[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2836-2857]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     EXECUTIVE CALENDER--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that of the 
postcloture debate time under my control, that 60 minutes be yielded to 
Senator Schatz, 60 minutes be yielded to Senator Whitehouse, 35 minutes 
be yielded to Senator Merkley, and 15 minutes be yielded to Senator 
Cantwell.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that of the 
postcloture debate time under my control, that 50 minutes be yielded to 
Senator Merkley.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I think it is important to understand what 
just happened today that makes this debate on Scott Pruitt to lead the 
EPA so critically important. We call ourselves the world's greatest 
deliberative body, and that is actually a well-earned reputation. 
Sometimes we move slowly. Sometimes we move so slowly that it is 
maddening for both parties and for the American public. There is a 
reason that the Senate moves slowly. It is because in a lot of 
instances it has the weightiest decisions that any public official 
could ever make. In this instance, we are deciding on the person to 
comply with the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts, the Endangered 
Species Act, to discharge their duties as the leader of the EPA.
  Something happened today that changes this whole debate. In Federal 
law, there is something called FOIA, the public records law regarding 
Federal officials. Most State laws have some kind of open records law, 
and Oklahoma is no different. There was a lawsuit against the Oklahoma 
attorney general, Scott Pruitt, and it basically said: Listen, you have 
to disclose the emails between your office and a bunch of energy 
industry companies. And the context here is absolutely important. Scott 
Pruitt is not just a person who is bad on the issue of climate; this is 
a person who is a professional climate denier. This is a person who has 
made his bones, politically and professionally, trying to undermine all 
the authorities the EPA possesses. This is a person who is a plaintiff 
in multiple lawsuits, as the Oklahoma attorney general, against the 
EPA. This is a person who has not promised to recuse himself when he is 
running the EPA. So imagine that there are going to be pending lawsuits 
where he was the plaintiff, and they are going to still be before the 
EPA. He was asked in committee whether he would recuse himself, because 
obviously it is preposterous to be both the plaintiff and the defendant 
in a lawsuit. It just stands to reason. He did not promise to recuse 
himself.
  So this is a person who has an incredibly close, uncomfortably close 
working relationship with the fossil fuel industry. He may have that as 
a sincerely held belief, but the Oklahoma State law requires that he 
disclose whom he is working with. Why is that relevant? Well, he 
actually had a couple of instances where he has taken language given to 
him, sent to him by email from oil companies, and he just copied it--
select all, copy, drop it, paste it--onto Oklahoma attorney general 
letterhead, and then transmitted it to the EPA as if it were from the 
AG's office in Oklahoma. So that is the context.
  What did this Federal judge say today? An Oklahoma County district 
court judge said that according to the Oklahoma Open Records Act--
Aletia Haynes Timmons from the district court of Oklahoma instructed 
Pruitt's office to hand over the emails by close of business next 
Tuesday.
  So here we are, trying to jam through this nomination, and now it 
makes perfect sense why they wanted to run the clock. They had 
congressional delegation trips to Munich for the security conference. 
There were Republicans who were planning to meet with NATO allies. 
There was another overseas trip of great import. Yet they abandon all 
other obligations, all other objectives, and they are bound and 
determined to run this clock until 1 p.m. tomorrow because they need to 
vote before these emails become disclosed. Tuesday is when we will see 
these emails. Yet we seem to be in a race to get this vote done 
tomorrow at 1 p.m. Something feels wrong about this. Something feels 
like they are worried about the contents of those emails.
  Gosh, I hope I am wrong. I hope on Tuesday that these emails are 
perfunctory, professional, proper. I hope I am wrong. I hope my fears 
and suspicions about what may be in those emails are unfounded. But 
here we are in the so-called world's greatest deliberative body, and we 
decided we don't even need another 2 business days to deliberate or to 
gather more information.
  This is a decision that will stick for 4 years. This is a nominee who 
will run one of the most important Federal agencies that there is, the 
one in charge of clean air and clean water. The person in charge of 
clean air and clean water has been corresponding with oil and gas and 
coal companies--nothing necessarily illegal or untoward about that, but 
he seems to not want people to know what the content of that 
correspondence was.
  The context here is very, very important, and that is why I am asking 
that we delay this vote until every Member of the Senate can read and 
review these emails. I think it is very important that we understand 
what is in the contents of those emails because there are some things 
we know about Mr. Pruitt. I am going to try really hard not to impugn 
his personal motivation. I have no doubt he feels sincerely about the 
issues we are arguing about. I don't have any reason to believe he has 
personally done anything improper. But I

[[Page 2837]]

think it is totally reasonable for us to just see what is in those 
emails next Tuesday.
  This isn't that we are trying to drag this out for 6 weeks or 6 
months. This isn't that we are trying to cook up an issue. I didn't 
know about these emails, actually, until Monday. I didn't know there 
was a court case. I was perfectly ready to say: Look, it looks like 
they have the votes. We will have our argument. Maybe we can persuade a 
couple of people--certainly Susan Collins has been a profile in courage 
here, and there are Members of the Senate on the Republican side who 
have been on the right side of climate. But you know what, all that 
gets washed away. All that gets washed away because you don't get to be 
on the right side of climate and vote for a climate denier for the 
Environmental Protection Agency.
  And lest you think I am being a little bit overheated here in terms 
of who Scott Pruitt is, this is what Scott Pruitt has said about 
himself. He describes himself as a leading advocate against the EPA's 
agenda. On the role of the EPA he says:

       I believe that the EPA has a role to play in our Republican 
     form of government. Air and water quality issues can cross 
     State lines, and can sometimes require Federal intervention. 
     At the same time, the EPA was never intended to be our 
     Nation's frontline environmental regulator.

  That is kind of a well-put-together statement, but I want you to 
understand how radical of a statement that is, because the EPA was 
designed to be the Nation's frontline environmental regulation.
  The basic premise is that there are certain things that can be done 
at the local level that ought to be done at the local level. When we 
configured our governments, we decided we want police forces and 
firehouses and other municipal services--sewer and water, and trash 
pickup--certain things get done locally. Some things get done at the 
county level. Some things get done at the State level. And what we have 
decided as a nation is that because pollution doesn't recognize 
municipal, State, or even Federal boundaries, that we actually need 
Federal law to make sure that if one State is polluting, it doesn't 
move over to the other State. So the idea that the EPA was never 
intended to be our Nation's frontline environmental regulator, which is 
what Mr. Pruitt says, is actually quite radical. It is an intentional 
misunderstanding of what the EPA is for. It is intended to be our 
frontline environmental regulator.
  Here is Mr. Pruitt on climate change:

       Global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates 
     of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists 
     continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global 
     warming and its connections to the actions of mankind. That 
     debate should be encouraged in classrooms, public forums and 
     the halls of Congress.

  I have to hand it to Mr. Pruitt--he magnificently describes radical 
policies as though they are not radical. He is very skillful at that. 
He is very lawyerly at that.
  He did very well, in my view, in the EPW Committee, but his views are 
essentially that the EPA is not the frontline in terms of protecting 
clean air and clean water, and that blows up the mission of the EPA.
  I see the Senator from Rhode Island is here. I would be happy to 
entertain any questions he may have in a moment.
  A couple more quotes from Mr. Pruitt on the Clean Power Plan:

       The president could announce the most ``state-friendly'' 
     plan possible, but it would not change the fact that the 
     administration does not have the legal authority under the 
     Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions.

  ``[T]hat the administration does not have the legal authority for 
regulate carbon emissions.'' Wrong. Factually wrong. Legally wrong. 
This has been settled. Massachusetts v. EPA. I left my law degree in my 
apartment, but I know Massachusetts v. EPA, and I know this is flat 
wrong. So what he says is totally radical. He is a skillful guy. I 
assume he is a good guy, but he wants to undermine the basic 
authorities of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
  I will finish with this quote before I yield for a question from the 
Senator from Rhode Island on methane regulation.

       My concern is that the EPA is employing its flawed 
     methodology in order to rationalize new and unjustified 
     federal regulations to solve a methane emissions problem that 
     simply does not exist.

  That has no basis in fact.
  I see the Senator from Rhode Island. Before I yield for his question, 
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the 
Senators from Rhode Island and Oregon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHATZ. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Rhode 
Island, if he is ready.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. A question of Parliamentary order here. The time 
during the colloquy will continue to be charged to the Senator from 
Hawaii, correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Through the Chair, I would inquire of the 
distinguished Senator from Hawaii whether, in addition to the concern 
about pollution that crosses borders when it flows down rivers or that 
crosses borders when it comes out of smokestacks and floats across 
State borders into other States, is there not also a supremacy clause 
in the U.S. Constitution that puts Federal law ahead of State law where 
there is a conflict?
  Are there not means and manners by which a Federal official could 
either pretend or actually believe or try to impose a Federal rule in a 
way that interferes with the rights of States that wish to protect 
themselves more than the fossil fuel-friendly Administrator and inhibit 
their ability to do so?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Well, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island. I think one 
of the great challenges is that it is one thing to misunderstand the 
EPA's role here; that is dangerous enough as the attorney general of a 
State or the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association. But 
when you are in the EPA and you have charge to administer the law, to 
discharge your duties under Federal law, to the degree and extent that 
you misunderstand the authorities in the Clean Air Act as either weaker 
than they may be or sort of optional--I mean, this is the issue in 
Massachusetts v. EPA.
  For instance, the question around carbon was resolved. There were a 
couple of questions. First of all, is carbon an airborne pollutant? The 
Supreme Court and the EPA made their finding, and they determined that 
it was an airborne pollutant.
  Once you determine that something is an airborne pollutant, it is not 
for the EPA, on a discretionary basis, to try to regulate that airborne 
pollutant. They are then required under Federal law to regulate that 
pollutant.
  So part of the misunderstanding here is the question isn't, Is the 
EPA authorized to regulate carbon? It is, Are they required to regulate 
carbon? So he has it wrong doubly--first of all, on the law and second 
of all, on the science.
  I think the danger of putting someone like that in a position of 
authority is that they will preempt States, California and others--
although California has some pretty significant carve-outs--but they 
will at least attempt to preempt the States from doing what they want 
to do to protect their clean air and their clean water.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for another question?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Yes.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator from Hawaii is a very kind as well as a 
very distinguished individual, and he is willing to spot Mr. Pruitt's 
sincerity in the way he goes about his business. I am a skeptical New 
Englander, and I think Mr. Pruitt looks a little bit too bought and 
paid for to spot him that same degree of sincerity.
  But to the question of the Federal and the State role, to the extent 
that it was Mr. Pruitt's position that the EPA should not be on the 
front line, that it is actually up to the States to bear the bulk of 
this burden and to be on the front line and enforce environmental laws 
and protect their Senators, what about the conduct of the Oklahoma 
attorney general's office might give us some pause as to his sincerity 
in this being a federalist question in which the power to regulate

[[Page 2838]]

should be enforced at the State level by strong attorney general 
enforcement as former attorneys general like myself know?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Well, I thank the Senator for that question. It is a 
really important one because essentially what Scott Pruitt is saying 
is: Hey, let's let the States handle this. But if you are to take him 
at his word, I think it is not unreasonable to say: Well how did you 
handle enforcement of either State or Federal environmental law as the 
top cop in the State of Oklahoma? Right?
  He did two things that would cause everybody to question his 
commitment to even local environmental protection. The first thing he 
did when he came in as Oklahoma AG--a lot of offices the attorney 
general have environmental protection units. It is like a big law firm. 
They have different units that handle different kinds of crime. They 
have a civil division; they have a criminal division. They do lots of 
things. One of the divisions is to enforce environmental law. He 
disbanded it. He disbanded the State attorney general's division that 
enforces environmental law. Then he beefed up this thing that did not 
exist until he got there, which was essentially a division to undermine 
Federal authorities.
  So you are right. He has them coming and going. He is making an 
argument that the State should be empowered to enforce environmental 
law. At least we could take that as kind of on-the-level federalism. We 
have some good Republican colleagues who just really believe that the 
government that governs least governs best. They think that local 
problems should be solved at the local level, even though, in my view, 
when it comes to air pollution and water pollution, that is essentially 
preposterous because pollution moves.
  I really believe that for some of these Members it is a sincerely 
held belief. It is hard to believe this attorney general when he says: 
Hey, give us the authority to enforce our environmental laws, and then, 
when the rubber hits the road--which is how many lawyers you put on the 
job, how many cops you put on the beat--he basically eviscerates the 
division that enforces environmental law, and he beefs up this division 
that is basically a little shop that sues the EPA to undermine the 
Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act federally.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I recall the facts of this correctly, not only did 
he shut down the environmental unit of the department of the attorney 
general, but in subsequent reporting you could not find a dollar 
allocated to environmental activities in the Oklahoma attorney 
general's budget. And he abandoned what his predecessor, Drew 
Edmondson, had been running, which was not just to have an 
environmental enforcement unit within the department of the attorney 
general, but also to have an environmental enforcement team that 
brought together Federal folks, State regulators, water officials, and 
put together the multiagency task force that prosecuted environmental 
cases--gone also.
  Finally, Drew Edmondson used to do an annual report, as I recall, on 
the successes of his environmental enforcement and his environmental 
task force, the multiagency group. That was gone too.
  In addition to all of those facts, what worries me a little bit--you 
know, one of the things we have to assess in this process is the 
credibility of the nominee. Are they going to tell you the truth in the 
nomination process? If they are not going to tell you the truth in the 
nomination process, you are probably going to get a lot of malarkey out 
of them down the road as well.
  He took the position that he actually had not gotten rid of the 
environmental unit. He said he had moved it into a new unit--the 
federalism unit--which, if you go to their own website and read about 
the federalism unit, it says it is an appellate. You don't do 
environmental enforcement at the appellate level; you do environmental 
enforcement at the trial level, and you do it at the investigative 
level.
  Further, if you read down, the word ``environment'' never appears in 
the general description of that unit. So it is not as if there is just 
one little wrinkle of the environmental unit kind of magically 
disappearing under this guy. Wherever there was any activity by the 
department of the attorney general with respect to the environment, he 
shut it down, zeroed it out, silenced it, finished it.
  I believe that is a pretty fair description of the status in 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Well, I think the Senator is right. You know, it is fair 
to look at his record. It is also fair to look at his words. In 2016--
so this is not 10 years ago; this is less than a year ago--he said: 
Legislation should not be ``we like clean air, so go make clean air.'' 
It is something that bothers me, that Congress then gives this general 
grant of authority to EPA.
  Congress has given a general grant of authority to the EPA. That is 
what the law says. So, my concern, when it comes to Mr. Pruitt, is that 
he understands, as a member of the bar, as an attorney general, what 
the law says. He has been operating in a political context, I think it 
is fair to say, as the head of the Republican Attorneys General 
Association. Working with energy companies, he has been very aggressive 
in cultivating friends across the country who are very enthusiastic 
about his nomination and potential confirmation.
  But he totally misunderstands the mission of the EPA. It is granted 
by the Congress, a general authority to enforce clean air. That is what 
the EPA is, really; it is clean air, and it is clean water. That is 
what the EPA is about.
  The thing I think is especially troubling for me when it comes to the 
politics of this, is that there was a bipartisan consensus for many, 
many, many years around the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. I 
believe the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act came under President 
George H.W. Bush. This used to be not very controversial because, 
actually, we can fight about the Iran deal, we can fight about women's 
reproductive health, we can fight about LGBT rights, we can fight about 
civil rights, we can even fight about foreign policy and the size and 
scope of the government, but even if you are an extremely conservative 
individual, you ought to believe, to the extent that we have government 
at all, that it should be responsible for keeping us safe and that it 
is a Federal role to make sure our air is clean and our water is clean.
  So this person who is very skillful in kind of eluding--you know, he 
basically dodged punches in that EPW Committee. We have some very 
skillful members on the EPW committee. They are very knowledgeable, 
very passionate. It was rough, but he was able to avoid a sort of 
knockout blow. The reason is that he is a professional climate denier. 
This is what this guy has been training to do all of his life.
  So, again: We like clean air, so go make clean air. That is something 
that bothers me.
  The Congress then gives a general grant of authority to EPA on the 
Oklahoma environmental regulations. He said: Federal regional haze 
standards--if you live in Oklahoma, I understand. You did not vote for 
Barack Obama, but I don't think you thought you were voting to reduce 
air quality. So he says that Federal regional haze standards threaten 
the competitive edge Oklahomans have enjoyed for years with low-cost 
and reliable electric generation. This low-cost energy not only 
benefits Oklahoma manufacturers, but gives the State a considerable 
edge in recruiting jobs. He is the attorney general. He is supposed to 
enforce the law. I mean, that sounds like a Member of Congress. That 
sounds like a Member of the State legislature. But it does not sound to 
me like someone who is prepared to discharge their duties under the 
Federal law.
  Another space where Mr. Pruitt has some alarming views is on science 
itself. I am deeply concerned about what is happening to science, to 
scientists, to government research. We just confirmed the Director of 
OMB who, in a Facebook post, wondered out loud--he had some questions 
about the Zika virus. I am not sure he had any special expertise to be 
raising these questions. We should all be researching and be as 
scientifically literate as possible, but the OMB Director put on his

