[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18233-18253]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL OF A RULE SUBMITTED BY THE 
               ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate as in morning business and that I be allowed to speak without a 
time limit.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Arizona is recognized.


                                  ISIL

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, it has been more than 1 year since 
President Obama spoke to the Nation about the threat posed by ISIL and 
escalated U.S. military operations against it. The goal at that time, 
the President said, was to degrade and destroy ISIL. One year ago, the 
goal was to degrade and destroy ISIL. It is impossible to look at where 
we are today and claim that the President's strategy is succeeding or 
that it is likely to succeed on anything approaching an acceptable 
timetable and level of risk.
  No one should take this as a criticism of the men and women in 
uniform, as well as their civilian counterparts in the field, who are 
doing the best they can under the strategic and operational constraints 
they face, especially in the face of the White House's desire to 
revisit the Vietnam war tactics and to micromanage the military's 
campaign.
  It is not that we have done nothing against ISIL; it is that there is 
no compelling reason to believe anything we are doing will be 
sufficient to destroy ISIL. Thousands of airstrikes against ISIL's 
targets have conjured the illusion of progress, but they have produced 
little in the way of decisive battlefield effects.
  I noted with some interest that we provided some targeting for the 
French, who carried out airstrikes. I wonder why we hadn't done any of 
that in the last year.
  ISIL continues to dominate Sunni Arab areas in the world, in both 
Iraq and Syria, and efforts to reclaim major population centers in 
those areas, such as Mosul, have stalled, to say the least. Meanwhile, 
ISIL continues to expand globally. It is now operating in Afghanistan, 
Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt, and other radical Islamist groups, 
such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia, have pledged 
allegiance to ISIL. This appearance of success only enhances ISIL's 
ability to radicalize, recruit, and grow.
  In the past month, ISIL has commenced a new stage in its war on the 
civilized world by unleashing a wave of terrorist attacks around the 
globe. In Ankara, ISIL detonated two bombs outside a train station, 
killing 102 people and injuring over 400 more. In the skies over Egypt, 
ISIL destroyed a Russian civilian airliner with a bomb that killed all 
224 passengers aboard. In Beirut, ISIL conducted 2 suicide bombings 
that killed 43 people and injured 239 more. In Baghdad, ISIL bombs 
killed 26 people and wounded more than 60 others. Finally, in the 
streets of Paris last week, as we all know, gunmen wearing suicide 
belts attacked innocent civilians at restaurants, bars, a soccer 
stadium, and a concert hall, killing at least 129 and wounding 352 
other people.
  The American people have experienced this kind of terror before, and 
we stand together with the people of Turkey, Russia, Lebanon, Iraq, 
France, and nearly 20 other nations whose citizens were murdered by 
these brutal atrocity committers. These attacks reveal nothing new 
about ISIL's character. ISIL is the face of evil in our world today. It 
has crucified its enemies, beheaded innocent journalists, burned a 
Muslim pilot alive in a cage, and it has condemned women and children 
and girls to slavery and torture and unspeakable sexual abuse. And when 
waging war on the living has failed to satisfy its savagery, ISIL has 
desecrated and destroyed many of the monuments to civilization that 
remain across the Middle East.
  ISIL's latest attacks also reveal nothing new about its intentions. 
Everything that ISIL is doing is what their leaders have long said they 
would do. They have stated their aims explicitly and clearly. All we 
have to do is listen to their words. Indeed, as one author put it, ISIL 
has ``toiled mightily to make their projects knowable.''
  What these attacks have demonstrated and what now should be clear is 
that ISIL is at war with us whether or not we admit we are at war with 
them. What should now be clear is that ISIL is determined to attack the 
heart of the civilized world--Europe and the United States--that it has 
the intent to attack us, the capabilities to attack us, and the 
sanctuary from which to plan those attacks. What should now be clear is 
that our people and our allies will not be safe until ISIL is 
destroyed--not just degraded but destroyed, and not eventually but as 
soon as possible.
  Unfortunately--unfortunately-- almost tragically, President Obama 
remains as ideologically committed as ever to staying the course he is 
on and impervious to new information that would suggest otherwise, as 
he made quite clear during his incredible press conference yesterday in 
Turkey. According to the President of the United States, anyone who 
disagrees with him is ``popping off''--popping off.
  I guess Michael Morell, former Deputy Secretary of the CIA, was just 
``popping off'' when he said recently that ``the downing of the Russian 
airliner, only the third such attack in 25 years, and the attacks in 
Paris, the largest in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004, make it 
crystal clear that our ISIS strategy is not working.'' That comes from 
Michael Morell, the former deputy head of the CIA under this President.
  I guess Senator Dianne Feinstein, vice chair of the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence, was just ``popping off'' when she said that 
``ISIL is not contained, ISIL is expanding'' and that we need new 
military strategy and tactics.
  I guess GEN Jack Keane, one of my heroes and architect of the 
successful surge strategy in Iraq, was just ``popping off'' when he 
said, ``We are, in fact, losing this war. Moreover, I can say with 
certainty that this strategy will not defeat ISIS.'' This strategy

[[Page 18234]]

will not defeat ISIS. That comes from the author of the surge which 
succeeded, which the President, by withdrawing all troops, allowed to 
go completely to waste, and the lives of brave young Americans were 
wasted.
  I guess Hillary Clinton, the President's former Secretary of State 
and desired successor, was just ``popping off'' when she declared her 
support for a no-fly zone in Syria to ``stop the carnage on the ground 
and from the air.''
  I guess GEN David Petraeus was just ``popping off'' when he testified 
to the Committee on Armed Services that the President's strategy has 
failed to create the military conditions to end the conflict in Syria 
and that ISIL will not be defeated until we do so.
  I guess James Jeffrey, a career foreign officer and the President's 
Ambassador to Iraq, was just ``popping off'' when he wrote in the 
Washington Post today that the President needs to send thousands of 
ground troops to destroy ISIL.
  What all of these national security leaders recognize is the reality 
that is staring us right in the face. It is the President who is once 
again failing to grasp it. He fails to understand even now that wars 
don't end just because he says they are over, that our terrorist 
enemies are not defeated just because he says they are, that the threat 
posed by ISIL is not contained because he desires it to be so, and that 
maybe, just maybe, the growing group of his bipartisan critics might 
just be right. And why won't he listen to them? Why won't he listen to 
these people of experience and knowledge and background? Whom does he 
listen to? Whom does the President listen to? He couldn't be listening 
to anybody knowledgeable and then make the comments he made at that 
press conference.
  The President has had to go back on everything he said he would not 
do to combat the threats now emanating from Syria and Iraq. He said he 
would not arm moderate Syrian rebels because that would militarize the 
conflict. He was wrong. He said he would not intervene militarily in 
Iraq or Syria. He was wrong. He said he would not put boots on the 
ground in Syria. He was wrong. Now he says that his strategy is 
working, that all it needs is time, and that no further changes are 
required despite ISIL's campaign of terror. Now, get this straight. 
After the bombing in Paris, after the Russian airliner, after the other 
acts of terror, he needs time--he needs time--and no further changes 
are required. Does anybody believe him anymore?
  What the President has failed to understand for nearly 5 years is 
that unless and until he leads an international effort to end the 
conflict in Syria and Iraq, the costs of this conflict will continue to 
mount. Those consequences have grown steadily, from mass atrocities and 
hundreds of thousands of dead in Syria, to the repeated use of weapons 
of mass destruction, to the rise of the world's largest terrorist army 
and its rampage across Syria and Iraq, to destabilizing refugee flows 
that have shaken the stability of Syria's neighbors and are now 
potentially changing the character of European society. Now we see the 
latest manifestation of this threat: global terrorist attacks directed 
and inspired by ISIL that killed hundreds around the world.
  The Paris attacks, obviously, should be a wake-up call for all 
Americans, most of all for the President. If we stay the course, if we 
don't change our strategy now, we will be attacked. I don't know where, 
when, or how, but it will happen. Do we need to wait for more innocent 
people to die before we address the reality that is right before us? 
ISIL has said it intends to attack Washington, DC. Do we not take them 
at their word? Do we think they are not capable of it? Do we think time 
is on our side? It is not. Time is not on our side.
  The lesson of the September 11 attack was that mass murderers cannot 
be permitted safe havens. They cannot be permitted safe havens from 
which to plot our destruction. Do we really have to pay that price 
again through the blood of our citizens?
  For nearly 5 years, we have been told there is no military solution 
to the conflict in Syria and Iraq, as if anyone believes there is. In 
fact, one of the things that is most frustrating about the President's 
rhetoric is that he sets up straw men. He says we either should do 
nothing or the Republicans or critics--now Democrats as well--are 
wanting to send in 100,000 troops. We do not. We do not. We believe and 
I am convinced that we can send in a force composed of Sunni Arabs, of 
Egyptians, of Turks, and Americans--about 10,000--establish the no-fly 
zone, allow the refugees a sanctuary, and make sure that no barrel 
bombing will be allowed in those areas. We can succeed. ISIS is not 
invincible. The United States of America and our allies are far 
stronger. We are the strongest Nation on Earth. To say we can't defeat 
ISIL--it is a matter of will, not a matter of whether or not it is a 
capability.
  So I say to my colleagues and the American people, we can defeat ISIS 
and we can wipe them off the face of the Earth, but we have to have a 
strategy, and this President has never had a strategy.
  For nearly 5 years we have been told that there is no military 
solution; that there are no good options; that our influence is 
limited, as if that is not always the case; that we won't succeed 
overnight, as if our problem is one of time, not policy; and that we 
can't solve every problem in the Middle East, as if that absolves us of 
our responsibility to make the situation better where we can. This 
isn't a question of our capacity, our capabilities, or our options. We 
have always had options to address this growing threat. But the longer 
we wait, the difficulty and risk and cost increase.
  Four years ago, Lindsey Graham and I came to this floor and said: We 
need to have a no-fly zone and we need to arm and train the Free Syrian 
Army, once Bashar al-Assad crossed the redline. We could have done it 
then, and it would have been one heck of a lot easier. But this 
President didn't want to do it, and we are faced with a more complex 
situation. Tens of thousands or a couple hundred thousand Syrians dead 
and millions of refugees later, the President of the United States 
still won't act. He still believes, as he stated in his press 
conference yesterday, that, somehow, everything is going fine--what 
delusion.
  After the attack on France, article 5 of NATO's founding treaty 
should be invoked, which states that an attack on one is an attack on 
all. That is what we did after 9/11. The United States should work with 
our NATO allies and our Arab partners to assemble a coalition that will 
take the fight to ISIL from the air and on the ground. My friends, air 
attacks only will not succeed. It will not succeed. I am sorry to tell 
you. I apologize ahead of time. We need boots on the ground--not 
100,000 but about 10,000, with the capabilities that are unique to 
American service men and women. We can defeat ISIL.
  We have to step up the air campaign by easing overly restrictive 
rules of engagement. At the same time, we have to recognize that ISIL 
will only be defeated by ground combat forces. Those don't exist today. 
We must recognize that our indirect efforts to support our partners on 
the ground--the Iraqi Security Forces, the moderate Syrian opposition 
force, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Sunni tribal forces--are 
insufficient to outpace the growing threat we face.
  As I mentioned, the United States must therefore work to assemble a 
coalition and ground force with a commitment on the order of 10,000 
U.S. troops.
  In Syria, we must hasten the end of the civil war. We must accept 
that Russia and Iran are not interested in a negotiated solution that 
favors U.S. interests. Russia and Iran have entirely different goals 
than the United States of America in Syria. Russia wants to keep Bashar 
Assad or his stooge in power, they want to keep their major influence 
in the region, and they want to protect their base there. The United 
States of America has none of those interests. They want to prop up the 
guy who has killed 240,000.
  I appreciate the outpouring of concern of all my colleagues and all 
Americans about these refugees. The refugees are the result of a 
failure of Presidential and American leadership. They are not the cause 
of it. The cause of

[[Page 18235]]

these hundreds of thousands or millions of refugees is because our 
policy failed. Bashar al-Assad slaughtered them with barrel bombs, and 
we are now faced with the threat, in some respects, of a possibility 
that one or more of these refugees, having gone through Greece, now are 
or possibly could be--as the Director of the CIA said yesterday--in 
ongoing operations to try to orchestrate attacks on America.
  It is often said that America doesn't go abroad in search of monsters 
to destroy. But that doesn't mean there are no monsters in the world 
that seek to destroy us. The longer we wait to accept this reality, the 
greater is the cost we will pay.
  One of my great heroes and role models, as is the case with many of 
our colleagues, is Winston Churchill. I would never compare myself to 
Winston Churchill in any possible way, except that I do sometimes have 
empathy with Winston Churchill, who, during the 1930s, came to the 
floor of the Parliament and made comments and speeches that were very, 
very moving, but no one paid any attention to him. In fact, he was 
ridiculed. In fact, Lindsey Graham and I have been ridiculed from time 
to time because of our assessment of the situation and what needed to 
be done.
  Winston Churchill, after the crisis had been resolved to some degree 
and the people of Britain and the world had awakened, said--and there 
is a parallel between the situation 4 years ago and what Winston 
Churchill had to say:

       When the situation was manageable, it was neglected, and 
     now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the 
     remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is 
     nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline 
     Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the 
     fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability 
     of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when 
     action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, 
     confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-
     preservation strikes its jarring gong--these are the features 
     which constitute the endless repetition of history.

  I say to my colleagues, we are observing the endless repetition of 
history--what once upon a time was a manageable situation. When the 
President of the United States said that it is not a matter of when 
Bashar al-Assad leaves but it is a matter of when, when the Chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then-Secretary of Defense testified 
before our committee that it is inevitable that Bashar al-Assad will 
go, when the President of the United States continuously said time 
after time that we have a strategy and it is not anything to worry 
about, when we get out of Iraq and we draw redlines in Syria and don't 
do it, when we don't take any action after the redline is crossed, when 
his national security team, composed of Secretary of State Clinton, 
Secretary of Defense Panetta, and then-Director of CIA David Petraeus 
all recommended training and arming the Free Syrian Army, he rejected 
it.
  So now we find ourselves with 240 thousand dead in Syria and more 
Syrian children in school in Lebanon than Lebanese children. Jordan, 
one of our best friends, has their very fabric threatened and unstable 
because of the huge number of refugees. We find a very unstable Middle 
East, and we find ISIL spread now to Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and other 
nations. ISIL has now even established a foothold in Afghanistan, and 
the Iranians are doing the same.
  It is not too late. It is not too late. We have to take up arms. We 
have to tell the American people what is at stake here. We have to 
inform the American people that what happened in Paris can happen here. 
Mr. Baghdadi, who was once in our prison camp at Camp Bucca for 4 years 
in Iraq, when he left said: ``I'll see you guys in New York.'' He was 
not kidding. There is no doubt that what ISIL has just proved is that 
contrary to what this President believed, contrary even to what our 
intelligence told us, they have a reach. They have had a reach to make 
sure that a Russian airliner was destroyed. They have a reach to Paris. 
They have a reach to Beirut. They have a reach in northern Africa and 
other places in the world. There is no reason why we should not suspect 
that they have a reach to the United States of America. It is time we 
acted. It is time the United States of America, acting with our allies, 
takes out ISIL. We must go both to Iraq and to Syria and take them out. 
Their total defeat is the only thing that will eliminate this threat to 
the United States of America.
  Yes, after they are destroyed there is a lot to do. Yes, there are 
things such as building economies and free societies and all of that. 
But there is only one thing that Mr. Baghdadi and his legions 
understand, and that is that we kill them and that we counter with 
everything we can this spread of this perverted form of an honorable 
religion called Islam. This is radical Islamic terrorism, whether the 
President ever wants to say it or not.
  There is one additional point. The refugees are a huge problem. 
Obviously, we have to pause until we are sure that nobody is doing 
exactly what--apparently, at least--one of the terrorists who attacked 
Paris did, and that is, to go through Greece and into France. But at 
the same time, we need to understand that the refugee problem is an 
effect of a failed policy, not the cause of it.
  Finally, I would say the President should do two things: One, call 
together the smartest people that we know. I named some of them: 
General Petraeus, General Keane. There are a number of people. There is 
General Maddox, General Kelly, Bob Kagan. The names are familiar to 
many of us who follow national security. These people are the ones who 
made the surge succeed. Call them together over at the White House and 
say: Give me your advice. He must do that. What he has been listening 
to and what he is doing is failing.
  I know that my friend and partner, Lindsey Graham, knows more about 
these issues than any other Member of this body--certainly anybody who 
is running for President of the United States. We will go over. We 
would be glad to go over and sit with the President. I want to 
cooperate with him. I want to work with him. We need to do that. I 
offer up my services and my advice and counsel, and anybody else on 
this side of the aisle.
  This is a threat to the lives of the men and women who are living in 
this Nation. They deserve our protection, and they deserve a bipartisan 
approach and a bipartisan action in order to stop that.
  So I stand ready. But right now, I have not been more concerned.
  I leave my colleagues with two fundamental facts:
  No. 1, there are now more refugees in the world than at any time 
since the end of World War II. No. 2, there are now more crises in the 
world than at any time since the end of World War II. We cannot sustain 
the failed policies that have led us to the situation that America and 
the world are in today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


