[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11532-11533]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          CLIMATE SECURITY ACT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this is a bill where we are actually on 
our third version, I believe. The fourth version of the bill. I stand 
corrected by the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works 
Committee, Senator Inhofe. The last one I saw went from 342 pages to 
491 pages. That was the one that was read yesterday. I daresay that not 
many, if any Senator who is going to be called upon to vote on that 
legislation, had a chance to read it yet in detail. So I don't think it 
was a wasted exercise to have the clerk read the bill yesterday to give 
people a chance to understand what is in it.
  When you look at a piece of legislation that comes with a $6.7 
trillion pricetag, and one that will raise and not lower the price of 
gasoline and electricity, will depress the American economy and 
literally put people out of work, I think we need to know what is in it 
and we need to debate it. We need to offer amendments to hopefully 
improve it.
  There is not one among us who does not care about the environment. I 
don't know any person of good will alive who doesn't care about the 
quality of the air we breathe and the cleanliness of the water we 
drink. So I think those who would suggest that because there are 
questions about this huge bill, this huge tax increase, this huge 
increase in the cost of energy, that if you are asking questions and 
want to offer amendments to improve it suggests you don't care about 
the environment is demonstrably false.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. CORNYN. I will yield.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Cornyn is a fabulous and 
important Senator. He knows what has been happening here on all the 
important issues and he knows the importance of certain actions on the 
floor.
  Senator Reid, last night, as I understand it, stood and filled the 
tree. As I understand it, that impacts directly the ability of persons 
on this side to freely offer amendments; is that correct, I ask Senator 
Cornyn?
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I say to the distinguished Senator from 
Alabama that he is exactly right. To come out here on the floor, as the 
assistant majority leader has done this morning, and say, Oh, we are 
interested in full debate and amendments and we regret the delay that 
occurred yesterday from the reading of the bill, yet at the same time 
to say no Member of the Senate can offer an amendment because of the 
actions of the majority leader, unless the majority leader gives the 
green light, is at odds with that claim. It is not a demonstration, 
from my perspective, of a desire to have an open debate and an amended 
process.
  Mr. SESSIONS. And so that act was a knowing and deliberate leadership 
act by the majority leader that fundamentally says unless he approves 
an amendment, whether it is offered by those who favor the legislation 
or oppose it, that is a significant event that constricts free 
amendments on this bill; is that not correct?
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, again 
he is correct. I think what it demonstrates is that the professed 
desire to actually do something about this important issue is, in fact, 
nothing more than a political game. Because I predict what will happen 
is that because he is blocking any amendments and an open debate about 
the bill, we will have a vote on the cloture motion, it will fail, and 
then the majority leader will attempt to pull this bill from the floor 
and consideration. I hope Members of the Senate will prevent that from 
happening by denying cloture on any future motions to proceed to other 
legislation. I think it is important that we have the kind of debate 
that a bill of this import and this size deserves.
  If I can refer my colleagues to this chart, which is produced, I 
believe, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Senator Dorgan, the Senator 
from North Dakota, the other day said this bill pales in comparison to 
``Hillary Care'' in terms of its complexity. I remember seeing the 
charts at the time of the huge bureaucracy that would have been created 
by that government-run health care system proposed by Senator Clinton 
when she was the First Lady of the United States. I think it was back 
in 1993.
  But this chart, produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reflects 
all of

[[Page 11533]]

