. When I was in med school, if you got diagnosed with melanoma, they said go fill out the will. Now I have friends who have been living for 8 years, 10 years longer taking immunotherapy for melanoma. That doesn't just happen. That happens because you incentivize innovation.
So what are our diseases now for which we have no cure? Alzheimer's. I lost two parents to it. Wouldn't it be great if we had a cure for Alzheimer's?
Pancreatic cancer, esophageal cancer--I could just go down the list of things for which there is no cure. But, I can tell you, with the appropriate incentive, with the research taking place, in 10 years, we will speak of those diseases as diseases of the past, as we now speak of bleeding peptic ulcer disease causing a portion of your stomach to be resected as something in the distant past.
Now, by the way, I applaud my colleague. I applaud President Trump for saying that other countries are not carrying their fair share of the load for paying for this innovation. They should do it too. This is not the way to get there. But it is absolutely essential that they do. And my staff is bringing something, which I will invite my colleague from Vermont to join us on that, because it is absolutely essential that we have the innovation, that we be able to afford it. And the only way we balance those two is if other countries pay their fair share.
But let's return to the measure at hand. The measure at hand sounds simple. It is simple. It won't succeed. Well, it will succeed in lowering prices temporarily, but, in the long term, it will defeat the ability to incentivize innovation. And then all drugs will be cheap because all drugs will be old. But we need new drugs, and we need the incentive, and this kills that incentive.
So for that, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Vermont.
I want to thank my colleague from Louisiana, the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on which I serve, for his remarks. And I think nobody will disagree with him that we have seen in recent years incredible innovation, and there are drugs now on the market that are saving lives that 20, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, were not the case. And we want to continue that innovation--no debate about that.
But all that I am asking my colleague from Louisiana to focus on is what President Trump said, not last year, not 5 years ago. It is what he said yesterday. And what he said yesterday, and I quote, Senator Cassidy--this is President Trump:
But we are going to do it here in the United States. That is what he said.
So all that I am doing, Chairman Cassidy, is putting into legislative, effective language what the President of the United States said.
And by the way, he said, again, that the pharmaceutical industry and all of their campaign contributions have no impact on Republicans, only on Democrats. Well, maybe that is the case, but I doubt that very much.
So all that I am asking my colleague and friend the chairman of the committee to do is to put in place what President Trump said he was doing.
And what my legislation would do is exactly what Trump talked about. It would lower the cost of prescription drugs to what other countries are paying. That is what it does; it does what Trump says he wants to do. I would urge my friend from Louisiana to reconsider.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. President, there is a sort of general rule in politics, which is that if you start your meeting at 1 a.m., you are probably not proud of what you are doing. Now, there are some instances in which you start the meeting at 7 p.m. and it goes long and then you have to vote at whatever hour you finish. But to convene at 1 a.m. is an intentional thing. It is to say: I would very much like if nobody saw what we were up to. And that is exactly what happened at 1 a.m. today, Wednesday morning.
Republicans in the House know that the bill that they are considering is super unpopular, but they have been ordered to pass it anyway. That is what is happening on the other side of the Capitol right now. House Republicans have convened the Rules Committee at 1 a.m. to advance their tax bill, and it is because they know this bill stinks.
For starters, it is the largest wealth transfer in American history. Think about that. There have been a lot of wealth transfers in American history, but this is the biggest one in terms of the Tax Code. It is not like they were redistributing wealth among the wealthy. They are literally taking from the poor--people who don't have enough money--and shoveling it straight into the pockets of people who already have more than enough.
This bill is about making the richest people ever to walk the Earth even richer. How do they plan to do that? By kicking 14 million Americans off of health insurance and denying food assistance to millions more. People will be turned away at hospitals and go to bed hungry, all so that billionaires have a bit more.
You do not need fancy polling to tell you that this is super unpopular. And so Republicans have decided to fix that problem by convening the hearing in the middle of the night, hoping that people will not notice.
The plain facts of the bill are so egregious. And as I started to write these remarks, I had a problem, which is, How do you describe this thing accurately and not sound like you are frothing at the mouth like a partisan and sort of overstating the case? Because this really is kicking 14 million people off of Medicaid, kicking millions more off of food assistance, and then that is the savings that is generated in order to fund these tax cuts for billionaire corporations and the wealthiest people in the United States.
And what happens if something is both true and sounds like a partisan accusation? But that is where we are at. This is actually what they are trying to do.
Here is the thing, even the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history are still not enough to cover the cost of these enormous giveaways. So the Republicans have turned to one of their favorite punching bags: solving the climate crisis.
Never mind that hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in clean energy across the country, mostly in Republican States and districts; never mind that those investments are creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs; never mind that even if you don't care about any of that, there is a basic principle in running a smart economy and running an investable economy--and that is that when the private sector makes an investment on the basis of the Tax Code and they are in the middle of that investment, you can't pull the rug out from under them.
The reason is very simple. Besides fairness and besides the fact that we are undermining progress towards actually addressing an existential crisis for the planet, it also makes the United States very hard to invest in because if you were a business and you are looking at the Federal Tax Code and you are saying: I am going to make a 5-, maybe 10- year investment--capital investment--in chips, manufacturing, climate, agriculture, hospitality, real estate, transportation, infrastructure, whatever it may be--you are doing it on the basis of what the Federal Tax Code says.
And then your investment committee, board of directors, whomever it may be, will say: How do we know these things are going to stay on the books?
The normal answer is: Come on, the Federal Government is not going to pull out a tax incentive structure in the middle of your investment and construction cycle.
And the truth is, yes, they are.
So this doesn't have just climate implications or economic implications in terms of the specific projects. It actually has to do with how stable of an investment climate we establish in the United States of America. We are no longer doing ``all of the above.'' The argument that we used to have between the political parties was Democrats would say we have to transition to clean energy; Republicans would say, no, let's do clean energy, but let's also do these other things.
But now the Republican position is picking winners and losers and, basically, riding the losers into the ground.
Here is the very tough truth: Coal is on the way out, whether you like it or not. But Trump and Republicans would rather revive it for a few more years just to squeeze a couple more years of profitability out of it because, after all, their capital investments are fully amortized. So a couple more years of profitability means no more investment, but a couple more years of revenue.
So that is what they are doing. This is going to raise costs for Americans. Let's be clear. This is going to raise costs for Americans.
There was a time--and I was part of these debates in the State of Hawaii--there was a time when there was a tradeoff between how much consumers had to pay and our climate objectives. But those trends have changed. Now wind is the cheapest form of energy. Nuclear is among the cheapest forms of energy. Solar is among the cheapest forms of energy. For me, in the State of Hawaii, to bring in low sulfur fuel oil on a fuel tanker and then light it on fire for electron is the dumbest thing to do, even if you don't care about climate.
It is simply cheaper. It is simply cheaper for consumers and businesses and for the climate crisis and, therefore, our ability to fiscally manage the climate crisis as we see increasing disasters, both in their severity and how often they happen. And then every--what?-- year, year and a half we do $150 million emergency supplemental because there are now wildfires where there have never been wildfires, floods where there have never been floods, tornadoes where there have never been
So there is a reason they convened at 1 a.m., and it is not because that is prime time in Hawaii. They didn't convene at 1 a.m. because they like to see each other past midnight. They convened at 1 a.m. because they are about to pass one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation that has ever been passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I just wonder why--if I am a House Member and I am being told ``We are going to make all these changes. All these things that you are voting for are going to be excised from the Senate version. Don't worry,'' well, my view would be ``If you are going to fix all that stuff, why are you making me vote on it now? Why are you making me vote on it now?''
The answer is very simple: Donald Trump showed up in the caucus and used a couple of expletives. They implied that voting no is a betrayal, that standing up for your constituents is a betrayal, and I think they are all going to fall in line.
So it is up to the U.S. Senate to fix this bill or kill this bill. That is the task in front of us.
I am hoping that cooler heads prevail. I know there are a number of Republicans who hate these Medicaid cuts. I know there are a number of Republicans who have a ton of clean energy investment in their States.
There is plenty of political room to criticize the Biden administration or say ``I am against the Green New Deal'' and still be for wind and solar and nuclear and geothermal and agriculture that is done in a more climate-friendly way. All of that is available to us. We don't have to do things in the maximally unpopular way, but the Speaker apparently wants to do it that way.
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.
The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I am a sponsor, along with Senator Markey, our lead sponsor, and Senator Hirono, for the Small Business Liberation Act. In a few minutes, Senator Markey will come to the floor and ask unanimous consent to pass it, but I wanted to say a few words in advance of his coming.
Senate Democrats today will try to pass the Small Business Liberation Act to exempt small businesses from Trump's destructive trade war. I am very proud to cosponsor and support this legislation that Senator Markey has sponsored.
Two months since Donald Trump's so-called ``Liberation Day,'' his tariffs have been economic arson on Main Street, and small businesses are getting scorched.
I have visited small businesses from one end of New York to the other, and these tariffs are sowing chaos. They are raising costs, smashing supply chains, forcing businesses to hike prices, lay off people, and even close their doors for good. Already, employment of the smallest of small businesses has declined by 3 percent, and last month alone, 65,000 small business jobs were wiped out.
Trump's 90-day pause does nothing to bring relief or certainty to small business but only continues the uncertainty and chaos. How can a small business possibly plan for the future when the future only shows chaos? One day Donald Trump says this, the next day he says that, and nobody knows what tomorrow brings.
These small businesses can't do anything about their pain. They don't have the ear of the President like the mega corporation CEOs do. The administration is utterly clueless about the pain they are creating for small business.
Our legislation will help small businesses get back on track by exempting them from Trump's destructive tariffs. There are almost 35 million small businesses in the United States that employ roughly half of the private sector jobs in the country. Providing these businesses with tariff relief shouldn't be partisan. It is a national priority.
If Republicans clearly care and truly care about protecting small business, they should not stand in the way of our legislation passing today.
Will they side with the American people and small business and help pass our legislation or will Republicans block this bill and side with Donald Trump as his trade war decimates small businesses from one end of the country to the other?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. President, we are witnessing one of the most anti- small business administrations in our Nation's history.
Since day one, Donald Trump and his administration have sown chaos in our country and our economy, disregarding the impacts of their mayhem on the American people, including the nearly 35 million small business owners in our country.
From freezing Federal funds to enacting tariffs that harm small businesses and consumers, Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the American economy and the small businesses that fuel it. Now the Trump administration has taken to gaslighting business owners and the American people about the impacts of their recklessness.
Just today, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler--a billionaire herself--testified before the Small Business Committee on which I sit. To call her remarks Orwellian would be an understatement. In her testimony before the committee, Administrator Loeffler claimed that thanks to the President's economic agenda, ``demand for American goods is rising and small manufacturers are stepping up to meet it.''
On the contrary, President Trump's tariffs are harming U.S. businesses--especially small businesses--and increasing their costs. As a result, business confidence is plummeting.
According to the National Small Business Association, only 59 percent of small business owners are confident in the financial future of their businesses. This is a new low in this organization's survey. It is a new low in the 16-year history of this survey.
According to another organization, Small Business for America's Future, 80 percent of business owners feel concerned or pessimistic about their economic outlook, 79 percent of businesses are concerned about a recession in the next 12 months, and 86 percent are concerned about navigating current economic conditions.
Normally, the SBA would be there for small businesses in moments of pain and uncertainty like this, but this anti-business administration has wasted no time in basically gutting the SBA. To date, nearly 800 SBA employees have been fired or resigned, and the Administrator has a goal to shed another 1,900 employees in the months ahead. The SBA is the smallest entity in our Federal bureaucracy, and they are shedding all these employees. When I asked the Administrator about these employees, the majority of whom are gone, she had a hard time giving me a straight answer.
Already, we have heard from small businesses that have noticed a significant decline in customer service since January when the SBA began shedding all these employees. If the SBA goes ahead with this disastrous plan to shed more employees, nearly half--nearly half--of the Agency's workforce will have been eliminated, leaving small businesses across the country basically to fend for themselves, not to mention all of the programs that the SBA supports on behalf of small businesses.
Gutting the SBA is hardly what I would call, to quote Ms. Loeffler in her testimony today, ``meeting the moment.'' Despite the Administrator's bluster, the numbers are clear: Our small businesses are suffering; they are not prospering. They are suffering under the weight of Trump's actions, especially his tariffs.
That is why I was proud to join Senator Markey in introducing legislation which he will talk about soon to exempt small businesses from Trump's tariffs, tariffs that may well force many of these businesses to shut down altogether. While the massive corporations controlled by President Trump's billionaire buddies may be able to weather this economic storm, our small businesses don't have the same luxury.
Republicans think our Tax Code makes our economy great; that if they
So, for these reasons, if Republicans are serious about supporting small businesses, they will join us in passing our commonsense bill. On behalf of the nearly 35 million small businesses across our country, I urge my colleagues to join us in passing the Markey bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, while we are waiting for the next opportunity to move on the legislation to liberate small businesses from the tariffs of the Trump administration, I would just like to speak for a few minutes about the attempts by the Republican leadership to truncate the process by which California is able to have a waiver to increase the efficiency of the vehicles which are driven in California, but the same thing would be true across the rest of the Nation.
All I want to say is that, right now, China is investing $1 trillion this year in clean energy, low-carbon technologies--$1 trillion in 1 year. Japan has just announced they are investing $1 trillion in clean energy, low-carbon technologies.
So what we are debating here is going to absolutely allow for these other countries to catch up to us, and we will ultimately fall further and further behind, especially in the efficiency of the vehicles which we drive in this country. We might as well put a bow on an entire industry over the long term and just hand it over to countries around the world that are focusing on these technologies.
That is why this is a big mistake. We should not be allowing for a procedural trick to be played here that is unprecedented in the history of the Senate, to then have the underlying issue be really not debated the way it should in terms of the consequences for our Nation and for the planet in terms of the greenhouse gases, additionally, that are going to go up that will endanger our planet.
So I just wanted to make that comment. I will come back later in order to speak on it.
At this point, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I am here in support of Senator Markey's very important bill that looks at these tariff taxes which, as we all know, apply to consumers--$3,000 for every family in America will be the tariff tax from President Trump's tariffs.
But the focus of Senator Markey's bill--which is so smart--it is on what is happening with small businesses. They are literally roadkill here. They do not have the margins of the big businesses who can go in and have the number of the White House and get a special meeting and get an exemption, which is exactly what has happened.
Or they are not invited to the special secret meeting at JPMorgan with the Treasury Secretary with major investors to find out what is going to happen next with tariffs. They are completely in the dark. Yet they are the backbone of our economy.
I use the example of Beth Benike who is from Minnesota, an Army veteran from southern Minnesota, CEO and founder of a little company called Busy Baby, Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year, just honored at the Small Business Administration about a week ago or 2. And she was celebrating getting her products into major, major retailers. And then these tariffs struck.
