[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 194 (Friday, December 16, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8700-S8702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HINDERING JOB CREATION

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, the holiday season is coming upon us, a 
period of celebration and joy. But as we prepare to spend time with our 
friends and our families in the coming weeks, it is important to 
remember during this holiday season there are many families out there 
across this country who are hurting.
  As I visit with Hoosiers, I hear concern in the voices of parents 
trying to

[[Page S8701]]

make their mortgage payment, the manufacturer trying to find work, and 
a business owner trying to make payroll. Too many Hoosier families have 
a parent unemployed or underemployed, some working two or three jobs 
just to scrape by. For nearly 3 years we have been hearing the 
President talk about how this Nation needs good-paying jobs for people. 
The President has spoken on this on numerous occasions. In his 
inaugural address in 2009, he said:

       There is work to be done. The state of our economy calls 
     for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to 
     create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.

  More than a year later in June 2010, the President said: ``Our top 
priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched 
the lives of nearly every American.'' Two months ago, the President 
said: ``Everywhere I go, they tell me they want action on jobs.''
  Despite the rhetoric, what we have and what we are dealing with is a 
series of regulations and policies coming out of the White House that 
are denying Americans the opportunity to have jobs and preventing job 
creators from hiring. This is a result of regulations that are 
hampering businesses as well as policies here that we have or have not 
enacted that would encourage job growth and economic opportunities.
  For nearly 34 consecutive months unemployment has been hovering 
around the 9-percent level although we all know the real unemployment 
number is much higher than that. There are people who have given up 
looking and they're no longer counted. There are people who are working 
at pay levels and talent levels far below their abilities. And so the 
underemployment number, combined with the unemployment number, is very 
significant and much higher than the official number reflects.
  For months I have been on this floor talking about a whole number of 
initiatives I thought was necessary to spur our economy and get us 
moving forward again. Comprehensive tax reform is something Senator 
Wyden and I have engaged in on a bipartisan basis and we've been 
talking about it all year, yet here we are at the end of the session 
and we are not going to be able to accomplish that this year. We'll 
give it a run next year, and hopefully we can make some progress on 
that. There is almost a unanimous consensus that comprehensive tax 
reform needs to take place. Yet we have now spent a year talking about 
it but not doing it. We also know that issues such as entitlement 
reform and reducing the out-of-control spending here are necessary to 
put us on more solid footing, and despite the valiant efforts and hard 
work of many in this Chamber, Republicans and Democrats, we've been 
unable to accomplish and succeed. Much of this difficulty, frankly, has 
been because the White House refusing to demonstrate leadership. The 
President has not stepped up and engaged in fulfilling the very things 
he said are the most important things we need to do.
  Let me cite two examples. The first one is still under discussion 
and, hopefully, will be part of what we are able to accomplish before 
we finish here either late this weekend or into next week, and that is 
the Keystone XL Pipeline. By delaying a decision for a year, the 
President essentially is saying we are denying 20,000 or more 
individuals from gaining work. The president is blocking jobs and 
preventing Americans from building this much-needed pipeline which is 
so important for the future of this country. We talk about our 
dependence on Middle East oil and the blood and treasure we have had to 
spend to keep those sea lanes open and that oil flowing to the United 
States, and yet the President denies us the opportunity to mine our own 
domestic energy sources and to use sources that come from Canada or off 
our shores.
  The Keystone XL Pipeline is a project that if constructed will bring 
a minimum of about 750 million barrels of oil to this country for 
refining purposes. It will provide an estimated 20,000 new jobs 
directly and support hundreds of thousands of jobs in coming years 
indirectly. My State alone, Indiana, has indicated that at least 100 
Indiana companies would benefit from the pipeline. This project has 
bipartisan support as well.
  Twenty-two House Democrats wrote a letter to President Obama and said 
that it is in our national interests to have a Presidential permit 
issued for Keystone as soon as possible. That's supported by 
Republicans, but the President has said that if we send him a yearend 
bill that includes this, he plans to veto it. It makes no sense what-
so-ever. It is irrational--to say that the No. 1 priority for this 
country is to get people back to work and to provide jobs, and here we 
have a ready-made job creator that is being postponed to pacify some 
extreme environmentalists who don't want one drop of oil or one piece 
of coal mined in this country or used in this country to provide energy 
resources. They think all we need to do is switch to electric--which, 
by the way, is only produced through burning coal and oil--to provide 
electricity to plug in our cars and make them work or they want wind 
and solar. Well, if we look outside the window here in Washington and 
across most of the country the last few days you are going to see a lot 
of clouds and very little sun. And you are not going to see much wind. 
We cannot run factories, we cannot run businesses, we can't even light 
this Senate based solely on this alternative energy as it currently 
exists, and it is costing the taxpayer a lot of money.
  The Keystone XL Pipeline also has the support of labor groups and 
unions. These are the entities that will be providing jobs for the 
project.
  Mark Ayers of the AFL-CIO wrote:

