[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 166 (Wednesday, October 8, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7016-S7030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TERMINATING THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED WITH RESPECT TO ENERGY
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to execute the order of
September 17, 2025, with respect to S.J. Res. 71.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, S.J. Res. 71 is
discharged, and the Senate will proceed to the consideration of the
joint resolution, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 71) terminating the national
emergency declared with respect to energy.
Under the previous order, the joint resolution was discharged from
committee, and the Senate proceeded to consider the joint resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be up to 6 hours for debate
only, with the time equally divided between the leaders or their
designees.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that we will
have over the course of the next couple of hours about this Senate
joint resolution--a privileged motion pending before the Senate that I
filed, together with Senator Heinrich, to terminate a Presidential
declaration of an energy emergency that he issued on his first day in
office.
The President took a number of actions on his first day in office,
and obviously the one that got the most attention was the fact of his
inauguration and the celebrations about that. There were other actions
that were taken--the pardon of the January 6 criminal convicts and
other pardons of individuals, including one notorious drug trafficker.
But there was also an action that was taken that did not get
attention immediately, but I started to pay attention to it a few days
after the inauguration. That was President Trump's use of the National
Emergencies Act and a related statute known as IEEPA to declare
national emergencies in the United States. The IEEPA statute is broadly
worded. It allows a President to declare an emergency when there is a
significant and unusual challenge to the United States that stems
primarily from a source outside the United States' shores.
The President has used the NEA to declare an energy emergency. He has
used IEEPA to declare tariffs on virtually every nation in the world.
And he has also used the statute in other ways.
I was puzzled by the President's determination that America, in
January of 2025, was in an energy emergency because I went back and
checked and found that the United States, at the beginning of the Trump
administration, was producing more energy than at any time in the
history of the United States. Where is the emergency? We were producing
more oil, gas, and coal than at any time in the history of the United
States. Where is the emergency?
Even more exciting to me because of its tremendous acceleration, we
were producing more alternative energy--low-carbon energy, geothermal,
wind, solar--than at any time in the history of the United States.
We have seen this in Virginia. To give you an example, when I came
into the Senate, Virginia was deep in the bottom half in this country
in solar deployment. Now we are in the top 10. Offshore wind was
nowhere in the United States. Now we are nearing completion of an
offshore wind farm off the shores of Virginia Beach, VA, and we will be
the leaders in the Nation and begin producing components that can help
us lead in the world when it comes offshore wind.
So where is the emergency? I look through the President's declaration
and can see nothing suggesting that the United States was in an energy
emergency. But you declare an emergency for a reason, and the emergency
was declared not because there was an emergency but because there was
something the President wanted to do. As you read down in the emergency
declaration, you found what the President wanted to do was allow a
bypass of environmental regulations for energy projects. That is what
he wanted to do, and he declared a sham emergency in order to do that.
I found it further interesting as I read--well, what is the
definition of energy projects that are getting a bypass around
environmental regulations? It was not all energy projects. It was oil
and gas and coal but not wind, not solar, not hydropower, not
geothermal.
Sometimes, I hear folks say they are for an all-of-the-above energy
policy. President Trump is embracing an all-of-the-below energy policy.
If it is not a fossil fuel under the Earth, it will not be prioritized
by this administration.
That was the President's action on day one. There is an energy
emergency, and we need an easy-pass lane for fossil fuel projects, but
we are going to make it hard for alternative energy projects.
So I dusted off the statute, IEEPA, and found that a single Senator,
even in the minority party, can challenge a Presidential declaration of
emergency and be guaranteed a privileged vote on the Senate floor
within a set period of time, a prompt vote on a simple majority that
cannot be filibustered, and that is what we are doing today.
In fact, you can challenge a Presidential emergency every 6 months. I
challenged the President's energy emergency with Senator Heinrich in
March, and it was a partisan vote.
Democrats said: There is no such emergency; it is a sham.
Republicans said: We are sticking with President Trump.
Senator Heinrich and I issued a warning on the floor in March. We
said: You are going to see higher energy costs because of what
President Trump is doing, and you are going to see jobs lost because of
what President Trump is doing. Energy costs will go up because the
cancelation of clean energy projects will constrict the supply of
energy at a time when the demand is increasing, and the natural
economic reaction when you constrict supply at a time of increasing
demand is that people are going to pay more for household energy.
We were not convincing then. Maybe people didn't believe that our
prediction would come to pass, but 6 months later, we are renewing the
challenge. We are here to say that what we said on the floor last
spring has happened, and we are seeing dramatic increases in the price
of energy for American consumers and businesses and the slashing of
American jobs so that Donald Trump can give an easy pass to the fossil
fuel industry.
It took a while for these effects to come to pass, but by the time we
got to the debate over the reconciliation bill here in this body in
late June and early July, it was pretty clear that the only energy
emergency was our President. President Trump is the energy emergency.
We were debating the spending law, the reconciliation bill, and I am
just going to go through some of the headlines.
NPR:
Power prices are expected to soar under the new tax cut and
spending law.
Why would they soar? Because that tax cut and spending law reduced
all
[[Page S7017]]
kinds of production and investment tax credits for clean energy
projects, making those projects unable to work. Demand is going up. If
you constrict supply, prices are going to soar. That was the prediction
in July.
Other articles from the same time:
The Trump megabill gives the oil industry everything it
wants and ends key support to solar and wind.
Most of the power that has been added to the grid in the United
States in the last couple of years has been solar and wind. It is
cheap; it is native; it is clean; it is sustainable; it works. It is
bringing people's costs down, but Donald Trump's megabill gives the oil
industry what it wants by dropping support for solar and wind. That was
from CNBC in July.
The story about how this was to benefit Big Oil was revealed earlier
in February, shortly after the emergency order went into effect, in The
Guardian:
How Trump is targeting wind and solar energy--and
delighting big oil.
This was all laid out. There is no emergency other than the President
himself. This is nothing but a giveaway to the oil and gas interests.
Shortly after the passage of the reconciliation bill:
EPA plans to end a program that makes solar power available
to low-income Americans.
Why don't we punish low-income Americans and make their energy costs
go up? Why don't we do that? I mean, it is shameful for that thought to
cross your mind, much less for you to do it, but that is what the
reconciliation bill and the Trump energy emergency put into motion:
punishing low-income Americans by making it more difficult for them to
access what is now one of the cheapest forms of energy.
Oh, yes, there was a prediction. We predicted it on the floor in
March that electricity prices were going to go up, and then others,
when the bill passed, predicted it, but by July 24, it wasn't just a
prediction.
Newsweek:
Electricity prices are soaring under Donald Trump.
Inflation is too high because of tariffs and other chaotic economic
moves on food, on building supplies, on healthcare, on pharmaceuticals,
but the energy inflation is higher now than the general inflation rate
because of Donald Trump's policies.
Here is a chart that is one that got some selfish attention from me:
How much Trump's Big Beautiful Bill could raise electricity
costs over the next 10 years.
By a State's monthly bills, in Virginia, it is $250 a month. Other
States are listed as $480 in Texas and $350 in Iowa. We see the prices
already going up. It is happening just as predicted.
In mid-August, The Guardian says:
Trump's tariffs and green energy rollbacks push household
electricity bills up by 10 percent.
This is much faster than the core inflation rate, which is going up.
So now, energy inflation is outstripping the rest of inflation, and it
is particularly hard for low-income households.
Then, finally, just last month, CNN Business:
Trump vowed to halve electricity prices, but they are
rising twice as fast as inflation.
Electricity prices--that monthly bill that households pay together
with their mortgage or their rent, together with food, together with
healthcare--all of these are going up. We have a President who
promised, when he ran for office, to deal with the costs of living, the
costs to live. What we see is a short attention span focusing on
sending troops into American cities and on political prosecutions and
on the firing of career prosecutors in Virginia and all kinds of
distractions. And the thing he promised the American public he would
do--bring down costs--he is not doing.
The only energy emergency in the United States today is Donald Trump,
and that is why I am pressing the Senate to vote. Do you want to listen
to your constituents? Do you want to decrease energy costs? Do you want
to give constituents the ability to have energy that is less costly and
that is also cleaner or do you want to just do what Donald Trump says
and embrace a sham energy emergency to give an easy pass lane to oil
and gas to bypass environmental regulations?
This timing today is bad and good. It is propitious or disastrous.
Last night, the administration announced that they were canceling
billions and billions of dollars of clean energy projects all over this
country in every State--in Virginia, in Missouri--all over the Nation:
billions of dollars of projects that hire people, thousands of jobs
lost. The projects that are being canceled are going to continue this
trend of--at a time of great demand and growth--data centers and all
kinds of uses for AI that, through searches, require more energy than
what we were doing a couple of years ago.
That demand is growing. In Virginia, we see it all the time,
especially with a profusion of data centers. As the demand is growing,
if we are cutting off energy projects and constricting supply, we are
only going to accelerate the increases.
President Trump has canceled 20 energy projects in Virginia since he
became President: an offshore wind staging project in Portsmouth, an
offshore wind logistics project in Norfolk, a project dealing with
electric vehicles in southwest Virginia, an electric vehicle
infrastructure apprenticeship program and workforce training program in
Northern Virginia--20 projects.
Here is one in Appalachia, VA: a project that would be implemented by
the Virginia Department of Energy, which is part of the Virginia State
government. We currently have a Republican Governor. This is an
allocation of grant funds to the Youngkin administration's Virginia
Department of Energy so they can do carbon capture and storage.
This is a way to take current coal technologies and make them cleaner
and more useful--canceled; enhancing energy resilience--canceled;
hydrogen deployment--canceled; reducing data center load impacts--
canceled; methane reduction--canceled; other projects to do carbon
capture and storage--canceled.
The President has canceled 20 projects just in Virginia, totaling
$540 million, and costing us thousands of jobs, including jobs in some
very important parts of the State that have struggled with
unemployment, like Appalachia.
Many of these projects were announced by our Governor. Our Republican
Governor announced these projects with pride--economic development and
manufacturing in some hard-hit parts of Virginia--because of tax
credits that are available to American innovators so that we not only
do the right thing by the Virginia economy but lead the world in the
development of innovative and clean energy technology. This was
canceled by Donald Trump.
So the prediction--and I make predictions that turn out not to be
true. I do have to acknowledge that. I have often made predictions that
have turned out not to be true. But on the floor of this body 6 months
ago, I said, if this energy emergency is not terminated, we will see
energy prices spike, and we will see American jobs lost. I get it that
sometimes people might not want to vote on a bill based on a
prediction. I could be wrong. It is happening, and it is not just
happening in Virginia. It is happening in every State in this country,
with energy inflation up and jobs being lost.
We can end it here. That is why the privileged motion is available to
even a single Senator. The privileged motions--and there are many
different kinds of privileged motions. In fact, we will be arguing
about another one later tonight dealing with Presidential war powers.
All privileged motions kind of fit into the ZIP Code of enabling a
Senator to challenge potential overreach by the Executive. They are
very much, kind of, in the framework of the checks and balances.
Executives have power, but the legislature should have power as well,
and the legislature should have the ability to challenge overreach by
an Executive.
In this instance, the declaration of an energy emergency, when we are
producing more energy than we ever have in our history, as a way to
give oil and gas an easy pass lane to avoid environmental regulation is
making our environment worse, our costs higher, and our economy weaker.
