[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 79 (Monday, May 12, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2853-S2857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Energy
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today, Donald Trump's Department of Energy
announced the largest deregulatory effort in the Department of Energy's
history, with 47 regulations in the Department of Energy slashed in one
fell swoop in the name of freedom on the same day that the House Ways
and Means Committee proposed to slash clean energy tax credits and just
a few days after the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed to
destroy critical programs that reduce hazardous air pollution in
exchange for fast-tracking dirty fossil fuels.
This isn't one big beautiful bill, as Donald Trump calls it; it is a
big billionaire bailout--that is what this whole thing is about--and
the only freedom this announcement guarantees is the freedom to
pollute, overcharge, and mislead the American people.
So let's be clear. These attacks are not common sense. These attacks
on energy policy--on the environmental policy of the United States--is
not common sense; it is nonsense which they are trying to sell. They
are not about choice; they are about giving fossil fuel corporations
and manufacturers a license to pollute on the one hand and to be
profiteers on the other. This is not deregulation; it is the
desecration of decades of bipartisan progress on public health and on
the truth.
Republicans are willing to throw $420 billion in clean energy
investments and 400,000 jobs in red and blue States right down the
drain. This would be a disaster for our economy and good-paying jobs.
What does that look like in action? Well, let's just go through it.
Let's go through what they are doing.
By the way, Chris Wright is the Secretary of Energy, and Chris Wright
says: Well, I am a reasonable man.
And he seems like a very likable person. But, in fact, Chris Wright
is a radical. He is an absolute, outright radical, trying to destroy
the clean energy future of the United States. So while he says he
believes in all of the above, we know he is an oil man; he is a gas
man. He really believes in oil above all, not all of the above. That is
for sure.
Chris Wright, with his radical, anti-capitalist attack upon the clean
energy future of the United States is absolutely destroying our ability
to be able to compete with China in the clean energy sector for the
rest of eternity. He is just deciding to completely and totally
eviscerate our future, and he does so at the behest of Donald Trump,
who is tied to, of course, the oil and gas and coal industry and their
profit-making opportunities.
Now, again, Chris Wright, that is where he made his money--oil and
gas; so it is kind of natural for him to be a
[[Page S2854]]
radical, a radical oil and gas guy who wants to destroy wind, destroy
solar, destroy new battery storage technologies. These are the
technologies that compete against oil, gas, and coal and their profits.
By the way, they would substitute technologies which would not pollute,
not cause asthma, not warm the planet dangerously that would cause the
storms and the fires and the floods, which we have been seeing. It
would accomplish all that. But a radical--a radical like Chris Wright
as Secretary of Energy--would rather destroy all of it in order to
increase the profits of the oil and gas industry. That is what he is
doing--creating this absolutely destructive policy that is going to
ultimately have the next generation of young people today pay a huge
price in the future.
So let's just take a few of these tax credits which they are
destroying, which would create good-paying jobs, which would help to
spur our economy. Let's just take a look at a few of them to see what
he has orchestrated in the House Ways and Means and House Energy and
Commerce Committees.
It would remove the tax credits that a local restaurant can use to
lower its electricity bill by putting solar panels on the roof of the
restaurant: Gone. Incentives that a local connoisseur could have used
to buy electric delivery trucks and install charging stations: Gone. EV
battery and offshore wind manufacturing factories that source steel
from red States: Gone.
And why is he doing it again? He is doing it to help the oil and gas
industry from which he came. He is a radical. He sees the world in the
rearview mirror. Let's just stay in the oil and gas era. Let's stay in
the coal era. Let's not move to a new innovation economy. Let's not
move to a clean energy economy. Let's just stay back in the past. We
will let China have the future. We will let Germany have the future. We
will let India have the future. But we own the past, says Chris Wright.
We own the energy past, and we are going to protect it against any
innovation in America that would, in any way, inhibit the ability of
the past to continue to reap profits from America.
By the way, one of the things which he killed is my offshore wind-
manufacturing bill, which was going to give incentives to companies in
the United States to manufacture the offshore wind technologies to be
deployed. He killed that. That was going to keep the jobs here. That
was going to incentivize American companies to innovate in the
manufacture of offshore wind technologies. He wants to kill that
because he wants to kill the offshore wind industry.