Beth's story is the American dream. She came up with an idea based on her own experiences with little kids to help with highchairs. And now she is worried about losing her business and even her house because of these across-the-board tariffs.
We are seeing this over and over again. That is why I am honored to join Senator Markey in his bill to say: If we are not going to help the rest of the world, at least we must exempt small businesses in America from these tariff taxes.
I would prefer for everyone to look at only doing targeted tariffs like we have successfully done in the past under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, instead of this across-the-board business that is basically driving China into the arms of Russia, that is dissing our own allies, like South Korea and Japan and Europe, Canada and Mexico. And the time is here to do something.
Mr. President, at the very least, let us exempt those small businesses who are going to be the first to fold under the weight of these tariff taxes. I thank Mr. Markey for his leadership.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. President, the motto of the State of Oregon is ``She flies with her own wings.''
I can't think of a better description for my State director Jessica Stevens. After more than 12 years with Team Merkley, I have come to the Senate floor today to bid her a grateful farewell.
Jessica has spent her career serving the people of our State of Oregon. She fought for working families as the executive director of the Oregon State Council of the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, before joining Team Merkley as director of our field team.
I hold a townhall in each of Oregon's 36 counties every year, so leading the field team is a very demanding challenge.
For 3 years, she traveled with me across the length and breadth of our State, from big cities to rural communities, from the Oregon coast to the Owyhee Canyonlands, from the Columbia River to Crater Lake.
So in 2015, when it was time to hire a new State director, there was no question that Jessica was the right person to lead our State team.
For the last decade, she has coordinated between two teams on two coasts, managing six field offices with nearly 20 staff working across Oregon's more than 98,000 square miles.
She has overseen more than 400 townhalls with the people of Oregon. She has built close working relationships with 3 Governors, 11 Members of the House of Representatives, countless State legislators, county commissioners, community leaders, stakeholders, advocates, and constituents, not to mention Senator Wyden's team.
And she leads by example.
As one of our team members said:
Others describe her ``constantly working behind the scenes,'' that she ``squashes trouble,'' ``puts out fires,'' and ``fixes problems nobody [has even yet seen].''
A former Team Merkley member said she ``was so impressed with how Jessica handled [difficult situations, bringing] immense calmness and clarity [with] considerable empathy and support.''
Another former team member said:
Jessica has also taken countless members of Team Merkley under her wing. She has encouraging words for our interns, podcast recommendations on tricky local issues.
She sets a ``calm but strong'' example for the entire team, including her ``skill for listening and really seeing all the diverse groups and constituencies'' my office serves.
One longtime member of our team said:
Another shared the story of the first time she had to do an airport pickup, saying:
Another member of Jessica's team said:
Someone said:
And one member of my team summed it up by simply saying:
In addition, she led one of the most consequential and sensitive processes: the nominations of Federal judgeships in Oregon. She supported judicial selection committees of legal and community leaders and worked with the White House to advance these nominations.
Thanks to her tireless efforts, Oregon has made history with its recent appointments, including Judge Adrienne Nelson, who is the first African-American woman to serve on the Federal bench from the District of Oregon, and Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, who is the first Muslim to serve as a Federal judge in the United States.
Her quiet efforts behind the scenes have helped to make our courts and our country more equitable and more just.
The motto of the State of Oregon is ``She flies with her own wings.''
Through workers' strikes and wildfires, through pandemics and post office closings, through the first Trump administration and now the second, she has kept Team Merkley flying for 12\1/2\ years.
It is with deep gratitude that Team Merkley and I thank Jessica Stevens for her service to the people of Oregon. We wish her all the best in her new chapter.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, today, I rise to advocate to my colleagues in the Senate for my Small Business Liberation Act, and I do so with Leader Schumer and Senator Hirono, who have each already spoken on this very important issue.
Here is what the bill would do: The bill would give relief from President Trump's disastrous, destructive, small business-killing tariffs that have been turning Main Street into ``Pain Street'' all over our country for the last 7 weeks.
I would also provide with my bill certainty to the constant whiplash and chaos that is President Trump's tariff policies by exempting small businesses from the baseline 10-percent tariffs and the tariffs that have been on a 90-day pause since April 9.
So let me just explain what I am talking about. On April 2, President Trump imposed a 10-percent tariff on pretty much the whole world. In other words, a 10-percent tax on anything coming into the country--10 percent.
He also imposed an additional--called reciprocal tariff--on April 2 as well. And those tariffs, for example, were an additional 20 percent on the EU or an additional--we will just say--32 percent on Fiji, for whatever reason.
So that was an incredible additional tax on top of the 10-percent tax, which he imposed on the same day.
So on April 9, the President said: Well, we will wait--we will wait 90 days on those additional tariffs; on the EU for 20 percent; the 32 percent for Fiji; the 24 percent additional for Japan--we will put that aside, but we are going to keep the 10 percent on.
Now, for a big company, maybe they can figure that out. They can ride that out, the 10 percent. However, if you are a small business in our country, and all of a sudden, there is a new 10-percent tax you have to pay on all of those goods which you are bringing into our country, and then there is a sword of Damocles sitting out there, as well, that there could be, in July--which is only 6 weeks away--an additional 20 percent if those products come in from Europe. You are going to have a chilling effect that is placed on your business decisions, without question.
They don't have the leeway to be able to make the kind of riskier decisions that, perhaps, a bigger business could to just ride through all of these tariffs. So all across every Main Street in our country, these small businesses are getting paralyzed by the Trump actions.
Again, we are going to start with this: There is a 10-percent tariff--tax--already in place right now, since April 2, on every good coming into our country. So this is a very dangerous place to put the small businesses of our country.
Even as the vast majority of small businesses are seeing massive tariff-induced cost hikes, this administration is offering exemptions-- exemptions--for billion-dollar corporations.
If you can get a dinner invitation to Mar-a-Lago, like the heads of Apple and Google, you can secure an exemption for your industry.
Now, in almost every instance, that is preceded by a big, big multimillion-dollar contribution to some entity that the Trump administration would like you to give that money to.
And then Apple is out; Google is out. They are not any longer affected by the tariffs. But no one on Main Street can afford to go to Mar-a-Lago to give the President $1 million. That probably exceeds the total worth of their business.
So that is the problem with where we are. And, by the way, it is also why the national chamber of commerce says that small businesses should get an exemption. It is not me. It is the national chamber of commerce that says that they should get an exemption.
And 97 percent of all companies that do business on an international basis are small businesses, and they constitute 30 percent of all trade. The national chamber of commerce is saying they should all be exempted. That is what my bill does. It says: Exempt those 97 percent of all businesses that constitute 30 percent of the trade from these tariffs--from the 10-percent tariff; from the upcoming, 6 weeks from now, upward of 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent more tariffs that are being imposed on countries around the world, while we are waiting for the President to negotiate bilateral agreements with each one of these entities.
Well, so far, after a month and a half, he is up to one agreement with the United Kingdom. That is it. He has got dozens and dozens to go and no time on the clock, and that is what small businesses are looking at. They are looking up at the clock. They are saying: How long can I last? I survive week to week. I survive month to month. I can't afford to be paying these tariffs or wondering if there is a new tariff which is coming in.
And all across our country, these numbers are unbelievable. In Massachusetts, we have 7 million people. We have 700,000 small businesses. Well, the same thing is true for the country. There are about 330 million Americans, and there are 33 million small businesses. There is a small business in America for every 10 people, and that person right now is looking up with fear that their future has a cloud over it.
And those small businesses, they account for two out of every three jobs added to our economy in the last 25 years. They are our engine of growth.
So I have heard from small businesses all across Massachusetts, all across our country, about how they are forcing those businesses to lay off employees, scale back benefits, or even shut their doors in some cases.
I spoke with Brandale Randolph, founder of the 1854 Cycling Company, an electric bike manufacturer based in Massachusetts, and here is what Brandale told me. He shared the story that his company finally-- finally--after years of work, recovered from the $45 million which they lost during COVID, only to now be forced to decide whether or not they can weather this new tariff disaster hanging over their head.
So they moved from COVID to tariffs--none of this having been in any way instigated by the small businesses of our country. They don't have anything to do with it. It just keeps coming into their lives. And the messages from 1854 and other small businesses across the country are clear: These tariffs are going to threaten to put them out of business.
Small businesses are not Democrat. They are not Republican. This should not be a partisan issue, and I am disappointed that President Trump continues to ignore the outrage and the opposition to his irrational and ill-advised tariff policy.
It is time for the Senate to stand up and exempt small businesses in our country. There is a trade war going on. We should allow small businesses not to be drafted into this war because they are the ones that will be the casualty.
So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 1593, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Ohio.
Reserving the right to object, and if my Democratic colleague could just yield for a very brief question for clarification, I think, for those listening: How do you define a small business?
Well, a small business is defined in the Small Business Administration definitions, and those would be the ones which we would exempt. And it can be different, depending upon the industry or its status, but, in general, what we are using is the definition used by the Small Business Administration.
And just for clarification of my colleague, that is actually 500 employees or less. So I think when we are talking about small businesses, I just want to clarify that we are talking about 500- employee businesses.
So, first of all, I also want to actually thank my colleague for caring about small businesses. Certainly, as a small business owner up until 4 months ago, I think we should have much more passion here in this Chamber around small businesses. So I truly commend you for that.
I also commend you in a very big and meaningful way for the vote you took 25 years ago when you voted against giving China normalization status with the United States. I think that was a courageous vote. You were on the right side of history.
That disastrous situation has led China to grow its GDP from $1.2 trillion back then, when you voted, to $25 trillion today. So the fact that you went against some of your colleagues and took that vote shows that you are somebody who is independently minded and understands what businesses go through.
I truly, truly commend you for that because there is no worse bill in American history than that act. That act destroyed companies, not just all over America but, specifically, in the Presiding Officer's State and in my State. We see it every day, don't we, when we go on the campaign trail, when we are driving around Missouri or driving around Ohio. We see the remnants of companies that once existed.
Well, let's talk about how we can liberate small businesses, and maybe we can agree on these plans. No. 1, in the 2017 tax reform, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, what is interesting to me, as a small business owner, is that very large companies had their taxes made permanent, but it was for small businesses that those tax rates expire. In fact, they expire this year.
And the bill that we are looking to advance here in the Senate is a bill that would make those tax rates permanent. Let me just repeat that. We are not looking to cut taxes, because that is what you hear from my colleagues quite a bit. We are looking to make the 2017 tax reform permanent--not for big companies, not for the massive companies that are headquartered in Massachusetts but for the small businesses in Ohio and Missouri and in other places around the country that are going to see a massive increase in their taxes if we don't take action.
To put it in numbers, it is a $4 trillion tax increase for businesses. So if we are going to liberate small businesses, join me in calling for the 2017 tax reform to be made permanent.
Let's reform onerous regulations, especially in the banking sector. If you were a small business over the last 4 years, it was really hard to get access to banking because banks were basically shutting out small businesses from lending. The big banks kept getting bigger. Community banks, which is what small businesses rely on, were getting absolutely tortured.
We need better energy policies. What that means is certainly not banning coal, which is important in my State; natural gas, of which we have a thousand years of reserves. And I have offered to my colleague that we will build a big, beautiful pipeline right to Massachusetts. You will never need energy again from Canada or any other place. You can get it right from Ohio.
Better workforce policies, ending the incredible amount of onerous overlitigation--those types of policies will liberate small businesses. How do I know it? Because I have been a small business owner my entire life.
So let's talk about the subject at hand, tariffs. Tariffs are exactly intended to help these kinds of companies. When a Mexican company came in and bought Republic Steel in Canton, OH, the first thing they did was take all the equipment that was valuable, shipped it to Mexico, massively laid off the employees, sucked all of the cash out of the business, and left a 258-acre environmental disaster in the heart of Canton, OH. Now, that same steel is made in Mexico, and they want to ship that steel into the United States completely tariff free.
What was the impact on small businesses around that steel mill-- restaurants, the hairdressers, the grocery stores, the doctors, the dentists--that relied on those employees? Devastation. Devastation rate.
In Lordstown, OH, we once had a General Motors facility that employed 10,000 people, 6 million square feet. They made the highest quality products of any facility in America. The production was shipped to Mexico. Now the facility remains basically idle. What was the effect on the small businesses of Lordstown, OH? Total and complete devastation.
So while I appreciate my colleague's desire--I really, really do. I have had a chance to meet you in your office. I think you are a good man. I say that with total earnestness on my part.
Let's actually liberate small businesses. Let's give them certainty on taxes. Let's keep their tax rates permanent, just like the big guys got.
Why did the big guys get permanency? And the little guys, who don't have access to the Halls of Congress, why do they get the tax rates that go up?
Let's give them better energy policies that allow them to have energy costs go down. Let's give them better workforce policy. Let's end the reign of terror of litigation that hits small businesses and drives up insurance costs. And let's give them good workforce policies. And let's support--let's unite as a country, as President Trump tries to undo, Senator, what you tried to do 25 years ago. And 25 years ago, you wanted this country to stand up to China and say: No, we will not give you normalization because if we do, you will destroy our economy.
And they have.
Let's rally around President Trump. It has been just over 100 and some-odd days. He is trying to reverse 25 years of bad behavior. We should be in this Chamber saying: Look, go out and do that. Negotiate. We have your back. Fight for America. Fight for American workers. Fight for American small businesses.
That is the message other countries need to hear. They shouldn't be hearing from this Chamber that we are not united as Americans in making the best deal for American workers.
And with that and therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
First of all, I want to say that I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Ohio.
But here is the bottom line: This isn't just about China. The President hasn't targeted just China. He hasn't explained his ``just China'' strategy. He has imposed these tariffs all across the world-- all across the world, every country.
And yes, the legislation that we have, it doesn't touch the steel tariffs that are imposed. We don't touch those. They can stay in place. We don't touch them.
But here is the bottom line: You can't make silk for U.S. ties in the United States. You can't grow coffee in the United States. I could go on and on and on and on, about product after product that is sold in Main Street in America. Putting a 20-percent tariff on and, on top of that, an additional 20
We are only 6 weeks from having the sword of Damocles of 20 percent more for the EU and countries from all around the world--Japan, Israel, you name it, India--it is just dozens and dozens of countries that aren't China. But there is no plan. The President is making it up as he goes along, and the people who are going to suffer are going to be the small business people.
If you import toys, and there are maybe 20 different countries from which you import your toys to put on the shelves of your stores on Main Street everywhere, and parents can go in to buy the presents for their child--I just think it is unrealistic. The President is saying: Well, maybe the kids can get by with 3 dolls instead of 30.
Well, that is not how it is going to work. The store is going out of business. The store has a certain predictable business model in terms of how much revenue they are going to have per year, based upon what they can import.
If the President had a plan, I would like to hear it. But I don't. I don't want to hear him talk about how he is ultimately going to get a deal with dozens of countries in 6 weeks. There is no likelihood of that happening. But a small business person can't take that risk.
