[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8225-8229]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              UTILITY MACT

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, let me thank the Senator 
from Ohio for allowing me to interrupt him for my unanimous consent 
request.
  This month, the Senate will have the opportunity to put a stop to the 
second most expensive EPA regulation in history, the rule known as 
Utility MACT. It is kind of confusing. Let me share with everyone what 
it means: MACT--and we better learn it now because we are going to hear 
it more and more--it is M-A-C-T. That means Maximum Achievable 
Controlled Technology. In other words, the EPA comes along and makes a 
regulation where there is no technology that will accommodate the rule. 
So that is what it is all about. That is what the Obama EPA calls it so 
the people will not know what it is and how much it costs. It is the 
first step--we are talking about Utility MACT--it is the first step to 
kill coal in the United States.
  Right now, we in this country depend upon coal for 50 percent of our 
electricity. One can just imagine what will happen to our energy costs 
as well as millions of lost jobs. I have introduced a joint resolution 
to kill it. By voting for my resolution, S.J. Res. 37, Members of the 
Senate can prevent the Obama EPA from causing so much economic pain for 
American families. It requires only a majority vote in the Senate and 
the House. It would have to be signed by the President.
  People say: Why would the President sign a bill that would stop his 
EPA from overregulating? I would suggest that right before the 
election, he does not want to go on record as causing that many job 
losses and that much damage to our economy.
  Utility MACT is the centerpiece of President Obama's effort to kill 
coal. Utility MACT is specifically designed to close down existing coal 
plants, while the Obama EPA's greenhouse gas regulations are 
specifically designed to prevent any new coal plants from being built. 
So we are going to shut down the coal plants that are there now and 
prevent new coal plants from being built.
  Keep in mind, 50 percent of our energy comes from coal. The goal 
behind these policies is not surprising. But what is surprising is that 
while President Obama goes around pretending to be for an all-of-the-
above approach on energy--let's make sure we understand what that is. 
An all-of-the-above approach was the Republicans' idea. It was: We are 
for all of the above. We are for nuclear energy. We are for fossil 
fuels, coal, gas, oil, renewables, solar, everything else.
  That is what ``all of the above'' means. The President has been 
saying he is for an all-of-the-above approach on energy, while members 
of his green team administration cannot help but tell the truth about 
what is going on in the EPA. The Presiding Officer remembers several 
weeks ago when I came to the Senate floor to bring attention to a video 
of EPA region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz admitting that the EPA's 
general philosophy is to crucify and make examples of oil and gas 
companies.
  We remember that, do we not? He said--and it was on a video, his 
voice with himself speaking to a group of people, including giving 
advice to those who were subordinates to him. He said: You have to do 
what the Romans did years ago when they would go around the 
Mediterranean. They would go into different areas in Turkey, and they 
would crucify the first five people they would see and leave them to 
die, dangling on a cross, in order to get them to submit to them.
  Today, I would like to highlight another video. It is a video of the 
EPA region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding, admitting that the Obama EPA 
consciously and deliberately made the choice to wage war on coal. I am 
going to quote exactly what he said so everyone can have the full 
effect of it. He said:

       But know right now, we are, we are struggling. We are 
     struggling because we are trying to do our jobs. Lisa Jackson 
     has put forth a very powerful message to the country. Just 
     two days ago, the decision on greenhouse gas performance 
     standard and saying basically gas plants are the performance 
     standard which means if you want to build a coal plant you 
     got a big problem. That was a huge decision. You can't 
     imagine how tough that was. Because you got to remember that 
     if you go to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and all those 
     places, you have coal communities who depend on coal. And to 
     say that we just think those communities should just go away, 
     we can't do that. But she had to do what the law and the 
     policy suggested. And it's painful. It's painful every step 
     of the way.

  Again, I am quoting the region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding in a 
statement he made. That is an exact quote. Let me repeat the key parts 
of Administrator Spalding's quote for emphasis. He said, ``If you want 
to build a coal plant you got a big problem.'' Even more stunning, he 
is admitting that the Obama EPA's decision to kill coal was painful 
every step of the way because West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and all the 
coal States depend on coal development for their jobs, their 
livelihoods.