So, when we finish this debate on the floor tonight, I will ask my
colleagues to support the resolution to terminate this fake emergency
and restore to American consumers the ability to afford their energy
costs.
[[Page S7018]]
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are down here telling the Trump
administration that their energy emergency, as they call it, is the
emergency for our country. Trump, Secretary Chris Wright--this whole
administration is using emergency authorities to make up a crisis that
is resulting in our electric bills going sky high all across our
country, and our clean energy jobs are going up in smoke. This energy
emergency is just fossil fuel gaslighting of the American people.
Since Trump took office, electricity prices have gone up more than 10
percent--twice as fast as general inflation, which also remains
historically high thanks to the Trump administration running our
economy into the ground. Their tariffs and their healthcare policies
are leading to higher prices--the price of food, the price of clothing,
the price of electricity--because of the Trump policies.
So why is this happening? For starters, Trump and the Republicans are
failing Econ 101. On the demand side, Big Tech is demanding big amounts
of electricity for its data centers. Data centers are projected to
demand up to 130,000 megawatts of electricity load by 2030--as much
electricity as is used by more than 100 million American homes. Do you
want to hear that again? This is all going to happen in the blink of an
eye. They are going to be consuming as much electricity as 100 million
homes in our country.
On the supply side, well, Trump is cutting off our cheapest and
quickest-to-deploy sources of energy that can meet this demand. Trump's
sham energy emergency pushes fossil fuels as the solution, but those
fossil fuels are polluting, they are pricey, and they are getting
pushed abroad to the highest bidder as exports. These fossil fuel
exports actually increase energy costs here for Americans. This is what
Senator Kaine has been talking about, trying to raise the profile of
these issues.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that they are killing
nearly $8 billion in grants for grid development and energy innovation,
targeting States that did not vote for Donald Trump in 2024. This week,
rumors have been swirling about the impending cancelation of tens of
billions of additional energy grant dollars that would be out there
trying to create more electricity, more energy here in the United
States. These lawless terminations hamstring American competitors,
drive up energy costs, and hurt domestic manufacturing.
But this is nothing new for this chaos administration, which has
already prevented hundreds of thousands of clean energy megawatts from
getting onto the grid. That is more than $42 billion in private sector
clean energy projects and 80,000 clean energy jobs already wiped out by
Donald Trump in the first 9 months of his administration.
Wright, Vought, Burgum, Trump--it is a fossil fuel cabal. It is not a
Cabinet; it is a cartel that is now running the United States of
America right out of the Oval Office, killing all of the new energy
sources that we need from wind and solar, from batteries, all-electric
vehicles--this incredible transformation that was taking place in our
country that they are now just trying to completely and totally kill.
Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill,'' which eliminated programs working to
lower household costs and get clean energy built, is expected to cause
wholesale electricity prices to rise by 74 percent over the next 10
years--that is just in one bill--while keeping 350,000 megawatts of
wind and solar off the grid over the next 10 years.
Just think about that. There are massive amounts of wind and solar
all lined up, ready to get on to the wires that go up and down the
streets of our country--the grid--and what the Republicans are doing is
saying: We are killing it all.
Of course, if you don't have all of that extra electricity and AI
consumes all of the remaining electricity, guess who is going to pick
up the tab? It is going to be residential homeowners. It is going to be
small businesses. They will have to pay much higher rates for the
remaining electricity. There will be a bidding war for the remaining
electricity in our country. Each individual family cannot compete
against these big AI companies. So the ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to
mean a lot of big ugly bills arriving in mailboxes for pretty much
every American over the next 10 years for their dramatically
skyrocketed electricity.
Their crazed push to produce more fossil fuels, whether by cutting
pollution regulation, selling off our public lands, keeping retiring
coal plants online, will cost Americans billions more. We will see
blackouts and we will see bigger bills because Trump and the
Republicans want bigger profits for their fossil fuel buddies--buddies
who contributed to Trump's campaign and have gotten paid out big time
in return, with more than $4 billion in brandnew handouts from the
government this year alone.
Let's call Trump's energy agenda what it really is: oil above all,
not all of the above.
Trump's energy agenda is killing American energy, especially the most
affordable and the most ready-to-go energy out there because--here are
the facts: Last year in the United States, 94 percent of all new
electrical generation capacity was wind and solar and batteries. Let me
say that again so everyone can hear it. Last year, 94 percent of all
new electricity came from wind and solar and batteries.
You wouldn't know that if you listened to the White House. You
wouldn't know that if you listened to the Department of Energy or the
EPA because they are just lying about it. They are just flat-out lying
about the role that wind and solar can play in our system because they
are over here just doing the bidding of the natural gas and the coal
industry. That is who they are.
They are looking at the future in a rearview mirror while young
people are looking to the future. Young people want to have this
renewable energy revolution unleashed for their century, for the 21st
century.
Solar panels today cost 1 percent of what they cost just 30 years
ago--1 percent. That is how much it has dropped. Crazy.
They say it is not working, in the White House. What is happening to
them? It is working too well. The oil, gas, and coal industry--they are
afraid of the future competition that comes from the technologies of
this younger generation in our country. They can smell it coming, that
their future is in the rearview mirror. That is what this whole thing
is all about.
There is a way of now producing solar energy. Even solar plus storage
is cheaper than running any coal-burning plant in the United States of
America. But you wouldn't know that from listening to Donald Trump,
when he says: I love coal. I love clean coal.
Well, young people love clean solar, clean wind. It is cheaper, and
it doesn't lead to asthma, it doesn't lead to lung cancer, and it
doesn't lead to genetic damage that can hurt future generations of
those families who are nearby those coal-burning plants.
Trump and Republicans have taken aim at renewables because they are
just plain scared. Even with all the subsidies that Big Oil and Big Gas
get from our government, renewables are winning on the market.
Trump is doing his fossil fuel donors' dirty work and keeping
American-made competition off of the grid. These are Trump energy taxes
on the American people.
So let's shine a spotlight on this fossil fuel gaslighting. Trump's
declaration is the energy emergency. Trump's declaration is the energy
emergency. He is stopping the future from arriving. He is stopping this
generation from deriving the benefits of a revolution that can be led
by the United States and then spread around the world--a solar
revolution, a wind revolution, a renewables revolution.
We should be the leaders, so let's end his sham declaration so we can
get lower bills, not raise barriers to affordable, American-made, clean
energy.
I urge my colleagues to enthusiastically support Senator Kaine and
Senator Heinrich's resolution. This is a critical debate. This goes to,
yes, the prices for electricity for all American families, all American
small businesses, but it also goes to the future of our planet.
Are we going to reduce the greenhouse gases we are sending up? Are we
going to recognize that we have a generational responsibility to be the
leader? Because the planet is running a
[[Page S7019]]
fever, and there are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage
in preventive care. That is what the wind and solar and battery storage
technologies all represent. They represent that future--a healthier
future, a safer future for all generations of all children in all
countries of the world. The United States should be the leader and not
the lagger.
I thank you, Senator Kaine, and I thank you, Senator Heinrich, for
bringing this resolution onto the floor.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, shortly, the Senate will vote on an
important resolution put forward by our colleague and friend Senator
Kaine on the topic of U.S. energy production.
As my colleagues know, Senator Schumer and I led the development of
the clean energy tax credits, which set in motion the possibility of
hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in clean energy and,
particularly, a policy that would keep prices down and keep good jobs
up. It had policies and ideas in it like technological neutrality that
created an opportunity for good science to reign and create incentives
for development.
Donald Trump came into office huffing and puffing because he didn't
like that. He didn't like that kind of energy dominance based on
consumer choice and marketplace forces.
He said our economic problems would go away with one thing: ``Drill,
baby, drill.'' Here is the reality. Like so much of his agenda, it
doesn't add up, and everything he does is rooted in a sweetheart deal
for his wealthy contributors.
Back in February, he signed the Executive order declaring an energy
emergency. That is the subject of today's floor action. The emergency
declaration has nothing to do with energy dominance, but it has
everything to do with giveaways for Big Oil. Donald Trump is looking
out for the same oil and gas companies that he solicited for big checks
for years and years. His offer to them was: Give me your money. Get me
elected. I will let your companies run the show.
I will give you this: Donald Trump kept his promise to Big Oil. He
has gutted American energy production, ceded ground to China on the
clean energy arms race, and rigged the system. There is no
technological neutrality, Senator Kaine. It is all about fossil fuels,
to the exclusion of everything else.
After declaring this energy emergency, Donald Trump and Republicans
took a wrecking ball to American energy production by gutting the tax
credits for wind and solar energy in their budget bill. I was struck,
as we were making the decisions, when natural gas leaders came and
essentially told the Energy Committee, which at one point I chaired:
Look, we are for natural gas, but with AI and all the energy needs for
growth, we need solar and wind.
These are the gas people. They are not repudiating gas. They said: We
need more energy.
My guiding principle has been crafting that legislation--that
legislation that took, really, a decade to put together. After cap and
trade went down, it was all about the need to create good-paying jobs
and secure a clean energy future--and that those two are not mutually
exclusive; you can have both. They go hand in hand.
The tax credits helped to kick off a manufacturing boom in America--
as I mentioned, hundreds of billions of dollars, not through government
but through the private sector--hundreds of thousands of jobs. New
factories went up around the country. Battery technology, clean
vehicles, energy-efficient products for businesses and homeowners--it
was already bringing down energy costs for consumers.
In terms of the global arms race for clean energy jobs and
investment, the United States went from the middle of the pack, under
our efforts, to the front basically overnight--until, at Trump's
direction, Republicans destroyed all of that. All of that progress was
destroyed, at the first opportunity, by Donald Trump. Why? To pay for
more tax cuts for corporations and his wealthy friends.
When Republicans were gearing up to pass a reconciliation bill, I
said this would be a bloodbath for clean energy. Fast-forward 3 months:
Manufacturing projects are being canceled, jobs are being lost, and
utility bills are going up. Their budget bill was a wrecking ball for
clean energy, and those workers are going to lose their jobs as a
direct result.
Last week, the administration announced plans to cancel over $7
billion in funding for clean energy. Almost every one of those projects
was located, as Senator Kaine and I have talked about, in a blue State.
Oregon alone had over $400 million in funding canceled.
Are the Republicans stopping there? No way. They have derailed
management of our public lands, and now they want to do it to prop up
coal. Oregonians see this for what it is--a gobsmacking attempt to hurt
American families just to score points with campaign folks they have
been close to.
Now, the United States is barreling toward a self-inflicted energy
crisis manufactured entirely by Republicans. Energy demand is
skyrocketing. Utility bills are rising. Keeping costs low and meeting
demand is going to require an all-of-the-above approach based on
technological neutrality. Instead, Republicans are focused on giveaways
to billionaires--Americans' bank accounts be damned.
It is as clear as our beautiful Crater Lake at home that all the talk
from Trump and Republicans about American energy dominance never was
going to be a reality. It was just a hollow campaign slogan. The
Republican energy agenda is a level of economic self-sabotage that
leaves you slack-jawed: How can you make such an unforced error?
