[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 59 (Thursday, April 12, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2106-S2110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



            Nominations for the U.S. Department of Education

  Mr. President, I would like to speak about nominations for the U.S. 
Department of Education and the approval of them or, I should say, 
their lack of approval.
  It is no secret that Democrats in Congress hate President Trump. For 
months, they have held up his nominees for key positions in the 
government. This strategy may serve in their hatred of President Trump, 
but it is harmful to our country.
  One example is the nominee for the Federal Railroad Administration, 
whose nomination was held up for months after he had been approved 
unanimously by the committee of jurisdiction for his appointment in the 
Federal Government. As a result, there have been multiple fatal crashes 
in the railroad system--Republicans were on a trip when one of them 
occurred--that may have been prevented had there been leadership on 
that railroad commission.
  We have a sense that there can be a consequence to this kind of 
unremitting ``whatever Trump proposes we are going to oppose, no 
matter, just because it is Trump'' when folks die in railroad 
accidents. I will note, after the last set of fatalities, that hold was 
lifted, and the nomination was allowed to proceed.
  Sometimes it is not so clear that damage has occurred from this kind 
of ``whatever Trump proposes we shall oppose.'' In multiple cases, it 
involves the Department of Education. One example is the nomination of 
BG Mitchell ``Mick'' Zais for Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department 
of Education. President Trump nominated General Zais in October 2017. 
It has been over 6 months since his nomination, and we still do not 
have a Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education.
  General Zais is qualified for the position. He served as South 
Carolina's elected State superintendent of education, the president of 
Newberry College, and as a commissioner on South Carolina's Commission 
on Higher Education. He also served his country honorably and 
faithfully as an infantry soldier in the U.S. Army for 31 years--again, 
retiring as a brigadier general.
  A little known fact about the general is that he is dyslexic--an 
issue I care passionately about that affects 20 percent of our Nation's 
population. He knows firsthand of the struggles of one with dyslexia 
and how, with the proper evidence-based resources, our children with 
dyslexia can learn to read and have as successful futures as any other. 
Ensuring children with dyslexia have the resources they need to succeed 
is a legislative priority for me and also will be for General Zais, as 
he indicated, when he is finally confirmed.
  Democrats have imposed 30 hours of debate on nominees they support by 
forcing cloture votes. They have forced more cloture votes in the first 
year of the Trump administration than in the entire first terms of the 
last four Presidents combined. These delay tactics have consequences 
for the rail system just as they do in the education of our children. 
It is a tragedy that Democrats are blocking or playing games with our 
children's futures.
  One example--and it is not a very good example, not good for those 
affected--is with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or 
NEPA, which released its Nation's Report Card. The results show that 
our Nation's children have not made gains in reading and math. In 2017, 
nationally, only 40 percent of fourth graders were considered 
proficient in math, and only 36 percent were reading at grade 4 levels.
  This is unacceptable. If a child learns to read in grades 1, 2, 3, 
after that, he or she reads to learn, and if one can't read by the 
fourth grade, one may never be able to read to learn as effectively as 
one needs in order to succeed in today's economy. Democrats hate Donald 
Trump so much, they would rather risk a child not learning to read than 
to have their future prospects dimmed and easily approve a Trump 
appointee.

  Mr. President, the time is now to stop the obstruction. Let's put our 
Nation's children's educational needs first and confirm the remaining 
nominees to serve at the U.S. Department of Education.
  This is not about Donald J. Trump; this is about the children of our 
country who, if they don't learn to read or do math proficiently, will 
have a future that is less than it should be, and that should be a 
bipartisan concern.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rarely rise three times in the same day 
to give a speech. This is a special day for me and maybe for the 
Senate. But I want to assure my colleagues that the concerns many of us 
have been expressing about the current chaos at the Environmental 
Protection Agency and the nomination of Andrew Wheeler--the person who 
could predictably replace the EPA Administrator--are not ours alone. 
Editorial boards around the country, including those from newspapers in 
Republican-leaning States, are expressing concerns regarding EPA 
Administrator Scott Pruitt's recent slew of ethical lapses--it would be 
charitable to call them lapses. It is these failings by Mr. Pruitt that 
Andrew Wheeler will be expected to address if he is confirmed by the 
Senate.
  I can assure the citizens of all these States, the editorial boards 
of all these papers, and all my colleagues that the Environment and 
Public Works Committee has not considered the nomination of Andrew 
Wheeler with these ethical failings in mind. Mr. Wheeler has been 
nominated to serve as the individual who will oversee day-to-day 
operations of an EPA currently in chaos. We have had no opportunity to 
ask Mr. Wheeler about the Administrator's questionable behavior, nor 
have we had a chance to ask him how he plans to right a ship that has 
so clearly lost its way.
  I am sobered but not shocked to read what people who have their 
fingers on