So that is why, again, this short-term pain that the President keeps talking about for long-term gains, well, honestly, in the short run, these businesses are going--they are going under, the small businesses. And there may be some posthumous indication of the President's theory about these tariffs, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years from now. That won't really do these small businesses any good.
So let the big businesses fight it out, and don't allow the Googles and the Apples to buy their way out of it.
You know, in the Civil War, there was an old saying: It was ``a rich man's war but a poor man's fight''--meaning the rich man could buy his way out of the draft. Rich man's war; poor man's fight.
So big business war, but it is going to be fought by small businesses on Main Street, who are going to be the victims. Those are always the casualties. And they have been drafted into this battle of big businesses.
So, again, I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from Ohio. I think he is wrong. I think we should exempt small businesses and let them know that they are not going to be driven out of business by this still-unplanned guided missile heading right toward every Main Street in our country that is going to be destructive of the hard-earned success those small businesses have had.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Just real quickly. Again, I truly respect my colleague and his point of view. I want to remind him that there is a great Massachusetts family, the Hassenfelds. Do you know what they used to do--what they still do? The brothers created a company called Hasbro. Those toys used to be made in the United States of America. They were employing lots of American citizens. They shipped all that production to China and elsewhere, and communities suffered as a result.
As I said--if you notice, my colleague did not address any of the points that I made. If you talk to any small business owner, they will tell you the No. 1 priority right now is for us to make their tax rates permanent. It is not tax cuts. No matter how many times my colleagues will say it is tax cuts for billionaires, it is objectively not true. This is permanency of the current rates.
Only in Washington, DC, by the way, would keeping things the same be considered a tax cut. It is ludicrous, and it makes no sense.
Since you asked for the plan, here is the plan: We are going to make America the best place to do business. We are going to give American companies and American citizens the best tax rates so they can grow and thrive here. We are going to give them a regulatory environment that is not overbearing, that doesn't kneecap companies. We are going to make certain we protect critical industries like steel, which I appreciate that.
I think we should put, by the way, a full tariff on all major steel products--like, for example, appliances. This country was once the epicenter of appliance manufacturing, and now there is only one company--Whirlpool. I am proud they make their appliances primarily in Ohio. Yet they have to compete with cheap appliances coming in from China.
We have a plan. The plan is very simple. We are going to have fair and reciprocal trade. And you are right; it is not just China. It is Japan, which charges us tariffs and nontariff barriers, and we allow them to bring their products here.
South Korea--not only is that the case, but we also pay to defend them.
Australia. Great ally. Great people. They tariff our meat. Their meat can come in tariff-free.
Canada and Mexico are great allies and large trading partners, but they have allowed their borders to be open. They have allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to die of fentanyl. I am ecstatic that we have a President of the United States that says: No, we will not allow that to continue. And if you want to have a relationship with the United States of America, you are going to secure your borders, and you are going to make it darn well necessary to secure your borders to protect Americans.
So that is the plan. The plan is to usher in a golden age for this country where working-class Americans have the ability to live a good life, have a good job where a mom or a dad can provide for their kids, afford a home, afford a car, go on vacation every once in a while, and retire with dignity. That was once the dream of the Democratic Party. This is what we should unite around and rally around and make certain that all of our policies are pointed straight in that direction.
So, again, I appreciate the comments from my colleague. Hopefully, I think we can work together on some initiatives, as I laid out--good tax policy, good regulatory policy, good workforce policies that allow small businesses to thrive--because as somebody who did that 5 months ago for my whole entire life, I am happy to hear that conversation happening here in the U.S. Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
Mr. President, earlier today, the Defense Department announced that the United States has formally accepted a luxury 747 jetliner as a gift from Qatar to be used as Air Force One. It is the largest foreign gift to an American President in modern history--one Donald Trump says will go to his Presidential library after his term.
This gift is outrageous. Donald Trump will berate companies to ``eat his tariffs'' and tell parents to pay yet more for groceries but is accepting a luxury plane he can use as Air Force One.
This gift screams ``national security risk.'' It is bribery in broad daylight. Donald Trump is thumbing his nose at Republicans and practically daring them to stop him.
Well, today, the Senate can. In a few moments, I will move for swift passage of the Presidential Airlift Security Act, prohibiting the use of any foreign plane to be utilized as Air Force One.
Specifically, my legislation would prohibit even a single taxpayer dollar from being used by the Department of Defense to procure, modify, retrofit, or maintain any foreign aircraft for the purposes of transporting a U.S. President. This is about ensuring our national security and about not wasting taxpayer dollars on an utterly senseless deal.
It should not take an act of Congress to stop the President of the United States from accepting the largest foreign bribe in modern history, but apparently Donald Trump is perfectly willing to sell out the American people and the Presidency to fill his own pockets.
Senate Republicans who say they are troubled by the idea of using a foreign plane as Air Force One should join me in supporting this very commonsense
So I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be discharged from further consideration of S. 1804 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Kansas.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following Senate resolutions in the order listed: S. Res. 242, S. Res. 243, S. Res. 244, and S. Res. 245; that there be up to 2 hours for debate on each resolution, individually; and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on adoption of the resolutions, individually; and that if any of the resolutions are adopted, the preambles be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Wyoming.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, the purpose and effect of these resolutions, very simply, is to provide votes. That is what we do in the U.S. Senate--we vote. And on these votes, the Constitution is involved. The provision of the Constitution commonly known as the emoluments clause enables officials of the Federal Government--from a sergeant in the Air Force or some other military branch to the President of the United States--to accept payments or benefits from a foreign power or other foreign entity or individual but only if there is approval by the U.S. Senate and Congress.
We need to take those votes if the President of the United States is to accept any benefits or payments. And that is what is happening in plain sight, openly, for all to see.
Literally, tomorrow night, in the White House, individuals who have invested to the President's benefit in his meme coin and World Liberty Financial will have dinner with him in the White House. He has literally put a ``For Sale'' sign on the White House. But money in his pocket will come from some anonymous donors, some foreign investors, and others in violation of the emoluments clause, unless there is approval from the U.S. Congress. That is tomorrow night in the White House.
And today, the Trump administration formally accepted a $200 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the Government of Qatar. Now, that plane may be used as Air Force One while he is in office before it is transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation before the end of his term.
The Department of Defense has confirmed that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has ordered the Air Force to plan rapid modifications to upgrade the plane for use as Air Force One. They are no small modifications. The plane has to be stripped down virtually to its shell to ensure the installation of multiple top-secret systems. The work will take, potentially, years to complete. And the estimate to taxpayers--all of us American taxpayers--is about $1 billion.
That plane probably won't even be ready before the end of President Trump's term when the foundation--his foundation--takes ownership of it. It is a gift, in effect, to him from Qatar.
The Air Force is a passthrough entity. That is the arrogance of this step--corruption--but also a violation of the emoluments clause, unless there is approval from the U.S. Congress.
Majority leader Thune has said:
Well, it is no longer a hypothetical. Selling out American interests began the first days and hours of this administration in President Trump's second term. How did he celebrate his inauguration? Well, he launched a cryptocurrency scheme, a meme coin. The only purpose of it was to enrich the President. Unsurprisingly, by design, foreign governments, unscrupulous foreign individuals, and anonymous foreign nationals are competing with themselves--literally, there is a leaderboard--to line his pockets and make known how they are lining his pockets.
There is no reason for them to write him a letter or file with some government Agency. Face-to-face, he will be with them in the White House tomorrow evening. They are competing--and I mean literally competing--with each other for access, and he has put his office and the White House on the auction block.
Tomorrow evening, he will be hosting that dinner--personally hosting it for 220 holders of that meme coin. Wherever the dinner occurs, whether it is in the White House or someplace else, the effect is the same: to be selling access.
And after the dinner competition was announced--alongside a ``Special VIP White House Tour'' for the top 25 holders--President Trump cashed in. The price of that meme coin rose more than 50 percent after the announcement of that dinner. In total, President Trump and his sons and his business partners have now earned $350 million in sales and related fees from that scheme.
Come tomorrow evening, he will have pumped up the price. And sometimes the price goes down. He may have dumped part of his holding-- pump-and-dump--raise the price and then dump the stock. It is a classic Wall Street corrupt move that would normally go to the SEC. But, of course, there is no regulation.
Bidders aren't hiding the pay-for-play scheme either. The winner of Trump's contest--the grand winner--is Justin Sun, who faces a civil fraud case from the SEC over allegations of market manipulation and unregistered asset sales.
Since the election, Justin Sun has poured nearly $100 million into Trump's crypto ventures. And guess what. Trump's SEC--poof--it is not a legal term, by the way--poof--the SEC paused the litigation and now is in negotiations to settle that case. It is out in the open.
One shipping firm with operations in Mexico announced it has raised $20 million to purchase the Trump coins for the express purpose of influencing tariff policy in the United States of America.
When Donald Trump negotiates tariffs, is he protecting American consumers and small businesses? No, not so much. More likely, he is cutting deals for his crypto friends. That is the essence of selling public office, and it is corruption.
But put aside the criminal violations of law that may be involved because the U.S. Supreme Court has given him immunity for what he is doing in the White House, the emoluments clause forbids him from taking those payments--benefits--without coming to the U.S. Congress and seeking our consent and approval.
Foreign governments are paying President Trump through another one of his cryptocurrency ventures, in addition to the FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT meme coin. World Liberty Financial, on May 1--literally, this month-- World Liberty Financial announced an investment fund backed by the United Arab Emirates. The government of that country, using Trump's digital coins, is completing a $2 billion transaction that, once again, puts money in his pocket. From this deal, Donald Trump and his family stand to gain hundreds
His sons are traveling around the world getting VIP treatment in Pakistan and elsewhere, using the President and the White House to strike deals for World Liberty Financial. We simply cannot accept this kind of practice as normal or legal. We can't abdicate our responsibility. We cannot seem to endorse or encourage this kind of corruption. That is the reason we have the emoluments clause. That is the reason the Founders wanted Congress to be involved whenever there is any benefit or payment to a member of the executive branch. Again, it applies not only to the President of the United States but all of the Federal officials, down to the rank and file.
Right now, the Senate is considering legislation to promote the growth of cryptocurrencies. This legislation has no ethical rules or conflict of interest provisions that would stop the President or his family from using the White House to enrich himself--none applying to the President. It fails to provide many basic consumer protections and national security rules. It invites Big Tech into our financial system.
We are considering this legislation at the very same time as Trump's crypto dinner will be happening literally within about 24 hours. Is there any wonder that the public's esteem for the U.S. Congress has sunk to the kinds of lows we are seeing right now? We are adding to the perception that Congress somehow is legitimizing or overlooking his behavior--in fact, looking the other way. That is not the message we ought to be sending at this moment in our history, and it is not legally right under the Constitution.
We ought to be voting on his emoluments, every one of these benefits. That is the reason I have separate resolutions--simply to preserve our own authority and power and our integrity and send a signal about the independence of this branch, the legislative branch.
Foreign governments have figured out a lot of ways to line Donald Trump's pockets. The Trump Organization--he is still the owner. It may be in trust. He maybe figured out some technical legal way to seem to insulate or isolate himself from it. But that organization is doing business deals with Saudi Arabia, with Qatar, and with Oman and Serbia.
LIV Golf, backed by the Saudi Arabian Government, hosted a tournament at Trump National Doral in April--April--of this year. The Trump Organization has signed $5.5 billion in real estate deals with a Qatari Government-owned firm, and it is going to build a new development on government-owned land in Serbia and Oman. The Trump Organization has already received $5 million from Oman. These are violations of the emoluments clause plainly, simply, in plain sight.
We have no excuse for failing to vote. We have no excuse for remaining silent. We have no excuse for ducking or dodging.
The foreign emoluments clause states:
Foreign states are clearly involved in these transactions.
The purpose of this clause is basic and unassailable, indisputable. It is to prevent undue foreign influence and foreign corruption.
The Founders knew about the dangers of a foreign government trying to influence our President or anyone under him. They knew about those powerful Kings in France and England. We had just liberated ourselves from England. We were a small, struggling country, and they were afraid that our executives would be influenced by those more powerful countries.
It was to ensure our government officials work for the American people and the Nation rather than their own financial self-interests or on behalf of any foreign government that the emoluments clause was adopted. But President Trump seemingly doesn't care about working for the American people; he cares about his own pocketbook. Not once has he come to Congress for consent on any of these deals. He hasn't even hinted at it. And he will continue pursuing these corrupt foreign deals until we, as Congress, have the gumption to act.
Today, I am introducing resolutions that condemn President Trump's violation of the foreign emoluments clause and demand the transfer to the U.S. Government of any gifts, benefits, or payments recovered or received from foreign governments or others through his illegal dealings.
I have asked for unanimous consent to schedule floor votes--I want floor votes--on each of these resolutions. I think the American people deserve to know where we stand, who is going to allow him to go forward with these deals, who is going to sacrifice the integrity and independence of this branch of government, and where every Senator stands on Donald Trump's self-enrichment schemes. We need to know whether the Senate is willing to stand up and show up against this corrupt self-dealing.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. President, it was my good fortune as a young man to work for a Senator from Illinois named Paul Douglas. He was known as Mr. Ethics in the U.S. Senate. He believed--and he shared that belief with me and all who worked with and for him--that the first obligation of a public official is to not betray the trust of the voters when it comes to self-dealing or making money out of public office.
He started me down the path in my early years in politics of making a complete disclosure--both my income tax return and net worth in detail, specific amounts--every year. I have done that for over 40 years. I believe he was right.
I remember Paul Simon, my predecessor in the U.S. Senate, used to say: People may not agree with my vote, but they know I didn't cast it to make a buck.
It is just that simple.
So what has happened at the highest level of the Government, the Office of President? Throughout our history, there have been examples of corruption which have been well documented. The Teapot Dome scandal comes to mind, and certainly the departures of previous Vice Presidents for wrongdoing have been well documented.
What we have going on in the White House now with the Trump administration is unprecedented not just in the amount of money involved going to the President and his family but also in the very real fact that the bottom line is that he is bold and states clearly: I have done it, and I defy you to do anything about it.
It is one of the reasons I am opposing the pending legislation on the floor on cryptocurrency. The President, as has been documented by my colleague from Connecticut, is making millions of dollars exploiting cryptocurrency, and he is inviting those who buy into his scheme--his profit-making scheme--to official gatherings and occasions at the White House. It is the most bald-faced demonstration of corruption we have ever seen in the Office of the Presidency. And this plane now--this $400 million airplane--says it all.
Mr. President, so that you understand, Pam Bondi is the Attorney General of the United States, duly appointed, and she has supposedly released a memo justifying the transfer of this airplane to the U.S. Government and then to Donald Trump personally as being acceptable--no objection. I am still looking for a copy of that public opinion. It should be public, if it hasn't been yet.