[[Page 2839]]

Facebook post: I have these questions. I am really interested in this, 
but the real question is whether we should have publicly funded 
research at all.
  So there is a full-on attack on science and facts. There is a full-on 
attack on reality. But when it comes to environmental science, it is so 
consequential. I am looking at these pages sitting here. I think about 
everybody's children and grandchildren. We just have an obligation to 
get the data right, to really understand what is happening with air 
quality and water quality.
  Here is what Mr. Pruitt says about mercury. ``Human exposure to 
methylmercury resulting from coal fired EGUs is exceedingly small.''
  This is, again, the White Stallion Energy Center versus EPA.
  This is what the scientists say: ``As a result of these long-term 
mercury inputs, there are hotspots and whole regions, such as the 
Adirondacks of New York, the Great Lakes region of the Midwest and 
large portions of the Southeast where the fishery is contaminated with 
mercury.''
  There are more fish consumption advisories in the United States for 
mercury than all other contaminants combined.
  I can tell you, just on a personal level, to the Senator from Rhode 
Island, that I like my ahi. I like my fresh sashimi. I like tuna, and 
everybody in Hawaii likes fish. So you kind of watch how much marlin 
you eat, how much ahi you eat because we understand that there is a 
real mercury problem. This isn't made up. If you talk to ER doctors in 
Honolulu, they have to deal with mercury poisoning on a weekly basis. 
That is what the science shows, and that is what the reality shows.
  Here is what Mr. Pruitt says: ``The record does not support EPA's 
findings that mercury, non-mercury metals, and acid gas pose public 
health hazards.''
  And here is what the scientists say: ``There is no evidence 
demonstrating a safe level of mercury exposure.''
  So before yielding for a question, I think it is really important for 
all of us to understand what is at stake here. We have a nominee who is 
really unique in the history of the EPA because never before have we 
had a person who has made it their life's mission to undermine the 
Agency which they wish to lead.
  You could probably argue that Mr. Puzder, who just withdrew his 
nomination yesterday, had a similar kind of attitude about the 
Department of Labor.
  But even under Republican administrations, we have had Republican 
Administrators of the EPA who understood: Hey, look, the law is the 
Clean Air Act, the law is the Clean Water Act, the law is the 
Endangered Species Act, and I have an obligation, as the EPA 
Administrator, to accept those premises--right?--and to be the EPA 
Administrator, to not sort of be on my crusade against Federal law.
  If he wants to undermine Federal law, he can go litigate that. He can 
be a private attorney or he could run for the Congress and try to be a 
lawmaker. But to the degree and extent that he wants to run the Agency 
with a specific statutory mission, he has to follow those statutes. And 
I have seen no evidence that he has any respect for or understanding of 
those statutes.
  I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, on the subject of respect for and obedience to 
statute, I thought we might want to discuss for a minute the Oklahoma 
open records law which the attorney general of Oklahoma not only needs 
to obey, but he needs to enforce it. He is not just subject to that 
law. He is the agency responsible for policing compliance with it.
  What we have just seen is 750 days of noncompliance by his office 
with an Open Records Act request where he refused to provide anything 
to us in the EPW Committee. And, by the way, shame on the Environment 
and Public Works Committee for allowing that to happen. Shame on the 
Environment and Public Works Committee for--on a purely partisan 
basis--not allowing us to get those emails that this office had covered 
up and suppressed for 2 years.
  Finally, they got before a judge and the judge said: Release that 
first set Tuesday--Tuesday. So he is sitting on several thousand emails 
between his office and the big energy companies and the big energy 
organizations, and he stonewalls everybody for 2 years.
  When a judge finally gets a look at this misbehavior, first she says: 
That is an abject failure. Second, she says: That is unreasonable under 
the statute. And third, she says: Produce them Tuesday.
  This was a guy who didn't think he could produce them Tuesday. He 
couldn't produce them for 2 years, and now the judge says Tuesday.
  So when you are looking at his adherence to law, his respect for law, 
it seems to me that this is yet another example in which off he goes. 
The beneficiaries are himself and all the big fossil fuel companies 
that he was engaged with. That is who the beneficiaries were.
  The people who lost were the ones who were supposedly the 
beneficiaries of the law--the public, the right to know, transparency.
  So it makes for an interesting comparison to his version of 
compliance with the law. And if that is the best he can do complying 
with an Oklahoma statute that he is obliged not only to comply with but 
to enforce, what reasonable conclusion would my colleagues draw about 
his willingness to follow Federal law, which he also despises?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Well, I thank the Senator for the question.
  This is what is happening today. It would be enough if we were in the 
process of debating and confirming a climate-denier to the EPA. It 
would be enough that this person is a plaintiff in 17 lawsuits against 
the EPA. It would be enough that he is a plaintiff in these lawsuits 
against the EPA and he refused to recuse himself if he is running the 
EPA. As Senator Markey says, he is going to be plaintiff, defendant, 
and judge in these lawsuits.
  All of that would be enough, but today a judge is compelling him to 
release around 3,000 emails that have squarely to do with the debate 
that we are having, which is this: Is this person a little too close to 
the industry that he is going to regulate?
  As I said before, gosh, I hope these emails, as they are disclosed, 
show nothing. I hope that my suspicions, my fears, my concerns are 
without foundation. But I think about the Republicans, the good 
Republicans on the other side of the aisle who are voting for this man 
tomorrow.
  Boy, they had better hope there is nothing in those emails. They had 
better think very carefully about what is in those emails. They might 
want to delay this vote themselves because, look, if there is nothing 
in those emails, then we can vote two Mondays from now--no harm no 
foul. You have career professionals at EPA doing their job. EPA will 
run for another 5 or 6 business days. It is OK.
  We are the world's greatest deliberative body. We go slow on almost 
everything, and we are rushing on this. Why are we rushing?
  Well, I was trying to figure out all week why we were rushing. Then I 
understood that the court was going to rule today, and they are jamming 
this. They are ramming this down the American people's throats.
  I would just offer this to my Republican colleagues: These emails are 
going to be disclosed, and maybe you guys and gals know that there is 
nothing to be concerned about in terms of the content of these emails, 
where the Oklahoma attorney general is corresponding with a bunch of 
fossil fuel companies. Maybe it is all good in those emails.
  But the thing is, if that is the case, why did he refuse for 750 days 
to offer the emails up? I mean, it literally takes more work to not 
provide the emails than to provide the emails. You have to lawyer up to 
not do something. You are going to lawyer up as the Oklahoma attorney 
general to not comply with an Oklahoma statute. This takes a special 
effort.
  Why would somebody want to undertake such a special effort to not 
comply with State law? I don't know. But I think we may find out on 
Tuesday.

[[Page 2840]]

  Gosh, I hope I am wrong. But I have a feeling that the people who are 
most nervous right now about what is in those emails--in addition to 
the American public who care about clean air and clean water--are the 
Republicans who are being forced to vote at 1 o'clock without seeing 
them. They are being forced to vote on this person to run the EPA that 
they know is unpopular.
  I mean, I understand that in some States this guy is tremendously 
popular because it is very easy to blast the EPA. In some portion of 
the Republican conference, Scott Pruitt is totally popular. I get that.
  There is a nontrivial number of Members on the Republican side who 
actually don't want to be on the wrong side of the public when it comes 
to clean air and clean water, but they are going to be on the wrong 
side of the public when it comes to clean air and clean water. And it 
might get worse next Tuesday.
  I really wonder why you would work so hard to not disclose the 
contents of 3,000 emails over a 750-day period.
  I want to quote from Mr. Pruitt again on climate change:

       Global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates 
     of our time. That debate is far from settled.

  Here is what the scientists say: ``The scientific understanding of 
climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify taking steps to 
reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'' This is from 
the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2005. This wasn't just some 
sort of recently arrived at conclusion.
  Here is Mr. Pruitt again on climate:

       We've had ebb and flow. We've had obviously, climate 
     conditions change throughout our history. That's scientific 
     fact. It gets cooler, it gets hotter. We don't know the 
     trajectory, if it is on an unsustainable course. Nor do we 
     know the extent by which the burning of fossil fuels, man's 
     contribution to that, is making this far worse than it is.

  I mean, sorry, this is not what the scientists say. This is what I 
say. That is just bunk. There was a point at which that was a tenable 
position, even if it was scientifically bunk, easily 15 years ago. It 
was politically kind of workable 10 years ago--maybe even 8 years ago 
and, depending on your community, 5 years ago. But there is a majority 
of Republicans who understand the urgency of climate change.
  The only place where the reality of climate change continues to be 
debated fiercely is in the halls of Congress.
  Local people in every community across the country understand that 
this thing is settled fact. This thing is upon us. You don't have to be 
some wonk. You don't have to understand ocean acidification. You don't 
have to understand exactly what is going on. You just have to, A, 
listen to experts who know about climate, who know about weather, who 
know about atmospheric science. Even if you don't believe any of the 
experts, you just have to believe your own experience. There is not a 
person out there--whether they are a fisherman on the Big Island or a 
farmer in the Midwest or a hunter in the Southwest--there is not a 
person out there who isn't experiencing the weather getting strange.
  Everybody understands that 1 day of weird weather does not climate 
change make. But there is just no doubt that severe weather and odd 
weather is getting more frequent and more odd and more severe.
  Here is what the scientists say about climate change:

       The scientific evidence is clear: Global climate change 
     caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a 
     growing threat to society.

  Here is Mr. Pruitt again:

       Is it truly man-made and is this just simply another period 
     of time where the Earth is cooling, increasing in heat? Is it 
     just typical, natural type of occurrences as opposed to what 
     the administration says?''

  I mean, this is so far out of the mainstream that it would be funny 
if it weren't terrifying. It would be funny if it weren't terrifying to 
think that the person who is going to run the Environmental Protection 
Agency, the person who is going to be in charge of administering the 
Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act is saying: Is it truly man-made and 
is this just simply just another period of time where the Earth is 
cooling, increasing in heat? I mean, is it just a natural type of 
occurrence, as opposed to what the Obama administration says?
  I would be happy to yield to the Senator for a question. I will note 
that we have a joke where I am the good cop and he is the bad cop, but 
I think over time, we are merging.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, I wanted to go back to lawyering for a minute 
in response to the Senator's comments about the predicament that the 
other side is being put into--being asked to vote on the nominee, 
knowing that the disclosure of thousands of emails between the nominee 
and the industry and companies that he is going to supposed to regulate 
is imminent--is imminent. As the distinguished Senator from Hawaii 
said, maybe there is nothing in those; maybe this is just an empty 
concern. But over and over and over, emails have been really important 
at breaking investigations open. Certainly, our friends on the other 
side--until the election in November--had a fascination with emails, a 
fixation with emails. They couldn't get enough of other people's 
emails. And now suddenly everybody is looking at the ceiling, examining 
the ceiling tiles when it is time to wonder about these emails.
  There is a doctrine, if I recall successfully back in the days when I 
was a more active lawyer, called willful blindness, which is the 
wrongful act of intentionally keeping oneself unaware of something--the 
wrongful act of intentionally keeping oneself unaware of something. If 
that doesn't describe what is being done right now to the Republican 
Senators about these emails with this vote, I don't know what does, but 
what I do know is that willful blindness under the law is a culpable 
state of mind. It is a culpable state of mind in civil cases, where you 
can be held liable because of deliberate willful blindness, and it is a 
culpable state of mind in criminal cases, where you can be found guilty 
of a criminal offense based on a finding of willful blindness.
  So this is no small predicament that the majority leader is creating 
for his Republican Members in the mad rush to get this fossil fuel tool 
voted on before this stuff all comes out, and it is either going to be 
good or it is going to be bad, and if it is bad, there will be a price 
to pay for having ignored this emerging avalanche of emails. If they 
are good, fine, no harm done, but who really gets hurt if it is bad?
  We are going to be examining Pruitt over this, when they come out. If 
these are bad things, there could be investigations that ensue and an 
enormous amount of stuff can take place, but there will be ownership on 
the other side of the aisle for the willful blindness they are 
displaying toward this package of emails that we now know are on their 
way and that we know were wrongfully withheld because the judge said 
so. The judge said it was an ``abject failure'' under the law. The 
judge said it was unreasonable. So we know it is wrong, and still, 
still, comes the vote.
  You have to wonder what the power force is here that makes that 
happen. In astronomy, there are dark stars, black holes. Because they 
are dark and because they are black, you can't see them in the sky. You 
have to deduce their presence when light bends around them and when 
their gravitational pull affects the behavior of other heavenly bodies. 
When you look for those weird, anomalous behaviors in space, that is a 
signal that some dark star is out there operating. This is a lot of 
weird and anomalous behavior. And what is the dark star that is causing 
the majority leader to put all the Republican Senators, other than 
Susan Collins, in peril, in terms of willful blindness to this release 
of emails, which everybody knows now is coming and which everybody 
knows now was wrongfully delayed--wrongfully and deliberately delayed--
by this attorney general as the enforcer of the disclosure of his own 
emails.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Well, I think----
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If there was a question in there.
  Mr. SCHATZ. You were asking about the willful blindness.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There you go.

[[Page 2841]]


  Mr. SCHATZ. I want to make an observation that there are a couple of 
kinds of willful blindness. One is willful blindness about climate 
change in the first place, a desire not to hear the truth, a desire to 
put blinders on when it comes to these issues. I will note that not 
every time but almost every time we have a debate on climate, we have a 
nice complement of Democrats on this side and a totally empty Chamber 
on the other side. It is not that they don't know what is going on, it 
is that they know exactly what is going on, and they don't want to deal 
with it. They don't want to deal with it, and they are good people and 
patriotic people, but there is a reason to believe this willful 
blindness is not coincidental.
  I would just implore the Senate Republicans who respect the Senate, 
who understand our special role under the Constitution to give advice 
and consent on nominations for Cabinet positions, that this isn't some 
minor sub-Cabinet position. This isn't some matter of little import. I 
understand both sides employ tactics to delay action on the Senate 
floor. That is kind of part of the way this body works, right? The 
minority slows the majority down, and we try to come to some kind of 
consensus, sometimes a unanimous consent agreement or whatever it may 
be, to try to make this place work a little better, and it is 
maddeningly slow, but it forces bipartisanship, right?
  I understand the accusation that sometimes gets made that we are just 
trying to delay for delay's sake. At the beginning of this week--look, 
I ran for the Senate because of climate. That is how passionately I 
feel about this issue, but I understood how this thing was lining up, 
and I said: Look, let's fight the fight. There is no magic between 28 
hours and 30 hours. There is no magic between 29 hours of talking about 
this and 26 hours of talking about this. I was prepared to fight the 
fight and move this week. I didn't want to employ extraordinary delay 
tactics. I was actually even arguing with some of my colleagues, with 
whom I agree so much on climate, about the sort of efficacy just 
delaying for another couple of hours, but we are not trying to delay 
another couple of hours for no particular reason. There are 3,000 
emails that a judge in Oklahoma is compelling Scott Pruitt to provide 
to the public, and not 6 weeks from now or 6 months from now but 3 
business days from now. On Tuesday morning, the public and, maybe in 
this instance even more importantly, the Members of the U.S. Senate, 
who are in a position to determine whether this is the right person to 
run the Environmental Protection Agency, are going to see the contents 
of these emails. Do you know what? It is probably nothing. These 3,000 
emails that are correspondence between the Oklahoma attorney general, 
the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, and a bunch 
of fossil fuel companies--this guy who has sued the EPA and tried to 
undermine the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act 17 times, this guy who 
refuses to recuse himself from running the EPA, from being both a 
plaintiff and a defendant, I am sure the 3,000 emails he has delayed 
releasing for 750 days--I am sure the 3,000 e-mails he has delayed 
releasing for 750 days and is only going to have to provide them to the 
public because a court is making him, I am sure there is nothing in 
them. But just in case, why don't we just find out what is in them? 
Because it seems to me that if they are awful, it would give pause to 
Republicans.
  I just don't get why the Republicans--I understand why people want to 
jam this through before maybe something bad happens on Tuesday, but if 
I were a rank-and-file Republican, I would be saying: This looks a 
little goofy. We don't normally vote on Fridays at 1 p.m., we normally 
vote on Thursdays at 2:15 so everybody can race off to the Reagan 
airport and go home. If it is 2:15, I can't get home until Friday, but 
most people can get home. We vote on Thursday afternoons, and in rare 
instances do we vote on Fridays--debt ceiling, continuing resolutions, 
big stuff. We have been moving on nominees kind of at a normal pace. 
Listen, it has been tough. We have a lot of late nights here. We thank 
the Senate staff for hanging in here with us. We apologize for the 
difficulty that you have to undertake to make the Senate work and for 
us to do our constitutional duties, but isn't it weird that we are just 
jamming this through on a Friday afternoon?
  If I were a rank-and-file Member, I would go to my leadership and 
say: Hey, this is getting a little weird. I don't want this thing to 
blow up when I am back home at a townhall.
  I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Oregon. There is no 
better climate champion than Jeff Merkley. It is probably a two-way tie 
with the junior Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Rhode Island. 
Before yielding to a question, thank you for your dedication on this 
issue for the people of Oregon and for the people of this country, but 
I am happy to yield for a question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity that my 
colleague from Hawaii has given me to ask a question. Particularly, I 
appreciate his willingness to be on the floor making this case because 
being the guardians of clean air and clean water in the United States 
of America is an incredible responsibility, and the individual we place 
in this position as Director of the Environmental Protection Agency is 
going to make decisions that will affect the life and death of millions 
of American citizens, that will affect the quality of life of millions 
of American citizens.
  When the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency proceeds to 
say we are to fight for the mercury standard, that means that fewer 
children will be exposed to a persistent neurotoxin that stunts the 
development of our children's brains. On the other hand, if that 
individual says: I am not concerned about that or I think I will just 
look the other way because I want to help the fossil fuel industry make 
a few more bucks, and he decides that weighs more heavily than the 
health of our children, then the health of our children is impacted. 
That is true with one form of pollutant and another, and they are just 
across the landscape. This is an incredibly important position. That is 
why understanding the viewpoints of the nominee is so critical.
  My understanding is that the individual who controls access to the 
emails in Oklahoma is the attorney general; am I correct in that 
understanding?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Yes, the Senator is correct.
  Mr. MERKLEY. So we have a situation where an individual has accepted 
a nomination from the President for this incredibly important position 
and then has turned around and said: By the way, I am the guardian of 
the gate for the very records the Senate needs to see in order to 
determine if I am a fit character for this position, and he says: No, I 
will not allow the Senate to see my records.
  My question to my colleague from Hawaii is as follows: Just the fact 
that a nominee, accepting a nomination and knowing the Senate has a 
responsibility to vet the nominee, who turns around and says, but you 
can't have access to my records, shouldn't that in itself disqualify 
that individual from consideration?
  Mr. SCHATZ. I thank the Senator for the question. I just want to ask 
the Presiding Officer what the parliamentary situation is; has my 60 
minutes expired?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has not.
  Mr. SCHATZ. How much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 54 minutes.
  Mr. SCHATZ. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I don't know if it is disqualifying. I would say it is strange, in 
the extreme, to have the chief law enforcement officer of a State and 
the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association not comply 
with his own State statute. This isn't trivial. Not that it would be OK 
for the attorney general not to comply with any law, but this isn't a 
nontrivial issue. This is letting the public know the nature of your 
correspondence with industry--especially