[[Page S2107]]

the pulse in their communities have to say about the current leadership 
in the Environmental Protection Agency. It is truly maddening and 
deeply sad to see the indictments on an agency that we in Congress have 
vested with the responsibility of protecting our children, supporting 
our elders, and ensuring a world in which we and all the life around us 
can thrive.
  What are newspapers around the country saying about the leadership of 
the Environmental Protection Agency these days?
  As a kid growing up in Virginia, I never read the Virginian-Pilot in 
Danville and Roanoke. This is what they said in Virginia through a 
newspaper called the Virginian-Pilot on April 6, 2018, about a week 
ago. The headline of the editorial is ``EPA's Pruitt a terrible 
choice.''
  They said:

       Short of nominating an actual oil derrick or a landfill to 
     the post, President Donald Trump couldn't have done worse 
     than tapping Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental 
     Protection Agency.

  They went on to say:

       And yet, it's unlikely that his sinister approach to 
     managing the EPA will be Pruitt's undoing. Rather, it's 
     almost certain to be a comparatively banal brand of 
     corruption that is infuriatingly commonplace in the highest 
     echelons of the Trump administration.

  The editorial goes on to say:

       Having a director of the Environmental Protection Agency 
     wholly uninterested in protecting the environment is a 
     national embarrassment, and Americans deserve much better 
     than the worst option available.

  The next quote comes from Charleston, WV, and it is from the West 
Virginia Gazette-Mail. It is focused more on a favorite Presidential 
theme.

       Donald Trump campaign crowds loved to chant ``Drain the 
     swamp!'' But if ever there was a political swamp creature, 
     it's Scott Pruitt, the man Trump picked to head the U.S. 
     Environmental Protection Agency.

  On the issue of favoring his fellow Oklahomans on the EPA staff, the 
Charleston Gazette-Mail editorial continued:

       Despite the White House telling him not to give large 
     raises to two employees--

  I think one raise was $29,000 and another was $56,000 per year--

     --who followed him from Oklahoma, Pruitt did it anyway. He 
     used a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act that's 
     supposed to let the EPA hire experts quickly in an emergency, 
     not give taxpayer-funded raises to political lackeys.

  Nor did the Administrator's security concerns pass muster. The 
Charleston Gazette-Mail went on:

       Pruitt is clearly very worried about his security; he has 
     tripled the size of his security detail, and is the first EPA 
     administration to have 24/7 security--again, at taxpayer 
     expense. That security detail includes some EPA agents who 
     would otherwise be investigating environmental crimes, rather 
     than protecting their snowflake boss.

  Those are the newspaper's words, not mine.
  The editorial goes on to say:

       Pruitt's predecessors, Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson--who 
     were demonized repeatedly by West Virginia politicians, among 
     others--flew coach, with a much smaller security presence.

  The Charleston Gazette-Mail editorial concludes:

       There are many reasons why Scott Pruitt shouldn't be 
     leading the EPA, primarily that he doesn't seem to believe in 
     science and is more interested in helping big business, 
     than, you know, protecting the environment. But his 
     obvious belief that taxpayer money and resources are given 
     to him for his personal benefit is a big reason, as well.