          Authorization For Use of Military Force Against ISIL

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, over the weekend France suffered the worst 
attack that it has seen since World War II. The day before that, Beirut 
was rocked by two suicide bombs perpetrated by ISIL that killed more 
than 40 civilians. We just had confirmation that the Russian plane 
flying over Sinai was taken down by a terrorist bomb. Again, ISIL has 
claimed credit. These attacks have followed on the heels of an 
announcement 2 weeks earlier by the President that he has authorized 
deployment of up to 50 Special Forces in Syria. They will be there to 
support U.S.-backed Syrian rebels in the campaign against ISIL.
  More than 1 year after the announcement of Operation Inherent 
Resolve, a mission to ``degrade and ultimately defeat'' ISIL, this 
conflict has escalated dramatically. The facts on the ground in the 
Middle East have changed dramatically. Russia is intervening militarily 
on behalf of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians 
left their homes and their country to escape ISIL and Assad, 
precipitating a massive humanitarian crisis that has

[[Page 18236]]

brought the European Union under great strain.
  In addition to the deployment of U.S. Special Forces in Syria, news 
reports indicate that the United States will increase supplies and 
military weapons to U.S.-backed Syrian rebels fighting ISIL.
  For all the changes that we have seen over the past year, one thing 
has not changed: The Congress of the United States has not voted to 
authorize the use of military force against ISIL. That needs to change. 
That is why I have come to the floor today. The Senator from Virginia, 
Mr. Kaine, who will speak in a moment, has come as well. We need an 
authorization for the use of military force.
  The President maintains that the legal underpinnings of his 
authorization come from an AUMF provided to our previous President in 
the 107th Congress, back in 2001. The 2001 AUMF allowed the President 
the authority to use ``all necessary and appropriate force'' against 
those he determined ``planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such 
organizations or persons.''
  More than 10 years later, two provisions of the massive Fiscal Year 
2012 National Defense Authorization Act expanded the 2001 AUMF to 
include ``associated forces'' of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This is the 
expansion from which the administration derives its authority for 
today's actions to go after the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
  I am not standing here today to debate the merits of the 
administration's argument as to whether they have the legal authority. 
That is not what is at issue right here. What is at issue is the ease 
with which Congress happily defers to old statutes and abdicates its 
authority to weigh in on what history will record as a long, complex, 
brutal conflict. This conflict has been going on for more than a year 
with very mixed results, and the consequences will change the 
geopolitical landscape in that region for decades.
  Ten American servicemembers have died supporting Operation Inherent 
Resolve--one of them recently killed in action. Five others have been 
wounded. With thousands of servicemembers in support of Operation 
Inherent Resolve and attacks happening all over the world, the notion 
that a 14-year-old statute aimed at another enemy is any kind of a 
substitute for congressional authorization is insufficient. Operation 
Inherent Resolve warrants its own authorization not just because of its 
size and duration, because Americans are dying in pursuit of it, or 
because it is directed at an enemy that is a threat to our security; 
this mission warrants its own authorization because we want it to 
succeed. We want the world to know that the United States speaks with 
one voice.
  Nearly a year ago, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pressed the 
administration to come forward with a draft AUMF against ISIL. When it 
did not do so, the committee proceeded with its own AUMF, which spurred 
the administration to take action. Two months after that exercise, the 
administration sent up its own draft AUMF. That was more than 8 months 
ago. But efforts to produce an AUMF here in Congress have since 
stalled. In an effort to break the gridlock, as I mentioned, the 
Senator from Virginia, Mr. Kaine, and I introduced a resolution that we 
think represents a good compromise. It may not be perfect. It may 
represent only a starting point. But we need a starting point here, and 
we need to move forward. This issue is far too important not to try to 
get an agreement to move ahead.
  I urge my colleagues to consider the importance of this operation 
against ISIL and the implications to foreign policies for many years 
ahead--specifically, the implications to this body, the Congress of the 
United States and the U.S. Senate. If we are not even willing to weigh 
in and authorize the use of force here, what does that say to our 
adversaries? What does that say to our allies? What does that say to 
the troops who are fighting on our behalf? How much longer can we go 
without an authorization for the use of force?
  I wish to yield time to my colleague, the Senator from Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for 
working so closely. This does not have to be a partisan issue. In fact, 
it should not be a partisan issue. My sense is that in this Congress, 
in both Houses, 80-plus percent of the Members believe strongly that 
the United States should be engaged in military action under some 
circumstances against this horrible threat of ISIL. Yet, despite that 
overwhelming consensus and despite the clear constitutional command in 
article I that we should not be at war without a vote of Congress, 
there has been a strange conspiracy of silence about this in the 
legislative branch for the last 16 months.
  The Senator from Arizona and I introduced a resolution in January to 
authorize military force, building upon previous efforts in the Foreign 
Relations Committee, the President's submitted authorization. We did it 
knowing that it is not perfect, knowing that not everyone would agree 
with every word, but we did it to show that we can be bipartisan and 
stand up against a threat such as ISIL.
  As the Senator did, let's review what has happened since August 8, 
2014. The President on that day started airstrikes against ISIL and 
said he was doing it for two reasons: first, to protect American 
personnel who were jeopardized at a consulate in Erbil, and second, to 
provide humanitarian support for members of a minority religious sect, 
the Yazidis, who were basically being hemmed in by ISIL in Sinjar in 
northern Iraq. Those were the two reasons.
  At that point in August of 2014, ISIL and their activities were 
limited to Iraq and Syria. Sixteen months later, we have lost four 
American hostages who have been executed by ISIL. We have lost 10 
American service men and women who were deployed to that theater. We 
have about 3,600 American troops who are deployed thousands of miles 
from home, risking their lives every day. We have spent $5 billion--$11 
million a day--in the battle against ISIL. We have flown nearly 6,300 
airstrikes with American aircraft against ISIL--ISIL, which was at 
first limited to Iraq and Syria and now has presence in Afghanistan, 
Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. They have undertaken attacks that they claim 
credit for in the Sinai in Egypt and in Lebanon.
  This threat is mutating and growing. At the end of last week, on 
Friday the 13th, we saw the horror of ISIL with the grim assassination 
of innocents as they were enjoying dinner or going to music concerts or 
watching soccer games in Paris. ISIL put out a video a few days ago 
threatening similar attacks on Washington. ISIL is not going away. This 
is a threat.
  The President started military action for a narrow and limited 
reason, but the threat has mutated. Like a cancer, it has grown, and it 
is now affecting nations all over the world. The question is, How long 
will Congress continue to be silent about this? I will say that I think 
this is a malady you can lay at the feet of both parties in both 
Houses. Congress has seemed to prefer a strategy of criticizing what 
the President is doing. And look, I am critical of some of the things 
the President is doing. In an earlier speech, the senior Senator from 
Arizona laid out some challenges with this strategy. But it is not 
enough for this body that has a constitutional authority in matters of 
war to just criticize the Commander in Chief. What we have done is sat 
on the sidelines and criticized, but we have not been willing either to 
vote to authorize what is going on, vote to stop what is going on, or 
vote to refine or revise what is going on. It is easy to be a critic. 
It is easy to sit in the stands and watch a play and say: Well, why 
didn't the coach call a different play? But we are not fans here, We 
are the owners of the team. We are the article I branch, and we are not 
supposed to be at war without a vote of Congress.
  I will hand it back to my colleague from Arizona, and then perhaps I 
can say a few concluding words that would be more about the kind of 
emotional rather than the legal side of this as we

[[Page 18237]]

are thinking about the challenges in Paris.
  I think the events of last week--Egypt, Beirut, Paris--demonstrate 
that the voice of Congress is needed. The voice of Congress is needed 
to fulfill our article I responsibility. The voice of Congress is 
needed, as the Senator from Arizona mentioned, because we send a 
message by our voice to our allies, to the adversary, and to our 
troops. The voice of Congress is also needed because it has the effect 
of solving some of the problems Senator McCain mentioned earlier. To 
the extent that the administration's strategy is not what we would want 
it to be, they have to present a strategy to Congress. We ask tough 
questions of the witnesses, and we refine it and it gets better. We do 
that all in the view of the American public so they can be educated 
about what is at stake. When you don't have the debate, you don't put 
before the American public the reasons for the involvement, and that is 
desperately needed.
  With that, I thank my colleague from Arizona. I would like to say a 
few words at the end about why this is a matter of emotional 
significance to me.
  I now defer to my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Virginia.
  Let me say that we both mentioned the importance of the message that 
needs to be sent from the U.S. Congress, the article I branch, the 
message to our troops who are fighting on our behalf and the message to 
our adversaries. They need to know that we are resolved, that we speak 
with one voice.
  Let me talk for a second about the message to our allies. An 
authorization for use of force will dictate and will set the parameters 
for that use of force. Our allies need to know if we are all in or 
whether there are certain limitations. If we decide--if the Congress 
decides there are certain limitations to that use of force, our allies 
need to know that. They need to know their role and what they are 
required to do. That will be useful. If there are limitations, we need 
to spell them out. If there aren't, we need to let our adversaries know 
that as well.
  But whatever the case, we need to debate this. We need to authorize 
this use of force. We have waited long enough. Frankly, we have waited 
far too long. We have asked the President for language. The President 
sent up language. I think that it is lacking in a few areas. I like 
some parts of it. But it needs to be debated here. If we asked the 
President for that language, then we need to take it up and actually do 
something with it. It is our responsibility. We are the article I 
branch. We are the branch that is supposed to declare war. We need to 
do that here.
  Again, I invite my colleague from Virginia to close. I thank the 
President and say that it is time--it is well past time that we move on 
this. Hopefully the events of the past couple of weeks--the attacks 
that happened in Paris, the bombing of a plane, the other suicide 
bombings that have occurred--our commitment of new resources will 
convince us all that it is time to act here in Congress.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for 
joining together in this important area.
  I had a sad epiphany on Friday as I was thinking about this. I think 
Senator Flake and I have children who are about the same age. I was 
thinking about young people--looking at our pages here, thinking about 
young people. Like many, when the attacks happened Friday, my first 
thoughts were, whom do I know in Paris? A lot of folks have relatives 
or have family or coworkers or former coworkers who were in Paris.
  Like a lot of people, I got on the phone and I got on text to try to 
track down my niece. I have a niece who is a student at law school, a 
third-year law student. She is in Paris for a semester studying at the 
Sciences PO. She was in the restaurant area where the shootings 
occurred so close that she could hear them. She was not immediately 
affected, but she and her friends had to barricade themselves in the 
restaurant for a while, wondering what was going on.
  We were able to determine that Elizabeth was fine. She assured all 
the family and the people who wanted to send her a plane ticket to come 
home that, no, she was fine. But over the weekend I started to think 
about how fine she really is, how fine our young people really are. 
Elizabeth was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon a few years ago. 
After she came home, the village she lived in was essentially wiped out 
by Boko Haram. The next door neighbor, who was her protector and the 
protector of all the Peace Corps volunteers who came before, was 
killed, along with a lot of her other friends. Boko Haram has now 
pledged allegiance to ISIL.
  She had the experience of losing friends in a terrorist attack in 
Cameroon, and now she has had the experience of being near a terrorist 
attack in Paris. It started to work on my conscience a little bit that 
this for her is now a norm. For me, at age 57, these events are not the 
norm. They are the extreme. But for Elizabeth or for my children--I 
have three kids, one in the military, and they all came of age after 9/
11--we are living in a world that for so many of our young people, the 
norm is not peace and safety and complacency; the norm is war or 
terrorist attacks all over the globe. If that can be said about 
America's young people, it is certainly the case for young people in 
France and young people in Syria and all over the region.
  I hate that we are living in a world where young people are starting 
to think this is the norm rather than the exception. It seems to me as 
an adult, as somebody in a leadership position, that a part of what we 
need to do is rather than just allow us to drift without taking a 
position into the world where this is more and more normal, while 
acknowledging that we are humble people and we can't completely control 
our destiny, we have to take charge of a situation and not stand by and 
lob in criticism but try to shape it to the best of our ability. I 
think that was the genius of the drafters of the Constitution.
  James Madison, a Virginian who drafted many of these provisions, was 
trying to do something incredibly radical. At the time, war was for the 
King or the Monarch or the Emperor, and Madison and the others who 
drafted the American Constitution, said: We are going to take that 
power to initiate war away from the Executive. Nobody else has really 
done this, and we are going to put the power in the hands of the 
people's elected representatives so that they will debate and soberly 
analyze when you should take that step of authorizing military action 
where, even under the best of circumstances, horrible things can happen 
and people can lose their lives.
  Well, we have allowed this war to go on long enough without putting a 
congressional fingerprint on it. For our young people, for our troops, 
for our allies, and for our adversaries, it is my prayer that we in 
Congress will now take up that leadership mantle and try to shape this 
mutating and growing threat to the greatest degree we can.
  With that, I yield the floor and again thank my colleague from 
Arizona.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, the Obama administration's war on energy 
isn't just a war on coal, it is a war on American jobs, American 
families, and our national security. That is why it is no surprise that 
the President's anti-energy agenda is gaining opposition from both 
sides of the aisle. I am thankful for the bipartisan leadership 
demonstrated by leader McConnell, Senator Capito, two Republicans, as 
well as Senator Manchin, Senator Heitkamp, two Democrats, in standing 
up against the President's harmful regulations on our Nation's coal-
fired plants. I am proud to have joined them as a cosponsor of the two 
bipartisan resolutions to stop the EPA from imposing its anti-coal 
regulations.
  The Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval we are 
considering today will block the Obama administration's regulations on 
existing