[[Page 8226]]

  I had occasion to be in West Virginia and in Ohio and see and speak 
face to face with people who are third-, fourth-generation workers in 
the coal mines. Those people are scared to death that coal will be 
killed. Here it is in front of us right now. They are going to kill 
coal anyway.
  Trust me, Administrator Spalding and President Obama, it is far more 
painful for those who will lose their jobs and have to pay skyrocketing 
electricity prices than it will be for you.
  Spalding's statement that ``if you want to build a coal plant you got 
a big problem'' reminds us a lot of President Obama's own statement 
about coal in 2008, when he was not so afraid to explain his real 
intention. Remember, he said--and this is a quote by the President in 
2008. ``If you want to build a coal-fired power plant you can, it's 
just that it will bankrupt you.''
  That was 2008. Sure enough, he is bringing that to reality. He is 
making every effort. Of course, this war on coal comes from the same 
administration that put the ``crucify them'' Administrator Armendariz 
in charge of the biggest oil-and-gas-producing region in the country. 
In fact, crucifixion philosophy is so obvious now that even the 
somewhat left-leaning Washington Post said that the Obama EPA is 
``earning a reputation for abuse.''
  But I think Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal put it best when 
she said that Armendariz was ``a perfect general for Mr. Obama's war 
against natural gas and on the front lines of President Obama's battle 
to end fossil fuels and affordable energy.''
  As this most recent video of region 1 Administrator Spalding 
confirms, there are plenty of green generals such as Armendariz going 
into battle for the Obama EPA. We have several more videos of EPA 
officials making similar statements. I am not going to talk about them 
tonight. I will talk about those at a later date because today I would 
like to focus my remarks specifically on President Obama's war on coal 
and what Members of this body will choose to do about it.
  The fundamental question before the Senate will be whether my 
colleagues will have the courage to stand up to President Obama and put 
the brakes on his abusive, out-of-control EPA that has openly admitted: 
If you want to build a coal plant, you have a big problem or if they 
are going to stand with President Obama and his administration's 
``crucify'' agenda.
  One of the most interesting and telling aspects of President Obama's 
disingenuous attempt to rebrand himself as a supporter of fossil fuels 
is that he never mentions coal. He does not even pretend. In fact, up 
until very recently, President Obama's campaign Web site had a section 
devoted to the President's goals for every energy resource except coal.
  Only after facing intense criticism and disappointing primary results 
in coal States, which just happened recently--I think we are all aware 
of that--the Obama campaign attempted quietly to add a clean coal 
section to its site.
  Apparently, President Obama's definition of clean coal is no coal. In 
his 2013 budget request, the President cut funding for coal research 
and development at the National Energy Technology Lab by nearly 30 
percent. This is at the same time EPA has proposed greenhouse gas 
standards for coal-fired powerplants that require carbon capture and 
sequestration. We refer to that as CCS. It is a technology that is not 
ready to operate on a commercial scale.
  On one hand, we have Obama issuing standards in which utilities 
cannot comply without using CCS; on the other hand, we have them 
handicapped in that very technology. In other words, what he is saying 
is that we have emissions standards for coal technology where there is 
no technology. There are standards required for emissions where there 
is no technology that will accommodate that request.
  We are going to see it in other areas too. This is coal. I am 
concentrating just on coal tonight. After cap and trade was thoroughly 
rejected by the American people and defeated in a Democratically 
controlled Congress, President Obama promised that he would not give up 
in his efforts to stop coal development. He also said:

       Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat. It was 
     a means, not an end. I'm going to be looking for other means 
     to address this problem.

