[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 182 (Wednesday, November 8, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7093-S7094]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of William Wehrum

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the Senate has, actually, already 
considered Bill Wehrum to be the Assistant Administrator for Air and 
Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency, who is the person in 
charge of the rules to administer the Clean Air Act at the EPA. This 
person has already been considered, and the Senate decided that he was 
not right for the job.
  Over 10 years ago, President Bush nominated Mr. Wehrum to head the 
Office of Air and Radiation at the EPA. He was rejected because his 6-
year record as an employee at the EPA told the Senators all that they 
needed to know. As the ranking member, Jim Jeffords, put it at the 
time: ``Mr. Wehrum's disdain for the Clean Air Act is alarming.'' If 
you disagree with the foundational Federal law that we use to keep our 
air clean, then it is hard to believe that you can competently lead the 
EPA's efforts when it comes to protecting our right to clean air. A 
decade later, nothing has changed. Mr. Wehrum has done nothing that 
should change our minds about his ability to lead the EPA.
  This, of course, is part of a pattern. This administration continues 
to nominate anti-science, pro-pollution, climate-denying people to lead 
the U.S. agencies that are in charge of science and climate.
  Scott Pruitt has denied a century's worth of established science and 
basic facts that say that climate change is real, urgent, and caused by 
humans. He now leads the No. 1 Federal Agency that is charged with 
working on climate change.
  Then there is Jim Bridenstine, who hopes to lead NASA, which is one 
of our Nation's top science agencies. He, too, is still on the fence 
about climate change.
  Meanwhile, 13 Federal agencies, including the EPA and NASA, just 
published a dire report that reads that greenhouse gases released by 
human activity are to blame for rising temperatures and severe weather 
throughout the world.
  This is why Mr. Wehrum should not go any further. It is really very 
simple. Our own government scientists say that climate change is real, 
urgent, and caused by humans.
  If you do not want to take their word for it, here in the United 
States in this year alone, a record number of category 4 hurricanes 
killed dozens of people and destroyed or damaged entire communities in 
the southern United States and Puerto Rico. Wildfires killed dozens of 
people and burned more than 8.4 million acres in the Northwest. 
Droughts lasting for months wiped out farmers' crops and forced 
ranchers to sell livestock in the Midwest. The city of Seattle had soot 
on cars from the wildfires. For a period, the State of Montana, 
depending on where you were, looked like it was literally on fire.
  The U.S. Forest Service's budget is soon to be more than 50 percent 
firefighting. This is supposed to be the Forest Service for the 
conservation and management of our forests, and now it is the Federal 
firefighting of our forests. There have been 15 severe weather events 
this year that have resulted in losses exceeding $1 billion. That is 
what insurance companies and reinsurance companies consider to be the 
threshold. They consider a big event--a catastrophic event--from an 
insurance standpoint to be a $1 billion event. We had 15 of them this 
year in the United States. In the past 10 years, the U.S. Government 
has spent more than $350 billion in helping communities recover from 
severe weather, and that is before our getting through with the various 
and necessary disaster supplemental budget requests that are coming 
down for Florida, Houston, and Puerto Rico.
  Look, severe weather is a reality or whatever you want to call it. If 
you feel uncomfortable politically calling it ``climate change,'' fine, 
but severe weather is actually already happening. It is now a moral 
issue, and it is a fiscal issue. It has taken a huge toll on our 
economy, on the American taxpayer, and on local communities. For the 
most part, we do not budget for

[[Page S7094]]

these costs because we have decided that these are one-time events, but 
they just happen to be one-time events that are occurring more and more 
frequently and that are costing more and more.
  Because of the leadership vacuum that Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump 
have created, States and cities and the private sector have been 
stepping up so that the United States can stay on track to cut carbon 
emissions and fight climate change. Yet the Federal Government still 
has a responsibility here, not just a moral responsibility but a legal 
one, for the climate will keep changing, the costs will keep rising, 
and more and more people will feel the effects. Instead of stepping up 
so that our Federal debt does not balloon and our coastlines do not 
erode and our security is not threatened, this administration keeps 
nominating people like Mr. Wehrum to deny that climate is an issue and 
that the government ought to act.
  Throughout his career, Mr. Wehrum has demonstrated antipathy for the 
very laws that he is now going to be tasked with upholding. When he 
held this position in an acting capacity in the 2000s--in other words, 
he was filling in until he was confirmed but was never confirmed--he 
was sued dozens of times for not doing his job. Time and again, the 
courts found that, in fact, he was putting special interests over 
science and over the public good. This is not just a rhetorical 
statement. These are 27 times that Mr. Wehrum lost in court for 
exceeding his authorities under the law.
  Here is where he kept getting specifically into trouble. Mr. Wehrum 
is a former lawyer for the very industries that the EPA regulates--
chemical companies, utility companies, the auto industry. This is the 
experience that he relied on while he worked at the EPA, which is fair 
enough so far, but when the Agency started working on a rule that 
regulated pollution from powerplants, Mr. Wehrum took language from his 
former law firm--again, which represented powerplants--and gave it to 
the EPA to put into the rule. In other words, the EPA did not look to 
experts and scientists to decide how best to regulate powerplants; it 
looked to the powerplants' lawyers.
  Mr. Wehrum's job was to protect clean air and public health, and he 
failed at that job by siding with special interests over that mission. 
The courts actually stepped in 27 times, and he lost 27 times. One case 
went all the way to the Supreme Court under Mr. Wehrum. The EPA said 
that it did not have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide from 
automobiles, but under U.S. law, the EPA must regulate all emissions 
that are damaging to human health and welfare, and the Supreme Court 
has acknowledged that carbon pollution fits that description.
  Just to be clear, under the EPA's responsibility to administer the 
Clean Air Act, the EPA does not just have the authority to regulate 
carbon emissions; it has the obligation to regulate carbon emissions. 
In other words, anything that is airborne that causes harm to people, 
to public health, must be regulated. The EPA does not simply decide 
which of these airborne pollutants must be regulated; it has to 
regulate all of those pollutants that cause damage to public health. 
Clearly, carbon fits that category on a commonsense level, but the 
Supreme Court also decided that. There have been more intense storms, 
as we have seen from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and others, that 
are certainly bad for human health and well-being, and the Supreme 
Court has agreed. The EPA has the authority and the obligation to 
regulate these greenhouse gases.
  We do not need to go through this again. Mr. Wehrum has already shown 
that he is not the right leader for the EPA. He will not commit to 
taking the necessary steps to address severe weather. He will not fight 
for clean air. He will fight for his former clients. This is not an 
accusation. It is based on exactly what he did when he was in the same 
position. It is the reason the Senate rejected him 10 years ago.
  With this kind of information in front of us, there is no way we can 
put Mr. Wehrum back in charge of the office that is tasked with 
regulating carbon pollution, not when we are facing a planetary 
emergency, not when the fiscal and human costs of inaction are so 
clear. The EPA needs leadership that understands the crisis we are 
facing and that understands and is willing to do everything in its 
power to address it. Mr. Wehrum has clearly demonstrated that he is not 
the right person for this job. I will vote no on this nominee, and I 
urge my colleagues to do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GARDNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  There will now be 30 minutes of debate, equally divided between the 
leaders or their designees.
  The Senator from Colorado.