It is going to take a huge toll on the economy. Our people thought
they were voting for cheaper groceries, utilities, gas, and good-paying
jobs and haven't gotten much of any of that. They didn't vote for an
energy crisis that benefits nobody except big oil investors.
So beginning, colleagues, with Senator Kaine's resolution, the Senate
now has an opportunity, a chance to go to innovation and modernization
and bring an end to Trump's manufactured energy crisis. This is a
chance for the Senate to use innovation to fight for lower prices, more
jobs, and greater energy security, while Donald Trump stands in
contrast trying to undermine all that.
I urge my colleagues, when we vote, to strongly support Senator
Kaine's resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to deliver two statements on the two
resolutions that are before us. First let me comment upon the proposal
S.J. Res. 71, led by my colleagues Senator Kaine and Heinrich, to
overturn President Trump's sham energy emergency.
You would think that, in an energy emergency, the President would be
pursuing the all-of-the-above energy policy his administration has
touted, but instead he is throwing up roadblocks at more than 90
percent of the power set to come online, as his Energy Secretary has
acknowledged. Meanwhile, President Trump has invoked emergency powers
to fast-track dirty fossil fuel projects, primarily to reward the Big
Oil donors whom he reportedly asked to donate a billion dollars to his
campaign.
The fact is, energy prices are a real emergency for the American
people, and we need more energy on the grid to keep up with the
proliferation of AI and data centers. But the truth also is, President
Trump and the harmful actions his administration is taking are actually
restricting supply, killing good-paying jobs, and increasing energy
prices, which have risen at more than twice the rate of inflation this
year under President Trump.
I will highlight two examples of President Trump's reckless actions
in my home State of Rhode Island. Right now, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO
is leading a critical lawsuit against President Trump's cancelation of
the $7 billion Solar for All Program, which was designed to help low-
and middle-income families install solar panels on their homes, saving
those families about $400 each year on electricity costs.
[[Page S7020]]
Rhode Island received nearly $50 million under this program to help
thousands of Rhode Island households install and utilize solar energy
while supporting hundreds of good-paying jobs in the State.
President Trump claims to support workers, but he is actually killing
good jobs that would bring affordable energy online for our
constituents. And just weeks after canceling the Solar for All Program,
the Trump administration paused work on Revolution Wind, a nearly
complete offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island. This
project is 80 percent constructed, with over $5 billion invested and 45
turbines already installed in the Atlantic Ocean. It supports more than
1,000 local union jobs and is poised to deliver enough low-cost energy
to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. State officials
estimate that losing this project could cost New England ratepayers up
to $500 million a year.
I am encouraged that a Federal court in Washington, DC, granted a
motion allowing work on Revolution Wind to proceed and that work has
restarted, but these cynical moves show that the President doesn't
really care about energy prices or supply or jobs; he cares, really,
about pleasing his Big Oil donors.
He is also pleasing China, which is becoming the global leader in
clean energy technology, building almost three-quarters of the world's
solar and wind projects, according to the Global Energy Monitor. And
despite President Trump's claims that China is simply exporting these
technologies and not utilizing them, the New York Times reported that
``In China, more wind turbines and solar panels were installed last
year than in the rest of the world combined.''
At the same time, President Trump is trying to keep the United States
hooked on expensive oil and gas and dependent on OPEC and other foreign
actors with interests opposed to our own; and while he is doing that,
China is launching into a new age of relatively cheap energy that will
power their data centers and their infrastructure.
Rhode Islanders deserve infrastructure that creates good jobs;
provides affordable, clean power; increases our energy independence;
and reduces climate-destroying greenhouse gases in the process. And it
is clear Trump's energy emergency is a sham, and I am proud to join my
colleagues' efforts to overturn it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow the chairman of
the Armed Services Committee, particularly in his remarks on the
Executive order that Donald Trump issued on Inauguration Day to declare
a nonexistent energy emergency. And I join him in support of S.J. Res.
71 to terminate that Executive order.
Let's be very clear. The only real energy emergency that we have in
this country is Donald Trump. Since that day of his inauguration, he
has used that Executive order to actually create an emergency. This
administration's actions are raising prices, killing jobs, and
undermining America's global competitiveness.
Now, we have a lot of evidence--and I will be mentioning some of it--
but the most recent is from the International Energy Agency, which has
slashed its forecasts for renewable energy capacity growth in the
United States this decade, citing the early phaseout of the Federal tax
incentives and regulatory shifts under this administration.
Mr. President, I ask that the Wall Street Journal article titled
``IEA Cuts U.S. Renewable Energy Growth Outlook on Trump Policies'' be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 7, 2025]
IEA Cuts U.S. Renewable Energy Growth Outlook on Trump Policies
(By Giulia Petroni)
The International Energy Agency slashed its forecast for
renewable energy capacity growth in the U.S. this decade,
citing the early phase-out of federal tax incentives and
regulatory shifts under the Trump administration.
The West's energy watchdog now expects the U.S. to add
nearly 250 gigawatts of new capacity by 2030--down by almost
50% from last year's projections--as a result of fresh import
restrictions, the suspension of new offshore wind leasing and
a crackdown on permitting for onshore wind and solar projects
on federal land.
President Trump has vowed to boost the oil-and-gas
industry, in part by cutting support for renewable-energy and
emissions-reduction initiatives. A key factor in the U.S.
downgrade was the ``One Big Beautiful Bill Act,'' the IEA
said, which has accelerated the phase out of tax credits and
imposed new construction-start requirements for wind and
solar PV projects.
``With the pushing forward of deadlines, renewable capacity
additions are now projected to peak in 2027, then decline in
2028 and remain stable through 2030,'' the agency said.
``After this period, renewable power growth will rely largely
on state-driven renewable portfolio or clean energy standards
and corporate PPAs [power purchase agreements], rather than
federal incentives.''
China's shift from a fixed tariff system to an auction-
based model is also impacting project economics and dampening
growth expectations. Previously, wind and solar projects
benefited from guaranteed long-term revenues tied to fixed
tariffs, while now projects are awarded contracts based on
competitive bids, with payments tied to market conditions.
Despite these shifts, Beijing continues to dominate the
global renewable landscape, accounting for nearly 60% of
capacity growth. The country is on track to meet its 2035
solar and wind power targets five years ahead of schedule,
the IEA said.
The downgrade is partly offset by more optimistic outlooks
for other regions, particularly India and Europe. According
to the agency, New Delhi will become the second-largest
growth market after China, with capacity set to increase by
2.5 times in five years on higher auction volumes, faster
hydropower permitting and a surge in rooftop solar
installations.
Globally, the IEA revised its renewable capacity growth
forecast down by 5%, but said it still expects capacity to
double between now and 2030, increasing by 4,600 gigawatts.
That is roughly the equivalent of the combined power
generation capacity of China, the European Union and Japan.
Solar power is set to account for nearly 80% of the global
increase due to its low costs and faster permitting
processes.
``In addition to growth in established markets, solar is
set to surge in economies such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and
several Southeast Asian countries,'' Executive Director Fatih
Birol said. ``As renewables' role in electricity systems
rises in many countries, policymakers need to pay close
attention to supply chain security and grid integration
challenges.''
The report came as clean-energy think tank Ember said
renewable energy generated more electricity than coal in the
first half of the year for the first time on record.
Offshore wind, however, is a weak spot in the IEA's
forecast, with its growth outlook about a quarter lower than
last year due to permitting delays, supply chain bottlenecks
and rising costs.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, it says:
The West's energy watchdog now expects the [United States]
to add nearly 250 gigawatts of new capacity by 2030--down
almost 50% from last year's projections--as a result of fresh
import restrictions, the suspension of new offshore wind
leasing and a crackdown on permitting for onshore wind and
solar projects on Federal land.
So let us now turn to one of those onshore--or, in this case,
offshore--energy projects: Revolution Wind, just one example of the
reckless energy policies that the Trump administration has implemented.
Let's be very clear. When President Trump came into office, America
was producing more energy than at any point in our country's history.
Last year, the United States added 49 gigawatts of new capacity to the
grid, and 95 percent of that new capacity was solar, batteries,
nuclear, and wind power.
Yet this administration has launched an all-out assault on these
lower cost, less polluting sources of energy.
President Trump promised to lower energy prices for Americans ``in
half.'' Now, across the country, electricity prices have jumped more
than twice as fast as the overall cost of living. And part of that
progress before Inauguration Day for Donald Trump and the emergency
energy Executive order was Revolution Wind--now, 80 percent complete.
It is an offshore wind project, off of the coast of both Connecticut
and Rhode Island, which is why my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator
Reed, mentioned it so prominently in his remarks.
The fact is, Revolution Wind is fully permitted. The project was on
track to deliver 704 megawatts of power beginning in 2026--that is next
year--powering 350,000 homes, a project well underway before the
Trumped-up energy emergency.
[[Page S7021]]
Forty-five of the planned 65 wind turbines were already installed
when the Trump administration, just months ago in late August, issued a
stop work order, grinding this project to nearly a complete halt--men
and women on the job in New London, offshore, onshore, stopped from
going to work, out of jobs; investors, construction companies, supply
chain suppliers, all of them grinding to a nearly complete halt.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has
found that canceling Revolution Wind would cost taxpayers half a
billion dollars a year. Let's be clear--half a billion dollars a year
to Connecticut and Rhode Island ratepayers every year.
The project has a 20-year contract at 9 cents per kilowatt an hour--
less than half of today's regional price. Connecticut families are
already facing surging energy costs. Our electricity bills are among
the highest in the Nation. Blocking Revolution Wind undermines efforts
to make energy more affordable. It undercuts our work to lower prices
for consumers, locking in higher bills for decades and impacting, as
well, jobs.
Revolution Wind is providing thousands of jobs in Connecticut and
Rhode Island. More than a thousand local union workers have already
logged more than 2 million hours on the project. The stop work order
put hundreds of these workers on the sideline, and I was proud to stand
with a number of them at the Connecticut State Pier to support the
offshore wind industry.
Let me thank them and thank the unions that were there. The unions
were compelling and powerful, and they are representing their workers.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into that State pier
to support the offshore wind industry.
So the Revolution Wind cancellation threatens our economy, jobs, and,
most immediately, affordability for everyday Americans, most
particularly in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
But it is not just Connecticut that has benefitted from Revolution
Wind. The supply chain for this project stretches across the country,
in red States and blue States. The construction of the first American-
made offshore wind vessel provided hundreds of jobs. Where? In
Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi. Steel for the project was sourced
in Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Offshore wind
components were sourced and manufactured in Kansas and South Carolina.
Just as our military construction and manufacturing often is sourced
throughout the United States, in this case, all of America is helping
to build Revolution Wind.
And what is most galling about the administration's actions on
Revolution Wind is they defy logic. Eighty percent complete, all of it
permitted, reviewed by the Department of Defense for national security,
as well as every other Federal Agency that had anything to do with it,
any say at all, approved.
And yet in the eleventh hour, the administration swooped down with a
stop work order, citing ``national security concerns.'' And that is
it--national security concerns.
Well, that phrase is not a pass for everything the Federal Government
wants to do, and so I demanded to know what they were, to be provided
with information in a classified briefing, if necessary. I demanded it
in a letter. I have yet to receive a satisfactory response. In fact,
those concerns collapse under even the slightest scrutiny.