[[Page 2842]]

since I think it is fair to say that I think even he would agree that 
he has distinguished himself among attorneys general as a lead advocate 
against the EPA and as an advocate for fossil fuel-generating 
companies. So it is not unreasonable for the public to say: Well, let 
me understand what the nature of your correspondence was.
  My very basic question to the Members of the Senate on the Republican 
side is, Why in the world would we vote at 1 o'clock before we get 
these emails? I understand that if we had said, give us 6 months so we 
can see these emails, that would be preposterous. That would be us 
delaying for delay's sake. Listen, we feel so strongly, I think it is 
fair to say about this nominee that we might have even tried that, but 
then in that case the majority would be within their rights to say: We 
are not going to let you delay for delay's sake.
  But this is not delay for delay's sake. There is information that is 
exactly on point.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Yes.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. With respect to delay for delay's sake, when a judge 
finds that the emails can be made available and the judge finds today 
that the emails can be made available by Tuesday and the attorney 
general has kept them bottled up for more than 750 days, it would seem 
that the accusation that delay for delay's sake does not belong with 
the Democratic minority on this issue. Would it not be a badge that 
would fit rather well on the attorney general from Oklahoma?
  Mr. SCHATZ. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for that question. 
The Senator is right that he has been delaying because he wants to be 
confirmed as the EPA Administrator before these emails become public. 
There is no other reason that I can think of that is so important that 
we get the EPA Administrator in. Remember, we have the HUD nominee, we 
have the Department of Commerce nominee, we have the Department of the 
Interior nominee, and we have the Department of Energy nominee, who has 
responsibility and stewardship over our nuclear arsenal. We have 
decided we are not going to run until Friday afternoon getting a person 
in charge as the Secretary of Energy to take care of our nuclear 
arsenal, but it is a really big hurry--and we have to literally prevent 
Members from meeting with NATO allies--to get this guy through. I 
really didn't understand earlier in the week what the big rush was and 
why Pruitt and why now.
  Listen, every Wednesday we are in some kind of negotiation about what 
kind of legislation and what kind of matters come before the Senate, 
and both sides sort of puff up their chests and make threats about 
going through the weekend, and we usually come to some sort of 
agreement. Yet this week there was no budging, and now I get it. They 
were afraid this judge was going to do what this judge did. This judge 
is requiring these emails to come out, and I think they are terrified 
about what these emails say.
  Do you know what? There is only one way to prove me wrong, which is 
to call our bluff and delay. Let's go two Mondays from now. We have a 
recess, and we will all read the emails. Then it will be great. We will 
find out that there was nothing untoward, nothing improper, nothing 
concerning about these 3,000 emails between the Republican attorney 
general from Oklahoma and these oil and gas and coal companies. I think 
maybe something is in those emails. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am 
wrong. For the country, for the planet, I hope I am wrong.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a 
colloquy with the Senators from Hawaii and Rhode Island over the course 
of the coming hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Has the Senator from Hawaii yielded the floor?
  Mr. SCHATZ. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I believe that will be charged to my 
time, but I have asked for that to be the case.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, in this conversation about these emails, 
the thing that keeps striking me is that our fundamental question is, 
Is the individual, is the nominee, given his record in Oklahoma, going 
to be an advocate for the environment, an advocate for the health of 
the citizens of the United States of America, an advocate for upholding 
clean water and clean air that have done so much to improve the quality 
of life for Americans, or is the individual, Scott Pruitt, going to be, 
instead, an advocate for the oil companies and the coal companies and 
the gas companies? That question goes to the heart of whether the 
individual, Scott Pruitt, is fit to carry this responsibility.
  The American people have been very pleased with the enormous changes 
in the quality of the environment over the last 30 or 40 years, and it 
has added a tremendous amount of improvement to their lives. Here we 
have somebody who, possibly, is not going to advocate and fulfill the 
responsibilities of the office but who is going to use the office as 
director of the EPA as an extension of the complex matrix of fossil 
fuel companies and work on their behalf and not on the people's behalf.
  I will invite my colleagues, if they have insight or questions 
related to this question of whether Scott Pruitt is going to serve the 
interests of the people or the interests of the fossil fuel companies, 
to feel free to weigh in.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. President, I note the diagram that I am showing beside me here on 
the floor, which is the work of an academic professor. He is one of a 
considerable number of professors and researchers who are looking at 
the fossil fuel-funded climate-denial operation as a socioeconomic 
creature. They are studying it. It is rather new. This is a diagram 
done by Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel University, one of the many 
academics and researchers who are looking into what I call the denial 
beast, because obviously if you are ExxonMobil, if you are the Koch 
brothers, you don't want to be out front yourself. You want to put 
outfits with names that sound much more benign out there--the Heartland 
Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute. These groups get thrown up 
by the fossil fuel company, stuffed with their money, filled with their 
employees, and they all run around saying more or less the same thing, 
which is, don't worry about climate change; don't worry about our 
carbon emissions.
  When the Senator from Oregon refers to a complex matrix that this 
individual serves, this is just one visual description of that complex 
matrix of fossil fuel interests with which he has been so closely 
involved.
  Here is one other example. This is Mr. Pruitt's fundraising from all 
of these energy companies and then the different ways he raised money. 
Liberty 2.0 was his super PAC. We still don't know a single thing about 
it. We haven't talked about the dark money life of Scott Pruitt 
because--why?--our colleagues on the other side won't require those 
questions to be answered. They are perfectly willing to scoot him 
through without knowing a single thing about his dark money operation--
his attorney general reelection, which was chaired by a fossil fuel 
billionaire; the Oklahoma Strong Leadership PAC, which was his 
leadership PAC that took constant fossil fuel money; the Rule of Law 
Defense Fund, which was the laundering operation for bringing money to 
the Republican Attorneys General Association.
  If you were one of these big companies and if you could drop money 
into the Rule of Law Defense Fund, it would wash your identity clean of 
the money, and then the money could go over to the Republican Attorneys 
General Association as if it were a gift from the Rule of Law Defense 
Fund, when all they did was launder the identity off of the fossil fuel 
donor. Then you had, of course, the Republican Attorneys General 
Association, which was so loaded up with fossil fuel interests that 
they had special, secret, private meetings with these big donors at 
their retreats.

[[Page 2843]]

It was right on the secret agenda of the retreats, which we have been 
able to get our hands on.
  I add that to the equation because when the Senator from Oregon talks 
about a complex matrix of fossil fuel interests, he is not kidding. 
This is a very, very significant matrix of fossil fuel interests, and 
that is what Scott Pruitt has been serving, not the public and not his 
duties.
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from Rhode Island put up the web. Maybe 
``web'' is a better word than ``matrix'' because it looks like a giant 
spiderweb. What is being ensnared in this spiderweb, in this web of 
denial, in this ``denial beast'' as you have labeled it, is the truth.
  What the complex group of organizations does is to put out 
information from every possible direction. They hold conferences; they 
hold workshops; they write letters to the editor; they write opinion 
editorials in our newspapers; they organize research--all so that it 
can reverberate in a way that an ordinary citizen hears from here and 
here and here the same lie--the lie that it is not clear whether carbon 
dioxide from burning fossil fuels is damaging our environment.
  Here is the truth: We know very clearly the damage that is being done 
by burning fossil fuels, by burning natural gas, by burning coal, by 
burning oil, but there is so much money, so much profit, that they can 
build this enormous web of organizations to mislead the public, and 
that is half of it.
  Then there is the second chart my colleague put up, which lays out 
these funds of dark money. This is really about the corruption of our 
democratic Republic. Maybe if I come over here, this will be in the 
same frame of reference. These funds flow through in a fashion that 
they contaminate the debate among citizens in election after election 
after election. This dark money is corrupting the very soul of our 
democracy--our elections.
  Here is the interesting connection. Right now, a judge has ruled and 
said: ``There was an abject failure to provide prompt and reasonable 
access to documents requested.'' Our nominee is in control of these 
emails, his own emails. He has been stopping access to them because he 
has that power as attorney general of Oklahoma because he is afraid of 
the information the public will learn from his communications.
  The lines on the chart that my colleague from Rhode Island put up 
showed his connection to fund after fund after fund. In his 
communications with these groups, which may possibly be among the 
communications that the judge has just said will be released to the 
public, wouldn't it be interesting to find out what he said related to 
those organizations? Was he serving the public, or was he serving the 
fossil fuel industry?
  This information will be available next Tuesday, but the majority 
leader has said, essentially, that he is willing to deny Americans the 
right to know the truth about Scott Pruitt. He is willing to deny 
Americans the right to know the truth about these emails. He is willing 
to deny Americans the right to know about these leaks between 
organizations and whether Scott Pruitt served the public trust or 
served the fossil fuel industry, served the Koch brothers.
  It is an offense to this body and it is an offense to the American 
citizens' right to know that we might be voting tomorrow without 
getting the information necessary to make a considered judgment on this 
nominee.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Will the Senator from Oregon yield to a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes.
  Mr. SCHATZ. I thank the Senator from Oregon.
  I have been thinking a lot about the job of the EPA Administrator. It 
is one of those things we have taken for granted over many, many years, 
that we are going to get someone who is going to sort of play it right 
down the middle of the fairway, but now we are forced to sort of 
challenge all of our assumptions with respect to what we can expect in 
an EPA Administrator.
  When I think about the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, they are very 
important, especially for young people who are so passionate about the 
environment, as they may not know what life was like and what the 
environment was like before the Clean Water Act. The majority of 
waterways in the United States were not swimmable. You had rivers 
catching on fire.
  I went to college in Southern California in, I guess, 1990 through 
1994, and the success of the Clean Air Act is incredible. I mean, L.A. 
still has its smog, but because of CAFE standards, because of the Clean 
Air Act, because of other environmental regulations, you don't have 
nearly the air quality problems that you had even 20, 25 years ago, and 
this is a nationwide success story.
  Kids had to stay home from school because of air pollution. I know 
everybody understands that is happening in Shanghai and in Beijing, 
parts of Africa, parts of the developing world, parts of the 
industrializing world. But 10, 20 years ago, you would have smog 
alerts, and kids would have to stay home from school in the United 
States of America. You had kids who couldn't function because of their 
asthma. So what is at stake is not a bird or a butterfly.
  I got my start in politics because of conservation issues. I am 
interested in forest ecology and reef ecology, but I understand a lot 
of people live a different life than that, and they are not in a 
position to be worrying about birds and butterflies. But everybody 
worries about clean air and clean water.
  So I was wondering if the Senator from Oregon could talk a little bit 
about the foundation of this debate. I saw the Senator from Rhode 
Island do this incredible exposition--as I have seen before, and nobody 
is better at this--in describing the forces behind what is going on. 
But I would like to talk about the premise that undergirds this debate, 
which is not about fossil fuel companies versus conservationists; it is 
about clean air versus dirty air, and it is about clean water versus 
dirty water.
  I know that is something that the Senator from Oregon is very 
passionate about, and I wonder if he might comment on the basic idea of 
a clean and healthy environment and the bipartisan consensus that we 
ought to have related to that.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the questions from my 
colleague from Hawaii. As we stand here tonight, I think about how 
Hawaii is a State completely surrounded by water. It is very vulnerable 
to changes in the environment, very vulnerable to the introduction of 
invasive species, very vulnerable to changes in the acidity of the 
ocean, which is affected by carbon dioxide, and very vulnerable to the 
rising sea level.
  I appreciate so much that as a citizen of Hawaii as well as now a 
leader for the voice of the State here in this Chamber, he keeps going 
back to his fundamentals of concern for our broader environment.
  As you were asking this question, I was thinking about President 
Richard Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. He 
recognized that we all share ``a profound commitment to the rescue of 
our natural environment and the preservation of the Earth as a place 
both habitable by and hospitable to man.''
  Well, that is a pretty clear statement that things were in trouble 
and we needed to operate a rescue. I think about that in the context of 
growing up in Oregon and, as I grew up, through my church and through 
my Boy Scout troop, we would go and do different projects to try to 
clean up messes that had been left. One of those was that we had a 
problem with these plastic six-pack rings that held all of the six cans 
together and the birds that were on the Pacific Flyway would stick 
their head through one of these plastic rings that would have held the 
top of a soda can, and they wouldn't be able to get it off, and they 
would end up choking or dying. Also, these plastic rings were being 
digested by the animals, and it was affecting them.
  Then we had these flip-tops where you would open a can of soda by 
pulling off a triangular piece of metal and it would be a little hook 
that would sit on the beach or the pathway, and then somebody would 
step on it and cut their foot open or an animal would eat

