[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 132 (Thursday, July 31, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4973-S4978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Republican Administration
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to start tonight by addressing
those on my side of the aisle.
My friends, I am taking the floor with a simple message to you: Don't
give up. We cannot give up. We can't afford to give up. The American
people are demanding we don't give up. They are demanding we get up,
and we fight back.
We have to fight back against the attacks on our healthcare system,
against the attacks on families across our country--especially the
poorest--on reproductive rights. We can't give up on our neighbors
seeking asylum or education through our country's lawful processes. We
can't give up on affordable energy that keeps the lights on, bills low,
and our air clean--wind, solar, all-electric vehicles, battery storage
technologies; the future. We can't give up.
Republicans have taken a battering ram to the American healthcare
system, a system that was already too expensive, too inaccessible, too
complicated for too many Americans. And what have they done? They have
passed legislation to slash $850 billion from Medicaid, $500 billion
from Medicare, $300 billion from the Affordable Care Act, and they are
slashing NIH research--research on Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes.
Alzheimer's--slashing the funding to find a cure for the diseases which
run through every family in America, just slashing it. Slashing the
Centers for Disease Control, slashing it. Just an absolute evisceration
of the healthcare system in our country.
And what are we going to see? According to the Yale University,
51,000 additional deaths per year over the next 10 years. A half a
million people dying because of those cuts in those programs. That is
what the Republicans have done in their Big Beautiful Bill. People are
going to die because of that.
And how have they done it? Well, Trump and his backers have done this
by breaking the basic functions of democracy, violating institutional
norms, and treating people's lives as expendable. He has done it
through corruption, intimidation, illegal power grabs, and plain
cruelty.
Already, the Republicans cut $2.5 billion from the National
Institutes of Health, $11.4 billion from the Centers for Disease
Control, and cut programming for mental health, environmental health,
and reproductive health. People are about to receive notices that their
insurance costs are going up. They are going to be skyrocketing.
Hospitals and Planned Parenthood clinics are already closing. Americans
aren't experiencing this one at a time because it is happening all at
once across our country.
Republicans acted on Trump's Big Oil-funded vendetta against wind and
solar energy by cutting incentives for the cleanest and the cheapest
sources of electricity, all to pad the pockets of their fossil fuel
friends: the oil, the gas, and the coal industry.
The companies that have created the climate crisis are the ones that
have
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given hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump for his election
last year, and now they are collecting by promising to destroy wind and
solar and all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies--the
competitors to the energy sources of the 20th century and the 19th
century--destroying the future for young people, who are looking to a
clean energy future in the 21st century.
Trump's ``One Big Ugly Bill'' eliminated the residential clean and
efficient energy incentives; they ripped out the funding for heat
pumps. They are pretty much pulling them out of the walls, pulling
solar panels off of roofs--in other words, committing highway robbery
on homeowners who want to lower their bills, breathe clean air, and
ensure a livable future for their families.
The ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to mean a lot of big, ugly healthcare
and big, ugly, higher energy bills arriving in the mail by the millions
for families all across our country.
Republicans are forcing us backwards. Republicans are looking at
America in a rearview mirror, not straight ahead toward the future
which we should have for every family--a cleaner, healthier, more fair,
and more safe future for everyone. No, that is not where they want to
take us.
Democrats must stop the bleeding and fight hard for something better.
And that means us. As part of that fight, we should not agree to a
government funding deal that makes Americans' lives harder and more
expensive. We can say loud and clear that we want to reverse Medicaid
and Affordable Care cuts; no cuts for research into cancer and
Alzheimer's and diabetes; no attacks on affordable, renewable energy;
no cuts to affordable housing; to save public broadcasting; to protect
public weather services; to save the EPA from being destroyed.
The Republicans are turning the EPA into ``Every Polluter's Ally.''
It is an open door for the oil, gas, coal, and polluting industries all
across our country over at the EPA right now. DOGE is just saying:
Welcome. Tell us what other environmental protection you want us to
take off of the books that have helped to increase life expectancy in
our Nation.