[[Page 18238]]

coal-fired plants. We are also seeing strong opposition from more than 
half of the States in the country, including my home State of Montana, 
which through three different lawsuits have requested an initial stay 
on the rule.
  The Obama administration's reckless agenda is shutting down coal-
fired powerplants across the United States. It is killing family waged 
jobs for union workers and for tribal members in Montana, and it is 
stifling investments that could lead to innovations to make coal even 
cleaner here in the United States. President Obama calls it the Clean 
Power Plan. It is not named correctly. It should be called the 
unaffordable energy plan. President Obama's unaffordable energy plan 
will have a negligible impact on global coal demand and global 
emissions, but it will lead to devastating consequences for affordable 
energy and these good-paying union and tribal jobs.
  Here are the facts: The United States mines just 11 percent of the 
world's coal and consumes about 10.5 percent of the world's coal. Said 
another way, approximately 90 percent of all the coal that is mined and 
consumed occurs outside of the United States. Global demand for coal-
fired energy will not disappear even if the United States were to shut 
down every last coal mine and coal-fired plant.
  Coal use around the world has grown four times faster than 
renewables. There are plans for 1,200 coal plants in 59 countries. Let 
me say that again: 1,200 coal plants are planned in 59 countries, about 
three-quarters of which will be in China and India.
  China alone consumes 4 billion tons of coal each year. Compare that 
to the United States, which is at 1 billion tons. In other words, 
China's coal consumption is four times greater than that of the United 
States. In fact, China will be building a new coal plant every 10 days 
for the next 10 years.
  Look at Japan, for example. After the great earthquake in Japan, they 
lost their nuclear power capability. Japan is currently building 43 
coal-fired plants.
  By 2020, India may have built 2\1/2\ times as much coal capacity as 
the United States is about to lose.
  The Obama administration's reckless war on energy will have little 
impact on global emissions, but here is what it will do: It will 
devastate significant parts of our economy. It will cause energy bills 
to skyrocket. It will be a loss of tax revenues for our schools, roads, 
and teachers. And it is going to destroy family-wage union and tribal 
jobs.
  If this rule moves forward, countless coal-fired plants like the 
Colstrip powerplant in Montana will likely be shuttered, thereby 
putting thousands of jobs at risk. It will also make new coal-fired 
plants incredibly difficult to build.
  The bottom line is this: Coal keeps the lights on in this country, 
and it will continue to power the world for decades to come. In fact, 
in my home State of Montana, it provides more than half of our 
electricity.
  I have told my kids--we have 4 children--when they plug in their 
phones, odds are it is coal that is powering that phone. Rather than 
dismissing this reality, the United States should be on the cutting 
edge of technological advances in energy development. We should be 
leading the way in powering the world, not disengaging. Unfortunately, 
President Obama's out-of-touch regulations take us in the opposite 
direction, and the people who can afford it the least will be impacted 
the greatest.
  I urge my Senate colleagues to join in this bipartisan effort to stop 
the President's job-killing regulations on affordable energy and join 
us in standing up for American energy independence. With what we have 
seen happen in the world in the last week, our national security and 
energy independence are tied together. Stand up for American jobs. 
Stand up for hard-working American families.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, there is a desperate need for the Senate 
to address one of the greatest national security and public health 
risks we face as a country, something that has the ability to affect up 
to 3.4 percent, or $260 billion, of U.S. economic output annually. What 
is this threat? It is climate change.
  In its 2010 and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Reviews, the Department of 
Defense identified climate change as a risk that must be incorporated 
into the Nation's future defense planning. Last year, I held a hearing 
on this issue as chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
  Pentagon experts explained the far-ranging effects of this threat . . 
. putting the U.S. at risk around the world . . . changing the 
landscape and vegetation of training areas . . . accelerating regional 
tensions and conflict. This summer, the Department issued a new report 
outlining in even greater detail the threats we face. It states, ``The 
Department of Defense sees climate change as a present security threat, 
not strictly a long-term risk.'' It goes on to say that climate change 
is introducing ``shocks and stressors'' in the Artic, the Middle East, 
Africa, Asia, and South America.
  The report argues that global warming has had ``measurable impacts'' 
on vulnerable areas and regional conflicts, like Syria. Due to these 
impacts, military leaders are now forced to include ways to respond to 
the risks and challenges of climate change in their planning.
  So if our Nation's senior military leaders are doing their part to 
address climate change, isn't it about time that we did the same? Well, 
we can start by supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's 
efforts to limit carbon pollution from power plants--which account for 
over 40 percent of U.S. carbon pollution emissions. The rules would cut 
carbon pollution from power plants by over 30 percent and reduce 
emissions of the pollutants that cause soot and smog by 25 percent. 
That is equivalent to removing over 160 million cars from the road--or 
almost two-thirds of U.S. passenger vehicles.
  The rules will also drive new investment in clean energy generation 
and energy efficiency technologies while growing the economy, shrinking 
household electricity bills, and putting the U.S. on a pathway to lead 
the world in creating new clean energy jobs. In addition, EPA's rules 
would lead to climate and health benefits worth up to $54 billion 
annually, including avoiding 3,600 premature deaths; 90,000 asthma 
attacks in children; and up to 3,400 heart attacks and hospital visits. 
This is a win-win for America.
  The State of Illinois has already started taking steps to reduce its 
emissions by adopting laws that promote the use of renewable energy and 
energy efficiency.
  Our ``community choice aggregation'' law allows Illinoisans to choose 
their energy providers. Since the program was started, more than 90 
communities have chosen to use 100 percent renewable electricity 
sources for their residential power.
  Illinois's Renewable Portfolio Standard requiring the State to use 25 
percent renewable electricity resources by 2025 is one of the strongest 
in the country.
  And State law also requires utilities to reduce Illinois's energy 
demand by 2 percent each year through efficiency improvements.
  With the support of these laws, Illinois now employs approximately 
100,000 people in the clean energy industry--and meeting EPA's new 
targets would put even more Illinoisans to work designing, 
manufacturing, and installing clean energy systems. Most importantly, 
EPA's rules will allow the U.S. to face the challenge of climate change 
head on instead of ignoring the problem until it is too late.
  Leading scientists warn that the world is running out of time to make 
the cuts in carbon emissions that are needed to prevent irreversible 
damage to the Earth's climate. According to the United Nations's 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at least half the world's 
energy supply needs to come from low-carbon sources such as wind, 
solar, and nuclear by 2050 if we are going to avoid catastrophic 
climate changes. That gives us just 35 years to save the planet for 
future generations.
  This may seem like a long time, but we have a lot to do. We need to 
start now, and EPA's rules are a great first step.

[[Page 18239]]

  But I know some of my colleagues are opposed to the EPA's plan and 
anything this administration does to acknowledge the existence of 
climate change. So they have introduced two resolutions of disapproval 
to prevent EPA from listening to over 97 percent of climate scientists 
and acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If the resolutions were 
to become law, they would prohibit EPA from proposing any new 
regulations that are ``substantially the same'' as their current rules 
for new and existing power plants.
  But even supporters of these resolutions have to admit that we have a 
responsibility to be good stewards of our planet.
  So I have to ask, if you don't like what the President is doing, what 
is your plan to make sure we leave future generations with a brighter, 
cleaner future? How do you propose we address the threat of climate 
change? And what is your plan to make sure that America leads the world 
in creating the well-paying, green jobs of the future? Denying the 
harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as these resolutions do, 
is shortsighted and declares war on science and on public health. So I 
hope my colleagues will vote ``no'' on the resolutions of disapproval 
from Senator McConnell and Senator Capito.
  The evidence is clear: we need to get serious about addressing the 
causes and effects of climate change. America has the resources and the 
inventiveness to create a new energy system that can protect our 
environment and economy and allow us to continue to choose our own 
destiny. But we can only do it by focusing on policies that address 
both the economic and environmental challenges facing the country by 
supporting critical, sustainable infrastructure. And we need to do it 
soon--our generation has a moral obligation to leave the world in as 
good of shape as what we inherited from our parents and grandparents.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, there is irrefutable evidence, with more 
accumulating all the time, that humans have altered not just the 
weather of a region, but the climate of our entire planet.
  From flooding felt across the country to extreme temperatures from 
north to south and east to west, these severe events are happening more 
and more frequently. Droughts are proliferating, wildfires are bigger, 
and more expensive, tropical storms and hurricanes are more intense. 
You can look no further than the damage wrought in Vermont in the wake 
of Tropical Storm Irene--a storm that had greatly weakened since first 
making landfall, but still so powerful as to deliver hundreds of 
millions of dollars in damage to our small State. It was enough to 
convince many Vermonters of the reality of climate change as they 
watched roads washed away and iconic covered bridges yanked out of the 
footings that had supported them for generations.
  The science and the data by now are clear that human activities are a 
factor in the climate change that is unfolding all around us and in 
every corner of the globe, but common sense alone should tell us, as we 
look about us and see all of the carbon and pollution that is being 
pumped into our thin and fragile atmosphere, that all of these human 
activities are contributing factors.
  We must address the root causes of climate change, and that is what 
the administration's Clean Power Plan, bolstered by the rules for new 
and existing power plants, will do.
  Today, we won't vote about how to support our roads and bridges. We 
won't vote to further advance educational opportunities for young 
children. We won't vote on ways to keep our government--of the people, 
for the people--open. Rather, we are summoned to heed the call of 
pressure groups, wealthy corporations, and moneyed interests and vote 
on a resolution of disapproval that denies the impact and the causes of 
climate change. These challenges under the Congressional Review Act 
fail to recognize the true cost of carbon pollution. The Clean Power 
Plan sets clear and flexible rules that signal to the marketplace that 
we cannot continue to spew harmful carbon pollution without limit. It 
finally puts an end to the free lunch for the fossil fuels industry.
  These rules offer commonsense solutions that will not only address 
climate change, but will protect Americans' health with cleaner air. 
They will also unleash the creativity and inventiveness of American 
entrepreneurship and support investments in new technology. They will 
further set the stage for our vibrant and job-rich energy future. The 
flexibility in these rules means that States and companies will be able 
to decide the best ways to reduce their carbon emissions, whether 
through gains in efficiency and new technologies or through an 
increased use of natural gas or renewable fuels.
  Vermonters are encouraged by these rules and about the Clean Power 
Plan--not only because together these proposals move the country 
forward to finally address climate change, but also because the plan 
and rules recognize the important work that Vermont and other Northeast 
States have been doing for the last decade through the Regional 
Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI, to cap carbon emissions and offer 
credits to cleaner producers. In Vermont, we can breathe easier knowing 
that under these rules, we will have less pollution blowing into the 
State from power plants in the Midwest.
  The majority in the Senate would rather roll back some of the most 
meaningful environmental initiatives of our time, rather than help to 
improve the health of Americans across the country. The science is 
clear: Failing to address climate change will lead to more dangerous 
and costly extreme weather events and threaten the health and well-
being of our families and our communities. We must stop putting the 
interests of polluters above public health. It is time to stop putting 
the future of our planet and of generations to come in danger and to 
act now to halt the devastating effects of climate change. Let us move 
beyond the energy policies of the last two centuries and move forward 
toward America's energy future.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, strong clean air protections remain very 
important for our health and environment. I have voted previously to 
protect the EPA's ability to take action to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions, and I will oppose the two resolutions of disapproval under 
the Congressional Review Act which would permanently block EPA from 
limiting carbon pollution from existing and new fossil fuel fired 
powerplants.
  Finalized on August 3, 2015, the Clean Power Plan sets the first 
national limits on carbon pollution from existing fossil fuel fired 
powerplants, the Nation's single largest stationary source of 
greenhouse gas emissions. According to EPA estimates, the Clean Power 
Plan will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power 
sector by 32 percent, from 2005 levels, by 2030. The final plan 
includes additional flexibility and provides States with more time to 
submit plans and to achieve compliance with the requirements. The 
standards to limit carbon dioxide for new, modified, or reconstructed 
powerplants were also finalized on August 3. On November 4, 18 States, 
including Maine, and several cities asked a Federal court to allow them 
to defend the Clean Power Plan against legal challenge.
  I am encouraged that the emissions targets under the Clean Power Plan 
for Maine are more realistic than were originally proposed in 
recognition of the fact that Maine already ranks first in the Nation in 
the percentage reduction in greenhouse gases due to the State's 
participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI. Through 
RGGI, Maine has already made substantial progress in reducing carbon 
emissions, increasing energy efficiency, spurring the adoption of clean 
energy technologies, and improving air quality and public health. By 
contrast, the EPA's original proposal would have unfairly disadvantaged 
and asked more of States that took action early than it would have from 
States that had not yet acted to reduce their emissions. The final rule 
represents a considerable improvement in this regard.
  I continue to have some concerns, however, with the Clean Power 
Plan's

[[Page 18240]]

treatment of renewable biomass energy. Biomass energy is a sustainable, 
responsible, renewable, and economically significant energy source. 
Many States, including Maine, are relying on renewable biomass to meet 
their renewable energy goals. Because the final rule places the onus on 
States to demonstrate the eligibility of biomass for the Clean Power 
Plan, this approach will lead to more regulatory uncertainty. The EPA 
must appropriately recognize the carbon benefits of forest bioenergy in 
a way that helps States, mills, and the forest products industry and 
recognizes the carbon neutrality of wood. I will continue to seek 
regulatory certainty and clarity on this issue.
  Climate change is a significant threat both here in the United States 
and around the world. It is a challenge that requires international 
cooperation, including from large emitters like China and India, to 
reduce greenhouse gas pollution worldwide. The upcoming climate summit 
in Paris provides a new opportunity for international efforts to curb 
greenhouse gas emissions in countries around the globe.
  I have had the opportunity to meet in the field with some of the 
world's foremost climate scientists. I have traveled to Norway and to 
Alaska where I saw the dramatic loss of sea ice cover and the 
retreating Arctic glaciers. In Barrow, AK, on the shores of the Arctic 
Ocean, I saw telephone poles leaning over because the permafrost was 
melting, and I talked with native people who told me that they were 
seeing insects that had never before been this far north. I returned 
from this trip believing that U.S. leadership to slow climate change 
would be vitally important--in order to prevent the worst extreme 
weather events, shifts in agricultural production and disease patterns, 
and more air pollution.
  For Maine, climate change poses a significant threat to our vast 
natural resources, from working forests, fishing, and agricultural 
industries, to tourism and recreation, as well as for public health. 
With heat waves, more extreme weather events, and sea level rise, the 
greenhouse gasses that drive climate change are a clear threat to our 
way of life. As a coastal State, Maine is particularly vulnerable to 
storm surges and flooding, and unpredictable changes in the Gulf of 
Maine threaten our iconic fisheries. Climate changes also raise 
significant public health concerns for Maine's citizens, from asthma to 
Lyme disease. Maine has one of the highest and fastest growing incident 
rates of Lyme disease, and its spread has been linked to higher 
temperatures that are ripe for deer ticks and their hosts. Sitting at 
the end of the air pollution tailpipe, Maine also has some of the 
highest rates of asthma in the country.
  The Clean Air Act remains vital for protecting our health and the 
environment, and I will continue to support responsible and realistic 
efforts to reduce harmful pollution that affects us all.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I wish to speak in favor of the Clean 
Power Plan. This plan shows real American leadership when it comes to 
climate change, proof that we are taking responsibility for the world 
we leave to our children.
  The debate over the Clean Power Plan is a question of whether we 
should take any action at all on climate change, a shocking question 
considering how long we have known about the ways we are harming the 
planet.
  A recent report by Inside Climate News shows that Exxon scientists 
were warning the company's leadership about climate change as early as 
1977. The Exxon scientists wrote: ``There is general scientific 
agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing 
the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning 
of fossil fuels.''
  Even before that, scientific advisers first cautioned the President 
about climate change in 1965--50 years ago this month--explaining that 
carbon dioxide from fossil fuels would ``almost certainly cause 
significant changes'' and ``could be deleterious from the point of view 
of human beings.''
  And as far back as 1956, the New York Times reported early evidence 
connecting climate change with greenhouse gases from fossil fuel 
combustion. That prescient article concluded with a sad commentary: 
``Coal and oil are still plentiful and cheap in many parts of the 
world, and there is every reason to believe that both will be consumed 
by industry as long as it pays to do so.''
  Today, decades later, we not only have even more scientific evidence 
of climate change, we are actually seeing the real-world consequences 
of inaction.
  This past September was the planet's warmest September in the 136-
year history of weather records. The last 5 months in a row all set 
world records for hottest average temperatures.
  Last year was the planet's hottest recorded year, and the last two 
decades include the 19 hottest years on record. Global sea levels rose 
7 inches in the last century. And since the beginning of the industrial 
era, the acidity of the oceans has increased by 26 percent, which could 
destabilize the food chain.
  My own home State of California is seeing firsthand the effects of 
higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns. We are in the 
midst of an epic drought, which scientists say has been made 15 to 20 
percent worse due to human-induced changes in the climate. This has 
made a drought into a disaster.
  The Sierra snowpack, which accounts for a third of the State's 
drinking water, is down to 5 percent of its usual levels, the lowest in 
500 years.
  The wildfires in California are made even more terrifying by the hot, 
dry conditions. And the fire season now lasts 75 days longer than just 
10 years ago, resulting in more and larger fires.
  Southern California and the Central Valley have the worst air 
pollution in the country, home to six of the top seven regions of worst 
ozone smog pollution. This is made worse by hotter conditions.
  But this is just the beginning. Unless we dramatically change course, 
children born today will witness calamitous changes to the world's 
climate systems in their lifetimes.
  Sea levels will rise another 1 to 4 feet this century based on 
thermal expansion of the oceans and continued melting of land-based 
ice. This would inundate Miami Beach, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long 
Beach, and 85 percent of New Orleans.
  In addition, a portion of the west Antarctic ice sheet large enough 
to raise global sea levels by 4 feet has begun an irreversible 
collapse. We have to slow down this process as much as possible and 
make sure the same doesn't happen to the rest of Antarctica or 
Greenland.
  By midcentury, ice-free summers in the Arctic Ocean could be routine. 
The global volume of glaciers is projected to be reduced by up to 85 
percent this century. And massive numbers of species will go extinct 
because many plant species cannot shift their geographical ranges 
quickly enough to keep up with the rate of climate change.
  This future is unacceptable. We cannot leave future generations a 
planet in such terrible disrepair.
  I will not see California become a desert State, with aquifers 
overrun by salt water and coastal cities overwhelmed by storm surges. 
My colleagues must understand that we will never relent in the fight to 
save the planet.
  I understand some States are afraid of an economy without fossil fuel 
extraction. But I assure you that transitioning to a new economy will 
be easier than coping with the devastating effects of global warming.
  That brings me to the issue we are debating today: the Clean Power 
Plan. Although the final rules were only recently completed by the EPA, 
the Supreme Court set us on this path 8 years ago when they found in 
effect that the Clean Air Act compelled the regulation of greenhouse 
gases.
  It puts us on a path to cut national emissions from the electricity 
sector by 32 percent over the next 15 years, using tools that each 
State can tailor to its own unique situation. It is a remarkably 
flexible regulatory approach that will harness the ingenuity of the 
American people to confront and roll back the effects of climate 
change.
  I know this approach can work because I have seen it work in 
California.

