[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 47 (Wednesday, March 18, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3324-S3327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I don't think my State of Oklahoma is any 
different from any other State when you go home and you find out that 
people are looking at these monstrous expenditures never even dreamed 
of before in the history of this country. They talk about the auto 
bailout, $17 billion; the housing bailout--I think probably the worst 
one was the first one, the bank bailout that gave the authority to 
unelected bureaucrats to do what they are doing today. We have the 
economic bailout, the stimulus package. I am here today to say that as 
bad as all of this is, if you look at the one that is in the budget--
the climate bailout--it is far worse because at least these are one-
shot deals, and that would be a permanent tax every year. Over the next 
few weeks, we will be talking about it.
  I spent nearly 10 years on this issue in the capacity of the ranking 
member and the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. 
To tell the truth, for a long time I was a one-man truth squad, and now 
more and more people realize that the science that was supposed to be 
there really is not there. But that is not the important thing. As I 
said in the debate against the Boxer bill a year ago, let's go ahead 
and concede the science, even though it is not there, so that it 
doesn't take away from the economic arguments.
  So, in my view, I think the President did a good thing, including an 
estimate in his budget as to how much this is going to cost. Now, his 
estimate was understated, I understand that, but it allows us to have 
an honest debate about the cost of a program of this magnitude to the 
American people, not to mention the enormous redistribution of wealth 
for pet projects and programs under the umbrella of clean energy. In 
fact, according to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity, the 
number of lobbyists seeking to influence Federal policy on climate 
change--that is what we are talking about here--has grown more than 300 
percent in 5 years. This represents more than four lobbyists for every 
Member of Congress, with a slew of new interests from Main Street to 
Wall Street, clamoring for new taxpayer-funded subsidies.
  I don't think anyone questions that in the Senate. Our Halls are 
inundated with people who want in on this deal. The administration's 
decision to include cap and trade, and the revenues it generates in the 
budget, forces my colleagues in the Senate to quit hiding from this 
issue. They are going to have to talk about it. They can no longer 
prevent a discussion of what a program of this magnitude is.
  The public is finally beginning to pay attention. To put it simply, 
they are realizing cap and trade is a regressive energy tax that hits 
the Midwest and the South the hardest, and it hits the poor 
disproportionately. I don't think anyone now is questioning that 
because everyone has been talking about it.
  While a number of lobbyists and the companies are lining up inside 
the beltway, Washington businesses and the consumers are coming to 
realize that cap and trade is designed to deliver

[[Page S3325]]

money and power to the Government, and there is nothing in it for the 
taxpayers or consumers or even for the climate.
  Let me further explain at this time that with the recession and 
economic pain, the administration and the proponents of mandatory 
global warming controls now need to be honest with the American people. 
The purpose of these programs is to ration fossil energy by making it 
more expensive and less appealing to public consumption. It is so 
regressive in nature. All you have to do is calculate it in any State, 
including Colorado and Oklahoma. The poor people spend a larger 
percentage of their money on heating their homes and driving their 
vehicles--using energy.
  If you need proof, the President's own OMB Director, Peter Orszag, is 
on record making the statement:

       The rise in prices for energy and energy-intensive goods 
     and services would impose a larger burden, relative to 
     income, on low-income households than on high-income 
     households.

  That is the OMB Director, who also said:

       Under a cap and trade program, firms would not ultimately 
     bear most of the costs of the allowances, but instead would 
     pass them along to their customers in the form of higher 
     prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. The 
     higher prices caused by the cap would lower real inflation-
     adjusted wages and real returns on capital, which would be 
     equivalent to raising marginal tax rates on those sources of 
     income.

  No one questions this. Recently, there was an article in the Wall 
Street Journal--this month. It said:

       Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute 
     income and wealth--but in a very curious way. It takes from 
     the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from 
     Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, FL; and takes from an 
     industrial America that is already struggling and gives to 
     rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street ``green tech'' investors 
     who know how to leverage the political class.

