[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1183-S1187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nomination of Scott Pruitt
Mr. President, the other thing we hope to do this week is to get to
the EPA Administrator. I have a hard time imagining that anybody had
more future damage lined up for the economy than the past Administrator
of the EPA. Rules like the clean power rule--all these rules almost
always have a good name. Clean power, who wouldn't be for that? I am
certainly for clean power, but the clean power rule, in virtually every
State in the country, would have increased utility rates from the
middle of the State of Pennsylvania to the western edge of at least
Wyoming, if not beyond that.
Fifty percent of the power produced by coal-powered utility plants,
most of which are cleaner than any utility plants that use coal have
ever been or are anywhere in the world today, many of which are almost
new, many of which aren't paid for--and, of course, who pays for that
utility plant, whether you use it or not? It is the family who pays the
utility bill. There is no mythical somebody else who will pay this
bill. So if you shut down a plant sooner than you should, somebody has
to pay for that.
You could write those same rules if your goal were to eliminate coal.
That is a different debate. It is a debate we could have at another
time. If your goal were to eliminate coal, you could write those same
rules. If the rule simply said: When the utility plants you are using
right now, which meet all the current standards, which are, in many
cases, the cleanest coal-fired plants
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that have ever been built or are being used anywhere in the world
today--when that plant is paid for, here is what you have to do next.
Then, when you get your utility bill, you are not paying for the plant
you are not using and also paying for the plant you are using. This
would be as if there were a new standard--this is the EPA view of
this--on automobile mileage, and that standard came out and said: Here
is what automobiles have to look like, in terms of standards, on miles
per gallon, and, by the way, you have to have that car or that truck
right now. If you have a truck or car that you are already driving that
doesn't meet that standard, you can't drive it any longer. Of course,
you still have to pay for it, but you can't drive it any longer. We
have been doing mileage standards in this country that have made a
significant difference for a long time, but we have never said: You
have to stop driving the car you are driving, and you have to buy a new
car. And, of course, you have to pay for the car you are driving or the
bank is unlikely to give you the loan for a new car. But that is what
the EPA said in the clean power rule.
There is a commonsense way to do things, and the next nominee we will
be dealing with, Attorney General Pruitt, is a commonsense guy. He has
had great responsibility as attorney general, but he has been willing
to challenge these rules that didn't make sense.
On the clean power rule, by the way, Missouri is the fourth biggest
user of coal-produced energy. Projections were that the average
Missouri utility bill under that rule, if it had been allowed to go
into effect--still in the courts because the courts say that EPA really
doesn't have the authority to do that; at least the lower courts have
all said that. If that had been allowed to go into effect, the average
Missouri utility bill would have doubled in 10 or 12 years. It is not
hard for a family to figure out. Get your utility bill out, look at it,
multiply it by two, and see what happens to the things you were doing
before you had to pay, in effect, a second utility bill.
It is time that these agencies had some common sense, whether they
are agencies that are being evaluated by the Office of Management and
Budget or agencies that are being tasked by the Congress and the
President to do certain things. It is time they thought about families.
It is time they thought about jobs.
If the economy of the country is better next year, the country will
be stronger 25 years from now. I think we spend a lot of time thinking
about what America should look like 25 years from now instead of what
we can do so that families have better jobs next month and next year.
It is time we got some common sense into trying to reach the goals we
want to reach, rather than coming up with goals and then reaching them
in a way that clearly will not work.
The waters of the United States--that is not a bad title. Water is
important. Waters of the United States is important. The EPA talked
about the waters of the United States and decided to take a definition
that the Federal Government has used for well over 150 years. By the
way, the EPA was given control of navigable waters in the Clean Water
Act and decided that navigable waters aren't just what for 150 years
the Federal Government said they were--from 1846 until just a couple of
years ago, more than 150 years--which was something you could move a
product on, which meant interstate commerce, which meant the
Constitution gave that responsibility to the Federal government, but
they said: That is actually any water that could run into any water
that eventually could run into navigable waters. That is what the Clean
Water Act said when it said the EPA could regulate navigable waters.
This is a Farm Bureau map that has been available for a long time but
that the EPA never did challenge during this debate. Only the red part
of our State would be covered by the EPA for anything involving water--
things like a building permit or things like whether you can mow the
right of way on the highway or things like whether farmers could use
fertilizer in their field, even if it were 100 miles away from any
navigable water. All of those things under the rule could have been
under the authority of the EPA. Let me mention again, only the part of
the map that is red would have been covered by the EPA, the part is
that 99.7 percent of the map.