  He has found other ways to skin the cat--by imposing regulations that 
have exactly the same effect of killing coal. I do not have time to go 
into every action EPA has taken, but I would like to highlight a few of 
the key coal-killing regulations. Front and center, of course, is 
Utility MACT. Utility MACT is a rule which sets strict standards that 
cannot be met, which means that along with EPA's other air rules, up to 
20 percent of America's coal-fired capacity will be shuttered and 
around 1.6 million jobs will be lost.
  That is initially. Carry that on through, considering that coal 
supplies 50 percent of our energy in this country, it is going to far 
exceed that, starting off with 50 percent of America's coal-fired 
capacity will be shut down. Utility MACT's pricetag is second only to 
the Obama EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, which are designed to 
prevent any new coal plants from being built in this country.
  Similar to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, these regulations 
will cost $300 to $400 billion a year and destroy over 2 million jobs. 
It may even cost more if the courts throw out the EPA's tailoring rule. 
It kind of gets into the weeds. It is a little bit complicated.
  What they are attempting to do is the regulations that they were 
unable to do through legislation. We had several bills over a 12-year 
period to try to impose cap and trade. That cap and trade cost would be 
$300 billion to $400 billion. The tailoring rule is one where if EPA 
does it through regulation, doing the same thing, imposing cap and 
trade on the American people, it will not cost $300 billion to $400 
billion a year, but it will be far more because it will have to reach 
the standards of the Clean Air Act. That would be regulating those 
emitters with 250,000 tons of emissions a year. Every school, church, 
restaurant, and coffee shop would now have to be regulated and would be 
put out of business by the EPA.
  EPA is also waging this war on the permitting front. We have been 
tracking this problem for a long time. A lot of people recognize when 
the Obama EPA was trying to shut down the gulf, they said: We are not 
going to do it because of public pressure. But then they refused to 
issue permits.
  As my EPW minority report from January 2010 showed, the EPA was 
obstructing 190 coal mining permits, putting nearly 18,000 jobs at 
risk. That was 2\1/2\ years ago and not much has improved.
  Last November a report by the Office of Inspector General I requested 
confirmed that EPA, through its own actions, had been deliberately and 
systematically slowing the pace of permit evaluations for new plants in 
Appalachia. These findings were concerning enough that the inspector 
general did a follow-up review. And again in February of this year, 2 
years later, the Office of Inspector General found EPA did not have a 
consistent official recordkeeping system that was exacerbating permit 
delays. Not only has EPA continued to stall the permitting process, 
they are trying to stop permits that were already granted.
  In January 2011--and this is significant--EPA took the drastic 
unprecedented step of revoking a lawfully issued mining permit the Bush 
Army Corps of Engineers had granted to Spruce Mine, which is a project 
in Appalachia. Fortunately, the courts recognized EPA's overreaching in 
this case.
  On March 23, 2012, the U.S. district court ruled that EPA exceeded 
its authority, and as the judge said,

       EPA's claim that it can veto a permit issued by the Army 
     Corps of Engineers is a stunning power for an agency to 
     arrogate itself.

  That is a Federal judge's quote.
  After 4 years of this aggressive barrage of rules designed to kill 
coal, many in the heartland, States that rely heavily on coal, are not 
amused.
  Just last month 24 State attorneys general, including one-quarter of 
all

[[Page 8227]]

Democratic State attorneys general, filed a suit to overturn Utility 
MACT because of the devastating effects it will have on jobs in their 
States and their economies. These are Democrats from Arkansas, 
Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wyoming. In other 
words, it appeared that Democratic AGs from several States are trying 
to save coal while the Democratic Senators from those same States are 
carrying out President Obama's war on coal.
  What is happening in West Virginia? The State government just 
sponsored a 3-day forum last week on ``EPA's war on coal.'' This is in 
West Virginia.
  Larry Puccio, the Democratic Party chairman in West Virginia, said:

       A lot of folks here have real frustration with this 
     administration's stance on coal and energy.
       Recently, on a West Virginia radio show, Cecil Roberts, the 
     President of the United Mine Workers of America, famously 
     said that EPA Administer Lisa Jackson ``shot [the coal 
     industry] in Washington just as the Navy Seals shot bin 
     Laden.'' As Roberts expanded:
       We've been placed in a horrendous position here. How do you 
     take coal miners' money and say let's use it politically to 
     support someone whose EPA has pretty much said, ``You're 
     done''?

