[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 129 (Tuesday, August 2, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3843-S3845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. CARPER. Madam President, the Republican leader knows I am a huge 
fan of his. Every Thursday, we gather, along with Senator Gillibrand, 
we gather in a Bible study, bipartisan Bible study. Most people think 
we would never pray together, read the scripture together, much less 
agree on anything, but we do that every week. We agree on a lot of 
things. In this one area, I am afraid we don't see eye to eye, as he 
knows.
  As a leader prepared to lead the floor, I just want to remind us all 
of this: Two weeks ago, the United Kingdom broke its record for the 
highest recorded temperature multiple times, reaching a high of 105 
degrees Fahrenheit. How high is that? They don't

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have air conditioning in most places of England. They don't have air 
conditioning--105 degrees. Airport runways that week were melting in 
the United Kingdom. Railways in the United Kingdom were buckling from 
the heat, with riders warned to stay home.
  Over 1,100 people that week died in Spain and Portugal from heat-
related causes. Wildfires in France forced about 30,000 people to 
evacuate. Organizers planned to pour--listen to this--tens of thousands 
of gallons of water on the course of the Tour De France big bicycle 
race in order to keep the road from melting. And more than 40 million 
people in the United States are under extreme heat warnings across, in 
our country, the Great Plains and California.
  Something like 60 million Americans will likely see temperatures at 
or above 100 degrees. Last week, they actually did, as I understand it. 
Nearly 60 percent of California has been dealing with excessive drought 
while 20 percent--20 percent--of Texas experiences exceptional drought, 
the most extreme level on the drought scale. Firefighters continue to 
battle huge wildfires across the United States--12 States, no less--
wildfires as big as my State of Delaware.
  The reason why we have put together legislation that actually 
addresses these tale of horribles is because it is getting worse. The 
scientists and people who we look to for advice on stuff like this say 
it is not going to get better any time soon; it is going to get worse.
  In Louisiana, you know what they lose from sea level rise every 100 
minutes? They lose a piece of land the size of a football field. I will 
say that again. In Louisiana, they lose a piece of land to the sea the 
size of a football field--not every 100 days, not every 100 weeks--
every 100 minutes.
  Something is happening here, and I think what it is, is exactly 
clear. There is way too much carbon in the air. The question is, What 
are we going to do about it? And there is something that we can do 
about it that not only addresses the climate crisis so these young 
pages sitting down here will not only have a planet to live on, but 
some day, they will have kids and grandchildren, and there will be a 
planet for them as well. That is why we have to do something.
  Here is the good thing about the PACT Act that we will be voting on 
later this week. It is paid for. Larry Summers--the former Secretary of 
Treasury, former president of Harvard, renowned economist--basically 
says this package is not only balanced in terms of its budgetary 
effect, but in terms of its effect on inflation, it is actually 
counterinflationary.
  The idea that somehow the IRS would get more money to do their job, 
let me say this: I have been on the Finance Committee for a number of 
years here in the Senate. Every couple of years, we have the 
Commissioner of the IRS come before us. I don't care if it is a 
Democrat or Republican administration. They beg us to provide resources 
for the IRS so they can do their jobs.
  The people that actually get audited the most are actually poor 
people. Folks that get audited the least are wealthy people, maybe the 
big corporations. The IRS needs resources. They need human beings; they 
need folks with the right skills; they need the kind of technology--
they want to do their jobs. If they do that, they can collect hundreds 
of billions of dollars, not by raising taxes but by making sure people 
are paying their fair share of taxes. That is what we are really trying 
to do with this legislation. It is paid for. It actually works against 
inflation.
  It helps people, particularly people who happen to be older and 
actually need access to pharmaceuticals. The legislation we have 
actually says if you happen to be a senior citizen and you are on 
Medicare Part D for the drug program, there is no way you are going to 
pay over $2,000 in a year--no way. Today, you pay a lot more than that. 
We put a cap on that.
  But by the same token, as a Senator from a State where we actually 
have a big interest in biopharmaceuticals--our whole area, including 
Philadelphia, New Jersey, and so forth--we don't want to kill the goose 
that lays the golden egg. We want to make sure they are still 
successful. We don't want to stifle innovation in the biopharmaceutical 
world. This legislation does not do that. It does not do that.
  It does say with the jobs for which there is no competition, there 
has to be some cap on the ability to raise the price of those drugs. I 
think it is common sense. I think it is common sense.
  Some of us have heard the term ``unforced error.'' My detractors have 
sometimes said: I am guilty of making an unforced error. If truth were 
known, we all make unforced errors. Our Republican friends made an 
unforced error here. What they have done is they chose--because of 
their anger or unhappiness with the agreement with Senator Manchin and 
Senator Schumer to move forward and address climate change in a way 
that is paid for and actually adds to economic job creation--they were 
unhappy and, unfortunately, they, apparently, took their anger out on 
the ability for us to move to legislation that actually helps the 
veterans deal with injuries they suffered in their lives from being 
exposed to toxic substances from these burn pits around the world.
  I know a little bit about the military. I am the last Vietnam veteran 
serving in the U.S. Senate. We had a bite out of this apple in 
Southeast Asia in the Vietnam war. It was called Agent Orange. It was 
called Agent Orange, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were 
exposed to Agent Orange. But a lot of folks in American service, men 
and some women, as well, were exposed. They had all kinds of maladies. 
And later on, they had questions that we are thinking about: Are we 
going to make sure you are eligible for care from the VA and don't have 
to pay for all of it out of their pocket? We have done that and, I 
think, in a very appropriate way. We did it decades ago. I am 
privileged to be a supporter of that, as were many of our colleagues, 
Democratic and Republican.
  We have a different kind of situation, but it is a similar situation 
in that we have a bunch of veterans who served in places like 
Afghanistan and other places where they breathed air that was toxic. It 
is not their fault. And later on, they became sick. The question is, 
What do we do about it?