Beyond our fights for programs that help working families, we should
not agree to a government funding deal that doesn't stop the
lawlessness of the Trump administration. The Trump administration must
spend what Congress allocates. If Republicans won't say that out loud--
that Donald Trump should follow the laws passed by this legislative
body--what good are the funding laws that the House and Senate passed
that are signed by the President? What is the whole point of having a
House and Senate if Donald Trump and Russell Vought over at OMB say: We
don't have to pay any attention.
OMB is not written into the U.S. Constitution. There was no
revolution to make sure that Russell Vought at OMB gets to decide which
programs get funded. When people were going down Mass Avenue in
Massachusetts--from Arlington, to Lexington, to Concord--they were
saying: No taxation without representation. We want a House. We want a
Senate. We are going to have a revolution. We don't want a King. We
want controls. We want safeguards.
If we can pass a bill that funds programs that better the lives of
Americans in every State but Republicans refuse to commit that they
won't then cut that same funding with a partisan vote later because
Trump tells them to, what good are our funding laws? What was the whole
point of bipartisanship in the first place?
Even if Republicans say that they will keep the promise of that
funding, how can we believe them? How can we buy their promises when
they have broken them before, over and over again? As recently as this
month, they broke their promise.
Republicans are the ones who started the government shutdown on
January 22, the day of the first Executive orders to cut funding across
the government. We started this administration with Trump unilaterally
and illegally withholding bipartisan-passed funding from whole
Departments, like USAID, to targeting individual recipients, such as
Harvard University in Massachusetts--cutting the funding at Harvard for
cancer, for Alzheimer's, for diabetes, for Parkinson's, for the
diseases for which they were looking to find a cure for families.
Republicans then unilaterally passed a continuing resolution last
March because they and Trump refused to negotiate with Democrats.
Republicans unilaterally passed a reconciliation bill to fund only
their priorities, including lavish tax breaks for the wealthy and huge
increases to the Defense Department budget, while gutting Medicaid and
food assistance and Medicare and kicking 10 million Americans off
of healthcare--10 million Americans are going to lose their
healthcare--halting funding to clean up our air; causing energy bills
to spike by attacking affordable, renewable energy.
Republicans also raised the debt limit in that bill because they
didn't want to negotiate with Democrats over that.
Republicans unilaterally passed, in the dark of night, cuts to public
broadcasting and global health just a couple of weeks ago, even though
Congress had previously passed that funding on a bipartisan basis.
Democrats and Republicans vote for it, it goes down to the White
House, and the President signs it. And the President says: Oh, not
binding on me. I can now do whatever I want.
So everything that is taught to kids in the sixth grade about how our
bills become law--that is just going into a shredder. That is just Etch
A Sketched right out of history.
The President wants to be a King.
And that is where it all started 250 years ago, right along
Massachusetts Avenue in Massachusetts: The redcoats are coming. King
George wants to be controlling us without any representation from the
people who are in the Colonies.
That is what we fought for--right here. The whole revolution was
fought to build this building so that there was representation.
Republicans just don't care about that.
Just this month, Trump's budget czar Russell Vought said he wanted
the appropriations process to be less bipartisan--less bipartisan.
Remember when Trump said he didn't know anything about Project 2025?
Remember when he said that? They asked him in September of 2024: What
about Project 2025?
Don't know anything about it, says Trump.
In October: What about Project 2025?
Don't know anything about it, he said.
Well, Russell Vought is now the head of OMB. He wrote Project 2025.
Trump gave the job to Russell Vought to then implement Project 2025.
Would you all agree that the President had a very high prevarication
coefficient as he was talking about his knowledge of Project 2025? Do
you all agree he knew exactly what he was doing; he was just lying to
the American people? I think so.
The White House and Vought are saying they will use their own pocket
rescissions--just another term for illegal impoundment of taxpayer
money--to enact DOGE cuts in anything that Congress passes.
So I will quote Mark Twain to my Democratic colleagues. ``There is
nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule'' to your behind.
Maya Angelou put it more nicely: When someone tells you who they are
the first time, you should believe them.
So Republicans are already plotting to eliminate the Department of
Education through another partisan vote to steal taxpayer money for
their own purposes. And I don't want to urge them to do the right thing
because I have no confidence and no evidence that they will do the
right thing, regardless of our request that they remember the
bipartisan spirit that has always defined the appropriations process.