Why does he want to kill the offshore wind industry? What is Chris
Wright's thinking? Here is what he is thinking, and here is what Donald
Trump is thinking: Ah, the more you deploy offshore wind, the less gas
you need to generate electricity. Since that is where he comes from,
that is the past, so he has to protect the past. He is a radical, Chris
Wright--just an absolutely rabid radical looking at the rearview mirror
at the past; and anything that would interfere with that, including the
massive deployment of offshore wind, must be killed. So that is what he
has recommended here in the House Ways and Means and the House Energy
and Commerce Committees bill.
But that is not all. That is not all that Chris Wright is engaging
in, that Republicans are engaging in, that Donald Trump is engaging in.
They are also cutting billions in historic investments from the
Inflation Reduction Act, in environmental justice, in air pollution
reduction programs. Even in schools--even where kids are exposed to the
pollution--they are removing any of the protections against kids
breathing in this dangerous asthma-inducing air that has been polluted
by oil and gas and coal. That includes $20 billion in the climate bank,
the green bank, which Chris Van Hollen and I secured in the Inflation
Reduction Act. Also, it is called the Inflation Reduction Act because
Joe Manchin, who voted for it, did not want it to be called the biggest
climate bill or the biggest clean energy bill in the history of the
world. OK? But that is what it is. It is the biggest clean energy bill
in history. What McKinsey has analyzed is that the $20 billion green
bank will unleash $250 billion worth of private sector investment in
clean energy technologies.
Well, if you are Chris Wright, you have to kill that. You can't allow
for a massive revolution in clean energy to come out of the green
energy bank. So Chris Wright--Mr. Radical, Reactionary, ``Look at the
World in the Rearview Mirror'' Secretary of Energy--has killed that
too--at Donald Trump's behest, by the way. At Donald Trump's behest.
Again, he looks like a very nice man, but that is not what the job of
the Secretary of Energy requires. It requires vision. It requires
looking ahead, leading the way, having America be competitive with the
Chinese in new technology. We are in a big battle with China over
trade. Well, we won't have anything to send to them in clean energy. It
is going to be a one-way street--a one-way street coming from them to
us--after they finish off our clean energy industry, which is what they
are trying to do. In the same way, they have made massive cuts to the
National Institutes of Health. Research in Alzheimer's and cancer and
diabetes and other diseases is going to finish off our ability to be
competitive in biotech. This is the next step: Let's finish off the
clean energy industry as well.
Unfortunately, the investments in the clean energy technologies would
have created jobs by the millions. They would have strengthened our
energy independence because all of that energy, by definition, is
produced here in the United States of America. It is our Sun; it is our
wind; it would be our batteries that we could store that electricity
with. We don't need the Chinese. We don't need anybody else. We could
just do it right here. What could be more conducive to being able to
have a headline of energy independence than capturing all of these God-
given gifts which we have in our country, destroyed across the board?
And they are going to be killing the funding that would save consumers
money at the pump by increasing the fuel economy standards of the
vehicles which we drive in our country.
The one thing the oil industry hates--I just talked about the natural
gas industry. They hate wind and solar and batteries--you know,
generating new electricity. What does the oil industry hate? Well, the
oil industry hates vehicles that are twice as energy efficient as oil
vehicles. Instead of 27 miles a gallon, they get 54 miles a gallon.
Instead of 54 miles a gallon, they get 108 miles a gallon, or if it is
a plug-in all-electric or a plug-in hybrid, it is pretty much an
infinity sign that is next to how efficient that vehicle is and how
little oil they need. That is a death star for the oil industry, so
they have got to kill the fuel economy standards that make all of the
vehicles which we drive more efficient because it is just going to
protect the past, which is what Donald Trump is all about. This is some
kind of nostalgia he has for 1958, OK? He wants to go back in time, but
America can't afford to be looking in the rearview mirror because our
European, our Asian, and our South American competitors, they are
coming for us.
We are only 5 percent of the world's population, and up until the
Trump administration, what has given us our edge is innovation; it is
investment in research; it is looking ahead; and it is trying to lead
the way. That is where young people in our country want to go, but
instead of the dawn of a clean energy future, Republicans are
sunsetting incentives that would spur a clean domestic manufacturing
for industries inside of the United States.
By the way, let me say it again: In just a very brief period of
time--about 3 years since the passage of the biggest climate bill in
history--we have created 400,000 new jobs in the clean energy sector in
the United States and have already unleashed $400 billion worth of
energy investment. So they are committed--the Republicans, and they are
proud of it, led by Chris Wright, an oil and gas man--to being the
world's laggard, not leader, and to just falling behind everybody in
the clean energy sector. That is what their plan is--to destroy
everything that has been unleashed in our Nation. We not only won't be
the leader in the global economy or the clean energy economy; we are
just going to cede the jobs; we are going to cede the progress to our
economic rivals, led by the Chinese.
