[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 88 (Monday, June 14, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4872-S4876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CAP-AND-TRADE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, today I wish to speak on where I think 
this climate change debate is headed after last Thursday's vote on the 
Murkowski resolution. We got a very clear signal in today's Politico, 
which reported that President Obama, in his Oval Office address 
tomorrow night, will seek, as a part of the response to the BP 
oilspill, to ``put a price on carbon.''
  Let's keep in mind what ``a price on carbon'' is. That is a tax, a 
carbon tax, or what we call cap and trade. Quite often people have 
said: Well, if those individuals really want to charge for carbon, want 
to stop this economy, why don't they just put a carbon tax on it? The 
reason they do not is then people would know how much it is costing 
them. As it is now, with cap and trade, they would not.
  But again, he is going to have an Oval Office address. I think this 
will be

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the first talk he will give from the Oval Office since he has been 
President. Of course, that is Washington-speak for cap and trade--a 
price on carbon.
  This is remarkable. Here we have the most significant environmental 
disaster in our Nation's history, and the President decides now is the 
time for cap and trade--a massive new energy tax paid for by consumers, 
working families, farmers, and small businesses; a massive new energy 
tax that will destroy millions of jobs, in good measure by sending many 
of them to places such as China and India; a massive new energy tax 
that will make a gallon of gas more expensive; and a massive new energy 
tax that will not do anything to stop global warming but will increase 
the size of government and give more money to politicians to spend. 
Just how that will contain the oilspill, mitigate the environmental 
damage, or help those immediately affected by it remains a mystery. Put 
simply, it will not do any of those things, but it will damage the 
economy and make it harder to deal with this crisis.
  We have a serious incident on our hands. People died, people's 
economic livelihoods are at stake, and the environment is being harmed. 
But instead of Presidential leadership and clear direction, we are 
getting pure partisan politics. One glaring example is President 
Obama's moratorium on deepwater drilling--something environmental 
groups have been seeking for many years. This is an exercise in 
overreaching that will do far more harm than good. The Louisiana 
Department of Economic Development estimates that the President's 
moratorium would kill 3,000 to 6,000 jobs in the next few weeks and 
over 10,000 Louisiana jobs in the next few months. More than 20,000 
jobs are at risk in the next 12 months. That is one example of just 
pure politics.
  Today, in a letter to supporters--we just got this, Mr. President; 
you may not be aware of this--this is a letter that went out today to 
Obama supporters all across the Nation, and it says: We are going to 
have a big meeting at the White House, and we are going to talk about 
moving forward on legislation to promote a new economy powered by green 
jobs, combating climate change, and ending our dependence on foreign 
oil.
  Down further in the letter, he says that the House of Representatives 
has already passed comprehensive energy legislation. Let's remember 
what that was. That was the Waxman-Markey bill. That was a cap-and-
trade bill--one that was very expensive. He says there is currently a 
plan in the Senate to do the same thing. That is the Kerry-Lieberman 
bill he is talking about and we are going to talk about.
  So the whole idea of this meeting--and I understand the speech that 
is going to take place tomorrow night is to try to promote an agenda, a 
very liberal agenda, an agenda that has been rejected. Cap and trade 
has been rejected by this legislative body since the Kyoto Treaty. That 
was way back in the late 1990s. Then, of course, the 2003 and 2005 
bills by McCain and Lieberman that have been cap-and-trade bills were 
rejected and every one of them since then, including the Warner-
Lieberman bill and the other bills we have had. The interesting thing 
is, every time a cap-and-trade bill comes up here, it is defeated by a 
larger margin. That is why I have been saying cap and trade is 
something that is dead in the Senate.
  Instead of Presidential leadership, we are getting rhetoric of the 
worst kind. A case in point came last week. We heard that the Murkowski 
resolution is a ``big oil bailout'' that will allow oil companies such 
as BP to pollute the air. That must be news to thousands of groups 
across the country because they certainly were very much in support of 
her resolution. I am talking about people such as the American 
Association of Housing Services for the Aging, Family Dairies USA, the 
Farm Bureau, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Brick 
Industry Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the 
Associated Builders and Contractors--the list goes on and on of the 
people who realize they do not want to have this massive government 
takeover.
  Let's keep in mind that when you talk about cap-and-trade legislation 
and then you talk about what the EPA is talking about doing under the 
Clean Air Act, it is essentially the same thing. It is just that since 
they could not get it passed legislatively, they are going to try to do 
it administratively. That is what the whole Murkowski resolution was 
about. It was about stopping that from taking place. Incidentally, it 
got 47 votes, and I am going to talk about those votes in a minute.
  Well, do some Members really believe these groups have been duped, 
that what they are really supporting is nothing more than a sop to BP 
and big oil? This is simply insulting to the citizens across the 
country who supported the Murkowski resolution for one simple reason: 
It will stop the greatest bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of the 
American people in history.
  I am confident we will keep hearing this refrain as we get closer to 
November. The story in today's Politico--and this is interesting; it 
just came out today--talks about a survey by a guy named Joe Benenson. 
He is President Obama's campaign pollster. He is an Obama guy. They are 
doing it for a very liberal group. Among other things, Mr. Benenson 
found that, based on his interpretation of the survey results, pushing 
for cap and trade and tying opposition to it to big oil is a ``potent 
political weapon'' for Democrats against Republicans this fall. Purely 
political. No one can argue that.
  Well, it is my view that we should be capping that well and not the 
economy, but apparently the President sees it differently. I suppose 
some of this was driven by last week's 47-to-53 vote on overturning the 
EPA's endangerment finding. The motion to proceed to the Murkowski 
resolution failed, but the President should not let those numbers 
obscure the hard political reality: there is a bipartisan majority in 
the Senate that supports either a delay of or an outright ban on the 
Obama EPA's job-killing global warming agenda.