There has been reference made to the Constitution on this issue. In the Constitution, article I, section 9 is explicit:
How clear can you be? This President has no authority to accept this gift. And the notion that he would accept it, use it for the remainder of his Presidency, and then take personal title to the airplane is outrageous.
The fact of the matter is--those of us who have taken the time to check--it will cost the American taxpayers a fortune to take this gift from Qatar and to make it safe for any President to travel in it.
As one of my colleagues has said, if the Qataris said ``As a favor to the people of the United States, we are going to redesign and pay for the redesign of the Oval Office, the Situation Room, and the President's residence. We will do it on our dime,'' the American people would never fall for it. Why would we ever let them get that close to the decision making at the highest level in America? That is exactly what we are doing here if we accept this airplane. We have taken all those three functions of the President, added wings to the equation, and said the Constitution doesn't count.
Republicans have claimed for years that Joe Biden, during his administration and his time as Vice President, engaged in wrongdoing due to his family's business dealings. I am sure we remember congressional Republicans' endless investigations into President Biden's son and his past business dealings as a private citizen. But despite multiple investigations and a failed impeachment inquiry against President Biden, Republicans are largely silent and willing to disregard the overwhelming corruption of President Trump and his family as they pocket millions of dollars personally at the expense of the American people.
In the latest of a long line of shady dealings, President Trump is receiving a private jet as a gift from the royal family of Qatar and is claiming that it is simply a gift to the Defense Department.
This aircraft that we are talking about is sitting in San Antonio, TX. It would be retrofitted to act as Air Force One for the remainder of Trump's term in office before ownership is transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
The President claimed it would be ``stupid [to] say `No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.' '' However, what he doesn't say is that it will cost American taxpayers millions more to retrofit the plane to meet the President's security, communication, and intelligence needs.
Mr. President, what is stupid is retrofitting a very expensive plane from a foreign government, which constitutes a major counterintelligence risk, on the American taxpayers' dime when an American company is already manufacturing the next Air Force One.
The Constitution, as I have read, explicitly gives Congress the power to control whether any officer of the United States, including the President, may accept a gift from ``any King, Prince, or foreign State.'' This unprecedented gift clearly violates the Constitution and laws enacted by Congress to govern such gifts. Yet Attorney General Bondi reportedly concluded it would be ``legally permissible'' for President Trump to accept this gift. I am calling on the Attorney General today to release this opinion and report in its entirety to the U.S. Congress.
I am not surprised by it. This administration continues to abuse its power at the cost of the American people time and again, while Republicans in Congress stand by and allow it.
Mr. President, do you hear it? The silence? The silence of the President's party? The silence of the lambs?
Make no mistake, this is more than just a gift that benefits the President and not the American people. The President, we understand, it has been reported, has actively solicited this gift from Qatar. The question remains: In exchange for what?
President Trump's acceptance of such a substantial gift from a foreign government could disproportionately influence the foreign policies of this country--exactly why the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power to control these gifts under the Constitution. It is clear to our foreign partners and enemies that, under President Trump, America's policymaking is open to the highest bidder.
We also see President Trump and his family profiting off the promise of influenced domestic policy. Right before his second inauguration, President Trump launched a valueless cryptocurrency token marked not as an investment but as monetary support for Trump. First Lady Melania Trump also promoted her own meme coin shortly thereafter. This scheme allowed the President to pocket millions of dollars in direct payments with little or no public disclosure or oversight. He has never denied it. He has since fired the heads of the Agencies that investigate these crypto schemes.
Donald Trump, Jr., has founded a new private membership club in DC called Executive Branch with a $500,000 membership fee. The launch party, featuring several Cabinet and other administration officials, underscored Trump Junior's efforts to sell access.
That is what this administration does. It sees a barrier to cutting corners or any check on its corruption and gets rid of it. These actions were entirely predictable because Trump and his family also blatantly used the Presidency to enrich themselves by selling access and the chance to influence policy under his first administration.
I am saddened that our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle apparently believe that silence is the best response to these outrages. It is the ``Silence of the Lambs.''
When will they stand up for the American people and say ``enough is enough,'' or do they believe American policy should be sold to whatever country is willing to place the highest bid?
If we are talking about a swamp in DC, sadly, this is a major part of it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, I want to align myself with the comments made by the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Illinois.
The Constitution is pretty straightforward on this. It is pretty basic:
This $200 million plane that is going to--$400 million plane--the estimates go up and down, but it is an expensive plane--is a gift, and it is going to the personal use of the President of the United States. The Constitution says it is the job of Congress to say yes or no to a gift. It is our job. And if this Congress wants to vote to accept this $400 million plane, that is our job to do it. If this Congress is silent and doesn't demand that we enforce article I responsibility about this extraordinary gift from the Government of Qatar, that is on us. That is on us.
And what we are seeing time and again is the relinquishment of authority and power under article I, and it can't be shipped out of here fast enough to the Executive down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to satisfy anyone.
That is so profoundly threatening to the well-being of our democracy. The whole point of having three branches of government is the recognition that you cannot allow one person, or even one branch of government, to consolidate all power. There has to be checks and balances. It was based upon what was true then and is true now: Absolute power can corrupt absolutely. And the foundational principle that has served us well is that with the checks and balances, the ambition of one branch can compete with the ambition of the other branch. We have given away the authority that Congress has and the responsibility it has to have those checks and balances and defend democracy.
And by the way, why in the world would we want some other government to be providing transportation for our Chief Executive? It is embarrassing. We don't need no stinking Qatar plane. We need our own planes. We need our own planes. This is about us having respect for the men and women who work here. It is about us having respect for our own responsibility to take care of our own national security needs. We can't outsource this to another government. We shouldn't do it, just as a matter of pride.
But we also shouldn't do it because it does stink--it does stink--of corruption. And all the evidence here is that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump thought this would be a pretty cool plane to fly in. He started putting the pressure on, directly and indirectly, to get this offer of a gift, and now it is a $200 million, $400 million gift. That is what we have. And that is, by the way, without any of us having any opportunity to ask the hard questions: What is it going to cost to so- call retrofit? Can it be retrofitted? How much will taxpayers be asked to pay? Is this gift going to be something that actually costs us a lot more money?
So the Appropriations Committee has no capacity to look into this, to kick the tires, to assess what this
The implications are pretty clear: Corruption is alive and well in the administration. The implications are pretty clear: Passivity is alive and well in the Congress of the United States, that we turn our back on exercising the profound responsibility that we have, an obligation we have to the people we represent.
Mr. President, I urge the passage of this resolution, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues Senator Durbin and Senator Welch for being here today. I know my resolutions reflect unanimity on our side, and I believe sincerely the reservations and doubts on the other side as well. And I regret the objection to these resolutions because I think that my colleagues deserve a vote. We deserve a vote on both sides of the aisle.
This violation of the Constitution benefits nobody. Many of the votes we take here, there are differing interests, there are contrasting and sometimes conflicting points of view on the merits, on who benefits and who may be hurt. Here, there is only one beneficiary: Donald Trump and his family--maybe some of the foreign investors, maybe some of the others who have donated or contributed to his campaign and have invested in the meme coins or in World Liberty Financial stablecoin.
This plane should be built by an American company. It should be built so that President Trump can use it--or any other President--on time, on schedule. It is now already delayed. Boeing should be held accountable. And if it can't deliver it when the President needs it, somebody else ought to be required to build it.
So I am deeply disappointed we are not going to have these votes, at least right now. I am going to be coming back to the floor and asking for these votes on the emoluments clause because it is part of our job, it is part of our constitutional responsibility, and Donald Trump is violating the Constitution by accepting gifts in the plane, investments, and money in his pocket from his cryptocurrency ventures and other schemes that he is enabling in plain sight. This corruption should not be allowed to continue.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, today, I am here to defend clean air regulations that tackle the climate crisis, protect public health, and save drivers money at the pump.
For more than 50 years, California has had the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to adopt stricter emissions standards than the Federal baseline. For 50 years, both Democrat and Republican administrations have granted these Clean Air Act waivers that are essential for reducing toxic air pollution, protecting public health, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions that dangerously warm our planet. No Congress has ever dared to revoke these waivers--until now.
My Republican colleagues say this is about protecting consumer choice. Well, let me ask: Who is really choosing this? Not the parents. Not the residents near busy highways. Not the doctors and nurses. Not even the drivers.
It is the polluters. This dependence on fossil fuels allows Big Oil CEOs to turn drivers upside down at the pump and shake money out of their pockets.
The Republicans say ``all of the above.'' No. No. It is ``oil above all.'' We put 70 percent of the oil we consume into gasoline tanks. And with cleaner, smarter, more efficient technologies, we can reduce and reduce and reduce the amount of oil that we put into the vehicles which we drive. This terrifies the oil industry.
America is a technological giant. We have a capacity to invent new technologies. By the way, the Chinese are just on the HOV lane of new technologies for the vehicles which they are driving. They have invented a technology that allows for the charging of a battery in 5 minutes in a vehicle that people are driving.
That should be us. We should be the ones leading.
That is not what the Republicans are doing. Donald Trump is saying he wants to repeal the tax breaks for electric vehicles in our Nation, just take those tax breaks off the books. He wants to repeal the laws which incentivize the development of even better batteries in our country--batteries that, with one charge, will go further and further and further. Maybe we could compete with the Chinese. But Trump wants to take them off the books, and the Republicans are going along with that.
Maybe we could put more charging stations across the country to make it easier for people to drive all-electric vehicles. No. Trump is saying we want to take away all those tax breaks too. Let's just make it easy for the Chinese to take over the electric vehicle industry of the 21st century. Let's just hand it over to them on a silver platter.
We are only 5 percent of the world's population. The other 95 percent is going electric.
The other 95 percent is moving to the future. That is not going to be the United States. The Republicans are working here tonight in order to absolutely short-circuit this future that was ours.
You know, honestly, gas-guzzling cars aren't just bad for drivers, they are bad for every one of us. According to the American Lung Association, more than 131 million people live in counties with unhealthy levels of ozone and particulate pollution.
And what is the largest source of that pollution? It is vehicles. It is the cars and the trucks which we drive in our country. That is what sends up the pollution. That is what gets into the lungs of Americans.
And now my Republican colleagues are trying to rip away the safeguards that help to protect public health and to save our country money. By triggering the Congressional Review Act to repeal California's waivers, it would allow for 1.6 billion metric tons of carbon emissions; more than 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen oxide, all going up into the air; 17,000 metric tons of fine particulate matter, the type of pollution that penetrates deep into your lungs, the lungs of your children, the lungs of your loved ones, and enters the bloodstream to wreak havoc on the body in the form of asthma, respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases, and more--much, much, more--all spewed into the air.
And that is what they want. That is what they want.
After the Surgeon General in 1964 issued a warning about smoking, America went from 50 percent of the country smoking down to 18 percent. People started to wise up. They said: We don't want that stuff in our lungs, and we are going to tell our kids not to smoke because it is dangerous.
Your lungs--your lungs--are vulnerable if there is an inhalation of dangerous substances.
So what does it look like in real life? Well, it means more kids are going to suffer from asthma. It means grandma and grandpa dying earlier. It means more death and destruction from extreme weather events, such as the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricanes Helene and Milton. By the way, those three events caused $500 billion worth of damage--those three events, all related to climate change, all related to the warming of the atmosphere.
Just assume that the ceiling here on the Senate floor is capturing all of the heat all day long, and there is no air-conditioning down below. That is the greenhouse effect. It just gets warmer and warmer and warmer, which is why, by the way, the Senate used to adjourn in the beginning of May because it just got too hot in rooms like this before air-conditioning.
Well, there is no air-conditioning for the planet. You have to engage in a preventive strategy, lower the temperature right from the beginning, lower the thermostat right from the beginning.
Ultimately, it is just going to raise costs on everyday families. By blocking the California waivers, consumers would spend more than $89 billion in additional fuel costs through the year
That is more money at Big Oil's gas pump and less money at your kitchen table. This comes at a time when Trump is waging war on clean cars, repeals to clean vehicle tax credits, attempts to flip a U-turn on fuel economy and EPA vehicle emissions standards.
In 2007, I worked on a bipartisan basis as the chairman of the committee over in the House to enact a provision in the energy law that increased our Nation's fuel economy standards for the first time in 32 years. We were actually going backward by 2007, and the rest of the world was zooming right past us.
It is one of the laws I passed which I am most proud of, and that is what led to the rulemaking that promulgated the higher fuel economy standards for our Nation. I am very proud of that law and the work I played over in the House authoring it.
And the industry, they were able to do it. They were still stuck at 27 miles a gallon. That was the law from 1975. It was 2007, 32 years later. They still couldn't figure out how to improve the efficiency of the vehicles which we drive.
Meanwhile, the Chinese and others, they were getting on the speedway. They were getting ready to catch up to us. And starting in 2009, the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation built upon that law to negotiate a historic agreement with the State regulators, with the automakers, with labor unions, and the environmental community.
But now--now--Trump, Republicans, at the behest of the oil industry, are trying to do a U-turn on these standards and the benefits that they give to our consumers, to our families, to our planet.
It is not enough for Republicans to promote chaos and conflict in our economy for the sake of billionaires. They now want to create chaos and conflict as well.
By intentionally modifying the Senate rules that protect this institution at a moment when Donald Trump is actively undermining the checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution, that is a serious threat, not just to the Senate but to our country. It is a threat to the rule of law. It is a threat to our health, to our communities, and access to clean air. It is a threat to our planet.
With this action, my Republican colleagues are opening the door for future votes on the countless unlawful and unethical actions waiting to be carried out by the Trump administration. There will be no putting the genie back into the bottle.
It is going to unleash the President who says he is a stable genius to continue to perpetrate more of his unconscionable actions on the people of our country.
So let's not trigger this nuclear option. Let's not unleash a mushroom cloud of pollution on our communities. Let's not allow polluters to rewrite Senate precedent. Let's not steal the right of States to set high standards that result in children breathing cleaner air, not having their vulnerable lungs be sucking in these particulates, sucking in this unhealthy air that vehicles emit.
We have another direction in which we can head. We have a better vision for us. By the way, this is not rocket science. We are not asking anyone to go to Mars. We are just asking people to improve automotive technology. This is car mechanics. It is not a mission to the Moon.
So while I hear Trump bragging about his buddy Elon and a mission to Mars and all these satellites out in outer space and how he wants to have a Golden Dome over our Nation that is going to protect us from incoming Soviet missiles at 2 a.m. in the morning, and here is vision of a Golden Dome that is going to protect us.
Then, when you turn to him and say: Hey, can we improve the efficiency of the cars which we drive, Trump and his oil buddies said: What are you crazy? That is auto mechanics. That is too difficult for us to figure out.
Well, it is not too difficult for the Chinese. They are coming. They are coming. And country by country, it is going to say: ``Made in China.'' ``Made in China.''
