[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 144 (Monday, August 9, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6186-S6189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ORDER FOR ADJOURNMENT

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come 
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned 
under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Wyden and 
Senator Whitehouse.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oregon.


                               H.R. 3684

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, as we have just heard, thankfully, 
instruction is almost complete on the infrastructure bill. Once 
infrastructure passes, it is on to the budget resolution, which lays 
the foundation to pass Build Back Better this fall.
  The Senate Finance Committee is immersed in this effort. For several 
months, we have been working with members of the committee on a host of 
proposals that are included in the resolution. These proposals stem 
from essential American priorities, making it easier to support a 
middle-class family, lowering the cost of healthcare, and addressing 
the climate crisis.
  When you focus on those key priorities, you build a stronger, more 
fair economy and create good-paying jobs. There is going to be a lot to 
say about these issues in the hours and days ahead. Tonight, I will 
take just a few minutes to discuss the Finance Committee's work and why 
the policies are so important. I will begin with support for American 
families.
  For decades, typical working families in Oregon and across the land 
have felt that it has gotten harder and harder for them to climb the 
economic ladder. The cost of housing and education have shot into the 
stratosphere. Yet wages have largely been stuck on the launch pad.
  Despite being the best-educated generation in history, young people 
working in America today earn less on average than their parents did at 
the same age. It ought to be easier to raise a family in America. That 
is why Democrats created the monthly child tax credit expansion as part 
of the American Rescue Plan.
  The new program, as our colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, has said, 
is Social Security for America's children. Too many kids have been 
growing up in poverty--or very, very close to it. The expanded child 
tax credit is cutting child poverty by more than half. But so far, it 
has only been funded for a year. With this resolution, Democrats are 
going to lock in the longest extension possible. Children and parents 
need help, and they need the certainty and predictability of a long-
term extension.
  Together with the help of the HELP Committee, the Finance Committee 
is also leading the way for a comprehensive national paid leave 
program. This sort of program is long overdue, and there will be a 
special focus on our efforts--the HELP Committee and the Finance 
Committee--on making sure that it is equitable so that workers of 
modest incomes can afford to take paid leave, too.
  Every family in American needs reliable income and a roof over their

[[Page S6187]]

heads. Tragically, affordable housing is in short supply, and as the 
pandemic proved, it takes just one big economic jolt to put millions 
and millions of Americans out of work.
  As part of this resolution, the Finance Committee is working on 
financial support for America's renters, as well as funding for new 
affordable housing. The challenge of affordable housing is no longer 
just an issue for a handful of big cities. It is a nationwide concern 
that needs creative big solutions.
  The Finance Committee is also zeroing in on worker training and 
making America's unemployment insurance more reliable and resilient for 
those in America who are laid off through no fault of their own.
  Having enough affordable housing, job training, and support for those 
workers is an economic win-win--good for families, good for businesses 
who rely on the strength of the American workforce.
  I am going to turn now to healthcare. Democrats have promised to 
allow Medicare to negotiate a fair price with Big Pharma. As the 
chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I intend to make good on that 
promise. Americans have been getting clobbered at the pharmacy window 
because Big Pharma holds all the power over drug costs.
  With the help of Republicans, Big Pharma is now engaged in classic 
hostage taking. They say, We decide the prices you pay or the pipeline 
for innovation gets shut down
  That is just not a reasonable proposition. Big Pharma doesn't need to 
treat Medicare and American taxpayers like their own private ATM, and 
we don't need that in order to develop the next blockbuster drug.
  We also intend to build on the bipartisan work the Finance Committee 
has already done in the last Congress: fighting back against drug 
company price gouging, strengthening the Medicare prescription drug 
benefit, protecting seniors with an out-of-pocket maximum for their 
medications. Lifesaving medications shouldn't be sending anybody in 
America into bankruptcy.
  We are also going to be updating the Medicare guarantee for the 
modern era. The Finance Committee has already put a lot of work into 
updating the program, particularly to helping seniors with chronic 
conditions. That now makes up the bulk of the program--cancer, 
diabetes, heart disease, strokes, COPD. We have made a lot of headway 
there.
  The next update is giving seniors access to a dental, vision, and 
hearing benefit because those also are crucial to the health of 
America's elderly.
  Back in the days when I was a codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers, 
we said Medicare was just half a loaf. It didn't address those 
concerns. Now we have the opportunity to make sure those essential 
benefits are available for seniors.
  Now, President Biden has called for major investment in home- and 
community-based care. And this is another priority for the Senate 
Finance Committee. We have been led in this effort by our colleague 
from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, and I have been pleased to assist him 
with that effort.
  And I believe the distinguished Senate majority leader has a question 
that he would like to pose.