And who is making this worse? Again, it is Energy Secretary Chris
[[Page S2855]]
Wright, the fracker in chief. He is a fracker. He really believes in
fracking for oil, in fracking for gas. He is a man who, just last week,
told the Congress that his Agency had paid all its bills, canceled no
clean energy grants, laid off barely a handful of staff, and wasn't
freezing funding. Every one of those statements is false.
Now he is doubling down with a thoughtless regulatory bonfire, and
this deregulatory blitz eliminates standards for everyday appliances in
our homes--microwaves, refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing
machines.
All the regulations say is make all those devices more energy
efficient so you don't have to burn coal in order to have the washing
machine work, in order to have the refrigerator work. We are not asking
anyone to put a mission to Mars in place. We are not asking for anyone
to be a rocket scientist. We are asking for people to make dishwashers
more efficient and washing machines more efficient.
Do you know what Chris Wright says? Impossible. Impossible. We can't
figure out how to do that, so we are just going to stop all progress
that we are making in ensuring that all these electricity-consuming
appliances are more efficient.
The less efficient they are, the bigger the electricity bill for
every single American. That is their goal. What happens when you have
to consume more electricity? You have to pay the natural gas industry
for all the extra electricity which is coming into your home. That is
the plan.
The oil industry wants automobiles and trucks to be less efficient.
The natural gas industry wants all appliances, homes, everything less
efficient and not to use wind and solar and battery storage technology.
They each have two simple business plans, which Chris Wright, who is
one of the most radical people who has ever had a position in the
American Government, wants to put in place--the fracker-in-chief.
I am the author of the law that the Department of Energy uses to set
the standards for dishwashers and for refrigeration in our country. I
put that law on the books in 1987. So far, it has saved the need for
somewhere around 200 coal-burning plants to ever be built in the first
place because those devices never needed the electricity that otherwise
would have been needed if there was less efficiency.
The bill itself, according to experts, has now saved $2 trillion in
energy bills since 1987. Can I say that again? I am very proud of this.
My bill has helped to save $2 trillion that consumers otherwise would
have had to have paid in their electricity bills to have inefficient
refrigeration, inefficient dishwashers in the house, inefficient air-
conditioning in the house. Two trillion dollars has been saved.
It has also prevented 3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas
emissions from going up. That is a law. Greenhouse gas emissions never
went up because we made those appliances so much more energy efficient.
And it then saved consumers $500 a year because they never had to pay
those electricity bills.
So you would think the Secretary of Energy would say: Let's keep
moving forward. Let's keep making all of these devices more and more
efficient.
But no. He works in natural gas, he works in oil, so his goal is to
roll it all back because it harms the business model of the natural gas
industry or the oil industry.
Here is the thing: I personally believe in Darwinian paranoia-
inducing competition. That is what I believe. I am a capitalist. Let's
just have everybody be able to do everything. That is not the
socialistic attitude that Chris Wright has. He wants to use socialism
to protect the oil and gas industry from real competition.
Is he going to take the tax breaks for the oil and gas industry off
the books? Oh, no, he is not taking those tax breaks off the books. Is
he going to take off favorable regulatory protections for the oil and
gas industry? He is not going to do that. No. No. No.
This is all the old boys' network, the billionaire boys' club network
in the energy industry to thwart the movement that young people want
toward a future of clean energy, of solar and wind, the all-electric
vehicle--the future for our country.
So Chris Wright and Trump want to throw everything out because
nothing says ``freedom'' more than smog and higher utility bills. They
want us to have the freedom to have more smog. They want us to have the
freedom to have more asthma. They want us as a nation to have the
freedom to pay higher utility bills for natural gas and generated
electricity. That is his idea of freedom--Chris Wright. Again, it just
goes back to the bottom line of those companies that he used to run
before he just became Secretary of Energy.
Now, I don't mind him saying that he wants to have a new future for
our country, but you can't say it simultaneously when you are killing
the future.
You are killing it, Chris Wright. You are the worst example of what
the Trump administration is bringing to Washington. You are going to
make us more dependent on fossil fuels. Consumers will have to pay
higher prices. It is going to lead to higher levels of disease in our
Nation. We are going to see more storms like Hurricanes Milton and
Helene last year, which caused $300 billion worth of damage. We are
going to see more fires like those which we saw in L.A., which caused
$140 billion worth of damage. Those are just three storms that caused
$440 billion worth of damage, those three storms alone.