A Department of Defense letter, last year, confirmed, and I quote DOD
here, ``construction of the Revolution Wind project . . . would not
have adverse impacts to DOD missions.'' No adverse impacts.
So the idea that somehow it might interfere with the movement of
submarines from the Groton sub base or maybe testing of submarines by
electric boat or some other national security or national defense need,
no adverse impact to DOD mission.
So these national security concerns, quite clearly and outrageously,
were just a pretext, a flimsy excuse to continue this administration's
all-out assault on offshore wind. The President said he doesn't like
it. He has got something in for it. There is an animus. Who knows what
the reason is.
But, thankfully, there is the law. Yes, a Federal judge saw the
administration's stop work order for what it was:
[T]he height of arbitrary and capricious.
Now, Federal judges do not often say that actions by the President of
the United States are ``the height of arbitrary and capricious,'' nor
do they lightly issue a preliminary injunction against that kind of
stop work order, but this judge did. And it was based on the fact and
the law, so work was allowed to resume on Revolution Wind.
But let's be very clear, a lot of the harm was done. Work was stopped
for almost a month, with workers sidelined and progress halted to the
tune of millions and millions of dollars, not the way for the United
States to do business, not the way for the United States of America to
advance economic growth or provide jobs or, equally important, make
energy more affordable.
If this administration can derail a fully approved energy project,
whether it is natural gas pipelines or offshore wind farms, why would
any developer--why would anyone invest in the United States?
The credibility of the United States as a place to do business
craters when projects can be derailed by the personal whim of a
President, lawlessly and recklessly, as was done here because this
President doesn't like wind power.
On the first day of the government shutdown, the Department of Energy
canceled nearly $8 billion in clean energy funding for the whole
country. It included $53 million for 12 projects in Connecticut
supporting lower energy prices, grid reliability, and American energy
independence.
It was done in a way that was as illogical, chaotic, and likely
illegal as canceling Revolution Wind was. Again, a self-inflicted wound
in every way by this President, and that is why he is the energy
emergency. He created it in just months, not even a year. He declared
it on his first day in office when there was no energy emergency.
He is denying funding for innovative, promising projects. He is
stopping nearly complete offshore wind projects. He is creating chaos.
It makes America weaker.
And so I urge my colleagues to vote to end the Trump energy emergency
and recommit to finding real solutions to lowering energy costs for
consumers and supporting American energy.
And I will just close with, again, referring to the Wall Street
Journal's report of today on the International Energy Agency's
conclusion about how our capacity for renewable energy will be cut by
50 percent as a result of Trump administration action.
Despite these shifts, Beijing continues to dominate the
global renewable landscape, accounting for nearly 60% of
capacity growth. The country is on track to meet its 2035
solar and wind power targets five years ahead of schedule.
And we wonder why we are in danger of losing competitive advantage to
China, not because we lack the resources or the innovators or the
workers. It is a failure of leadership, and it begins in the White
House.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I have come to the Senate floor today to
say what every New Mexican I know can easily tell you: Americans are
reeling from an affordability crisis. It doesn't matter if you are
talking about the price of groceries or rent or healthcare, everybody
is stretched thin.
They need help and they need it now and they need it from Congress
and the President. But help is not what the President and his
administration are delivering. Instead of working to lower healthcare
and energy costs for American families, the President, his
administration, and Republicans in Congress are choosing to drive those
costs through the roof.
They repeal energy tax credits making it harder and more expensive to
build and deliver energy to the grid or even just to put solar panels
on your own roof. They made it more expensive to make your home energy
efficient. They imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, driving up
energy costs, infrastructure costs, and they are blocking energy from
coming onto the grid.
Now, if it feels chaotic, it is probably because it is. They are
trying to sow chaos. While all of the numbers and
[[Page S7022]]
projects and policies float around in the headlines, the real story,
the real impact is in your budget. It is in your electric bill.
According to the Energy Information Administration, residential
electricity bills have already increased by almost 10 percent since
President Trump took office. Household energy costs are expected to
increase by another $170 annually by 2035 thanks to tax credit repeals
and tariffs.
And when it comes to the impacts on energy supply, it is the same
story. As of August, clean power estimated that 25,000 megawatts--that
is like 25 gigawatts, it is 25 nuclear powerplants' worth of energy--
25,000 megawatts of planned energy generation have been lost to
projects being canceled or delayed since the President's election.
That is more than enough power for 8.4 million homes in the United
States. And I have bad news: It is about to get a whole lot worse. That
is because President Trump is strangling the energy supply we badly
need to drive down costs for everyone.
From canceling energy projects to withholding energy permits, to
issuing illegal stop work orders on fully permitted generation
projects, President Trump is waging a war on affordable, American-made
energy. Most recently, that came in the form of canceled energy
projects. Last week, the Trump administration unlawfully canceled
nearly $8 billion in Federal investments in 223 energy projects across
21 States, including 10 in the State of New Mexico.
In Albuquerque, two projects by the same company were targeted. They
have already had to make their first round of layoffs. If these awards
are not restored in the next 45 days, they will be forced to lay off 50
percent of their workforce. These are people's lives we are talking
about.
And their local partners and collaborators who were anticipating
growth opportunities because of the investment are being left in the
cold. In Socorro, NM, one technical university lost funding for four
projects--$67 million in total. One project alone will impact 36
student researchers, all of whom now have to search for new funding or
lose their research roles altogether.
In Fruitland, NM, another canceled project could have unlocked the
key to keeping 600 people working. In Taos, NM, more chaos is playing
out. Funding for Kit Carson Electric Cooperative's project to provide a
battery energy storage system and microgrids to rural communities,
canceled.
This project would have directly improved reliability in Picuris
Pueblo, the Taos Ski Valley, and El Rito West. Millions of dollars have
already been expended, and countless New Mexicans were depending on
that project. Now they are all left wondering whether those funds will
ever be reimbursed or if New Mexicans will simply be left to pay the
price and pick up the pieces.
But it looks like cancellations may just be getting started. This
morning there was another article about rumors of even more
cancellations coming.
According to reports, this next round of cancellations could involve
another 260 awards and $13 billion in revoked funds. Whether that
happens or not, I can tell you, without a doubt, that the harm done
from the first round will be irreparable.
The cancellations will mean lost jobs for Americans, lost educational
opportunities for students. It will mean higher energy bills for
households and businesses across this country.
It will make it even harder for folks who are already struggling to
make ends meet because of the affordability crisis instigated by this
administration's tariffs and economic policies.
It will mean less domestic manufacturing and innovation, all while
diminishing America's competitive leadership globally, and it will make
it harder for impacted developers and utilities to secure their
financing.
That is not just true for the now-canceled projects but also for any
future opportunities that depend on the stability of things like
government permits and regulatory structure, investments, grants
because that is another casualty of this administration's war on
American-made affordable energy: the reliability of the permitting
process.
In January, on his first day in office, President Trump paused all
new leasing and permitting of wind energy projects on public lands.
In February, the Army Corps of Engineers singled out and delayed 168
energy projects on private land.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew the permit for
Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind.
In April, the Department of the Interior imposed a stop-work order on
the Empire Wind 1 project.
In July, the Interior Department released a directive requiring the
Secretary's personal review and approval of every wind and solar energy
project on public lands--a move that will undoubtedly cause long
delays.
In August, the Department of the Interior issued an illegal stop-work
order on Revolution Wind's offshore wind project--a project that was
already 80 percent done. It was fully permitted, and it was 80 percent
complete, and they told people to go home. They said: Your job doesn't
matter.
In September, the Trump administration asked a court to cancel the
permit on a wind farm off of Ocean City, MD. It is a project that would
generate 2.2 gigawatts of energy--enough to power 718,000 homes and,
just as importantly, support almost 2,700 jobs every year over the next
7 years.
That is just among the ones that have actually been in the news. I
have heard from companies across the Nation about delays and
difficulties getting their projects permitted.
So let's be clear. Spending your time canceling ready-to-go energy
projects isn't doing anything to address the energy crisis.
Instead of fixing any of this, President Trump's Executive order
makes it worse. Here is what his order actually does: hikes energy
costs for millions of Americans by doubling down on expensive fossil
fuels when it makes no economic sense, sends hundreds of thousands of
American jobs overseas as other countries continue to develop their
next-generation energy sources, decreases our American-made domestic
energy supplies, forces us to be more reliant on foreign energy
sources, and erodes our economic competitiveness and energy dominance.
It does not have to be this way. The last time we faced an energy
crisis in the United States, it was the 1970s. Energy prices were
skyrocketing because of the 1973 oil crisis, when barrels of oil--then,
our most in-demand energy source--quadrupled in price. U.S. energy
production could not meet domestic demand, and the country saw
blackouts and brownouts.
With an energy crisis on its hands, Congress actually acted. In a
bipartisan effort, Congress created the Department of Energy. It funded
significant research around the country to explore new ways to power
things--solar, geothermal, nuclear--including the Energy Research and
Development Administration. It worked on advancing transmission systems
to create more competitive energy markets, saving money for everyone.
Congress met the moment and defined our energy future for decades to
come. As part of that, in 1976, construction began on a 5-megawatt
thermal solar test facility at the Energy Research and Development
Administration's Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Before it was
even complete, the facility became the largest operational solar
installation in the world. This solar test facility was just one small
example of the huge bipartisan effort to meet that moment.
Today, we are at a similar crossroads. Demand for new technology has
once again outpaced available power reserves. Infrastructure is aging.
Across the country, utility prices are rising as demand for energy
rises too.
Again, Congress can meet this moment. We cannot do that by doubling
down on expensive fossil energy or generation sources that take 5, 6,
7, even 10 years to build. If you order a gas turbine today, it would
take you 5 to 7 years just to receive it, and its price is going
through the roof because of the tariffs that the President has put on
things like aluminum and steel. That is not going to solve the rising
costs we are dealing with right now.
In contrast, solar, wind, and battery are modular, faster to permit,
and easier to construct with fewer supply chain restraints. That is
especially true when they are--or were--already permitted, with shovels
in the ground, workers ready to build.
[[Page S7023]]
Instead of accepting this reality, President Trump and congressional
Republicans are flailing, and it is leaving everyday Americans to
shoulder the costs.
By eliminating energy sources instead of adding more, this
administration is raising your energy prices, raising your electricity
bill, not lowering it. The impacts are real, and they are far-reaching.
For many households, the choice to pay hundreds more in energy costs
means the choice to not pay for other things--groceries, doctor's
bills, school supplies. That is not a choice you should have to make.
You shouldn't be a pawn in President Trump's political games.
Senator Kaine and I introduced S.J. Res. 71 to put an end to Trump's
war on American-made, affordable energy, to bring down costs for
American families, to save jobs that American families rely on, and to
call out this administration for its chaos and its incompetence and the
fact that it doesn't seem to care about the impacts on everyday
Americans.
So I call on all of my colleagues here in the Senate to join us. Vote
yes on S.J. Res. 71. Do not make American families pay the price for
Trump's war on affordable American energy.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk
about President Trump's completely fake energy emergency, which is
nothing more than a pretext to move money from the pockets of Americans
to his big fossil fuel mega donors.
You may remember that he had a meeting with big fossil fuel donors
and asked for a billion dollars in campaign money in return for giving
them whatever they want. Well, I don't know that he got a billion, but
he got hundreds of millions, and, sure enough, he is giving them
everything they want.
