Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It goes the other way.

Sometimes it seems that our friends on the other side of the aisle think that the only people who are watching this conversation are fossil fuel industry lobbyists and CEOs and electioneers.

So we are going through, shortly, a truly preposterous exercise on the floor of the Senate, which is that a party that has brought up no significant legislation in the time that Leader McConnell has had the floor is now going to bring its first measure related to climate for a floor vote, and it is something they intend to vote against. It is something they intend to vote against. When you bring a measure to the floor that it is your intention to vote against, that is not legislating. Something else is going on.

Now I think this was a very clever stunt. We don't know quite where it was cooked up, but we have observed that the Wall Street Journal editorial page is a relentless mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry, having published climate denial articles literally within the last year. The Wall Street Journal editorial page called for this stunt vote, and it was less than 24 hours before the Republicans in the Senate jumped up, scampered out, and did exactly what they were told to do by the fossil fuel industry's mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

I am sure there were champagne corks banging into the ceilings of the boardrooms for ExxonMobil, Americans for Prosperity, and the Koch Industries as all of these fossil fuel executives and lobbyists cheered this stunt. But in the Senate, we actually have a larger audience than just fossil fuel donors; the country is watching and the world is watching, and what they are seeing right now is, frankly, an embarrassment.

It is not just this stunt that reflects a broken Senate; it is a much larger problem of a Senate that cannot deal with the climate change issue in a bipartisan fashion.

I would state that when I got here in 2007, the Senate could deal with climate change in a bipartisan fashion. In 2008, the Senate could deal with climate change in a bipartisan fashion. In 2009, the Senate could deal with climate change in a bipartisan fashion. The reason I know that is because I was here then, and I saw as many as five bipartisan efforts to deal with climate change during that period, with different Republican and Democratic Senators. Then along came the Citizens United decision in January 2010, and from that moment after, it was like watching a patient drop dead in the emergency room. The heartbeat of activity on climate change just flatlined on the Republican side of this Chamber.

I think the fossil fuel industry--I know the fossil fuel industry asked for that decision from the Supreme Court and the five Republican Justices. I think they anticipated what the decision was going to be, and they immediately went to work to squelch and crush any dissent from their orthodoxy on that side of the aisle. The result has been that there has been no significant piece of climate legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to deal with this problem since Citizens United that any of our colleagues now will cosponsor or support. It has just been silent, and it is a dramatic failure in this greatest deliberative body.

I will state, as others have stated, as Ranking Member Carper and Senator Markey have said, that the science on this is now beyond dispute. The science on this is irrefutable. If we fail to deal with this problem, the consequences will be catastrophic and irreversible.

``Irrefutable science.'' ``Catastrophic and irreversible consequences.'' I am actually quoting somebody when I say that. Do you know whom I am quoting? I am quoting from 2009 Donald Trump--Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, and the Trump Organization signed this full-page advertisement in the New York Times in 2009. ``If we fail to act now,'' they said, ``it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.'' So as much as the fossil fuel-funded mockery in which the Republican Party has engaged, challenges these facts, even the Trumps knew this a decade ago.

In trying to describe the Green New Deal, one might describe it as something that, if you invested in it, would ``drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk.'' That is a pretty good capsule of the Green New Deal.

Guess what Donald Trump and his family said in the same advertisement.

Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of- the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at risk.

All you have to do is listen to the 2009 Donald Trump to understand that the science of climate change was then irrefutable and it is even stronger now and that the consequences of our failure to act and our obedience, our adherence to fossil fuel-funded propaganda and orthodoxy will lead to consequences that are catastrophic and irreversible--said a decade ago. We have had 10 more years of unrestricted emissions since then.

Just the basic tenets of the Green New Deal are ``a clean energy economy [that] will drive state-of-the-art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new energy jobs, and increase our energy security.''

With the words of Donald Trump, I rest my case and yield the floor.

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