Unfortunately, for too many of our domestic auto companies, they are using this as the excuse to just walk away. And maybe for the short run, it will be OK, but in the long run, that is not a business plan.
Maybe it makes it to their retirement as executives of the companies, maybe they make it a few more years, but the country--the country--is going to suffer.
You know, when you look at Fortune magazine or Forbes magazine and there is a picture of one or another businessperson on the cover, that is great. That is great for that individual. But when you look at the international magazines, you know what is on the cover, just a picture of China.
It is a country with a plan. It is a country with a vision. It is a country that is just speeding past us in terms of their capacity to deploy new technologies. That is what we are confronted with right now--a plan from our arch rival economically that we are going to ignore on behalf of the oil industry in our Nation.
They will reap the short-term profits for sure, but our country and the children in our country will reap whirlwinds economically as each year goes by because we are going to be left in China's technological dust.
So that is what we are voting on, and they are going to use a perversion of Senate rules to attempt to accomplish it at the behest of the oil industry, but the price--the price--not only for this institution and its rules but also the well-being of our economy, the health of our planet is going to be way too high to pay.
You can't preach temperance from a barstool. You can't tell the rest of the world they have to reduce greenhouse gases if the Senate continues to pass laws which allow for all of this dangerous pollution to go up in historically high quantities.
That is absolutely the wrong path for the next several generations of American children. You are endangering their lungs right now, and you are going to endanger their ability to have a job in the future.
We are going to wind up with China dominating the auto industry and the planet. That is what we are voting on tonight: Who is going to win in the long term?
By the way, the Republicans have a comprehensive plan to hand this entire industry over to the Chinese. They are going to do away with all the tax breaks for electric vehicles, do away with all the tax breaks for chargers. They are going to do away with all the tax breaks for battery storage technologies to be developed.
This is systematic. This is a plan that our country has to pull us out of the competition with the largest industry in the world, this automotive industry, tied to the oil industry--just an absolutely reckless, historic mistake.
And by the way, they are doing the same thing over in biotech. They want to cut NIH funding by 40 percent. That is finding the cure for Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and Parkinson's and every other disease.
You are saying to all the young, brilliant people in the country who are going to dedicate their lives to finding the cures for those diseases: Don't go there. There is no guarantee you are going to have a job next year or the year after or the year after. Again, another industry we are going to put a bow on it and hand it over to Beijing: Hope you enjoy this great present we are handing you--the technological leadership of the United States in biotech, in automotive technology, in battery technology, just handing it over.
So this is a pretty sad day in the history of the Senate, that there will be a compromise of our procedures--our rules--that have been sacred on behalf of the oil industry in our Nation. It is not the first. There is an ongoing systematic plot that Donald Trump came up to the Hill to say: Get my ``big, beautiful bill'' passed.
Well, he might see it as a ``big, beautiful bill,'' but this thing is one big economic disaster for our Nation.
And I will say it again. It is all to get the tax breaks for the billionaires, all of the tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our society.
So, please, Senate, please say no. Please allow us to retain our procedural prerogatives. And please, on this
They are going to look back at this moment--children alive today--and they are going to just wonder, What were they thinking that every car is coming in from China into every country in the world, and eventually our barriers will come down, too, because we won't be able to compete.
It is just a sad commentary on the Senate today that they will acquiesce to such a pathetic concession made to the oil industry in our Nation. But it is the perfect example of the outsized influence that is now playing in our society.
When Trump promised them last April if they gave him a billion dollars, he would do away with all the clean energy technologies in our country, he is paying them off right now. There is no transition plan. There is no promise that maybe we will help the oil industry so they catch up to the Chinese Government.
Mr. President, no. They are going to cede the field, and ultimately it will be the next generations that pay the price.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I want to be very clear about what is about to happen tonight, here on the floor of the Senate.
Tonight, in order to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, Republicans will erode away at the Senate and undermine this institution they claim to care about.
By weaponizing the CRA, Republicans tonight cross a point of no return for the Senate, expanding what this Chamber can do at a majority threshold--this from the very party that professes to care about the rules and norms and precedents of this institution.
To override the Parliamentarian and to use the CRA in the way that Republicans propose is going nuclear--no ifs, no ands, no buts. It is going nuclear.
Don't take my word for it. This comes from Leader Thune himself. He was asked a few months ago about this very scenario of overriding the Parliamentarian, and he said this:
But, unfortunately, we are going there, it seems. And, just yesterday, he admitted that this step could ``create precedent for the future.''
So, apparently, when the rules suit the Republicans, they will preach about protecting them. But now that the rules are inconvenient, when they stand in the way of their ideological goals, Republicans will say: Away with them.
Make no mistake, this is not a narrow assertion of congressional authority, as the other side claims. This is an aggressive, new precedent. Moving forward, Congressional Review Acts will likely be weaponized to bold new levels.
Today, it is all about California emission waivers, but tomorrow the CRA could now be used to erase any policy from an Agency that the Trump administration doesn't like, at a simple majority threshold. They could eliminate healthcare innovation waivers that assist patients on Medicaid and the ACA, at a simple majority threshold. They could use CRAs to make it harder to form a union, at a simple majority threshold. They could go after Agency actions that protect access to reproductive care, like making it harder to access the medication mifepristone. All of this and more can now be done, at a simple majority threshold, with an expanded CRA.
This, in other words, is a backdoor strategy for Republicans to make Project 2025 a reality. It is the legislative branch ceding its authority over to the Executive, which will now slap the ``CRA'' label on a whole host of policies and get Congress to rubberstamp their appeals.
Republicans should tread very carefully today. What goes around comes around.
If Republicans are willing to overrule the Parliamentarian and hijack the CRA in a way it has never been used before, they will not like it during this session of Congress and, certainly, next time, when they are in the minority.
So this is a sad, shameful, disappointing day for the U.S. Senate. Republicans, I am certain, will come to regret the ill-considered step they take tonight.
Now, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry.
Is the Chair familiar with section 802(d)(1) of the Congressional Review Act, which states that ``all points of order against the joint resolution (and against consideration of the joint resolution) are waived''?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
Thank you, Madame Chair, you made the case that this is nuclear.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Madam President, we are facing a novel situation here in the Senate. For the sake of my Democrat colleagues, who seem more than a little confused as to what is going on here, let me just review the situation.
We have received from the House joint resolutions of disapproval that meet all the statutory requirements under chapter 8, title 5, of the U.S. Code, the Congressional Review Act.
In the past, the Senate has treated any such joint resolution as being eligible for expedited floor consideration procedures prescribed under the Congressional Review Act. But here is the twist: Senate Democrats claim that we can't consider these resolutions under these Congressional Review Act procedures because the rules addressed in the resolutions in question are not, in fact, rules.
Now, the rules in question, the California waiver rules, were submitted to Congress's rules, which has always been all the Senate needed to consider something as eligible for consideration under the Congressional Review Act, and they are clearly rules in substance given their nationwide impact and scope. But, in an unprecedented move, the Government Accountability Office has inserted itself into this situation and declared that these rules submitted to Congress by the EPA as rules are not, in fact, rules.
Now, for years, the Senate has turned to the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, to determine if something not submitted by an Agency is actually a rule that should have been submitted to Congress as such. That is not part of the Congressional Review Act statute, but the Senate has relied on GAO for this to prevent Agencies from flouting the law and ignoring Congress's statutory right to review Agency rulemaking. In other words, GAO has acted as a failsafe to ensure Congress's rights are protected from encroachment by the executive branch.
That is not the situation we find ourselves in today. In fact, it is the inverse. The situation we are facing today is an Agency submitting to the Senate actions that the Agency says are rules and GAO, for the first time in history, inserting itself into the situation and offering its own opinion that the rules in question are not, in fact, rules.
Well, so what do we do about this? I believe that when the Senate is facing a novel situation like this one with disagreement among its Members, it is appropriate for the Senate to speak as a body to the question--something the Senate does when questions over application of the rules arise.
For example, just last year, a Republican Member of the Senate brought a resolution to the floor under a fast-track procedure, the War Powers Act, and a Democrat Member of the Senate argued that it was not entitled to those
Nobody at the time cried nuclear. Nobody said the Democrat Member was blowing up the Senate. In fact, most Members probably don't even remember the situation because it was just the Senate doing what the Senate is supposed to do, and that is voting on how to apply the rules when faced with a new situation.
I think at this point it should be abundantly clear that what we are doing has nothing to do with the legislative filibuster. But while I would love to think that reality will prevail, I fully expect Democrats to continue to misrepresent the situation, and I think there are probably multiple reasons for that.
One is that I think a lot of Democrats support an electric vehicle mandate and are perfectly happy to allow California to set an EV mandate for the whole country. In fact, I think they are somewhat frantic at the prospect of losing this ``Green New Deal'' policy.
Two, I suspect Democrats are trying to use the situation as cover to justify abolishing the filibuster next time they are in charge. I think they think that they can make dismantling the Senate filibuster a lot more palatable by claiming--however mendaciously--that Republicans attacked it first.
I would love to believe--I would love to believe--the Democrats have suddenly come to the realization of the importance of the legislative filibuster no matter how misplaced their concerns would be in this particular instance. I think there is perhaps no Senate rule today that does more to preserve the character of the Senate as developed by our Founders, and there is nothing I would like more than to see Democrats recognize this.
But despite the rank hypocrisy the Democrats have displayed by embracing the use of the filibuster this Congress repeatedly after campaigning to overturn it mere months ago, I suspect that their newfound enthusiasm for the filibuster is situational only--something to be used when it helps them and to be destroyed when it doesn't.
As I said, I strongly suspect they are attempting to use the situation as cover for destroying the filibuster the next time they are in power; hence the misrepresentations and hysteria.
I can't control what Democrats do the next time they take the majority here in the Senate, although if they attempt to abolish the legislative filibuster and destroy the institution of the Senate, I can safely promise to fight them on it tooth and nail. But I can say this: While Republicans are in charge, the legislative filibuster will remain in place, and you can take that to the bank.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrat leader.
Madam President, is it true--parliamentary inquiry, Madam President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry.
Yes. I just want to--I hope our leader will listen because it is exactly clear, and I want to repeat what we had said yesterday.
Is it true what you said yesterday: that the Parliamentarian advised leadership offices that the joint resolution of disapproval regarding the California waivers at issue do not qualify--do not qualify--for expedited consideration under the Congressional Review Act?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Parliamentarian has advised me that such advice was given.
Thank you. It shows we are going nuclear, no matter what the leader says.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Madam President, notwithstanding the distinguished majority leader's accusations of mendacity and hypocrisy and misrepresentation, the facts at heart here are quite simple: The waiver at issue is not a rule and was never a rule. Thirty years of precedent and practice at EPA and in this body prove that. So what the GAO did here was not unprecedented.
What was unprecedented was for the House to send over a document claiming falsely, according to the Parliamentarian, that the waiver is, in fact, a rule under the CRA. And to blame the GAO or the Parliamentarian for that is to mistake the referee for the player who committed the foul. The foul here is pretending that a waiver is a rule, and both the GAO and the Parliamentarian independently blew the whistle on that foul. Those are the facts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
Madam President, I make a point of order. The points of order are in order under the Congressional Review Act, given sections 802(d)(1), 802(d)(2), and 802(d)(4) are in conflict with each other.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. In the opinion of the Chair, the Senate has not previously considered this question; therefore, the Chair, under the provisions of rule XX, submits the question to the Senate for its decision: Shall points of order be in order under the Congressional Review Act?
The Democrat leader.
Madam President, I move to table the question submitted by the Chair, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 52, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. For the benefit of the Senate, I would like to remind you that the question is, Shall points of order be in order under the Congressional Review Act?
The Democratic leader.
Madam President, I raise a point of order that points of order are not in order under section 802 (d)(1) of the Congressional Review Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. A point of order is currently pending before the Senate. It is not in order to have multiple points of order pending at the same time; therefore, the point of order is out of order.
I appeal the ruling of the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.
Madam President, I move to table the appeal, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Paul).
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:
The motion was agreed to.
(Mr. JUSTICE assumed the Chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate sustains the decision of the Chair. The point of order by the Democratic leader is not in order.
The Chair recognizes the Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I move to recess for 90 minutes, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 51, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. President, for the information of Senators, for the balance of the evening, we are going to confine votes to 15 minutes in duration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I move to recess for 60 minutes, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay''.
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 51, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrat leader.
I move to recess for 30 minutes, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''
I announce that the Senator from new Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 51, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I move to recess for 15 minutes, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 51, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I move to recess for 10 minutes, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 52, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I move that the Senate adjourn, and I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to adjourn.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennesee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``nay.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 46, nays 51, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. For the body to remember, the question is, shall points of order be in order under the Congressional Review Act?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``yea.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are 46.
The point of order is sustained.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Madam President, I make a point of order that joint resolutions that meet all the requirements of section 802 of the Congressional Review Act or are disapproving of Agency actions which have been determined to be rules subject to the CRA by a legal decision from GAO are entitled to expedited procedures under the Congressional Review Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. In the opinion of the Chair, the Senate has not previously considered this question. Therefore, the Chair, under the provisions of rule XX, submits the question to the Senate for its decision.
Shall joint resolutions that meet all of the requirements of section 802 of the Congressional Review Act or are disapproving of Agency actions which have been determined to be rules subject to the Congressional Review Act by a legal decision from the Government Accountability Office be entitled to expedited procedures under the Congressional Review Act?
The Democrat leader.
Madam President, on this vote, the Republicans will be breaking their commitment and will be going nuclear. And however they try to disguise their actions, this is nuclear--no ands, ifs, or buts.
Tonight, Senate Republicans expose themselves as fair weather institutionalists by overriding the Parliamentarian, which the Chair explicitly noted that the Parliamentarian has been overridden. And in order to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, Republicans have eroded away at the Senate foundation and undermined this institution they claim to care about.
Make no mistake, Republicans have set a new precedent that will come back to haunt them and haunt this Chamber. What goes around comes around.
If Republicans are willing to overrule the Parliamentarian and highjack the CRA in a way that has never been used before, they will not like it next time they are in the minority.
I yield the floor.
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.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``yea.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are 46.
The point of order is sustained.
The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Budd) would have voted ``yea.''
I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 55) was passed, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
H.J. RES. 88
Mr. President, as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I rise in support of my resolution to block the Biden EPA's rule approving California's Clean Air Act waiver for its Advanced Clean Cars II regulation.
I want to explain to my colleagues why they should join me in disapproving of this job-killing electric vehicle mandate and why the use of the Congressional Review Act is appropriate and correct in this instance.
First, I would like to offer a little bit of background about how we got here. Typically, the Clean Air Act stops State laws that regulate emissions for motor vehicles in favor of a national standard by the Environmental Protection Agency. This allows automakers to build the same vehicles for use by drivers all across the country.