       For America's skilled craft construction professionals, any 
     discussion of the Keystone XL project begins and ends with 
     one word: Jobs . . . Throughout America's heartland, the 
     Keystone Pipeline represents the prospect for 20,000 
     immediate jobs, and as many as 500,000 indirect jobs via a 
     strong economic multiplier effect . . . without one single 
     dollar of government assistance.

  That is right. This is totally paid for by the private sector. We can 
provide 20,000 jobs immediately without taxpayer dollars. That is why 
this is supported by Republicans, supported by Democrats, supported by 
Unions, supported by right-to-work States, supported across the board 
by those who feel we need more energy independence. Yet, after assuring 
us that his top priority is creating jobs, the President says, no. 
Instead, he chooses to yield to some extreme voices on the 
environmental left who basically say, no more oil, no more pipelines, 
no more coal, fossil fuels are out. It is wind, solar, batteries, or 
nothing--despite how many jobs it costs.
  So I am asking the President of the United States to reconsider his 
decision especially at a time when people are struggling in this 
country. The commonsense solution to one of our problems is right here 
before us. Yet we hear from the President, no, he is going to postpone 
the decision for a year to get past the 2012 election. This is 
political decision is denying a lot of people work at a time when it is 
desperately needed. At the same time the President is asking the 
Congress to extend unemployment benefits, primarily because of his own 
failed economic policies, the White House is blocking this incredible 
job creating opportunity.
  Another immediate action the administration can take would be to 
accept a modest provision to provide a reasonable delay on two costly 
Environmental Protection Agency regulations that will deal another 
devastating blow to our already fragile economy. In the next few days, 
the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize a rule that 
could threaten over 20 percent of the coal-fired powerplant generation 
in the Midwest and in the Southeast. We've now learned it also has a 
dramatic adverse effect on powerplants in the States of Kansas, 
Oklahoma, and Texas. So a major part of our country will be affected by 
this rule. Known as Utility MACT, this regulation will force most of 
our country's 1,100 coal-fired plants to retrofit their facilities or 
close their doors. The Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy reported 
that closures of U.S. coal-fired powerplants will accelerate sharply 
during the next 10 years because of this utility rule.
  The EPA's expected announcement on the utility rule comes just after 
they issued another major rule that will cost additional American jobs 
because starting on January 1 the EPA will begin requiring utilities to 
reduce powerplant emissions that may cause air quality complications in 
neighboring States. That regulation, called the Cross State Air 
Pollution Rule, is

[[Page S8702]]

also one of the most expensive policies ever imposed on coal-fired 
plants. Under this rule, the EPA will require plants to install costly 
control technologies in exchange for minimal environmental gains.
  The combined economic impact of the two regulations I have just 
mentioned is alarming. The Indiana Energy Association estimates that 
the cost of these rules will be between $6.5 billion and $7.3 billion 
just in my home State of Indiana. And when we add the entire eastern 
half of the country, from Mississippi River on to the Atlantic Ocean, 
that number goes up exponentially.
  The National Economic Research Associates estimates employment losses 
of 1.4 million across the country as a result of the current EPA rules 
and deadlines. By 2016, NERA reports that American ratepayers will see 
an average increase of up to 23.5 percent--and in some places rates 
will be even higher.
  Now, I want to say this: Cleaning our air is a worthy goal. Hundreds 
of billions of dollars have been spent under the Clean Air Act, which I 
supported in the 1980s and early 1990s because, as Americans, we all 
want to clean our air. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent 
by our utilities on clean air, consumers have been paying for it 
through our electricity bills to clean the air. The progress we have 
made has been astounding.
  Provisions that were offered in a bill Senator Joe Manchin--a 
Democrat from West Virginia--and I offered together on a bipartisan 
basis do not turn back or unwind the progress we have made. They simply 
extend the compliance date for a 3-year period of time and coordinate 
that compliance date so that utilities can accomplish both of these 
goals laid out by the EPA in a reasonable time frame. This rule will 
take effect on January 1 of 2012. So we're asking for a little more 
time.
  Earlier this year I voted to eliminate these rules. That vote, led by 
Senator Rand Paul, was defeated. So we move now to the next stage which 
is to give utilities more time to meet EPA deadlines.