  Let's go down to Texas. The Houston Chronicle weighed in on this. I 
don't know if we have a poster on this one, but here we go. This is 
what they said at the Houston Chronicle on April 6, this month. The 
headline of the editorial is ``The time has come for EPA Administrator 
Scott Pruitt to resign.''
  It reads in part:

       On the next episode of the Trump administration's reality 
     show, the latest character the President needs to vote off 
     the island is Environmental Protection Agency Administrator 
     Scott Pruitt.
       Indeed, it's hard to figure out how Pruitt has survived so 
     far into this season. The host of this show says he wants to 
     drain the swamp, but the EPA boss is so deep in the muck, he 
     could play the creature from the Black Lagoon.

  The Houston Chronicle concluded:

       So Pruitt seems destined to become the next character cut 
     from Trump's chaotic reality show. Dropping this bad actor 
     can't happen fast enough.

  Even in Mr. Pruitt's home State, some people are fed up with his 
antics. The Tulsa World editorialized in this way--this was on April 6. 
The title is ``With a controversial agenda, EPA Administrator Scott 
Pruitt must live above suspicion.''
  In part, the editorial reads:

       Some of the latest accusations are embarrassing. He should 
     have known better, and he may pay a heavy consequence for 
     them.

  The paper goes on:

       From his first day in office, Pruitt has been under the 
     microscope of scrutiny from those who disagree with the 
     president's thinking on environmental issues. If that's not 
     entirely fair, it also should have been obvious to Pruitt 
     that he would have to live a life that was above suspicion. 
     In ways that have nothing to do with money, he couldn't 
     afford to fly first class.

  The second Oklahoma newspaper, the Edmund Sun, had more particular 
advice for the President, along these lines:

       Donald Trump has never needed help miring himself in 
     controversy, and that was true before he ever moved into the 
     White House. But he could do himself a favor, and gain some 
     begrudging respect from detractors, by drop-kicking Scott 
     Pruitt to the curb.
       The fact that he defied a White House decision should by 
     itself make Pruitt ripe for termination. Staffers and Cabinet 
     members far more ethical than Pruitt have been shown the 
     door. Trump should cut him loose, and get rid of the rope and 
     the scissors he used to make the snip.

  Under the best of circumstances and even in the most accountable 
administrations, consideration of a nominee to serve as EPA Deputy 
Administrator is a huge responsibility for this body. As the Miami 
Herald rightly points out, this is no normal circumstance and surely 
not a normal EPA that Mr. Wheeler would enter. He would have to be 
ready for a job that none of us can say at this time that he is ready 
to tackle--cleaning up a huge mess at EPA.
  The Miami Herald notes:

       The flurry of ethical questions surrounding Environmental 
     Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is now a 
     blizzard. The emerging picture is of a chief environmental 
     officer not only fighting a war on science as he promotes oil 
     and gas interests but also arrogantly betraying the public 
     trust.

  The Miami Herald concludes:

       Time and again, Trump has accepted arrogance and 
     incompetence on his staff as long as loyalty remains beyond 
     question.

  Meanwhile, in Akron, OH, in its editorial entitled ``Deep in the 
Swamp at the EPA,'' on April 8, the Akron Beacon Journal notes that 
some folks in the White House knew just how bad Scott Pruitt was.

       John Kelly showed the right instinct.

  John Kelly is the Chief of Staff.

       According to news accounts, the White House chief of staff 
     advised President Trump that Scott Pruitt, the administrator 
     of the Environmental Protection Agency, needed to step down 
     in view of his ethical misdeeds and spending excesses.

  The Beacon Journal concludes:

       Scott Pruitt should go. This isn't about policymaking, 
     dismaying and damaging as the direction of the agency has 
     been. The problem is his conduct in office. Pruitt has abused 
     the public trust, in the way he has spent taxpayer dollars, 
     in the perception he invites.

  Apparently, Mr. Pruitt is not showing folks in the Show Me State what 
they want to see in an EPA Administrator either. In an editorial on 
April 7, 2018, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said:

       There are many good reasons why President Donald Trump 
     should fire Scott Pruitt as administrator of the 
     Environmental Protection Agency. Top on our list are his 
     multiple failures to do his job protecting the environment. 
     He's gone so far as to say that if global warming is real, it 
     might be a good thing.