[[Page 18241]]

In the last 10 years, the State has implemented a number of changes: an 
economywide cap-and-trade program to return statewide emissions back to 
their 1990 levels by 2020; a renewable portfolio standard requiring 50 
percent renewable electricity by 2030; regulations to double energy 
efficiency by 2030; a low carbon fuel standard to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions from transportation fuels at least 10 percent by 2020; and a 
program to reach 1 million zero-emission vehicles by 2020.
  Here is the thing: even though California is making these changes, 
the State continues to grow. The economy grew by 2.8 percent last year, 
with a 1.3 percentage point reduction in the unemployment rate. Both of 
those figures are better than the national average.
  As a result, California is already on track to meet or exceed the 
Clean Power Plan's targets. And more importantly, California's 
leadership is showing others just how much we can accomplish.
  Internationally, California's cap-and-trade program was used as a 
model for China's cities and provinces. Now, President Obama has 
leveraged the ambition of the Clean Power Plan to convince the Chinese 
to combine their regional cap-and-trade programs into a national carbon 
strategy.
  This is how bold leadership achieves results. And this December in 
Paris, the Clean Power Plan will serve as the keystone of America's 
national climate ambitions, helping convince the world that we will be 
the leaders we promise to be in combatting climate change.
  The Senate shouldn't be considering a rejection of the Clean Power 
Plan. Our real responsibility is to find ways to be even more 
ambitious.
  Today's vote changes nothing. If Congress were to pass this 
resolution to disapprove of the Clean Power Plan, the President's veto 
would not be overridden. The Clean Power Plan will be implemented.
  I believe the Clean Power Plan will not only reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions, but that process won't be nearly as difficult as some now 
fear. The Clean Power Plan will be seen as one of the many important 
steps we took to stabilize global temperatures.
  I truly think we are making headway in the fight against global 
warming. Environmentally conscious individuals are marking changes in 
their own lives, and those are driving changes in the economy and in 
State policies. Those changes spurred reform on the national level, and 
now, we are seeing real action on the global stage.
  Today's ``show vote'' on the Clean Power Plan won't diminish those 
successes.
  Thank you.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I join many of my colleagues in 
opposing S.J. Res. 23 and S.J. Res 24.
  These measures are an attack on the Clean Power Plan's carbon 
pollution protections for new and existing power plants.
  Not only would these measures undo the health and economic benefits 
of the Clean Power Plan, they would also bar the EPA from issuing any 
standards in the future that are substantially similar.
  The Clean Power Plan is an important step in reducing carbon 
pollution and taking action on climate change. It seeks to protect 
public health, cut energy costs for consumers, and create jobs in the 
clean energy economy. Additionally, these reductions--the first of its 
kind in our country for carbon pollution from power plants--are vital 
to meeting the commitments the United States has made to lowering 
emissions. Our country is not alone in making these commitments. China 
and other nations are also doing so--as will be discussed and hopefully 
furthered at the climate negotiations taking place next week in Paris. 
Because pollution crosses borders, protecting air quality is a globally 
shared responsibility.
  Let me also emphasize that EPA has the legal authority to set 
standards on carbon pollution. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that 
the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas 
emissions from sources including power plants.
  Despite criticism from the opposition, we have seen, since the 
enactment of the Clean Air Act 45 years ago, that economic growth and 
environmental protection are not mutually exclusive. According to the 
Department of Commerce, environmental laws including the Clean Air Act 
have made the U.S. the largest producer of environmental technologies 
in the world, supporting close to 1.7 million jobs and $44 billion in 
exports annually.
  The Clean Power Plan will build on this progress and help accelerate 
the development of renewable energy, creating thousands of jobs in the 
clean energy sector.
  The Energy Information Administration, EIA, finds that the Clean 
Power Plan will increase the use of renewable energy, leading to 
thousands of clean energy jobs across the country, including in my home 
State of Rhode Island.
  The 2015 Rhode Island Clean Energy Jobs Report states that Rhode 
Island's clean energy economy currently supports nearly 10,000 jobs and 
suggests that the State is expected to add approximately 1,600 new 
clean energy jobs over the next year.
  Renewables, like wind and solar, are already generating power 
reliably and cost-effectively across America. Wind power is already 
showing it can be integrated onto the grid at a large scale while 
ensuring reliability.
  Wind power plays an important role in Clean Power Plan compliance, 
with wind electricity generation capacity more than tripling over 2013 
levels by 2040, according to the EIA.
  This is why in Rhode Island we are building the first offshore wind 
farm, which is projected to increase energy capacity for the residents 
of Block Island.
  Our commitment to clean energy is not only cost-effective, but vital 
to supporting our Nation's health. Climate change is impacting air 
pollution, which can cause asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease, and 
premature death, and fostering extreme weather patterns such as heat 
and severe storms, droughts, wildfires, and flooding that can harm low-
income communities disproportionately.
  The Clean Power Plan makes America healthier by improving the well-
being and productivity of our children, workforce, and seniors through 
such benefits as reducing asthma attacks in children, lowering the rate 
of hospital admissions, and reducing the number of missed school and 
work days.
  Action is needed to protect not just our economy's growing renewable 
energy field, but also our public health. This is why I stand with my 
colleagues in supporting the Clean Power Plan.
  We must make clean air a priority.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Clean Air Act and vote ``no'' on 
both S.J. Res. 23 and S.J. Res 24.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.


                         Syrian Refugee Crisis

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, on Friday, ISIS terrorists massacred 129 
people in Paris. Just the day before, ISIS terrorists massacred 43 
people in Beirut. While these are merely the latest in a series of 
horrific attacks launched by ISIS over the last few years, these twin 
tragedies have riveted the attention of the world.
  These events test us. It is easy to proclaim that we are tough and 
brave and good-hearted when threats feel far away, but when those 
threats loom large and close by, our actions will strip away our tough 
talk and reveal who we really are. We face a choice--a choice either to 
lead the world by example or to turn our backs to the threats and the 
suffering around us. Last month Senator Shaheen, Senator Durbin, 
Senator Klobuchar, and I traveled to Europe to see the Syrian refugee 
crisis up close. I come to the Senate floor today to speak about what I 
saw and to try to shed some light on the choice we face.
  Over the past 4 years, millions of people have fled their homes in 
Syria, running for their lives, searching for a future for themselves 
and their families. Official estimates indicate that 2 million Syrians 
are now living in Turkey, more than 1 million in Lebanon, and more than 
one-half million in Jordan. The true numbers are probably much larger.
  The crisis has put an enormous economic and political strain on those

[[Page 18242]]

countries. In late 2014, I traveled to Jordan where I visited a U.N. 
refugee processing center. I also met with Jordan's Foreign Minister, 
U.N. representatives, and American military personnel stationed in 
Amman. Even a year ago, it was clear that the humanitarian crisis was 
straining these host countries and that there was no end in sight.
  In recent months, the crisis has accelerated. The steady stream of 
refugees fleeing Syria has become a flood, and that flood has swept 
across Europe. Every day refugees set out on a journey of hundreds of 
miles from Syria to the Turkish coast. When they arrive, they are met 
by human smugglers who charge $1,000 a head for a place on a shoddy, 
overloaded, plastic raft that is floated out to sea, hopefully in the 
direction of one of the Greek islands.
  I visited one of those islands last month. Lesbos is only a few miles 
from the Turkish coast, but the risks of crossing are immense. The 
water is rough, the shoreline is rocky, and these overcrowded, paper-
thin rafts are dangerously unsteady. Parents do their best to protect 
their children. Little ones are outfitted with blowup pool floaties as 
a substitute for lifejackets in the hope that if their rafts go down, a 
$1.99 pool toy will be enough to save the life of a small child--and 
the rafts do go down. According to some estimates, more than 500 people 
have died crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece so far this year.
  Despite the risks, thousands make the trip every day. Greek Coast 
Guard officials told us that when refugees see a Coast Guard ship, they 
may even slash holes in their own rafts just so they will not be turned 
back.
  I met with the mayor of Lesbos, who described how his tiny Greek 
island of 80,000 people has struggled to cope with those refugees who 
wash ashore--more than 100,000 people in October alone. Refugees are 
processed in reception centers on the island before boarding ferries to 
Athens, but Greece plainly lacks the resources necessary to handle 
these enormous numbers. Refugees pile into the reception centers, 
overflowing the facilities and sleeping in parks or beside the road. 
Last month, a volunteer doctor in Lesbos was quoted as saying: ``There 
are thousands of children here and their feet are literally rotting, 
they can't keep dry, they have high fevers, and they're standing in the 
pouring rain for days on end.'' Recently, the mayor told a local radio 
program that the island had run out of room to bury the dead.
  Greece's overwhelmed registration system is not only a humanitarian 
crisis but also a security risk. In meeting after meeting, I asked 
Greek officials about security screening for these migrants, and time 
after time I heard the same answer. It was all Greece could do simply 
to fingerprint these individuals and write down their names before 
sending them off to Athens, and from there, to somewhere else in 
Europe. Now Greece's Interior Minister says that fingerprints taken 
from one of the Paris attackers may match someone who registered as a 
refugee at a Greek island entry point in early October. Whether this 
ultimately proves to be true, there is no question that a screening 
system that can do no more than confirm after the fact that a terrorist 
entered Europe is obviously not a screening system that is working.
  The burden of dealing with Syrian refugees cannot fall on Greece 
alone. Greece and the other border countries dealing with this crisis 
need money and expertise to screen out security threats. Europe needs 
to provide that assistance as quickly as possible, and if we are 
serious about preventing another tragedy like the one in Paris, the 
United States must help. We must build adequate procedures to make sure 
that refugees, especially those who have entered Europe through this 
slipshod screening process, can enter the United States only after they 
have been thoroughly vetted and we are fully confident that they do not 
pose a risk to our Nation or our people.
  The security threat is real and it must be addressed, but on our 
visit to Lesbos, we also had the chance to meet with refugees processed 
at the Moria reception center to see who most of them really are. From 
the outside, with its barbed wire and guard towers, Moria looks like a 
prison. At the entrance, the words ``Freedom For All'' are etched into 
the concrete encircling the facility, but speaking with refugees inside 
feels more like a 21st-century Ellis Island. We met doctors, teachers, 
civil engineers, and college students. We met young, educated, middle-
class Syrians seeking freedom and opportunity for themselves and their 
families. They were seeking a safe refuge from ISIS, just like the rest 
of us.
  The most heartbreaking cases are the unaccompanied children. These 
boys and girls are separated from the other refugees in a fenced-in 
outdoor dormitory area. I met a young girl in that fenced-in area--
younger than my own granddaughters, sent out on this perilous journey 
alone. When I asked how old she was, she shyly held up seven fingers. I 
wondered, What could possibly possess parents to hand a 7-year-old girl 
and a wad of cash to human smugglers? What could possibly possess them 
to send a beloved child across the treacherous seas with no more 
protection than a pool floatie? What could make them send a child on a 
journey knowing that crime rings of sex slavery and organ harvesting 
prey on these children? What could possess them to send a little girl 
out alone with only the wildest, vaguest hope that she might make it 
through alive and find something--anything--better on the other side?
  Today, we all know why parents would send a child on a journey alone. 
The events of the last week in Paris and in Beirut drive it home. The 
terrorists of ISIS--enemies of Islam and of all modern civilization, 
butchers who rape, torture, and execute women and children, who blow 
themselves up in a lunatic effort to kill as many people as possible--
these terrorists have spent years torturing the people of Syria.
  And what about the Syrian Government? President Bashar al-Assad has 
spent years bombing his own people. Day after day, month after month, 
year after year, Syrian civilians have been caught in the middle, 
subjected to suicide attacks, car bombings, and hotel bombings at the 
hands of ISIS or Assad or this faction or that faction--each assault 
more senseless than the last. Day after day, month after month, year 
after year, mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents are 
slaughtered.
  In the wake of the murders in Paris and in Beirut last week, people 
in America, in Europe, and throughout the world are fearful. Millions 
of Syrians are fearful as well, terrified by the reality of their daily 
lives, terrified that their last avenue of escape from the horrors of 
ISIS will be closed, and terrified that the world will turn its back on 
them and their children.
  Some politicians have already moved in that direction, proposing to 
close our country for people fleeing the massacre in Syria, but with 
millions of Syrian refugees already in Europe, already carrying 
European passports, already able to travel to the United States--and 
with more moving across Europe every day--that is not a real plan to 
keep us safe, and that is not who we are. We are a country of 
immigrants and refugees, a country made strong by our diversity, a 
country founded by those crossing the sea, fleeing religious 
persecution and seeking religious freedom. We are not a nation that 
delivers children back into the hands of ISIS murderers because some 
politician doesn't like their religion, and we are not a nation that 
backs down out of fear.
  Our first responsibility is to protect this country. We must embrace 
that fundamental obligation, but we do not make ourselves safer by 
ignoring our common humanity and turning away from our moral 
obligation.
  ISIS has shown itself to the world. We cannot and we will not abandon 
the people of France to this butchery, we cannot and we will not 
abandon the people of Lebanon to this butchery, and we cannot and we 
must not abandon the people of Syria to this butchery. The terrorists 
in Paris and in Beirut remind us that the hate of a few can alter the 
lives of many. Now we have a chance to affirm a different message--a 
message that we are a courageous people who will stand strong in

[[Page 18243]]

the face of terrorism. We have the courage to affirm our commitment to 
a world of open minds and open hearts. This must be our choice--the 
same choice that has been made over and over again by every generation 
of Americans. This is always our choice. It is the reason the people of 
Syria and people all around this world look to us for hope. It is the 
reason ISIS despises us, and it is the reason we will defeat them.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague Senator Warren 
for those very eloquent remarks. She and the Senators she traveled with 
have taught us a lot. We have heard her comments, and she is right. Our 
values in the United States of America are accepting and open to 
refugees who flee violence and persecution, and that is the country we 
are.
  So I thank very much the Senator from Massachusetts for her remarks. 
As I have said, we all have learned very much from her and the trip she 
took and from what she shared with us.


