[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 30, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Page S5638]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CAP AND TRADE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, President Obama invited a 
group of Senators down to the White House to talk about the kind of 
energy bill he would like Congress to pass sometime this summer.
  The first thing we heard about this meeting is that the President 
said it was not a meeting about the oilspill. Let me say that again. 
The President said the purpose of this meeting was not to discuss the 
ongoing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, where up to 60,000 barrels of oil 
are spewing into the gulf waters each and every day, and which have 
been for 72 days now.
  Senator Alexander had to raise the issue himself, only to be 
dismissed by the President. Well, I am sure that will be of great 
comfort to the people of the gulf coast. When the President called 
Senators to the White House to talk about energy, I am sure most people 
in the gulf thought the crisis down there would at least be a topic of 
discussion. Evidently, they were wrong.
  The second thing we heard about the meeting is that the President 
made what was described as a ``very passionate'' argument in favor of 
``putting a price on carbon.'' This, of course, is code for the new 
national energy tax commonly referred to around here as cap and trade.
  This is what the meeting was really about. And those of us who said 
that this is also what the President was talking about in his Oval 
Office speech a couple weeks ago were right: when the President urged 
Americans to view the gulf oilspill as a reason to embrace his vision 
of energy consumption in this country, he was talking about giving 
government vast new powers over industry and over the everyday lives of 
Americans through a new national energy tax.
  In other words, at a moment when the American people were hoping to 
hear about what the White House was doing to fix the oil leak in the 
gulf, the President was using that moment to prepare the ground for yet 
another piece of legislation that would expand the reach of government, 
and which would do absolutely nothing to solve the crisis at hand.
  The leak still is not fixed. For more than 2 months, this pipe has 
gushed oil into the gulf, polluting our waters and our beaches, 
wreaking havoc on the lives and livelihoods of millions along the gulf. 
I think it is most people's view that the left-wing wish-list can wait. 
Fixing this immediate problem should be the top priority right now.
  One of the President's senior advisers said the other day that when 
the President was elected, he had to deal with problems that had been 
put off for too long. But the administration needs to solve the most 
urgent problems first, and the most urgent problem is not a new 
national energy tax, it is the crisis in the gulf.
  Former President Clinton had it right the other day. He said the 
Federal Government's position on this issue ought to be very 
straightforward. The most important thing, he said, is to fix the leak. 
The second most important thing is to keep oil away from the shores. 
The third most important thing is to minimize the damage from the oil 
that reaches the shores. And the fourth most important thing is to find 
out who did what wrong, at BP and in the Federal Government, and to 
hold them accountable.
  But the first thing is to fix the leak.

                          ____________________