We have a lot of caves in our State and a few sinkholes. I think
those white dots, the three-tenths of one percent, are some combination
of caves and sinkholes where the water appears to run right back into
the middle of the earth, instead of into any water. What a ridiculous
rule. It is the kind of rule that the Office of Management and Budget
should challenge whenever they are asked to look at the cost-benefit
analysis. It is the kind of rule that a reasonable Administrator at the
EPA would never let be issued. In fact, I would say it is the kind of
rule that this Congress eventually, hopefully, will take this
responsibility back and say: We have to vote on these rules. We have to
take responsibility for things that cost families their extra income
and cost people their jobs.
As we get along with the business of confirming Mick Mulvaney to the
Office of Management and Budget--and then after that and before we
leave this week--Attorney General Scott Pruitt to be the Administrator
of the EPA, hopefully both of them will use common sense as their
guideline. Both of them will look at, What does this really mean to
hard-working families? What does this mean to struggling families? What
does this mean to single-mom families? What does this mean to young
families who are trying to figure out how they can save for the future
of their kids' college or even summer camp? A lot of things go away if
you double the utility bill. A lot of things go away if it takes a year
to get a building permit. A lot of things go away if we don't have
common sense in our government.
I think this nominee, Mick Mulvaney, and the next nominee, Scott
Pruitt, both bring that common sense to the jobs they have been asked
to do and have agreed to do, if confirmed by the Senate.
I see my friend from Massachusetts is here.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Missouri, and the
Senate, for giving me this opportunity to speak. I rise to speak in
opposition to the nomination of Representative Mick Mulvaney to be
Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Congressman Mulvaney represents the latest of President Trump's
broken promises to the American people. In this case, it is President
Trump's campaign promise to protect Social Security, and Congressman
Mulvaney is the man who will lead the charge. The Office of Management
and Budget, OMB, as it is called, is like that group of scientists in
the movie ``Apollo 13'' who have to figure out how to bring the
spacecraft home with only a few items found in a couple of boxes. In
the movie, they describe it as fitting a square peg in a round hole. In
government, we call it the Federal budget.
The crucial role of OMB and the development of the Federal budget
means that the Director often has the final word on the priorities of
our Federal agencies. The Director must be someone who will approach
the enormity of the Federal Government in a thoughtful and deliberative
manner. They must be able to consider how the budget will impact the
everyday lives of all Americans. Representative Mulvaney's support for
reckless, across-the-board cuts demonstrates that he is not up to this
challenge.
Donald Trump campaigned on the promise that he would make no cuts to
the Social Security safety net. That means no cuts to Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid. Congressman Mulvaney's nomination shows that,
despite what candidate Trump may have said, President Trump intends to
do just the opposite. This is not what millions of people voted for.
Mick Mulvaney's nomination has Americans across the country fearful for
their futures, and they have every right to be scared.
Congressman Mulvaney represents an immediate threat to Social
Security. He represents a threat to the 1.2 million seniors in
Massachusetts who currently rely on Social Security. He represents a
threat to the millions more who expect the program to be
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there when they retire in coming years.
Mick Mulvaney has attempted to declare Social Security
unconstitutional and has referred to the program as a Ponzi scheme.
Well, Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is not a
handout. Social Security is a promise we make to America's seniors
after decades of hard work. It is the commitment we made to those who
built this Nation, fought in wars, and provided for their families.
Seniors pay into the system throughout their working lives, and they
expect it to be there for them when they retire. We need to keep that
promise.
Social Security is not just a line in the budget. It is a lifeline
for millions of Americans.
In Massachusetts, the program keeps 295,000 people above the poverty
line. Across the country, more than 15 million elderly Americans are
able to live out their lives and not be driven into poverty because
they have a Social Security check. That is what it does for 15 million
Americans. Seniors will have nowhere to turn if President Trump and
Representative Mulvaney have their way and Social Security ceases to
exist. Congressman Mulvaney has repeatedly suggested raising the Social
Security retirement age to 70 years old. Let me repeat that. Mick
Mulvaney wants grandma and grandpa to wait until they are 70 years
old--that is 4 years older than the current retirement age--before they
can call upon the benefits they deserve.
Not only does Mick Mulvaney want to make it so Americans have to work
longer, he wants them to receive less when they finally do retire. At
his Budget Committee hearing, Mick Mulvaney said that he himself was
willing to be subject to these new rules, since they might require him
to work a couple of extra months before retirement and require his
children to work until they are 70.