To quote the great comedian Oscar Levant, they ``will double cross that
bridge when'' they come to it. That is who they are. They are double-
crossers. We can all see what happened in that rescission process, and
we know they are planning more double-crossing coming right down the
line.
Republicans are asking us not to believe our own eyes that have seen
them cut funding to our States and to programs that save lives in our
country. They are asking us not to believe our own ears that have heard
them say they are going to cut and they are going to withhold funding
for our special needs students, for cancer research, for farmers.
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Republicans and Trump do not care about working with Democrats. When
they say ``bipartisan process,'' what they really mean is ``We are
going to do whatever we want to do. We are the Republicans; we are in
charge of the whole country. We don't need to talk to anybody.''
Democrats don't have many tools, being in the minority, but an
important one is doing everything we can to slow down this Trump march
to increased costs, lost healthcare, and ultimately an economic
catastrophe. So I have continued to vote against all Trump nominees
because their only job is to execute Trump's illegal and
unconstitutional agenda. I am voting no.
Those who have gotten bipartisan support have acted in their jobs
just as partisan as the rest of them. Anyone who has stood up for
independence and the rule of law--they have been fired by Trump. Just
show that you have independence. Just show that you are going to stand
up for the Constitution. Just raise a question. They fire you in the
Trump administration. And what have Republicans done about it? Nothing.
More nominations for more unqualified candidates.
I wasn't aware that Donald Trump placed one of his tariffs on
courage, because we appear to be experiencing a Congress-wide shortage.
And that is what is troubling, I think, to the American people because
that is what is going to cause the problems that are about to be seen
across our Nation.
The Trump administration thinks Congress is irrelevant, and
unfortunately Republicans don't appear to have any interest in
disabusing them of that notion. Just look at the Department of Energy.
This month, the Department of Energy announced openly that it is
ignoring the appropriations law on funding for wind and solar and all-
electric vehicles--or, as young people call it, the future.
Only today, the Government Accountability Office said that the
Department of Energy broke the law by failing to distribute funding for
the Renew America's Schools Program, as directed by Congress.
We have to ask ourselves: How is passing another appropriations law
going to address that lawlessness? It is like the definition of
insanity--doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting
different results.
And it is just not about budgets. It is not just about dollars and
cents. It is about common sense. That is what we are going to have to
bring to this process because Trump and his henchmen have been on a
deregulatory blitz.
The latest and perhaps the most egregious is the Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator's--Lee Zeldin--announcement this week
that the Trump administration is repealing the finding that climate
change endangers our lives and health and safety. That is like a doctor
repealing the finding that smoking causes lung cancer--but that is the
head of the EPA under Donald Trump working for the oil, gas, and coal
industry--or a firefighter repealing the finding that a lit match can
burn down a house. That is the head of the EPA for Donald Trump. He
says there is no such thing as climate change that needs any kind of
action by the American people for the next generation of Americans--to
protect them.
All I can say is, you can try to censor information, you can try to
silence scientists--and they are firing them, the biologists and the
chemists at the EPA, by the hundreds. They are just firing all these
people who were summa cum laude in college, all the kids that sat in
the first row in your high school class, all those biologists and
chemists. They are firing them all. They don't want to hear about
climate change. They don't want to hear about the science.
So you can try to bury the facts, you can try to bury the reality,
but you can't change that. You can't change it.
The endangerment finding is backed by science. The endangerment
finding is backed by law. It has withstood every single attempt to
challenge it so far.
You are saying: What is the endangerment finding? Well, in
Massachusetts v. EPA, in a Supreme Court decision in 2007, the Supreme
Court ruled that the EPA had to determine: Do greenhouse gases in large
amounts endanger the lives and well-being and welfare of citizens in
the United States? And the EPA made that finding under Barack Obama,
using science, saying: Yes, there is an endangerment.
That is the law we have operated under for 15 years. That is why we
have cleaner cars. That is why utilities don't send up as much
pollution up into the air--because of that finding. That is why we have
lowered the temperature, lowered the thermostat in the United States
and across the planet. We have just reduced the temperature.