                           Order of Business

  Mr. SCHUMER. It is not a question. I would just ask the Senator to 
yield for 30 seconds so I might inform the Members. I have been getting 
questions.
  After we finish on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, we will move 
immediately to proceed to the budget resolution with reconciliation 
instructions and expect to move to vote-arama shortly thereafter.
  I yield the floor


                               H.R. 3684

  Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague for that timely information.
  Madam President, as I was saying, the Better Care Better Jobs Act, 
led by Senator Casey, really fulfills another dream that goes back to 
those Gray Panthers days. We know that America's most vulnerable would 
always prefer to get quality care at home, where they can be with loved 
ones. And yet this country really hasn't fulfilled that dream. Our 
legislation for seniors and for those with disabilities will give those 
individuals a long overdue opportunity to get good quality care at home 
and raise the work wages for the crucial workers who provide this 
frontline care.
  In this resolution, Democrats will also push to expand on the success 
of the Affordable Care Act. Already this year, the Congress expanded 
middle-class tax credits for health insurance on a temporary basis. We 
wish to make that permanent.
  Finally, more than a decade after the Affordable Care Act became law, 
there are still holdout Governors who have chosen to deprive vulnerable 
people in their States of access to Medicaid. Finance Committee 
Democrats are leading the effort to close that coverage gap.


                             Climate Change

  I want to briefly touch on our work on energy and climate. Life for 
Oregonians this summer--and virtually every summer--has become about 
record-high temperatures and recordbreaking wildfires. Over one weekend 
last month, temperatures outside my house in Southeast Portland were at 
108, 110, and then up to 116. And, unfortunately, I just learned that 
we are headed for another big, severe hit in terms of weather starting 
tomorrow and going through Saturday.
  It has gotten so bad that I have been spending time on the phone over 
the last few days trying to use a section of our CHRONIC Care Act, 
which allows Medicare Advantage plans to cover services essential for 
the elderly that didn't used to be considered healthcare, like air 
conditioners. And we are getting a good response from the plans. They 
know because we are seeing story after story--just another one 
yesterday--about seniors, often seniors who own their own homes but 
haven't been able to get the air filters and the air conditioners and 
the like.
  That is what we are faced with now this week in my home State. That 
is on top of the severe drought. And that kind of heat adds fuel to the 
mega-infernos that we have been seeing.
  Now, the Congress has to act to prevent the worst most catastrophic 
outcomes of climate change, and the linchpin of the Finance Committee's 
effort to tackle climate is the Clean Energy for America Act.
  The Finance Committee passed this earlier this year, and for the 
Finance Committee, this is the most dramatic proposal passed from the 
committee in more than 100 years--more than 100 years. And I am pleased 
to see climate's most vigorous champion on the floor here, our friend 
from Rhode Island. What we did, with the Senator from Rhode Island's 
help, is we took the 44 tax breaks in the Federal Tax Code for energy 
and we put them in the dustbin of history--gone, over, lights out--and 
we substituted, instead, one for clean energy, one for clean 
transportation fuel, and one for energy efficiency.
  And then we said for America going forward, we will have a tech-
neutral free-market system for energy tied to one very clear measure; 
and that is, if you are a renewable energy program or you are a fossil 
fuel program, if you reduce carbon emissions--that one standard, 
reducing carbon emissions--you are eligible for the tax reductions in 
the Senate Finance Committee's proposal.
  The proposal also makes electric vehicles more affordable to middle-
class families and boosts clean energy manufacturing in everything from 
semiconductors to solar components.
  An independent analysis of the Finance Committee's energy plan said 
it would help create more than 600,000 jobs, and I just believe it 
would be a catastrophic mistake to pass that up in order to protect the 
status quo. The status quo is an outdated system that basically cuts 
special taxpayer-funded checks every year to these powerful interests--
these oil and gas firms. So we are going to talk a lot more about 
climate in the days ahead, and I think it is very fitting that Senator 
Whitehouse is here.
  I will close by way of saying that the proposals that I have just 
outlined would be paid for under what we have focused on by restoring 
fairness to the Tax Code. I know there has already been some discussion 
on the floor of the Senate about how these proposals will be paid for. 
We will have a lot of discussion about it, but it sure takes chutzpah 
for the Members who spent $2 trillion on the Trump tax handouts to