  Do you know what. I wholeheartedly agree with the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch.
  In conclusion, I share these editorials because I think they 
illustrate the situation that Mr. Wheeler will face should he be 
confirmed, and that is a very difficult situation. As the No. 2 person 
at EPA, Mr. Wheeler will be responsible for fullfilling the Agency's 
mission and doing so in a way that earns, once again, the public's 
trust. There is a long way to go to regain that trust, and Mr. Wheeler 
will have a Herculean task in front of him to help the Administrator do 
so, should he be confirmed today.
  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.

[[Page S2108]]

  

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to voice my opposition to the 
nomination of Andrew Wheeler to be Deputy Administrator for the 
Environmental Protection Agency.
  The Senators standing up this afternoon to fight this nomination are 
not just opposing Mr. Wheeler. We are trying to shine a light on the 
fact that this administration has one of the worst environmental 
records in history. And you don't have to take my word for it because 
this unprecedented assault on our Nation's bedrock environmental laws 
has drawn strong criticism from former Democrat and Republican 
Environmental Protection Agency Administrators.
  The American public overwhelmingly supports the laws and regulations 
that protect our air and water. And my constituents don't buy the false 
trade-off between protecting the environment and jobs. To them they 
come hand in hand. The facts on the ground have proven that these are 
red herring arguments.
  There are so many examples of how this administration's disdain for 
science has led them to try to undo decades of progress on the 
environment. I want to focus on three issues that are particularly 
damaging and serve as an indication of why Mr. Wheeler's nomination and 
record are so troubling.
  First is the example of Mr. Wheeler lobbying on behalf of fossil fuel 
interests. My concern is that Mr. Wheeler would have a prominent role 
in reviewing the air pollution rules that govern coal plants, rules 
that he got paid millions of dollars to help attack.
  A number of press reports have exposed how one of Mr. Wheeler's 
biggest lobbying clients, Murray Energy, was a driving force behind 
Secretary Perry's ill-considered resilience proposal. That proposal 
ignored the Energy Department's own staff report and was an attempt to 
try to say that coal was the only reliable source of energy for the 
electricity grid, which would have forced citizens to pay more on their 
utility bills. They said that is a wrong conclusion. And it was a 
transparent attempt to try to prop up one of the administration's 
favorite energy sources, which really would have made everything more 
expensive for consumers and certainly would have changed the focus of 
what we need to do to decarbonize our energy system.
  But the biggest problem here was how the proposal would have hit 
consumers, as I said, with billions of dollars in added costs. Bailing 
out old coal plants wasn't just bad policy; it was a breathtaking raid 
on consumer pocketbooks. The regional grid manager found that the 
Secretary's proposal would nearly double the cost of wholesale energy 
in the Nation's largest electricity market.
  Fortunately, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously 
rejected this proposal. But if Mr. Wheeler comes to EPA as the No. 2, 
what other misguided proposals like this are they going to propose or 
try to fight, even though the science within the own agencies says they 
are wrongheaded? How much time will we have to waste exposing these bad 
ideas? We should instead be making investments in policy and 
infrastructure that will help us be more competitive in the future.
  I am also troubled by the administration's backward view on how the 
United States can achieve so-called energy dominance by focusing more 
on coal. In my assessment, the days of this strategy are numbered.
  Selling away our cheap natural gas to foreign buyers. Or eking a 
little more life out of our grandfathered coal plants. Or drilling, as 
the administration has proposed, in every part of the United States and 
off our shores, is not the way to be competitive for the future. I am 
concerned that Mr. Wheeler holds and will support these backward views.
  When he was criticizing the Paris Climate Agreement, he called it a 
``sweetheart deal'' for China because it gave them a manufacturing 
edge, but he really got it backwards.
  That is because China itself has been investing in renewable energy. 
By 2040, it will have invested over $6 trillion in clean energy 
technologies, according to the International Energy Agency. China also 
adopted a 5-year solar energy plan calling for 105 gigawatts of solar 
capacity by 2020. They have proposed an aggressive stance moving 
forward, and I want to make sure that U.S. companies who have great 
technology get a fair crack at making investments there and 
particularly in the area of energy efficiency, which is already 
accounting for about a $2.2 trillion investment in 2016.