                    Terrorist Attacks Against France

  Mr. President, before I begin my remarks today, in addition to the 
comments I have just made, I wanted to first pause for just a moment 
and say a few words about the Paris attacks last Friday.
  The people of New Mexico and the people the world over are grieving 
for those who were killed and injured in the horrific attacks that have 
just been spoken about by Senator Warren and others who have come to 
the floor today. Earlier today, we had a moment of silence to recognize 
them. I just want to say that our thoughts are with the French people, 
and we are united in our resolve to fight the murderous thugs of 
terrorism who thrive on hate, intolerance, and fear.
  I met today with the French Ambassador to give him New Mexicans' 
heartfelt condolences. All of us on the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee and the Senate leadership met today with the French 
Ambassador to say to him that we stand together with him against these 
murderous thugs.
  Mr. President, today, because we are on this resolution of 
disapproval, we are discussing the issue of climate change and global 
warming. It is one of our greatest challenges and we have a choice. We 
can deny the reality. We can ignore the danger to our planet, to our 
economy, and to our security--that is one choice--or we can move 
forward. We can work together. We can find common ground with a 
diversified energy portfolio that includes clean energy, with an energy 
policy that makes sense, that creates jobs, that protects the 
environment, and that will keep our Nation strong. That is the choice 
we should make, that is the choice we must make and, once again, that 
is the choice we are failing to make.
  This year is almost over. It will likely be the warmest year on 
record. The current record holder is last year--2014. The impact is 
clear. People are seeing it all over the world, with rising sea levels 
and increased droughts.
  The Southwest is at the eye of the storm. In New Mexico, temperatures 
are rising 50 percent faster than the global average, not just this 
year or last year but for decades. This has strained my State with 
terrible droughts and wildfires. When the rain does come, it often 
brings floods as well. In 2011, we had the largest fire in our State's 
history--the Las Conchas fire. Then, in 2012--just a year later--we had 
an even larger wildfire. The Whitewater-Baldy fire burned 259,000 
acres. We have seen massive droughts. Our crops and natural resources 
are at risk.
  Through all of this, Congress has failed to act. There have been many 
attempts in the past. We have had many bipartisan bills introduced in 
the Senate, including the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade proposal, the 
Bingaman-Specter cap-and-trade proposal, the Cantwell-Collins cap-and-
dividend proposal, the Lieberman-Warner bill, the Kerry-Graham bill, 
and others. In the House of Representatives, I had my own bipartisan 
bill with Representative Tom Petri. In 2005, over half the Senate voted 
on a resolution affirming the need to implement mandatory reductions of 
greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Each and every time 
Congress failed to make it to the finish line--failed to pass 
comprehensive legislation in both Houses to curb our greenhouse gas 
emissions. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Time is growing short, and 
we are going from bad to worse.
  So the President and the EPA have used their authority under the 
Clean Air Act to implement restrictions and to control the pollution. 
They have done what needs to be done with the support of many of us in 
Congress and, as we know, with the support of the American people. The 
proposals are reasonable, they are critical, and they will make a 
difference to restricting emissions from new and existing powerplants. 
Some in the Senate have argued these proposals do too much and others 
argue they don't do enough, but instead of rolling up our sleeves and 
developing a comprehensive energy and climate strategy of our own, we 
are here today voting on a Republican resolution of disapproval of the 
Clean Power Plan rules. What a waste of our time, the American people's 
time, and the time we have left to seriously address this very 
important problem.
  I started this speech talking about choices and again we are making 
the wrong one. We are wasting time when we should be working together 
and developing proposals that would address global warming and help 
push forward clean energy jobs. There are now more solar jobs in the 
United States than coal jobs. There are currently more than 98 solar 
companies in New Mexico, employing 1,600 people. Renewable energy jobs 
and solutions are in abundance in New Mexico, and this is true for many 
other States. A renewable electricity standard, which I have long 
fought for, would create 300,000 jobs. Most of these jobs are high-
paying, local, and cannot be shipped overseas.
  Congress could be using this time moving forward. Our country can 
lead the world in a clean energy economy. We have the technology, we 
have the resources, and we need the commitment. Instead, the Republican 
leadership in Congress is doubling down, trying to overturn the 
President and derailing the progress we are making. They do so knowing 
they will fail, knowing the President will veto it, and knowing the 
votes aren't there to override the veto. Once again, this is a lot of 
sound, a lot of fury, and a lot of wasted time. It makes a false claim 
that support for climate action does not exist in the United States, 
and it does so ahead of the Paris Climate Conference, where 153 
countries, it is my understanding at this point, are going to gather 
and sign on to positive climate proposals.
  Action on climate change is under attack in the U.S. Senate. That is 
true, make no mistake about it, but also make no mistake that all of 
these attacks will fail.
  I have led the charge in our Appropriations Committee, on the 
subcommittee of which I am the ranking member, to fight against 
dangerous environmental riders. I will continue to fight them, and they 
will fail.
  My colleagues and I are here today in opposition to this resolution 
of disapproval and we also are here to ask that we move on, to ask that 
we work together and face the very real threat of climate change.
  We will go to Paris next month, and we will get a solid, strong 
agreement from the international community. The United States will 
continue to lead on this issue even if our Republican colleagues 
continue to fight it each step of the way.
  With that, I yield the floor to my good friend from Massachusetts 
Senator Ed Markey, who has been an incredible champion in terms of 
working legislation and who had a big part a Congress or two ago 
getting climate change legislation out of the House of Representatives.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Mexico for 
his historic leadership on these issues.
  The consequences of climate change are evidenced around the world. 
Temperatures are increasing, sea level is

[[Page 18244]]

rising, glaciers are receding, rainfall is changing, and people's 
health is suffering. These impacts can worsen the tensions that are 
fueling terrorism and conflicts around the world. The Pentagon and the 
CIA have both issued reports that found that instability from changes 
in the climate can contribute to conditions that breed insurgencies.
  As we look around the world, we can see how climate change is a 
threat multiplier and a catalyst for conflict today. That is why 
partnering with developing countries so they can grow their economies 
in a climate-smart way is a crucial part of our foreign policy. That is 
why we need to support the Green Climate Fund and other financing and 
aid programs that will help countries increase their resiliency in the 
face of climate change impacts, because those impacts are very real, 
and scientists agree that it is humans who are causing them.
  The year 2014 was the hottest year in a global record that stretches 
back to 1880. The first half of this year is now the hottest January to 
June in that same record. As temperatures continue to soar upwards on 
land, our seas are getting hotter as well.
  While we have to deal with the consequences of climate change that 
are already gripping our Nation and our planet, there is still time to 
prevent future catastrophes. That is why President Obama has been using 
the tool he has in the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution. He has 
used it to further increase the fuel efficiency of America's cars and 
trucks.
  He has released the historic Clean Power Plan, but Republicans want 
to undo that plan with the Congressional Review Act. Undoing the Clean 
Power Plan would be bad for our economy, for our national security, and 
for our health. The Clean Power Plan captures the scientific urgency 
and the economic opportunity needed to avoid the worst consequences of 
climate change. The Clean Power Plan provides flexibility to the States 
to find solutions to reducing carbon pollution that work best for their 
situations. The Clean Power Plan will be at the heart of a supercharged 
renewables renaissance in every single State in the Union. It will 
create jobs and save consumers billions on their electricity bills. It 
will avert almost 100,000 asthma attacks a year and prevent thousands 
of premature deaths. The climate and health benefits of this rule are 
estimated to be $34 to $54 billion every year by the year 2030.
  With the Clean Power Plan, we can create wealth and health for our 
country. In Massachusetts, we know firsthand that by cutting carbon 
pollution, we can grow our economy and save families money. It is a 
formula that works. We did it through the Regional Greenhouse Gas 
Initiative, or RGGI, which is a model for the Clean Power Plan. Since 
the program went into effect in 2009, the program has added on the 
order of $3 billion worth of economic value to participating States and 
it has saved consumers more than $1.5 billion.
  Massachusetts now has nearly 100,000 people working in the clean 
energy sector in our State. It is the fastest growing job-creation 
sector in our economy. All of this has happened just over the last 10 
years.
  As a nation, we have a choice: We can continue to pump harmful carbon 
pollution into our skies and foreign oil into our cars or we can pump 
new life into our economy, creating jobs and saving Americans money on 
their energy bills.
  Climate deniers call this plan a war on coal, but it is really a war 
on carbon pollution. The Clean Power Plan is a signal to the 
marketplace to invest in clean energy, and it is a signal to the world 
that America will lead the global effort for climate action and be the 
global leader. You cannot preach temperance from a bar stool. If we 
want to be a leader, we have to stand up and say: Here is what we are 
going to do.
  By reducing U.S. carbon pollution, the United States will be the 
leader and not the laggard in the international climate negotiations 
beginning at the end of this month in Paris. U.S. leadership has helped 
secure climate pledges for Paris from more than 150 countries. We now 
have the opportunity to forge an international climate agreement that 
includes all countries doing their fair share for a global solution to 
global warming.
  We aren't tackling climate change alone. Efforts are underway in 
legislatures around the world to develop laws and develop national 
responses to climate change. But without the Clean Power Plan, America 
would not be able to have any credibility in Paris in 2\1/2\ weeks in 
saying: We are going to reduce our greenhouse gases. You must, as 
another sovereign country, reduce your greenhouse gases.
  Coal companies, the Koch brothers, and other allies of the fossil 
fuel industry may oppose the United States and the world acting on 
climate, but scientific facts, economic opportunity, and history are 
not on their side.
  Today we are debating a resolution to overturn the Clean Power Plan, 
and should it pass, the President will veto it and Republicans won't 
have the votes to overturn the veto. What the Republicans are doing 
today is nothing more than a political Kabuki theater. Instead of 
wasting time tilting at legislative windmills, we should be passing tax 
extenders to help build more wind turbines and more solar panels in the 
United States of America. That is what we should be debating out here 
on the floor of the Senate today.
  If the Republicans don't like the Clean Power Plan, then I ask them 
what is their plan to prevent climate change, expand energy, and create 
jobs. That is the real question we should be debating on the Senate 
floor today. The reality is that they have no plan. The reality is that 
as a party they are in denial that the planet is dangerously warming. 
The reality is that they want to keep the wind and solar tax breaks off 
of the books, giving incentives for Americans to innovate in this area. 
The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is still driving the 
agenda of the Republican Party here in Congress. That is the reality. 
That is why we are having this vote here on the floor of the Senate 
today, because the Republican Party is siding with Big Coal and Big 
Fossil Fuel in order to keep us on a pathway that does not allow us to 
unleash this renewable energy revolution.
  The green generation--the young generation in our country--wants to 
be the leaders. They are innovators and they can find investors to help 
them with their new technology. They are professors and they are 
producers who want to work together in order to unleash this 
revolution.
  The next generation already did this with telecommunications. They 
moved us from a black rotary dial phone to an iPhone in about 8 years. 
The technology was locked up. There was no innovation that was 
possible. The utility industry that was the telephone industry had a 
stake in everyone still renting a black rotary dial phone. The utility 
industry, which is the electrical generating industry, has a stake in 
slowing down the pace at which we move to wind and solar and to new 
technologies of the 21st century that are the match for the iPhone in 
the telecommunications sector. That is what we are debating on the 
floor--the path to the future. That is what we are debating on the 
floor--the 19th-century technologies versus the 21st-century 
technologies.
  That is what we are debating on the floor--the status quo or an 
innovation economy where young people are able to move into these new 
sectors and invent these new technologies and exploit them around the 
planet. We did that in telecommunications. It is branded Google, eBay, 
Amazon and YouTube, around the planet. We did it in the blink of an eye 
once we unleashed the potential. We can do the same in the green energy 
sector, but defeating the Clean Power Plan vote the Republicans brought 
out on the floor is the key to unleashing this potential not only in 
our own country but across the planet.
  I urge a ``no'' vote on this historic set of regulations that 
President Obama is putting on the books. It is what will give us 
credibility when he goes to Paris in the beginning of December in order 
to negotiate this historic deal.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

[[Page 18245]]


  Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  I rise today to oppose the Congressional Review Act to derail the 
Clean Power Plan.
  It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, ``Of all the questions that can 
come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its 
existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance 
with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for 
our descendants than it is for us.''
  Theodore Roosevelt was at the core of the conservation movement in 
the Republican Party. It is a Republican Party far removed from the 
party it is today. Roosevelt's determination to ``leave this land a 
little better'' has been replaced by complete abdication of responsible 
leadership for the stewardship of our planet.
  The Clean Power Plan that this resolution concerns is the single most 
significant step this country has taken now or in the past to combat 
climate change. Many citizens do not know that over the past few 
decades we have seen the carbon pollution rise in the atmosphere, and 
it is now in the upper level of 400 parts per million. As that carbon 
dioxide concentrates and comes to a higher level, it traps the heat, 
and that heat is producing profound consequences. We haven't had this 
level of carbon pollution for 3 million years--long before humans 
walked this planet and when sea levels were as much as 80 feet higher 
than they are today. So this is no ivory tower issue; it is very real, 
not only in the measurement of pollution in the air but in the facts on 
the ground.
  In my home State of Oregon, we are seeing impacts on our forests. We 
see impacts of pine beetles spreading and creating a big red zone of 
dead trees. We see it in impacts in terms of fiercer forest fires and a 
longer forest fire season--a season that has grown 60 days in 40 years. 
We see it in terms of the diminishing snowpack in the Cascades, which 
not only makes our trout streams warmer and smaller, but it decreases 
the water we have for agriculture, and we have a massive drought year 
after year. The three worst ever droughts have been in the last 15 
years in the Klamath Basin in the south. We see it in terms of our sea 
production--our oysters, which are struggling to create shells when 
they are small because the Pacific Ocean is 30 percent more acidic now 
than it was before the industrial revolution.
  Carbon pollution is really a war on rural America. It is a war on 
forestry, our fishing, and our farming, and that cannot be allowed to 
stand.
  There is no question that we have conclusive evidence of global 
warming. Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all 
occurred in the last 15 years. They have all occurred in this century, 
and 2014 was the warmest year ever on a global basis. This year, 2015, 
is on course to be even warmer yet. This translates into damage to our 
rural economy not only in terms of our forestry, our fishing, and our 
farming, but also in terms of the economic impact that occurs from the 
damage. The damage we see today is going to only get worse in the years 
ahead. These rural industries will suffer, and American livelihoods 
will suffer.
  It is irresponsible to continue business as usual. We need to 
dramatically change course. We need to pivot from a fossil fuel energy 
economy to a renewable energy economy.
  The Clean Power Plan sets achievable standards to reduce carbon 
dioxide emissions by 32 percent of 2005 levels by the year 2030--strong 
but achievable standards. We have the technology today, but do we have 
the political will? Or is this body going to be ensnared by the 
powerful lobbying of the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, 
which have announced they are going to spend $1 billion in the next 
election to make sure their policies are the ones adopted in this room 
and that their policies will guide our future.
  Well, how about this? How about we have policies that are the 
policies related to the welfare of American citizens, related to the 
welfare of our farmers, our fishing industry, and our forest industry? 
How about we fight for rural America instead of being led astray by the 
Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry?
  We know the Clean Power Plan will have a powerful, positive impact 
that will provide significant public health benefits, reducing 
premature deaths from powerplant emissions by nearly 90 percent, and 
that will avoid 3,600 premature deaths, will lead to 90,000 fewer 
asthma attacks for children, and will prevent 300,000 missed work and 
school days. We know this plan will create tens of thousands of jobs 
while driving new investments in cleaner, more modern, and more 
efficient technologies. We know it will save the American family nearly 
$85 on their annual energy bill.
  Fewer deaths are a good thing. More jobs are a good thing. Saving 
families money is a good thing. So let's fight for good things. Let's 
not follow the path my Republican colleagues are proposing, in which 
they are saying no to reducing bills for families, they are saying no 
to creating good-paying jobs, they are saying no to improving public 
health, and they are saying no to saving lives. Well, let's say yes.
  It has been said that we are the first generation to feel the impacts 
of global warming and the last generation that can do something about 
it. This is a moral challenge to our generation of humans on this 
planet--on our beautiful blue-green planet. This responsibility rests 
not with some future generation or some past generation but with all of 
us right now. This resolution to try to torpedo the most effective 
measure America has ever adopted in the past or in the present is, in 
fact, deeply, deeply misguided.
  Let's turn back to the test President Theodore Roosevelt put before 
us when he said that there is no more important mission than leaving 
this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Our 
children and our children's children are counting on us to act. They 
are counting on us to save jobs, to save lives, and to save our planet. 
We must not fail this test.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the 
administration's Clean Power Plan. I think the first thing that must be 
said--and said over and over, especially this week, with so many 
critical issues facing our country, with appropriations bills pending, 
with the transportation bill pending, with perhaps a motion to go to 
conference on the education reauthorization--is that we are wasting 
floor time, that this piece of legislation has no chance. The threshold 
under the Congressional Review Act is 51 votes, and while it is very 
likely the threshold will be met, let's take this through the 
legislative process.
  This will eventually, if it passes the House--when it passes the 
House--reach the President's desk. Can you imagine that President Obama 
is going to enact legislation that overturns his signature and 
environmental achievement? Whether you agree or not with the Clean 
Power Plan, the idea that he is going to sign this into law is 
preposterous. So it faces a veto. So then the only question is this: 
Can you get 67 votes in the Senate? And the answer is a resounding no.
  So let's put this in context. This is an important debate, but this 
is not likely to result in any kind of legislation one way or the 
other. But here is what this is about. The Clean Air Act requires the 
EPA--it doesn't authorize the EPA; it requires the EPA--to regulate 
airborne pollutants. So it doesn't allow the EPA to pick among airborne 
pollutants and place limits; it requires that any airborne pollutant 
have limits.
  In 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States determined that 
CO2--carbon--was in fact an airborne pollutant, which is 
kind of intuitive and consistent with what every expert in the field 
understands. So the only question is this: Do you believe in the Clean 
Air Act? Do you believe there should be an exception in the Clean Air 
Act for carbon pollution? Do you disagree with the consensus among 
scientists that carbon is a pollutant? That is what we are voting on 
today. So carbon is a pollutant, and this is a pretty straightforward 
policy issue, and it is a pretty