       By preventing a debate on the Murkowski resolution, the 
     Democrat-led Senate voted last week to expand the reach of 
     government into our daily lives. But the reason this 
     bureaucratic intrusion will continue is that a deal was cut 
     just prior to the vote.

  Now, listen to this. It was exposed in a front-page story in the Hill 
the day of the vote. I am going to read from that story, the Hill 
story:

       Democratic leaders are scrambling to prevent the Senate 
     from delivering a stinging slap to President Barack Obama on 
     climate change. They have offered a vote on a bill they 
     dislike in the hopes of avoiding a loss on legislation Obama 
     hates. The president is threatening to veto a resolution from 
     Sen. Lisa Murkowski that would ban the Environmental 
     Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions. But if 
     the president were forced to use his veto to prevent 
     legislation emerging from a Congress in which his own party 
     enjoys substantial majorities, it would be a humiliation for 
     him and for Democrats on Capitol Hill. So Senate Majority 
     Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders are doing what 
     they can to stop it. They are floating the possibility of 
     voting on an alternative measure from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a 
     Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia, which they 
     previously refused to grant floor time. . . .

  This is all quoted from the article.
  It appears at least seven Democrats took the deal offered to them. 
What is the deal? The deal is: I know you guys want to vote for the 
Murkowski resolution. All your people back home want you to vote for 
it. It is a very popular resolution to stop this overwhelming takeover. 
Yet, in order to keep them from getting to 51 votes, you are going to 
have to vote against it.
  These are seven Democrats. At the same time, those same seven 
Democrats could use the Rockefeller amendment for cover. The 
Rockefeller amendment is the same as the Murkowski resolution, except 
it just delays it 2 years. Frankly, it accomplishes the same thing. I 
am for either one of them. Either one would be good. The problem with 
that is the Rockefeller bill would take 60 votes. So it is saying we 
know they can get the 51 votes, but if you seven won't vote for 
Murkowski, we will let you go ahead and vote for the Rockefeller thing 
and they won't get it anyway because it would take 60 votes.

