[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 14, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1800-S1803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think tomorrow President Trump is 
going--or at least is planning--to sign an Executive order rolling back 
the Obama Clean Power Plan. I will have a lot to say about that, but I 
think it is important at an appropriate time to discuss the history of 
this issue. It has been going on a long time.
  At the start of the 114th Congress, the Senate voted 98 to 1 in 
support of the Inhofe-Whitehouse amendment, stating that climate change 
is real and not a hoax. That is something we can actually agree on; 
that climate has been changing since the beginning of time, and there 
is all the archeological evidence, there is the Scriptural evidence, 
the historic evidence. Climate has been changing and will continue to 
change.

  The hoax is that some on the far left believe man controls changes in 
the climate. We have endured 8 years of an administration that buys 
into the alarmist mentality that the world is coming to an end, and it 
is due to manmade gases. That is what the hoax is. Even though 
individuals--occasionally you will find some scientists who agree with 
this, but they will say that there may be some contribution, but it is 
minimal. It is not even measurable.
  The Obama administration has used climate change as justification for 
taking unauthorized actions, such as the so-called Clean Power Plan. 
Every administrative entity under Obama was forced to embrace his 
climate change agenda as a top priority and used it as a convenient 
sounding board.
  We have seen agencies such as the Department of Defense divert 
resources away from their core responsibilities and instead spend them 
on finding ways to justify statements from the President that climate 
change is the greatest threat, a greater threat than terrorism.
  So other agencies have spared no taxpayer expense in supporting the 
outcome-driven science in an attempt to bolster their claims. In fact, 
the Congressional Research Service has reported that the Obama 
administration spent $120 billion on climate change issues. That is a 
total waste of money. I don't think anyone can tell me what that $120 
billion was spent for. It was not authorized, it was not appropriated, 
but it was spent.
  This comes from the Congressional Research Service. So this is a 
total waste of money, money needed to defend America. Despite the 
administration's efforts, as research and data around climate change 
continue to improve, the results do not support their claims but 
instead call them into question. This is especially true for all of the 
``hottest month'' or ``hottest season'' or ``hottest year'' in history. 
This is something that is often claimed by those who are reading the 
script and trying to make those claims.
  So 2014 was previously the warmest year on record, until a reporter 
pressed NOAA and NASA on the claim and the agencies were forced to 
admit they were only 38 percent sure that claim was accurate. A 
December 2015 study from the American Geophysical Union concluded that 
after analyzing over 1,200 ground-based weather stations: ``The 
warmest-ever claims by government scientists are inflated due to 
compromised U.S. temperature stations impacted by encroachment of 
artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air 
conditioning exhaust.''
  Because of NOAA's methods, they failed to account for these factors. 
Additionally, surface thermometers continue to be at odds with 
satellite data, which shows essentially no warming for the past 18 
years, continuing the hiatus the Economist magazine originally wrote 
about in 2013.
  In fact, just a few weeks ago, a whistleblower alleged that a June 
2015 NOAA report manipulated data in an attempt to discredit this 18-
year pause. Now, the 18-year pause has been agreed to. People 
understand, this is what they call the hiatus. This is a time when 
temperature has not changed, but they have done this to influence the 
public debate surrounding the Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate 
conference. Conveniently, the computer with the data suffered a 
complete failure and none of the data was saved.
  It is not just the inflated temperature claims that can be called 
into question. A growing body of scientific study suggests variations 
in solar radiation and natural climate variability have a leading role 
in climate change. That is a novel idea, that the Sun has something to 
do with warming. A number of the incident studies assessing the impact 
of clouds have even suggested that water vapor feedback is entirely 
canceled out by cloud processes, as global data shows no increase in 
the number or the intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or 
floods, in spite of what they say on the Senate floor.
  Even the IPCC's 2013 report concluded that the current datasets 
indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone 
frequency over the past century. No robust trends in the annual numbers 
of tropical storms, hurricanes--major hurricane count--have been 
identified in the past 100 years in the North Atlantic Basin, but we 
still hear it over and over again.
  When it comes to droughts, the IPCC report indicated that previous 
conclusions regarding global increase trends in drought since the 1970s 
were probably overstated.
  The increasing observations from scientist Craig Idso suggests a much 
reduced and practically harmless climate response to the increased 
amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Further, there are benefits from 
the increase in carbon that have led to a greening of the planet and 
contributed to increased agricultural productivity. Now, this shows 
that the progression that has taken place--the green parts are the part 
where they have an increased amount of CO2 activity.
  The trend is in the annual gross productivity per decade by 
percentage. This is from 1982 to 2011. So you can see the great 
benefits. In fact, many people still remind us, over and over again, 
that CO2 is actually a fertilizer. It helps things grow. But 
these points were kept out of the Obama administration's press 
releases, and the media has been more than willing to go along.
  None of this is surprising. As I have given a lot of speeches on 
climate change, my message tends to be one that the alarmists on the 
far left do not want to hear and do not want to believe, but they have 
been proven wrong time and time again.
  Despite millions of dollars of the Tom Steyers of the world, 
Americans do care about climate change, but it is not high on their 
list. Right now, which I will state in just a moment, some of the 
polling activity that has taken place has surprised a lot of people. 
This is Tom Steyer. We keep hearing about the Koch brothers and other 
people who are putting money in the campaign, but Tom Steyer is the one 
who has said--that was his statement--that prior to the 2014 races, he 
was going to put $100 million in there to elect people to promote such 
things as Obama's plan.