[[Page S6188]]

the megacorporations and wealthy to come over to the Senate floor and 
say it is the Democrats who are fiscally irresponsible.
  Senate Democrats in the Biden administration have been working on a 
number of changes that can help pay for the proposals in this 
resolution. That includes making sure megacorporations, which are 
paying less today than they have in decades--are required to pay a fair 
share. It includes legislation to close the carried interest loophole 
for private equity executives and legislation to close other loopholes 
abused by wealthy investors. And Democrats made a promise that nobody 
who earns less than $400,000 per year pay more in taxes, and we are 
going to stand by that. In fact, the expanded child tax credit is the 
largest tax cut for working-class and middle-class families in decades. 
And we have proposed as well to cut taxes for Main Street small 
businesses from one end of the country to another.

  Now, the Republican position has been something else. Their position 
is that megacorporations and those at the very, very, very top of the 
economic system, basically, shouldn't pay one penny in taxes. That is 
unfair. It is wrong. And the American people know it.
  We are going to have a lively debate on the resolution, and I am 
pleased to be able to stand up with colleagues to make the push, to 
make the fight for making it easier to support a middle-class family, 
lowering the cost of healthcare, addressing the climate crisis, and 
building a stronger, more fair economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am delighted to follow my 
distinguished chairman on the Finance Committee as he gives assurances 
about our important work on climate change.
  The majority leader has announced that the final vote on the 
bipartisan infrastructure package will be tomorrow at 11 a.m., and we 
will then roll into the rather ignominious spectacle of the Senate 
known as vote-arama. What vote-arama does, however, it allows us to go 
to budget reconciliation, which allows us to pass measures with a 
simple majority.
  We should do that bearing in mind what just came out--the latest IPCC 
report on climate change. It is getting increasingly dire. The IPCC 
report uses words like ``unequivocal,'' ``unprecedented,'' 
``irreversible.''
  Unequivocal is the link between fossil fuel pollution and the climate 
damage we are doing to our oceans and atmosphere--unequivocal.
  Unprecedented. We talk about unprecedented around here if it hasn't 
happened in a decade. They talk about unprecedented across many 
centuries or many thousands of years. We are undoing the basic 
operating systems of our planet as humankind has come to know them.
  Irreversible means, for some of this, there is no going back. We were 
warned and warned and warned. We ignored it and ignored it and ignored 
it, and now we are in it. We can make it less bad, but parts are 
irreversible. As one United Nations spokesman said, this is red alert 
for humanity.
  It doesn't take the IPCC or the U.N. or the universities in our home 
States or our environmental community to tell us this. All we have to 
do is look around. Look at the wildfires that are tearing through the 
West. Senator Padilla was here earlier today talking about what is 
going on in California.
  Here is a report from California, from the head of the Plumas 
National Forest, its supervisor:

       We are seeing truly frightening fire behavior, I don't know 
     how to overstate that. We have a lot of veteran firefighters 
     who have served for 20, 30 years and have never seen behavior 
     like this, especially day after day, and the conditions we're 
     in. So we really are in unchartered territory around some of 
     these extreme, large fires and the behavior we're seeing.