  I know it is heavy lifting. It is complicated, but that is what is 
going on around here. In other words, for the Democrats to ensure that 
the EPA can micromanage farms and other institutions in America, they 
have to develop a scheme to give cover to Democratic Members who should 
oppose the EPA takeover. I wish to emphasize that I

[[Page S4874]]

believe these Members are conflicted about what to do. I think they 
understand the economic harm and what an unfettered EPA bureaucracy 
could mean for their constituents--fewer jobs, more regulations, higher 
taxes, and a slower economy--but they were pressured by the President 
and the base of the Democratic Party. They were warned against defying 
the President on one of his top initiatives, so they turned to the 
Rockefeller bill as an alternative, which is a 2-year delay for 
implementation of this bill; in other words, not allowing the EPA to 
micromanage our lives at least for 2 more years, giving us a little 
breathing time. But it is not the end of the road.
  As I see it, the Rockefeller bill should not be used as political 
cover. It is merely an alternative means of achieving a similar goal 
sought by Senator Murkowski to stop the EPA from deciding our Nation's 
energy policy. We ought to get a vote on Rockefeller one way or 
another, and if it happens, I trust these seven Members--and possibly 
others who voted no on Murkowski--will vote with their constituents for 
the Rockefeller bill and against EPA taking jobs, businesses, and 
energy out of our struggling economy.
  Let me be blunt. EPA's growing regulatory regime will lead to one of 
the greatest bureaucratic intrusions into the lives of the American 
people. Peter Glaser, an attorney with Troutman Sanders and one of the 
foremost Clean Air Act attorneys--the Clean Air Act passed many decades 
ago--said that the EPA's endangerment finding will lead to Federal 
regulation of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, commercial buildings, 
churches, restaurants, homes, hotels, malls, colleges and universities, 
food processing facilities, farms, sports arenas--all of these things. 
That is virtually everybody--and it would be a very expensive 
proposition.
  If you look at what happened throughout the history of this 
endangerment finding, the debate over the Murkowski resolution began 
even before the resolution was introduced in January. It began with the 
creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. 
That was at the United Nations back in 1989. That led to the Kyoto 
Protocol, and we voted on the intent of the Kyoto Protocol right in 
this Chamber 95 to nothing. The question was this: We will reject any 
treaty that comes from the Clinton-Gore White House to us if it either 
hurts our economy or doesn't treat the developing nations the same as 
the developed nations. Of course, that is exactly what we did. That was 
95 to 0.
  Then, later on, as I mentioned, we had all of these different bills, 
including the Lieberman-Warner bill, the McCain-Warner bill, and all of 
these were cap-and-trade bills and they all died. All of this led to 
the EPA's endangerment finding. What that said was--and this is the 
President: In the event that the House and the Senate refuse to vote in 
favor of some kind of a cap-and-trade bill, as has been mentioned, then 
we will go ahead and do it under the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act 
was set up to attack real pollutants such as SOX, 
NOX, and mercury. So they were saying we will go ahead and 
do it with this regulation.
  Make no mistake. Despite testimony to the contrary by senior 
officials, the Obama administration was not forced by the Supreme Court 
to choose endangerment. As I noted, they had a choice. They made the 
wrong choice. They could have either voted not to consider 
CO2 as endangering to health or they could do it or ignore 
it altogether. They decided to do it, and it didn't surprise me a bit.
  So the IPCC put together this thing and we now--I can remember so 
well when we had Lisa Jackson, who is the Administrator of the 
Environmental Protection Agency, before our committee. We talked about 
the fact that I thought--this is before the endangerment finding. I 
said: Administrator Jackson, I think you are going to have an 
endangerment finding, and when you do, you have to base that on 
science. What science are you going to base it on? The answer was: The 
IPCC or the United Nations.
  We know what has happened to the credibility of that science since 
that time. It has been totally debunked.
  The other defense people use in trying to justify voting against the 
resolution as expressed by a few Democrats was that overturning 
endangerment would mean removing the authority from the National 
Highway Traffic Safety Administration--that is the NHTSA--to set 
Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, CAFE standards. More 
specifically, some argue it would undo the historic auto deal reached 
last May by the two auto companies, the White House, and the EPA, DOT, 
and California. The only problem with this argument is that it is 
wrong. Ask the Obama administration. According to a February 19 letter 
by Kevin Vincent--that is the NHTSA's general counsel:

       As a strictly legal matter, the Murkowski resolution does 
     not directly impact NHTSA's statutory authority to set fuel 
     economy standards under the Energy Policy and Conservation 
     Act, as amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act 
     of 2007.

  So we are hearing that this resolution will revoke the new CAFE 
standards and increase the amount of oil we consume. It is patently 
false to assert that NHTSA said they can't continue to work on, and 
then implement, as they are doing today, the CAFE standards. So that 
argument is a phony argument.
  Cap and trade. During the debate last week, I spoke briefly about the 
collapse of the science behind manmade global warming. I said the vote 
last week was not based on the science but, rather, on stopping a 
liberal job-killing agenda. It is interesting because there are several 
people--all of the Republicans supported the Murkowski resolution. Yet 
there are some Republicans who actually believe that anthropogenic gas 
is a major cause of global warming. I am not one of those. I am at the 
other extreme. But there are some here who don't agree. So that wasn't 
what the vote was about. It was about whether they should take over 
control of our lives as they are talking about doing. There is no doubt 
that there is a wide spectrum of beliefs about the science in the 
Republican Party, but I am pleased that last week we stood united for 
protecting American jobs. That is all 41 Republicans. That is very 
rare. They always say Democrats are much more disciplined than 
Republicans are. That is where the phrase ``herding cats'' came from. 
That is why you try to get Republicans all together. It is a very 
unusual thing, but we were. We were all together last week.
  The Clean Air Act is a monumental mistake that will shackle the 
American economy with job-killing regulations and higher energy taxes.
  Let me now take a little time to discuss both the current state of 
cap and trade in the Senate and the latest science behind global 
warming. First, let me state the obvious. Despite the best efforts by 
many in the more extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party, global 
warming cap-and-trade legislation is dead. It is dead. I stated that 2 
months ago, and there is no way they are going to be able to bring it 
back. We will have to wait and see. In fact, just the term ``cap and 
trade'' is so toxic these days in the Senate, my Democratic colleagues 
refuse to even use the term anymore. They don't use ``cap and trade.'' 
Last week Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

       We don't use the words ``cap and trade'' . . . That's 
     something that's been deleted from my dictionary.

  Further, RollCall reported last week that Democrats in the House had 
a similar response to cap and trade. RollCall reported:

       Both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny 
     Hoyer bristled at a question about Senate Minority Leader 
     Mitch McConnell's declaration that the House's cap-and-trade 
     energy proposal is dead. The House passed a bill that 
     includes the proposal last year, but the issue has stalled 
     in the Senate. ``That's not the bill they have in the 
     Senate,'' Pelosi told reporters. ``They don't have a cap-
     and-trade bill. That's not the bill they have in the 
     Senate.''

  That is the bill we have in the Senate. It is cap and trade. All of 
those are cap and trade. The current bill, the Kerry-Lieberman bill, is 
cap and trade. They may change the name of it, but it is still cap and 
trade. They cap emissions and then they start trading around and the 
government picks winners and losers and tries to convince everyone that 
he will be the winner.
  It wasn't long ago that the author of the cap-and-trade bill in the 
Senate tried to suggest that his bill wasn't cap and trade either. He 
said:


[[Page S4875]]


       I don't know what ``cap and trade'' means. I don't think 
     the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill, 
     it's a pollution reduction bill.