So you just say: Hey, Chris, Mr. Secretary, what is your answer to
that?
Do you know what his answer is? More fossil fuels. Warm up the planet
even more. Turn it up a few more degrees. The temperature is too low;
let's put the temperature up higher.
What are young people saying? They are saying: Turn the thermostat
down. This planet is getting too warm. Just turn it down.
That is renewables. That is the way in which you do it.
We have seen Chris Wright make outlandishly false claims before. Back
in March, Chris Wright took the stage in front of oil and gas
executives and delivered what might go down as the most
egregious fossil-fueled fiction ever spoken at a podium--and that is
still saying a lot. It was part sermon, part standup, and part 100
percent spin.
Chris Wright said:
The previous administration's policy was focused myopically
on climate change with people as simply collateral damage.
That is his statement.
The Inflation Reduction Act, on the other hand, did create 400,000
clean energy jobs. It unleashed $400 billion worth of investments. That
is not collateral damage. That is a climate comeback. That is a middle-
class revival in our country. That is 400,000 middle-class jobs in our
Nation that the Inflation Reduction Act--also known as the biggest
climate bill in our history--has produced. They are committed to
stopping it. That is what Republicans are willing to tank with their
latest proposal.
Now I am going to give you the killer stats. This is why they have to
kill it. Last year in the United States, 94 percent of all new
electricity generation capacity installed was wind and solar and
batteries. So the natural gas industry is saying: That can't happen.
You mean we were left with 6 percent?
Yes, that is right. This thing is moving--wind, solar, and battery
storage--for electricity generation in our country. If you do it every
year for the next 10 years or the next 25 years, then the natural gas
industry just won't be able to compete in the marketplace.
So Adam Smith is spinning in his grave, looking at what Chris Wright
is doing today--tampering with the free market, tampering with
incentives for the competition to oil and gas, which have received tax
breaks for 100 years.
Adam Smith is spinning in his grave, thinking how capitalism is being
completely distorted, although he wrote a whole chapter in ``Wealth of
Nations,'' and the chapter was just about how much he hated monopolies,
how much he hated oligopolies, which are anathema when it comes to
competition, when it comes to capitalism. He really wanted Darwinian
paranoia-inducing competition--Adam Smith. That is not what Chris
Wright wants. That is not what Donald Trump wants. Donald Trump wants
to be able to put his thumb on the scale for the oil and gas industry
and for the coal industry just to destroy the future competition.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already cost America more
than 50,000 clean energy jobs and over $8 billion in private sector
clean energy
[[Page S2856]]
projects. If anything is collateral damage, it is our economy under
Donald Trump and the Chris Wright chaos agenda in the marketplace for
the clean energy industry.
Here is what Chris Wright also said:
Natural gas . . . has been the fastest growing source of
energy over the last 15 years. Wind and solar supply roughly
3 percent of global primary energy.
Chris Wright must have brought a calculator from 2005 because those
numbers are just completely wrong. In reality, wind and solar are the
fastest growing electricity sources in history. In 2024, as I have
already said, they made up over 90 percent of all new electricity
generation in the United States.
Listen to this--this is scary for the oil and gas industry--96
percent of all new electricity generation installed worldwide last year
was wind and solar and battery--96 percent globally, wind and solar.
He is saying: Oh, it is just such a small part.
No, it is not, and it is going to grow and grow and grow and grow.
That is what is putting the fear into the hearts of the oil and gas
industry. They have got to stop it, so they have ordered the House
Republicans to kill it in the Ways and Means Committee, kill it in the
Energy and Commerce Committee, and then they want to send it over here
so that Republicans can rubberstamp this decision to kill the future. I
guess that is inaccurate. It is not the future; it is right now. It is
over 90 percent of the United States and 96 percent globally, last
year, the installation of new electricity generation capacity.
So they are desperate, totally desperate. They wish they had killed
the Affordable Care Act 10 years ago because now they don't have the
nerve to try to kill the Affordable Care Act because now people already
are benefiting from those changes. They are trying to kill this, kill
it right now, kill it before it gets more momentum and destroys the
business model of 100 years of the oil, gas, and coal industry.