Well, the endangerment finding gave the EPA the power to regulate
planet-warming greenhouse gases as air pollution under the Clean Air
Act because climate change threatens our welfare, and that authority
came from the Supreme Court of the United States.
Driven by the devastation that climate change wreaked on its
citizens, Massachusetts sued the EPA for not regulating the gases that
contribute to climate change, and Massachusetts won. The Supreme Court
agreed that the EPA was obligated to safeguard people from the actual
and imminent threat that greenhouse gases pose to people everywhere,
and that is known as the endangerment finding.
Nearly two decades later, that danger has only gotten worse, more
intense, more acute, and more personal for everyone in our country and
around the world, and we have to be the leaders, not the laggards.
You can't preach temperance from a barstool. You can't tell the rest
of the world to do something if you are not doing it. You can't tell
someone not to drink a beer or have a cigar in their hand if you have a
cigar in your hand and a beer in the other hand. No one is going to
follow you.
That is where Donald Trump has taken us now on climate change. That
is where Lee Zeldin has taken us on climate change. He has given away
the moral authority, the technological leadership that should be the
United States of America.
And I breathed--I breathed--that dirty air from wildfire smoke. I
have seen horrible floods steal the livelihoods of Massachusetts
farmers and warming waters wreck the fishing grounds off of our coast
of Massachusetts. I have grieved with those who lost lives in
hurricanes, those who were forced from their family homes thanks to
rising tides.
Look at those families and tell me that this isn't dangerous. Look at
those young people who worry about their future and see every year
hotter than the last. Every year is warmer than the preceding one, and
that is because the oil, gas, and coal industry continues to send more
and more of these greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere. Look at the
families paying skyrocketing electric and home insurance bills,
wondering how they are going to keep their kids safe in a crisis and
keep food on the table. Tell me their welfare isn't hurt by the climate
crisis.
This endangerment finding keeps us safe. It says that there is danger
and something must be done about it because you can't fix what you
won't face. There is danger from sending all of those pollutants up
into the atmosphere. Then, like the ceiling here, it is captured, and
then the heat is held in, and the planet gets warmer and warmer, and
the fires become hotter and hotter, and the floods gets bigger and
bigger, and the storms get more and more violent because we keep the
heat in because of the greenhouse effect of all of those pollutants.
This administration just continues to bury its head in the sand and
will bury Americans along with it. We are going to lose a lot of lives.
Now, we have discovered a second endangerment finding. Lee Zeldin and
Donald Trump are a clear and present danger to the welfare of our
Nation today.
I think it is pretty clear to young people that they have made their
own endangerment finding. They know Donald Trump is a danger to them.
They know Lee Zeldin at the EPA is a danger to them.
How did they justify this decision in the White House when all of the
science in the world is against them? The Trump administration found
five crank, faux scientists and gave them a platform for lies and
misinformation. These known climate deniers argued that our seas aren't
rising more quickly and that extreme heat caused by global warming
can't affect our crops.
[[Page S4976]]
Putting these five climate deniers in charge of a climate-science
report is like putting a vaccine denier in charge of the national
health Agency. Wait. Wait. I am sorry. They did that as well. They did
that as well. A vaccine denier is running the Department of Health and
Human Services. It is unbelievable.
In an era where science should be venerated, in fact, it is just
being disregarded across all of Trump's Agencies.
This report put out by the Department of Energy ignored the
overwhelming scientific consensus and ongoing body of evidence that
climate change puts us in danger, evidence that we are already bearing
witness to. You don't need to be a climate scientist to see that storms
are becoming more furious and more deadly.
Just this month, we saw extreme weather take the lives of loved ones
in Texas in that flooding and in New Mexico, and those floods were
supercharged by climate change. That climate change was driven by the
greed of the fossil fuel industry, the oil, gas, and coal industries.
This sham Department of Energy report is an attack on common sense,
and it is an attack on public safety.
Trump and Zeldin are arguing that American transportation emissions
don't contribute to global climate change. EPA's own data shows that if
our transportation sector was a country, it would be the fourth largest
emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
They argue that sea levels aren't rising, that warming temperatures
can't kill. That climate denial is going to cost lives. They are just
denying science. They are denying reality. They are denying what
everyone sees 3 nights out of 7 on their television sets as the lead
story--these wild storms and wildfires that affect all parts of our
country. They are saying that warming temperatures can't kill. Well,
again, climate denial costs lives.