  It is a cap-and-trade bill.
  In fact, when Senators Kerry and Lieberman finally introduced their 
bill, we soon learned that it was worse than cap and trade because it 
was cap and trade, but it also included a gas tax increase.
  No matter the word games employed or the extent to which the 
Democrats wish to hide the truth from the American people, cap and 
trade will mean more job losses, more pain at the pump, and higher food 
and electricity prices for consumers. Despite the postmodern denial of 
``the truth'' in which words can mean whatever one chooses, the next 
version of ``putting a price on carbon'' will be cap and trade, pure 
and simple. And if the House Waxman-Markey bill is any guide, it will 
showcase massive expansion of government mandates, spending, taxes, and 
energy rationing for America.
  Now let me turn to cover the flaws of the science on which the EPA's 
endangerment is based. Lisa Jackson is President Obama's EPA 
Administrator. She admitted publicly that the EPA's finding of 
endangerment is in good measure a conclusion of the UN's IPCC. She told 
me in a public forum live on TV that EPA accepted those findings 
without any serious independent analysis to see whether they were true.
  After climategate and the admission of errors by IPCC, we now know 
that the process was flawed all along. In a Senate report I released 
earlier this year on climategate, the report found that some of the 
world's leading climate scientists engaged in unethical behavior and 
possibly violated Federal laws. Many of those scientists appeared to 
have manipulated the data--this is what came out of the report--
manipulated the data to fit preconceived conclusions. In other words, 
IPCC says, What do we have to show to come to the conclusion we have 
already come to 7, 8 years ago that anthropogenic gases are causing 
global warming. They obstructed Freedom of Information requests and 
dissemination of climate data--and by the way, they did show that was 
true in Great Britain, but the problem is the statute of limitations 
had already run and the IPCC had colluded to pressure journal editors 
against publishing scientific work contrary to their own.
  The U.K. Government has already found that scientists from the 
Climate Research Unit, or CRU, who are at the center of this scandal, 
violated its Freedom of Information Act.
  Importantly, the Senate report shows many of the scientists involved 
in this scandal worked for the UN's IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change. They helped compile the IPCC's 2O07 Fourth 
Assessment Report. That is important because that report is a primary 
basis for the EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. The 
media has uncovered several errors and mistakes in the report which 
undermine the credibility of the IPCC's science.
  The things I am going to list right here were found both in Al Gore's 
movie as well as the IPCC report. They are all in this thing together. 
They said it would melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. That is just 
flat not true. They admit that is not true. They said it would destroy 
40 percent of the Amazon's rain forest. That is not true. They said it 
would melt the ice in the Andes, the Alps, and in Africa. That is not 
true. They said it would drastically increase the cost of climate-
related natural disasters. That is not true. It would drive 20 to 30 
percent of the species to extinction. That is not true. It would slash 
crop production by 50 percent in Africa by 2020. All of these things 
have been fabricated and since proven not to be true. Yet that is the 
science on which the endangerment finding has been based. Oh, yes. The 
IPCC said the Netherlands is 50 percent below sea level. That is not 
true, either, as we well know. There is even more, but I think we have 
made our point here.
  The fact is that the EPA accepted the IPCC's erroneous claims 
wholesale without doing its own independent review. So EPA's 
endangerment finding rests on bad science. The EPA minority report 
provides further proof that EPA needs to scrap the endangerment finding 
and start all over again. By the way, anyone interested in this can 
look at my Web site where we cover all the details and all the 
documentation on everything I have been saying.
  The Obama administration, however, is pressing ahead. We have been 
told that the science still stands. We have been told that IPCC's 
mistakes are trivial. We have been told that climategate was just 
gossipy e-mails between scientists. Yet global warming alarmism has 
been sold on the very notion that manmade greenhouse gases are causing 
environmental catastrophes, such as the Himalayan glaciers melting and 
all that stuff. So the science is certainly not so.
  Further, the challenges to the integrity and credibility of the IPCC 
merit closer examination by the Congress. The ramifications of the IPCC 