Since 1966, the Clean Air Act has given California, and only California, the ability to seek a waiver of Federal mobile source emissions standards. Other States can choose to adopt California's standard or follow the Federal standard, but they cannot seek their own waiver.
Congress provided California this special ability because of its need to address unique locally high levels of pollution--like smog--in Los Angeles and in the San Joaquin Valley. But over the past two decades, California has used its waiver authority to push its extreme climate policies on the rest of the country, which was never the intent of the Clean Air Act's decision to grant the waiver. As EPA recognized in 2008, the rationale for California's ability to seek waivers does not extend to greenhouse gases, as these levels are not unique to California but are global in nature. But now, in addition to establishing an EV mandate, California is also seeking to use its waiver authority to eliminate diesel trucks. The Advanced Clean Trucks and Low NOX truck rules set unattainable standards that will harm our ability to ship goods across this country.
While my remarks today will focus on the resolution of disapproval that I have offered on the Advanced Clean Cars II EV mandate, I strongly support the resolutions that will follow that are offered by Senator Fischer and Senator Mullin to block these rules.
California's Advanced Clean Cars II program requires all--and I did say ``all''--vehicles sold in that State, Washington, DC, and 11 other States that have adopted California's standard--all cars--to be zero- emissions vehicles by the year 2035; meaning, in one decade, these States, totaling 30 percent of the new car market, will have a full ban on the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles--and not just those but also on traditional hybrids as well.
The regulation begins in 2026--next year--by requiring affected States to sell 35 percent electric vehicles. These cars will hit showroom floors within the next few months. So to avoid the devastating impacts of these waivers, we need to act now.
These unattainable standards, backed by a fine of $26,000 per vehicle--I said $26,000 per vehicle--for noncompliance attempt to reshape auto manufacturing and take away consumer choice all across the country.
I want to be clear, I have no problem with electric vehicles. Consumers should be able to purchase the vehicle of their choice. But I do have a big problem with electric vehicle mandates that replace the will of the consumer and the will of the government.
Only 2.3 percent of new vehicle registrations in West Virginia last year were electric vehicles. Nationwide, EVs accounted for only 10.2 percent of new vehicle registrations. The plain truth is, electric vehicles are not popular. Even in New York, one of the States that has adopted the California standard, only 10.1 percent of 2024 new vehicle registrations were EVs. Perhaps that is why six New York House Democrats voted against this rule.
As States and manufacturers ramp up to meet this EV mandate, the impacts and costs will be massive. As the National Automobile Dealers Association wrote, the economic impact of California's regulation will affect all States. Soon, automakers will be forced to either sell more EVs or limit the number of gas cars for sale in the other affected States. Affordable new gas and hybrid vehicles, which cost between $30,000 and $40,000, are expected to be among the first vehicles that would be rationed out. This will leave consumers with far fewer choices and force everyone to pay more for new and used cars to reflect consumer demand and offset automaker losses.
To make matters worse, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be eliminated. The Specialty Equipment Market Association wrote that a ban on internal combustion engines ``would represent over $100 billion annual economic impact to the U.S. economy and impact roughly 330,000 jobs.''
And those job losses will not be confined to California, but they will be spread all across the Nation. Workers in auto manufacturing, oil and gas production, and the agriculture sectors across this country would lose jobs because of California's EV mandate.
And the elected officials who represent Michigan autoworkers, Nebraska corn farmers, or West Virginia gas workers had no say in California and EPA's decision to impose this mandate nationwide.
The responsibility of approving or disapproving California's waiver application rests solely with the EPA.
California applied to EPA for a waiver to implement ACC2 in May of 2023, and the Biden administration sat on that application until December of 2024. Well, there is no practical reason that the Biden EPA couldn't have acted on California's waiver in 2023 or even during the first 11 months of 2024, but we know why the previous administration decided to wait: President Biden and his team knew that electric vehicle mandates were unpopular with most American voters, especially swing State voters that would decide the Presidential and congressional elections. Mr. President, 2024 polling from WPA intelligence showed that 70 percent of likely voters opposed a ban on gas-powered cars, with only 18 percent in support.
Both the text of the Clean Air Act and public sentiment should have led the Biden EPA to reject California's application. Instead, the Biden administration approved California's waiver in December 2024, after Democrats lost the election.
EPA's approval was published in the Federal Register on January 6, 2025, the same day Congress certified President Trump's victory. The decision to limit consumer choice, increase car prices, and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs was made by California and approved by a Federal administration that had already been rejected by the American voters.
I strongly oppose these California EV mandates and strongly oppose a process that allows such a major national policy decision to be made against the will of the American people, without input from their Members of Congress.
In 1996, the Congressional Review Act was enacted through regular order to create an expedited process for Congress to consider resolutions that overturn rules finalized by Federal Agencies, like the Biden EPA's decision to approve California's EV mandate. The CRA's rationale--as explained by sponsors Don Nickles, Harry Reid, and Ted Stevens--was to allow Congress to efficiently stop rules it finds ``too burdensome, excessive, inappropriate, or duplicative.'' Every one of these terms applies to the situation we find ourselves in today.
The CRA works by requiring Federal Agencies to submit their final rules to the Senate and to the House of Representatives. When a rule is submitted to Congress and published in the Federal Register, a 60-day period is opened for any Member to introduce a resolution of disapproval that, if passed by both Chambers and signed by the President, prevents the rule from taking effect. These resolutions, by law, are subject to limited debate, allowing them to be enacted by the Senate by a simple majority vote.
Senators can bring resolutions of disapproval to the Senate floor either by reporting them through committee or by submitting a petition that has been signed by at least 30 Senators. Either way, the process allows the Senators to vote on whether the rule should go into effect, providing a method for elected Representatives to have oversight over unelected bureaucracies.
I decided to use the CRA process and introduce this resolution against EPA's approval of the California electric vehicle mandate for two reasons.
First, enactment of the resolution would vacate EPA's rule approving of the California waiver, stopping the EV mandate and protecting consumers and workers across the country.
Second, because a vote here in the Senate and in the House would allow the elected representatives of Americans of all 50 States, not just California, to decide whether a nationally significant policy should be implemented.
As I discussed earlier, the Biden administration delayed its action on approving the California waiver for 18 months to get past the 2024 election. But that wasn't the end of the previous administration's effort to shield this unpopular EV mandate from the will of the people. The Biden EPA did not submit its approval of the California EV mandate for review under the CRA and claimed its action was not a rule. That was a clear effort to avoid accountability from Congress.
Fortunately, President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin decided to give the American people a say by submitting the approved California waiver to Congress as a rule. Under the CRA, that submission by the Trump EPA triggered my right as a Senator to introduce this resolution to block California's EV mandate. But that submission kicked off another effort by Democrats to stop the Senate from voting on this issue.
On March of this year, at the request of three Senate Democrats, the Government Accountability Office wrote an unprecedented letter stating its ``observation'' that the Biden EPA action approving California's EV waiver is not a rule subject to the CRA. Similar to the Biden administration's efforts, this GAO letter was obtained in an attempt to stop the Senate from exercising its authority provided by the CRA, keeping the California EV mandate in place without a vote in this Chamber.
Nothing in the Congressional Review Act, Senate rules, or Senate precedents gives unelected staff at the GAO the authority to prevent elected Senators from considering a resolution of disapproval against a rule. In fact, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who is head of the GAO, recently testified in a Senate hearing and said:
But Democrats now want to give the GAO staff a veto over the Senate's use of the CRA to disapprove rules submitted by Federal Agencies.
The Senate has given GAO the authority in the CRA process in the past to protect the legislative branch's ability to conduct oversight over administrative rules.
My predecessor West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller was a leader in 2008 efforts to give GAO the ability to trigger the Congressional Review Act procedures for Agency actions not submitted to Congress as required by the statute.
The issue in 2008 was an action by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services directing States on how they were to administer the Children's Health Insurance Program. CMS did not submit its action to Congress, calling it guidance rather than a rule. Senator Rockefeller asked GAO to determine that the CMS guidance was a rule. When GAO agreed with him, he introduced a resolution to block the rule--the first time such a resolution was introduced pursuant to a GAO decision rather than an Agency submission.
Ten years later, Congress passed and President Trump signed a resolution introduced by my colleague Senator Moran from Kansas against guidance from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was similarly not submitted. Senator Toomey went to GAO for a legal opinion that the CFPB guidance was a rule for the purposes of the CRA, and GAO determined that Congress could consider it as such.
I have personally gone to the GAO myself on several occasions when I believed that an Agency action not submitted to Congress under the CRA
In all of these cases, Federal Agencies had not submitted their actions to Congress, but in this case, EPA did submit its rule approving the California EV mandate to Congress.
A GAO opinion has never been used to cut off the Senate's ability to consider a CRA resolution of disapproval when the Federal Agency actually submitted the rule to Congress. In fact, GAO has repeatedly recognized that its legal opinions are unnecessary when Agencies submit a rule to Congress.
In 2018, GAO wrote:
And:
Two years later, GAO concluded:
Protecting our legislative branch oversight is the basis upon which this Senate has involved GAO in the CRA process since 2008, but it does not follow that GAO should be able to halt congressional privileges when the executive branch does submit a rule. Once an Agency has submitted a rule to Congress, as EPA has done here, elected representatives should be able to decide whether to approve or disapprove of the rule. That is how the Congressional Review Act has functioned since its beginning in 1996.
I want to quickly talk about the filibuster and the Parliamentarian because this has been raised.
My Democrat colleagues argue that there will be ``profound institutional consequences'' by the Senate not allowing GAO a veto over the use of the CRA against Agency-submitted rules. I, on the other hand, disagree. Such a GAO veto has never existed before, and we must remember that the CRA is all about protecting the authority of elected representatives over unelected Agencies. Delegating to the unelected GAO staff the authority to determine if Members of Congress can use the CRA against Agency-submitted rules turns the statute completely on its head.
My Democrat colleagues say that our action today undermines the legislative filibuster, and that is simply not true. I support the legislative filibuster. I have supported the legislative filibuster as a Senator in the majority and as a Senator in the minority.
The Congressional Review Act, which was passed with the legislative filibuster in place, has stood since 1996, providing a narrow exception to the Senate's normal practice of extended debate. It applies only to allow for disapproval of Federal Agency rules and only during a prescribed time defined by the statute.
In deciding to retain the 30-year-old practice of allowing the use of CRA procedures against Agency-submitted rules, we are not expanding any authority to enact laws by a simple majority. We are not expanding the scope of the CRA itself but, rather, simply refusing to narrow the CRA by subjecting its use to GAO approval.
Like my colleagues in the Senate, I hold our Parliamentarians in very high regard. They perform and she performs a vital role in this institution, and her wise counsel is critical to making this Senate function.
I want to make two things crystal clear: The procedural action we have taken today is not about the filibuster and not about the Parliamentarian. Instead, the procedural issue before the Senate was simply whether GAO staff should be able to block resolutions of disapproval against Agency-submitted rules.
I have explained why my answer to that is no. I have spent significant time talking about the CRA itself and about procedure. I think that is important because I respect the Senate as an institution, and I care about how we do things.
We shouldn't lose sight of the substance of what we are doing today. We are deciding whether California, DC, and 11 other States can impose an electric vehicle mandate that will take away consumer choice, drive up prices, and eliminate jobs across the country.
West Virginians don't want California's climate policy. West Virginians don't want California's EV mandate. And I am confident that most Americans don't want these things either. That is why the House of Representatives passed this resolution of disapproval with a strong bipartisan vote that included every Republican and 35 Democrats, some from the State of California.
Today, despite the best efforts of the Biden administration and congressional Democrats to shield this EV mandate from the will of the American people, the Senate will have its say.
I urge my colleagues to vote tomorrow for the resolution of disapproval.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, today, the Senate has done something unprecedented. Our actions and the ones that will follow from the procedural steps taken here today, over the next day or so, will change the Clean Air Act, will change the Congressional Review Act, will change the rules of the Senate, and will do so by overruling the Parliamentarian and breaking the filibuster.
In effect, going nuclear. The Republicans can say what they like about this, but the fact of the matter is that the Parliamentarian ruled that the Congressional Review Act does not permit what we are doing.
And she did so on the basis of advice from the Government Accountability Office, which was given that role by the Senate, given that role in a bipartisan agreement years ago.
So we are de facto legislating here, amending the operation of the Clean Air Act to remove a statutory waiver for the State of California, amending the Congressional Review Act, so it is no longer the narrow provision only about rules with a short timeframe that the Senator from West Virginia described.
That may have been what the Congressional Review Act was like until today, but after today, none of that is true any longer because of this action.
It did not have to come to this. It did not have to come to this. There were many ways around the procedural shortcut of going nuclear, where a majority of the Senate shoves its view on the minority, without consideration, without cloture, without 60 votes, without negotiation, just rolling the minority in order to get what they want done. That ought to be a last recourse for a desperate majority, but instead it was the first recourse because this is the easy way to do what the fossil fuel industry wants.
Now, one way to do this would have been to go and amend the Clean Air Act and amend the Congressional Review Act through regular order, the way the laws were created, through bicameralism, with both Houses passing the bill and the President signing it. They have been amended over and over again. We know how to amend those laws. That is what we call in the Senate regular order. But regular order would have required compromise, would have required effort, would have required working with Democrats, and the fossil fuel industry didn't want to put up with any of that. They wanted the Republican Party to jam this through, and that is what happened.
So regular legislative order--not interested, not going to do it. That was one way. The second way would have been to go to EPA and have them follow an administrative process, which they had already started in the first Trump administration, to review the three predicates for the waiver administratively.
Now, the problem is that would have taken a certain amount of administrative effort out of EPA, and it also would have required EPA to meet the basic standards for Agency action, that the Agency action be rationally based and not arbitrary and capricious.
If they made a decision that had no rational basis and was arbitrary and
So that is the second avenue that Republicans could have followed here, that the fossil fuel industry could have followed here, but simply didn't want to.
The third avenue that they could have undertaken was to go talk to California. This is California's waiver. Last I heard, California had a Governor. Last I heard, the United States has a President. They could talk. They could invite the fossil fuel industry into the room. They could invite the auto industry into the room. They could invite environmental groups and health groups into the room.
They could say: Look, we want to have some consideration here. Let's negotiate. But they didn't want to do that because they had this quick and dirty, sneaky maneuver that they could pull off so they didn't have to negotiate, they didn't have to legislate, and they didn't have to use regulatory process. All those rules were available, and yet this was the shortcut that was chosen.
Now, we have repeatedly heard it said--in fact, it was recently said just now on the floor--that President Biden claimed that what was being done with the California waiver was not a rule, claimed that it was not a rule. Do you know why the Biden administration claimed it was not a rule? For the simple reason that it was not a rule.
It did not go through the APA rulemaking process, and it had a history. And I have got a summary of that history right here.