  I urge the President to consider the Manchin-Coats legislation called 
the Fair Compliance Act, which is bipartisan legislation to delay the 
implementation of these harmful EPA rules. Otherwise, our utilities 
will not have the time needed to adequately prepare. The EPA will be 
shutting them down. Without extra compliance time, there are 
predictions of blackouts or rolling blackouts and substantial increases 
in utility rates at a time when the economy is struggling and our 
manufacturers need every competitive advantage they can get in order to 
compete around the world and get people back to work.
  Having said that, let me just say one more thing. It is disappointing 
from my perspective in the lack of progress in addressing our dire 
fiscal situation. We've tried just about everything and every process 
and every procedure people can think up, and each one of those has 
achieved either minimal results or failed completely. So after 
evaluating and looking at the extraordinary effort, energy and time put 
into the process this year, there have been very few results. It has 
become clear to me and reaffirmed something I believed from day one 
when I first got into politics--that unless we put in place a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution that will require Members to come 
down to this well and, before the President of the Senate, put their 
left hand on the Bible and their right hand in the air and swear to 
uphold a Constitution that incorporates a balanced budget requirement, 
we are never going to get there.
  There is always a reason why something statutorily--all the efforts 
of the Gang of 6, the committee of 12; the rush to prevent crises by 
raising the debt limit; the cliff hangers: are we going to pass this or 
not, and are we going to extend the debt limit or not extend it--all 
the provisions through the appropriations process to cut spending and 
reduce government involvement and so forth have essentially failed.
  What we need to do is what most States in this country do, what every 
business has to do, what every family has to do; that is, commit to 
balancing our budget, not spending more than we take in, and having a 
sworn, constitutional agreement that this is what we will do before we 
adjourn during every session. My State of Indiana has to do this, and 
many States across the country have to do this. They do because it 
produces transparency and honesty and Members going before their 
constituents and saying: That program is a great idea, but we can't 
afford it. Unless you're willing to support Congress raising your taxes 
or cuts in other places, we can't put that new program in place.
  I think my time is running out. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more 
minutes, and I will wrap it up.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blumenthal). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. COATS. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my colleagues.
  If we don't have this ultimate enforcement mechanism, I fear we will 
just continue to do what we have been doing for years and years and 
years; that is, falling far short of where we need to go. I think where 
most of us know we need to make the tough decisions, to be honest with 
our constituents, to go forward and basically say this is what our 
sworn obligation is, and we are going to have to fulfill this 
obligation. Nothing else has succeeded in forcing this body to come 
together and in a bipartisan way--or even on a partisan basis--do what 
is necessary to get our fiscal house in order.
  During this holiday season, the people who are without work and 
struggling to pay their mortgages or struggling to save money so their 
kids can go to school, struggling to pay bills, wondering what the 
future is going to hold, those working two or three jobs, they are all 
out there saying we have to get this together, we have to get this 
country moving again. We cannot do that if we are plunging into debt or 
the policies coming out of this administration are denying our citizens 
the right to work in jobs that are available, such as the Keystone 
Pipeline. I can't even pay the utility cost now they say and if you are 
going to raise my rates 20 to 30 percent because of these regulations 
it is not going to be the kind of joyful, happy celebration at 
Christmas we would all wish for all our families across America.

  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I have a number of consents I will offer.

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