[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 125 (Tuesday, September 8, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9117-S9118]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        ISSUES FACING THE SENATE

  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair.
  Well, first of all, I had a few stories I was going to tell about my 
very good friend who is deceased now, Senator Kennedy, and if there is 
time before my time expires I will get into that. I have a feeling more 
will take place on that tomorrow or later on tonight.
  Let me mention one thing because I think it is so fresh on our minds 
now, having come back from the August recess. I did my town meetings in 
smaller communities in Oklahoma. I was in Stigler, Coweta, Chickasha, 
Grove, Woodward, Guymon, McAlester, and Lawton. I did this because so 
many times smaller communities are left out, and I wanted to know what 
kind of response they had. I made the comment when I was in Grove, OK, 
that the very institutions that have historically set America aside 
from the rest of the world are the ones that seem to be under attack by 
this administration. I am talking about free enterprise, talking about 
the fact of little government, big people, and all these things.

  Since the junior Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Coburn, is one of the two 
medical doctors in the Senate, I decided to talk about the other 
issues. My fear is this: There was concern about socialized medicine. 
Everyone is concerned about what this President wants to do with the 
health issues in America, but we are forgetting there are other very 
serious issues. So I covered these, as opposed to the health problems, 
because these are things we are going to be dealing with in the Senate 
in the next few days or weeks, and they are very significant.
  One of them is the cap-and-trade issue that we have talked about at 
some length, and I will get into that in a minute; the other is the 
closing of Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, or Gitmo as it is known to 
most people, and the other is what has happened to our military. So let 
me, real briefly, get into these areas. These are three areas where I 
will be providing leadership. These are the areas of specialty I have 
and I am very much concerned about.
  First of all, I positioned myself in Afghanistan in February, when 
Secretary of Defense Gates came out with his announcement as to the 
portion of the President's budget dealing with defense because I knew I 
was going to be opposed to it, and I thought that would give me a 
national forum, and it did. I was concerned about such things as the F-
22. Right now, the only fifth-generation fighter we have is the F-22. 
Initially, we were going to have 750 of them. We now have 187, and the 
President, in his budget, stopped it right there. He didn't say 
terminate, but I will use the word ``terminate,'' because when you 
suspend something for an undetermined period of time, I think it is 
terminated.

  At the same time that happened, we know that China is now working on 
their J-12s and Russia on their PAK-FAs. These are fifth-generation 
fighters they are going to be using to export to countries that could 
be potential enemies of ours. I have looked at the C-17 program--
stopping that program--the future combat system. We haven't had in 
America a transition in ground capability in quite some time--about 60 
years. So we have been working on the future combat system. That system 
has been terminated.
  I think the one that probably has the greatest danger on the lives of 
Americans could probably be the system we had negotiated with the 
Parliaments of Poland and the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic was 
asked if they would agree to have a radar system to see any kind of 
incoming missile which might have been coming from Iran, and they 
agreed to do that. Then Poland agreed to have an interception 
capability that would knock down such a missile coming from Iran. I 
don't think there is anyone in America who doesn't realize that Iran is 
going to have their nuclear capability and delivery systems just as 
soon as they can. For the sake of Western Europe and the Eastern United 
States, I think it is critical we put ourselves in a position to have 
that capability. Well, he stopped that. So we will be talking about 
that for quite some time.
  Gitmo. I think most people realize now that Guantanamo Bay is an 
asset we have had since 1903. It has all kinds of capabilities. It is 
the only place in the world you can put terrorist detainees where you 
can have a facility built for them--some seven degrees of security. We 
have a system there where we use military tribunals. I will never 
understand why President Obama is obsessed with bringing these 
detainees into the United States either for trial or for incarceration. 
For a trial, it would be the worst plan in the world because, by 
definition, a terrorist trains people to become terrorists. We don't 
need to have terrorists in our prison system teaching other people how 
to become terrorists.
  Some of the places the President talked about sending them included 
my State, at Fort Sill. We will talk about that maybe some other time. 
But I do think, when we see just a matter of days ago, the release of 
Mohammed Jawad from Gitmo, nobody knows--or at least I don't know, and 
I should know, being the second-ranking member on the Armed Services 
Committee--why he would be released. We also know Mullah Zakir, who was 
killing American marines in the Helmand Province for quite some period 
of time, was released and is now back. He went into Gitmo in 2006, they 
released him in 2008, and he is back. Now we have received evidence 
that is conclusive that he is fighting on the side of the Taliban. So 
you can't turn these guys loose.
  The third area I was concentrating on is one I will go back to 8 
years ago. Redemption is kind of good for the soul, I think, because 8 
years ago I was looking at the science on the notion that manmade 
gases--anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane--caused global 
warming. It was something everybody believed. Until I looked into the 
science, frankly, I believed it too. Now we see the science is not 
there. I made the statement 8 years ago that perhaps those liberals--
mostly from Hollywood and that type of mentality--who want us to 
believe in the notion that manmade gases cause global warming is the 
most significant hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. I think 
now there are a lot fewer people today who are upset with the statement 
I made 8 years ago than there were then. This is something that is 
critical.

