[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 164 (Thursday, October 17, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S5856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              S.J. RES. 53

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on one final matter, this week, I 
have been discussing how Washington Democrats have sought for 3 years 
to effectively nullify the Trump Presidency. They have tried to cancel 
out the voters' decision in 2016 and dodge the consequences of 
Secretary Clinton's defeat whether it be through the 3-year-old 
impeachment parade that the House Democrats have been leading or 
through the unprecedented delays and obstruction that has been visited 
on the President's nominations here in the Senate.
  Well, our Democratic colleagues will today mount yet another effort 
to fire up the time machine. They want to move forward with legislation 
that would undo a major regulatory reform success story of the Trump 
administration's and reopen the Obama administration's disastrous War 
on Coal. Specifically, they want to try and revive the so-called Clean 
Power Plan, which is a dangerous, misguided policy that the Trump 
administration has rightly done away with. We will be voting on this 
resolution later today.
  The basic facts haven't changed since this job-killing scheme was 
first put forward back in 2014. This relic of the Obama administration 
would have further buried the producers of affordable American energy 
under a mountain of stifling redtape. It would have created overlapping 
local, State, and Federal standards, unrealistic compliance deadlines, 
and would have set up a Washington bureaucracy that would effectively 
root for American energy to fail. It is no wonder, by one analysis, 
that 125,000 jobs would have been on the chopping block had President 
Obama gotten his way.
  The workers in my State know better than anyone the true costs of the 
last administration's misguided War on Coal. Kentucky workers know what 
happens when plants that create jobs and generate affordable 
electricity at the same time are simply shut down.
  That is why I have been proud to lead the fight in ending the 
regulatory War on Coal. It is why I wrote every Governor in the country 
in 2015 and raised my concerns about the Obama administration's 
dangerous Clean Power Plan scheme, because, even today, nearly 3 years 
into an administration that is not at war with American energy, 
Kentucky miners continue to feel the effects of the previous 
administration's policies.
  We also know that the full effects of the Clean Power Plan would have 
stretched far beyond coal country. The ripples of this harmful proposal 
would have been felt across the country by Americans in paying their 
power bills.
  One independent report predicted that consumers in 40 States, 
including Kentucky, would have seen double-digit percentage increases 
in their electricity costs, and by the Obama officials' own admissions, 
the proposal would have hit low-income and minority communities the 
hardest. Let me say that again: Low-income and minority populations 
would have been hit the hardest by the double-digit electricity bill 
increases in four out of every five States. That is quite a rap sheet 
for a Federal policy.
  In a nation in which carbon emissions have already been trending 
downward, this proposal would have sold off our economic edge to 
overseas competitors whose emissions are, actually, steadily climbing. 
It would have taken the legs out from under American job creators while 
some of the world's leading polluters would have continued to roar 
right past us. It would have literally shipped our economic 
competitiveness to places like China and India.
  Here is how experts estimated the effect of all of this self-
inflicted economic damage on the climate: a one one-hundredth-of-1-
degree difference by 2050. Here is the impact estimated to have 
happened if it had gone forward--a one one-hundredth-of-1-degree 
difference by 2050. Think how deeply you would have to be in the grip 
of leftwing ideology for that trade-off to sound like a good deal for 
American families.
  Today's effort to revive this bad policy is being pushed by the same 
Senate Democrats who, overwhelmingly, could not bring themselves to 
vote against something as absurd as the Green New Deal back in March. 
Unfortunately, we know there is a considerable appetite among Democrats 
to inflict huge economic harm on American workers and American families 
just so we can better comply with this new green religion.
  But here is the good news for my constituents in Kentucky and for 
hard-working Americans across the Nation: Senate Republicans are on the 
case, and we will not let far-left fashions take precedence over the 
common good of our country.
  The American people have elected an administration and a Senate 
majority that trusts workers and job creators, not Washington 
bureaucracies. We have spent years cleaning up the mess of 
overregulation that the Obama era has left behind, and we will continue 
to stop the Democrats from reenacting that damaging history.
  So I would urge all of my colleagues to join with us today and oppose 
these efforts to nullify a Presidency and take us backward.
  Let's vote to keep this ill-conceived, leftwing policy on the shelf, 
where it belongs.

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