spread far and wide, most notably to the endangerment finding.
  The EPA's finding rests on the IPCC's conclusions, and the EPA has 
accepted them wholesale, without independent assessment.
  Remember how the Telegraph of London referred to all this? That is 
one of their largest publications, the London Telegraph. They said 
climategate and the IPCC's errors amount to ``the greatest scientific 
scandal of our time.'' That is a publication that was very favorable to 
the IPCC before climategate came along. Climategate--even though it 
happened this last December, if anybody wants to document how far back 
this was first discovered, I made a speech at this podium on the Senate 
floor 4 or 5 years ago that documented all these scientists coming in 
and saying how they were rejected from the process of the IPCC because 
they would not verify their conclusions.
  At this pivotal time, as the Obama EPA is preparing to enact policies 
potentially costing trillions of dollars and thousands of jobs, IPCC's 
errors make plain that we need openness, transparency, and 
accountability in the scientific research financed by U.S. taxpayers.
  Mr. President, let me conclude with this: As the most conservative 
Member of the Senate, as ranked by the National Journal, I have spent 
the past 2 years speaking out against the unprecedented liberal agenda 
coming out of Washington. I have stood up and spoken out about massive 
out-of-control spending in Washington, increased government 
intervention into our daily lives, the gutting of our national defense, 
and of the costly global warming agenda.
  In the midst of these challenges, we also face an unprecedented 
environmental catastrophe in the gulf. Today, as the American people 
continue to face high unemployment and a struggling economy, we must 
remain focused on finding every opportunity to stand on the side of the 
American worker and create opportunities.
  In the gulf, we all have to work together and stay focused on 
mitigating and containing the environmental impacts and providing 
assistance to the gulf's affected commercial and recreational 
industries and investigating the causes so we can prevent a disaster of 
this kind from happening again. Staying focused will help us make 
prudent decisions.
  The bottom line is, for the sake of our Nation, we must be willing to 
put aside the costly liberal agenda of the left and not allow them to 
use the gulf tragedy to advance their cap-and-trade energy tax, which 
is completely unrelated to stopping the spill and helping the people in 
the gulf. There is no relationship between cap and trade and the gulf 
disaster. There is no relationship between what the EPA endangerment 
finding would allow one bureaucrat to do and the gulf tragedy. By their 
own admission--to say they can parlay this into their own agenda is 
something we cannot let happen.
  Twenty years ago, a very similar thing happened with the Exxon 
Valdez. It was tragic, and I went up there. The environmental 
extremists were up there celebrating and saying: We are going to parlay 
this into retarding the exploration and production on the North Slope. 
I made the statement there--it is all in writing--how can you figure 
this out? How can you stop oil production domestically in Alaska by 
using this issue?
  Well, the issue was a transportation issue. It wasn't an oilspill or 
a production accident. It was a transportation accident.

[[Page S4876]]

  I said: If you stop our production, we are going to be more dependent 
upon other countries for our ability to run this machine called 
America. They are going to have more transportation and a greater 
possibility of transportation accidents. That is what we are faced with 
now.
  Clearly, I appreciate the two statements that were made by President 
Obama's old director of the EPA that the endangerment finding is based 
on the science that we now know is false science. By the way, even 
though it is not the end of the world that the Murkowski resolution 
failed, four key lawsuits are filed challenging the law on which they 
are basing this endangerment finding.
  Even if we were to pass any of the cap-and-trade bills, it would not 
reduce worldwide emissions any. It would only affect the United States. 
I argue it would increase CO2 emissions because as we lose 
jobs in the United States with cap and trade and force a lot of our 
manufacturers to other countries--they would go to countries such as 
China, India, and Mexico where they don't even have strong emissions 
standards.
  With that, let's not politicize this any more. If they want to bring 
up cap and trade, let's do it, and we can defeat it like we have done 
over the past 10 years.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. 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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