  It doesn't get any stronger than that. These are all Democrats. Let's 
not forget West Virginia is the State where President Obama lost 
several counties in a primary to a convicted felon not long ago.
  Kentucky is weighing in. As Politico reported, President Obama lost 
an ``uncommitted'' vote in 38 counties representing the Kentucky Coal 
Coalition and won just 44 percent of over 49,000 votes. He only carried 
14 of the 38 coal counties, and overall carried the State as a whole 
with just 58 percent of the vote.
  In Arkansas, President Obama won the primary with less than 60 
percent of the vote.
  In Ohio, it was the same story. When Vice President Biden visited the 
State recently, he was faced with over 100 workers who would lose their 
jobs because of this administration's aggressive regulatory regime. 
Their message to the administration is ``Stop the war on coal.''
  These States have good reason to be concerned. Let's look at how 
Utility MACT will impact some of the most coal-dependent States.
  In Arkansas, 40 percent of their electricity is produced by coal.
  Louisiana has the ninth cheapest electricity in the Nation, $100 
million in payroll.
  In Michigan, 60 percent of their electricity is produced by coal. 
They are tenth in coal use.
  Missouri, which is a big one, 80 percent of their electricity is 
produced by coal. They are sixth in coal use.
  Montana, 60 percent of its electricity, fifth in coal production.
  North Dakota, 85 percent of electricity is produced by coal. They are 
ninth in coal production.
  Ohio is a big one, with 85 percent of electricity, and more than 
19,000 jobs are at stake because of this Utility MACT.
  Pennsylvania, 52 percent of their electricity is produced by coal, 
and they are fifth in coal use; Tennessee, 62 percent of the 
electricity.
  Virginia, more than 31,000 jobs, and they are 13th in coal 
production; West Virginia, second in coal production, with more than 
80,000 jobs.
  These are real jobs that we lost State by State. That is how this is 
a big deal. I will go into detail as to why Utility MACT would be 
devastating. Just put this rule in perspective.
  Even Democratic Representative John Dingell, who has been in the 
House many years--I served with him in the House many years ago, and he 
was the author of the Clean Air Act Amendments--said that Utility MACT 
is ``unparalleled in its size and scope'' and that it ``presents a set 
of new regulations with possible wide-reaching impacts on the way our 
country generates and consumes electricity.'' Now, that was 
Representative Dingell over in the House of Representatives, a 
Democrat.
  Utility MACT has an unprecedented price tag. EPA puts the cost of 
their rule at nearly $10 billion a year. That is interesting because no 
one else's is that low. Other sources project that it will cost 
considerably more, making it the second most expensive rule in the 
Agency's history. This is second only to global warming's cap-and-
trade, which would be about a $300 billion to $400 billion tax 
increase, so double that.
  Now, this is something I always do because in my State of Oklahoma, 
when we start talking about billions and trillions of dollars, I like 
to see how it will affect our families in Oklahoma. So a $300 billion 
to $400 billion tax increase, which is what it would have been if they 
had been successful in passing cap-and-trade and what it will be if 
they do it by regulation, you can double that. This tax increase would 
cost the average family who pays Federal income tax in my State of 
Oklahoma over $3,000 a year. And, of course, you don't get anything for 
it because even Lisa Jackson, Obama's Administrator of the EPA, 
admitted that if we pass cap-and-trade, it would not reduce our overall 
emissions because the problem isn't here in the United States; it is in 
Mexico and it is in China and in other countries around the world. So 
the Utility MACT we are talking about today would tax each family over 
and above cap-and-trade.
  Further, the rule will shut down 20 percent of America's coal-fired 
power capacity. This will inevitably result in higher electricity 
prices for every American. Simply put, it is a supply-and-demand 
situation. I think we all understand that. There is not a person who is 
within earshot of me, anyway, who didn't learn back in grade school and 
elementary school what supply and demand means. It means if you shut 
down the coal plants, the energy remaining will cost a lot more.
  It is not just me saying this. Here is what the Chicago Tribune 
reported on May 18: that in 2015, ``electric bills are set to be about 
$130 more than they are today.'' Now I am talking to everyone out there 
who has electricity. The electric bills are set to be about that much 
more.
  The Chicago Tribune went on to say that prices have already 
significantly risen in the heartland. I will quote the article again:

       Prices were higher in northern Ohio and the Mid-Atlantic 
     region at $357 per megawatt, and $167 per megawatt 
     respectively.

  Now, let's look at the jobs. Utility MACT and other EPA regulations 
on the electric power sector have resulted in over 24,000 megawatts of 
announced powerplant retirements located in 20 States. According to the 
National Economic Research Associates, Utility MACT would destroy 
between 180,000 and 215,000 jobs in 2015. And with other new EPA 
regulations on the electric power sector, the economy stands to lose 
approximately 1.65 million jobs by 2020.
  Manufacturers will be particularly hard hit due to their reliance on 
low-cost electricity and because of their dependence on natural gas as 
a raw material as both electricity rates and natural gas prices 
increase. According to Nucor Steel, a 1-percent increase in electricity 
rates will cost the firm $120 million. These extra costs would endanger 
1 million manufacturing jobs outside of the coal and utility 
industries.
  Utility MACT will also have a negative ripple effect. To bring up one 
example, in Avon Lake, OH, the closure of the local GenOn powerplant 
will cost the school system 11 percent of its budget annually. Besides 
the 80 high-quality jobs lost at the plant and many indirect job losses 
in the community, the city will have fewer resources for its 
paramedics, firefighters, schools, and everything else. This story will 
be replicated in communities across America.
  Now, for a couple of myths about this, people try to say it is not 
surprising that instead of taking credit for the dire results of this 
coal-killing agenda in an election year, the Obama administration is 
claiming that lower natural gas prices are the reason utilities are 
switching from coal to natural gas. That is absolutely wrong. There is 
one problem with that. While President Obama poses in front of the 
pipelines in my State of Oklahoma pretending to be a friend of oil and 
natural gas, he is