  That is the report from the front of the wildfires. But we are not 
just in unchartered territory with wildfires; we are in unchartered 
territory with respect to flooding. Here is what we are predicting in 
Rhode Island. Right now, this is the northern part of my State. 
Everything you see here that is a bright-blue color, that is land right 
now. People live there. People have businesses there. People have 
recreation there. There are things that people do that are part of 
their lives there, and it all disappears under current predictions of 
sea level rise. It disappears
  This is a place called Warwick Neck. It becomes Warwick Neck Island. 
This is a place called Poppasquash Point. It becomes two little islands 
off of Bristol, and Bristol becomes its own island. Barrington gains 
sort of the Barrington Great Salt Lake in the middle of it, and now you 
have an island along what is now Barrington's southern coast. We stop 
being Rhode Island, and we become the Rhode Island Archipelago. That is 
a big change, and if I can stop it, I am going to.
  Drought. You have seen the pictures of the western lakes at alltime 
lows, and the dependence of those Western States on water is acute. The 
hurricane cycle we are already in has warnings about how serious the 
coming hurricane season is going to be.
  If you step down to God's creatures, you have manatees that are dying 
in unprecedented numbers in Florida. Off the northwest coast, in the 
Pacific Ocean, you have the humble tetrapod, a tiny, small oceanic 
snail that just happens to be a big part of the bottom of the ocean 
food chain. Half of the tetrapods sampled have severe shell damage 
because of ocean acidification, which is happening because the ocean 
absorbs carbon dioxide, and it turns acidic when it happens. I have 
proven that little experiment from this desk early in the morning once.
  Our Atlantic fisheries are all in flux, all moving. Our Connecticut 
and Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts lobster fisheries pretty 
much collapsed. Species that farmers didn't used to see are now turning 
up in our waters.
  There were these horrible stories about the heat that Chairman Wyden 
spoke about. Small birds get so disoriented in the heat as fledglings 
that they jump out of their nests to get away and then, of course, 
become prey and incapable of getting back to their nests on the ground. 
And birds generally and insect populations generally are crashing.
  We think about this very often in terms of looking back at what we 
have been through, and we are told over and over again and we know from 
our own experience that this past year has been the worst in the last 
10 years or the last 20 years across all of these measures. But I want 
you to think about this. Yes, it has been the worst year in the last 10 
or 20 years, but here is what else we know and here is what the IPCC 
report warns us: It is the best year of the next 10 or 20. This is 
getting worse, period--end of story. We can slow down it getting worse, 
and we can slowly turn it around, but the disasters we are seeing now 
are child's play compared to what is coming.
  So action is now necessary, and thankfully, our timing is such that 
we have a reconciliation measure starting tomorrow that gives us the 
tools to take action. We have to do this now, and unfortunately, we 
have to do this alone.
  There are three sad facts about our predicament. One is, we can't 
count on Republicans. If we lose the House next year, as people are 
predicting, to gerrymandered States, we are done getting serious about 
climate because we know perfectly well that since the Citizens United 
decision, no Republican has gotten on a serious climate bill in the 
Senate--not one. It used to be bipartisan.
  John McCain ran for President on a climate plan that was very good. 
There were three or four different serious climate bills kicking around 
before Citizens United. But then Citizens United came. Unlimited money 
came. The fossil fuel industry used unlimited money, and they shut down 
the Republican Party on climate.
  They said: We are tolerating no dissent any longer. You are all going 
to line up and do as you are told. If you don't do what you are told, 
we will do what we did to Bob Inglis--take him out in a primary. And if 
you do as you are told, we will send boatloads of dark money to throw 
into elections through super PACs.
  You have a party that is hip deep in fossil fuel money and has a 
decade--a lost decade--in which it would do nothing serious about 
climate. So, unfortunately, and to the great sorrow of my friend John 
Warner, who passed away recently, and John McCain and others who worked 
hard before this when the Republican Party was less dependent

[[Page S6189]]

on fossil fuel money, unfortunately, we have to do it alone.
  We can't count on the fossil fuel industry to mend its ways. They 
have been at a decade of lying. They built this, an entire web of 
phony-baloney front groups all paid for with fossil fuel money--in the 
hundreds of millions, billions of dollars--to put out fake science, to 
hide who they are behind the dark money, behind these front groups. 
They ran an enormous corrupt scheme to fool Americans and block 
progress here in this building so that they could keep polluting. And 
now we are supposed to count on them? No way.
  They still haven't come clean about their years of funding denial, 
and they won't come clean. Guess why. Because they are still at it. 
Their CEOs will say one thing at a press conference, but this machine 
of disinformation and obstruction--this machine is still funded, and it 
is still rolling. So you can't count on the fossil fuel industry to 
change its ways.

