[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 10 (Thursday, January 16, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S383-S385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HOMEOWNER FLOOD INSURANCE AFFORDABILITY ACT OF 2014--MOTION TO PROCEED

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 294, the 
flood insurance legislation.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 294, S. 1926, a bill to 
     delay the implementation of certain provisions of the 
     Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 and to 
     reform the National Association of Registered Agents and 
     Brokers, and for other purposes.

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, on this issue alone we have been trying for 
months to move this vote. On our side we have heard constantly, 
persistently, and always from Senator Landrieu indicating how important 
this is to her State and to our country. So I would hope we can finally 
have a pathway forward on this today with a consent agreement.
  It is my understanding Senator Isakson of Georgia is going to come to 
the floor soon and we will try to do that. I just want to alert 
everyone to the fact if that isn't going to work out, we are not going 
to delay this any more. We will file cloture and move on it when we get 
back from our next work period.


                                Schedule

  Following my remarks, Mr. President, and those of the Republican 
leader, the Senate will resume consideration of the House message to 
accompany H.R. 3547, which is the legislative vehicle for the Omnibus 
appropriations bill.
  The filing deadline for first-degree amendments to the House message 
is 1 p.m. today. Under the rule, the cloture vote on the motion to 
concur in the House message to accompany the omnibus will be an hour 
after we come in tomorrow morning. There have been requests by both 
Democrats and Republicans to move the vote forward, and if that is 
possible--I am happy to cooperate with all Senators, if the majority of 
the Senators would like to do this early--I will be happy to see if we 
can get a consent agreement to do that.
  We are also working, as I have indicated, on the flood insurance bill 
and we will continue to work on that.


                Measure Placed on the Calendar--S. 1931

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, S. 1931 is due for a second reading, I am 
told.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will read the bill by 
title for the second time.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1931) to provide for the extension of certain 
     unemployment benefits, and for other purposes.

  Mr. REID. I object to any further proceedings with respect to this 
legislation.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard. The bill will 
be placed on the calendar.


                    Unemployment Insurance Benefits

  Mr. President, on this side of the aisle, we have not put to one side 
and forgotten about unemployment compensation extensions for 1.5 
million desperate Americans. I wish to just spend a minute or two on 
this issue, but we have not forgotten this and I want to direct 
everyone's attention to an editorial in one of America's leading 
newspapers of today. Here is what it said.


[[Page S384]]


       Republican Senators are pulling out every fake excuse they 
     can think of for filibustering an extension of jobless 
     benefits for the long-term unemployed. . . . The majority 
     leader, Harry Reid, was mean to us and wouldn't let us offer 
     amendments, they say.

  We have heard that a lot. I am really a mean person.

       Democrats refused to pay for the benefits. It's President 
     Obama's fault because people can't find work because he won't 
     approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

  The article goes on:

       The truth is the Republican Party simply does not believe 
     that job seekers who have been out of work for 6 months or 
     longer deserve government assistance. The most hardhearted 
     believe cutting benefits will give people an incentive to get 
     back to work. The most cynical are hoping for widespread 
     misery, which they can pin on ``Obama's economy'' for 
     political gain in the elections this fall. Whatever the 
     reasons, nearly five million unemployed people will go 
     without benefits by the end of 2014, unless the party backs 
     down.
       The most appalling demand from Republicans was that 
     benefits be paid for with cuts to other programs.

  That is certainly the truth. The article continues:

       For example, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire proposed 
     requiring that parents have a Social Security number to 
     receive the child tax credit--a move that would eliminate an 
     important anti-poverty measure for millions of children who 
     are citizens though their parents are not.

  We will have more to say about this. We are not going to leave this 
issue. This is a cutting-edge issue for the American people. 
Republicans outside Congress believe this is the right thing to do--the 
majority of Republicans.