[[Page 18246]]

straightforward scientific issue. The EPA must regulate emissions.
  Let's also understand how CRA works. This vehicle is to overturn the 
Clean Power Plan. The way the statute runs is that it doesn't give the 
administration--or any future administration--any flexibility to do a 
different version of the same thing. It prohibits the administration 
from doing anything that is ``substantially similar.''
  So the difficulty, of course, is that hasn't actually been tested too 
many times in court. But the assumption most attorneys on both sides of 
this question are operating under is that it would not just invalidate 
this Clean Power Plan but prohibit the EPA from regulating carbon on a 
going-forward basis.
  So if you have a specific concern, if you have a specific objection 
to the way this thing is administered, that is fair enough, but you 
don't have the ability to tell EPA to go and do this again and submit 
it again. It will actually be illegal under a CRA. So CRA is an 
extremely blunt instrument. It is an extremely radical thing to do, and 
that is what we are contending with.
  So why, if all of that is true, is there a CRA vote this week? My 
instinct is that it is designed to create confusion, to kick up dust, 
and to raise the possibility that the American government does not 
stand behind the Clean Power Plan as we go into the final throes of the 
Paris climate talks.
  Now, we have an opportunity here. We have 160 countries for the first 
time in history committing to different versions--all executed from 
within their own governmental systems, but they are all committing to 
different versions--of emissions reductions. Some of them have cap and 
trade, some have incentives, some of them have regulations, some have 
financing programs, but all of them are committing to various programs 
to reduce carbon emissions. This is a significant international 
achievement.
  In previous climate negotiations, folks who opposed international 
climate action would actually go to these negotiations to create 
confusion, to imply the American government was somehow not going to 
stand by its commitments. That is why I wanted to go through how the 
CRA works and what the inevitable outcome of this piece of legislation 
will be, which is that it will be vetoed and that veto will be 
sustained.
  The hope, I think, among people who oppose international climate 
action is that there is enough confusion going into Paris that someone 
can point to America's national legislature and say: Well, there is no 
consensus. That is true. There is no political consensus. But there is 
no practical way to overturn the Clean Power Plan, and there is no 
going back. I mean that is the most important aspect of this. This 
year, 2015, of all the new power generation in the United States, the 
majority of it was clean energy. The majority of new power generation 
in the United States was clean energy--how exciting.
  I am not exactly sure why people fear the clean energy future so 
much. I understand we need to make a transition. The State of Hawaii 
depends on low-sulfur fuel oil for the vast majority of its 
electricity. I understand we can't make that transition overnight, and 
I understand there is going to be disruption and there is going to be 
difficulty as we make a transformation of this magnitude, but we are 
going to have to make this transformation. It doesn't have to be a bad 
thing. It can create innovation jobs, it can attract investment 
capital, and it can be a new American economy.
  This is already happening. This is not pie in the sky any more. This 
is already underway. The majority of new power generation in the United 
States is clean energy. Let's keep the momentum up. Let's support the 
Clean Power Plan.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I first want to thank very much the 
Senator from Delaware for his courtesy in this regard.
  (The remarks of Mr. Vitter pertaining to the introduction of S. 2284 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. VITTER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                            Syrian Refugees

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I come to the floor to address the issue 
of climate change, but I am inclined to follow up on comments by our 
friend from Louisiana who has just spoken.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, I am no longer the chairman of the 
homeland security committee, but I am the senior Democrat. I have 
served on the committee for about 15 years. The issue of the security 
of our homeland, whether from cyber attacks or terrorists or any other 
of number of threats, is something I care a whole lot about.
  I am sure all of us recall when we had a special visitor who 
addressed a joint session of the Congress on the other side of the 
Capitol. His name is Francis, and he is the Pope. It was a Papal visit. 
He addressed a joint session of Congress. I am not Catholic, but I was 
moved, and I know a lot of our colleagues were moved, especially when 
he invoked the Golden Rule in front of a national television audience, 
when he called on all of us to treat other people the way we would want 
to be treated, and also when he invoked the words of Matthew 25: When I 
was hungry did you feed me, when I was naked did you clothe me, when I 
was thirsty did you give me to drink, when I was a stranger in your 
land did you take me in?
  When I hear of the prospect of a thousand or so Syrian refugees 
coming to this country this year--and more next year--I think of the 
desperate plight of people who are trying to escape the hellacious 
situation in Syria and who have been living, in some cases months or 
years, in refugee camps. What kind of moral imperative do we have with 
respect to them? What kind of moral imperative? What kind of moral 
imperative do we have at the same time to ensure that the folks we 
allow to come in as refugees to this country--that we are going to 
protect those of us who live here from possible threats that might be 
caused by that immigration?
  This week I learned a few things I didn't know before. There is a lot 
more I have to learn. Among the things I have learned this week is that 
when refugees--whether in Turkey or someplace else in that or the other 
side of the world, in Pakistan or any other place--seek to come to this 
country, they don't get to just come. It is not like they say: I am 
applying under refugee status to come to the United States, and I would 
like to come this week or this month or even this year. The average 
wait for folks in refugee status trying to get someplace out of a 
refugee camp--and it could be here, but especially here, the average 
wait for refugees is not a week, it is not a month, it is not a year. 
It is 1.5 years. For those of Syrian descent, the wait could be even 
longer.
  I am not going to go through all the hurdles folks have to go 
through, but it is a screening process that begins not with the 
Department of Homeland Security in this country. It is a screening 
process that begins way before that with the U.N. High Commissioner for 
Refugees. They first register refugees, they gather biometric data, and 
they gather other background information. Only those who pass the U.N. 
assessment are ever referred to the United States for possible 
resettlement. Where they are looking to accept maybe 1,000 Syrian 
refugees this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees may 
interview 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 refugees, or more, to come up with a list 
of 1,000 that we would even consider. Those refugees are interviewed 
not when they get off a plane here, but overseas, before they ever get 
on a plane. Before they ever get on a plane, they go through multiple 
background checks and vetting and use biographical checks conducted by 
the State Department, security advisory opinions from

[[Page 18247]]

intelligence and other agencies for certain cases, National 
Counterterrorism Center checks with intelligence agencies for support, 
the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI biometrics checks, and 
the Department of Defense biometric screening.
  Then, after going through all of that, if they get here, they have 
the opportunity to be interviewed again face-to-face by the Department 
of Homeland Security folks who are trained to interview people alleging 
to be refugees. They could be something else. Then, if they get 
approved to stay here as a refugee, we continue to monitor them for an 
extended period of time.
  A year or so ago there was great concern with Ebola. We had a lot of 
people coming across the border from Mexico, and they were going to 
have Ebola and infect us all and a lot of people were going to die. Not 
one American died from Ebola contracted here.
  So I would have us take a deep breath, try to gather the facts, and 
really understand what somebody has to go through as a refugee to get 
here. It is not overnight; it is not a 1-week or a 1-month deal. If I 
were a bad guy wanting to come here and create mischief, I sure 
wouldn't go as a refugee. I wouldn't cool my jets for a year and a 
half, trying to get through that process. I would find another way.
  Mr. President, that is not what I wanted to talk about. I want to 
talk a bit about one of our favorite subjects, climate change and 
global warming.
  I will start off with a map here of New Jersey, Maryland, 
Philadelphia. In between Philadelphia and the Delmarva Peninsula is my 
State, the State of Delaware. This is probably hard to see from up 
there or on television, but the outline of this map is Delaware today. 
A couple hundred years from now, if we don't continue to make progress 
in reducing carbon dioxide, Delaware will not look like the outline of 
that map. It is not going to look like the green. It will be somewhere 
between the outline of that map and the green that we see here that 
depicts Delaware. For us, this is real. These are our homes, these are 
our farms, the places we live and raise our families. So for us, this 
is something that is serious.
  Long before I ever moved to Delaware, I served as a naval flight 
officer in the Navy during the Vietnam war and served in Southeast Asia 
and other places. Long before I ever did that, long before I went to 
Ohio State to study economics, long before I moved to Virginia, I was 
born in West Virginia. I was born in a coal mining town. My dad, coming 
out of Shady Spring High School in Beaver, WV, was for a short while a 
coal miner. Even after my sister and I had grown up and left West 
Virginia--she after being in the third grade and I in the second 
grade--we would come back and visit my mom's parents, my grandparents, 
in Beaver, WV, right outside of Beckley. A coal miner named Mr. Meaders 
lived next door to my grandparents. He had a big field of about 2 to 4 
acres right next to my grandparents' house. He would come home from 
work at about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. He always had his coal mining 
clothes on. He had mined coal for decades. He also owned a cow, and he 
kept his cow in a shed on that 3-, 4-, 5-acre field. When he would come 
home, he would clean up, and then he would milk his cow and he would 
let us milk his cow. Mr. Meaders didn't make his living off the milk 
from that cow. He made his living as a coal miner. And he wasn't the 
only person in West Virginia who made their living mining coal. There 
are still a number of people in West Virginia whose income is derived 
from mining coal.
  West Virginia is one of the top five coal-producing States in the 
country, among Wyoming, Kentucky, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. The 
number of people employed in the coal mining business in each of those 
States today--as opposed to when my sister and I were little kids 
running out with Mr. Meaders to milk his cow--has come down a whole 
lot. But for these people, these are good-paying, life-sustaining jobs 
for their families.
  So we try to figure out--not just in Delaware, not just in America, 
but around the world--how do we reduce the threat from high levels of 
carbon in our atmosphere? Is there a way to do that? Is there a way to 
do that that is also respectful of the needs of people in Wyoming, West 
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky, who are trying to make 
a living and all they want to do is mine coal? That is what they have 
done maybe all their lives and want to be able to continue to do that. 
The Golden Rule--again, is there a way we can somehow adopt a policy or 
policies that are mindful of their needs to be able to sustain and 
support their own families, and at the same time to make sure in doing 
that, they don't endanger the rest of us? That is the dilemma we are 
in. We have a moral imperative to look out for the coal miners and 
their families in those States I mentioned, and we have a moral 
imperative to look out for everybody else, including the folks here and 
up and down the east coast and west coast, and others whose lives are 
going to be changed if we don't continue to make progress. We want to 
continue to make progress with respect to reducing the amount of carbon 
in our air.
  I think we can try to at least address both moral imperatives--to try 
to make sure the folks who for generations have mined coal can continue 
to do that in a way that is not just economically sustainable but 
environmentally sustainable, and do so in a way that actually looks out 
for the legitimate interests of a whole lot of us who come from States 
where we don't mine coal.
  One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere 
continues to be coal-fired plants. We generate electricity. It used to 
be that about 40 percent of the electricity in the United States came 
from coal-fired plants, maybe another 20 percent or so from nuclear 
powered plants, another 20 percent or so from natural gas-fired plants, 
and the rest from hydroelectric, solar, wind, and so forth. That mix 
has changed a little bit. Today, coal is down to about 30 percent. 
Natural gas, in terms of generating capacity, is up to about 30 
percent. Nuclear is still in there at about 20, adding a couple nuclear 
plants in the next few years, maybe building some smaller, modular 
plants. We are generating ever more electricity from wind, a bit more 
from solar and from geothermal and hydro. But coal is down from 40 to 
maybe 30 percent, and the projection is that maybe by 2030 it will be 
down from 30 percent to as low as 20 or 25 percent. That is going to 
create some hardship for the folks in those States, including my native 
State. Is there some way that we can actually help them while at the 
same time helping those of us who aren't from those five States?
  For as long as I can remember, I have heard people, including from 
this floor, for many years talking about Robert Byrd, who was the 
former majority leader, dean of the Senate, and maybe the longest-
serving person in the House and Senate in the history of our country. 
He was a big champion of clean coal technology. Since approximately 
1997, we have pursued clean coal, carbon capture, and sequestration. I 
am told that just in this last decade we have spent about $20 billion, 
since maybe 2005--something like that, in the last decade--and we have 
a success story. We have had a lot of disappointments, but we have a 
success story. I want to share that with our colleagues today.
  The success story on U.S. clean coal is a project in Southwest Texas, 
in Houston, where there is NRG, a big utility company. That project is 
a clean-coal project generating electricity. It is going to come online 
sometime next year. There are other projects under way, and we are 
continuing to invest a lot of money in clean-coal technology. We need 
to continue to do more.
  The last thing I want to say is this. We face many threats to our 
Nation these days. ISIS is certainly one of those. There are also other 
terrorist threats. Cyber security is certainly a threat we face. We 
have an obligation to our grandchildren and their grandchildren to be 
able to make sure we address those threats.
  This is not a battle that the United States can win alone on those 
fronts--