[[Page 2844]]

it, and this nice little curved object would tear up their throat and 
kill them. Those issues of: Why? Why do we have to operate with these 
consumer products in the fashion that are creating these specific 
hazards? The answer was: We didn't.
  There was a bill in the Oregon legislature, and we eliminated the 
plastic rings that birds were sticking their heads through. And then we 
had a proposal--and I can't really recall if was done by initiative or 
by the legislature--to eliminate these flip-tops. The industry said: 
You cannot eliminate these flip-tops. People will not be able to open 
their cans of soda. It will be a terrible tragedy for America. There is 
no solution. You cannot touch this. Adamantly, they said: Nothing can 
be done. It is an impossible problem to solve.
  But we passed the law. We adopted that law, either by initiative or 
by the legislature, and a magical thing occurred. Within what seemed 
like a few days--maybe it was a few weeks--those peel-off flip-tops 
disappeared and were replaced by a different mechanism that opens that 
same triangle, but stays attached to the can.
  Well, I have seen this time and again where there is a proposal where 
we need to improve our habits as humans, and as we are engaged in 
making our consumer products more complimentary to the environment, we 
are told: It can't be done. It will be too expensive. It will be too 
difficult. And then, when we say no, it can be done, and we pass a law, 
the solutions appear. And everyone says: Oh, that works just fine.
  So now we don't have those plastic rings. Now we don't have those 
peel-off flip-tops that sit on the ground.
  But we would go out in my Scout troop or in my church group and we 
would clean up and we would think that this would be so unnecessary to 
have these, and I saw the changes that occurred.
  Then people said: What about all of these aluminum cans and glass 
bottles that are sitting all around here on the pathways around our 
State. Oregon had a strong ethic for the environment, but we were 
littered by all of these aluminum cans and steel cans back then, and 
also by glass bottles and broken glass bottles. If you have cleaned up 
a broken glass bottle, you know that it is real a pain to do that. And 
if you step on the shards from a glass bottle, you regret that somebody 
else shattered it and left it on the ground.
  So we said: Why can't we change that? So the legislature put forward 
the idea and said: Let's just put a deposit on this so when you turn it 
in, you get 5 cents back. So we had the first bottle bill in the 
Nation, and that bottle bill got a huge percentage of those cans and 
those bottles returned that were left out in the public. And if 
somebody did leave something in the public space, somebody else would 
come along and say: There is a nickel; I will grab it and return it.
  I must say that the amount of deposits in Oregon hasn't kept pace 
with inflation. When my kids were small, I would say: There is a 
bottle; grab it. There's a nickel. And they would say: It is just a 
nickel, Dad. A nickel isn't what it was three or four decades ago. But 
nonetheless, it still was an innovation that served as well.
  About that same time, Oregon was worried about the developments of 
its beaches because we had a huge public trust with the beaches. The 
beaches belonged to all the people in the State, but the law was a 
little bit vague in this regard. But there was a provision that said 
that essentially public byways would remain public byways, and those 
beaches were established then by law in Oregon as belonging to all of 
the people of the State, and that access would be available to all of 
the people in the State. So nobody could take a piece of beach and say: 
This is mine. It belonged to everyone. So we gained our public beaches 
during that time period.
  Then, someone else said: Well, look, we are seeing what is happening 
with congestion in some other States. And, with apologies to my fellow 
Senators from California, a lot of Oregonians turned to California and 
said: We are seeing a lot of sprawl, we are seeing a lot of congestion, 
and maybe we can do something about that and change the way that 
development occurs.
  So under the governorship of Tom McCall, who, by the way, was a 
Republican and who, like Richard Nixon, believed in the environment--it 
was Richard Nixon who was President when we did the Clean Water Act and 
the Clean Air Act, and we established the EPA, and it was the 
Republican Tom McCall who preserved the beach bill and the bottle bill 
and this land use planning bill that said: Let's put a boundary around 
each town and city, and you will not be able to build outside of that 
boundary so that we don't have sprawl. And some said: Well, we want to 
still have the right to build anything. So a compromise was struck. And 
it was that the tax rate outside of those boundaries would be much 
lower. So, with that, the farmers said: That is a sweet deal, we will 
take that. And the forest industry said: We will take that. Meanwhile, 
it meant that our city started to develop more densely with intense 
services, and we avoided the sprawl that had been experienced 
elsewhere.
  I mention each of these issues--the bottle bill, the beach bill, the 
land use bill, the fact that we got rid of the flip-tops--because these 
were strategies to make us be able to operate in a more sustainable 
fashion, in accordance with the vision that Richard Nixon laid out when 
he created the Environmental Protection Agency.
  Let me read that one more time. He said that we all share ``a 
profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment and the 
preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable 
to man.''
  Mr. SCHATZ. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. He will.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Through the Chair, I would just like to ask the Senator a 
question. It strikes me that Governor McCall, President Nixon, I am 
thinking of Governor Schwarzenegger, I am thinking of Susan Collins, 
although I am almost sheepish to continue to single her out; it may not 
always be helpful to her to be singled out as the lone pro-climate 
person on the Republican side of the fence on this issue--but it 
strikes me that your beginning as an environmentalist was not based on 
being liberal or progressive, but your community's values, your 
family's values, your church's values, your Scout troop's values.
  We had a really interesting lunch today with a preacher from North 
Carolina talking about framing political issues as moral issues. It 
really touched me because I am telling you, it breaks my heart to 
think--I mean, look, for some of these arguments about the size and the 
scope of the government, we just have different views on what the right 
size and scope and role of the Federal Government is. Some of these 
questions about geopolitics--tough stuff. You try to get it right. You 
try to have a coherent world view. Tough stuff. If you serve in the 
Senate long enough, you are going to get some stuff exactly right, and 
you may be wrong a few times.
  But what really breaks my heart is to see the once-bipartisan 
consensus, which was based on common sense and morality that we just 
don't pollute our oceans, our streams, our aquifers, the air we 
breathe; that we try to preserve our environment for each other and for 
posterity; and a basic understanding that people who own businesses--
especially once those businesses are incorporated and especially if 
those businesses are publicly traded--have a different set of 
imperatives. It is really hard to get each individual business that is 
in the mining industry or the electricity generation industry or the 
extraction industry or the transportation industry or the manufacturing 
industry to voluntarily worry every day about clean air and clean 
water. It is kind of like not their job. They are supposed to make 
stuff. They are supposed to extract stuff. They are supposed to make 
electronics. They are supposed to make this economy work.
  So one of the ideas of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and 
the Endangered Species Act is that we have an obligation to creation 
itself for those of us who are religious and for those of us who are 
not. That is a

[[Page 2845]]

moral obligation, not a political obligation. We have a duty that has 
nothing to do with us being Democrats, and that duty doesn't stop 
because they decided to run for office as a Republican.
  I am wondering if the Senator from Oregon could comment on the sort 
of degradation of the bipartisan consensus around protecting our 
environment, which used to be a sort of 90-percent issue, a bipartisan 
issue. I am wondering how the Senator from Oregon feels about that.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate that question. It is something we have 
witnessed unfold over the last two decades. It was not that long ago 
Republicans--both parties--for example, would stand up and say: We have 
a serious threat to our planet. That threat is the temperature of the 
planet is increasing, that we are suffering the impacts of methane and 
carbon dioxide pollution, and we must address that threat, but in the 
last few years, we have seen a steady diminishment of Republican 
commitment to address that threat. What does that correspond to? It 
corresponds very precisely to the growth of dark money from the fossil 
fuel industry.
  I hate to lay out this story because it is offensive to anyone--any 
patriotic American who wants to see government of, by, and for the 
people--to hear this story about the massive corruption of our body 
politic by this dark money.
  If I go back a few years and look at a set of campaigns the last time 
I ran for office, that dark money became involved in Senate campaign 
after Senate campaign after Senate campaign after Senate campaign, and 
it very much had an impact on the composition of this body. As those 
races were won with dark money from the fossil fuel industry, the 
willingness of some individuals to stand up and speak truthfully, 
forthcomingly, and powerfully about the challenge to the environment 
diminished and diminished and diminished. That really has to change. It 
is why we have to take on this role of dark money. It is the factor 
that means there is no longer a Governor McCall--a Republican who is 
fighting for the beach fill, a Republican who is fighting for the 
bottle bill, a Republican who is fighting for the land use bill to make 
our environment work better.
  As a kid, we had rivers in Oregon you couldn't swim in, and now you 
can. Now, they are not perfect. They still show a touch of humankind on 
them, but the point pollution--the pipes full of toxic materials that 
went in the river--those are gone. What we have left primarily is 
nonpoint pollution, which is a much harder thing to tackle, but even 
that we are working to control through buffers and a variety of 
regulations to try to clean that up. We have made big improvements.
  That, to my colleague from Hawaii, I would have to say is the factor 
that has changed this body.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I will.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I draw the Senator's attention to this graphic my 
office has prepared which reflects certainly my recollection. When I 
came to the Senate, I want to say there were at least five Republican-
sponsored climate change bills floating around. Senator John Warner, a 
Republican of Virginia, had one; Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of 
Maine, had one; Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona actually 
ran for President on a strong climate change platform; Senator Lindsey 
Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, was working with Senator Kerry 
on one; Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican of Tennessee, had one.
  So there was a regular heartbeat of activity in this body on climate 
change, a bipartisan heartbeat of activity. Then, pow, came Citizens 
United 2010, and it has been flatlined since. It is the power of money 
unleashed into our politics, and nobody plays harder and nobody plays 
rougher and nobody plays meaner with the power of money than the fossil 
fuel industry that Scott Pruitt serves.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate the Senator's chart because I think it 
demonstrates, in a much more precise way, what I was describing, the 
corrupting role of dark money. Here, the Senate has illustrated how 
that money was really unleashed by the Citizens United decision and how 
the impact has been dramatic, just squelching the ability of my 
Republican colleagues to share this effort to create a sustainable 
planet.
  I think, when we are asking for these emails to be reviewed before we 
vote, we are asking the question: Does Scott Pruitt share the mission 
that Richard Nixon stated when we created the Environmental Protection 
Agency? If you are going to head the Agency, do you share the mission? 
We want to know whether Scott Pruitt has, in Richard Nixon's words, ``a 
profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment.'' We want 
to know whether Scott Pruitt has a profound commitment to the 
preservation of the Earth as a place habitable to mankind. We want to 
know whether he has a commitment to the preservation of the Earth as 
hospitable to mankind.
  Henry David Thoreau kind of summed it up like this: What use is a 
house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on? That is a good 
question. It is a commitment to the fact that where we live is just not 
the house, the structure of our bedroom and our kitchen and dining 
room, where we live is on this beautiful blue-green planet. That is our 
home, and we must care for it just as we do the structure of our house.
  When I ask this question: Is Scott Pruitt committed to the mission of 
rescuing our natural environment, I think there will be answers to that 
in these emails. That is why we should see these emails, as the judge 
has said that we should see those emails. He said there was an abject 
failure to provide prompt and reasonable access. By whom? The person 
who blocked it was the attorney general of Oklahoma, who is the nominee 
whose record we are examining--the attorney general of Oklahoma. The 
reason this body hasn't had these emails, the reason the American 
public has not been able to answer the question: Are you committed to 
the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency, is because Scott 
Pruitt prevented us from being able to answer that question.
  He has been quite clear in other circumstances which amplify our 
concerns. On the Agency he has been nominated to lead, he describes 
himself as a ``leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda.'' 
Just with those words, we sense a certain hostility to the work the EPA 
does to try to clean up the air, clean up the water, and hold polluters 
accountable. Activists. Isn't it a good thing to fulfill the mission 
you are charged with doing? It is not a pejorative. It is an important 
commitment to work hard to fulfill the responsibilities of the office.
  That is one piece of evidence, but here is another. Devon Energy sent 
a letter to Scott Pruitt and said: Would you please make this the 
position of your office and address it to the Environmental Protection 
Agency, to the Honorable Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA.
  Here is the letter as it was sent to Scott Pruitt by Devon Energy, 
saying: Won't you take our position as your position. Here is the 
letter that was sent on. This is the first page. There was a longer 
amount to it. As we can see, these paragraphs in yellow were lifted 100 
percent over here into the letter. There was one sentence that was 
dropped out in the course of this lengthy letter. I think it is less 
than 5 percent of the letter was dropped out. Essentially, he took 
their letter and printed it on his stationery as the position of the 
attorney general on behalf of the people of the State of Oklahoma.
  So I asked him in the hearing whether he felt he was representing 
Devon Energy and making his office an extension of this corporation or 
whether he was serving the people of the State. He had earlier said he 
would like to hear from everyone and get all sides of something. He 
said: Well, I consider, in printing Devon's letter as Oklahoma's 
attorney general's letter, simply advocating for an industry that is 
important to Oklahoma--so making the oil position the position of the 
attorney general's office.
  I said: Well, earlier you stated that you liked to hear the various 
sides of

[[Page 2846]]

an issue and consider the input. Whom else did you talk to about this 
issue before you simply took the position of the oil company?
  The answer was: No one.
  So we can only conclude that, at least in this one instance, the 
nominee before us didn't look out to the people he was representing as 
attorney general. He didn't look after the body of law, the body of 
opinion, the body of effects. He didn't consult with anyone, except one 
organization--Devon Energy.
  I must say, this is evidence, at this moment, of not serving the 
people, as an officer of the people is committed to do, but serving a 
company. So is this an anomaly or is this essentially the way he 
operated day in and day out? The answer is in the emails that we do not 
have. That is why it is a travesty if we vote tomorrow without getting 
those emails next Tuesday and enabling the public to examine them.
  We normally have 30 hours of debate postcloture after we officially 
close debate. We don't quite close it but say there is another 30 hours 
of debate. That is what we are in right now, and that is why we are 
here tonight. Wouldn't it make sense to suspend this debate until after 
the citizens of the United States of America have a chance to pour 
through those emails and know the answer? Is this what we can expect; 
that we will have an Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
Agency who is serving Devon Energy and the Koch brothers and this dark 
money cartel or is he going to serve the citizens of the United States 
of America? That is what we want to know the answer to.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I will.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. One of the points I think could be made here with 
respect to the emails is that the first tranche of emails--the ones the 
judge instructed be released on Tuesday--are communications with Scott 
Pruitt's donors, with Devon Energy right here, with Peabody coal--which 
I don't see on the list--and with API, the American Petroleum 
Institute, which is right here. That funding has gone into his 
political operation.
  It is worth understanding how that pays off. I don't know if we can 
see this, but this says ``confidential.'' I don't know if that is clear 
on the screen. This is the confidential agenda for a Republican 
Attorneys General Association meeting, at a nice place--the Greenbrier 
in West Virginia. It is pretty swish. Look here on the agenda: Private 
meeting with Murray Energy. There is Murray Energy, right in the energy 
donors. He is attorney general. Look at what they get--a private 
meeting with the Republican attorneys general on the confidential 
agenda. If you go to the next day, the morning meeting is an issue 
briefing on the dangerous consequences of the Clean Power Plan and 
other EPA rules, and guess who the lead panelist is--Attorney General 
Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma.
  What you have is this link between a big political donor, Murray 
Energy, and a private meeting for Murray Energy on the confidential 
agenda and a followup meeting at the same retreat on attacking the 
Clean Power Plan. And guess who a lead plaintiff with Scott Pruitt is 
in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan? Boom--Murray Energy.
  There is a little machine here that turns between money in from the 
fossil fuel industry and litigation out on behalf of the fossil fuel 
industry. These emails aren't just matters of general interest. These 
emails may provide some good connection, some good evidence into what 
exactly that little feedback loop entails, because there are plenty of 
circumstances, and, as somebody who spent years as an attorney general 
and years as the U.S. Attorney, those little feedback loops is 
sometimes called corruption.
  Depending on what those emails say, that could easily be prosecutable 
corruption. Rather than answer that question, of whether this link 
between big donors and action on cases using the badge of the State of 
Oklahoma as a shield to protect the fossil fuel interests, which were 
the donors, and talking about it in confidential meetings, in private 
meetings on confidential agendas--to me, that smells pretty high all by 
itself, before you have actually dug into it and seen what the emails 
say and gotten to the potentially really stinky part.
  The fact that this is being jammed through is not without consequence 
for the Republicans on the other side who are not being given the 
chance by their leadership to say: Hold it. Whistle. Let's give this a 
couple of weeks. Let's see if there is something beyond how bad it is 
already--that perhaps might even make this chargeable stuff--before we 
are forced to vote on this guy.
  Once again, the fact that they are being forced to vote on this guy 
in this circumstance is very, very unusual behavior. And unusual 
behavior, to me, signals powerful forces.
  I could not agree more with the Senator from Oregon about the 
importance of these emails and their potential significance. I agree 
with my friend from Hawaii that I hope there isn't anything really bad 
here, but the likelihood that there is is very strong. The dogs are 
hunting.
  Mr. MERKLEY. One of the things that I want to return to is why we are 
so concerned about this complex matrix of corruption, of dark money 
changing the outcome of campaigns, changing the makeup of the Senate, 
changing the type of rules that are adopted and the laws that are 
passed, because behind it all is a rising tide of pollution that is 
changing the chemistry of our air and changing the temperature of our 
planet.
  This is a very simple chart here, and this shows temperature and 
carbon dioxide. If we look at this carefully, you can see that the 
carbon dioxide rises and the temperature rises. This is what has 
happened. The scientists have looked back hundreds of thousands of 
years. Carbon dioxide goes down, and the temperature goes down. Carbon 
dioxide goes up, and the temperature goes up because carbon dioxide is 
essentially a blanket.
  If you increase the thickness of that blanket--that is, the density 
of the carbon dioxide--more heat is trapped on the Earth's surface. 
When we realize the age of the Earth, which is measured in billions of 
years, the time that we have been here in human civilization is pretty 
brief. And the time that we have been burning fossil fuels for energy 
is very brief--150 years--a very small blink of the eye.
  In that time, we have changed the chemistry of the air. We have 
increased the size and the weight of the blanket substantially. Prior 
to the burning of coal, for many thousands of years, the carbon dioxide 
level had varied up and down, but the top level was 280 parts per 
million. That is this blue line.
  What we see is that the carbon dioxide level has steadily climbed as 
we burn the coal, the natural gas, and the oil. As we have done that, 
the black line is going up and down. It has varied a little bit from 
year to year. It has steadily increased as well.
  There are many folks who look at this and say that is just lines on a 
chart. If you project into the future, that is just a computer model. 
It can have different assumptions, and you can tweak that computer 
model. But this is a powerful, powerful explanation of facts on the 
ground that we are seeing every day.
  Let's look at the facts on the ground. Let's set aside the computer 
models. Let's even set aside this chart showing temperature rising as 
the carbon dioxide levels rise.
  What do we see in my home State of Oregon? What we see is that we 
have warmer winters, and those warmer winters mean that the pine 
beetles don't die off in the same way they do when there is a very cold 
winter. So they come out, and they attack more trees and more trees are 
killed. That is damaging to our forests. We see that effect.
  What else do we see? We see a change in forest fires. Our forest fire 
season has grown enormously, by more than 2 months over about the last 
40 years. Two months is a big additional portion of the year with fires 
raging, and the fires have been more intense. Partly, they are more 
intense simply because the forest is different.