But the side effect of the fossil fuel industry having ownership and
control over the Trump administration and all of its policies and
decisions is that people's electricity rates are going to go up. They
are already going up, and they are going to go up more.
This graph shows how voters are feeling about electricity prices, and
it says most voters are feeling some pain from electricity prices.
This is already. It is going to get worse. Already, 26 percent of
Americans say it has a lot of impact on their lives; 31 percent say a
decent amount of impact on their lives; another 30, a little bit. Only
9 percent say: None at all. It is cool. Electric prices are good with
me.
So that is a pretty big hit.
Even among Republicans, 25 percent say it hits them a lot, 29 percent
say it hits them a decent amount, and 32 percent say it hits them a
little bit. Only 11 percent say: None at all. Electric prices are cool.
So electric prices are going up, and they are going up big time, and
they are going up for deliberate reasons.
The one deliberate reason has to do with the AI, crypto, tech bros
data centers problem.
As you know, the data center crypto people gave a lot of money to
Donald Trump. They are big political donors. They are getting pretty
much everything they want from this administration. In return, they are
making the Trump family hugely rich in crypto billions. But in the
meantime, they are driving people's electric prices up.
They are doing so this way. This is an interesting graph. This shows
places where electric bills are going down. Blue means the prices are
going down. And what is measured here is how far away you are from a
data center.
So here is 0 to about 25 miles away from a data center. So if you
live between 0 and 25 miles from a data center, if you are in the range
of the electric utility that has to serve that data center when it
drops in with its huge electric load, with its huge water demand, with
all the traffic and pollution and everything else that it means, you
see very, very little in the way of cost decreases.
In fact, if you compare it to places that are farther and farther
away--this is about 225 miles away from a data center--you can see that
the electric prices going down happens much more the farther away you
are from a data center.
This shows the opposite. This shows the places where electric prices
are soaring--the price increases. And it is the same deal. This is how
far away you are from a data center. If you are from 0 to 25 miles
away, compare that to this. The comparison between your electricity
price increases, if you are near a data center, versus your electricity
price decreases, if you are near a data center, couldn't be more clear.
This is me, with a gold marker, marking off the difference. That is
not in the original graph, but it focuses your attention on how, when
you are near a data center, you are less likely to have low electric
prices. You can see how low it is compared to the further away you get.
But if you are near a data center--the nearer you are to a data
center, the higher your electric prices go. And if you are really near
one, if you are in this block here, within 25 miles, your electric
prices are skyrocketing, and that is not a mistake. That is being done
on purpose because the Trump administration won't make these big donors
who are in crypto world and data center world bring their own clean
energy or provide their own clean water, for that matter, to the grid.
So what they do is they arrive, they dump a huge amount of demand
into the existing grid, and that means that new and more expensive
units have to come online. As those new and more expensive units have
to come online, the price goes up and up and up because in almost every
grid, it is the most expensive unit running at any minute that sets the
price for the entire grid in that minute.
So if you can drive up demand, you drive up these huge, inefficient,
polluting, expensive, powerplants and the price goes through the roof.
That is precisely why you are seeing this huge increase in costs when
you are near a data center, and it is almost impossible to find a
decrease in costs if you are near a data center.
So problem 1, energy emergency 1, caused by the Trump administration
to pay off its big crypto donors is this: It is the data center bomb
falling on regular electric utility ratepayers who suddenly watch their
bills skyrocket.
Here is the other bomb. This is the plot in the Trump administration
for the sake of their big fossil fuel donors to try to hamper and
hinder and injure clean energy. They have the big lie, which is to say
clean energy is more expensive; it is clean energy that is driving
costs on the grid.
Oh my gosh, expensive clean energy--wrong. That just isn't true. That
is a complete fabrication.
This graph shows the Texas grid. This is an illustration of how that
plays out. Texas has a unique grid. It is unique to Texas. It doesn't
interact with the other grids the way most of the grids do. They have
interconnections, and they can interact with each other. Texas is
isolated. That is why that big freeze in Texas shut down all the power
and caused people to freeze. That took place because that grid was
unified, and they couldn't call in power from elsewhere.
This graph does two things. It takes a look at 1 month, August back
in 2018, and it looks at what power costs at different levels of demand
on the grid. So in 2018, if you had 40 units of gigawatts of demand,
then you were paying about 20 cents per megawatt hour. It stayed about
the same until demand got bigger. If you get up to 50 megawatts, 60
megawatts, then it starts to spike here, and it hits $75 per megawatt
hour once it approaches 70 gigawatts of load.
So what is important here is the comparison. In 2018, these were the
prices in August for that increment of load during August. This, the
yellow graph, is 2024, 6 years later. What happened to the Texas grid
between 2018 and 2024? What happened to the Texas grid between 2018 and
2024 is that huge amounts of clean energy came onto the grid. In fact,
last year, 95 percent of the new power coming on the U.S. grid was
clean energy. It was solar, it was wind, and it was battery--95
percent.
Between 2018 and 2024, you see this move in the Texas grid. And look
at what happens. Pick, let's say, 60 megawatts of load at a given
moment in August of 2024. You paid 20 bucks per megawatt hour for the
exact same circumstance. Six years earlier, you would have paid 35,
maybe 40 bucks--20 bucks, twice as much, basically.
The reason the cost went down from 2018 to 2024 was new, inexpensive,
clean energy coming on the grid.
Why is it inexpensive? It is inexpensive because wind is free. It is
inexpensive because solar is free. Once you
[[Page S7024]]
have built the infrastructure to capture the solar rays, once you have
built the infrastructure to capture the wind flowing by, God made those
resources free.
For a fossil fuel plant, you still have to build it, but once you
have built it, you have to bring in the fossil fuel, pipe in the fossil
fuel, burn the fossil fuel. It is expensive. And so almost always, the
unit that is setting the price on the grid for electricity is a fossil
fuel unit because they are the most expensive ones. So they set the
price for the whole grid.
You can see the difference. Let's go to--let's call this 68 megawatts
of load, just comparing these two points. Back in 2018, that would have
been a $75 per-megawatt-hour cost--75 bucks, and yet here, it is $25.
It is a third the cost on the Texas grid because all that clean energy
came on. And you have to get way out here before the price spikes when
those polluting, expensive, fossil fuel plants have to come on at 80-
plus megawatts of load to even begin to match the prices from 6 years
earlier.
Clean wind and solar power save consumers money. So when the Trump
administration says it is going to inhibit, hinder, injure clean energy
development, that is backing this back out of the grid. Now it starts
to look more like 2018. If you are buying electricity at this level of
grid load, you are paying three times as much--three times as much.
And this is deliberate. You don't think the Trump people don't
understand this? They know perfectly well.
And here is the deal. The extra two-thirds of your cost here that
comes out of your pocket if you are in Texas is because the clean
energy isn't there lowering the cost. That comes out of your pocket.
Where does it go? Where does it go? I will tell you where it goes. It
goes to the fossil fuel units that had to get called up to meet that
amount of load. The most expensive units on the grid have to be called
up to meet that load, and they drive the price up.
If you are a fossil fuel billionaire and you own a bunch of polluting
powerplants, sometimes, particularly with clean energy around, they are
sitting idle. They are not being called up. They are too expensive to
be called up because clean energy is in there beating them. So if you
own those plants, you want to go and talk to the Trump administration
and say: Hey, knock that clean energy out of the grid. I want my
polluting, expensive plant to run again because that is money in my
pocket.
And if you are selling that plant to fossil fuel, you go to the Trump
administration and you say: Hey, clobber those clean energy guys. I
gave you good money. Clobber those clean energy guys and now I get to
sell all that fossil fuel to burn to run those expensive plants.
So the people that make a bundle out of knocking down clean energy
are the fossil fuel people who cut that deal for hundreds of millions
of dollars to Trump's campaign in return for him clobbering their
rivals by making it difficult to develop clean energy projects. And
what they don't want you to know is that this is on purpose and this is
for fossil fuel.
They don't want you to know how this works. They don't want you to
know about how the most expensive units get called up as demand grows--
that when you take out the clean energy, even more expensive units get
called up; that those are the polluting fossil fuel units that tend to
set the price.
It is a massive transfer of money from the pockets of ratepayers,
whose electric utility rates go up, to the fossil fuel industry in
return for all the political money they gave Donald Trump. That is the
deal. It is a huge transfer of wealth from ratepayers to big fossil
fuel donors.
What they are hoping is that you won't know this. They are hoping you
will blame it on the electric utility that sends you the bill. They are
hoping that you won't notice that behind that soaring electric utility
bill is manipulation of the grid to knock out clean energy, to drive up
prices.
And if that is not bad enough, what you then find out is that the
climate consequences of all that fossil fuel pollution start coming
home to roost, as well.
We did some work on this in the Budget Committee. I will use three
quick slides.
These are places where nonrenewal rates for homeowners insurance are
increasing. What is the nonrenewal rate, you may ask, for homeowners
insurance? That is how often the insurance company says to you, their
longtime customers: Hey, thanks for being my longtime customer, but you
are fired now. I don't want your property. I can't insure it. There is
too much climate risk.
If you looked at where it is really spiking, where did you get?
Florida--Florida, because they have huge risks from flooding, sea level
rise, hurricanes, and storms. Their whole insurance market is melting
down. Where else? Out West, where wildfires are making properties
uninsurable.
I tell you what, if you know somebody in Florida, ask them about
their home insurance. Just do that for me. If you know somebody who
lives in Florida, ask them about their home insurance. You will hear an
earful from them.
It is not just getting shot down; it is also that insurance rates are
going up. Again, look where--along these coastal areas, along these
wildfire-prone areas.
What the Trump administration is doing to reward its big fossil fuel
megadonors isn't just to transfer money from your pockets to the big
donors through electric utility rates. It is not just to transfer money
from your pockets to their big crypto donors by letting them
irresponsibly dump their demand on the grid. They are also breaking
down the home insurance market so that not only are the insurers saying
to people, ``I can't insurance you any longer; your climate risk is too
great,'' but they are also saying, ``Wow, if I am going to insure you,
we have to really raise our rates.''
These are premium increases--100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent--
that you can find in these areas. In Florida, the average homeowners
insurance is $14,000. If you go to Miami-Dade, it is $21,000 for
homeowners insurance. If you go to Louisiana here, it is $11,000.
You have got people who try to buy a home in these places. They get
the deal together, and they get the mortgage together. They show the
Realtor that they can make the nut on the mortgage. Then they try to
get insurance to close the deal, and they can't get insurance, and the
deal falls apart. There are young families who can't buy homes because
of the skyrocketing prices or because the insurers won't insure them
because it is too dangerous. And guess what that does. Where does that
land? That lands in home values declining.
This is not just me saying this. The chief economist for Freddie
Mac--the huge mortgage company--predicts that climate risk makes
homeowners insurance unavailable.
When you can't get homeowners insurance, what can you also not get on
your property? You can't get a mortgage. If you are a Palm Beach
billionaire who is swapping mansions with other billionaires, great,
you can pay cash. But for regular families who have bought their homes
with a mortgage, when they need to sell them, they need to find
somebody who can buy them with a mortgage 9 times out of 10, maybe 99
times out of 100. So when you can't get a mortgage, what happens to
that piece of property? When the property is uninsurable and
unmortgageable, its value goes down.