[[Page 18248]]

nor with respect to our climate change concerns. It is going to take a 
coalition of many nations, and we are one of those nations. We are one 
of the nations that put as much CO2 in the air as anybody 
else. We have an obligation to try to figure out how to reduce that 
amount and how to reduce the threat. We need to be a leader and not 
just say to other nations that they should do this but also that they 
follow our example. What we are trying to do is to lead by our example.
  At our church, our pastor sometimes will say: I am preaching to the 
choir, but even choirs need to be preached to. The other thing he will 
say from time to time is this: I would rather see a sermon than hear a 
sermon. For the rest of the world, they don't want to hear a sermon 
from us on climate change. They want to see the sermon.
  What we are trying to do over the next 15, 20 years is to reduce our 
CO2 emissions since 2005 by about 30 percent and leave it up 
to the States--not EPA calling shots and not micromanaging--to figure 
out what works best in their States and to help them help us meet that 
national target. Thirty percent reduction from 2005 to 2030--that is 
the deal. That is the goal. My hope is that we will do our part. We 
will provide the leadership that is needed, not by what we say but by 
what we do.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30 
p.m. today, all time on S.J. Res. 24 be considered expired and the 
Senate vote on passage of S.J. Res. 24; further, that following the 
disposition of S.J. Res. 24, the majority leader be recognized to make 
a motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 23; that if the motion to proceed is 
agreed to, then all time under the Congressional Review Act be 
considered expired and that the Senate vote on passage of S.J. Res. 23.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized for such time as I shall consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, at 5:30 p.m. today, two votes are going to 
take place on the two CRAs--one by Senator Capito and one by Senator 
McConnell, as he just referred to.
  The Congressional Review Act is something really good that has come 
along for a reason. A lot of people don't understand that the 
bureaucracy gets out of hand sometimes. I was listening very 
attentively to my friend from Delaware. When I see some of the 
regulations that come through, I am wondering: How in the world could 
this happen? These are things that we have voted on over and over, as 
with the case of cap and trade, which is what we are talking about now. 
Our first one was the McCain-Lieberman act of 2003, then again in 2005, 
and then the Warner-Lieberman act of 2008. And Waxman-Markey didn't 
even come to the Senate floor because they knew they didn't have the 
votes for it. Each one of these was rejected by the elected Members of 
the Senate and by a larger margin each year.
  It is interesting what this President has done. He has taken the 
things that people don't want and has said: Well, if we can't do it 
through legislation, we will do it through regulation.
  We have seen time and again that he has followed this. It is really 
going to come to a screeching halt this time because there are some 
things that are going on that people are not aware of. There are a lot 
of legal problems with Obama's carbon rules--especially his power plan.
  Right now we have 27 States, 24 national trade associations, 37 rural 
electric co-ops, 10 major companies, and 3 labor unions representing 
just under 1 million workers. They are now challenging the final rule 
in court. This chart shows you the States that are challenging the rule 
in court. A lot of these entities have requested a judicial stay, which 
would likely put these rules on hold until early next year. While the 
courts work through the numerous other challenges, time is going to go 
by and time is certainly not their friend.
  I was listening carefully to what my friend from Delaware was saying. 
One observation I have is that the people have caught on. In 2002 it 
was very lonely standing here at this podium in this Chamber, and no 
one else wanted to be a part of that discussion. Yet, at that time, the 
ranking of people, insofar as what they thought about the legitimacy of 
the argument that the world was coming to an end because of global 
warming, was either No. 1 or No. 2. I am talking about the polls that 
were across the nation at that time.
  Now that same poll last March that said that global warming was the 
No. 1 concern back in 2002 is now No. 15. People have caught on. They 
realize that the cost is going to be exorbitant, and they realize it is 
not going to accomplish anything. I don't have any doubt that once the 
courts assess the merits of these challenges, the Obama 
administration's power plan will not survive judicial scrutiny.
  President Obama and Administrator McCarthy are equally aware of their 
legal vulnerabilities, which is why Obama's Agency deliberately slow-
walked the implementation process to try to prevent any CRAs or 
negative court rulings prior to the International Climate Conference in 
December. It has already been done over there. It is going to get very 
active here in a matter of just a few days.
  POLITICO had an article a week ago that reported that the 
administration has asked the DC Circuit to postpone decisions until 
after December 23. What does that tell you? It tells you that they 
don't want to go over to the International Climate Conference for the 
big show and then walk in and find out that nothing is going to happen 
over here in this country and where the people are in terms of this 
issue.
  The Agency's lack of legal authority is not the only reason for 
bipartisan opposition to the administration's carbon regulations. The 
President's power plan alone would cost $292 billion, resulting in 
double-digit electricity price increases in 46 States. That is 
conservative. We have documentation from MIT and from many of the 
organizations saying that the cost of this type of cap and trade is 
somewhere in the range of between $300 billion and $400 billion a year.
  The Presiding Officer and I are very concerned about the State of 
Oklahoma. In the State of Oklahoma, every time I hear a figure that 
talks about trillions or billions of dollars, I find out how many 
families in my State of Oklahoma paid Federal income tax, and I do the 
math. This would cost somewhere around $3,000 a family--an average 
family in Oklahoma. You couple that with the fact that nothing is 
happening only here. If you believed in all the dangers that you hear 
about with CO2 emissions, if you really believe that to be 
true, that would not be true in terms of what we are talking about now. 
The first Administrator of the EPA who was supported by President Obama 
when asked the question if we were to pass this regulation or pass the 
legislation on cap and trade, would this have the effect of reducing 
CO2 emissions worldwide, said no, it wouldn't because it 
would only affect the United States of America. If that is the case, 
then it is not going to affect the other countries.
  In fact, you can carry it one step further. If we have very tight 
restrictions in this country where our manufacturing base is forced to 
go to other countries, and then there are countries that don't have any 
emission requirements at all, it has the effect of increasing, not 
decreasing, the emissions.
  We had a hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee, which 
I chair, and we had as one of the witnesses Harry Alford. Harry Alford 
is the President of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He talked 
about how any type of a cap-and-trade scheme is unfair to very poor 
people. He estimated that the Obama power plan would result in an 
estimated job loss of nearly 200,000 jobs for Black Americans and more 
than 300,000 jobs for Hispanics. The increased energy cost undermines 
global competitiveness for American small business and

[[Page 18249]]

energy-intensive industries. These companies will ultimately shut down 
here at home where the electricity bill becomes unaffordable and create 
jobs instead for our competitors, such as China.
  I can remember talking to China at the various meetings such as the 
International Climate Conference meeting that is coming up at the end 
of next month. They are hoping that something will happen where we are 
going to restrict our manufacturing base because they are the 
beneficiaries of that.
  The EPA has consistently acknowledged this. The former Administrator, 
Lisa Jackson, says that U.S. action alone is not going to have any 
reduction. Her job didn't last too long after she made that statement.
  The current Administrator, Gina McCarthy, testified that the 
President's power plan is not about pollution control but rather about 
sending a signal to the rest of the world that the United States is 
serious about addressing global warming. The minuscule benefits that 
might come would be hardly measurable to this country.
  Lastly, I would like to mention something that people don't talk 
about very often, and that is, there is something good about the 
process that we have available to us, the CRA--the Congressional Review 
Act. There are a lot of people who are of liberal nature, and they like 
overregulation. They don't mind it a bit. I am talking about Senators 
and House Members now. They go back to their States, and they get hit 
by all the business communities that say: We can't compete because of 
the overregulation of EPA. The response is always this: Well, I have 
nothing to do with that; the unelected bureaucrats are doing that.
  That is not true. You need to carry this message back with you. The 
CRA is there so that a person cannot tell the people at home that he is 
opposed to regulations that he is really supporting, because what is 
going to happen tonight--I can tell you right now--is that both of them 
are going to pass. But they are not going to pass them by a two-thirds 
margin. That means that they will go to the House, and they will pass 
them. They will go to the President's desk, and he will veto them. 
Therefore, it is going to take two-thirds to override a veto. They will 
come back for a vote. Those individuals who always rejoice in not 
having to vote and getting on record are going to have to vote on them. 
That is a neat deal. It is going to happen. You are here in on it right 
now.
  That reminds me a little bit about Copenhagen, back in 2009. I 
remember so well that they were all going over there. That was back 
when the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White 
House. They made it a real issue. They put on quite a show over there. 
President Obama went over. Pelosi went over. John Kerry went over. They 
all talked about the 192 nations that were there and how we were going 
to pass cap and trade as legislation. This is 2009. I went over at the 
very last conference and told them they were telling the truth. We are 
not going to pass it. In fact, there weren't 30 votes in the Senate 
that would pass it at that time. Of course, that is what ended up being 
the case.
  There is a real setback that happened 6 days ago. You may have 
noticed that Secretary of State Kerry made the public statement that 
nothing would be binding on the United States that came out of the 
International Climate Conference. Immediately, the President of France 
and all the others were outraged, saying that he must have been 
confused. They used the word ``confused.''
  Right now the big fight that is going on is not Republican or 
conservatives and liberals. It is between those participants who are 
all for restrictions on emissions. That is what is going on now. I 
think the vote this afternoon is going to be a very important one. I 
can assure you that anyone who wants to vote against this can go ahead 
and do it. But keep in mind that this is going to pass. It is going to 
be vetoed by the President. It is going to come back for a veto 
override. Everyone is going to be on record. Here it is. These are the 
States that are currently anticipating the process of putting together 
legal action to stop this outcome. It is a very important vote this 
afternoon.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


          Terrorist Attacks Against France and Syrian Refugees

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I wish to begin by echoing the 
condolences shared by millions around the world regarding last week's 
attacks in Paris. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and 
loved ones of those who died. As a nation, we remain committed to 
supporting and defending the people of France in whatever way we can.
  The attacks in Paris last week remind us again of the dangerous world 
in which we live. Although Paris has become the focus of attention, the 
day before the attacks in France, two ISIS suicide bombers in Beirut 
blew themselves up, killing 40 people in a bustling urban area. Our 
thoughts and prayers go out to the people in Beirut and to all those 
who have suffered loss at the hands of this horrific terrorist 
organization.
  ISIS remains one of the most brutal and indiscriminate terrorist 
organizations in recent history. Its campaign of violence is not 
limited to a specific region, nationality or religion. As the events in 
Paris have shown us, the threat posed by ISIS reaches well beyond the 
borders of Iraq and Syria. If it can, ISIS will spread its campaign of 
violence to innocent people all over the world.
  The United States, as a champion of freedom and democracy, has a duty 
to stand up against ISIS's brand of radical Islam and stomp it out 
wherever it
exists. ISIS represents a clear and present danger to the American 
people and our allies and it must be stopped.
  President Obama, when asked about ISIS the day before the Paris 
attacks, made the following statement. He said:

       I don't think they're gaining strength. . . . From the 
     start our goal has been first to contain, and we have 
     contained them.

  ``We have contained them.'' Those were his words. Unfortunately, ISIS 
does not appear to be contained. My colleague from California, the 
ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, responded this week by 
saying:

       I've never been more concerned. I read the intelligence 
     faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding.

  Yet yesterday President Obama, unbelievably, doubled down on this 
failing strategy by stating: ``We have the right strategy and we're 
going to see it through. . . .'' And when referring to the Paris 
attacks, he called them a ``setback.'' Based on the number of 
casualties and population of France, this attack was the equivalent of 
a 9/11. I would hardly call such an attack a mere ``setback.'' When it 
comes to the U.S. strategy against ISIS, one thing is clear: ISIS 
cannot simply be contained. ISIS must be defeated.
  From what we have learned so far, most of the terrorists involved in 
last week's Paris attack were individuals who already resided in France 
and Belgium. That means these are individuals who became radicalized at 
home, received training or support from ISIS, and in some cases 
traveled to Iraq or Syria for training and then returned to France to 
carry out these attacks. Since ISIS first occupied territory in Iraq 
and Syria and began recruiting foreign fighters, the possibility of 
these combatants returning home has been a concern to the United States 
and to our allies, and this attack in Paris demonstrates the validity 
of that concern. As a nation we must remain vigilant in defending our 
homeland against this type of attack by radicalized individuals holding 
U.S. or European passports.
  I also wish to speak for a moment about the Syrian refugee crisis 
because it ties into everything that has happened in that region of the 
world. As

[[Page 18250]]

we are all aware, the regime of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the 
civil war in Syria that allowed ISIS to gain a foothold and to expand. 
Assad used chemical weapons on his own people and hundreds of thousands 
of lives have been lost as a result of the conflict he created. It is 
completely understandable that the peace-loving people of that country 
want out.
  Just this week, several of my colleagues sent a letter to President 
Obama expressing concerns about the possibility of ISIS infiltrating 
the Syrian refugee population and asking what is being done to 
thoroughly vet these refugees. Over half the Governors in this Nation 
have stated they don't want Syrian refugees resettled in their States. 
I share their concerns. The United States should not accept Syrian 
refugees as long as there is a threat posed by ISIS. If we cannot be 
100 percent certain that additional refugees from Syria do not put 
Americans at risk, the President's plan to accept up to 10,000 
additional refugees this year should be rejected. If the President 
tries to act unilaterally, Congress should cut off funding to prevent 
the President from taking any action that would put the American people 
at risk.
  If we are going to be serious about solving the Syrian refugee 
crisis, the answer is not deciding which countries are accepting how 
many refugees, the answer is to defeat ISIS and remove Bashar al-Assad 
from power so the peace-loving people of Syria can return home.
  On that point, I want to speak about a realistic strategy for 
defeating ISIS. So far the United States has relied almost entirely on 
airstrikes. Prior to the attacks in Paris, France was already the 
coalition partner conducting the second greatest number of airstrikes 
against ISIS. Those airstrikes have been ramped up in recent days, but 
this is not a fundamental shift in our strategy. Airstrikes are 
important, but ultimately they cannot be a solution in and of 
themselves.
  It was President Obama's politically motivated decision to withdraw 
troops from Iraq that ultimately led to ISIS expanding into Iraq to 
begin with. President Obama stated yesterday that boots on the ground 
would be a mistake, but it was his decision to withdraw U.S. troops 
that is partially responsible for creating this problem, and now we are 
at a point where retaking territory from ISIS will require ground 
forces. There is no way around it. If President Obama is going to be 
realistic about defeating ISIS, he needs to form a coalition capable of 
taking the war to ISIS on the ground. That does not require the United 
States committing ground troops, but it does require the United States 
leading by example and forming a coalition capable of fighting both in 
the air and on the ground. The President needs to stop talking about 
containment and start acting on a strategy that will root out and 
defeat ISIS wherever it can be found.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I have the honor of being the ranking 
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and earlier today I 
had a chance to be with the other Members of the Senate and the 
Ambassador from France to express our solidarity, our condolences about 
those who lost their lives in the attack last Friday night, and to 
express America's resolve to work with our French partners to root out 
ISIL.
  Let it be clear, our policy is to degrade, defeat, and destroy ISIL 
wherever it may be, any place in the world. We will retake the 
properties and lands they currently control, and we will destroy their 
operation. That is our commitment, and that is what we must do. We will 
protect U.S. citizens, our homeland. That is one of our most solemn 
responsibilities. We will do that by having the strongest possible 
security screening measures for those who enter our country. We will do 
that by enhancing our intelligence-gathering capacity not only here in 
the United States because we have taken major steps since the attack on 
our country on September 11, but we need a seamless system with our 
allies in Europe and our global partners to share timely information so 
we can track those who want to do harm to us and so we can apprehend 
foreign-trained fighters who have joined the terrorists and then go 
back to Europe or try to enter the United States. We need to know where 
they are, apprehend them, and get them out of our community.
  Let me mention a couple of issues that have come to light just 
recently; that is, our policies with regard to refugees. I want to make 
it clear that we have to have the most stringent security screening, so 
that when we are settling refugees, we don't allow anyone with any 
association to terrorist organizations to be able to enter the United 
States.
  I also think it is important that we understand the current 
procedures and processes that are in place and how it differs 
dramatically from Europe. In Europe, they literally have millions of 
refugees who are fleeing Syria and who get into Europe. They usually 
get in at a border country to the Middle East, over water, and then of 
course enter Europe and can travel throughout that continent. There is 
virtually no screening.
  In the United States, before we will resettle a refugee under the 
auspices of the United Nations, there is a requirement for an in-person 
interview, biographic checks, interagency checks,
biometric screening, including fingerprinting, initial case review by 
the Department of Homeland Security before an in-person interview, and 
it goes on and on and on.
  My constituents and the Presiding Officer's constituents want to make 
sure that those security screenings are strong enough to make sure 
terrorists can't get into the United States, and we have a 
responsibility to make sure that in fact is the case, but I also point 
out that millions travel to the United States freely through our 
borders because it is a small world and people travel. They travel here 
for vacation, and they travel here for family. We have relationships 
with many countries, a program known as the Visa Waiver Program, where 
individuals can travel to the United States without obtaining a visa. 
It is interesting that if a person has a French passport, they can 
enter the United States without a visa. So we need to make sure that 
anyone who attempts to come to America, we know that; that if they are 
dangerous, we have that information, and as a result we can prevent 
them from entering our country.
  I say all of this because I hope that what happened in France will 
energize us in unity to carry out our most important responsibility, 
which is to keep America safe and keep Americans safe. We need to do 
everything we can, whether it is going after terrorists or protecting 
our homeland, to make sure Americans are kept safe.
  Madam President, shortly we will be voting on the Congressional 
Review Act, the regulatory review act which will allow us to vote on 
two regulations on the Clean Power Plan rules that have been 
promulgated by the administration. I urge my colleagues to reject these 
resolutions that would prevent these regulations from going forward. In 
other words, I urge my colleagues to allow these regulations to go 
forward that deal with the Clean Power Plan rules.
  There are four reasons I say that. First and foremost is the public 
health reason. We have a responsibility for the public health of the 
people of this Nation, and clean air is critically important. The 
number of children who suffer from asthma will go up dramatically if we 
don't clean up our air. Premature deaths will go up. There is a direct 
cost to our public health as a result of ignoring what we can do for 
cleaner air in America.