  The veteran service organizations have been very angry at our 
Republican colleagues. I am glad our Republican friends have come back 
and said: We realize we voted to derail the PACT Act to help veterans 
from these burn pit injuries. We realize we maybe shouldn't have done 
that. We all make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes.
  I am the only Democrat I know in this body who ever quotes Richard 
Nixon. Richard Nixon used to say that the only people who don't make 
mistakes are people who don't do anything. Think about that. That is 
pretty good, huh? The only people who don't make mistakes are people 
who don't do anything.
  They made an unforced error. They voted in a way that was not 
consistent with their interests and not consistent with the interests 
of veterans, of which I am one.
  They have an opportunity here--I will say this in a spiritual tone 
here--they have an opportunity to atone for their sins, and my hope is 
they are going to do that.
  I hope at the same time as we do that, we will keep in mind this list 
of horribles that just went down--going on in the face of the Earth 
just a week or 2 ago. We have to do something about it. It is real. We 
have to do something about it. Time is not on our side. Time is not on 
the side of these young people here who are like 16, 17 years old.
  I have one last point here. I am going to go back to what some people 
say--I am privileged to chair the Committee on Environment and Public 
Works. We have jurisdiction over clean air, clean water, climate 
change, roads, highways, bridges, water, sanitation--a bunch of stuff, 
good stuff. As a result of that, we have the opportunity to write 
legislation that hopefully addresses a real cause, a real problem.
  One of the problems we found in climate change is the biggest source 
of carbon dioxide, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions comes 
from the cars, trucks, and vans that we drive, the vehicles that we 
drive. That is the biggest source. There used to be--as Senator 
Gillibrand knows--a bank robber, Willie Sutton. He used to rob a lot of 
banks. He finally got caught. He was dragged into court, and

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at trial, the judge said: Mr. Sutton, why do you rob banks?
  Your Honor, I rob banks because that is where the money is.
  One of the reasons why we want to encourage people in this country to 
buy vehicles that don't spew out a lot of greenhouse gases is because 
that is the biggest part of where our emissions are. Thirty percent of 
greenhouse gases in this country come from cars, trucks, and vans. We 
want to encourage people, as they are ready to buy a new vehicle, to 
consider an electric vehicle.
  One of the things that I really like about the bill that we are going 
to be debating later this week is, we actually encourage people to buy 
not just the new, expensive vehicles, but to buy used electric 
vehicles. So the middle- and lower-income people who may not be able to 
afford a new electric vehicle, they can buy one. If they want to be 
good to the planet, kind to the planet, they can buy a used one. We 
provide a modest tax cut for them.
  The tax cuts, I might add, in the bill that we will take up later 
this week are a lot more modest than they were originally. I think that 
is a good thing.
  Again, we all make unforced errors. I know I have, and I believe--I 
say this lovingly--our Republican colleagues made a big one, and I 
think they regret it. They have the opportunity to do something about 
it and to do the right thing.
  Let's do that. Let's do the right thing by veterans, and let's move 
on. And then later this week, we will take up another challenge, and 
that is, how do we save this planet and make sure that my kids, my 
grandchildren, our grandchildren, have the opportunity to have a planet 
that is worth growing up on?
  I yield the floor.

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