[[Page S1801]]

  The Environment and Public Works Committee last Congress--and this is 
when I chaired that committee--held 10 hearings assessing the 
President's climate agenda, where we heard from a diverse group of 
expert witnesses who testified to the enormous costs, especially for 
low-income minority communities, the economic consequences, the legal 
vulnerabilities, and the miniscule environmental impacts. We had the 
president of the Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford, come to a 
hearing. He was the one who talked about how disproportionate the harm 
is that is done to poor people. He talked about the Blacks and the 
Hispanics who are at risk. I will elaborate on that in just a moment.
  Taking committee action is a further step that Democrats and 
Republicans in both Houses of Congress rejected Obama's and the radical 
left's key climate regulations. Then, in February of last year, the 
U.S. Supreme Court put a stay on the so-called Clean Power Plan because 
they too had significant legal questions surrounding the validity of 
this.
  Well, needless to say, there is a well-documented, substantive 
rejection to Obama's climate actions across the institution designed to 
keep the executive branch in check.
  I have not attended one of the United Nation's climate conferences 
since 2009, when I was kind of a one-man truth squad in Copenhagen. Let 
me mention what this is. The United Nations, they are the ones that 
started the whole thing in the very beginning in talking about global 
warming, talking about all the problems that were out there. We have a 
pretty documented case. In fact, there is a book that was written--I 
will not mention the name of the book--that comes to the conclusion 
that the United Nations was right in the middle of this whole 
discussion as far back as 1972. So what the United Nations does is 
every year they have a big party. This is the big party of the year. It 
is in December. They have had 21 in 21 consecutive years.
  What they do is invite everybody to come in who says that we will 
voluntarily reduce targets for CO2 emissions. Of course, 
most of them who come in are coming in to get some of the billions of 
dollars they say they are going to be distributing. This is really 
interesting because these parties--I can remember one time I was 
talking to someone I know from Benin in West Africa. In fact, the Chair 
knows this individual too. I saw him at one of these meetings. I said: 
Now, you don't go along with all of this.
  He said: No, but this is the biggest party of the year.
  So they have these every year. That is what I think is important for 
people to understand. Anyway, I hadn't gone to any of these since the 
big event in Copenhagen, but the message I carried to the international 
bureaucrats then is exactly what happened: Congress did not then and 
does not now support the radical climate change actions, and the U.S. 
role in any associated international agreement will be limited 
accordingly.
  The outlook for environmental activists and climate change alarmists 
is grim. With the significant losses in the White House, the Congress, 
the Supreme Court, and a persistently skeptical public, their political 
leverage and relevance has dwindled.
  For the past 8 years, the Obama administration and the American 
economy have suffered under the effects of the climate agenda. That era 
is over, and President Trump is already delivering on his campaign 
promises.
  Just a few weeks ago, I was at the White House when President Trump 
signed an Executive order instructing the EPA to roll back the waters 
of the United States rule. This is the rule that would have allowed the 
EPA to regulate waters in the United States. I think most people know 
this has always been regulated by the States, but the true liberals, 
they want to have regulation taking place not by the States but in 
Washington.
  A guy named Tom Buchanan is the Oklahoma Farm Bureau chairman. He was 
talking about all the problems farmers have throughout America, farmers 
and ranchers. The biggest problem they have is overregulation by the 
EPA. Do you know what he singled out as being the most onerous of all 
of these regulations? It was the regulation on water. Of course, I was 
in there when the President did away with that particular rule.