By the way, in the United States alone, we added 50 gigawatts of new
solar in 2024. Think of it like this: In 2009, we only had 2,000
megawatts of solar from the beginning of time until 2009. Last year,
50,000 new gigawatts of solar was installed in our country. If it was
50,000 next year and the year after and the year after, when 10 years
is done, you will have a half a million new gigawatts of solar.
So the oil and gas industry is listening to Donald Trump, who said:
If you raise $1 billion for me--he said this last April in the middle
of his campaign--I will kill the clean energy revolution. I will kill
it.
So this is just pay to play.
Here is an industry that is growing, creating new jobs hand-over-
fist, just growing at a faster rate than the economy itself--growing
way faster than the economy itself--and what we now see are the fossil
fuel apologists saying that new solar just doesn't work when, in fact,
new solar is now cheaper than simply operating an existing coal plant.
Offshore wind is half the cost of building a new gas plant. That is
what offshore wind amounts to--half the price.
They have to kill it. It is too efficient. It is too clean. It
doesn't pollute. It doesn't cause asthma. They have to kill it now,
says Chris Wright, says the oil and gas industry.
Chris Wright also said:
Wind has been singled out because it's had a singularly
poor record of driving up prices and increasing citizen
outrage.
That is just not true. In fact, the States with the most wind and
solar--Iowa, South Dakota, Texas--also have lower electricity rates
than other parts of the country.
Clean energy isn't just clean; it is cheap. If Republicans really
cared about communities, they would stop exporting our liquefied
natural gas, which drives up prices at home. So let's stop these fossil
fuel companies from gouging families with price spikes and pretending
that pollution is patriotism.
The administration has made its tradeoff clear: your future for their
profit. That is Trump's ``art of the deal.'' They get to be rich, and
young people don't have a future when it comes to clean energy or
protecting against climate change. That is the ``art of the deal.'' It
is an intergenerational deal. The older generation gets all the money,
and the next generations take all the risk. That is his deal, and he is
expecting everyone to respond like a candidate on ``The Apprentice.''
Well, they are not going to. Young people are going to rise up. The
word is going to get out. This is very dangerous, what he is doing.
The Trump administration--
said Chris Wright--
will end the Biden administration's irrational, quasi-
religious policies on climate change that imposed endless
sacrifices on our citizens.
That is Chris Wright. This is kind of radical, irrational, nonfact-
based but, ultimately, Trumpian-at-its-soul policies that Chris Wright
has to defend. Now, you would hope that he knows better, but I think it
is different. I think that what Chris Wright has is a remarkable
ability to harness voluminous amounts of information to defend a
knowingly erroneous premise, and that erroneous premise is that wind
and solar and batteries aren't working right now. So he has to just
tell lies about it, plain and simple. Lie, lie, lie.
And I get it. This is a religious war, pitting economic stimulus
policies that drove investment in the free market against their
religion of pure Trumpism; pitting corporate profits against breathable
air, drinkable water, and a habitable planet.
Do you place your alms at the foot of an effigy for Harold Hamm?
Well, Republicans do. He is the biggest natural gas guy in the country,
and he said he would raise the money for Donald Trump.
Here is the real gospel. Clean energy is not polarizing; it is
popular in the polls. Not only do people like it, 70 percent of
registered voters support the biggest climate bill in history, with
over 70 percent of registered voters saying the United States needs to
use more renewable energy than it does today. That is not religion;
that is stimulus in solar panels. And again, it is the public saying:
Move to the future, move away from oil and gas.
If we want to talk about sacrifice, it is our communities that are
sacrificing their lungs to pollution, their homes to floods, their
paychecks to fossil fuel price spikes, all for the religion of climate
denialism.
I think all these guys, they must have gotten their climate degree
from Trump University--I think, Chris Wright and all of them inside of
his administration--because it is just the opposite of what is
happening out there. The planet is dangerously warming.
We have got a response that is massively capturing a private sector
investment all across our country to deploy the renewable energy
resources that reduce greenhouse gases. Yet--again, I am going to come
back to Chris Wright--he claims:
The previous administration's climate policies have been
impoverishing to our citizens, economically destructive to
our businesses and politically polarizing.
The cure--
This is Chris Wright--
was far more destructive than the disease. There are no
winners in that world except for politicians and rapidly
growing interest groups.
Is he talking about the 450,000 asthma deaths every year worldwide?
Let me say that again. Is he talking about the 450,000 people who die
from asthma every year globally or the billions in extreme weather and
climate change-related damage every year? That disease sounds pretty
damaging.