  Third, unfortunately--and I really hate to say this--you can't count 
on corporate America. They are full of great statements. CEOs go to the 
business roundtables, and they go to the Climate Leadership Council, 
and they go to C2ES. They join series and talk about their support for 
climate and how it is urgent and how they support carbon pricing. But 
when it comes to the levers of power here in this building, forget 
about it. They have built the most powerful lobbying and electioneering 
apparatus in our country's history. Trade association after trade 
association, business group after business group--not one has been 
switched on to do anything about climate.
  By the way, when it is a CEO giving a press conference in New York, 
but that trade association is saying nothing or ``Don't do it,'' guess 
who people listen to here in Washington. They listen to that trade 
association. They know what greenwashing is, and they know when 
corporate America is serious. At this moment, no major trade 
association is taking any interest in climate action.
  The chamber of commerce--nothing. They are embroiled in a long 
conversation with members of theirs who are fed up with their climate 
denial, but they have done nothing.
  The National Association of Manufacturers--also nothing. They were 
recently the two worst climate obstructers in America. Have they 
changed their direction? No. Now they are just climate obstruction 
light, climate obstruction 2.0.
  Look at API, the American Petroleum Institute. This one is pretty 
funny. They come out and they say they support carbon pricing. They are 
going to support putting a cost on pollution, on greenhouse gas. And 
then we come out of the Budget Committee and we announce, as Leader 
Schumer did, that we are going to actually price methane, another 
greenhouse gas--an even more potent greenhouse gas and actually kind of 
a dangerous one--so, uh-oh, suddenly it looks real. Somebody might 
actually price methane. And what did API to? Came out against it.
  Now, you tell me how you can be for pricing a milder greenhouse gas 
in order to help address climate change but against pricing an even 
more toxic chemical to help solve climate change. It makes no sense. 
The only way you can reconcile those two things is with the statement 
of the Exxon lobbyists that the only reason the industry is talking 
about carbon pricing is because it doesn't think it is going to happen. 
It is another fake. It is another scheme. It is another denial and 
obstruction--in this case, probably 5.0.
  The American Bankers Association. You read from central banks around 
the country warnings about the economic crash that is going to happen 
if we don't get ahead of the climate problem. Those are the central 
banks' warnings, but what did the American Bankers Association have to 
say to us? Nothing.
  Insurance companies are screaming about the risks that they are 
facing now from worse hurricanes, worse flooding, worse droughts, worse 
wildfires; claims going up, difficulty anticipating what risks are, and 
hard-to-price insurance. Yet where is the American Insurance 
Association? Silent.
  Freddie Mac has warned us that there is going to be a coastal 
property values crash as those sea levels rise and, as you can predict, 
that that home is going to be literally under water in the 30-year 
mortgage period, not just figuratively under water--so no mortgage, no 
insurance, no market; hence, our property values crash.
  And where is the Realtors Association? Where are the American Home 
Builders? Silent.
  The American Beverage Association. Oh, Coke and Pepsi talk a really 
big game. What is the American Beverage Association doing on this? 
Nothing.
  And all those big barons out in Silicon Valley are represented by a 
group called TechNet. A year ago, they didn't even mention climate 
change in their lobbying materials. They didn't even mention clean or 
renewable energy, and they have clean and renewable energy companies in 
their membership.
  So we cannot count on corporate America to take climate change 
seriously here, where a solution is needed. So this is on us.
  And I will tell you, we intend to--I intend to--meet the moment. And 
there are those out there who will grouse and complain. And to you, I 
say: Too damned bad. You have had years to help, and you did nothing or 
worse. So you have lost your right to complain.
  But under pressure of the facts and the realities of what is going on 
around us, under pressure of the warnings about this being 
irreversible, unequivocal, and unprecedented, we are going to act. We 
are going to act.
  And I don't want to hear your complaining because you had a decade to 
come in and try to do something about this and you shirked your 
responsibilities for a decade, you funded trade associations that were 
doing nothing, you funded these creepy front groups that were attacking 
us on climate change. So you lost your right to complain.
  And in the next 6 or 7 or 8 weeks, as we go through building this 
reconciliation instruction, we aren't just going to address climate 
change, we are not just going to do more than has ever been done 
before; we are going to get on a safe pathway for this country and for 
the planet.
  Because I will tell you, ``more than we have ever done before on 
climate'' is a pathetically low bar because, for a decade, thanks to 
the fossil fuel industry and its web of denial and its control over the 
Republican Party, we have done nothing on climate.
  So we have got a lot of catching up to do. Reconciliation gives us 
the chance to do it. I pray to God that we meet the moment.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________