That is why the chief economist for Freddie Mac, the mortgage
company, predicted the cascade from climate risk to uninsurability, to
no mortgages, to what he called a coastal property values crash that
could lead to a recession like in 2008.
I remember 2008. It was ugly. I do not want to go there again.
But here you see places in which home values are predicted to
change--along the coast here, where there is all the coastal risk; and
here, where there is big wildfire risk. And guess what. If you look at
the graph, it goes from no change--that is the tan; that is most of
it--all the way to--how about that one? You can't read it; so I will
tell you what it says: minus 100 percent--a total wipeout of your
home's value because it is uninsurable and unmortgageable.
That is the future we are looking at. This is the energy emergency.
This is the real energy emergency, and it is an energy emergency that
is caused by
[[Page S7025]]
fossil fuel pollution. The immediate circumstance also comes through
the electric utility bills, as you put less and less clean energy into
the grid and make more and more expensive fossil fuels, set the price,
and at the same time, you are selling out to the crypto guys. You let
them come in and irresponsibly dump their demand on your grid, and
supply and demand show that prices spike.
So if you want to know what the real emergency is, the real emergency
is that the Trump administration has sold out to the crypto industry;
it has sold out to the fossil fuel industry. It denies climate change;
it pretends it is a hoax. Literally, the President has said that in,
like, words. And that climate change problem is destroying home
insurance markets, mortgage markets, and property values. And it has
already begun.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The Senator from California.
War Powers Resolution
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to bring before the Senate a
resolution concerning one of our most serious constitutional
responsibilities: whether the United States should engage in armed
conflict against a particular adversary.
The Constitution clearly and intentionally places the power to
declare war in the hands of this body, the Congress, not with the
President or the executive branch. Our Constitution's Framers, having
just endured a war and having paid the toll that war always takes,
wanted to ensure that our newly independent Nation would see the
representatives of the people make the decision of whether and when to
put American lives on the line.
In 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the danger of
leaving that power in the hands of an executive.
He said:
The Constitution supposes, what the History of all
Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of
power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has
accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in
the Legislature.
For the past month, Congress's power to authorize or refuse to
authorize the use of power has been usurped by the Executive. This
administration has carried out at least four military strikes against
vessels that it asserts have ties to drug trafficking organizations.
These strikes were not authorized by Congress. Congress has not been
shown the evidence of who exactly was on board these ships, whether
they were all headed to the United States or some other destination, or
whether they posed an imminent danger of attack on the United States.
Such strikes are not legal, and they are not made legal or
constitutional by the claim--correctly or incorrectly, with or without
evidence--that some or all of the occupants of these boats belong to a
list of organizations kept secret by the administration.
Being put on a list by the executive branch does not deprive Congress
of its vital role in approving the use of force, but such a list kept
hidden from the American people, if used as a justification, may drag
our Nation into an unintended war.
If it were as simple for a President--any President--to claim that
war power for himself by placing an individual or a group of
individuals on a list, let alone one held in secret, there would be no
limiting principle to the executive's use of force--no limits
whatsoever--and that is deeply inconsistent with the intent of our
Framers' and the desire of the American people to be kept out of
unnecessary military conflicts.
Indeed, the President has confirmed that he does not see a limit. He
saw targets at sea, and now he sees potential targets on land.
Now, I know that the word ``unprecedented'' gets used so much these
days that perhaps it has lost some of its value, but we need to put in
context just how far from normal these strikes are.
For perhaps the first time in our history, a President of the United
States ordered the U.S. military to use lethal force against
individuals who posed no imminent threat of attack and who could have
been stopped thousands of miles from our shore had we interdicted and
arrested those on board just as they routinely are by our Coast Guard.
Instead, the U.S. military used lethal force on four separate
occasions, killing everyone on board.
Despite this breathtaking departure from more than two centuries of
law and practice, we still know almost nothing about these strikes,
some taking place as far as 2,700 miles away. It may be that there were
narcotics traffickers on board some or all of these vessels. It may
also be that some of these boats were being used for human trafficking
and that the victims of that offense were killed along with the
perpetrators, or, if not on one of the first four ships destroyed, then
perhaps on the next one.
The lack of detail concerning these strikes is telling. We have
learned of these strikes through social media posts from the President,
the Secretary of Defense, and from the press. In fact, administration
officials have offered differing accounts of where these vessels were
heading. Media reports have suggested--without rebuttal from the
administration--that the first vessel to be struck had turned around
prior to being hit. The Secretary of State originally claimed that one
of the boats wasn't even heading to the United States.
Given our Coast Guard presence in the region and with a sizable Navy
deployment and expansive intelligence resources, U.S. personnel could
have boarded all of these vessels, detained those aboard, seized any
drugs or cash, and gathered additional information about ties to drug
trafficking organizations, just as they normally do. Secretary of State
Rubio even acknowledged publicly that this could have been done but
said that the President wanted to send a message by killing all of
those on board.
We all agree that the scourge of drugs is real and that scores of
Americans die from such poison every year. We are all committed on both
sides of the aisle to battling the importation of illegal drugs, even
as we work to beat back addiction here at home. But we are also
committed to our Constitution, to a system of checks and balances that
wisely places the power to make war in our hands, not with an Executive
who may grow too fond of using it.
That is why Senator Kaine and I have introduced a resolution to
direct the President to stop engaging in armed strikes against these
vessels or the country from which they emanate without the explicit
authorization of Congress. We are here today to ask our colleagues to
join us in this nonpartisan vote, in this affirmation of Congress's
authority to declare war or to refuse to declare it; to authorize force
or to refuse to authorize it.
We have been precise and deliberate in crafting it. This resolution
does not affect the United States' ability to target terrorist groups
covered by Congress's existing authorizations to use military force,
including al-Qaida, ISIS or its affiliates and offshoots, or to address
real threats posed by other groups, like the Houthis. It also in no way
limits the United States' ability to defend our own citizens and
interests or to come to the collective self-defense of our allies and
our partners.
It comes down to this: The President has used our military to strike
unknown targets on at least four occasions, and he is promising more.
With at least 21 people dead and more killing on the way and with the
President telling us that strikes on land-based targets may be next, we
ask you to join us in reasserting Congress's vital control over the war
power.
I yield the floor.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to move to the topic before the
Senate with respect to the War Powers resolution regarding Caribbean
military operations.
I rise to express my deep concern about the Trump administration's
ongoing military operations in the Caribbean and to voice my strong
support for the War Powers Resolution introduced by Senators Schiff,
Kaine, Wyden, and Sanders.
Over the past month, the United States has carried out four lethal
strikes on boats in the Caribbean, reportedly killing 21 individuals.
These attacks have been retroactively explained by the President's
unilateral declaration that the United States is in ``armed conflict''
with unnamed ``non-state armed groups'' throughout the Western
Hemisphere.
He has deployed thousands of U.S. forces, ships, and aircraft to
conduct
[[Page S7026]]
these operations--all without congressional authorization and without
any credible explanation to the American people.
Let me be clear. The drug cartels that traffic poison across our
borders are violent and reprehensible. They have devastated families
and communities across our country. We must do everything in our power
through law enforcement, intelligence, and international cooperation to
bring these organizations down. But that is not what this is all about.
These are not police actions or defensive operations; these are
targeted, lethal military strikes using weapons designed for warfare,
not interdiction or law enforcement.
The administration has offered no positive identification for those
killed, nor any information linking the boat crews to cartels. In fact,
they have not proven that these vessels were engaged in drug
trafficking, nor even that they were destined for the United States.
I would note that even if this evidence had been provided, that would
only justify interdiction by law enforcement, not lethal military
strikes.
The justification thus far has relied entirely on the President's
word, and that is not good enough. Our Constitution does not vest the
power to wage war on one man's word. The White House has claimed that
these strikes are allowable under the President's article II powers as
Commander in Chief, but article II is not a blank check. The Framers of
our Constitution deliberately separated the powers of war and peace
between the branches.
James Madison warned:
The executive is the branch most prone to war; therefore
the Constitution has, with studied care, vested that power in
the legislature.
The War Powers Resolution exists for moments like this. It ensures
that before we send American forces into hostilities, the people's
representatives have debated and voted on that decision. It ensures
accountability. It ensures legitimacy.
If we allow these unauthorized operations to continue unchecked, we
will have surrendered Congress's most solemn constitutional duty. We
will have set the precedent that the President--any President--may
initiate military action at will, without oversight, without
transparency, and without the consent of the governed.
We have seen this pattern before. Over the past several years, this
administration has repeatedly tested the limits of Executive power--
ordering strikes in Iran and Yemen and now the Caribbean, while
refusing even a brief consultation with Congress. Each time, the lines
blur a little further. Each time, the balance of power tilts a little
more toward the Executive.
This body, the U.S. Senate, cannot afford to shrug and move on. The
slow erosion of congressional oversight is not an abstract debate about
process; it is a real and present threat to our democracy.
The War Powers Resolution before us does not tie the President's
hands in responding to genuine threats; it simply requires him to do
what every Commander in Chief should: come to Congress, present the
facts, and seek authorization from the people's representatives before
initiating hostilities. That is not weakness. That is constitutional
strength. It is the principle that has guided our Republic for nearly
2\1/2\ centuries.
Finally, I will say this: Even setting aside the constitutional
questions, this campaign is deeply unwise. The notion that we can bomb
our way out of a drug trafficking crisis is not strategy; it is wishful
thinking. Using the U.S. military to conduct unchecked strikes in the
Caribbean risks destabilizing the region, provoking confrontation with
neighboring governments, and drawing our forces into yet another open-
ended conflict without a clear mission or exit strategy.
Conflict in the Caribbean or with Venezuela is entirely avoidable,
but the risk that we stumble into war because of one man's impulsive
decision making has never been higher. Our troops deserve better--much
better.
This War Powers Resolution would restore that balance. It reaffirms
that the Constitution has always required that decisions of war and
peace belong to the legislature, not the Executive.
Mr. President, for that reason, I urge my colleagues to support this
resolution and to reassert the fundamental role of Congress in matters
of war.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senators
Schiff and Kaine's resolution regarding war powers.
This resolution would just say very simply that if the Trump
administration wants to be at war against a terrorist organization,
they should come to Congress, notify us, and seek our approval.
Currently, the administration is waging a secret war against a secret
list of unnamed groups that they will not tell us about. There have
been four lethal strikes against boats in the Caribbean. The
administration wrote us a letter--wrote this body a letter--about what
they were doing in September. They said they considered themselves to
be in a ``non-international armed conflict''--that means a war--against
a secret list of ``designated terrorist organizations.''
I received a briefing last week on the administration's strikes in
the Caribbean. During that briefing, Members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, from both sides of the aisle, asked a Senate-
confirmed official whether the Department of Defense could produce a
list of the organizations that are now considered terrorists by the
United States. They said they could not provide that list.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am a CIA officer. I am a former Pentagon
official. I did three tours in Iraq--armed--alongside the military. I
participated in the targeting of terrorist groups. I actually have no
real problem going against cartels, given what they have done in their
inserting drugs in our community and with the death of so many
Americans. But as a nation, I think we should have as a basic principle
that you can't have a secret list of terrorist organizations that the
American public and, certainly, the U.S. Congress don't get to even
know the names of.