[[Page 2847]]

  The old-growth forests were more resistant to fire than the second-
growth forests, and that is a result of our logging practices. In 
addition, there is the dryness of the forest. The forest is more dry. 
Sometimes the wood on the floor of the forest is as dry as a kiln-dried 
two-by-four. Then we have these weather patterns that involve more 
lightning, and there are more lightning strikes that are starting 
fires. So we have drier forests.
  We have more lightning strikes. We have more dead trees, and we have 
more damage from these fires. We see a significant impact on our 
forest. How about on our farming? Farming depends on water. We have had 
three worst ever droughts in the Klamath Basin over the last decade and 
a half--three worst ever droughts. It had a huge impact on ranching in 
that basin and a huge impact on farming in that basin.
  As we see that impact, we realize that on the frontline--on the very 
frontline--in the battle with rising temperatures is rural America, 
where we have industries that depend on our natural resources, on our 
forests, on our fishing, and on our farming.
  Let's turn to our fishing for a moment. As the winters have gotten 
warmer, we have seen that in most winters--not in all but in most 
winters--the snowpack has been decreasing. What does that do? Partly, 
it affects farming because you have less water stored in the form of 
the snowpack, but it also affects the mountain streams. So you have 
warmer, smaller mountain streams for trout and for salmon.
  For those who love to fish in Oregon--and so many people do love to 
fish in Oregon; in fact, people come from many parts of the world to 
come and fish in Oregon--you now have streams that are less hospitable 
for that purpose.
  Let's think about what is happening on the coast of Oregon. On the 
coast, we are a Pacific Rim State. We have the vast Pacific Ocean. 
Ponder this question. Is it possible that you could burn so much coal 
and so much oil and so much natural gas in 150 years that you could put 
so much carbon dioxide into the air, that the ocean could absorb a good 
share of that, and you could change the chemistry of the ocean?
  I have to tell you this. Apologies to my colleague from Hawaii. This 
is the most beautiful coastline on the planet. You have these 
incredible mountains dashing into the ocean. You have these gorgeous 
Pacific waters. You have all kinds of wildlife, all kinds of fishing 
industry. The Oregon coast is one of the most spectacular places in the 
world. I must say that, in fairness, I have really enjoyed seeing the 
Hawaii coastline as well. It is different. It is beautiful and rugged 
in a different way, but spectacular.
  There you are on the coast of Oregon, and you are looking out from 
those mountains that come crashing into the sea. We have capes--one 
cape after another. The cape is a big projection of land. You can stand 
on top of those capes, and you can see out to the horizon of the ocean. 
You can't see any land. You realize you can only see about 20 miles 
with the curvature of the Earth, but you know that the ocean goes on 
and on, far more than a thousand miles. And you say: That is a lot of 
water. That is an incredible amount of water on the planet Earth. It 
surely can't be possible that we have changed the basic chemistry of 
the ocean through the burning of carbon dioxide.
  Then you talk to the marine biologists who measure what makes up the 
Pacific Ocean, and they tell you: You know what, the burning of coal 
and oil and natural gas is changing our ocean in a way that is making 
it less hospitable to life.
  Here is what they are talking about. The ocean through wave action 
absorbs that carbon dioxide that we have been putting into the Earth. 
In fact, the carbon dioxide level in the air would be much, much higher 
if it weren't for the oceans pulling a good deal of it out. And then, 
in the water of the ocean, the carbon dioxide becomes carbonic acid.
  When you hear the word ``acid,'' you say: Well, that doesn't sound 
very good. And you are right. That acid, then, has an impact on the 
ability of marine organisms to create shells. One specific example of 
this are the oysters on the Oregon coast. The oysters, as little 
babies, start to pull molecules out of the water and form shells. If 
the water is more acidic, it is much more difficult for them to do 
that, and the result is they die. They put all their energy into that 
effort. They can't do it. So they die.
  In about 2008--the year I was running for office--we had this big 
die-off of baby oysters in the hatchery on the Oregon coast. It was a 
big scientific puzzle: What is causing this? What is the virus or the 
bacterium that is causing this?
  The scientists got together, and with a lot of help from Oregon State 
University, the industry got together and they studied this, and they 
couldn't find that there was a virus causing this action. They started 
looking for a bacterium. Well, they looked. They didn't find that 
either.
  What else could it be? It has to be one disease agent or another. It 
turned out that it wasn't a disease agent. It was the increasing 
acidity of the Pacific Ocean.
  Now, this morning, the owner of that hatchery happened to be coming 
through DC and came to my ``Good Morning Oregon'' reception. I hold 
this every Thursday morning that I am here. People can show up. We have 
a little bit of good Oregon coffee and a warm chance to reacquaint 
ourselves with old friends and to hear what folks who are visiting are 
thinking. He said to me this morning: Buffering is now continuous.
  What did he mean by that? What he meant was, when they discovered it 
was the acidity that was killing the baby oysters, they had to start 
taking this seawater--they have a big pipe that pulls seawater up into 
the oyster hatchery, and they have another pipe that recirculates it 
back into the ocean. They had to start artificially reducing the 
acidity of the seawater so the baby oysters could thrive. What he said 
this morning is: We now have to buffer continuously. The condition has 
become so bad, it is bad on any given day. So that is where we are.
  If the acidity of the ocean has changed from the burning of coal and 
oil and natural gas, isn't it time for us to wake up and pay attention? 
Isn't it time for us, as the stewards of the environment here in terms 
of making laws, to be paying attention? Shouldn't we be thinking again 
about those words that President Richard Nixon said when he created the 
Environmental Protection Agency in 1970; that we all ``share a profound 
commitment to the rescue of our natural environment.''
  How are we going to rescue our natural environment from the harm of 
burning fossil fuels if we keep burning fossil fuels? That is the 
question before us, and the answer is that we can't. We have to stop.
  We have to, in a modest period of time, a rather short period of 
time--really, in the course of human civilization, just a microsecond 
of time--we have to move from burning fossil fuels to basing our 
economy on energy from clean and renewable sources. We have to do this 
very conscientiously. We have to do it through grassroots action. We 
have to do it through a framework that we create here at the national 
level. Both are powerful. Let's do both.
  In the middle of that is the Environmental Protection Agency. That is 
why it is so important that we have a Director of the EPA who is 
committed to the vision of rescuing our natural environment, and that 
is why we need to have access to these thousands of emails before we 
vote in the U.S. Senate.
  I think that as we consider this, we need to ponder that the 
conditions we see in Oregon--that are derived from global warming, 
increasing temperatures--are not simply happening in my State. I used 
those examples because I come from Oregon. I represent Oregon. You can 
see these things right where I am, but you can look across our Nation, 
you can look across our planet, and see the effects everywhere.

[[Page 2848]]

  If you take the 100 largest glaciers in the world and track their 
average retreat, it is dramatic. There are those, by the way, who say 
if you want to see a glacier at Glacier National Park, you better go 
soon because a number of glaciers in Glacier National Park have 
retreated substantially.
  You can go to other parts of the country and see other impacts. For 
example, if you go to the Northeast, you have the challenge--just like 
the pine needles aren't being killed in the winter, the ticks aren't 
being killed, and the ticks are infesting the moose, and the moose are 
dying because you have these big clumps of ticks sucking the blood from 
the adults and from the babies. The list goes on.
  Our colleague from Maine says: We are concerned about our lobsters. 
Our lobsters are migrating up the coast to find a temperature of water 
that used to be in Maine, and now they are moving north toward Canada.
  You can talk to those who track insects, like certain types of 
mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus, and their range is spreading. 
There is an insect called a sandfly that thrives in Central America, 
that is starting to show up in the United States of America because the 
temperature is changing, and that sandfly carries a disease called 
leishmania. This disease basically is extraordinarily difficult to 
cure, and it is a single-cell parasite. When you get bit by a sandfly, 
you get an enormous number, if it is an infected sandfly, of these 
parasites that start eating a hole either in your organs or in your 
skin--very difficult to cure.
  As I describe this, I am just touching the surface. I haven't talked 
about the Great Barrier Reef, much of which has died over the last 
couple of years off Australia, and the list goes on and on.
  So to close, we need a Director of the Environmental Protection 
Agency who has that profound commitment to the rescue of our natural 
environment, and the preservation of the Earth as a place habitable by 
and hospitable to humankind. That is why we need the emails, and that 
is why this vote should be delayed until they have been examined fully 
by the public.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, very good to see you. I want to again, as 
I stated in the past, thank the staff. We are obviously pushing late 
into the night, and there are unsung heroes who are here in the U.S. 
Senate working in a nonpartisan way, keeping the Senate going. I want 
to thank them all for being here tonight. Definitely, the folks who are 
typing with their fingers are heroic. They have muscles in them. Thank 
you very much for your work. Of course, I want to just highlight the 
pages and thank them for yet another late night, when they still have 
calculus homework, I am sure, to work on.
  Mr. President, I am honored to be able to join my colleagues, three 
of whom themselves are some of the great voices, in my opinion, in the 
United States on issues of the environment, issues of protecting the 
health and safety of our communities: Senators Merkley, Whitehouse, and 
Schatz. I am grateful to be able to stand with them, joining them in a 
chorus of conviction about our opposition to the nomination of Scott 
Pruitt to serve as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
Agency.
  The EPA is a critical Federal Agency. It was established through an 
Executive order by President Nixon and charged with the protection of 
human health and the protection of the environment. Given the pressing 
health issues, environmental challenges we face in our Nation, and 
frankly the growing environmental challenges around our planet today, 
we should make sure we are confirming an Administrator who has a 
conviction for the protection of the health and safety of people; that 
he or she prioritizes the well-being of Americans and is focused 
tirelessly, exhaustively, on making sure the mission of the Agency is 
made real, that other factors, conflicts, wealth of industries--that 
their No. 1 concern is not all of those things but is really the health 
and safety of people, of Americans, because we know what it means when 
the health or safety of Americans is undermined.
  This idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is 
completely compromised if cancer rates are going up because of toxic 
dumps or superfunds or asthma rates are epidemic because of toxins in 
the air.
  We need a person who is in charge of making sure we are not 
prioritizing polluters or industries; that we are prioritizing people 
first and their safety. This is not just a moral calling of this 
Agency, but it is actually a practical one too. It is an economic one, 
too, because the cost to society of pollution, we already know, is 
extraordinarily high.
  I see this in the community where I live. I am a proud resident of 
Newark, NJ, but I see a polluted river, the Passaic River, that has 
caused health issues, that has taken away sports and recreation, 
actually taken away a source of bounty of fish and clams and other 
shellfish. In addition to that, now it is costing taxpayers hundreds of 
millions of dollars to clean up the waste and mess that was made by 
corporations that were allowed to get away with that polluting. That is 
the common sense of this.
  Not only is it an issue of justice--something our country stands for, 
this ideal of justice--not only is it compromising life and liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness, but it also ultimately costs us so much more 
not to be vigilant in the protection of our environment. It is actually 
stealing, as we have seen all across this country--stealing from future 
generations. As you pollute now, you are stealing from future 
generations and calling it profit.
  So this is what I see as a person who is in charge of this Agency, 
someone who is putting health, common sense, pragmatism before the 
short-term avarice that often has undermined the great bounty of this 
Nation.
  In this particular case, in this moment in time, with this Agency 
started by a Republican, we now have a President who is not only 
putting someone up who is singularly unqualified--and as a person who 
worked with EPA Administrators, Republican and Democratic, we had a 
great Republican Governor from New Jersey who was the head of the EPA. 
Republicans and Democrats, if you compare this person, it is my 
conviction that he is singularly unqualified to lead the Environmental 
Protection Agency at this moment. That is Scott Pruitt.
  I do not believe Scott Pruitt will lead this Agency in a way that 
upholds this critical mission in our country. Again, I don't care if 
you are in a so-called red State or so-called blue State, I don't care 
what your background is, your religion, your race, if you are living in 
an environment that is toxic--the air, the water--it is undermining 
your ability to enjoy the liberty and the freedom and justice of our 
country.
  So if you look at this individual, Scott Pruitt, if you look at his 
track record, you will see that his actual work has undermined the 
mission of the Agency that he is now nominated to lead.
  At his confirmation hearing, Scott Pruitt stated, as attorney general 
for the State of Oklahoma, he was responsible for protecting the 
welfare of Oklahoma citizens. This was his statement. Yet during his 6 
years as attorney general, Scott Pruitt spent his time doing the 
bidding of the polluters, and filing or joining 14 lawsuits against the 
EPA's effort to clean up the air and water of a State, challenging 
water and clean air rules.
  On top of this, on top of his track record, not for doing things to 
improve the quality of the air and water but doing things consistently 
to fight the EPA--on top of this, on one of the largest issues going on 
with our planet right now, Mr. Pruitt says clearly that he denies the 
science and the reality of climate change.
  So many in his own community who have come to this building to give 
their voice and their facts believe this person being nominated has a 
nonexistent record in Oklahoma when it comes to protecting the 
environment and that he actually aided and abetted many of the people 
who were doing some of the worst harm to the water and to the air.

[[Page 2849]]

  Mr. Pruitt seems to say this is a philosophical thing; that he is a 
Federalist. What amazed me, as I dealt with Mr. Pruitt, engaged with 
him during the hearings, is it exposed the fact that he not only tried 
to get the Federal Government to stop acting to clean up the air and 
water and constrain the avaristic polluting of these industries, but he 
actually worked to make sure the State government didn't have the power 
to do it as well, as I will show momentarily.
  But here is somebody who is not into philosophy. The driving force is 
his picking polluters over people. Mr. Pruitt also has serious 
conflicts of interest. What is amazing to me is that he has stonewalled 
the Senate, claiming to us that all of the emails from his agency that 
should be open--listen, we went through a whole Presidential campaign 
with all of this talk about email. How ironic is it that we are now 
putting someone up for EPA Administrator who suddenly is not allowing 
open public record requests to view his emails.
  This is hiding, as Senator Whitehouse has gone through--not allowing 
the public to see what is their right to see--the emails and 
communications he has had with polluting industries, as well as other 
organizations plowing money into his campaign and others. Not only has 
he denied us access to that, but he has used lies that this could not 
be produced.
  Well, we have just had a judge in Oklahoma, contrary to what he said, 
force the viewing of these emails. This is really important. Here is a 
judge who literally calls his failure to release the emails an abject 
failure, that not releasing these emails in accordance to the public 
information laws of the State--the judge called it an ``abject 
failure'' to not produce this information and called it ``unreasonable 
under the law''; those are the quotes--and ordered him to release these 
thousands of emails, to release the first tranche on Tuesday.
  These are records pertaining to communications with Devon Energy, 
Peabody Coal, and other organizations. These should be released on 
Tuesday. We are going to see a lot in these emails.
  Then he was ordered to release another tranche to organizations like 
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council that supports a 
tremendous amount of partisan policy, the State Policy Network, and 
other organizations. Those will be released in 10 days.
  By the way, the requests for those go back to April 27, 2016. So one 
thing I have to say that I object to--and actually I am shocked and 
appalled that, suddenly, when you have a judge now forcing the release 
of these emails, which are going to give us transparency, which are 
going to answer the questions many of us have been asking about the 
conflicts he might have and how he used or potentially abused his power 
working in collusion with private industry, we can now see all of this 
plainly. But suddenly, now, this vote on Mr. Pruitt has been scheduled 
for tomorrow. Why not wait to let the Senators who have been asking for 
these emails for months--now that we are finally getting them, why are 
we now rushing a vote before we get to analyze his record?
  So for these reasons--his lack of qualifications, his demonstration 
of working against the mission of the Agency, his denial of something 
as important and significant and planetarily consequential as climate 
change, his clear demonstration of his work on behalf of polluting 
industries, and the potential for serious conflicts of interest--we 
should not only oppose him, but at the very least what we should be 
asking is to have the vote postponed until the transparency that has 
been requested by Senators is achieved.
  Any of these deficiencies individually should have us move the vote 
or vote against, but let me take some of these issues now. Let me look 
right now at the issue of climate change and his positions. The EPA is 
the most important Agency in the United States in the fight against 
climate change. Through its authority under the Clean Air Act, the EPA 
is tasked with regulating harmful air pollutants, including carbon 
dioxide.
  I do not believe that Scott Pruitt will adhere to this EPA mandate. 
It is an EPA mandate that he has shown a disregard for that he will be 
tasked with enforcing. He not only has no record of enforcing it, but 
even believing in the harm that these pollutants can cause. He has 
openly questioned the need for climate change action on numerous 
occasions. He is on the record for pondering whether climate change is 
even happening at all.
  Less than a year ago, he told a public audience the debate about 
climate change is just that, a debate. He has said that climate change 
is a religious belief and a political bumper sticker. Scott Pruitt 
appeared to walk back that language on climate denial during his 
confirmation hearing before the committee of jurisdiction, the 
Environment and Public Works Committee, last month. He claims that 
science tells us that the climate is changing, and human activity in 
some manner impacts climate change. The human ability to measure with 
precision the extent of that impact is subject to continuous debate and 
dialogue, as well it should be.
  Well, I am happy to see that he is moving. But here Mr. Pruitt now is 
taking a different tactic. He is acknowledging that our climate is 
changing, without accepting the scientific consensus that human 
activity is the primary cause. But this seemingly softer language is 
actually a damaging tactic and in many ways is just as damaging as 
outright climate denial.
  This is a hallmark of the new strategy: Hey, let's admit the climate 
is changing, but let's try to cast doubt on whether human activity is 
doing it. The language may be different, but the implication is the 
same: If we don't know how much human activity contributes to climate 
change, hey, then we don't need to do anything about the crisis.
  This reminds me of Big Tobacco. There were these big tobacco 
scientists who made their living insisting that the link between 
cigarettes and lung cancer was uncertain. To cast doubt on it was their 
strategy--that link between lung cancer and smoking. This is a strategy 
we have seen before, again and again and again. Even though there is a 
consensus of science about smoking--or in the case of climate change--
cast doubt, cast doubt. That is what Scott Pruitt does; he is a 
merchant of doubt when it comes to climate change.
  He is attempting to sow uncertainty where there is, in fact, 
considerable certainty. As a result, he is deliberately undermining and 
misrepresenting the reality of the case. This is the person we want to 
put--who is intended by the President to be put at the head of the 
Environmental Protection Agency, someone who is a merchant of doubt.
  Well, let me just go through the climate change evidence. Let's be 
clear about the facts. There are extraordinary indicators to provide 
strong evidence not just for climate change but for rapid, human-caused 
climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide now is higher than at any 
point in recorded history; 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have 
occurred since 2001; the pace of global sea level rise has doubled in 
the last decade; surface ocean acidity has increased by 30 percent 
since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
  Those are dramatic changes in what is happening to our oceans. The 
evidence of this is global, from the bleaching of reefs to the killing 
of the biomass, to the extinction of species.
  Arctic sea ice is declining by over 13 percent per decade. Just 
yesterday, scientists published a large research synthesis that has 
detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around 
the world, a long-predicted result of climate change that is expected 
to have severe consequences for the marine ecosystem and fisheries.
  Some 97 percent of the actively published climate scientists agree 
that these climate change trends--I would say crises--are extremely 
likely due to human activity. Scientists this month released an 
estimate that human activity is causing the climate to change 170