[[Page 18251]]

  Clean air has an effect on our economy. When a parent can't go to 
work because they have a child suffering from asthma because the air is 
not clean to breathe, that is a day lost from work. It affects our 
economy. We also know that if we rely more on clean energy and 
renewable energy sources, that is stronger for economic growth. It 
creates more jobs. So for the sake not just of our health but for the 
sake of our economy, it is important that we take the appropriate steps 
to make sure we have clean air.
  Yes, there is also the issue of our environment. Climate change is 
real. We should follow the recommendations of the experts, not 
necessarily the politicians. The experts tell us that our activities on 
Earth are affecting the rate of change in climate, that they affect the 
stability of the world in which we live, and that we can do something 
about it for a more positive outcome.
  The extreme weather conditions that we have seen all too often--I 
could talk about what has happened in my own State of Maryland and the 
impact it has had on the Chesapeake Bay. We know that. Scientists are 
telling us that. It is because the carbon emissions are accelerating as 
a result of our activities on Earth. Scientists say we can do something 
about it. Scientists have told us we can do better in the way we 
generate power in reducing carbon emissions. That is not a heavy lift; 
it is something we can do.
  Shortly, the world will meet in Paris to come together, I hope, on a 
way that we can join, as an international global community, in a 
strategy to reduce our carbon emissions. The United States must 
exercise leadership. President Obama has done part of that leadership 
by the promulgation of these power plan rules.
  Lastly, this is a matter of national security. We know that we have a 
limited amount of fossil fuels. We know that. We also know that 
renewable energy sources are becoming more energy independent, and that 
is smart for our national security concerns.
  So for all of those reasons, I urge my colleagues to reject the 
resolution that would prevent these regulations from going forward.
  I just want to give by way of example what is happening in my own 
State of Maryland. Maryland is well underway in complying with these 
rules. We are there. We will be there. We have shown that we can make 
these types of investments, and by the way, we would create more jobs 
in doing this. Creating clean power generation will help our economy. 
As I said earlier, it helped Maryland's economy. So we have been able 
to move forward in aggressive steps for clean energy production. But 
Marylanders breathe air that is polluted by the generation of power in 
other States. We need a national policy. It can't be done just by a 
State. We need a national policy, and that is what these clean power 
rules do.
  I urge my colleagues to follow the best science. Allow America to 
continue to be the world leader. Do what is right for the public 
health, for our economy, for our environment, for our future, and 
reject these efforts that would block these rules.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I rise to speak in opposition to the 
Environmental Protection Agency's new rules on carbon dioxide, which I 
believe need to be rescinded.
  On August 3, 2015, the EPA released its so-called Clean Power Plan. 
This final plan will impose a 32-percent reduction nationwide in 
CO2 emissions in the existing electric power sector compared 
with 2005 levels. This is an increase from a 30-percent reduction 
outlined in last year's proposed rule.
  North Dakota's mandated reductions, however, far exceed those levels. 
The EPA originally proposed an 11-percent reduction, but then in the 
final rule that went from 11 percent to a 45-percent reduction. Let me 
repeat that. For our State, the EPA put out a proposed rule and said 
North Dakota has to reduce by 11 percent. Then, without reissuing a new 
proposed rule or anything else, EPA said in the final rule, no, it is 
not an 11-percent reduction in the State of North Dakota, it is a 45-
percent reduction. Not only does that create real problems in real 
terms as far as our industry addressing that level of reduction, but I 
think it raises real questions as to whether EPA followed the law and 
regulation in promulgating the rule.
  It is critical to communicate the impacts this rule will have on our 
State and across the country, especially in our electricity generation 
and mining sectors. People need to know that thousands of workers' 
families and communities across the country will be negatively impacted 
by this rule.
  On September 30, 2015, I hosted a meeting with North Dakota's coal 
industry and regulators to meet with Janet McCabe, the EPA Assistant 
Administrator in charge of issuing the new carbon dioxide rule. We 
directly communicated our State's opposition to the rule. We also 
called on the EPA to provide greater flexibility by recognizing the 
investments and advances made by industry in reducing CO2 
levels and North Dakota's unique coal and geographic resources.
  As a result of the meeting, EPA officials agreed to provide 
flexibility for the State to submit its State implementation plan, its 
SIP. Essentially, instead of requiring a plan in 1 year, we will be 
able to provide a draft plan in 1 year, with 3 years to submit the 
final SIP. We also received a commitment from the EPA to send technical 
staff to North Dakota so that the Agency can hear firsthand from North 
Dakota regulators and officials about the challenges in complying with 
the Agency's mandate.
  Also, here in the Senate, I am working with colleagues on several 
legislative efforts to halt and repeal this rule. As a member of the 
Senate Appropriations Committee, I worked to include language in the 
fiscal year 2016 interior and environmental funding bill to block the 
EPA from implementing this rule. We are working to include this 
priority in the fiscal year 2016 Omnibus appropriations bill that 
Congress will take up in the coming weeks.
  I have also joined with Senator Capito of West Virginia to introduce 
a bipartisan bill, the Affordable Reliable Energy Now Act, or the ARENA 
Act. This legislation would empower State Governors to protect 
ratepayers from increases and ensure the reliability of the electric 
grid. At the same time, it would prevent the EPA from mandating 
unproven technology or withholding highway funds from States not in 
compliance with the rule.
  Further, I am cosponsoring the resolutions of disapproval under the 
Congressional Review Act to repeal the new EPA regulation which we are 
considering on the Senate floor right now and which we will be voting 
on in a little more than half an hour. The Congressional Review Act, or 
CRA, authorizes Congress, by a majority vote, to repeal actions by a 
Federal agency after they are formally published and submitted to 
Congress.
  In North Dakota, we have successfully adopted an ``all of the above'' 
approach to energy development, and we have demonstrated that we can 
utilize our natural resources to do it with better environmental 
stewardship. EPA's new rules on carbon dioxide neither reflects our 
State-led approach nor accounts for the significant investment our 
industry and workers have already made to improve the way electricity 
is generated in our State, and that is true across the country.
  I encourage my colleagues to vote for Senator Capito's CRA which 
disapproves the EPA's carbon rule for existing electric utility 
sources, as well as Leader McConnell's CRA to disapprove the EPA's rule 
for new sources.
  We can produce more energy with better environmental stewardship, but 
the way to do it is not by shutting down powerplants and destroying 
jobs as well as raising costs on hard-working families and small 
businesses. Instead, we need to create a business environment that will 
attract more investments so that the industry can develop and deploy 
new technologies that help us produce more energy more dependably and 
more cost-effectively while at the same time promote better 
environmental stewardship. That is the

[[Page 18252]]

right way to do it. That is the way we are doing it in North Dakota.
  Thank you, Madam President.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I rise today to speak about this battle 
and regulatory war being waged by the Environmental Protection Agency.
  Just 2 weeks ago, the Senate considered two measures aimed at rolling 
back ill-thought-out rules by the EPA--the waters of the United States 
rule. The body did the right thing in stating our bipartisan resolve 
against the rule.
  Unfortunately, here we are again, another week, another proposed rule 
to massively expand the EPA's power, and another attempt by this 
administration to stomp out America's coal industry. That is exactly 
what the Clean Power Plan is--a miscalculated regulation aimed at 
keeping coal in the ground at any cost.
  This latest travesty of a rule, known as the Clean Power Plan, 
requires States to develop and implement plans to reduce carbon 
emissions between 2022 and 2030 in order to accomplish interim and 
final emission goals established by the EPA. Let me clarify that. This 
is actually not one rule but three separate rules which, taken 
together, would be more aptly named the ``No Power Plan.'' The Clean 
Power Plan includes a final rule to revise carbon pollution standards 
for new, modified, and reconstructed power plants; a final rule to 
revise carbon pollution standards for existing power plants; and 
thirdly, a Federal plan for enactment and enforcement of the other two 
rules. Simple, right? No.
  Under the guise of flexibility and cooperation, the CPP requires 
States to choose between two types of plans, described by the EPA as an 
``emission standards'' approach or a ``state measures'' approach. Some 
States, such as my home State of Wyoming, will have some terrible 
choices to make under the CPP. Under the final rule, by the year 2030, 
Wyoming's carbon emissions will have to be 44 percent lower than in 
2005, which is the baseline year the EPA uses for the plan. That is 
more than double the 19-percent reduction the EPA imposed upon Wyoming 
in the proposed rule, which was released about 18 months ago, in June 
of 2014.
  As Wyoming's Governor Matt Mead said recently when my home State 
joined 23 others in suing the EPA to strike down the rule, ``The fact 
that the agency more than doubled the damage to Wyoming in the final 
rule shows arbitrary and capricious action.''
  Not only that, this plan puts the onus on the States to figure out 
how they are going to do it, and that is so the EPA can avoid a cost-
benefit analysis that they are required to do. But not if they force 
the States to do it! But, of course, if the States don't do it, then 
the EPA will have to do it, which means the agency should have done a 
cost-benefit analysis to begin with. But the EPA doesn't have a very 
good track record on cost-benefit analyses.
  One of the regulations, the mercury air toxins rule, is going to 
provide about $500 million in benefits over a 10-year period. It is 
hard to determine what those benefits are or how the EPA did the 
calculations. None of it is transparent. But the compliance cost for 
that $500 million in benefits is up to $43 billion a year. Couldn't we 
incentivize somebody to come up with a better system for a whole lot 
less than $43 billion a year, to save $500 million over 10 years? That 
is another example of an arbitrary and capricious action.
  So how does Wyoming wind up with such a huge burden under the Clean 
Power Plan? Because the Clean Power Plan supposes it will achieve 
carbon emission reductions from electricity generating units that burn 
fossil fuels--coal, oil, and natural gas. States that produce these 
fuels are the hardest hit. Wyoming is the largest coal-producing State 
in the Nation. Wyoming produces 40 percent of the Nation's coal, and 
coal represents almost 40 percent of the electricity generated in this 
country. It is abundant, affordable, clean and, most important, it is 
stockpilable. If the power plants that produce energy from fossil fuels 
like coal are forced to shutter their doors to make dramatic structural 
changes, it will have tangible negative impacts on fossil fuel 
consumers. If that doesn't alarm you, it should, because according to 
the National Mining Association, every person in America uses 20 pounds 
of coal a day.
  Of course, when we are talking about CO2, we are also 
breathing CO2, and plants need CO2. There is an 
interesting invention in Wyoming. A guy figured out how to grow plants 
vertically, and Whole Foods has some of his mechanisms to be able to do 
that, and you can actually cut your own vegetables while you are in the 
store. I asked him why he isn't doing greenhouses with this. He said: 
Not enough CO2. Yes, plants rely on CO2 to live. 
I suggested that he locate near a power plant, where they can absorb 
the CO2 and use the waste heat from any power plants and 
help feed America at the same time. We need to be more innovative in 
what we are doing instead of just trying to put businesses out of 
business because we don't like the business.
  As I said, under the Clean Power Plan, Wyoming will have to reduce 
its carbon emissions by 44 percent. That isn't just a problem for 
Wyoming or the 27,000 people employed in the coal industry and the 
ripple effect it has on people who work with the things that people in 
the coal industry use. If you represent Illinois or Missouri, you 
should be worried about CPP, too, because in 2013 each of those States 
received more than 10 percent of Wyoming's coal. Wisconsin, Kansas, 
Arkansas, and Michigan each got 5 percent of Wyoming's coal. Wyoming's 
coal was distributed to Georgia, Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, 
Minnesota, and Arizona. If I didn't list your State, don't think this 
issue doesn't affect you. More than a dozen other States and foreign 
entities got smaller amounts of Wyoming coal in 2013.
  According to the National Mining Association, which commissioned the 
report on the Clean Power Plan after it was released, the plan would 
cost $366 billion and bring double-digit electric rate increases to 43 
States. That is more than a 10-percent increase to 43 States. All this 
because of the administration's vendetta against coal and power plants 
that burn it and provide energy.
  Just this week the EPA held a hearing in Denver and received public 
comments on the proposed Federal plan to implement the Clean Power 
Plan. That is right. Even though 26 States are suing the EPA to block 
the plan's implementation, the Agency is going ahead with a rule to 
implement it. At that hearing, Mickey Shober, a county commissioner 
from Campbell County, WY, also known as the energy capital of the 
Nation, had a chance to speak. Campbell County has 11 surface mines 
that produce over 340 million tons of coal every year, the majority of 
which is delivered by train to about 30 States across the country for 
electricity generation. All in all, Campbell County coal provides about 
one-quarter of the Nation's electricity every year. That is one county. 
So when a Campbell County commissioner gets up to talk about power 
generation, everyone should pay attention.
  As Commissioner Shober pointed out, the coal industry has 
historically stepped up and dealt with every new regulation and 
challenge the Federal Government has thrown at it, but the new 
technology and innovation--the type that will have to be utilized, if 
there is any way for new and existing power plants to comply with this 
rule--takes time and takes money. As the commissioner said, America's 
energy industry always rises to the challenge, but the EPA isn't 
fighting fair this time. This rule needs to be scrapped in its current 
form, and that is exactly what these joint resolutions of disapproval 
will do.
  Congress has provided billions of dollars in incentives for solar and 
wind energy. Wyoming produces a lot of solar and wind--primarily solar, 
because Denver is the Mile High City and you have to go uphill to get 
to Wyoming. There are high plateaus across the southern part of the 
State. The first wind turbines that went in Wyoming had to be 
redesigned because the wind

[[Page 18253]]

blew so hard that it blew the rotors off. At 80 miles an hour, the 
rotors on wind turbines will not stand up. They will generate a 
tremendous amount of power. Most of that power goes out of State, and 
other States use it but claim offsets from their wind power because it 
doesn't carry any of these bad connotations from the EPA. Wyoming has 
to claim all of carbon emissions from the coal and the coal-fired power 
plants, though most of the electricity produced is sent out of State. 
So Wyoming gets no credit for the energy it provides, but we get all 
the disadvantages associated with providing energy.
  General Electric wanted to build a test facility in Wyoming to figure 
out better ways to burn coal. They went through all the permitting 
process to the point of building it. Then they said: Wait a minute. 
Under this President, who is trying to get rid of coal, who would we 
sell our product to? So they postponed the project.
  I have spoken of why this rule is bad for my home State of Wyoming 
and why it is bad for any State that consumes fossil fuels, but I would 
be remiss if I didn't address the reasons the Clean Power Plan is bad 
for the United States. At the end of this month, the President is going 
to send his team of environmental experts and negotiators to the U.N. 
Climate Summit in Paris. That summit aims to map out a global accord to 
limit greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions goals described in CPP, 
which have been rejected by industry and rejected by almost half the 
States, are at the heart of this administration's plan to contribute to 
the overall global emissions reduction. To make commitments to our 
allies based on the plan which doesn't have the support of the American 
public is nothing short of irresponsible and disingenuous. We are 
living in a dangerous, complicated, frightening world--a world that 
forces our Nation to rely daily on its friends for priceless assets, 
such as shared intelligence and safe havens at which to strategically 
position our military troops around the globe. The very least America 
can give our allied partners in return is our candor.
  Incidentally, I heard the comments about the growing cases of asthma. 
There has been a reduction in the amount of CO2, so why 
would these coal-fired power plants be elevating that health problem? 
One problem that we have out West is called regional haze here, but we 
call it smoke from forest fires. This summer we had tremendous smoke 
from forest fires and it wasn't just smoke, it was ash as well. There 
hasn't been a power plant putting out ash in decades, but when we don't 
do the proper stewardship of our forests, we let them burn. If we 
allowed some of that to be cut into boards for houses, it could reduce 
the cost of housing, and the CO2 would be trapped forever, 
not burned up and released into the air and blamed on coal.
  I am hoping my colleagues will come together today to show our 
constituents where we and the world stand on the Clean Power Plan.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield back our remaining time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading 
and was read the third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the 
third time, the question is, Shall it pass?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. 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 legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Florida 
(Mr. Rubio).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) 
would have voted ``yea.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 46, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 306 Leg.]

                                YEAS--52

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--46

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Graham
     Rubio
       
  The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 24) was passed, as follows:

                              S.J. Res. 24

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress 
     disapproves the rule submitted by the Environmental 
     Protection Agency relating to ``Carbon Pollution Emission 
     Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility 
     Generating Units'' (published at 80 Fed. Reg. 64662 (October 
     23, 2015)), and such rule shall have no force or effect.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

                          ____________________