The problem for me is that this is unprecedented. You know, during
the Global War on Terror, which is kind of my era, it was very clear.
Terrorist organizations would be notified. If we wanted to declare a
new terrorist organization, it would be notified to Congress. Then our
intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement would spin up
to go after information about that group and prosecute--you know,
target against that group. But that is not what is going on today, and
we will not understand, apparently, the dozens of terrorist
organizations that we have now named until we understand their names.
This is important in the foreign context, right? This is
unprecedented in terms of what we have done against foreign
adversaries, against foreign terrorist organizations; but what I want
to draw people's attention to is the implication for what is happening
inside of our own country.
In September--also last month--the Trump administration put out a new
Executive order about domestic terrorist organizations. They said that
they were going to, again, make secret lists of ``terrorist groups''
inside the United States and send the full force of the U.S. Government
against those terrorist organizations. They are not telling anyone the
name of these organizations, but they are authorizing law enforcement
and the intelligence community to double down and come up with that
list.
This is a problem because the Trump administration defined in that
document a ``terrorist organization'' or ``domestic terrorism''
incredibly broadly. It suggests that any group that talks about anti-
Christian values, views they don't like on migration or race, differing
views on the role of the family, religion, or morality could all be
grounds for labeling an organization ``domestic terrorists.''
If this administration is not telling us who is on their secret
designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they are
definitely not going to tell us who is on their list of domestic
terrorist organizations.
We saw, to start us off, the attorney general down in Texas put out
publicly that he is now going to launch a campaign against domestic
terrorist organizations in his own State. So it has begun.
Meanwhile, we know what is going on in some of our American cities.
Trump
[[Page S7027]]
said that he would invoke, potentially, the Insurrection Act of 1807.
He has made more than 800 of our military generals fly in from across
the world and talked about going after the ``enemy from within''--his
words--and making American towns and cities their ``training grounds''
for the military.
This is important, and I think every American should understand what
it means if the President of the United States follows through with
what he said and says--that he is now invoking the Insurrection Act.
That means--a certain city--if the violence has gotten to a level of an
insurrection, it means that the U.S. military can now be used as law
enforcement in our cities. It means the U.S. military can raid; they
can arrest; they can detain. You can easily see a world where the
President of the United States labels protest groups ``terrorists,''
doesn't tell anyone, and creates an excuse to unilaterally use the
military inside our cities, similar to the way he used them in the
Caribbean.
Just to be clear, this is straight out of an authoritarian playbook
where the President gets to play judge, jury, and executioner. This
time, instead of stopping drug traffickers, it will be stopping
Americans potentially from exercising their right to freedom of speech.
This is not theoretical, using the U.S. military in our streets. It
is not something that the President hasn't already thought about. We
know that in the first Trump administration, the President called up
his Secretary of Defense and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs because
he was upset about protests that were going on in front of the White
House. Mark Esper was the Secretary of Defense. He wrote about this in
his book called ``A Sacred Oath,'' and he talked about some of the
things President Trump asked him to do.
President Trump wanted him to send in not the National Guard but the
82nd Airborne--an Active-Duty military unit, one of our most elite, a
large unit--to quell protests here in Washington, DC. He asked for them
to be moved into the city. And when the back-and-forth happened with
former Secretary Esper, President Trump asked him point blank: ``Can't
you just shoot them in the legs or something?''
I want to just flag for everybody that we are seeing a repeat of that
story but in exponentially more gruesome detail play out right now. The
President is looking for an excuse to send the U.S. military into our
streets, to deploy the U.S. military against his own people, to prompt
confrontation, and to hope that confrontation justifies even more
military force and military control.
This is a well-worn authoritarian playbook. It is one that quite
literally the United States of America was founded on rejecting--the
idea that the British soldiers, when they occupied American cities,
abused American citizens to the point where Americans turned against
them.
I am a former CIA officer, a former Pentagon official. I have worked
alongside the military my entire life. I cannot stomach the idea that
the American people would fear the uniformed military who have given
their lives to protect them for so many years.
But all of us in this Chamber and certainly those of us who have
served in the past swore an oath to the Constitution--not to a King,
not to a party, not to any one person. Nobody gets to rewrite the
Constitution--not a President, not an adviser, no one.
If the President wants to use force abroad or at home, he needs to
come to this body and explain it publicly to the American public.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, incredibly, the Democrats are here to
condemn President Trump's recent strikes against narcoterrorists
operating in their backyard. Maybe they want to distract from the
Schumer shutdown by tying the President's hands and siding with
narcoterrorists who have the blood of hundreds of thousands of
Americans on their hands. Whatever the reason, this would be foolhardy.
If you think I am exaggerating here, let me remind you of the kind of
depraved savages we are dealing with. Recall the Tren de Aragua gang
member who tried to rape 22-year-old Laken Riley while she was out for
a jog on a college campus. After Laken fought back, this savage smashed
her head with a rock and strangled her to death.
Also, recall the two Tren de Aragua gang members who, after being
released into our country by Joe Biden, raped and murdered 12-year-old
Jocelyn Nungaray. These animals threw this innocent little girl's body
off a bridge.
Finally, consider the recent arrest of the Tren de Aragua gang leader
who kidnapped three women and shot them in the back of the head in an
alley in Chicago. Only one survived to call for help.
These are the sorts of horrific acts of violence that narcoterrorists
commit against Americans. And, of course, these narcoterrorists--many
affiliated with Tren de Aragua--also flood our country with dangerous
drugs that have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every
year after year after year. They target every State in our Union with
their poison.
This is among the many reasons why President Trump was well within
his constitutional authority to take action against these
narcoterrorists who put American lives at risk. These recent strikes
fulfilled President Trump's constitutional duty to protect Americans as
their elected Commander in Chief.
This should come as no surprise. President Trump stated very clearly
and repeatedly during the campaign that he would attack these cartels
if necessary. This is simply him keeping his word to the American
people.
Also, the President's strikes were lawfully sound and extremely
limited. Because they have been going on for less than 60 days, they
don't even fall within the War Powers Resolution threshold.
I would also note that Presidential action like this is hardly
unheard of or unique. For context, as of the mid-20th century, scholars
identified more than 100 military deployments or actions that lacked
express prior congressional authorization.
I could go back to the beginning of the Republic, with the Barbary
pirates off the coast of North Africa, but there is another example
much closer in time and, for that matter, on the border. That would be
President George H. W. Bush's decision to invade and topple the
Government of Panama in 1989. Without prior congressional approval, he
ordered 12,000 American troops into that country. We toppled Panama's
illegitimate regime. We apprehended the country's dictator, and he
spent the rest of his life in foreign custody.
Let's compare these two cases. In both cases, you had the leader of a
country who is indicted by the U.S. courts for drug trafficking. In
both cases, that leader is not recognized by the U.S. Government as the
legitimate leader of his country. I would say the comparison ends there
because the case is much stronger here than it was in 1989.
Maduro also has I think a $50 million reward on his head from our
government. Maduro is associated with a designated foreign terrorist
organization. Noriega didn't have a reward. Noriega wasn't associated
with a designated foreign terrorist organization. Maduro is in league
with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. Noriega was not. Yet George Bush
invaded Panama and overthrew its government.
I don't hear many Democrats, in retrospect, saying that this was an
unwise action or it made our country less safe. And somehow Donald
Trump is doing those things merely by striking a few boats of drug
traffickers in international waters?
Even if you had misgivings about these strikes, even maybe if you
were a Democrat in Congress in 1989--as some of our colleagues were--
and you condemned President Bush for taking action to defend our
country, I would still point out that the resolution before us is
overbroad.
The resolution prevents the President from taking offensive action
against any foreign terrorist organization designated on or after
February 20 of this year. This includes the Iranian-backed Houthi
terrorists in Yemen.
It appears our Democratic friends have forgotten that the Houthis are
responsible for at least--at least--150 attacks against the United
States and allied naval and commercial ships, which have killed at
least 3 people. These terrorists have also targeted our friends in
Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--mostly civilians,
for that matter.
[[Page S7028]]
So if the Democrats had their way, President Trump would not be able
to, for example, strike a secret meeting of senior Houthi leaders;
wouldn't be able to strike imminent attacks on our friends in countries
like Israel, Saudi Arabia, or United Arab Emirates.
I think we should all agree that we want a President, when terrorists
are gathered together for the purpose of planning attacks against
American civilians, our troops, or our friends abroad, to have the
authority necessary to take action.
The Democrats claim: Oh, there is a carve-out in our resolution. Oh,
we have a saving clause. We have a rule of construction that says our
troops can defend themselves.
Once again, they are misleading the American people. I invite you to
read it closely. They may allow our sailors to defend themselves if
these Houthi terrorists shoot a missile or a drone directly at their
ship, but it absolutely ties the President's hands if, for instance, we
have intelligence about a senior meeting of Houthi terrorist leaders.
It absolutely ties the President's hands from protecting our friends in
places like Jerusalem and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. There is no question
about that. It is the black letter of the resolution. It only goes for
about three lines. I would invite anyone to read it, and you will
understand that the Democrats are once again dissembling.
No reasonable person denies the authority of the President to strike
a terrorist threat on foreign soil. Yet the Democrats are here tonight
questioning the President's authority to do the exact same thing in our
own backyard--in international waters, no less; not even foreign
territory. This is a dangerous double standard.
Therefore, I encourage my colleagues to vote no on this resolution
and to get back to the more pressing business of reopening our
government.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, let me just take this opportunity to
address some of the remarks of my colleague who has, I think, rightly
pointed out the horrors of drug trafficking and those that are engaged
in that poisonous, deadly trade. I agree with that, and we should do
everything we can to fight back against those who are trying to traffic
that poison into this country. And I agree with him about the murderous
dictator that is Maduro.
But here is the thing. If my colleagues in this Congress want to go
to war with Venezuela, if they want to use military force to bring
about regime change in Venezuela, or if they want to wage a literal war
using the military and armed force to blow up traffickers, then they
need to come to Congress and seek an authorization to use military
force for that purpose because our Constitution is clear.
There are, essentially, three circumstances in which we can
constitutionally use force. One is if Congress declares war. We have
not declared war on Venezuela. We have not declared a literal fighting
war using military troops either.
Or we authorize the use of military force. We have not done so.
Now, the third circumstance in which a President is authorized to use
force is in the event of imminent threat of attack from our
adversaries. And that is simply not the circumstance here.
Instead, what the administration seems to be relying on is a claim
that it has the power, somehow, to put organizations on a list and go
after them wherever they may be, without the approval of Congress. That
is what this resolution is about.
Now, my colleague also made an argument about the Houthis. Nothing in
this resolution affects the ability to defend ourselves from the
Houthis as necessary. The President and the former Presidents who have
taken action against the Houthis have not done so on the basis of the
Houthis being added to some list. Being added to a list, even the
foreign terrorist organization list, empowers an administration to put
sanctions on that organization. But being placed on a list by the
Executive does not give any greater authority to use armed force
against an organization.
The basis in which this President and previous Presidents have used
force against the Houthis is the Houthis have attacked us, and if the
Houthis attack us again, the President will have the article II power
to defend ourselves. And nothing in this resolution touches that in any
way, shape, or form.