  Warren Buffet said:

       That tax is probably going to be pretty regressive. If you 
     put a cost of issuing--putting carbon into the atmosphere--in 
     the utility business, it's going to be borne by customers. 
     And it's a tax hike like anything else.

  Ben Stein had an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he 
said:

       Why add another element of uncertainty to energy 
     production, especially if the goal of suppressing carbon-
     based fuel burning can be accomplished by another means? 
     Energy companies have enough problems as it is--including 
     reduced supplies, political risks, and wildly changing prices 
     of raw materials.

  Jim Cramer of CNBC said this:

       Obama's budget is pushing an aggressive cap and trade 
     program that could raise the price of energy for millions of 
     people.

  Detroit would really suffer. The Detroit News said this:

       President Barack Obama's proposed cap and trade system on 
     greenhouse gas emissions is a giant economic dagger aimed at 
     the nation's heartland--particularly Michigan. It is a 
     multibillion dollar tax hike on everything that Michigan 
     does, including making things, driving cars and burning coal.

  So we have this awareness that wasn't there until this appeared in 
the President's budget. I have to say this. Back in the very beginning 
of this discussion, I was somewhat of a believer that manmade gas, 
anthropogenic gases, CO2, caused global warming, until we 
found out what the cost is going to be, and until we looked at the 
science.
  In terms of the costs and how it is going to impact the various 
States such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan, these States 
will be impacted harder than most others.
  All of these reports reflect the numbers released in the President's 
proposed budget which estimated that a cap-and-trade program would 
generate $646 billion in Federal revenues through 2019. Keep in mind, 
that is a nice way of saying increase taxes by $646 billion. However, 
we now know that figure is way low.
  Nearly 10 years ago--and this was my first discovery--we came this 
close to ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, which would have mandated all 
these things they are talking about doing now. That was about 10 years 
ago. The Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates did an analysis and 
said: What could it cost if we were to sign Kyoto and live by its 
provisions? They found it would cost 2.4 million U.S. jobs and reduce 
GDP by 3.2 percent or about $300 billion a year in taxes.
  Well, nearly 10 years later, we have come full circle. According to 
MIT, an analysis of similar legislation as the President's budget 
proposal suggests much higher revenues. We have gone through the Kyoto 
thing and then we had the Lieberman-McCain bill and then the Lieberman-
Warner bill. Each time we do this, more people come in and do analyses, 
and they come to the same conclusion.
  Then I looked at one of the more recent ones, the Sanders-Boxer bill, 
and that bill mandates even less aggressive emissions reduction 
targets, and that is 80 percent. Now they are talking about 83 percent. 
It would have cost approximately $366 billion a year. So you have a 
consistent range from $300 billion to $366 billion. That is what 
everyone says it is actually going to cost. It is around $350 billion 
if you round it off.
  As bad as all this spending is--it is out of control--still, this is 
worse because this is something that is every year. To put it into 
perspective for my colleagues, I point to this chart that shows the 
largest tax increases in history--we remember these--in the last 50 
years. I remember this one, the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. I 
remember talking about this on the Senate floor--the inheritance tax, 
the marginal tax rates, the income tax, and the capital gains tax. It 
was a $32 billion tax increase.
  By contrast, look at what we have--a $300 billion increase or 10 
times greater than the largest tax increase in the last 50 years. You 
are going to hear that some of these revenues will fund tax relief to 
be returned to the people.
  For the purposes of this budget proposal, the administration plans to 
spend $15 billion a year to fund clean energy technologies and allocate 
$63 billion to $68 billion per year for the making work pay tax credit 
campaign promise to give back to people who don't pay taxes. We have 
learned firsthand that, of course, this stuff wasn't true. We learned 
that in the consideration of the Warner-Lieberman bill, when they made 
the statement that they were going to give back a lot of this revenue 
to poor people--it turned out the same thing will be true in the case 
of this budget--that for each $1 a person gets back, they are paying 
$8.40. That is how the math works out.
  You can try to make people believe they are going to be on the 
receiving end of this, but when it is over, the cost is $6.7 trillion, 
and the refund--which wasn't guaranteed; it was legislative intent--was 
$802 billion. I think we will have plenty of time to talk about this 
and bring this to the American people.
  In his budget, the President wants to recycle $525 billion through 
the making work pay tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay 
income taxes. The math is not good, as we noted. It doesn't work. My 
colleagues may argue that at least this money will be going to a good 
purpose, for the cause of fighting global warming, having America lead 
the way. I think many find it very difficult this would happen. I add 
that, at times, you have to be logical on these things.

