[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 167 (Thursday, November 3, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S7118]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EPA REGULATIONS

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I apologize to the Chair. I had a 
misunderstanding as to where we were, and I only wanted to try to get 
the point across, which I think I failed to do, regarding the cost of 
these regulations.
  I think I used as an example the five--I mentioned, actually, six 
when you consider hydraulic fracturing also as one of the regulations. 
By far, the one that is the most expensive is the regulation that would 
be for the greenhouse gases. I think we have pretty much established 
the cost to do a cap-and-trade bill and the range being from $300 
billion to $400 billion. The quotes I used, which I won't repeat now, 
were from Administrator Jackson and Senator Kerry and others stating 
that doing it through regulation would be far more expensive. So I 
think we need to be looking at it in terms of about $400 billion a 
year. This would be a tax on the American people. This would be the 
cost to our GDP.
  I remember back in 1993 when we had the Clinton-Gore tax increase. It 
was the largest one in four decades at that time. It was an increase in 
the death tax, an increase in marginal rates, an increase in capital 
gains--an increase in almost all taxes--and it was a $30 billion tax 
increase. What we are talking about here is a tax increase that is 10 
times that great--10 times. We are using the figure now of $400 billion 
because we know that through regulation, it will cost more.
  Again, I go back and repeat the quote we had from Administrator 
Jackson of the EPA, who said in response to my question, live in our 
committee, if we were to pass legislation--at that time, I think it was 
the Waxman-Markey bill, although it doesn't really matter because cap 
and trade is cap and trade--would that reduce overall emissions, and 
she said no because it would only apply to the United States.
  I would carry it one step further. If we were to pass or do anything 
through regulation here, all it will do is cause our manufacturing base 
to go out and find the energy necessary to operate. And where do they 
go? They go to places such as China, India, and Mexico--places that 
have almost no emission standards. So if there is a pollution problem, 
it becomes much greater, not less, in terms of overall emissions.
  Another situation I often talk about is the time before I left to go 
to the Copenhagen United Nations event, where they were going to try to 
convince the rest of the world that we were going to pass legislation 
that would be cap and trade and impose this tax on the American people.
  In a committee hearing, I said to Administrator Jackson: I have a 
feeling that as soon as I leave town, you are going to have an 
endangerment finding.
  Sure enough, that is what happened.
  I said: When you have an endangerment finding, it has to be based on 
science. So what science would you be using?
  She said: By and large, it would be the science developed by the 
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  Ironically, right after that, climategate came up and really 
destroyed the legitimacy of the IPCC.
  I have read some of the quotes that were given by different people 
when they talked about climategate. One of them is a British writer 
George Monbiot, who is known for his environmental and political 
activism, and he is on the other side of this. He writes a weekly 
column for the Guardian. He said:

       Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to 
     make it go away.

  Here, he is referring to climategate and the fact that they were 
cooking the science.

       Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with 
     technicalities.

  Again talking about the participants in IPCC.

       We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, 
     apologizing where appropriate and demonstrating that it 
     cannot happen again.

  I also mentioned the Daily Telegraph in the UK. Quoting from it:

       This scandal could well be the greatest in modern science.

  Then the Atlantic Magazine, which generally is editorializing the 
other side of this issue, said:

       The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, 
     their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a 
     preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of 
     intellectual corruption is overpowering.

  That was the loss of credibility of the whole idea of the science 
that was put together by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
at the United Nations. But to make it even worse, we requested that the 
inspector general do a study and report back as to the science and how 
the science was developed by the IPCC and whether it followed the 
guidelines that were necessary. They came back just 1 week ago with a 
report that says the EPA has failed to follow the responsible 
guidelines. In fact, even before the scope of the study was finalized 
today, the EPA was already collecting data samples at the undisclosed 
fracking sites, so they are going in now to using the same type of 
flawed science and going after other parts of their agenda. In this 
case, it would be hydraulic fracturing, which I mentioned just a few 
minutes ago, is an attempt to stop our ability to develop our own 
resources.
  In the course of this overregulation, I think we have to keep in mind 
and to keep talking about these six greatest and most costly regulatory 
problems that we have out there and how much it is going to cost the 
American people. Again, the one that is the most serious right now is 
trying to regulate and do a cap-and-trade through the regulations as 
opposed to doing it through legislation.
  We are going to keep talking about that. It is not going to go away. 
People think time will make people forget. But we don't forget 
something of that magnitude.
  I did a calculation in my State of Oklahoma; as I always do, I get 
the number of families who file a tax return each year. When something 
comes along that will cost something, I do the calculation and I do the 
math and then I go back to the American people and say: Get ready. This 
is what it is going to cost.
  If we were to have passed any of the bills that were like the Kyoto 
Protocol, and the last one being the Waxman-Markey bill, the cost would 
have been at least $300 billion. If we take that annual cost, that 
would cost my tax-paying families in Oklahoma in excess of $3,000 a 
family, and they get nothing for it.
  We can do an awful lot of talking about the deficits and the spending 
of this administration. Let's don't overlook perhaps the most expensive 
thing to the American people; that is, the overregulation that makes us 
noncompetitive with the rest of the world.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.

                          ____________________