[[Page 2850]]

times faster than natural forces alone would cause.
  I just sat with an incredible author who wrote ``The Sixth 
Extinction,'' a book that documents the rapidity with which we are now 
in a period of global climatic extinction, with species disappearing 
from the planet Earth at a speed that she compared, in the larger 
perspective of time, to the impact of a massive asteroid that was one 
of the major extinction periods. This is happening rapidly, like no 
period before in history, except that of massive climactic events like 
the asteroid hitting Earth. This is a crisis. The crisis is already 
being felt in terms of human impacts. Right now, we know that, 
unabated, these climate trends will continue to have impacts, and they 
will grow more devastating for our planet, especially for our children 
and our grandchildren.
  By 2045, some east coast cities could flood three times a week. Scott 
Pruitt's home State may not have to worry about this, but New Jersey, a 
coastal State--we now have everyone from people in the military to 
businesses, to leaders in government, all realizing that this is going 
to have a serious effect on our State and we have to start preparing 
now to deal with that crisis.
  Weather patterns are going to become more erratic. Hurricanes and 
other major storms in the North Atlantic will become stronger and more 
intense. Drought and heat waves will increase in parts of Arizona, 
California, Texas, and, yes, even Oklahoma could exceed 100 degrees for 
over 120 days a year. The U.S. crop yields will drop significantly. 
Estimates suggest that under a business-as-usual scenario, by 2100, 
wheat yields could drop 20 percent, maize by 40 percent, soybeans 40 
percent, causing global spikes in food prices.
  The rising seas, with more intense storms and worsening drought, 
could create climate refugees. In fact, we are seeing climate refugees 
already form small island states. The United States is already facing 
the reality, with many of these people from around the globe, that 
several communities in low-lying coastal areas in Alaska and Louisiana 
are in the process of relocating to higher ground. It is happening 
right now, where you are seeing evacuations from coastal areas that are 
no longer habitable.
  Regarding climate refugees, I would like to quote Pope Francis. He 
said:

       Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected by the 
     phenomenon related to warming, and their means of subsistence 
     are largely dependent on natural reserves and ecosystem 
     services such as agriculture, fishing and forestry. They have 
     no other financial activities or resources which can enable 
     them to adapt to climate change or to face natural disasters. 
     Their access to social services and protection is very 
     limited.

  The Pope continues:

       There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants 
     seeking to flee from growing poverty caused by environmental 
     degradation. They are not recognized by international 
     conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they 
     have left behind, without enjoying the legal protection 
     whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to their 
     suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our 
     world.

  All of this--and perhaps lastly--it is this global insecurity that 
will grow. Major climate events like drought and floods have clearly 
been linked to violent conflicts around the globe. Climate extremes are 
worsening tensions in some parts of the world. There is a widespread 
international scientific agreement on the scope of this problem and 
international urgency about doing something about it.
  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has unequivocally 
concluded that there is a clear human influence on the climate system. 
To keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, 
the IPCC estimates that we need to reduce emissions by 40 to 70 percent 
by 2050, compared to the 2010 levels. Warming beyond this level, 2 
degrees Celsius, is often cited as that threshold.
  Warming beyond this level will result in surface temperatures above 
anything our planet has experienced in the last 100,000 years. Given 
current emissions scenarios, keeping temperature increases below this 
2-degree threshold will be extremely challenging, but this only 
underscores the urgent need for rapid and dramatic emissions 
reductions.
  Unsurprisingly, given these numbers, there is also an international 
agreement on the need for action. We are seeing people come together 
and make strong commitments. In 2015, 195 countries adopted the first-
ever binding global climate change agreement in Paris. The national 
commitments established in the Paris Agreement would put us on a 
trajectory to limit warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius--not enough of a 
limit, but it is a start. It is a start and a remarkable moment in 
planetary cooperation.
  There is no question that given planetary cooperation, there is no 
question that given a consensus of scientists, there is no question 
that, given the factual urgencies being created by climate change, 
Scott Pruitt is on the wrong side of history in refusing to acknowledge 
global scientific and political consensus on climate change and the 
urgency that we need to act. We are potentially going to put someone 
who stands against this global consensus in charge of the EPA.
  Much of the opposition to climate action in our country is motivated 
by false narratives about economic costs--people who are selling this 
idea that somehow doing the responsible thing is going to hurt our 
economy. The idea that addressing climate change could actually make us 
less of a wealthy nation is propaganda, and it is propaganda that is 
being pushed by the people who are doing significant amounts of the 
polluting, the people whom Scott Pruitt has spent time advocating on 
behalf of.
  Last year, Mr. Pruitt parroted the argument that fighting climate 
change is bad for the economy. He parroted that on an Oklahoma radio 
station, arguing that climate action is ``hurting our ability to 
manufacture, to grow our economy, it's hurting the fossil fuel 
industry, it's an assault, and it's all done outside of the 
Constitution and the law, which makes it even more egregious.''
  That is a strong statement. Besides the fact that addressing climate 
change is very much within the law, this economic devastation narrative 
is simply patently false. Just last month, a renowned climate economist 
who had long argued that emissions reductions would damage economic 
growth actually changed his mind after running a more accurate analysis 
of carbon dioxide's impact on temperature.
  In fact, responding to climate change will help grow new parts of our 
economy. Last year, nearly half a million Americans were employed in 
whole or in part by the solar energy and wind energy industries. Wind 
energy jobs grew by 32 percent in 2016, and solar jobs grew by 25 
percent. Solar jobs, in fact, have tripled since 2010. We should be 
focusing on actively expanding our promising clean energy sector. 
Frankly, we should be racing, as the great Nation of innovation that we 
are, to lead in these areas and not let our competitors get there 
first. We should be doing the breakthroughs, making the investments, 
growing the jobs.
  Scott Pruitt is one of the last stand-offs. In fact, the GOP--the 
Republican Party--is the only major political party in the developed 
world that refuses to acknowledge that climate change poses a problem. 
All of our other allies--their right parties, their left parties; you 
name it--all the other major political parties on the planet Earth 
recognize that this is a problem, but it is unconscionable that we, 
here in America, are still pushing a narrative that is contrary to the 
global consensus and the consensus of science, that denies the reality 
of human-caused climate change and the urgent need for action.
  Recent polling says that nearly 8 out of 10 registered voters--people 
on the right and the left, especially with our millennial generation--
support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Seven out of 10 
registered voters support setting strict carbon dioxide limits on coal-
fired powerplants, a core aspect of the Clean Power Plan that Scott 
Pruitt and the Trump administration have vowed to repeal. Seven out of 
10 registered voters think the

[[Page 2851]]

United States should participate in the Paris Agreement, another 
critical moment where the planet was coming together in cooperation. 
Seven out of 10 voters agree that we should be a part of the global 
movement to cooperate on dealing with climate change.
  Nothing in Scott Pruitt's record as Oklahoma attorney general 
suggests he will uphold Americans' desire for climate action. A public 
servant who abides by the wishes of polluting industries, instead of 
the wishes of the American people, instead of the real tangible health 
challenges in their own State--someone who is standing with the 
industries and contrary to people suffering in their own State--has not 
earned the right to be our Administrator of the EPA.
  Look at his record in Oklahoma. Well, let's just start with air 
pollution. At his confirmation hearing, I asked Scott Pruitt if he knew 
how many children in his State had asthma. He did not know. So I 
informed him. According to the data published by the American Lung 
Association, more than 111,000 children in Oklahoma--more than 10 
percent of all the children in Oklahoma, so more than 1 out of every 10 
children in Oklahoma--has asthma. This is one of the highest State 
asthma rates in the Nation. This is a crisis.
  As former mayor of Newark, I know the devastating impact that asthma 
has on parents and children. This is the number one health-related 
reason why kids miss school not only in my city, not only around my 
State--it is still one of the top reasons, if not the top--but in our 
Nation.
  I have talked to parents and teachers about this crisis, about kids 
who are struggling to breathe, children rushed to emergency rooms, 
children missing school. This is literally undermining kids' ability to 
succeed in school and to get the benefits of life from academic 
success.
  In a State where more than 1 out of every 10 kids--a State where more 
than 10 percent of your children--have asthma, clean air should be an 
urgency.
  So what did Scott Pruitt do, as it relates to air pollution? Well, he 
actually took every major possible opportunity to help the polluters, 
joining with them to block the EPA from taking action to clean up the 
air and protect the children in his State.
  When I say ``joining with them,'' and that is not a hyperbolic 
exaggeration. Scott Pruitt sent a letter to the Environmental 
Protection Agency in 2011, accusing Federal regulators of grossly 
overestimating the amount of air pollution that natural gas companies 
were releasing from well sites in Oklahoma. The letter was sent to the 
EPA on Mr. Pruitt's official attorney general letterhead. So we might 
assume its contents represented the State's official stance on what was 
best for the welfare of Oklahoma families and children because, as he 
testified, his job was to represent what was best for the welfare of 
Oklahoma's families and children.
  This is what he said in his testimony here in the Senate. This is 
what he said. That was his job. So he is writing a letter, challenging 
the EPA, saying they grossly overestimated the amount of air pollution 
that natural gas companies were releasing.
  Well, the problem is that we would be wrong if we had thought that 
this was something that his office came up with. No, what Mr. Pruitt 
did was actually take a letter written by lobbyists at Devon Energy, 
one of the State's largest oil and gas companies, change maybe a few 
words--maybe three, maybe four--and, basically, took these words, took 
off their letterhead, put the same letter on his letterhead, and passed 
it along to the EPA.
  Remember, Devon Energy is one of those organizations that we want the 
emails from, back and forth between his office.
  Now, did he go out from his position and do research on air quality? 
Did he interview families with asthma? Did he test air quality? How did 
he come up with his conclusions that what the EPA was doing was wrong?
  Well, clearly he couldn't write his own letters. He just took the 
information from Devon Energy, put it on his letterhead, and sent it 
off. He was doing the bidding of one of the people, one of the 
companies that was undermining the air quality for the 1 out of 10 
children that have asthma.
  So we, as U.S. Senators, who believe in thorough vetting--we hear a 
lot about intense vetting for refugees; I am a guy who just wants a 
thorough vetting for nominees--asked for his communications, using 
public FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act. What are your 
communications with this company that seems to be writing your letters 
for you?
  What he said to us was--he stonewalled: I can't get those things to 
you.
  Well, thank God a judge in Oklahoma has now ordered him to release 
it, calling a failure to do so an abject failure.
  Well, great, we are going to see the letters to understand what kind 
of cooperation or even collusion he had with these companies, but we 
are going to see them too late because the vote is tomorrow. We are 
going to get that information a day, 2 days, a few days too late.
  So here is someone who says his job, as attorney general, was to 
represent the welfare of children and families. Here we have a State 
with a crisis in air quality, a crisis in asthma, and where the EPA is 
working to do something about air quality in the State, and he is 
coming to conclusions that we don't know if they are his or not, but we 
know there are industries that do not want to change their practices at 
all and want to continue to pollute the air.
  Whose side is Scott Pruitt on--the side of the children in his State, 
1 out of every 10 who has asthma, or of Devon Energy? And we want to 
put him in charge of the EPA, without even having a thorough 
understanding of what his relationship was with these companies.
  Well, my colleague did his own exhaustive research about the campaign 
funding he had received and more support from companies like this, and 
it creates an implication. Well, let's get to the bottom of what is 
happening. Let's see the emails before we vote. What do these say to 
these corporations?
  I asked him: He allowed polluting companies to write emails to the 
EPA on his letterhead; did he let any children with asthma or their 
parents write letters that he then just put on his letterhead--people 
who were suffering from the poor air quality?
  Later, the director of government relations at Devon Energy emailed 
Mr. Pruitt's office--this, we do know--to express gratitude to the 
attorney general for sending the letter.
  Beyond this note of thanks, there were other clear benefits of this 
type of behavior for Mr. Pruitt. Energy industry lobbyists and 
executives worked tirelessly to help Mr. Pruitt raise his profile as 
president of the Republican Attorneys General Association. As president 
of this nationwide group, Mr. Pruitt set up something called the Rule 
of Law Defense Fund, a super PAC that allowed corporations benefiting 
from the actions of Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general 
to make unlimited and anonymous donations. This super PAC raised $16 
million in essentially untraceable fundraising in 2014 alone.
  Companies were partnering with him to fight the EPA in its efforts to 
fight for cleaner air in a State with children struggling from 
widespread asthma challenges. This would be bad enough, but this in 
many ways is only the beginning of Mr. Pruitt's collaborations with air 
polluting corporations. Scott Pruitt filed two lawsuits challenging the 
EPA mercury and air toxics standards.
  So the EPA is working to clean up mercury. He filed lawsuits against 
the EPA to stop them. These were the first Federal standards to require 
powerplants to limit their emissions of such toxic air pollutants. The 
EPA's final rule set standards for known hazardous air pollutants 
emitted by coal- and oil-fired powerplants above a certain generating 
capacity.
  This rule sought to limit Americans' exposure to airborne toxics like 
mercury. Mercury in the air settles on the surfaces of water and land 
where rain washes it further into surface water. Once in the water, 
mercury is converted to a toxic chemical called