This is Trump's America, where EPA stands for ``Every Polluter's
Ally.'' It is just a revolving door. Come on in, tell us which
environmental regulations are making you less profitable, and we will
give you permission to ignore those environmental laws and send more
pollution up into the air--more cancers, more asthma, more disease in
children and pregnant women. We will just give you a permission slip to
go and do it.
Your health is sacrificed for their wealth.
Trump and Zeldin and their whole cabal of polluters should be
ashamed, and they should be held accountable.
From day one, Trump has had it out for any technology that might save
money for working Americans, usually for reasons that range from the
personal, like his problems with water-efficient toilets, to the
personally enriching for Donald Trump.
Look at wind power. Trump's crusade against wind power dates to 2006,
when he bought an 1,800-acre estate in Scotland near a planned wind
farm that he warned would be ``really ugly.'' You know he just wants
better views for the golf courses, for which he is willing to violate
our ethics laws.
Now look at his fossil fuel donors. In April of 2024, Trump demanded
$1 billion in campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry, at Mar-
a-Lago. Give me $1 billion, he said, and I will take care of those
environmental problems for you. And the fossil fuel industry has been
cashing it in for favors ever since.
In the first 2 weeks alone in the Trump administration, Trump's top
15 fossil fuel billionaire donors--otherwise known as the
``oilgarchy''--increased their wealth by a collective $2.4 billion.
In the ``Big Ugly Bill,'' mom-and-pop taxpayers were forced to give
$18 billion in handouts to Big Oil and Big Gas. That is the One Big
Beautiful Bill that the Republicans brag about. Do they brag about the
$18 billion they gave to the oil, gas, and coal industry? You are not
going to hear that when you hear the litany of the things they were
concerned about. That is on top of the $35 billion the fossil fuel
industry already gets in tax breaks and has gotten for decades and
decades and decades.
Do you know what drives them crazy? When we give tax breaks for wind
and solar, all-electric vehicles, battery storage technologies. That is
what drives them crazy--when the competition can finally get up and
compete.
That is what Donald Trump is doing in return for the funding from the
oil, gas, and coal industry. He is just unleveling the playing field so
that the fossil fuel industry, as they were in the 19th and 20th
centuries, can dominate in the 21st century, regardless of the
environmental impacts and the health impacts on the American people.
The result of Trump's showboating on trade, besides higher costs for
American families--Trump said the European Union would buy $750 billion
of energy resources from the United States over the next 3 years. You
heard him say that just last week. This is more than pay to play; it is
pay to slay our chance at a livable future--our clean air, our clean
water, our affordable energy bills.
The One Big Beautiful Bill's attacks on clean and cheap energy just
absolutely are ahistorical. In the ``One Big Ugly Bill,'' Republicans
took aim at the cheapest form of energy out there: renewable energy. It
is cheaper than oil and gas and coal, and they hate that now. It is a
young person's vision for the future.
Their legislation essentially puts a new tax on cheap, clean power--
raising costs for ratepayers everywhere as projects to install new
generation slow to a crawl, which is deeply ironic given that nearly 80
percent of clean energy investments from the Inflation Reduction Act of
2022 that they sought to destroy have gone to Republican districts,
creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in red districts across this
country. Think about that. Trump is actively working to destroy
economic growth and jobs in the very places that got him elected.
More demand, less supply. More costs, less relief. Bills going up by
more than $100 a year per family. We are already seeing energy costs
start to spike, rising nearly three times higher this year than during
Biden's term and rising three times as fast as general inflation.
This is a predictor of coming atrocities due to the Big Beautiful
Bill. Electricity rates are spiking across our country. People are
seeing it in their bills on their kitchen tables. Energy is getting
more expensive more quickly for every family across our country, and
that is all thanks to the Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill.''
But that is not all. The ``Big Ugly Bill'' will increase emissions
equivalent to putting 72 million new cars on the road and eliminates
pollution-reduction programs, leading to approximately hundreds of
additional premature deaths in our country every single year. This
means more asthma, more heart attacks, more families losing loved
ones--all because Republicans want to give billionaire polluters
another bonus.