  Referring to this chart, these are the figures actually used in terms 
of how it would have an effect if we passed one of these programs. This 
was based on the Lieberman-Warner bill. If we had passed it in terms of 
the emissions of CO2 worldwide, you can see it doesn't have 
an effect. Let's assume that--which is not true but assume--there is 
global warming, which is not happening, as we are in a cooling period 
now; global warming is a result of CO2 coming into the 
atmosphere, and that we want to somehow reduce the emissions of 
CO2.
  The problem we have with this is, if we do it unilaterally, then we 
in the United States are going to be paying these huge taxes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 1 minute remaining.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair. While we are paying these huge taxes, 
you have to keep in mind that China is not doing that, Mexico isn't 
doing it, and India isn't doing it. They are laughing at us. I wish 
there was time to finish. We document what China and Mexico are saying. 
They are going to be the beneficiary. If we were to limit 
CO2 in our country, our jobs would have to go elsewhere. 
There would not be adequate energy.

[[Page S3326]]

  In conclusion, if you look at how fast this is in terms of what 
happened so far, for those of us--I am not saying anything disparaging 
about the President; I like the guy--all of these things that are in 
yellow are expenditures that are unprecedented in the history of this 
country. Far worse than that would be if we were to pass a cap-and-
trade bailout. It would cost some $6.7 trillion, as opposed to the 
lower figures. It is something we cannot afford. It is all pain and no 
climate gain.
  Let me briefly go back in history. It is my understanding that the 
other person who was going to use time is delayed, so we have more 
time. I mentioned a minute ago that when Republicans were in the 
majority, I was the chairman of the committee called Environment and 
Public Works. This committee has jurisdiction over most of the energy 
issues we deal with.
  At that time--way back during the Kyoto consideration, about 10 years 
ago--most people didn't believe CO2 or anthropogenic gases 
were causing global warming. We were in a warming period at that time. 
I have an interesting speech where I take magazines, such as Time, 
where back in the middle 1970s they were talking about another ice age 
coming, and we were all going to die. I wish I had it with me now.
  About 2 years ago, the same Time magazine had this polar bear 
standing on the last piece of ice floating around on an icecap, saying 
that we were all going to die; global warming is coming.
  A couple things, I believe, are the motivation for this. One is 
publications. Probably their two largest issues were those two. They 
made people walking by the news stands and seeing that ``we are going 
to die'' think: I better see how much time we have left. It started 
with the U.N. IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that 
came out with this idea that somehow greenhouse gases are causing 
global warming.
  When you think about it--and this was in concert with the NAS--they 
had reports they started giving out, summaries for policyholders. They 
were not based on science. They talked about how the science is all 
settled. It was after we realized from the Wharton School how much 
money this is going to cost taxpayers. After that, we were in a 
position where we could start analyzing it, and then the scientists 
started coming out of the woodwork. They were no longer intimidated.
  One of the problems we had was that the scientists who were dependent 
upon various sources of income, either from the Government or from 
various organizations, such as the Heinz Foundation and Pew 
Foundation--so long as they said they went along with this scheme that 
CO2 is causing global warming, they were getting grants. 
This started changing, and they started telling the truth. We now have 
accumulated--later today or tomorrow, I will give a talk showing how 
the science now has grown, where over 700 scientists who were on the 
other side of this issue are now on the truth side of this issue.
  So the science needs to be talked about even right now during the 
debate. It is probably more significant that we talk about the 
economics and what it is going to cost people.
  I can remember when Claude Allegre, who is probably the most 
respected scientist in France, a Socialist, was a person who was very 
strongly on the Al Gore side of this issue and has recently come over 
and said, in reevaluating, in looking at this issue and in looking at 
what has happened to the climate, the science is not there.
  David Bellamy, a similar scientist in Great Britain, was on the other 
side of this issue. He has now come over.
  Nir Shaviv from Israel, a top scientist who was always on the other 
side of this issue until about 3 years ago--I don't have the quotes 
here--came out and said: We are wrong on this issue, the science is not 
there.
  By the way, we have a lot of documentation, and I invite my 
colleagues to go to my Web site, inhofe.senate.gov. We document what 
has happened in terms of the science.
  This has been a 10-year journey. I sometimes think of Winston 
Churchill, who said:

       The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, 
     ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

  It has taken 10 years for the truth to come out so the American 
people realize, with all of the scary stuff going on, with Hollywood 
and the elitists pouring money into campaigns--and I am talking about 
moveon.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and all the millions of 
dollars that went into campaigns. They have influenced a lot of Members 
of the House and Senate. But the truth is coming out now.
  As this issue moves forward, I invite all of us to look at all that 
has happened. It is hard for people to understand this sometimes until 
they get to my stage in life. I have 20 kids and grandkids. None of 
this stuff is going to affect me, but it is going to affect future 
generations. I look at that and think: How can we allow all this to 
take place and then pass a tax increase that will do absolutely 
nothing?
  I repeat, those who are believers who have bought into this thing and 
have seen the science fiction movie ``An Inconvenient Truth''--even if 
we do that, what good would it do for us to do it unilaterally in the 
United States, take the jobs and put them in countries that have no 
additional requirements? It would have a net increase of 
CO2. That is being logical even for those who are believers 
that this is a problem.
  Yesterday, I pointed out something I thought should be pointed out; 
that is, the first bailout was the $700 billion bailout. As much as I 
hate to say it, 74 Senators voted for that bailout. What is bad about 
that is this gave one person, an unelected bureaucrat, the power over 
$700 billion to do with as he wished. It is interesting because that 
was Hank Paulson, the Secretary of Treasury. Now we find the new 
Secretary of Treasury was in on that deal at the same time. So they put 
this together. A lot of this stuff was authorized by voting to give 
someone $700 billion to do with as he wished. Now we are paying for 
that, and the costs are very great.
  I believe, when we look at what is going on right now, there are some 
scary things over and above what I have been talking about. I had 
occasion to make several trips to Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay. That is an 
asset we have had in this country since 1903. In fact, it is one of the 
few good deals around. We are still paying the same rent now that we 
paid back then. It is $4,000 a year, and we get this great big 
resource. It is a place to put the detainees and to go through the 
tribunals in a courtroom that is over there.
  One of the scary things I am looking at now is a statement by 
President Obama that he wants to do away with the tribunals and he 
wants to close Gitmo or Guantanamo Bay. Here is the problem we have 
with that. Right now, we have 245 detainees--some call them 
terrorists--who are incarcerated there. Of the 245, 170 of them have no 
place to go. Their countries will not take them back. They cannot be 
repatriated anywhere. Of the 170, 110 are really like the Shaikh 
Mohammed-type individuals--really bad terrorists. If the President goes 
through with his statement that he is going to close Guantanamo Bay, 
there is no place else to put them, no place in the world.
  This number is going to increase as we escalate in Afghanistan. It is 
going to be going up. Some might say: There are prisons in Afghanistan. 
Yes, there are two, but they will only take detainees who are Afghans. 
So if they are from Djibouti, Yemen, or Saudi Arabia, then they have to 
go someplace else. The only place we can put them right now is 
Guantanamo Bay.
  The argument some make is there has been torture going on. That has 
been completely refuted. In fact, every publication, every television 
station, every newspaper that has gone and inspected the premises at 
Guantanamo Bay has come back with a report that it is better than 
anything in our prison system in the United States.
  One of the suggestions was that we take these people and send them 
around to some 17 areas within the United States. One of those areas 
suggested is in my State of Oklahoma, which is Fort Sill. I went down 
to Fort Sill the other day to look at the place, trying to picture if 
we had a bunch of terrorist detainees there.
  By the way, this will serve throughout the country as 17 magnets to 
bring in terrorist activity. Most people agree that would be the case.
  If we were to distribute these people around, they would have to be 
coming into our court system since we could not use tribunals, and the 
rules of evidence are different in a court system.

