[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

[[Page S1184]]

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

[[Page S1186]]

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.

[[Page S1187]]

  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.