Kill the new industries, Trump says, Big Oil says. Kill those new
industries. And they did.
Undermining clean energy means all of us breathe dirtier air, costing
Americans in expensive trips to the emergency room for asthma attacks,
lost schooldays, lost workdays. Asthma is already responsible for
nearly 1.8 million emergency department visits, over 94,000
hospitalizations, more than 3,500 deaths annually. And what the
Republicans have done in cooperation with Donald Trump is it is
supercharging--it is supercharging--asthma visits to emergency rooms in
our country.
Cutting clean energy is making all of those health benefits go away,
and the economic burden of asthma is staggering. Let me give you the
numbers. It costs our healthcare system approximately $50 billion each
year, almost $3 billion in lost school and work days, and $29 billion
from mortality. The cumulative impact of breathing dirty air from
living near a highway or a powerplant means your risk of lung cancer
skyrockets. Nearly $24 billion was spent on lung cancer in 2020, and it
costs each patient $200,000, on average. But wait, there is more.
At the same time that the bill slashes Medicaid and slashes the
Affordable Care Act as it pays out to dirty, expensive energy that
pollutes your lungs, it also cuts billions in historic investments from
the Inflation Reduction Act, in environmental justice, and air
pollution reduction programs, even at schools.
This included the $20 billion climate bank that I secured with Chris
Van
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Hollen in the Inflation Reduction Act, which is projected to spur more
than $250 billion in public and private sector investment to create
jobs, lower Americans' energy costs, strengthen our energy
independence, combat the climate crisis, deploy solar, deploy charging
stations for electric vehicles. That was the climate bank, which I was
able to create with Chris Van Hollen. They want to eliminate that. They
have taken it to court. It was working too successfully. Anything that
is working to deploy clean energy technologies, they hate.
Republicans also targeted clean car regulations that saved drivers
money at the pump. Instead of the dawn of the clean energy future,
Republicans are sunsetting incentives that would spur clean domestic
manufacturing for industries.
This bill is on track to destroy more than 840,000 American jobs by
2030 in the clean energy sector. This is the largest job-destroying
bill to ever pass Congress--killed 840,000 new jobs. Never before has
Congress done anything like this, deliberately, intentionally killing
all of those jobs. And that means fewer manufacturing, solar
installation, home efficiency contracts all across our country.
States with the largest job losses: Texas, Florida, Indiana, Georgia.
They voted to destroy the jobs in their own States. They were going to
be the center of this revolution. That is where the manufacturing
plants were. But the oil, gas, and coal industry, they said to Donald
Trump: Kill it. And each of them received, as it is said in ``The
Godfather,'' part 1--they each got an offer they couldn't refuse. So as
a result, they voted to kill all of that job creation.
This isn't a red State or blue State issue; this is creating a
national economic crisis. The States with the highest spikes in energy
prices: South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Their prices are spiking right now and have been and are going to
continue to spike because of this bill.
This administration has made their tradeoff clear: your future for
their profit. That is Trump's ``Art of the Deal.'' You give up your
future, and we get to make billions. So this is absolutely something
that young people in our country, the next generation, they are going
to be devastated by these decisions. And it is going to unfold next
year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
They are going to be looking back, saying: What did that generation
think? How could that Congress kill wind and solar and all electric
vehicles? Because the Republican bill is going to make the United
States a laggard, not a leader, in innovation. Already China is
investing four times more than the United States in renewable energy.
Instead of catching up and overtaking China, this bill will cede more
jobs and progress to China.
In fact, in 2024, China installed 357,000 megawatts of wind and
solar. That is roughly the amount of wind and solar that the United
States has installed in our country's entire history. China did it last
year. You would think we want to take them on. You would think that is
a challenge for the United States in our innovation, our
entrepreneurial spirit. And instead, Donald Trump said to the
Republicans: Let's just surrender. Let's give up. Let's not compete in
the energy sectors of the future. Let's let the Chinese sell the
electric vehicles to the world. Let's let them sell the solar panels,
the batteries, the wind technologies to the world. We are not going to
do it.