  So we know that we can move forward on a cleaner energy economy, and 
we want to know that we have the leadership that are going to support 
this critical transition. I am perhaps most troubled that, during his 
confirmation hearing, Mr. Wheeler refused to acknowledge the 
indisputable reality that humans are the cause of dangerous 
accumulation of greenhouse gases.
  The fact that greenhouse gases are going to warm our planet and cause 
acidity in our oceans is something my State knows well.
  In Washington, climate change has serious consequences for human 
health and our economy. Climate change has resulted in extreme weather 
patterns, putting lives and property in danger. It has impacted water 
quality, and it has caused other impacts to our salmon and shellfish 
industries, big parts of our seafood economy. Climate change has 
created drought conditions, has jeopardized our farm economy, and it is 
even changing the chemistry of Puget Sound.
  Mr. President, responding to climate change is more than just an 
environmental issue. It is an economic imperative.
  Senator Collins and I requested from the Government Accountability 
Office an analysis about the full costs of climate change.
  That is because, after seeing how it impacted us with fires, how it 
impacted our shellfish industry, how it impacted so much of our 
coastline, we wanted to know how much climate is costing taxpayers. 
Well, the GAO report said it will cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion 
in the next 10 to 15 years.
  So I know that Mr. Wheeler thinks this may not be part of his day 
job, but rolling back strong environmental laws that help us move 
forward will put us further and further behind and cost us billions of 
dollars more than we need to be paying.
  We need to uphold these critical environmental standards and laws 
that protect our clean air and clean water so that we can make 
progress, so that we can diversify our economy, and so that we can make 
the right investments.
  I believe Mr. Wheeler is the wrong choice for this position. I think 
he is the wrong person to help us meet those standards.
  We need a Deputy Administrator who isn't there trying to just jam 
coal down the throats of American consumers and businesses, but rather 
advocating for the next generation of Americans, who will need to be 
able to compete and compete in a cost-effective way.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no on Andrew Wheeler to be 
the Deputy Administrator at EPA.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, in Federalist Paper No. 76, Alexander 
Hamilton wrote that it was the job of the Senate to ``prevent the 
appointment of unfit characters.'' That is certainly the mission for 
which we have responsibility today--to make sure that the unfit 
characters do not have roles of power and influence within our 
government.
  Andrew Wheeler, the nominee who is before us for the No. 2 job at the 
Environmental Protection Agency, raises a series of questions and 
concerns related to whether or not he is fit for office. This is a man 
whose entire career working for the fossil fuel industry stands in 
direct opposition to the mission of the Environmental Protection 
Agency--a mission to protect the health of the American people and the 
well-being of our planet.
  At such a volatile moment for the EPA, when the Agency is plagued by 
scandal, ethical misbehavior, and pandering to polluters, this 
nomination deserves the closest of scrutiny. After all, it is quite 
possible that, before long, whoever fills the role of No. 2 at the EPA 
could be acting in the No. 1 spot.

[[Page S2109]]