[[Page 8228]]

giving marching orders to his administration to do everything possible 
to end hydraulic fracturing.
  To get back in the weeds a little here, hydraulic fracturing is a 
process to get oil and gas out of tight formations. In fact, you can't 
get 1 cubic foot of natural gas out of a tight formation without using 
hydraulic fracturing. I am pretty familiar with that process because 
that was started in my State of Oklahoma way back in 1949. There has 
never been a documented case of groundwater contamination by using 
hydraulic fracturing. But this is what he is trying to do--to kill the 
oil and gas by doing away with hydraulic fracturing.
  Remember, I mentioned earlier that Armendariz was the only one caught 
on tape admitting that the EPA's general philosophy was to crucify and 
make examples of oil and gas companies, specifically targeting 
hydraulic fracturing. If the crucifixion scandal isn't enough of a 
revelation in this war on natural gas, remember the Sierra Club, which 
recently gave the President its most enthusiastic endorsement, just 
rolled out its newest campaign called ``Beyond Gas,'' a spin-off of its 
decade-old campaign ``Beyond Coal.'' That was 10 years ago that the 
Sierra Club talked about its campaign to phase out coal-fired 
powerplants.
  Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune explained:

       As we push to retire coal plants, we're going to work to 
     make sure we're not simultaneously switching to natural-gas 
     infrastructure. And we're going to be preventing new gas 
     plants from being built wherever we can.

  So it is not just coal, it is coal and all other fossil fuels. So 
those people who think somehow they can say, well, we are going to 
promote natural gas--which they are not doing because they are trying 
to stop hydraulic fracturing--they don't realize that is a fossil fuel. 
It may have taken Nancy Pelosi 6 months to realize natural gas is a 
fossil fuel, but everybody knows that today.
  So natural gas supplies may be plentiful now, but the Obama 
administration's ``crucify them'' agenda on oil and gas development is 
designed to change that. Its whole purpose is to decrease access to 
these resources through increased regulations from the Federal 
Government.
  Another myth is the public health myth. I want to address that 
because that is being perpetrated by Utility MACT proponents, and it 
has to do with their public health argument. The truth is that the 
health benefits EPA claims are exaggerated and misleading. That is 
because EPA's analysis showed that over 99 percent of the benefits of 
the rule we are talking about--a Utility MACT rule--come from reducing 
fine particulate matter, not air toxics. Of course, fine particulate 
matter is already regulated under the National Ambient Air Quality 
Standards. In fact, 90 percent of Utility MACT's purported particulate 
matter benefits occur in air already deemed safe by the NAAQS program.
  Not only is the EPA double miscounting benefits, it is also dismally 
failing the cost-benefit test. The Agency itself admits that Utility 
MACT will cost an unprecedented $10 billion to implement. We think it 
is going to be more than twice that, but they say $10 billion. They 
also admit that the $10 billion it costs will yield a mere $6 million 
in direct benefits. That means, by the EPA's own statement, they admit 
the best-case scenario yields a ludicrous cost-benefit ratio of 1,600 
to 1.
  In reality, Utility MACT will harm the public by increasing 
unemployment--a well-established risk factor for elevated illness and 
mortality rates. In addition to influences on mental disorders, 
suicide, and alcoholism, unemployment is also a risk factor in 
cardiovascular disease and overall decreases in life expectancy. 
Further, higher electric bills act like a regressive tax, hurting the 
poor and the elderly most by diverting funds they would otherwise have 
for food, rent, and medical care to pay for more expensive electricity.
  To be sure, those who won't feel any of this economic pain are 
President Obama's Hollywood elites.
  I know that my environmental friends are already accusing me of 
allowing mercury to go into the air. So today I would like to remind 
them that it was the Republicans who first put forth a real plan to 
reduce mercury emissions from powerplants.
  In 2002 and 2003, Republicans were in the majority. At that time, I 
was the chairman of the committee that had regulation over the air, and 
we were working to pass the Clear Skies bill, which was the most 
aggressive initiative in history to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, 
nitrogen oxide, and mercury--SOX, NOX, and 
mercury. In fact, this bill would have reduced mercury emissions by 70 
percent by 2018. So in just 6 years from now, we would already have had 
a 70-percent reduction in what I call real pollutants--SOX, 
NOX, and mercury.
  Now, what happened? Why did it fail? It failed because they wanted to 
include greenhouse gases. They wanted to include CO2. And at 
the expense of losing those reductions that were mandated in 
SOX, NOX, and mercury, they said: Well, if we 
can't have CO2, we don't want it at all.
  So why did Clear Skies fail in 2005? Then-Senator Obama served with 
me in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and it was 
his vote that killed the bill. As Senator Obama himself admitted:

       I voted against the Clear Skies bill. In fact, I was the 
     deciding vote despite the fact that I'm a coal state and that 
     half of my state thought I'd thoroughly betrayed them because 
     I thought clean air was critical and global warming was 
     critical.

  That was then-Senator Barack Obama.
  Clear Skies apparently didn't cause enough pain. It reduced real 
pollutants. It didn't address President Obama's pet cause of climate 
change. It did not achieve the goal they really wanted to impose; that 
is, ending coal.
  So now, instead of having a reasonable and effective mercury 
reduction plan already in place and working for the American people, 
President Obama wants to implement EPA's Utility MACT in order to kill 
coal.
  The bottom line is that we still need coal, and all those who dream 
of doing away with it will not be able to escape the reality that coal 
will continue to provide much of our electricity for the foreseeable 
future. So we need to be implementing policies that improve air quality 
without destroying coal and millions of good American jobs and imposing 
skyrocketing electricity costs on every American. That is why my 
resolution to stop Utility MACT is so crucial.
  Contrary to what critics are saying, this resolution does not prevent 
the EPA from regulating mercury under the Clean Air Act. It simply 
requires that the EPA go back to the drawing board to craft a rule with 
which utilities can actually comply--a rule that does not threaten to 
end coal in America and American generation but helps utilities to 
reduce emissions without having to shut their doors.
  The House, led by Congressman Fred Upton, recently passed bipartisan 
legislation to rein in the Utility MACT, with 19 Democrats supporting 
the measure. So now it is time for the Senate to act.
  I would like to remind my colleagues that this resolution will 
probably be the vote for coal for the year, so this is our one chance. 
Many of my Democratic colleagues have gone on record saying that they 
want to rein in the Obama EPA. The senior Senator from Missouri is one 
of them. She said, back home, that she is determined to hold the line 
on the EPA. Does that mean she and other Senate Democrats who have made 
similar statements will vote to stop the centerpiece of Obama's war on 
coal? Apparently not.
  Today I talked a lot about Utility MACT. Let's be sure we understand 
what it means. One more time: Utility MACT is a rule by the EPA to end 
coal in America and cause electricity rates to skyrocket. That is a 
statement that even the President said, that the electric rates would 
skyrocket. My resolution, S.J. Res. 37, will allow Members of the 
Senate to stop the Obama EPA. It is as simple as that.
  I can remember when we passed the CRA, the Congressional Review Act. 
It

[[Page 8229]]

is interesting because the Congressional Review Act was one which 
recognized that sometimes things are out of control, the EPA and other 
parts of the administration. So if it is something where you get a 
simple majority of Members saying: This is outrageous, and we need to 
stop it, we can do it by passing a CRA--a Congressional Review Act. 
That is what S.J. Res. 37 is, and that is our only chance to stop this.
  So a vote on my resolution would clearly demonstrate to the American 
people which Senators will hold on and stand with their constituents 
for jobs and affordable energy and which Senators want to kill coal in 
favor of President Obama's radical global warming agenda that will be 
devastating to people. To borrow a phrase from Administrator Spalding: 
To choose the latter will be painful--painful every step of the way for 
their constituents. And I hope they make the right choice.
  So I would just repeat that this is the last chance you have to stop 
the administration from killing coal. This is the vote of the year in 
terms of the effort to stop the killing of coal.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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