But let me just underscore the perils of what we are discussing
today. Now, this is an article that just came out. I haven't had the
chance to vet it: ``Colombia president claims U.S. bombed Colombian
boat in strike off Venezuela.''
So I don't know whether we have now struck a Colombian ship or what
the circumstances were or who was on board, and that is exactly the
problem. That is exactly the problem. Now, maybe this is real and maybe
it isn't, but the fact that we don't know, the fact that the Executive
asserts the authority to blow up ships without coming to Congress for
the authorization of that kind of force could invariably lead to
mistakes, could also lead, inadvertently, to war with another country.
This resolution says: If you want to use force against
narcoterrorists by blowing up ships, come to Congress for an
authorization because at this point you don't have it. If there is an
imminent threat of attack, you have all of the authority you need under
article II. But if you want to engage in a war with Venezuela or a
regime change with Maduro and you want to use military force to do it,
you need to come to Congress for an authorization. There being none,
these strikes are unconstitutional and unlawful.
I would urge my colleagues to join Senator Kaine and myself in
supporting this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, we are here today to talk about a
resolution put forth by the Democrats that is very, very not well-
taken.
We are all aware in this body that on September 4, President Trump
notified Congress of his initial strike against narcoterrorists who
were bringing deadly and illegal drugs into this country--the first of
four such strikes.
Now, my colleague just referred to the fact that the President can--
if there is an imminent attack on our country, that they can strike.
This wasn't an imminent attack; this was an actual attack. It was in
progress. It was going on. People were attacking our country by
bringing in poisonous substances to deposit into our country that would
have killed Americans all over America, including your constituents.
Fortunately, most of those drugs are now at the bottom of the ocean.
Had that not happened, I guarantee there would have been hundreds--
maybe thousands--of people in this country that would have been killed
with the tremendous amount of drugs that were being brought in. The
facts of that are obviously well-known, well-reported, and if you want
to see more, it is certainly available in the Intelligence Committee.
The people carrying those drugs were terrorists, plain and simple.
They were trafficking drugs that financed a designated foreign
terrorist organization. These strikes were fully compliant and fully
justified under the President's article II constitutional authority--
and not only authority but duty as Commander in Chief of our Armed
Forces to defend this country. And he took an oath to do so.
So why are we here today? We are looking at a resolution saying that
he can't do this anymore. This is nonsense. It is unreasonable. It is
why the American people look at Congress and say: Are you people crazy?
You have the President of the United States trying to do something
about this terrible scourge that is going on in America, and you in
Congress are saying: Don't be doing that anymore unless you come here
and ask us for permission to do it.
So these actions are political, pure and simple. These actions here
are political. This was a good decision on the part of the President,
and the President acted legally. So what are my Democratic friends
doing here? They are putting forth this joint resolution No. 83 to stop
the President from acting in the way he has just acted to stop these
drugs from coming into the country. So let's look at what it says.
Let's look at the actual language:
Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use
of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against any
organization designated on or after February 20, 2025--
[[Page S7029]]
His date of inauguration--
as a foreign terrorist organization or specially designated
global terrorist, any states in which those entities operate,
or any non-state organization engaged in the promotion,
trafficking, and distribution of illegal drugs.
You are telling the President to stop using this against
organizations and people who are trafficking drugs for distribution and
on the way to the United States.
And it goes on to say that he can't do this unless explicitly
authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use
of military force by this organization.
How long do you think it would take him to get that? Those drugs not
only would have been delivered to the United States, they would have
not only been distributed in the United States; there would be dead
Americans, and we would still be here yapping about it.
So even if this passed--and it is not going to, but if it did pass,
he is not going to obey this order. He can't obey this order. He took
an oath to defend this country. When he sees an attack like this
coming--an attack of drugs or explosives or anything else that is going
to kill Americans--he not only has the authority to do something about
it; he has the duty to do something about it.
We should have a resolution out here not condemning what he did and
telling him ``don't do this anymore''; we should have a resolution out
here thanking him for the hundreds--probably thousands--of lives that
he saved with these four attacks, including constituents in your
districts.
Thank you, Mr. President, for what you did. Thank you. And continue
the good work of taking these drugs out of the traffic and putting them
on the bottom of the ocean.
My friends, this is Trump derangement syndrome. These people hate
President Trump; I get that. But simply because you hate him, you
should not wallow in that hate like you have and produce this kind of a
product that stops the President from doing what he is supposed to do.
This is shameful and it should be defeated and it is going to be
defeated.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho's emotional speech
notwithstanding, this is not about hating a President; it is about
loving a Constitution. It is about loving a Constitution.
The resolution that my colleague Senator Schiff has filed, which I
gladly cosponsored, does not say there cannot be military action
against terrorists or cartels or drug traffickers. It just says that
the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress, the
United States should not be at war against groups on a secret list
prepared by one individual who is unwilling to share it with Congress
and with the American public.
My colleague said that we should put a resolution on the floor
thanking the President. I have an idea for my Republican colleagues:
put a resolution on the floor declaring war against narcotraffickers.
Why haven't they done that? That is what the Constitution says they
should do. They are so strong in their belief that we should be at war
with narcotraffickers, why haven't they put a resolution before this
body to say we should be at war with cartels and narcotraffickers?
There are two reasons: They know it would fail, even in a Republican
Senate. And second, they are afraid to vote on that resolution because
they know their constituents are tired of wars and don't want Congress
declaring more wars and treating serious law enforcement problems as
challenges for the U.S. military.
I strongly support the resolution my colleague has filed.
When President Trump announced in August that he might undertake this
action, Senator Schiff and I conferred with other Senators. And when
the first strike was taken on the 4th of September, we wrote a letter
to the President, as the article I branch charged with the power of
declaring war, asking him a basic series of questions: Give us the
evidence that these boats were actually carrying narcotics. Give us the
legal rationale for striking them without coming to Congress. If you
knew where they were enough to strike them, you could have interdicted
them. Why did you choose to strike them and not interdict them? We hear
that drugs are now at the bottom of the sea.
If you interdict a ship and you seize drugs, you get evidence, you
get individuals that you interrogate, and you build cases against the
higher-ups in the narcotrafficking ring. When you destroy a boat, you
don't get the evidence; you can't build the case.
And we asked: Why not interdict? Why strike rather than interdict?
These were questions that Congress has a right to know the answer and
the American public has a right to know the answer. And we asked the
President: Give us answers to these questions in 7 days--not
unreasonable.
We have yet to get answers to these questions. The administration
believes it does not have to justify these actions to Congress, it does
not have to tell us the evidence about the narcotics content of these
boats, it does not have to give us a clear legal rationale, it does not
have to explain the decision to strike rather than to interdict.
When you ask the basic questions and you are not given answers, you
get suspicious that the answers are not forthcoming because there
aren't good answers to the questions that we asked.
We did have a followup hearing, the Armed Services Committee, in the
secure facility last week. And I can't really talk about what was said
there, but I can sure talk about what wasn't said there. No answer to
the question of ``Why not interdict?'' It was asked over and over and
over again, and aside from asserting that ``we have the ability to do
what we did,'' they could not provide an answer about interdiction.
They could not provide clear evidence that all of those boats
actually had narcotics on them, even though they knew we would be
asking that question.
And so, to the legal rationale, all they said was ``the President has
an article II ability to undertake these actions.'' Saying ``I can do
whatever I want under article II'' is not an answer, and that is no
legal rationale, but it is essentially what the President is saying: I
can put groups on a list--and we understand it is many groups and their
affiliates--and not tell Congress and not tell the American public, and
I get to make the decision about whether the Nation goes to war.
That is not what our Constitution says.
My colleague Senator Schiff is talking about the Constitution, so I
won't belabor it. But there are a couple of points that I do want to
stress because there is nothing more important in the Constitution than
the power to declare war.
The Founders who wrote the Constitution in 1787 debated this topic
extensively, and they recognized the reality in the world at the time:
Decisions about war were made by the Executive, King, Monarch, Emperor,
Czar, Pope. It was made by the Executive.
The Framers of the Constitution in 1787 were dealing with leadership
that included the first President of the United States, George
Washington, the greatest general that has ever been President of the
United States. They revered George Washington.
But when they had to make a decision about who declared war, they
said: Even George Washington--even George Washington--is not smart
enough to carry that sole decision on his shoulders to make war. So
they decided to do something almost completely contrary to the whole
flow of human history, and they invested the power to declare war in
the legislative branch, in Congress.
And my colleague read Madison's exchange as the principal drafter of
the provision with Jefferson, many years later, about why they had done
it. They wanted, with studied care, to vest the question of war in the
legislative branch.
It is not only in the Constitution, it is in the Constitution for a
reason. And here is the reason: A decision about war puts troops in
harm's way, puts troops in a position where they may be injured or
killed; they may see their best friends injured or killed; they could
come home with physical injuries or mental injuries that could affect
the remainder of their lives.
The Constitution of the United States, in a somewhat unique way,
requires congressional approval for war
[[Page S7030]]
so that there is a consensus of the Nation, after a full debate in view
of the American public and a vote, that the war is in the national
interest.
If a President goes off unilaterally without getting Congress on
board, then we are asking people to risk their lives with no national
consensus that the mission is worth it. Could there be a grosser
example of public immorality than to order troops into harm's way where
they could be killed and their lives and their families affected for
the rest of their lives without a national consensus that this is a
mission worth you risking your life?
That is why that provision is so sacred in the article I branch, and
that is why even George Washington was not entrusted by the Framers of
the Constitution to make a decision like this on his own.
I will finish where I started. This is not about dissatisfaction with
President Trump. I filed similar resolutions, as my colleague from
Idaho knows, when President Obama was President. I came into the Senate
in 2013 with an absolute obsession because of the military nature of my
State, because one of my kids is a marine--with an absolute obsession
that the Nation should never go to war--never--without a debate in
Congress that the American people can see, can learn from, and a
political consensus that the war is worth it.
Yes, there is an exception for defense or imminent attack. That has
been understood as part of the Presidential power of Commander in Chief
since the very first days of this Republic.
But even in that instance, it was foreseen that Congress would come
in and have a debate and agree or not with whether they blessed the
mission or not. Letting a single individual take us to war based on a
secret list that he won't even reveal to the public and to Congress
sets such a dangerous precedent.
And if my colleagues, as they have stated, believe we should be at
war in the Caribbean or at war with nations in the Americas or with the
narcotraffickers, they have had the ability the entire time to bring a
resolution before us and have that debate in front of the American
public. I have a feeling that debate would produce some positive votes
if it were limited enough, but to allow a President to do it by secret
without Congress having the guts to have the debate and vote about
whether the war is worthwhile is contrary to everything this country
stands for, to the oath we take.
I would urge folks to support my colleague's resolution.
Mr. President, I ask consent that we yield back all remaining time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will read the joint resolution by title a third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading
and was read the third time.
Vote on S.J. Res. 71
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read a third
time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Mr. KAINE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Montana (Mr.
Sheehy).
The result was announced--yeas 47, nays 51, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 554 Leg.]
YEAS--47
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
NAYS--51
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young
NOT VOTING--2
Cruz
Sheehy
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 71) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
____________________