  As I previously mentioned, President Trump has also committed to 
rolling back the Clean Power Plan and its $300 billion pricetag. This 
rule would lead to dramatic increases in energy prices and reduce the 
reliability of the grid. These two rules are examples of major 
expansions of Federal power and a departure from the core functions and 
responsibilities provided by Congress to the EPA.
  The steps taken by the Trump administration will return the rules of 
those agencies to their statutory intent. We have seen great successes 
in our air and water quality based on the EPA operating within its 
statutory limits. I can remember the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air 
Act. Right now, our pollution has dramatically dropped down. This is at 
a time when vehicle miles have actually doubled. So we are doing some 
things that are successful, and I look forward to continuing that 
success.
  That is the end of my prepared remarks. I want to visit just a little 
bit about what is going on and what we have been doing over the last 
quite a few years now. I think it is important. People ask me: What are 
the motives of those individuals who are promoting all of these 
regulations that are on greenhouse gases? There has to be a motive for 
that.
  I suggest, and this will surprise a lot of people, you go back 
originally--and I can remember when Koyoto first came out. Koyoto was 
the first regulation--they tried to get all the countries to join in. 
In fact, that was at a time when Clinton was President of the United 
States, and they were trying anxiously to get this thing--to join in 
the Koyoto treaty.
  The ones who originally were involved in it--and I could go back to 
people who have forgotten about this. The former European Union 
Minister of the Environment, Margot Wallstrom, said: ``Kyoto is about 
the economy, about leveling the playing field for big business 
worldwide.''
  Then the French weighed in; that was President Jacques Chirac. He 
said during his speech at the Hague in November of 2000 that Kyoto 
represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.''
  You know, it hadn't really changed that much. Christiana Figueres was 
the one in charge of the Paris convention that took place where they 
were talking about the great successes they had there, and she said the 
real goal was ``to change the economic development model''--in other 
words, redistribute wealth among the nations.
  So let's keep in mind that is what the original motivation was.
  Then the United Nations weighed in. This goes all the way back to 
1972. In 1972, the United Nations held a conference on human 
environment in Stockholm, Sweden. Fifteen years later, in 1987, the 
U.N. published the report ``Sustainable development: Our Common 
Future.''
  ``Sustainable development'' is a word that they changed--a phrase, 
because it is easier to sell to the public. That was 1987, and then you 
go forward to 1992 and the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They 
announced their intention to pursue sustainable development through the 
Kyoto Protocol.
  It is kind of interesting because Reuters wrote an article in 2012 
that said:

       The ``sustainable'' branding for this year's summit, rather 
     than climate, is by design, said Ambassador Andre Correa do 
     Lagos, who headed Brazil's delegation to the U.N. climate 
     talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in 
     Rio.

  That is behind us now, but this is an article that came out in 2012.

       Sustainable development is an easier sell globally than 
     climate change, even though sustainable development is a way 
     of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he 
     said.

  He said the end goal is not about the environment but about the 
redistribution of wealth.
  Again, if anyone doubts that he was accurate in that statement, the 
Secretary General of the United Nations at that time was Ban Ki-moon, 
and he proposed how the challenges must be addressed. In talking about 
what they were going to do at these annual meetings, he said:

       More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from 
     rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering 
     ``green infrastructure,'' ``climate adaptation'' and other 
     ``green economy'' measures.