Nothing could be more out of touch with working-class, blue-collar
workers across our country. I have no doubt that Mick Mulvaney would be
able to work a few extra years in his current role as a Congressman or
Director of OMB or a great job that he would get after those
responsibilities, but what about millions of construction workers,
carpenters, waitresses, gardeners, busdrivers, and others with
physically demanding jobs? My father, a milkman--how many years can you
work being a milkman? You have to go until you are 70 to receive a
Social Security benefit in this country in the future? That is the
challenge we have. We ask milkmen, we ask 69-year-old construction
workers to lay cement in blistering summer heat because Social Security
is no longer there when it is promised. Do we expect a 68-year-old
window washer to climb the scaffolding every day when they cannot
afford to retire without their Social Security benefits? We should not
balance the budget on their backs. That is just plain wrong.
Raising the Social Security retirement age is just one of many of
President Trump's broken promises. He also wants to cut Medicare and
the health care of millions of Americans. Congressman Mulvaney looks
ready to do the President's bidding as well.
Congressman Mulvaney has said we need to end Medicare as we know it
and supported House Speaker Paul Ryan's destructive ideas to turn
Medicare into a voucher program. Congressman Mulvaney went even further
saying that those efforts did not go far enough. Those kinds of cuts to
Medicare would be nothing short of a disaster for the 55 million
Americans enrolled in the program, including the more than 1 million
individuals in Massachusetts who rely on Medicare for their health care
needs.
Seniors deserve an OMB Director who will protect their health care,
not put it on the chopping block. We know Congressman Mulvaney is
deeply committed to these misguided ideas because we have seen how far
he is willing to go to support them. He was one of the few key
cheerleaders of the Republican government shutdown in 2013. He was
willing to put millions of American families, businesses, and services
at risk in order to defund the Affordable Care Act.
That shutdown cost the United States more than $24 billion. At that
time, Congressman Mulvaney said it was good policy. He said it was all
worth it in order to prove a point. That simply is irresponsible. That
kind of recklessness has no place in the Office of Management and
Budget. Congressman Mulvaney also does not believe in raising the debt
limit.
Back in 2011, he put the economy at risk when Republicans held our
debt limit hostage. He put the full faith and credit of the United
States in danger by his willingness to allow the Treasury to default.
That would have wreaked havoc on the financial markets and could have
destabilized our entire economy, but Congressman Mulvaney dismissed
these concerns and called the potential breach of the debt limit a
fabricated crisis. Nothing could be more fiscally irresponsible and
further from the truth.
Congressman Mulvaney is not the type of leadership Americans expect
in their government, and he is not the type of leadership needed to
direct the Office of Management and Budget. Strong leadership is
especially crucial at the Office of Management and Budget, where
responsible oversight of the regulatory process is a requirement of the
Director's job. The individual in charge must be willing to make fair
determinations based on facts and evidence.
Congressman Mulvaney's record gives me no confidence that he will
meet this standard. Congressman Mulvaney also dismisses accepted
science and rejects established facts. He has stated global warming is
based on questionable science and has outright dismissed the threat
that climate change imposes on the planet. OMB oversees agencies' use
of the social cost of carbon, the Federal metric that assigns a dollar
value for future damages to each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the
atmosphere. We need an OMB Director who accepts the consequences of
climate change because it will be the most vulnerable in our society
who will pay the highest price if we ignore climate science and the
danger it poses, not only to our own country but to the rest of the
planet.
Our country faces serious challenges that require the careful and
nonpartisan allocation of resources. We need a Director of the Office
of Management and Budget who will hear the concerns of all Americans,
not promote dangerous fiscal ideologies. Congressman Mulvaney has
indicated that he will approach our budget with an ax, and it will be
our seniors who will be first on the chopping block. I do not believe
he is qualified to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
I do so remembering 1981 and 1982. Ronald Reagan arrived, and Ronald
Reagan had a very simple plan for America. He was going to do three
things fundamentally; No. 1, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest and
biggest corporations in America; No. 2, simultaneously increasing
defense spending massively; No. 3, to simultaneously pledge that he was
going to balance the budget while unleashing massive economic growth in
our country.