[[Page 2852]]

methylmercury, and this accumulates in increasing levels up the aquatic 
food chain. It is one of the reasons that doctors often will advise 
pregnant women not to eat certain fish because of the high mercury 
content. Why is there a high mercury content in some of those fish? 
This is the reason: mercury spewing out into our air, coming down and 
settling on land and water, getting into our waterways, and working its 
way up the aquatic chain, ultimately getting into our food.
  Humans, especially young children and pregnant women, are vulnerable 
to mercury exposure from consuming contaminated fish or shellfish. This 
is a tragedy. Over 400,000 newborns are affected by mercury pollution 
each year in the United States--400,000 of our children, the greatest 
hope for our country, 400,000 children affected by mercury pollution 
each year in the United States.
  What does mercury exposure do? It damages the brain, heart, kidneys, 
lungs, and it damages the immune system of people of all ages but, 
again, particularly vulnerable populations. It is a horrific toxin. 
This is not an argument. It is scientifically clear that the largest 
source of mercury air emissions are our power companies. It doesn't 
mean we want to shut the powerplants down; it doesn't mean we want to 
stop them. We want to take measures to remove the mercury emissions.
  So what happened in the State of Oklahoma to hundreds of thousands of 
our children? What happened in the State of Oklahoma? The man who was 
on the job--he told the U.S. Senate that his job was protecting the 
welfare of the people. What Mr. Pruitt did is attack the EPA. He said 
that they lacked the legal authority to regulate powerplant mercury 
emissions and other hazardous pollutants under the mercury and air 
toxics standards. He did not do this once; he did it twice. When the 
EPA moved under the mandate they had, he tried to stop them twice.
  He went even further than that because he apparently doesn't even 
believe that mercury is toxic to humans. In his challenge to the EPA's 
mercury rule, this is what he wrote: ``The record does not support the 
EPA's findings that mercury . . . pose[s] public health hazards.''
  Reading this was astonishing to me. This was written by someone whom 
we want to put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency? I am 
sure that even his family was told not to eat certain fish because of 
mercury. It is astonishing to me that he would say that ``the record 
does not support the EPA's findings that mercury . . . pose[s] public 
health hazards.''
  Mercury is a scientifically proven, well documented, deadly 
neurotoxin, and the person we are about to elevate to head the 
Environmental Protection Agency when he had the chance to fight to 
protect people from mercury not only fought to stop efforts to restrain 
mercury being put into the air and into our water, he went as far as to 
say: Hey, this stuff isn't so bad.
  While he was focused on attacking these mercury standards and denying 
its status as a toxic metal, the number of lakes in Oklahoma with 
mercury-related fish consumption advisories has doubled since 2010. 
Think about this. The attorney general, in charge of protecting people, 
has the Federal EPA saying: Hey, you have a problem here. Let's address 
it. The mercury levels in your lakes have doubled since 2010. The 
scientists and experts in your State are releasing advisories to your 
community that state: Don't eat the fish from Oklahoma's lakes. His 
response is to fight against efforts to clean that up in support of 
those industries, as we are finding out, that are pumping money into 
his super PAC.
  If I lived in a community and I lived next to a river that had deadly 
toxins in it--I have spent my entire professional career as a city 
councilman, as a mayor, and now here to fight to clean the Passaic 
River. I swore an oath to defend people. I am fighting for them.
  What did Pruitt do when he had a shot to be there for the people who 
were living by lakes that literally had a doubling of the advisories 
about fish consumption? What did he do? Did he stand for the people or 
the polluters? What did he do? It is clear what he did. He stood with 
the polluters.
  But there is more. Scott Pruitt filed a lawsuit challenging EPA's 
2015 national ambient air quality standards for ozone. The Clean Air 
Act required the EPA to set national ambient air quality standards for 
air pollutants considered harmful to the public health and the 
environment.
  Under this authority in 2015, the EPA strengthened the standards for 
ground-level ozone from 75 to 70 parts per billion, based on 
substantial scientific evidence about ozone levels on health. This 
updated ozone standard improved public health protections, particularly 
for children, older adults, and people who suffer from lung diseases 
like asthma. The new standard will prevent hundreds of thousands of 
asthma attacks. This is not rhetoric; this is scientifically based. The 
reductions will save hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks.
  As already stated, Oklahomans have some of the highest incidence of 
asthma in our country. But like the mercury contamination in the lakes, 
this excessive asthma rate did not stop Scott Pruitt from trying to 
block EPA from regulating harmful air pollutants under the national 
ambient air quality standards. So this is Scott Pruitt.
  The list goes on and on and on, of his attacks on the environment, of 
his doing the bidding of the polluting corporations, of literally 
taking his letterhead and taking their letters and putting them on his 
letterhead and using that, not his own research, not his own interviews 
with scientists, not his work connecting to people with asthma--which, 
unfortunately, in his State with one of the highest asthma rates isn't 
hard to find--not talking to the people who were in his State releasing 
advisories not to eat the fish because of increased mercury content. 
What he did was the bidding of the polluting industries, and he sued 
the EPA again and again and again and again and again.
  The EPA estimated in 2015 on their regional haze rule--this is the 
Agency he is about to take over--that implementing the rule would 
prevent 1,600 premature deaths, 2,200 nonfatal heart attacks, 960 
hospital admissions, and over 1 million lost schooldays and workdays. 
That is the EPA's estimate on one rule, the regional haze rule.
  Think about that. He is going to lead an Agency where the scientists 
in that Agency are going to be telling him: Hey, this rule that you 
fought against is going to save lives. What is his response going to 
be?
  Can we as Americans trust that he is going to run an Agency where he 
relies on science or is he going to run an Agency where he relies on 
polluting industries to give him advice on what he should do? If he 
relies on them, there will be 1,600 more premature deaths, 2,200 
nonfatal heart attacks, 960 more hospitalizations. We will suffer. 
People will suffer.
  Scott Pruitt also filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA cross-state air 
pollution rule. This rule tightens limits on the amount of sulfur 
dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution that powerplants in 28 States in 
the eastern United States are allowed to emit. Once in the air, this 
pollution drifts across state borders, meaning that States that had no 
role in contributing to the pollution suffer the repercussions. It is 
this type of interstate pollution that EPA is especially well 
positioned to address.
  Further solidifying his stance as a staunch opponent of climate 
action, he filed four lawsuits. He filed four lawsuits challenging the 
EPA Clean Power Plan. He also sued the EPA to challenge the Clean Air 
Act 111(b) standards for carbon dioxide emissions from new powerplants. 
And in all those lawsuits except one, Scott Pruitt joined with the 
polluting companies that were also suing the EPA.
  So amidst all this in the confirmation hearing, I asked Scott Pruitt, 
given all those lawsuits he had filed with the polluters against the 
EPA to block the EPA from reducing air pollution--he had even filed one 
lawsuit on behalf--he literally was advocating for polluting industries 
to the point where he was even using their letter on his letterhead to 
make his point. So my

[[Page 2853]]

question was, in all this fighting against the EPA, all of this, using 
their words, using their facts, not the scientists in your community, 
not the scientists telling you about the mercury in the lakes and the 
fish that you shouldn't eat and one of the highest asthma rates in the 
Nation, I asked him: Have you ever filed at least one lawsuit on behalf 
of those 111,000 children in your State with asthma? Have you filed one 
lawsuit on their behalf to try to reduce the air pollution and help 
those kids? Have you ever filed one lawsuit as attorney general of the 
State? And his answer was no.
  Had he ever tried as Oklahoma attorney general to take any action--
any action to help those children who struggle with asthma? What reason 
did Mr. Pruitt give for failing to even try? Mr. Pruitt stated that he 
lacked the statutory authority to file that type of legal action.
  Let's think about that for a minute. Again, it doesn't take a law 
degree to understand the problems with that statement. You see, Scott 
Pruitt was more aggressive than any other attorney general in our 
country's history in suing the EPA, often using completely novel 
theories in court that lost--novel theories that lost. He was trying to 
find all kinds of ways on behalf of polluting industries to stop the 
EPA and thought of using creative legal approaches for doing it. Yet, 
when it came to the children in his State, 111,000 children suffering 
from asthma, one of the highest rates in our country, could he think of 
one novel thing to do on their behalf? Did he file one lawsuit to try 
to help those children? No, he claimed he lacked the legal authority.
  What Scott Pruitt lacked was not legal authority. What I believe he 
lacked was any interest in trying to truly help those kids, to stand up 
for people against polluters. Those sick children were not powerful. 
They didn't have millions of dollars for a super PAC. They couldn't 
make campaign contributions. It seems, when it comes to their advocacy, 
that they were not important enough for him to even try.
  When Mr. Pruitt was questioned by a reporter on his practice of 
letting polluting companies write letters challenging EPA regulations, 
which he then copied onto his official attorney general letterhead and 
he then sent, this is what Scott Pruitt said. This is his defense for 
letting polluting companies write letters that he put on his letterhead 
and then sent off to the EPA, advocating for them: ``That is actually 
called representative government in my view of the world.''
  That is, simply, not an acceptable world view for the head of the 
Environmental Protection Agency. His view of representative government 
isn't any one of those 111,000 children. His idea of representative 
government isn't a family living next to a lake from where they are 
advised not to eat the fish anymore. His idea of representative 
government isn't pregnant mothers who are worried about eating fish 
that are caught in the State. His idea of representative government is 
giving voice to the polluters--to the powerful, money-laden interests--
and not to those of the people.
  If Scott Pruitt wants to be the EPA Administrator, we as Americans 
should insist that we have transparency into what he did in his work 
beforehand--what he did on air quality, which I just went through. But 
the truth of the matter is that it is the same story for water 
pollution in the State, and it is the same story for other health and 
safety issues that the EPA was doing.
  I conclude by saying that it is unfortunate that, at a time when we 
are finally going to get transparency into Scott Pruitt and what he has 
been doing as attorney general, after his stonewalling week after week, 
month after month, saying he wasn't going to release these records--by 
the way, the person in charge of enforcing Oklahoma's Freedom of 
Information Act is the attorney general. So it is kind of ironic that 
the attorney general was refusing to enforce them himself--the laws 
that public officials have to abide by in the State. It finally took a 
judge to order him to release that transparency. Now we are going to 
get these letters and see more about his connections to polluting 
companies--what kind of potential collusion went on and what 
conversations went on. Was he fundraising even from his official 
capacity? What was happening?
  Alone, that is unfortunate that we are not, at least, postponing this 
vote until we get transparency in the Senate. Our role, as spelled out 
by the Constitution, is to advise and consent the President on these 
choices, and we are about to vote on somebody on whom we don't have 
full transparency to give advice.
  The final point is that here is someone who is going to be the head 
of an agency that was started under the Nixon administration that is 
focused on protecting the health and safety of Americans, and he has 
demonstrated in no way his commitment to doing that--that he is putting 
people first. More than that, he has the ability to pull back these 
regulations that he himself has been fighting and that the scientists 
are saying will literally save lives.
  It is not just what he will do. It is what he won't do in that job 
that is so threatening and so potentially devastating to families and 
communities like the one he is coming from. I cannot support someone 
who denies climate change, someone who clearly prioritizes polluting 
companies over people, someone who has spent his career in not 
protecting folks but in fighting the EPA.
  I end where I began, with this Nation's ideals of life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. I would hope that an EPA Administrator, 
regardless of party, would understand the sanctity of those ideals and 
those aspirations. This person is clearly, clearly not someone who will 
support the common good but narrow interests to the detriment of, not 
just of his State, not just of our United States, but to the detriment 
of our children's future and of the future of the very planet.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I just want to follow up on what Senator 
Booker has been talking about.
  This is a historic nomination tonight. This reminds the country so 
much of James Watt being nominated in 1981 to be the Secretary of the 
Interior. That turned out disastrously. He had to resign. This reminds 
the Nation of the nomination of Anne Gorsuch, in 1981, as the head of 
the EPA. That ended disastrously. She had to resign.
  We are just repeating history here today as we are going through the 
very same stages of an administration--a radical rightwing, anti-
environmental administration--that is trying to dismantle environmental 
laws across our country. It did not end well back then, and this will 
not end well. Scott Pruitt, as attorney general of the State of 
Oklahoma, has not demonstrated the qualities that are going to be 
necessary in order to protect the environment of our country.
  Today, many of us recognized a day without an immigrants. Businesses 
across the country closed, students did not attend classes, and workers 
did not head to their jobs--in protest. In my own home State of 
Massachusetts, the museum at Wellesley College took down all of the 
works of art that were created and donated by immigrants. Bare walls, 
empty desks, shuttered restaurants--all of these things--show us just 
how essential, how fundamental immigrants are to our economy and to the 
very fabric of our Nation.
  Now imagine if tomorrow we recognized a day without the Environmental 
Protection Agency. Imagine that--with no Environmental Protection 
Agency; no Clean Air Act enforcement; no clean water rule enforcement; 
no one to clean up abandoned Superfund and toxic waste sites; more 
climate change; more kids with asthma; more rivers with toxins running 
through them; more families with cancer; more environmental injustice 
for communities of color because it is those communities, the most 
vulnerable communities, that will suffer the worst consequences on a 
day without the EPA.
  If Scott Pruitt has his way, it won't just be a day without the EPA. 
It could be a nation without the EPA. That is

[[Page 2854]]

what Scott Pruitt wants. That is what congressional Republicans want. 
That is what Donald Trump wants--no more clean air and water 
protections, no more pollution controls, no more environmental justice. 
That is Scott Pruitt's favorite day. That is Scott Pruitt's EPA.
  That is why we are out here tonight. We are out here tonight to begin 
this warning to the country that there is trouble brewing if Scott 
Pruitt is, in fact, confirmed as the next head of the Environmental 
Protection Agency.
  What is it that we can look forward to?
  The oil, the gas, the coal industries opposed many of the Obama 
administration's commonsense protections for our air, for our water, 
for our climate.
  One by one, Republicans in Congress are working to legislatively 
overturn many of those protections. They now have twice deployed a very 
rarely used procedural tool known as the Congressional Review Act to 
benefit the coal, the oil, the gas industries by rolling back 
environmental protections. Republicans are planning to use the 
Congressional Review Act to hand out even more giveaways to the fossil 
fuel industries in the coming weeks.
  You can pick any industry you want--coal, oil, mining, timber, 
grazing. You go through, and no matter how you spin it on the 
Republican ``Wheel of Giveaways,'' some industry gets a big giveaway. 
They are trying to decide right now what is the next one they will 
bring out here that waters down the protections that the American 
people need in each and every one of these areas. But don't question 
for a second if that is what this whole year is going to be about. Just 
take oil. There will be big tax breaks for oil coming very, very soon--
like they need it. The same thing is going to be true in area after 
area. We have our helpful tool here, the GOP ``Wheel of Giveaways,'' to 
help viewers at home keep track of which industries the Republicans are 
making the weekly winners.
  Now, by nominating Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, President Trump and 
Senate Republicans have found their new host for this great Republican 
show--the ``Wheel of Giveaways''--and that will be Scott Pruitt, 
attorney general of Oklahoma, because Scott Pruitt has already made a 
career of handing out prizes to the fossil fuel industry in our 
country.
  As attorney general of Oklahoma, he sued to block the EPA from 
restricting toxic mercury pollution from powerplants in order to 
benefit the coal industry--that is right--blocking protections from 
mercury that could affect the lungs of children in his own State and, 
ultimately, across the whole country.
  Then, as attorney general of Oklahoma, he questioned the EPA's 
estimate of air pollution from new natural gas wells in Oklahoma. By 
doing that, he took natural gas and oil, and he made sure that would, 
as well, be something that wasn't subject to the types of regulations 
that were necessary in order to protect the public health and safety.
  Then he moved on, as attorney general of Oklahoma, to push for a 
rollback of protections of our Nation's waterways to the benefit of 
corporate polluters. Corporate polluters love to use the waterways of 
our country as one big sewer. Why do you have to store that dirty 
water? Why do you have to make sure that it is just not put in some 
safe place when you can just use rivers? Just dump all of that garbage 
right in the river. Put all of that pollution right in the river. Who 
cares what impact it has upon families? Who cares what impact it has 
upon children?
  So, again, this ``Wheel of Giveaways'' is really a way to ensure that 
the polluting industries don't have to pay to clean up the messes they 
create, just pass it on to innocent families, because with Scott Pruitt 
as the new host of the Republican ``Wheel of Giveaways,'' we know who 
will always win every time, every week, during all 4 years of the Trump 
administration. It will always be the oil industry, the natural gas 
industry, the coal industry, the polluters of all stripes that 
otherwise the EPA would be regulating and protecting the public health 
and safety of our country.
  It is going to ultimately be those American families who are left to 
lose protections which for generations we have fought to put on the 
books in order to ensure that we increase life expectancy and reduce 
exposure to asthma and other diseases that otherwise, because of these 
polluting companies, are going to be visited upon hundreds of thousands 
and millions of families within our country.
  When we think about this whole issue of the environment, many times 
we say: Well, the Republicans--the coal industry, they say there is a 
War on Coal in the United States of America, an absolute war, a war out 
there to destroy the industry. However, upon closer examination, it 
turns out that it is the free market that has been working to replace 
coal with other sources of energy.
  A decade ago--here are the numbers--50 percent of all electricity in 
the United States came from coal; now it is down to 30 percent of all 
electricity in our country. What has replaced coal? Well, the free 
market has actually substituted natural gas, which has grown from a 
little over 20 percent of U.S. electrical generation a decade ago to 35 
percent of all electricity in our country right now. And coal has been 
replaced by clean energy--by wind, which has grown to 5 to 6 percent of 
our generation from almost nothing, and solar, which is up to 1 percent 
of all of our electrical generation. And between wind and solar, there 
are additions of 1.5 percent every single year between those two 
sources, to renewable electrical generation capacity in our country. So 
we can see that every year that goes by--over a 15-year period, for 
example, that would be 22 percent of all electricity would be wind and 
solar if we just keep on the current pace.
  From the coal industry's perspective, that is terrible. That is a War 
on Coal, what natural gas is doing, what wind and solar are doing. But 
the reality is that they are losing it in the marketplace. Adam Smith 
is spinning in his grave--so quickly, by the way, that he would 
actually probably qualify as a new source of energy. So the Republican 
complaint is that the free market is killing coal; it is a war. It is 
capitalism, actually, and it is working. So the only way they can stop 
it, the only way they can slow it down, is to get somebody like Scott 
Pruitt to be the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. This 
isn't a conspiracy; it is actually a competition, and the competition 
for those clean energy jobs is global.
  Back in the 1990s, I was the author of a law that moved over 200 
megahertz of spectrum. In 1993 in America, the average phone that was 
wireless was the size of a brick. It looked like the phone Gordon Gekko 
had in the movie ``Wall Street.'' People didn't have one. It cost 50 
cents a minute. But I was able to move over 200 megahertz of spectrum 
in 1993, and four new companies were able to compete. They both went 
digital, and by 1996, this is what people had in their pocket--under 10 
cents a minute, and all of a sudden everyone had this phone. It just 
killed that phone that was the size of a brick.
  But then another remarkable thing happened. Within 8 or 10 more 
years, there was a guy out in Silicon Valley, and he came up with an 
idea for an iPhone, and that revolution just kept moving because we had 
opened it up to competition.
  You can imagine there were devotees to the black rotary dial phone 
who kept saying: Oh my goodness, it is a war on the black rotary dial 
phone, all of these new devices. But it wasn't. It was just technology. 
It was a revolution. It was capitalism, and it had finally been opened 
to that competition after 100 years.
  Well, that is what has happened in electrical generation. We finally 
have passed laws that open it up to competition. It is not a secret. 
And the only way to shut it down is to have someone like Scott Pruitt 
as the head of the EPA because then, all of a sudden, you can have an 
EPA chief who says: We are not going to have any new rules on climate 
change. We are not going to have any more rules that reduce the amount 
of pollution that goes up into the atmosphere. We are not going to