[[Page S1802]]


  So there again, after all these years, it is still about the same 
thing.
  Now we go into more science and the different weather events. I 
notice when people come to the floor and they talk about all the bad 
weather and the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the fires and that all 
that is as a result of these events, I would like to remind people that 
George Mason University reported that 63 percent of the weathercasters 
believe that any global warming that occurs is a result of natural 
variation and not human activities.
  Here is another one too. The Democrats will like this because Dr. 
Martin Hertzberg was a lifelong liberal Democrat, a retired Navy 
meteorologist with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. He also declared his 
dissent of warming fears in 2008. This is a quote from this guy. He 
said:

       As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the 
     constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-
     trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to 
     science.
       The global warming alarmists don't even bother with data! 
     All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally 
     out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be 
     false.

  That is coming from a very liberal Democrat.
  So you start looking at some of the things they say are linked to 
CO2. NOAA, the scientists, rejected the global warming link 
to tornado. NOAA said that no specific consensus or connection between 
global warming and tornadic activity exists.

       According to NOAA, hurricanes have been in decline in the 
     United States since the beginning of records in the 19th 
     century. The worst decade for major . . . hurricanes was in 
     the 1940s.

  Journal of Geographical Research: Since 2006, global tropical cyclone 
energy has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the 1970s. 
Global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historic low.
  On droughts, the same thing: Severe droughts in 1934 covered 80 
percent of the country, while the one they talk about in 2011--it was 
just 25 percent.
  On sea level, the Journal of Geographical Research: There is no 
statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise over the past 
100 years.
  Again, these are the people who know, and we are talking about in 
this case the Journal of Geographical Research.
  So enough of that. That is something that is a fact in terms of the 
weather events.
  The other thing I want to mention here, going back to my notes on 
Antarctica, this is kind of interesting because in September, according 
to NASA and the data on the National Snow and Ice Data Center website, 
Antarctic ice hit a new record high in recorded history as it has 
increased to more than 19.4 million square kilometers. That was 
happening in terms of the data center information.
  In January of 2010, Time magazine talked about the Himalayas melting. 
I remember people on the floor of this Senate standing up and talking 
about how the Himalayas are going to melt because of global warming. 
The article in Time magazine said: ``Himalayan Melting: How a Climate 
Panel Got It Wrong.''
  Glaciergate is a black eye for the IPCC and the climate science 
community as a whole.
  Sometimes some humorous things do happen. They were trying to build 
their case back in 2013. This was a research expedition to gauge the 
effect of climate on the Antarctic. It began actually on December 24. 
There was a Russian ship carrying climate scientists, journalists, 
tourists, and crew members for the expedition until it became trapped 
in deep ice up to 10 feet thick. Now, here they were going up there to 
show that things were warming in Antarctica. The whole crowd was 
wanting this to happen. They got stuck in ice. Well, they were stuck 
there for 6 days. Then an Australia icebreaker was sent to rescue the 
ship, but efforts were suspended due to bad weather. On January 2, they 
were still there. A Chinese icebreaker sent out a helicopter and 
airlifted the 52 passengers from the Russian ship to safety on an 
Australian icebreaker. The Chinese vessel was also stuck in the ice, 
along with the Russian vessel. There were 22 Russian crewmembers 
onboard the Russian ship, and an unreported number of crewmembers 
remained on the Chinese ship. Finally, the U.S. Coast Guard came along, 
and they were able to get in there and pull them out. The ship was 
called Polar Star.
  I remember when that happened because they were going there with the 
express purpose of explaining to the world the problems they have in 
the Antarctic.
  OK. Let's talk about bears. You don't get people talking about this 
without dancing out the polar bears and talking about what is happening 
to polar bears.
  It is kind of interesting because when we look at the bear 
populations, they say that in the Davis Strait, they have flourished 
despite the shrinking Arctic Sea ice since the 1970s. In fact, in 2007 
they escalated up to 2,158 bears, and they only had 1,400 in 1993. 
Another way of looking at it is, when Al Gore was born, there were 
5,000 polar bears. In 2005, that number grew to 22,000. Today, there 
are 30,000 polar bears. So don't worry about the polar bears. If there 
is a serious problem there, it is because of overpopulation. But it 
looks so good. It is such good theater to dance out the polar bears and 
say the polar bears are all going to disappear.
  When Climategate happened, I was convinced that this whole issue was 
over.
  I can remember when we had Lisa Jackson before the committee that I 
chaired. This was actually in 2009. In 2009, we had sent over all of 
these people to tell the 192 people at the U.N. meeting in Copenhagen 
that the world was coming to an end, that they needed to all join in 
and sign an agreement on what they were going to do about 
CO2. So the day before I left for Copenhagen, Lisa Jackson 
happened to be in our committee. On tape, with live TV, I asked the 
question--I said: Well, Madam Administrator, I am going to leave town. 
I have a feeling that when I leave town, you will have an endangerment 
finding. For you to get the authority to do something about global 
warming, you have to have an endangerment finding. An endangerment 
finding has to be based on science. What science are you going to use?
  She said: Well, the IPCC.
  That is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is the 
United Nations. They set it up for that purpose.
  So as luck would have it, it happened in a matter of days after that, 
after she said everything is put on the science of the IPCC, the worst 
scandal--some people say the greatest scientific scandal in history--
took place. It took place at the University of East Anglia Climate 
Research Unit located in the UK. It revealed the scientific fraud. They 
have tapes and emails of individuals who were saying: We are going to 
have to rig this in order to come up with some facts to show that there 
is warming taking place.
  These were the scientists of the IPCC. It was such a scandal that one 
of the UN scientists resigned, and he said: The result is not 
scientific.
  Here is a good one. Clive Cooke of the Financial Times 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.