the regulations and mandates of the Boxer climate tax and it indicates 
the complexity of what has been proposed here, and why I guess it 
shouldn't be surprising that the pricetag comes in at $6.7 trillion, 
and where the Federal Government, through a growth in the bureaucracy, 
an intrusion in the freedom and lives of the American people and small 
and large businesses alike, will be the one that will choose the 
winners and losers in this system, who gets the goodies and who does 
not; who gets permission to operate their powerplant and who does not. 
That is why the price of gasoline, that is why the price of electricity 
is expected to go through the roof as a result of this bill.
  I agree with the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Corker, who called 
this bill the ``mother of all earmarks.'' There has been a lot of 
discussion about earmarks here and lack of transparency in the way 
Congress spends money. Well, this bill, if it is passed and signed by 
the President of the United States, would empower the Congress to dole 
out earmarks with a complete lack of transparency, in a way that would 
allow massive Government intrusion in the free market system. That is 
why the Wall Street Journal dubbed this bill ``the biggest government 
reorganization of the economy since the 1930s.''
  The National Association of Manufacturers has estimated the economic 
impact on my State, the State of Texas. We are fortunate now. While 
some parts of the country are suffering through a headwind when it 
comes to the economy, we are doing pretty well, relatively speaking. 
Unemployment is at 4.1 percent. A lot of new jobs have been created, a 
lot of opportunity. We have seen a lot of growth in the population 
because people are moving to where the jobs and the opportunities are. 
But under the Boxer climate tax bill that we have before us on the 
floor of the Senate, it is estimated that 334,000 of my constituents 
would lose their jobs.
  Why would they lose their job? Because this bill would be like a wet 
blanket on the economy, raising electricity prices, raising gas prices 
on everything from agriculture to small businesses, and it is estimated 
that it would cost the average Texas household $8,000 in additional 
costs. Now, that is on top of the $1,400 that most Texas households are 
currently having to pay because of increased gas prices due to the 
obstruction of Congress in failing to allow development of American 
natural resources, an American solution to our energy crisis. It would 
be a $52 billion loss to the Texas economy. As you see here, it is 
estimated that electricity prices would go up 145 percent and gasoline 
prices 147 percent.
  I am sorry the assistant majority leader refused to allow us to offer 
an amendment designed to lower gas prices, because I can't think of any 
more urgent, any more targeted relief we could offer the American 
people today than to provide some relief for the pain at the pump. I 
think that should be our highest priority as we go about the process of 
developing a clean energy future for this country, as we transition out 
of an oil-based economy into one for renewable forms of energy and 
increased nuclear capacity, and one that will improve the climate at 
the same time.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a quick 
question? I don't want to use the Senator's time.
  Mr. CORNYN. I will yield.
  Mr. INHOFE. I want it made clear today, as we go into the debate, 
that when we look back at the clean air amendments of the 1990s, we had 
something like 180 amendments considered at that time and we had it on 
the floor for 5 weeks. This goes much further than those amendments 
did, and yet they are cutting us off.
  Let us make it very clear: The Republicans on this side of the aisle 
want to debate this bill, want to vote, we want recorded votes on 
amendments, and we want to vote on the bill itself.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma is 
absolutely correct. That is why 74 Senators--I believe 74--voted for 
the motion to proceed, so that we could get on the bill, so we could 
offer amendments, and we have a list of amendments we wish to offer. We 
wish to have debate on those amendments because we think the impact of 
this proposal would be dramatic on the American people and on the 
economy and would, in all likelihood, not accomplish the goal Senator 
Boxer professes to want to accomplish.
  If in fact we impose this Draconian bureaucracy and this huge expense 
on the American people, and our competitors in China and India are not 
going to do it, we are going to put people out of work in Texas while 
people in China and India are going to continue to do what they are 
doing now and enjoying the prosperity caused by their access to the 
energy which they need to grow their economy. This bill would do 
nothing to impose the same restrictions on them, the same high prices 
on them that the Congress proposes to impose on the American people, 
including my constituents.
  So rather than increasing gas prices by 147 percent, I would hope our 
friends on the other side of the aisle would reconsider and let us take 
up that most urgent issue in the minds of most of our constituents: How 
do we bring down the price of gas at the pump? I suggest the first 
thing we should do is take advantage of the natural resources God has 
given this great country of ours, which Congress has put out of bounds 
because of the moratorium on that development going back to, I believe, 
1982.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, how much time do we have on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The first 30 minutes has expired. It is now 
the majority's time.
  Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

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