[[Page S3327]]

It could be that some of these people would actually be turned loose.
  It is very serious. It is something we need to keep. Every 
publication, every newspaper or television station that has gone to 
Guantanamo Bay has come back and said all these things just are not 
true, we need to keep Gitmo, and it has changed a lot of minds. I am 
hoping that is one area where we will be able to demonstrate clearly 
that it is a resource we must have and the world needs very much. We 
will be working to that cause.
  Another issue that is not talked about very much in the budget is 
that almost everything is increased. We look at the size of the budget. 
We look at the deficits. The deficit for the year we are in right now 
could approach $2 trillion. It is just unimaginable. People criticized 
George W. Bush during his tenure, but if you take all the deficits for 
those 8 years, add them up, and divide by eight, it averaged $245 
billion a year. Now we are talking about eight times that in 1 year. 
These amounts are horrible.
  The other aspect of the budget I don't like is everything is going 
up, an increase in spending, except military. We have a serious problem 
right now that we are facing in the military; that is, during the 
decade of the nineties, we downgraded our military by about 40 percent. 
I might add that some countries that could be potential adversaries, 
such as China, increased tenfold during that time. We reduced. There 
was this euphoric attitude that the Cold War is over, we don't need a 
military anymore. So in the nineties, they brought down the military in 
terms of our force strength, in terms of our modernization program.

  There were a few heroes back at that time who helped us out. One was 
a GEN John Jumper, before he became the Chief of the Air Force. He made 
a statement in 1998. He said: Now we are in a position where our best 
strike fighters, our best strike equipment, the F-15 and F-16, are not 
as good in many ways as what the Russians are making right now in the 
SU series. At that time, it was SU-30s, now SU-35s. We went ahead. That 
helped us get into the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter so we would 
again regain our superiority.
  When I talk with people and tell them that when our kids go out in 
potential conflicts, they would be fighting people who have better 
equipment than we do, it is un-American, it is not believable. Right 
now, the best artillery piece we have is called a Paladin. It is World 
War II technology. You have to get out and swab the breech after every 
shot. Yet there are five countries, including South Africa, that make a 
better one than we have.
  Because we lifted that awareness, we were able to step into an area 
of what we call Future Combat Systems, FCS, to modernize our ground 
equipment and other equipment they will use. There are 16 elements of 
the Future Combat Systems. The first is NLOS-C, non-line-of-site 
cannon. This would replace the Paladin, so we will have something that 
is state of the art. But we are not there and will not be there for 
several more years.
  We went through the decade of the nineties downgrading our military, 
and then, of course, when 9/11 came, all of a sudden we were in a war. 
I have to be sympathetic with former President George W. Bush because 
he inherited a military that had been taken down, and then all of a 
sudden he is confronted with one or two wars or fronts he had to fight. 
So it has been very difficult.
  It is interesting to me that many of the liberal Members of the 
Senate during the years we were trying to enhance our military spending 
are the ones who objected to that and then complained about the 
overworking of our Guard and Reserve. They actually are responsible for 
that. Yes, we are now trying to do something about it. But in this 
budget, we increase spending everywhere except the military. That is an 
area where we are going to have to be doing something.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. INHOFE. I encourage us to look at the overall budget, not just 
the tax increases but also how it affects other programs, such as our 
military.
  I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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