  I wish to conclude with that, but first of all I wish to mention that 
there is a document that is too long to put in the Record. It is some 
65 pages. I will have it on my Web site. This is a brave paper done by 
Robert P. Smith. He has a Ph.D., he is a petroleum engineer, and he 
talks about the energy crisis and what we can do in the United States 
to resolve that energy crisis--such commonsense things as continuing to 
conserve, to continue to support the free market, to oppose the cap-
and-trade

[[Page S9118]]

taxes--which I will talk about in a second--to oppose the alternative 
energy subsidies because we have to continue to develop and to supply 
energy for America while we are developing the technologies, so we need 
to continue coal-powered generation. We need to fast-track oil and gas 
exploration and use natural gas wisely. It includes nuclear plants.
  I would suggest to anyone who is interested in getting into the best 
piece I have seen on this subject to go to my Web site--
inhofe.senate.gov--and we have a lot of that information on this. But 
he does have only 3 pages out of the 65 pages detailing the idea that 
global warming is caused by manmade gases, and I think it is done in a 
way that is very understandable by people who are not necessarily 
scientists or don't have a background in it. So I strongly recommend 
this document--called ``Energy: Present and Future,'' by Robert P. 
Smith--to the reading list of the American people or anyone who is 
concerned about that issue.
  Lastly, prior to the Republicans losing the majority in the Senate, I 
was the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. That 
chairman is now Senator Barbara Boxer. She took over the committee from 
my leadership.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. INHOFE. I was given an additional 5 minutes from our side, Mr. 
President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair. I will conclude with this.
  During the time that all the hearings--over 30 hearings--that Senator 
Boxer has had on the subject of global warming were taking place--and 
it was not just the Republicans but a total turnaround--the Democrats 
started to look into this and realized the Democrats, as a party--who 
always supported cap-and-trade systems, such as the 2003 bill and the 
2005 bill and the 2008 bill--are now looking at it and they are cutting 
to the chase. I will give a few quotes here. These are all quotes from 
Democrats.
  President Obama said: Electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket. 
Democratic Representative John Dingell from Michigan said: Cap and 
trade is a tax and a great big one. Democratic Representative Pete 
DeFazio said: A cap and trade system is prone to market manipulation 
and speculation without any guarantee of meaningful GHG emission 
reductions.
  The best is from my good friend from North Dakota, Senator Byron 
Dorgan, when he said about cap and trade: The Wall Street crowd can't 
wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in 
which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on 
carbon credits and securities. I totally agree with my good friend, 
Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan.
  Democratic Senator Cantwell from Washington: A cap and trade program 
might allow Wall Street to distort a carbon market for its own profits.
  We learned, of course, from Lisa Jackson, who is the new 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, when I asked her 
this question in a public hearing. I said: If we should pass the Markey 
bill in the Senate and it gets signed into law, will this reduce carbon 
emissions in the world?
  She said: No.
  Logically, obviously, she is right. If we drive our jobs overseas to 
places such as China and India, where they have no intention of having 
any kind of emission requirements, then that would have the effect of 
increasing, not decreasing, the amount of emissions in the air.
  Senator Kerry said: There is no way the United States of America 
acting alone can solve this problem. So we have to have China; we have 
to have India.
  I say we are not going to have China and India.
  Senator McCaskill said: If we go too far with this cap and trade, 
then all we are going to do is chase more jobs to China and India, 
where they have been putting up coal-fired plants every 10 minutes.
  Not quite true. I would say to my good friend, Senator McCaskill, it 
is about two coal-fired generation plants that are built every week in 
China. We haven't done one in 12 years here. So we know what their 
intentions are.
  So we have had all these hearings, and we have recognized that things 
have changed now. You look at the groups now, and you have the 
agricultural community, the American Farm Bureau, and a vast majority 
of the agricultural groups who oppose it. The GAO says it will send our 
jobs to China and India. The very eloquent chairman of the National 
Black Chamber of Commerce did a great job of testifying before our 
committee and said it would destroy over 2 million jobs. The EPA and 
the EIA--that is the Energy Information Agency--said it would not 
reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The EPA said it will do nothing 
to reduce global temperatures. So when all is said and done, the 
American people will reject it. We are sure a lot further now.

  I have to say this: This was a breath of fresh air, to listen to the 
American people standing up at these townhall meetings all around the 
country. In my 12 or 14 meetings I had in my State of Oklahoma, people 
know the right thing is going to happen. We are here to make that 
happen.
  With that, I thank the Senator from Nevada for allowing me to have 15 
minutes of his time, and I yield the floor.

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