And by the way, he did the same thing with the biotech sector. When
you slash the NIH budget, China is saying: Thank you. We didn't like
the fact that the United States was ahead of us. We don't know what we
deserved to get this gift from Trump, but thank you for giving us the
clean energy and biotech future for the 21st century--and asking for
nothing in return. That is what Trump just did. That is what the
Republicans are doing out here.
Between January and May of 2025 alone, China added 198,000 megawatts
of solar and 46,000 megawatts of wind. China now has more than 1
million megawatts of solar energy on the grid. China also produces 80
percent of the solar panels. Do you want to compete with the Chinese?
No, says Trump. I don't want to compete. I don't like solar. I don't
like wind. I don't like batteries. I don't like all-electric vehicles.
I don't want to compete. America, we are 5 percent of the world. Let's
just control the 5 percent of the world that is the population of the
United States. Let the Chinese have the other 95 percent of the world
for the clean energy future for the 21st century. That is the decision
the President made, and Republicans went along with it just this month.
By contrast, the United States had approximately 1,200 gigawatts of
utility-scale power on our grid. The United States added only 50,000
megawatts of solar and 4,000 megawatts of wind throughout the entirety
of 2024--not too shabby but only a fraction of what China was able to
accomplish. China sold over 11 million electric vehicles in 2024. China
continues to be the world's EV manufacturing hub and is responsible for
more than 70 percent of global production of electric vehicles.
The United States remains a net importer of electric cars, with
imports increasing by nearly 40 percent in 2024. How are we going to
catch up if Republicans would rather hamstring the industry? We are not
close to winning this race. The Republicans won't let us even get to
the starting line.
In fact, they don't even know where the ball game is. They are still
driving around trying to find out where this game is. It is as though
they don't understand that China is targeting our key industries:
biotech, clean energy. And instead of responding with a plan--and we
can beat China with a plan. You can't beat them without a plan. And
what they did, the Republicans, in unison with Donald Trump, with JD
Vance breaking the tie, the Vice President of the United States came
here to cast the vote that said: We are giving up on biotech. We are
giving up on clean tech. We are just going to let the Chinese have it.
Just absolutely insane, economically.
So since the start of the Trump administration through April 2025,
the Trump administration has already cost America more than 62,000
clean energy jobs, over $14 billion in private sector clean energy
projects, and these vanishing projects were winners for the grid, for
your wallets, for our economy.
In 2024, 94 percent of all new electricity generation added was from
wind and solar and batteries. That is 50,000 megawatts of solar, 4,000
megawatts of wind, 11,000 megawatts of battery.
So think of it this way: If you are the oil, gas, and coal industry,
you are looking at 2024, and you are seeing 94 percent of all new
electricity being wind and solar and batteries. It is driving them
crazy because this year would be 94 percent and next year would be 94
percent and the year after and the year after. And natural gas would,
slowly but surely, just recede, recede into the rearview mirror of
American history. And the coal industry would join them.
So they hate it. They had to kill it. They had to kill the revolution
that they said was never going to be competitive. And when it became
competitive, they said: Now, we are going to kill it. Utility-scale
solar, onshore wind are the cheapest energy technologies to operate and
quickest to build even without subsidies. Solar panels today cost 1
percent of what they cost 30 years ago.
Can I say that? Solar right now costs only 1 percent what it did 30
years ago, and these cheap, clean megawatts of power are powering our
economy in red and blue States, and compare these with the fuels of the
past.
Last year, only 2,500 megawatts of natural gas were added and zero
from coal. That is a losing streak if I ever saw one. Trump and
Republicans like to characterize Democrats' interest in addressing
climate change as quasi-religious.
Well, here is the real gospel. Clean energy is not polarizing; it is
popular in the polls. Seventy percent of registered voters support the
IRA, with over 70 percent of 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.
That is why Republicans are using every trick up their sleeve to rig
the game while eliminating programs and incentives that lower energy
costs and reduce pollution. An energy demand that is increasing, driven
by power-hungry AI data centers and natural gas
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exports out of our country, Republicans are choosing to strangle
America's supply of cheap solar and wind.