It is clear that Andrew Wheeler is not fit to be that person.
  When President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection 
Agency in 1970, he recognized that we all share ``a profound commitment 
to the rescue of our natural environment, and the preservation of the 
Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.''
  For more than 47 years, the EPA has worked under Democratic 
Presidents and Republican Presidents to protect our natural environment 
and preserve our planet as a habitable and hospitable place. That has 
included controlling toxic and poisonous chemicals, improving air and 
water quality, and enhancing vehicle efficiency and emissions control. 
The list of EPA's accomplishments goes on and on, but it can be summed 
up like this: Americans value clean air. Americans value clean water. 
Scott Pruitt does not, and Mr. Wheeler does not.
  Administrator Pruitt has turned his longstanding disdain for the EPA 
into a crusade to destroy it. Think about the hard work of protecting 
our air and our water. There is a lot that goes into that. You can 
think about the equivalence of constructing a house. You need to have 
somebody who knows the foundation, knows the plumbing, knows the 
wiring, knows the carpentry, knows the drywall, and knows the roofing. 
You have to combine all of that with someone to get the windows 
installed right and the insulation installed right. It is a lot of work 
to create a structure that protects our air and water from the 
thousands of chemicals that can do it harm, but it only takes one 
person to knock down that carefully constructed house--one person, one 
wrecking ball.
  Scott Pruitt is that wrecking ball in the EPA, knocking down the 
carefully constructed work of decades of efforts by some of the 
Nation's leading scientists and most dedicated team members.
  There is a lot of frustration among those dedicated scientists, and 
700 employees have left or have been forced out. Critical clean air and 
clean water regulations have been stalled or left in limbo. Enforcement 
of existing regulations has virtually disappeared. Regionally, EPA 
offices have been routinely stripped of the power to investigate, while 
advisory committees that have usually been made up by scientific, 
objective individuals are now being filled with industry shills. To put 
it bluntly, under Scott Pruitt, the EPA is conducting a war against 
clean air and clean water. This is really a shameful situation, and 
that is just the policy side.
  Then we have the ethical side. There is the Administrator's desire to 
waste our taxpayer money on $40,000 private phone booths, first-class 
travel, and swanky accommodations; the Administrator's determination to 
retaliate against those who have pointed out the restrictions that he 
is violating; and an Administrator who has increased the salaries of 
his friends in an unapproved fashion. There is little to think that any 
of this would change with Andrew Wheeler in either the No. 2 or No. 1 
position.
  It starts with the fact that neither man takes seriously the profound 
threat to our planet from carbon pollution. I believe that these 
individuals are smart, that they actually know the enormous damage that 
carbon pollution is doing to our planet.
  After all, it is hard to miss. You can see it this last year in the 
ferocity of Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey. Why were they so 
fierce? Because 90 percent of the heat produced by climate chaos was 
trapped by the oceans, and that hotter ocean energizes the storms to a 
higher level of impact. You can see them in the forest fires that raged 
in Montana, across Oregon, and down into California. Year after year, 
the fire season is longer and fiercer. There are more forests burned.
  You can see it in the insect population. You can see it in the 
mosquitoes that carry Zika. You can see it in the success of the pine 
beetles, when it is too warm to kill them in the winter. So they do 
great, and the trees don't. You can see it in the oysters that now have 
to have the water in which they are born be artificially buffered 
because it is now too acidic for baby oysters.
  And why is it too acidic? Because the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide 
from the air, creating carbonic acid.
  It is hard to miss. It is hard to imagine when you see the ocean, 
where so much carbonic acid has been placed through our ocean through 
polluted air that it has changed the acidity of the ocean, but that is 
exactly what it has done.
  Now, the EPA does a lot of wonderful work under a normal 
administration, be it Democratic or Republican. It tracks greenhouse 
emissions. It works on money-saving regulations, like renewable fuel 
standard programs. It conducts analyses to compare different policies 
to see which one would be more effective and what the range of impacts 
would be. It conducts world-class research on the science. It partners 
with States and local communities and governments on efficiency and 
renewable energy. But that is under a normal administration and a 
normal Administrator. There is no partnering now. It is just simply the 
wrecking ball.
  Scott Pruitt said scientists disagree about the extent of global 
warming in connection to the actions of mankind. Actually, NASA has 
very precise estimates or recordings of the changes in the carbon 
dioxide in the atmosphere and the temperature changes that are 
occurring from that.
  You can find people, primarily those who are funded by the fossil 
fuel industry, who dispute that and sow confusion. It is certainly the 
strategy of the fossil fuel folks, who are choosing their greed over 
our planet. They are selling out America, and those who shill for them 
are selling out America.
  They say: Well, you know, out of 100 scientists, we can find 2 or 3 
who disagree. Well, how often do you have somebody who goes to 97 
doctors and have them say: You have cancer. And they say: Oh, but, 
wait; I can find one doctor somewhere. If I pay them enough, they will 
say I don't have cancer, and then I am healed--except that they 
wouldn't be healed and they would soon be dead.
  In Oregon, we have seen the impact on the Klamath Basin, the worst 
ever droughts time after time over the last 15 years. Talk to the 
people in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin 
Islands, whose communities were devastated by last year's hurricanes.
  In the last 10 years, the time I have been in office, we have seen 
half the coral reefs around the world either die or be deeply damaged--
in the time since I was elected in 2008. As to the fact that our 
economists have calculated the monetary terms of damage for the United 
States from last year's storms and fires to be well over $300 billion, 
the fact that quality of life would be profoundly affected by the 
movement of diseases, the fact that the moose are dying in New 
Hampshire and lobsters are migrating north from Maine, none of that 
matters because these folks keep coming back and saying: You know, it 
is just not clear what is happening. It is not even an understanding of 
the basic scientific principle. Really? That is just such a lie.
  As far back as 1959, Edward Teller, the eminent scientist, was 
warning folks in the petroleum industry. When he gave his speech at the 
100th anniversary of the petroleum industry, he said: ``First of all, 
these energy resources will run short as we use up more and more of the 
fossil fuels.'' True enough, it turns out that there is a lot more than 
anyone thought in 1959. But then he said, second, that it turns out 
that carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels has a big problem.
  You can look through it and you can't smell it so it doesn't seem 
like a pollutant, but it turns out it traps heat. He proceeded to say 
that would be a big problem because it would melt ice in the world and 
raise the sea levels and that would flood our cities. He didn't have 
all of the science that has been generated since 1959, but he had a 
basic understanding of the physics of the problem.
  What have we seen? We have seen, from that time until now, a 25-
percent increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that is a big 
deal. So we have seen, year after year, it become hotter and hotter. In 
fact, 2015, 2016, and 2017 were the three hottest years ever recorded. 
In fact, 17 of the 18 hottest years on record occurred within the last 
18 years. Yet these individuals stand up and say: Do not worry. Be 
happy. There is no problem.