The EPA started granting waivers to California under this Clean Air Act process in 1968. The first waiver was granted on July 11, 1968. And this summary of the waivers that have either been granted or amended or modified over the years, 131 times. The score on whether the California clean air rule is treated by EPA as a waiver or a rule, it is 131 to 0.
It is nearly 50 years of constant practice undisputed. Under President Nixon, 15 times a Republican EPA granted the waivers. Under President Reagan, 33 times a Republican EPA granted the waivers. Under President George H. W. Bush, nine times a Republican EPA granted the waivers. Under George W. Bush, 15 times a Republican President granted the waivers. A waiver for half a century has never once been treated as a rule.
So it really ought to come as no surprise to anybody that the Biden administration did not treat it as a rule. The Reagan administration didn't treat it as a rule. Neither Bush administrations treated it as a rule. No Republican administration since the passage of the Clean Air Act has treated these California waivers as a rule. It just isn't so.
So it is pretty clear that with this history of waivers, there was a real problem. And that is why when EPA pretended for the first time that this was a rule, the Government Accountability Office, which didn't inject itself into this, which didn't butt in to try to interfere with us, which was tasked with giving advice on this by the Senate--we gave them this job, and now we are accusing them of butting in and interfering with our process? We gave them this job so they did it.
It has been said that what GAO did was unprecedented in making this decision that it is actually a waiver and not a rule. Yes, it is unprecedented. It is unprecedented in the same way that a referee blowing a whistle on an unprecedented foul is doing something unprecedented. But it is not the fault of the referee that their whistleblowing is unprecedented, it is the fault of the player committing the foul that has never been committed before, and the foul is to treat the waiver as a rule.
So it was easy for GAO to say: This ain't a rule. This is a waiver. It is not allowed under the Congressional Review Act. Not allowed. But the GAO is just advisory; they don't make any decisions for us.
The rules of the Senate are actually the Parliamentarian, and that is where the going nuclear happened because we went in with the California delegation staff and the EPW staff and the Republicans, and we argued in front of the Parliamentarian. GAO wasn't even in the room. We filed our pleadings. We made our arguments. The arguments went back and forth. The Parliamentarian asked questions.
At the end, there was a decision, and, in my view, it was a slam-dunk decision because the score going in was 131 to 0. Mr. President, 131 times these waivers have been granted. Never once was it even argued that they were a rule, let alone decided that they were a rule.
It was only when GAO and the Parliamentarian made the obvious decision that what the EPA did in this case was wrong that then the fossil fuel industry decided that Republicans had to go nuclear, and that is why we are where we are.
There is statutory text in the Clean Air Act that gives California its waiver. We had testimony from Administrator Reilly earlier today. He was the EPA Administrator at the time this happened. And he understands full well how valuable it was to have a second set of eyes on this process.
The California process is so popular that a dozen other States follow it, and it is in the law. The way we should work around here is if there is something in the law you don't like, you amend the law. You don't run it falsely through the Congressional Review Act, treat it as a rule when it is not, overrule the Parliamentarian when she says it is not, and pretend you haven't broken the rules around here. We have broken the rules around here.
The other rule we broke was the Congressional Review Act itself, which says--I am reading from the text of the law:
Which is where we are--
Which means it has come to the floor, it is out of the committee, which is procedurally where we are--
That is part of expediting the process; part of the deal with it being a very narrow process for only regulations and only in a short time window.
We just heard the person sitting in that chair before this Presiding Officer say that under the rule just created we are now going forward. We just created a new rule through this parliamentary process, and it is that rule that violates this law because now we have a point of order, even though the law says that all points of order are waived.
Why did we go through this? As has been said, the Congressional Review Act is kind of an odd thing. Usually, an Agency goes through a rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedures Act. And if they got it wrong, an aggrieved party can go to court and say that was a bad regulation; it was arbitrary and capricious; it is not a rational basis; you didn't follow the APA properly; your findings are demonstrably false; there isn't support for the rule; the way you have written it violates the actual law involved.
There are a whole array of challenges that you can make in court, but we wanted something more than that. We wanted to have a political intervention narrowed just to rules, just to that short time period window that the Congressional Review Act provides. That was the idea. And the two concerns were what we described in our argument to the Parliamentarian as oversubmission and undersubmission.
I will read from our presentation.
Right? So there is a rule. It is actually amenable to Congressional Review Act under the CRA, but they don't submit. They just don't because they don't want to subject it to that process. They thought they could sneak around it would be the notion.
So if an executive Agency tries to cheat on exposing itself to the CRA process by not submitting the rule, a Member of Congress can go to the GAO and say: Hey, what is up with this? Isn't this a rule?
And if GAO says it is a rule, then it is deemed submitted, and the CRA process begins. That solves the under submission process.
We continued in the argument: The second way an Agency could work to defeat Congressional intent in crafting the CRA would be this situation, the incident situation, where an Agency submits actions, which clearly do not meet the definition of a rule under the CRA. This would pose an over submission problem.
The three CRA submissions at stake here illustrate well the slippery slope that could ensue. Not only would treating them as rules override two GAO analyses and broaden the scope of CRA coverage in an unprecedented way, but the waivers are already in effect, and one was issued so long ago as to violate any reasonable reading of the time bounds in the CRA. To accept these three submissions as rules would be to reject the principle that the privileged procedure in the CRA should be closely examined and strictly limited.
Agencies could submit any final action, going back to the enactment of the CRA in 1996--including adjudications, leasing contracts, grant awards, and licensing decisions--and magically convert those actions into timely rules that could be disapproved under the CRA's privileged procedures. This would nullify the reasonable bounds that Congress itself set in the text of the CRA, in the statutory law.
Without strict limits--truly absent any meaningful limits--the statute would be fully weaponized, threatening to destabilize decades of Agency action and highjack the Senate floor for the foreseeable future, which is precisely the can of worms that the majority has just opened with this overruling of the Parliamentarian, this establishment of a new rule.
Now, the other problem with this is that it provides a way to evade court review. Court review is usually how you check the action of the executive branch when they are up to no good. But very often, they are doing perfectly reasonable things, but a special interest doesn't like it. So they have the right to go to court too.
But when they go to court, first of all, there is a record of the proceeding, and the court is bound to that record. Second of all, there is law involved. There is both the Administrative Procedure Act, and there is the substantive law that is the subject of the regulation. Then you have to deal with evidence. The court reviews evidence. Then there has to be a rational decision by the court. And the court is, what we know of, as a neutral and disinterested magistrate.
Those are pretty essential due process determinations. For the Congressional Review Act, none of that. The only thing is the politics and the votes. You have got the politics behind you, and you got the votes. Anything is fair game.
And that is the danger of what was done today. What we have just done is open up the Congressional Review Act from that little 6-month period--60-day period; I am sorry--all the way back to when the CRA was passed, 30 years. Licenses, leases, Executive actions that have had a decade or more of reliance could simply be brought forward, dumped into the Federal Register, sent over here as a submission, magically become a new rule because of this loophole we just built, and then the majority of the Senate, with a compliant House, can just shove it right out the door without following regular order, without ever going to court, without following bicameralism, and present with the constitutional requirements.
I will conclude with two things. First, please don't call this unprecedented when you are talking about GAO saying that this was not a rule. Please don't call it unprecedented when the Parliamentarian said: This was not a rule. This actually is illegal for you to do.
The only thing unprecedented about what GAO said and what the Parliamentarian said was the fact that this rule breaking by EPA, that is what was unprecedented.
Again, 131 waiver determinations over half a century always, always, always treated as waivers--always--a score of 131 to 0.
But the Trump administration, flacking for fossil fuel, decides that all of that is wrong, that this actually is a waiver, even though there was no APA rulemaking, even though none of the steps that lead to a regulation under the Congressional Review Act were undertaken. They just filed it in the Federal Register and sent it over as a submission.
You could do anything that way. File it in the Federal Register, send it over as a submission, and--boom--it is over here to be kicked around as a political football, without due process, without bicameralism, without regular order--none of it.
That is what was unprecedented. And the only reason that the GAO's decision was unprecedented was because nobody had the nerve or the foolishness to do something so stupid before. So they called them out for it for the first time because nobody had ever done such a thing before.
But because of the politics, that just got shoved through here. Because of the power of the fossil fuel industry, that just got shoved through here.
This is part of a campaign of the Trump administration to pretend that climate change isn't real, to ignore the immediate threats that are looming over us of climate change--looming over us--and to serve the interest of the fossil fuel industry.
You remember the President saying, ``Give me a billion dollars, and I will give you everything you want,'' to the fossil fuel executives? Well, he didn't get the full billion dollars, but he got a lot of money. He got north of a 100 million, and now, sure enough, he has given them everything he wants.
And this is one of the payments--this breaking of the Senate rules, this overruling of the Parliamentarian, this going nuclear, this pretending that something that was never a rule, and is clearly not a rule by any reasonable reading of what APA rulemaking is, is suddenly now magically a rule. All of that is being done as just a political errand for the fossil fuel industry, and it is wrong.
I see that the two Senators from California are here. The hour is getting later and later. So I will not review at this moment my presentation earlier today, where I went through the multiple warnings of the systemic economic collapse that is coming at us, based on a fairly simple proposition, which is that climate risk is making weather and risk unpredictable. And when you can't predict weather risk, you can't predict the insurability of a piece of property. The original concern was about coastal risk--flooding, hurricanes, rainstorms, damage to coastal properties. Now wildfire is just as dangerous. And when you can't predict it, you can't insure it.
And we are right now, in the United States, in the middle of an insurance crisis. Go ask around Florida how property insurance is going. It is a full-blown meltdown.
And when you can't get insurance any longer, you can't get a mortgage on a property any longer. And when property doesn't carry a mortgage any longer, when you can't get a mortgage on that piece of real estate, then your buyer pool collapses. You are left with only cash buyers. And what happens then is that the property value crashes.
And that is the prediction: climate risk to insurance collapse, to mortgage unavailability, to property value crash, to economic collapse--recession. And it is coming from all over--all over. And we won't listen to those warnings whether they come from insurance CEOs, from Freddie Mac, from international banking safety reviews, from international economic magazines, from the chief risk officer of Goldman Sachs, from the head of the Bank of England. I mean, you can just go on and on. The warnings are piling, piling, piling up.
And as Ernest Hemingway said about going broke, ``it happens gradually, and then all at once.'' And we are deep into ``gradually'' on this climate risk mess, and pretty soon we are going to get hit with ``all at once.''
And then all this foolishness done on this floor in the service of the fossil fuel industry, which has the world's biggest conflict of interest and a history of lying and of dark-money political influence, is going to look pretty damned bad.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from California.
Mr. President, I, first of all, thank my colleague from the State of Rhode Island and echo his sentiment and his message that Senate Republicans have crossed the line this evening. They have chosen to overrule the Parliamentarian, thrown out some rules, rewritten some rules, established new precedents for how this body operates, despite claiming that that was something they were not going to do, despite the majority leader warning earlier this year that this would be akin to killing the filibuster.
But now we have seen it. It is on the record. They have overruled the Parliamentarian not just once but twice. And the Parliamentarian's determination as to whether or not the action taken this evening was in conformance with the rules that we have or not were buttressed by-- again, as my colleague from Rhode Island has explained--the analysis and the findings of the GAO, which we charge with this input.
And so I want to take a moment to just read some excerpts from the GAO, as written to the Senate. And I will submit the entire letter for the Record, but the key excerpts are important to highlight.
From the GAO:
It couldn't be more clear than that.
Just two other elements that, again, I think are in need of being highlighted here because of the significance of the action taken this evening--quoting still from the letter:
Pretty clear.
And, finally, later in their letter:
GAO is charged with establishing this review and making a finding. They heard from the parties involved. They did not get responses from the EPA. Why? They must have something to hide. What are they afraid of? And the GAO shared their conclusions which informed the Parliamentarian in their determination: This was inconsistent with the rules.
Not only have Senate Republicans overruled the Parliamentarian this evening, they have also broken the Congressional Review Act, as has been respected for years, all to bypass the filibuster in order to undermine California's efforts to pursue cleaner air for our constituents. And while today the California waivers may be the target, we don't know what comes next.
In previous statements on this issue earlier today and in previous days, I have given examples of, now that the CRA has been applied in this fashion, there is a whole host of adjudicatory decisions by a wide variety of Agencies across the Federal Government that are now fair game.
But for now, let me continue to focus on the waivers in question that Republicans are seeking to overturn. See, I rise not only in opposition to this power play tonight, I rise in the interest of protecting the health of my constituents, the nearly 40 million Californians that I am honored to represent.
Because, colleagues, leaders in California didn't just wake up one day to find some special privileges to establish our own climate policy and impose it upon the rest of the country. And we certainly didn't cheat the system to jam States represented by Republicans in the Senate or in their Governors' mansions. No. California was explicitly granted waivers because of the unique air quality challenges that we face, different than anywhere else in the country.
California was granted these waivers because California, as a whole, and Los Angeles, in particular--the southern California area, the Los Angeles Basin--is uniquely situated to produce some of the most dangerous air pollution in the Nation. So it means that we had to work harder than other States and other regions to protect the health of our residents.
This is not some new liberal agenda. It actually goes back nearly a century with broad bipartisan support. Way back in the summer of 1943, Angelenos actually started to notice a brown haze descending upon the city. People's eyes and throats began to sting from this smoke, and they could no longer see more than a handful of blocks ahead of them, let alone the beautiful skyline or the views of the city around them.
It was actually in the middle of a World War when Americans feared that breakouts of chemical warfare were imminent and many started to wear gas masks as a result. While it didn't take long to learn that there was no chemical attack targeting Los Angeles, it would take researchers years to learn that the true source of the haze was different. Eventually, they learned it wasn't just factories that were pumping black smoke into the sky; it was in large part due to the cars that were being driven.
Now, unfortunately for us, Los Angeles does create the ideal conditions for smog to thrive. Southern California's sunshine along with a booming population of people reliant on car travel and all the exhaust that comes with it combines to make a photochemical reaction that we call smog. But in addition to that, given the beautiful mountains--and you have all seen the scenes--the mountains that surround the Los Angeles area act as a perfect sort of cradle to hold all those pollutants in, encasing the city in a thick haze of pollution.
For all the beauty of our city--most of you have visited, and you have certainly seen images on television and in the movies--generations of Angelenos know what it is like to feel engulfed by the smog around us.
As I began to share earlier today, that includes me. As many of you know by now, I grew up in the community of Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley, the northern part of the city of Los Angeles. And growing up in the 1970s and 1980s--40 years after the gas masks that I spoke about a minute ago--smog was still ever-present in our sky and part of our daily life.