What he did then was to put together a team that had a remarkable
ability to harness voluminous amounts of information to defend that
knowingly erroneous premise. You cannot say you are heading toward
balancing the budget if you are simultaneously saying: I am going to
give massive tax breaks to those who need them the least and massive
defense increases, which are going to further lead to Federal
expenditures, because then you have to turn and you have to cut
programs. You have to cut Medicare. You have to cut Social Security.
You have to cut the EPA. You have to cut Head Start. You have to cut
food stamps. You have to cut programs for the poorest. You have to cut
all of those investments in science in the future. You have to cut and
cut and cut.
That really was not the goal because ultimately Ronald Reagan just
retreated from the cuts because the pressure came from across America,
but he had accomplished his principal goal, which was the massive
defense increases and the tax cuts for the wealthy because that was the
real agenda all along.
So there is a great book, ``The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan
Revolution Failed,'' by David Stockman. He was the head of OMB for
Ronald Reagan back in the early 1980s. He wrote a book in 1986 about
his experiences with this failed economic philosophy. It is a
blistering, scalding indictment of what they tried to do in 1981
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and 1982. He wrote this as a warning to the future, about why we should
not try to repeat what Reagan tried to do in 1981 and 1982.
What he talks about in the book is this. The same kind of made-up
numbers to put a Panglossian--rose-colored glasses--the most optimistic
projection on what would happen to our economy if we had these massive
tax cuts and increases in defense spending, while pretending that we
were going to do all of these other things, which actually never did
occur.
So he said, because the numbers did not add up, they had to engage in
a lot of fiscal chicanery. What he did was he constructed two little
separate categories. No. 1, he called it the magic asterisk. The magic
asterisk was this attempt to avoid ever specifically having to itemize
all of the budget cuts that would cause a revolution in America because
they knew they could not put that list out.
So they called it a magic asterisk--cuts to be named later, programs
to be cut later. We all know the names of those programs--Medicare,
Medicaid, education, Environmental Protection Agency, Head Start, all
the way down the line--but we will just hide the ball on that.
Secondly, he constructed another idea, he said, which was also
fraudulent, which was called ``rosy scenario.'' What they would do is,
they would put together a group of economists who would then, using
completely bogus projections for the future, project massive economic
growth. That is what Donald Trump talks about now: Oh, we will see
growth that you have never seen before in the history of mankind--rosy
scenario.
There is no economic data to back it up, but that is just how much
Trump is trying to model himself after this attempt in 1981 and 1982 to
sell the exact same bill of goods, which collapsed, by the way. They
collapsed like a house of cards economically because it did not add up.
You cannot have a magic asterisk for all of these cuts that are never
going to happen because ultimately the Democrats are going to back down
the Republicans.
We are going to back them down on cutting Medicare. We are going to
back them down on cutting education. We are going to back them down on
cutting the budget for all of these great programs. We are going to
have this battle. They already know it, but it is not going to stop
them in terms of the first two programs, the tax cuts and the defense
increases. They are going to still try to ram them through. That just
creates bigger and bigger and bigger deficits.
The only way they can get away with it is if they can project massive
economic growth in our country, which is the ``rosy scenario.'' Then
you have a bunch of economists who are kind of supply-siders who kind
of look back at the 1980s and ask: Can't we go back to the Reagan era
again and repeat that?
You don't want to repeat it. The guy who put the program together
said: Please don't do that again. Please don't do that again. He said
here: Ronald Reagan chose not to be a leader but a politician, and in
doing so, showed why passion and imperfection, not reason and doctrine,
rule the world. ``His obstinacy,'' said David Stockman, ``was destined
to keep America's economy hostage to the errors of his advisers for a
long, long time.''
Mark Twain used to say that ``history doesn't repeat itself, but it
does tend to rhyme.'' So, yes, this isn't exactly like Ronald Reagan in
1981 and 1982, but it rhymes with 1981 and 1982. It rhymes with it.
They are trying to argue economics like lawyers, right? Politicians, PR
people. Sell the bill of goods. Donald Trump calls it ``truthful
hyperbole,'' like when he is selling a piece of property. Well, the
United States is not a piece of property. The American economy is not a
piece of property. It is the central organizing principle for all of
the hopes and all of the dreams of every person who lives in our
country.
You cannot allow for knowingly false premises to be advanced, and
that is what Congressman Mulvaney will represent in this entire process
if he is confirmed as the new head of the Office of Management and
Budget. He represents someone who is going to reach back into time to
this era which has already been shown to have completely failed and
repeat the exact same experiment again. The American people just can't
run the risk because ultimately the economic catastrophe--the impact on
ordinary families--would be so great that ultimately we would look back
and say that this Senate failed, that we did not discharge our
responsibilities to those families.