  Then we had Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph say: ``This is the 
worst scientific scandal of our generation.''
  So I had thought that since everything was based on that particular 
science, that would do it in, but it didn't happen.
  If you look at all the damage that has been done in the last 8 years 
by the concentration of all these issues, the defense is one that took 
the biggest hit. A lot of people don't really believe or don't 
understand or don't appreciate what has happened to the defense during 
the time Obama was President. In fact, we have been watching very 
carefully what our new President is going to do to try to undo the 
damage--what I call the disarming of America--the damage that was done 
to our military.
  They will say: Well, wait a minute, the Obama budget for the military 
was the same as the budget was before that, so it isn't any great 
reduction.
  The difference is, they changed the function of the military. How 
many people are aware that despite all of the problems, they wasted 
money on the Green Fleet. Remember the Green Fleet? They were actually 
paying $59 a gallon for biofuel to try to convince

[[Page S1803]]

people that we could use the military to experiment for other more 
pleasing sources. Twelve million dollars for operation and maintenance 
to exercise painting ships, printing hats, and transforming fuel to 
show off the Green Fleet at the foreign military show, and $3.7 billion 
in solar panels and wind power. Why should the military be paying that? 
We have a Department of Energy. As I read the function of Energy, that 
is what they are supposed to be doing.
  Then we have Tom Steyer. The reason I bring this up is because we 
keep hearing about the Koch brothers. And yes, the Koch brothers are in 
production. Their job is to try to find energy to run this machine 
called America, and they have done a very good job of it. But they get 
criticized all the time. So I think it is important that people realize 
that there are a lot of liberal billionaires who have made pledges. In 
this case, this individual, Tom Steyer--I am sure he is a fine guy. He 
actually made a commitment of $10 million personally to try to promote 
the message that Obama had. Here is something interesting that we just 
found out or I just discovered: Even though this man is trying to kill 
fossil fuels, he made his money in fossil fuels. Since 2003, Steyer's 
hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, has played a pivotal role in 
financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal 
production in Jakarta and Sydney. All of this took place under Mr. 
Steyer's tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon. The coal 
mines that Mr. Steyer has funded through Farallon produce an amount of 
CO2 each year that is equivalent to about 28 percent of the 
amount of CO2 produced in the United States each year by 
burning coal for electricity generation. So it is worthwhile to note 
that he now is putting huge investments out to defeat the very people 
who were the source of his wealth.