The cure? Well, regulations that this administration is going to try
to roll back right now. They are going to try to roll back the
protections that are now in place to reduce dramatically the number of
people who die from asthma. And the rest of the world, of course, is
also deploying the cure--the renewable energy technologies.
So is there too little mercury up in the air? Are there too few air
toxics up in the air right now, so that Chris Wright says we need more
of them? We need more of them in the lungs of young people? We need
more of them in the lungs of young mothers, pregnant women across our
country and across the planet?
I don't hear anyone calling for more mercury, more toxics in the air.
And if the regulations stayed in place, it would save 11,000 deaths
every year.
And speaking of interest groups, let us not pretend this
administration is for the people. The only group Trump has ever
prioritized is the fossil fuel elite.
[[Page S2857]]
So now we come back to Chris Wright again, who is bringing that same
attitude toward governing. And he just doesn't get the attention he
deserves for the malevolent way in which he is trying to destroy the
clean energy future of our country. Today's energy regulatory
rollback--today--is a kamikaze mission against clean energy, against
efficiency, against accountability. And the Republicans are more than
happy to sign our planet's death sentence. That is what they are doing.
That is what their plan is this year on the floor of the Senate and in
the rollback of all the regulations that have been promulgated over the
years at the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection
Agency--a death sentence for the planet.
We are talking about rescinding energy and water conservation
standards for dozens of products that most Americans have in their
homes--microwaves, faucets--that save billions of dollars and billions
of gallons of water annually.
And what are we going to get instead? What is Chris Wright promising?
What is Donald Trump promising us? A rule book written by and for
fossil fuel companies. That is what we are going to have--fossil fuel
profiteers. No science. No data. Just the same old special interests
pushing the same old lies.
So when Chris Wright and Republicans say they want to cut redtape,
what he really means is cut clean air, cut consumer savings, cut
climate future, cut clean water, cut safe lands. Cut, cut, cut.
So let's call this what it is: the Trump deregulation doctrine. If it
saves money, repeal it. If it protects public health, gut it. If it
curbs emissions, cancel it. And if it benefits the American people,
sabotage it. This isn't a regulatory review; it is a regulatory revenge
tour. And it is not just about energy efficiency; it is about justice--
because it is frontline communities, the poorest communities, Black and
Brown communities, poor communities already overburdened by asthma,
heat, and energy insecurity who are going to pay a disproportionate
price because of what Trump is doing, because of what Chris Wright is
doing.
It is almost unconscionable what Chris Wright is attempting to
perpetrate upon the poorest, the most vulnerable in our society, but he
is doing it all because they are not rich enough--the oil barons, the
natural gas barons, the coal barons. They are not rich enough. We have
to have more people die. We have to have more people get sick.
Madam American, Mr. American, the American people deserve better than
this. They deserve an Energy Secretary who believes in science, who
tells the truth, who doesn't measure progress in barrels sold or rules
repealed.
We should be investing in the future, not dismantling the future. We
should be building cleaner, safer, and more affordable systems, not
resurrecting pollution in the name of profit.
So to Chris Wright and Donald Trump, I say: We will fight you in the
courts. We will fight you in the States. We will fight you on the floor
of this Chamber--because every rule you tear down, we are going to
rebuild stronger. Every lie you tell, we are going to counter with the
truth. And every time you try to sell out the American people to pad a
corporate balance sheet so that the rich become even richer, we will be
back there to push against you, to protect the American public, to
attempt to protect those who are most vulnerable in our society.
So you are not going to back down; we are not going to back down.
This is a fight for the future. This is a fight for the planet. They
are trying to write the death certificate of the planet right now, and
we are not going to let them get away with it. They are in for a
historic resistance coming up from the streets of our country because
this is too important just to be another source of revenue for the tax
breaks for the already too rich in our society.
Let me just finish with this. The three richest guys in America who
sat behind Donald Trump at the inauguration, they control more wealth
than the bottom 50 percent of our population combined. Do they really
need more? Do oil and gas barons really need more? Does it have to come
at the expense of the future of all the young people in our country?
Does it have to come at the expense of the health of everyone in our
Nation? Aren't we better than this? Aren't we really the innovation
country?
So that would be my message: You are in for a fight. It is a fight
for the future against those who want to pull us back toward a past
which ultimately has created the issues, the problems, the risks that
we are confronted with today.
So with that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
(Mr. MORENO assumed the Chair.)
(Mr. SCHMITT assumed the Chair.)
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.