                          House-Passed Omnibus

  The Senate today will consider the House-passed omnibus spending 
bill, an important bipartisan agreement that keeps our country on a 
responsible path while preventing another manufactured crisis--and we 
have had so many of those.
  I cannot say enough about the work of the senior Senator from 
Maryland Ms. Mikulski. We came to the Senate together. She is someone 
who identifies with the people of Maryland as no one has ever 
identified with the people of Maryland, but in the process she also 
identifies with people around America. That is why she is revered in 
Maryland. She has been to Nevada, and we love her in Nevada also.
  I don't know of anyone else who could have done what she did, working 
with the Republicans in the House. I admire her so very much, and I am 
very happy to have reached the point where we are today. After 3 years 
of damaging cuts to vital social programs, this bill finally increases 
investments in the middle class.
  Is it perfect? Of course not. There is so much good to say about this 
bill. But Senator Mikulski, who represents the State where the 
headquarters of the National Institutes of Health resides, got an extra 
$1 billion for them--more than they got last year. It is too bad the 
Republicans' cost-cutting whacked them $1\1/2\ billion in the year 
before, but what she did with the NIH is exemplary of what she has done 
to help America.
  So enough about her, but she has done something no one else could do.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.


                               Free Trade

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, I said there were a number 
of things the President could announce in his North Carolina speech 
that would draw bipartisan support and actually boost the economy. One 
of the things I was particularly disappointed he didn't push--at least 
push harder--is trade.
  As I said, this is one of the brightest areas of his economic agenda, 
but if we as a nation don't act quickly and decisively, the world is 
going to literally pass us right by. We are going to miss opportunities 
to benefit economically, to open foreign markets to American goods and 
to America's political and cultural influence.
  When we look at the rest of the developed world, from Europe to 
Canada to Australia, they are practically falling all over themselves 
to negotiate more and better opportunities, while we basically have sat 
on our hands, a consequence of the President's inability to persuade 
his own party--his own party--to expand trade-related jobs.
  So we need to catch up, but we can't do that without leadership from 
the President, the kind of leadership as we have seen in the Senate 
from the chairman of the Finance Committee, who himself obviously is a 
Democrat. He has been a tireless advocate for trade and for American 
agriculture. Yet with his retirement looming on the horizon, I am 
afraid there might not be many Democrats left in the Senate willing to 
help lead on this issue. That is why we need the President to be deeply 
involved. We need him to step up for American workers and increase 
exports by bringing his own party on board with a trade promotion bill 
that was introduced just last week.
  The authority in that legislation is key to enabling the 
administration to conclude critical trade negotiations that hold 
incredible promise for American jobs and economic growth. With our 
economy in such dire straits these days, opening new opportunities for 
American goods through trade should be a real no-brainer. It is an 
issue that used to be fairly bipartisan around here, and it can be 
again, if the President is willing to lead. Millions of middle-class 
families and small businesses are counting on him to do just that.
  So I look forward to him promoting the benefits of trade and the 
legislation I mentioned in his State of the Union Address. I hope we 
will hear about that. When he does so, Republicans will be right there 
with him to move the trade promotion bill through Congress in a 
bipartisan fashion.