[[Page S2110]]

  But there is a big problem, and putting folks whose bread is buttered 
by the fossil fuel industry in charge of clean air and clean water is a 
colossal mistake for our Nation.
  Mr. Pruitt's association with the fossil fuel industry is well 
documented. He went as far as to send a letter to the EPA on his 
stationery accusing regulators of overestimating how much air pollution 
energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in Oklahoma were 
causing. The letter was written almost word-for-word by a company, not 
by a scientific expert, nor did it have input from scientific experts.
  This type of cozy relationship has continued throughout his tenure at 
the EPA. Take, for instance, his efforts to stall or eliminate 
regulations, delay implementations of new ones to help polluters at the 
expense of the health, safety, and livelihood of millions of Americans. 
He has issued a memorandum saying the regional EPA offices first have 
to seek permission from headquarters before investigating polluters, 
investigating violations, or requesting information. So he has sought 
to really completely stop the investigation into malfeasance and 
misconduct damaging our environment--all to help his associates who are 
in private industry.
  The list goes on and on.
  We see the same thing with Mr. Wheeler working so closely as a 
lobbyist for the same fossil fuel industry; specifically, Murray 
Energy. How can you say an individual will enforce the rules when he 
represents the industry? That is the challenge.
  Our U.S. President said he was going to drain the swamp, but Scott 
Pruitt is the swamp. He is the person who is proceeding to fail to 
enforce our clean air and clean water laws. He is the person who is 
stopping his team from investigating violations. He is the person who 
is allowing his friends to have their pay increased, or actively 
working to increase their pay, when it is outside of the regulation. He 
is the person wasting our taxpayer money in all kinds of ways that have 
been documented, from security details to trains of cars blowing lights 
so he can get someplace in the city 5 minutes faster, violating the 
rules; demoting people who try to hold him accountable--every possible 
ethical and professional violation.
  The nominee before us is a straight backup to that kind of 
misconduct. He should absolutely not be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. 
He should not get a single vote from a single Member here because the 
American people want the rules on clean air and clean water enforced. 
So let's vote for enforcement.