  The other question I get quite often is, Why aren't more people 
talking about this? I have made an accumulation of various threats. 
There are two groups of people out there. We have those who are for the 
whole program that President Obama had, and they are the ones who are 
questioning and talking about the various science, and then we have 
threats coming from people such as James Hansen, who said that these 
are ``high crimes against humanity.''
  Robert Kennedy, Jr., said: ``This is treason and we need to start 
treating [people] as traitors.''
  Barone: ``The warmists have `a desire to kill heretics'--Calls for 
capital punishment for `global warming deniers.' ''
  So it is not fun, and there are a lot of threats out there. If they 
don't have logic on their side and don't have science on their side, 
then the threats are what people use.
  We talked about cap-and-trade legislation. They tried for a long 
period of time to get legislation through, and when that didn't work, 
we might remember the first bills that were introduced were the McCain-
Lieberman bills in 2003, 2005, and 2007. The first of those bills was a 
cap-and-trade bill that was defeated in this Chamber by 43 to 55. Two 
years later, they tried it again, and it was defeated by 38 to 60. Each 
year, the margin went up. President Obama came along and decided: Well, 
if we can't pass this stuff through legislation, let's do it by 
regulation. So we had cap-and-trade regulation.
  I have already talked about going to Copenhagen after Obama, Pelosi, 
Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry had gone there to a big United Nations 
party in 2009 and went with the idea of convincing everyone that we 
were going to pass legislation over here, and, of course, we didn't do 
it.
  In 2010, Japan under no uncertain terms refused to extend the Kyoto 
Protocol. They dropped out when they said: If we don't have India and 
China, we are not going to be a part of it. Canada finally went 
through. Canada was one of the first countries to join in on the Kyoto 
Protocol, but they dropped out in 2011 and 2012.
  That brings us to the Paris party that they had. They tried to make 
it look as if it was a success, when in fact it was a miserable, dismal 
failure. Our President said that we would reduce our CO2 
emissions by 27 percent by 2025. Obviously, we couldn't do it. We even 
had a committee hearing asking how were we going to do that? We had the 
EPA in, and they admitted that it couldn't be done.
  Then they talked about the commitment that China made at the Paris 
conference. China has actually produced more--this diagram gives you an 
idea of where China is going. They are building a new coal-powered 
generation plant every 10 days, and they are not about to try to 
restrict their CO2. They said: Ok, we will do it. Let us 
increase our CO2 emissions until 2025, and then we will 
agree that we will do a waiver. That is the extent of the regulations 
that have not worked.
  The polling and the truth are coming out. The polling is now 
different than it was at first. I can remember when global warming was 
one of the first--either in first place or second place in the polls as 
to the dangers that face America. Look at the polling today. The FOX 
News poll last week said that 97 percent of Americans don't care about 
global warming when they stacked it up against terrorism, immigration, 
healthcare, and the economy.
  The Washington Post-ABC News poll just found that fewer Americans 
think climate change is a serious problem.
  On March 12, 2015, the Gallup poll said that climate change came in 
dead last of national problems of concern to Americans. Shortly after 
that, the Gallup poll did their annual environmental survey, and global 
warming came in dead last in terms of environmental issues--15th out of 
15 concerns. So I am stating that the people of America have caught on. 
It is something that people are aware of now.
  When we stop, look, and think about the cost of the Clean Power Plan, 
that is what this whole thing is about. I think that tomorrow the 
President is going to come up with a plan to do away with the Clean 
Power Plan. The compliance costs would be between $29 and $39 billion a 
year, up to $292 billion over 12 years with double-digit electricity 
price increases in 40 States. It would be an absolute disaster, and it 
is not going to happen.
  What is worse than that is not just the cost but how it is hitting 
the most vulnerable people. Harry Alford, who is the president of the 
National Black Chamber of Commerce, found that the proposed Clean Power 
Plan would increase Black poverty by 23 percent, Hispanic poverty by 26 
percent, reduce Black jobs by 200,000 and Hispanic jobs by 300,000, 
with a cumulative job loss of 7 million for Blacks and nearly 12 
million for Hispanics by the year 2035. I have to state also that the 
National Energy Assistance Directors' Association found that high 
energy costs force seniors to forgo meals, medical care, and 
prescriptions in order to comply.
  I am very proud of the President. He is keeping his commitment. He is 
not going to allow our most vulnerable citizens to be taxed, and I 
thank him for his help.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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