[[Page 2855]]

have any more rules that ensure that President Obama's Clean Power Plan 
is implemented in our country, which would again telescope the 
timeframe that it would take in order to deploy these massive amounts 
of new renewable electricity sources in our country and expedite the 
pace at which natural gas resources get deployed in our country.
  So that is really what this is all about. It is a special interest 
giveaway--pick your industry. How do we protect it? How do we make sure 
we don't move beyond the 20th century? How do we not have this 
incredible green generation be able to invent the new energy 
technologies of this century, the same way that they invented the new 
telecommunications technologies at the end of the 20th century? How do 
we stop them? Well, you have to really find people who are willfully 
committed to it.
  Let's go to Scott Pruitt. Scott Pruitt, as the attorney general of 
Oklahoma, unbelievably sued the EPA 19 times. Now, what attorney 
general sues the EPA 19 times? Well, let's look at the subjects he sued 
on--clean air, clean water, soot, mercury, haze. It is almost like a 
laundry list of the dirtiest issues that America would want us to have 
an Environmental Protection Agency working on. And he sued over and 
over and over again. And even as he is being considered for 
confirmation, after I questioned him in the hearing, saying: Will you 
recuse yourself from any consideration of any issue that you have 
already sued the agency on that is still pending, he said he would not 
recuse himself.
  So I said to Mr. Pruitt in that hearing: Well, if you don't recuse 
yourself and you still have eight pending cases, that will make you the 
plaintiff, the defendant, the judge, and the jury on these matters that 
are at the heart of the clean air, clean water agenda that the American 
people want to see implemented in the 21st century.
  What was he doing in Oklahoma? What was he trying to accomplish? 
Well, I decided to ask Mr. Pruitt some questions.
  Question No. 1: I asked Mr. Pruitt to describe the actions he took as 
Oklahoma's attorney general to enforce the State's environmental laws. 
His response: He told me to go file an open records request.
  Secondly, I asked Mr. Pruitt how much of the budget he controlled as 
attorney general did he devote to Oklahoma's Office of Environmental 
Enforcement. Do you know what he told me? He said: Go file an open 
records request.
  No. 3: I asked Mr. Pruitt how many individuals he employed in the 
Office of Environmental Enforcement. Do you know what his answer was? 
You are asking for too much information. Go file an open records 
request.
  No. 4: I learned that Mr. Pruitt had hired one of his campaign 
contributors to sue the EPA, so I asked him to show me the contract. 
And do you know what he told me? You are right. You guessed it. He told 
me to go file an open records request.
  So his answer to me over and over again was go FOIA yourself. But 
that is not a sufficient answer to a Member of Congress because we 
actually get the right to ask for critical information on the 
environmental records of those who are applying for the job of chief 
environmental protector of our country. And if you are looking for 
evidence to convict Scott Pruitt on the charge of protecting public 
health and the environment, he is unwilling to give it to you.
  During his confirmation hearing, we heard a lot about Scott Pruitt 
respecting States' rights. Scott Pruitt's record shows that he is in 
favor of States' rights but only when it is good for the State of 
Oklahoma and the oil industry of Oklahoma. When I asked him about 
protecting the rights of States like California and Massachusetts to do 
more to protect their environment, he declined to support their rights 
to do that for their States.
  So under Scott Pruitt, EPA is going to turn into Every Polluter's 
Ally. He won't be there as the cop on the beat to ensure that those 
protections are in place to ensure that every American--all 320 
million--is given the protections they need. No. It will no longer be 
an Agency that is a watchdog for the environment; this is an Agency 
that is going to be a lap dog for polluters across our country. And if 
that is the case, then we are going to see a rollback in the health, 
the safety of those protections that all Americans have come to expect 
in the area of the environment.
  When we raised the issues of his conflict of interest in the 
committee, we received unsatisfactory answers. When we raised the 
issues of providing us the information we were going to need in order 
to fully understand his complete record, we were not given the answers 
we need.
  Now let me once again come back to 1981 and 1982. What did James Watt 
do at the Department of Interior? Well, he wound up selling off for 
bargain-basement prices the coal resources in the Powder River Basin in 
Wyoming. It was a scandal of massive proportion. It led to his 
resignation. It was avoidable but predictable because he made very 
clear what his attitude was about all of these resources.
  The same thing was true over at the EPA with Anne Gorsuch. It was an 
Agency that the Reagan administration, in actual reports, said that the 
goal of the EPA Administrator would be to bring the Agency to its 
knees--to its knees--and that became the goal during the Gorsuch time 
at the EPA. So another resignation.
  We have here with Scott Pruitt someone who has the same agenda, the 
same goals, and the same unfortunate allies to accomplish those goals.
  So I am going to continue, along with my colleagues, for the rest of 
the evening to bring this case to the American people. We believe this 
is a preview of coming attractions. We want America to know who Scott 
Pruitt is because when he begins to take action in March, in April, and 
in May, if he is confirmed, then they will know who he is very simply 
because everything we are saying tonight is going to be a preview of 
those coming attractions.
  So at this point, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, earlier today I spoke on the floor about 
Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt and his nomination to lead the 
Environmental Protection Agency. Since that time, an Oklahoma judge has 
now ruled that Scott Pruitt must comply with a 2-year-old request to 
release email correspondence between the attorney general's office and 
fossil fuel companies, like oil company Devon Energy and coal company 
Murray Energy.
  After an over 2-year struggle, these communications will finally come 
to light starting next Tuesday, but the Senate is due to vote on Scott 
Pruitt's nomination tomorrow afternoon, Friday, at 1 p.m. Now, that 
smells to the high heavens. The American people in the Senate have a 
right to know what is in all of those emails that have finally been 
ordered to be released by a court. Instead, what the Republican 
leadership is going to do is rush to judgment, forcing Members of the 
Senate to vote on this confirmation without knowing what is in all of 
these emails that have been subject to litigation for the last 2 years.
  Now, it is a little bit fishy because Republicans have been obsessed 
with emails for over 2 years. They have spent millions of dollars on 
attempts to gain access to emails during the Presidential campaign, but 
now they are denying the Senate and the American public the right to 
examine Scott Pruitt's emails. That, again, is not OK. The only thing 
Senate Republicans seem to want to deny more than climate change is the 
right of Senators to review these 3,000 emails. That, again, is not OK. 
So we are going to be in a very funny situation at 1 tomorrow 
afternoon. The emails are on the way. We are going to find out what was 
in all of those emails. We are going to

[[Page 2856]]

find out what kind of correspondence Attorney General Pruitt had with 
all of these different entities with which he was communicating, but 
the Senators will not have it for a basis of casting a vote.
  Now, maybe it is benign, but maybe it is not. Maybe that is why this 
vote is being rushed. It is being rushed so the Senators don't know 
what is in there; that they are blind as they vote. Then, as each email 
becomes public, as each new revelation becomes public in the weeks and 
months ahead, people are going to look back at this body and they are 
going to say: Why could you not wait just another week so Senators 
could know what was in those emails? I think there is a reason why many 
people have arched eyebrows that are going up so high that it would hit 
the roof a ceiling. There is a reason to be skeptical that something is 
happening here that is meant to be a rush to judgment to avoid all of 
the evidence being placed in front of the Senators and the American 
people in terms of his nomination.
  Members of the faith community are weighing in as well. They have 
opposed Mr. Pruitt's nomination. I want to read portions of a letter 
that the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Massachusetts sent to 
President Trump:

       The Episcopal Church stands strongly for the protection of 
     the environment. We respect the facts of science. We support 
     the laws and policies that address the reality of climate 
     change.
       Our respect for our government leaders and our reverence 
     for the earth as God's creation impel us to write you to 
     express our dismay about your selection of Scott Pruitt to 
     head the Environmental Protection Agency.

  These are the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Massachusetts. They 
continue:

       We wonder why a person who has consistently and adamantly 
     opposed all laws and policies that provide even minimal 
     ``protection'' to the environment should be entrusted with 
     leading such an agency.
       President-elect Trump, you have promised economic 
     development. Like you, we value a stable and prosperous 
     economy. However, a thriving economy depends on a healthy 
     environment. The more we weaken and dismantle the E.P.A.'s 
     vital protections of our natural world, the more we threaten 
     the common good.
       You have also promised to strengthen our national defense. 
     Like you, we value national security. However, our country's 
     top military intelligence have concluded that climate change 
     is a ``threat multiplier'' that is already creating 
     instability around the world and will likely create 
     significant security challenges in the years ahead. If 
     someone who casts doubt on the reality of climate change 
     becomes the head of the E.P.A., our national security will be 
     compromised.
       As citizens of this beloved country, we intend to write our 
     members of Congress, urging them to block the nomination of 
     Scott Pruitt to lead the E.P.A. We will pray for a better 
     choice.

  The letter is signed by the following faith leaders: Right Reverend 
Douglas J. Fisher, Bishop Diocesan of Western Massachusetts; the Right 
Reverend Alan M. Gates, Bishop Diocesan of Massachusetts; the Right 
Reverend Gayle Harris, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts; the Right 
Reverend Barbara C. Harris, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts; the 
Right Reverend Roy F. Cederholm, Bishop Suffragan of Massachusetts.
  The reality is, this is not just a question of these Episcopal 
bishops, but Pope Francis came to the Congress just last year and 
preached a sermon on the Hill, saying the planet is dangerously 
warming, human activity is causing it, and we have a moral 
responsibility to take action as Americans, as the House and Senate, a 
moral responsibility to protect this planet that God created and those 
who are the poorest and most vulnerable who will be most exposed.
  This is a moral issue of the highest magnitude. The leaders of 
religions all across our country are praying for us, begging us to do 
something in order to protect this planet. Scott Pruitt does not intend 
on taking those actions.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to continue on the subject that I 
was just referencing. This is a story from Oklahoma that is on the 
wires right now across the country.
  Headline: ``Judge orders Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to 
release emails related to fossil fuel industry.''
  Let me read a little bit of this news story. This is Oklahoma City.

       A judge has ruled that Americans have a right to know how 
     much of a relationship Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt 
     has with oil and gas leaders before becoming the head of the 
     Environmental Protection Agency.
       For years, Pruitt has been an outspoken adversary of the 
     EPA and is currently suing the agency.
       In December, President Donald Trump selected Pruitt to lead 
     the agency despite concerns from lawmakers.
       A 2014 New York Times report claimed that Pruitt's ties to 
     Devon Energy Corporation directly influenced decisions he 
     made while in office in Oklahoma.
       Through open records requests, the New York Times obtained 
     a letter written by Devon's attorneys, which was then taken 
     to Pruitt.
       The article states, ``The attorney general's staff had 
     taken Devon's draft, copied it onto state government 
     stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to 
     Washington with the attorney general's signature.''
       In 2014, KFOR asked for a comment to the allegations, but 
     received a statement focusing on the benefits of the oil 
     industry. . . . Six Senators from the Senate Environment and 
     Public Works Committee asked Pruitt to list his connections 
     to energy companies so they can decide whether those 
     interactions will affect how he will run the EPA. . . . The 
     Center for Media and Democracy filed nine open records 
     requests with the AG's office, beginning in January 2015.
       ``Probably the largest request we have is for 
     communication: emails, phone calls, [and] scheduling related 
     to his involvement with various energy companies, as well as 
     his involvement with the republican attorney general's 
     association,'' attorney Blake Lawrence said.
       The group alleges that Pruitt received nearly $350,000 in 
     campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. They 
     want his dealings with those in the industry made public--and 
     soon.
       ``Just last week our office contacted the Center for Media 
     and Democracy to notify them that release of their request 
     was imminent. The fact that they have now filed suit despite 
     our ongoing communications demonstrates that this is nothing 
     more than political theater,'' AG spokesman Lincoln Ferguson 
     said in a statement.
       According to the Hill, Democrats asked Pruitt for the 
     documents as part of his confirmation hearing, but he 
     declined. Instead, he told them to file public records 
     requests themselves.
       Now, a judge has ordered the Oklahoma Attorney General's 
     Office to turn over close to 3,000 documents related to 
     Pruitt's communications with oil, gas, and coal companies, 
     according to E&E News.
       Pruitt's office has until Tuesday to release the emails, 
     but his confirmation vote was originally believed to be held 
     Friday, Feb. 17.

  Meaning today, in 5 more minutes.

       ``Scott Pruitt and Senate Republicans have made a mockery 
     of the confirmation process, permitting the nominee to escape 
     scrutiny and hide his deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. 
     What is he hiding in all of these emails? The vote to confirm 
     Pruitt must now be delayed until every senator can see just 
     who Pruitt is and what he will do if permitted to run the 
     EPA,'' a statement from the Sierra Club read.

  That is where we are right now, ladies and gentlemen. We are 6 
minutes to midnight on Thursday night. The vote is now scheduled in 13 
hours 5 minutes here on the Senate floor.
  These emails are going to be released next Tuesday so there can be a 
public examination of them, to finally determine what is the 
relationship between Scott Pruitt and these industries that he will be 
given responsibility to regulate.
  What are they hiding? Why are they rushing? Why will they not give 
the American people the ability to find out what is inside these emails 
before there is a vote on the Senate floor? Because once that vote 
takes place, he will be the head of EPA, and then we will find out what 
conflicts may exist, what relationships may exist, what decisions had 
been made. But, no, the Senate leadership will not give the American 
people the respect they deserve to ensure that all of that information 
is out for public viewing so they can make an informed judgment as to 
the exact nature of the relationships between this nominee for the EPA 
and industries

[[Page 2857]]

that he has had responsibility for regulating in Oklahoma and he will 
have responsibility for regulating as the head of the national 
Environmental Protection Agency.
  It is an absolutely unacceptable policy to know that critical 
information that makes it possible for the public and the Senate to 
understand a candidate for such a powerful office is to be available 
and yet not in fact considered as part of this historic decision.
  For me, it is a ``March of Folly.'' It is just another example of how 
the Republican Party, the GOP, has become the gas and oil party. That 
is really what it stands for now, just committed to ensuring that they 
cover up what is in these emails. They don't give the public the chance 
to be able to understand what these potentially explosive relationships 
may be so the Senate can deliberate fully on whether Mr. Pruitt does in 
fact qualify to be an impartial head of the Environmental Protection 
Agency of our country and ultimately of the world because the world 
looks to us to determine where climate change is going, where 
environmental protections are going, not just for our own citizens but 
for theirs as well. What we do is replicated inevitably, inextricably 
in the rest of the world.
  This man will have one of the most powerful positions on the planet. 
Emails are available right now if we just wait to help us in our 
deliberation. It is really a tragedy. It is a sad commentary upon this 
institution that rather than just delaying, examining, and then giving 
the public the information they need in the Senate, instead we rush to 
judgment. We rush to judgment, but ultimately the judgment of history 
is going to be on us if it is determined, through these emails, that 
Mr. Pruitt is unqualified for this position; that the conflicts which 
he has had disqualify him for this position; that the emails disclosed 
to us the conflicts of interest that are going to ultimately impair his 
ability to be impartial in his regulation of clean air and clean water 
and mercury and haze and soot and smog and this whole litany of issues 
that go right to the public health and safety of every American.
  From my perspective, it is a sad day in the Senate when the 
information is now available, a brief delay would make it possible for 
each Senator to be able to make an informed decision, and yet the 
Senate moves on, not waiting, not listening, not willing to give the 
American public the information they will need to make an informed 
decision that they can then give to their Senators to make a wise 
decision that could lead to much stronger protections that they can 
receive from this critical Agency that is the overseer of the 
environment in our country.
  Again, I oppose Mr. Pruitt's nomination. I would ask for a delay. I 
know it is not going to happen. I understand why, but it is a sad day 
in the history of the Senate.
  Mr. President, I wish to reclaim the remainder of my time and yield 
the floor.

                          ____________________