                             EPA Coal Regs

  Last week the Obama administration published a regulation that would 
effectively ban coal-fired powerplants from being built in the future.
  The head of the EPA, who will be testifying on this regulation today, 
basically admitted as much herself when she called it ``significant 
economic lift.'' She knows the technology this regulation requires is 
prohibitively expensive; that her own agency knows it is nowhere near--
nowhere near--ready for adoption; that even some White House officials 
do not believe her plan is feasible, and that is the point. The point 
is to eliminate coal jobs in America.
  That is why I wasn't surprised by emails that recently came to 
light--emails which appeared to show EPA officials colluding with 
extremist special interests in devising impossible-to-achieve 
regulations. The emails even referred to previously shuttered 
powerplants as ``defeated,'' making the intent behind coal-related 
actions abundantly clear.
  Here is the other thing. This new regulation is not even expected to 
reduce emissions in a meaningful way--not even expected to reduce 
emissions in a meaningful way. What it will do, however, is trigger a 
section of the law that would allow the administration to eventually 
shut down coal-fired plants that exist today.
  In other words, it would allow the administration to achieve its true 
aim of eliminating coal jobs completely. For struggling middle-class 
families across eastern Kentucky, this is just the latest punch in the 
gut from Washington, from an administration whose own advisers seem to 
believe that ``a war on coal is exactly what is needed,'' from one of 
the President's advisers.
  Some call this regulation outrageous. Some say it is extremism at its 
worst. Here is what I call it. It is absolutely cruel because here is 
what is lost in this administration's crusade for ideological purity, 
in its crusade for approval of coastal editorials--human lives are 
affected, the lives of people I represent, folks who haven't done 
anything to deserve a war being declared on them.
  These are the Kentuckians who just want to work, provide for their 
families, and deliver the type of low-cost energy that attracts more 
jobs to Kentucky. And coal is what allows so many of them to do all 
that. It provides well-paying jobs. And, as Jimmy Rose of Bell County, 
KY, who has now become a rather famous country singer, puts it in his 
hit song, ``Coal Keeps the Lights On.''
  I remind my colleagues that coal does more than keep the lights on in 
Kentucky; it keeps the lights on here too, both figuratively and 
literally. From the anti-coal blogger tapping out a tweet to the EPA 
staffer cooking up a meal, millions of Americans rely on coal to power 
their homes and their offices. In recent years, coal has accounted for 
about 40 percent of the

[[Page S385]]

electricity generated in our country. That compares to just 3.5 percent 
for sources such as wind and solar. So even if the administration were 
to achieve its dream of eliminating every last coal job, it is not as 
though they could just fire up a few windmills to cover the gap. It is 
going to take a very long time--decades--for alternative sources to 
even come close to providing the same level of jobs and energy as coal. 
In other words, the administration's ideological crusade doesn't even 
seem to have a logical end game. It is basically just ideology.
  Here is the thing. Republicans agree that alternative and renewable 
energy sources are necessary for fuel diversity, but we believe wind 
and geothermal and solar should be part of an ``all of the above'' 
energy strategy which also includes coal and natural gas and the oil we 
can get right here in North America, with Americans providing the 
workforce.
  Another key difference is this: Republicans look at Kentucky coal 
miners and see hard-working men and women, not obstacles to some 
leftwing fantasy. That is why I, along with 40 Republican cosponsors--
including my friend and fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul--intend to file a 
resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to ensure 
a vote to stop this devastating rule. We believe the EPA regulation in 
question clearly meets the definition for congressional review under 
this statute, and I am sending a letter to Comptroller General Dodaro 
outlining the reasons why that is the case.
  If the majority leader were serious about helping Kentuckians, he 
would stop blocking the Senate from passing my Saving Coal Jobs Act. It 
is commonsense legislation that would give elected representatives of 
the people a greater say in how coal is regulated in this country. 
There is no reason for him to keep it bottled up a moment longer.
  Look. Kentucky is facing a real crisis. The Obama administration 
appears to be sending signals that its latest regulation is actually 
just the beginning in a new, expanded front in its war on coal. Already 
the administration's regulations have played a significant role in 
causing coal jobs in my State to plummet. These are good jobs which pay 
more than $1 billion in annual wages to my constituents. For every 
miner with a job, three more Kentuckians will hold a coal-dependent job 
as well.
  The majority leader and his Democratic caucus now have a choice: Are 
they going to stand with the coal families under attack in places such 
as Kentucky and West Virginia and Colorado or are they going to 
continue to stand with the powerful leftwing special interests who want 
to see their jobs completely eliminated? That is the choice. It is 
pretty clear where I stand and where most of my colleagues on this side 
of the aisle stand.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                       Reservation of Leader Time

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
leadership time is reserved.

                          ____________________