So from my perspective, I stand out here knowing that once again we
are faced with this prospect of repeating David Stockman's book ``The
Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed'' and knowing
that when Donald Trump said: Oh, don't worry, I am going to take care
of you, ordinary Americans; you are going to get the biggest tax
breaks--they are not. That is not his plan.
Oh, don't worry. I am going to give you better healthcare. I am going
to give you more coverage for your families.
That is not going to happen. That is not his plan.
I am going to give you cleaner air and cleaner water. It is going to
be the best. It is going to be the greatest.
That is not going to happen.
It is the triumph of politics. It is the triumph of the special
interests, of the oil and gas industry, of the defense establishment
that wants bigger and more contracts, of the wealthiest who want big
tax breaks. It is the triumph of politics--the politics of the most
powerful, of the wealthiest, of the most entrenched. That is what this
Trump administration is already about, and they are going to continue
to say: Don't worry. Your healthcare will be better. Your air will be
cleaner. Your children will be safer. Social Security will be
protected.
But then who gets named to run the Office of Management and Budget?
Somebody who wants to raise the retirement age to 70; someone who wants
to fundamentally change Medicare as we know it; somebody who has an
agenda that looks a lot like 1981 and 1982 in the Reagan years, very
much like it.
So is there anything new here? No. Is this just a sales job, a con
job? Yes. Because when you pull back the covers and you look at what is
about to unfold, it is something that is going to be very destructive
of our economy. It is going to further income inequality across our
country. It is going to reduce opportunity for every child in our
country. Rather than democratizing access to opportunity through
healthcare and education, they are going to work systematically to
undermine those opportunities, to reduce the chances that they can
maximize their God-given abilities.
That is why this nomination is so important, because the OMB controls
the Federal budget. That is all the hopes and all the dreams. That is
where the money goes. Who gets it? What are the incentives?
Right now, once again, Donald Trump is embracing Ronald Reagan's
trickle-down economics: the more money you give to the people who are
already rich, the more it will trickle down to ordinary folks.
We don't hear him saying: Oh, don't worry, the overwhelming majority
of these tax breaks are going to go to the blue-collar people in our
country. You are not going to hear him say that. And when you look at
all the proposals they have made, it always goes to the corporations,
it always goes to the upper 1 or 2 percentile.
Those promises he made are just the same as David Stockman's and
Ronald Reagan's back in 1981 and 1982--identical almost down to the
final detail--and are just as guaranteed to fail.
We have Congressman Mulvaney who has been nominated. And give him
credit--he is actually honest about what he believes. He is actually
very clear in his explanation of what the goals are going to be for our
country if he is confirmed and can partner with Donald Trump to
implement this agenda. We give him credit for his honesty, but it is
only honesty in saying that he is going to defend a set of economic
assumptions that are completely and totally fallacious and have already
been disproved in the marketplace--the political marketplace.
So all I can say here is that it would be reckless of the Senate to
deliver over to the American people once again someone whose intent is
to try to take this formula which gathers voluminous amounts of
information to defend knowingly erroneous premises.
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You cannot have massive tax cuts and massive increases in defense
spending and balance the budget without killing all of these programs
that almost every American family relies on, beginning with Social
Security and Medicare and Medicaid, education programs, all the way
down. We can't do it.
So that is why we are fighting out here. We are fighting to make sure
we don't repeat the same history we have already lived through.
By the time Reagan reached near the end of his career, guess what he
did. He changed and began to acclimate himself to reality. He began to
accept, through a group of new advisers, the actual impact his initial
policies were having. And that is all we are trying to do right now. We
are trying to start out where we are going to be forced to wind up
anyway. Why not do that since we have already learned the lesson? Why
not have those lessons of the past be implemented? But no. They are
committed to a repetition syndrome, a reenactment of what has already
occurred, rather than a reconciliation with history, learning from it
and then trying to move forward in a way which is wise, protective of
every American.
I stand here to oppose Congressman Mulvaney's nomination for the
Office of Management and Budget. I do not believe it would be a good
thing for our country, for our economy. This is just too dangerous a
roll of the dice with our entire Nation. So I say to the Senate, please
vote to reject this nomination, and ask the President to nominate
someone who does reflect the best economic values that our country has.
With that, I yield to the Senator from Washington State, Mrs. Murray.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.