[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 156 (Monday, October 26, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10720-S10721]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CAP-AND-TRADE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I will tell you something else I do not 
think is going to work. During the August recess, people were upset 
mostly about--because it was the most visible issue at the time--the 
prospect of socialized medicine for America. But at the same time, as a 
close second, there was another issue that was very much of concern; 
that is, a cap-and-trade bill.
  Just to refresh your memory, this goes all the way back almost 10 
years when we had the Kyoto Treaty. That was back during the Clinton 
administration, and we were supposed to be ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, 
which would have been a big, massive cap-and-trade or tax increase. In 
fact, the analysis of that was done by the Wharton Econometric Survey, 
from the Wharton School of Economics.
  The question put to them was, What would it cost if we ratified the 
Kyoto Treaty and lived by its emissions standards? The answer was it 
would be somewhere between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. I 
always go back, when I am trying to figure out what that would mean to 
individual families, and I recall that the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 
1993 was the largest tax increase in three decades, increasing marginal 
rates, capital gains, inheritance taxes, and all other taxes. That was 
a $32 billion tax increase. So that would be 10 times larger. That was 
the Kyoto Treaty. We did not ratify it.
  Then along came the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003 and then again the 
McCain-Lieberman bill of 2005, and the same thing was true. Other 
universities' analyses came in and tried to determine what the cost 
would be. I remember MIT came in and did an analysis of those bills, 
and it was somewhere in excess of $300 billion a year. Then along came 
the Warner-Lieberman bill--not the current Senator Warner but the past 
Senator Warner--and that was essentially the same.
  What I am saying is, it does not really matter whether we are talking 
about Waxman-Markey or what we are going to be voting on sometime in 
the near future, I would assume, that is going to be a form of Waxman-
Markey. By the way, I say that because when several Senators were 
trying to get information to analyze what it is we are going to be 
starting to have hearings on tomorrow and then ultimately marking up, 
they said the bill is a lot like Waxman-Markey, so just go look at the 
analysis of Waxman-Markey. If you want to do that, at least we now know 
there is a target out there. We have something we can talk about.
  While I have serious problems with EPA's analysis of Waxman-Markey 
and its 38-page ``meta-analysis'' of Kerry-Boxer--that is 38 pages of a 
923-page bill--the latter is not entirely EPA's fault. It is a drive to 
ram the Kerry-Boxer bill through the legislative process before people 
really know what it is. Now we know what it is because it is 
essentially the same thing we had in the Waxman-Markey bill that went 
through the House of Representatives.
  It is kind of interesting. This massive tax increase called the 
Waxman-Markey bill passed the House after very little debate because it 
came up--in fact, they finished it at 3 o'clock in the morning the day 
they voted on it, so people had not had a chance to read any of it. So 
it passed by 219 votes in the House of Representatives. That is barely 
a majority. It is one that was--interestingly enough, the last time 
they had a massive energy tax increase such as this, it was called the 
Btu tax of 1994. That passed the House by 219 votes, the same margin. 
Obviously, that was killed later on in the Senate, as I believe this 
will be.

  I come to the floor now to talk about this because tomorrow we start 
hearings, exhaustive hearings, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. 
They are not going to be talking about the specifics of the bill; it 
will just be more propaganda. The main thing we want to do is make sure 
everybody knows it

[[Page S10721]]

is going to be a very large tax increase. It wasn't long ago that 
Representative John Dingell, who is a Democrat from Michigan--he said 
it right. He said: Cap and trade is ``a tax, and a great big tax at 
that.''
  So we have something we know we are going to be faced with. We know 
we are going to have hearings. The question has to be asked: If we know 
there are not votes to pass it in the Senate, why are we having our 
hearings now? I would suggest to my colleagues we are having them 
because there is a big party that is going to take place in Copenhagen. 
Every year, the United Nations throws this party. You might ask: The 
United Nations? Yes, that is where it all started, the IPCC. It is 
going to take place in Copenhagen during the middle of December. I 
thought it was interesting last night when President Obama announced he 
probably was not going to be going to this party in Copenhagen because 
it didn't look as if they had the votes to pass something in the 
Senate.
  So I would only say to get ready. We are going to have more of the 
same. We went through it back during Kyoto, 10 years ago, and since 
then with four bills on the Senate floor and we are going to be talking 
about it more and more.
  I just came from my office. This is kind of interesting. This is a 
hat signed by the Young Farmers and Ranchers, which is tied to the 
American Farm Bureau or the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, in this case. It 
says: ``Don't Cap Our Future.''
  When you stop and think about what would happen to the farmers--I 
hate to even single out farmers or any other groups because it is going 
to be just as punishing to the entire manufacturing base. It was 
interesting the other day, when we asked the question of the newly 
appointed Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa 
Jackson, as to what would happen if we were to pass the bill in the 
Senate and it would become law, as did the Waxman-Markey bill, how much 
would it reduce CO2 emissions. She said: Well, it wouldn't 
reduce them. Because if we act unilaterally in the United States, then 
things happen where--this isn't where the problem is. In fact, we know 
we would have a massive exodus of our manufacturing base to such 
countries as China, Mexico, India, and others.
  But nonetheless, here are the farmers who are concerned about this 
because, if you look at the cost of fertilizer, one of the major 
ingredients there is natural gas, and you look at the cost of diesel 
and everything else, it is very serious.
  Bob Stallman, the president of the American Farm Bureau, just the 
other day said:

       Increased input costs will put our farmers and ranchers at 
     a competitive disadvantage with producers in other countries 
     that do not have similar greenhouse gas restrictions. Any 
     loss of international markets or resulting loss of production 
     in the United States will encourage production overseas in 
     countries where production methods may be less effective than 
     in the United States.

  In other words, we can do it more efficiently in the United States, 
but if we don't have the energy, we will not be able to do it.
  So I think the farmers, of all the people who should be concerned and 
are concerned, the wake-up call is out there. They better be ready when 
they come up with allocations. The allocations will not be available to 
us during the next 3 days of hearings. The allocations are something 
that are held back in secret so they can go to different elements of 
the society and say: Well, you are going to have an allocation where 
you can be a winner. They tried this with the Wheat Growers of America 
early on during the Warner-Lieberman bill, and they actually endorsed 
the bill until they realized it was a fraud and withdrew their 
endorsement.
  I think Senator Kit Bond said it well. They did a study in the State 
of Missouri, and the study found that the proposed cap-and-trade 
legislation will cost the average Missouri farmer an additional $11,000 
a year in 2020 and more than $30,000 a year by 2050.
  So let me say to Tyler and to all my friends at the Oklahoma Farm 
Bureau: I have your hat, and I will wear it with dignity all the way to 
Copenhagen to make sure this thing doesn't pass.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Republican leader is 
recognized.

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