I still remember what it was like being sent home early from school as a kid because the air was too unhealthy for us just to play on the playground--the stinging in our eyes, the tightness in your chest. Yes, when I was growing up, we were more often waking up to air quality forecasts of unhealthy or hazardous than clean. Imagine just the sheer simplicity of trying to take a deep breath, but not being able to because halfway through taking in a deep breath, your chest would tighten up. You literally choke because of the pollution in the air. While we have come a long way, for too many Californians today, that is still a reality. It doesn't have to be that way.
But that is why, decades ago, Congress recognized both California's unique air quality challenges but also its ingenuity, its creativity, the innovation that is in our DNA and granted California the special authority to do something about those unique air quality challenges.
Thanks to the Clean Air Act, which, again, was adopted in an overwhelming bipartisan basis over 50 years ago, California obtained the legal authority to set its own emissions standards because Congress wisely recognized back then that West Virginia and Wyoming are different than California; and their air quality is different; there are significantly fewer cars on the road in Salt Lake City than there are in Los Angeles; and because California was and still is seen as the innovation center of the United States.
So we earned the right to set California standards for California. We are not setting California standards for national standards. I am sure my colleagues in State government wish we had that kind of power and authority, but that is not the case. And it is certainly not California's agenda to impose our standards on States across the country. We are simply seeking to protect Californians.
And, quite frankly, if Members of this body representing the other 49 States in the Nation are worried about some Federal mandate taking effect
So from a government standpoint, let me explain why I get so worked up on this. State and local jurisdictions in California have done all they can to push ambitious but implementable regulatory agendas in the country--some of the most ambitious in the country. But we are out of options when it comes to controlling the pollution sources that State and local governments are allowed to regulate.
What is left--the biggest nut to crack--are the mobile sources of pollution--the cars, the heavy-duty trucks, the locomotives, the ships, and the planes that are the key sources of the bad air quality in regions of California. These are industries that only the Federal Government can regulate.
So California has had no option, but we have embraced the challenge to innovate, to advance creative and indirect source rules or rules that, for example, require ships to plug in when docked in our ports to cut down on pollution.
That is why these waivers are so important. They let us get at these mobile sources of pollution that we need to clean up because unless or until the Federal Government gets more ambitious about setting national standards that meet the moment of this climate crisis, at least let California protect Californians.
I am realistic with the times that we are living in. Under this administration, I doubt we will get the assist from the Federal Government over the course of the next 3\1/2\ years.
I want to acknowledge that it was former President Ronald Reagan, when he was Governor of California, who first created the California Air Resources Board. And 3 years later, it was Republican President Nixon who signed amendments to the Clean Air Act into law, fulfilling a promise that he made at that year's State of the Union, that clean air should be the birthright of every American. What a far, far cry from Republican leadership then to the Republican agenda today.
But the bottom line is, colleagues, by supporting this measure, Republicans are simply making it harder for California to improve air quality in California.
As I did yesterday, I also just have to acknowledge what it means for families throughout the State. You see, as the parents of three growing boys--they are not little kids anymore; they are growing--through the course of their upbringing, we have been able to control certain things, like how we feed our kids. We go to the grocery store, and you are shopping for what you are going to prepare for dinner. You have readily accessible information--nutritional information--not just calorie information, protein information, but ingredients of what is in the product you are about to buy. There are certain things that we cannot control, like the ingredients in the air we breathe.
If you are fortunate enough to live in a part of the State of California, in the part of the country with a great air quality index, good for you. But for those who aren't as fortunate and with the assistance of the Union of Concerned Scientists, let me read off a couple of the ingredients that are in the air that we breathe--not just us, our children too.
Particulate matter, defined as follows:
How is this for another ingredient: volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs, referred to as VOCs:
Now, I know I have felt those things as a kid. It is in the science.
Just a couple more:
Which we refer to as NOX.
I can go on and on--carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, greenhouse gases--but in the interest of time and given the late hour, let me say this: All of these ingredients are in the air that we breathe, as I just described, but as you heard me say earlier, it is not just our lungs that are at risk; these toxins can permeate into the bloodstream and spread to other parts of the body. That is what is at stake, again, not just for us but for our children.
But for all the dangers that I see around us, I also see opportunity. Thanks to the allowances afforded to California under the Clean Air Act, we have actually made tremendous progress.
As evidence of that, in 2015, USC--the University of Southern California--published a study that said that the reduction of air pollution was paying off; kids were breathing healthier.
Let me read just briefly from their findings, summarized in a National Geographic article from March of 2015 that said:
I will skip some of the additional scientific details and jump to more of the conclusions because during those decades differential in the study, ``California officials set groundbreaking standards that phased out many inefficient car and truck engines and some of the dirtiest fuels for everything from jet skis and lawnmowers to school buses and heavy-duty trucks. Local smog-fighters in the Los Angeles basin forced cleanup of oil refineries, manufacturing plants, and consumer products such as paints and solvents. Other local and state programs offered incentives for replacing old trucks and buses.''
As a side note, by the way, the two ports referenced in this, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles--sister ports in the San Pedro Sports Complex--account for 40 percent of our Nation's imports, those two ports alone. So you can imagine the intensity of the pollution in that specific region, let alone the air quality and health impacts for Californians.
So I go back to, if the Federal Government, through the EPA, isn't willing to step up to meet the challenge of air quality in California, let California take care of Californians. As these studies and reports lay out, California's leadership is working. Kids are breathing cleaner air.
But we still have a lot more work to do. We have a track record of successfully developing and implementing innovative tools to improve lives, but because of what is transpiring here now in the Senate, our progress is now at risk. It is important, it is urgent, it is significant because we still have so much more work to do.
California plans on continuing to exercise our legal authority under the Clean Air Act to protect kids, to set ambitious but achievable goals, to reduce pollution and, yes, Heaven forbid, set an example, set a model, set a path for other States to follow if they wish because no one is forcing California
But what I see transpiring here with the overruling of the Parliamentarian and the overturning of these waivers as if they were rules is the Senators from other States, Republican Senators from other States, imposing their will on California. So much for States' rights, I guess.
And I hope you sleep well at night with the consequences of your decisions in the years ahead.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, my colleagues, it is getting very late. Indeed, most of our constituents are asleep. But across the U.S. Capitol tonight, the lights remain on.
Over in the House, they burn dimly on the House floor as Republicans try to jam through a ``big, ugly bill'' that would wreak havoc on our families, our communities, and our climate to pay for more tax cuts for wealthy people, that would cut Medicaid and block help for families that will go hungry so that billionaires like Elon Musk get another tax break they simply don't need.
But that is not what I am here to talk about this evening. I am here at this hour, or this morning, because right here, right now, in the dead of night, Republicans in the Senate are hard at work on another objective, an unprecedented and previously unimaginable effort to abandon their own standards, their own precedent, their previous very public statements, the very rules of this body, to make our air less clean.
To do so is complicated. It requires a lot of parliamentary maneuvers. Why?
Now, I don't blame my Republican colleagues for wanting to shroud what they have set out to do tonight in secrecy. I don't blame them for trying to hide it. It was just a few short weeks ago the Republican leader assured this body that he would never do any such thing, but that was then.
But hide or not, the blame will lay squarely on my Republican colleagues for the impact of what is done here tonight because tonight is a turning point, a moment in which the majority gave up yet another guardrail, where they chose to go nuclear, to violate the filibuster, to overturn the Parliamentarian in order to gratify the wishes of Big Oil over the need of our constituents for cleaner air.
The GOP wasn't always this way. Republican administrations didn't always demonstrate such hostility to the environment. At a different moment in our history, there was a very different kind of Republican Party.
So I would like to begin tonight by reading verbatim a message from President Ronald Reagan. The date was July 14, 1984. The then-President turned on a microphone in a studio here in Washington and took to the Nation's airwaves to deliver an address. This is part of what Ronald Reagan said:
More than 15 years ago, the State of California decided that we needed to take action to combat the smog that was choking the beautiful cities of my home State. Out of that concern was born the first serious program to require manufacturers to build cleaner cars and help control air pollution. The auto industry had to build two kinds of cars--one that would be for sale in the other 49 States and one that would meet the stiff antipollution standards required in California.
Now, if you are just tuning in, this is a speech from Ronald Reagan.
The former President had to say--
Reagan said--
Reagan said--
And by the way, under this ``big, ugly bill,'' the cuts to Superfund cleanup will be enormous. It will move the country exactly the opposite direction that Ronald Reagan moved the country back in 1981.
Reagan said--
That was Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party wasn't always like it is today. There was a time when the environment and clean water and clean air were a priority of this party.
Now, this isn't the first time I have noted on the Senate floor that Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave. It is certainly true of our treatment of Ukraine and our giving in to the Kremlin. But that President, who was looked to as a portrait of the American conservative movement, watching as the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan completes its transformation into the party of Donald J. Trump, it probably doesn't recognize what it sees.
What happened to ``States' rights''? Because this attack on California's clean air policy is an attack on States' rights.
What happened to ``freedom to innovate''? This will stifle innovation.
What happened to ``family values''?
How is what we are doing here tonight in service of our kids and the air that they breathe?
Now, Ronald Reagan wasn't the only Republican President to believe in clean air and clean water. This is Richard Nixon giving an address January 22, 1970.
If you are tuning in, these are the words of Richard Nixon.
He said--
Nixon said--
What more profound words for today than that?
And that debt is called climate change. Those are my words, not Nixon's.
But Nixon went on to say:
This was a Republican President.
Nixon said--
Nixon said--
Little could he have imagined the electric vehicles of today. But he said:
This is Richard Nixon--
Isn't this incredible? Richard Nixon, in the 1970s, talking about requiring that the price of goods should include the cost of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment.
He went on:
He said--
Now, Richard Nixon--that was in January of 1970.
This was Richard Nixon in July of the same year, July of 1970, in a special message to the Congress:
This was the work of a Republican President: the EPA and NOAA. And look what is happening to it today.
The Administrator of the EPA Lee Zeldin testified before our committee today. He is calling to cut the EPA in half--cut it by more than half, actually: by 55 percent. This creation of the Nixon administration, he believes more than half of it is a waste. This Agency devoted to what Reagan talked about, what Nixon talked about, devoted to clean air and clean water, is just a waste.
This was the CEO of Ford just a year ago:
What about our competitiveness? Are we walking away from that too? Every step this body takes this week to undermine the growth of what could be America's next great manufacturing powerhouse will be felt not just by the big three but in communities all across America.
A recent study from Princeton University found that if Congress takes action to target these emissions regulations, as they are doing, and the EV tax credits that we passed in the last administration--can you guess the place that will be the most impacted? It will be the same States that supported Donald Trump in the last election. That is because the EV component plants that are being built for this burgeoning sector are happening in Texas and in Tennessee and in Missouri and in South Carolina. The battery factories are being launched in Indiana, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and Michigan.
Every signal we send to American industry and to the world that we are throwing in the towel to Chinese EV manufacturers will resonate far longer than I think this Senate realizes this week, and it will hit American families in the exact place it will hurt the most. It will hit them in the wallet. Cutting tax credits, shuttering American electric car manufacturers--these will make the modern commute, the future of family vacation, all that, more expensive as we become all that more reliant on fossil fuels to go anywhere.
It will also hurt the future earnings of our apprentices, our tradespeople, our engineers by killing in the cradle a sector of the American economy to the tune of thousands of good-paying jobs.
That is not to mention, even more significantly, making Americans spend far more on healthcare as they face more sick days and worse health conditions from dirtier air.
Now, I want to talk about that for a moment because I know there are many who take for granted our air, just as we take for granted that the sun will rise or set. While air that we breathe may feel like a given, we cannot lose sight of the fact, for 135 million people--more than 4 in every 10 Americans--they live in a community impacted by unhealthy levels of air pollution; and 24 million Americans--or 1 in every 14 adults--are living with asthma. That rate is even higher in children, with about 1 in every 12 kids living with asthma.
Now, consider for a second that elevated air pollution has been found by the University of Washington, Columbia, and the University of Buffalo to be equivalent on your lungs like a pack of cigarettes.
Why is smog like a pack of cigarettes? Because it has the same effects exactly on our health. Here is what the EPA says on this topic:
Here is another quote:
That is heart trouble, that is lung trouble, health effects so devastating you could land in the hospital just from constant exposure to smog--smog--something we will see a lot more of once again by repealing these Clean Air Act standards that California has set.
Now, I heard one of my colleagues earlier today say that California was
But other States have chosen to follow California's lead. They weren't required to. They weren't forced to. They chose to. They chose for their constituents to have air as clean as what California was striving to achieve.
And, yes, a lot of States adopted those standards, and some of the other States might not like it. Maybe they are just fine with having dirtier air, and that is their judgment.
But to tell California we can't set our own air standard, to tell California that because other States are following our example, we should lose the opportunity to decide how clean or how dirty we want our own air to be; is that a road we really want to go down?
Now, I know because I have been in the majority before, and when you are in the majority, you feel like you will never be in the minority, but the tables will turn. Do my colleagues want a situation where the Democratic majority can look at rules we don't like in red States and say with a simple vote--majority vote--we are going to get rid of them? we don't like your rule on mifepristone? we don't like your license for natural gas? we don't like something your State likes, and therefore we are going to legislate by CRA? Because that is what is going to happen. You can overturn the Parliamentarian here. We can overturn the Parliamentarian there. I just don't think that is a road we want to go down.
I grew up in California. I have lived there since I was 11 years old. I saw the smog days, and I knew the haze that had come to define our cities and skies for a generation dating back to the first automobile boom of the post-war era. I remember all the smog alerts, days you were warned not to go outside.
It is no surprise that that smog at the time became synonymous with California. Even today, we see some of the most densely populated and at-risk areas in the Nation for air pollution are still in California.
The Los Angeles County area, including the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys; the Central Valley, including Bakersfield and Fresno; San Diego County; San Francisco Bay Area--these are all areas that see dense populations facing increasing health risks from smog, which is why California took such a step 60 years ago to become the first State to tackle air pollution caused by automobiles head-on, to take drastic generational action to clean up our air.
But the steps that my colleagues in the Republican Party are taking tonight aren't going to make America healthy again. They are going to make America hazy again. If we go down this road, the future is clear even if our skies won't be.
Americans will pay for this nuclear option with more of their paychecks on hospital bills. They will pay for it with fewer jobs, less success in their communities, fewer years with their loved ones, more cancers, less time to enjoy the quality of life, and less quality of life.
That is not a future I want to see. I want to see a future envisioned, I think, as we heard by Democratic Presidents and Republicans Presidents alike, in which we invest in the technologies that can clean our air and clean our water, in which we get ahead of this tipping point on climate change, in which fire seasons go back to being a few months a year and not year-round, in which we are not constantly seeing our wildlife at risk, and in which we have to wonder what the future will look like for our kids and our grandkids.
It may seem like a small step tonight to get rid of the filibuster, to force California to abandon its standards for its own air, but this step down this road may be the first. It will not be the last. And I want better for my kids and grandkids, and I want better for everyone else's family as well.
I yield the floor.