And thanks to Republicans and their ``Big Ugly Bill,'' wind
deployment is expected to drop from 200,000 megawatts and solar by
150,000 megawatts by the year 2035 compared to prior estimates before
they passed their bill.
It is absolutely unbelievable the stuff that was working and cheapest
and cleanest, they are destroying. The stuff that is dirtiest and more
expensive, they are giving tax breaks to. It is the opposite of what
the rest of the world wants. And China knows they are going to be
selling the solar panels, the all-electric vehicles, the batteries, the
wind to the rest of the world, 95 percent of the population. And we are
pulling out of that competition.
This is economics 101. High demand plus low supply means higher
energy prices for everyone, forcing families to pay at least $130 more
per month on energy bills in 5 years and $170 more per month in 10
years.
It goes even beyond the ``Big Ugly Bill.'' We are living in their big
ugly world. Earlier this month, the Department of the Interior released
a memo stating that all decisions related to wind and solar energy
projects on Federal lands now require the Secretary of the Interior
Doug Burgum's personal signoff. Who is Secretary of the Interior Doug
Burgum? He was a fossil fuel guy. Now, you have to go to the fossil
fuel guy to get permission to deploy wind and solar.
A few weeks later, the Trump administration came out with new
messages, new measures to further sabotage wind, and the staff at the
Department of Energy are now full-time coal lobbyists.
Can I say that again? The staff at the Department of Energy are full-
time coal lobbyists who have been brought in. Coal, yes, the dirtiest
source out there, both a major contributor to the climate crisis and to
the public health threat for communities nearby. That is who is running
the Department of Energy.
Just like Trump, coal is outdated, costly, dangerous. Perhaps it is
no surprise that he is in a weird love affair with coal. It is just
weird that he loves this technology from 100 years ago. He just can't
move to the future.
Coal has shrunk from nearly half the country's electricity generation
in 2008 to only 15 percent at the start of this year, a trend driven
primarily by competition from cheaper fossil gas and renewables.
Building new solar, even solar plus storage, is now cheaper than
running existing coal plants in the United States. It is already
winning.
From today's Twitter post of coal captioned, ``She is the moment''--a
type of coal, mind you, that has not been mined in the United States
for more than 80 years--to spreading misinformation that coal is
critical to modern technology, some of the coal love affair has just
been plain weird.
But more concerningly, they are actively spending your ratepayer
dollars to keep retiring coal plants online.
With Trump's sham energy emergency Executive order, he has enabled
the Department of Energy to use emergency authority to keep coal
online, forcing working families to pay more in order to line the
pockets of those Big Oil billionaires.
That is not an energy emergency. This is a Trump energy tax on the
American public. It is a deliberate strategy to make sure working
families stay dependent on a damaging fuel source that makes a handful
of billionaires richer by the day while everyone else pays the price in
higher bills and a deterioration of their health.
The truth is that Trump's gutting of cheap and reliable wind and
solar has created a reliability risk to our grid, in addition to the
rapid proliferation of massive, load-sucking data centers.
AI is incredibly energy intensive. One ChatGPT search uses ten times
the amount of power needed for a Google search. It took the energy
consumption of 28,000 households to train ChatGPT4. Data centers are
expected to demand 130 gigawatts of electricity load by the end of this
decade, equivalent to the electricity used by about 100 million U.S.
homes.
This will require adding 10 to 20 additional gigawatts per year to
the electricity grid. Data centers are expected to demand--
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. MOODY). The Senator's time has expired.
Do you need a moment to wrap up?
Mr. MARKEY. I thank you, Madam President, and I will conclude, and I
will be back because this subject is just too important.
We are now in a climate crisis. It is only going to worsen. NOAA is
predicting higher than normal hurricanes coming our way. They are going
to be supercharged.
The planet is running a fever, and there are no emergency rooms for
planets. We have to engage in preventive care. The Republicans have
removed that care, and so we have to have this debate, this discussion.
And I thank my colleagues, but especially my Democratic colleagues.
We have to continue to fight. We have to continue to stand. We have to
continue to ensure that the American people know that we are in this
battle for the clean energy future for the next generations of young
Americans who are out there depending upon us to lead that fight for
them.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Ms. ERNST. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak up to 5
minutes preceding this evening's scheduled vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.