Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, there is a war on coal in America--a war on coal in America. The leader is the President of the United States. A number of us were in the Senate in 2009 and 2010, and the administration couldn't pass their cap-and-trade proposal through the Senate. They had 60 votes in the Senate. The President and his party had 60 votes in the Senate, but they couldn't pass the cap-and-trade proposal through this body, so they decided they were going to do it anyway. They decided they were going to do it anyway.
As the two Senators from West Virginia can attest, we have a depression in central Appalachia, created not because of anything we did here in Congress but because of the President's zeal to have an impact worldwide on the issue of climate. I suspect that even if we follow this path all the way to the end, this effort by the United States would have about as much impact as dropping a pebble in the ocean. Yet we are paying a real price for it here at home. Eastern Kentucky looks like the Dust Bowl during the thirties--no jobs, no opportunity, no future, not as a result of anything we passed through the people's elected representatives but by this sort of arrogant, singlehanded messianic goal to deal with worldwide climate.

Our options to stop it are quite limited. We do have the possibility of the Congressional Review Act, but the weakness of that obviously is that even though we can pass it with a simple majority, he is likely to veto it.

We are here today to stand up for our people, the ratepayers of America, and not only the ratepayers--90 percent of the electricity in Kentucky comes from coal--but the communities that have been devastated by this. I have never seen anything like it. I heard my parents talk about what the Depression was like. It sounds and looks a lot like the stories they told me about America in the 1930s.

This is a venture that will have no impact on the issue for which it is being pursued but is having a devastating and current adverse impact on the people we represent.

We have representatives from both parties here on the floor today working toward overturning the administration's deeply regressive energy regulations. These regulations are going to ship more middle-class jobs overseas. I told my constituents last year: Coal has a future; the question is, Does coal have a future in this country? The Indians and the Chinese are not going to give up their future by not using this cheap and abundant source of power. The Germans--one of the greenest countries in Europe--are now importing coal. So coal has a future. The question is, Does it have a future here after this administration?

My folks can't even put food on the table. The ones who can find a job somewhere are leaving. The population continues to decline.

As I said earlier, it is not going to have much of an impact on the environment of our planet. This isn't going to do anything meaningful to affect global carbon levels. It just seems that someone wants to be able to pat themselves on the back for doing something even if they accomplish hardly anything at all, except hurt a whole lot of Americans. Higher energy bills and lost jobs may be trivial to some folks out on the political left--not their jobs; they don't care--but it is a different story for the middle-class Kentuckians whom I represent.

So here we have on the floor Senators from both parties who are saying it is time to take off the ideological blinders and instead think about those who have already suffered enough over the past few years. We have worked together to file bipartisan measures that would overturn the administration's two-pronged regulations. I have joined with Senator Heitkamp and Senator Capito on a measure that would address one of those prongs, the one that pertains to existing energy sources. Senator Manchin is here on the floor and joined me as I introduced a measure that would address the other prong, the one that pertains to new sources. These bipartisan measures together represent a comprehensive solution. As I said, I am pleased to be joined here on the floor by Senators from West Virginia and North Dakota. Senator Daines from Montana is here--another important coal State. The chairman of our Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe, is here, and some have already spoken and some will speak after me. I am proud and pleased to be here on the floor with all of my colleagues standing up for our aggrieved constituents who have been mightily abused by this administration.

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