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Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am now going to just continue what Senator Whitehouse has been raising for the consideration of the American people.
I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership as the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee and for throughout his entire career focusing upon the corruption which is at the heart of the fossil fuel industry's control of the energy agenda, the climate agenda in our country. That is something which Senator Whitehouse has done insistently, persistently, consistently over the last decade, just rising over and over again to make the very clear, compelling, and undeniable point that the fossil fuel industry controls the energy policy of our country and that it has succeeded for 100 years in squashing the competition until very recently.
They got a second breath, once Donald Trump was reelected this year, in their efforts to ensure that wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and clean energy technologies were, in fact, once again snuffed out after they had seen a great resurgence because of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which really should be called the greatest climate bill ever passed in the history of the world.
Senator Whitehouse has been the leader in raising these issues about corruption, about their ownership of administration after administration which did not, in fact, advance a clean energy agenda for our country.
So I join with Senator Whitehouse this evening in calling for the resignation of Lee Zeldin as the EPA Administrator. When someone's track record is as full of failure as Lee Zeldin's, they should flunk out of the class. He has failed to uphold science, failed to protect health, failed to hold regulated industries accountable.
He has failed to carry out the basic mission of the Agency which he was appointed to lead. The basic mission he is failing on is to protect human health and to protect the environment of the United States of America. Since he has been in charge, the only thing ``EPA'' has stood for is ``Every Polluter's Ally.'' He has spent his first 15 months as the Administrator protecting the polluters instead of protecting the health and the environment of our country.
Trump and Zeldin may be in public office, but they are not on the public's team. They are batting for the Big Fossil Fuel and Big Tech billionaires, not for parents worried about their kids' asthma, not for families worried about whether their water is safe to drink or food is safe to eat, and not for young people worried about their future as climate change continues to cause global chaos.
One of Lee Zeldin's first moves as Administrator was to come for the Agency's brain trust--the dedicated public servants who serve as the engine powering the EPA's core mission. Who are those people? They are biologists. They are chemists. They are climate scientists. They are mathematicians. They are people who have dedicated their lives working at the EPA in order to create the best science which can be used in order to guide American policy to protect the public health and the environment in our country.
They empowered DOGE--these young, ideological thugs--to enter into the EPA headquarters and all the regional headquarters of EPA in order to peer over the shoulders of scientists, of chemists, of biologists, of climate scientists, and question, as a 25-year-old DOGEr, what the qualifications are for these people, these scientists, to have their jobs. I mean, it is absolutely absurd that in 2026, we would allow for that to happen at the lead environmental Agency for the world, but yet that is what Donald Trump and Elon Musk unleashed--the terrorization of career, brilliant scientists.
How do we know they are brilliant? Because every person in America knows that when they were in high school, the first row--the first row--was filled with all the kids who were going to go to college to study biology and chemistry and physics and mathematics. The second row was filled with everybody else. But everyone knows who the smartest kids are, and they have been the smartest kids since they were in the sixth grade or the seventh grade. They are dedicated to science. They are dedicated to getting the right answer. Yet Donald Trump and Elon Musk unleashed an army of DOGE--mostly young men, unqualified for anything except going in almost as mafia-like hit men to take out these career, brilliant scientists who decided not to go out into the private sector to make 5 times, 10 times more money working for chemical companies, writing algorithms for hedge funds--no. They dedicated their lives to working on the science of public health and the environment, and Trump just unleashed these young DOGE men to go in and terrorize these workers. They pushed out these EPA workers who test our water, who monitor our air, who study how to keep us safe from chemicals, from pollution. All the while, he pushed to keep--to keep--chemicals like glyphosate on the market.
The amazing thing about this is the Make America Healthy Again movement wants chemicals like glyphosate to be taken off the market. They want it. They actually ran on that, the Make America Healthy Again movement. That is what Robert F. Kennedy was saying he wanted to do.
Do you know who is more powerful? The chemical industry. The chemical industry wants it legal. The chemical industry wants it on the market. The chemical industry wants families to be exposed to it. So the EPA under Lee Zeldin--he is all on board for something like that. He is not going to be bucking the chemical industry on behalf of the health of the American people.
By the way, Zeldin spent $86 million in taxpayer money to pay EPA staff not to work. Your taxpayer money went to avoiding environmental protection and saying to the workers: You don't even have to show up. We will pay you not to come in, not to protect the public health and safety.
After firing thousands of these brilliant people, the Agency is at its lowest staffing level since the 1980s--40 years ago--all while we deal with our modern-day challenges like forever chemicals, toxic pesticides, climate change--you name it. All of these issues which have been identified by a new generation of scientists are now all on the back burner at the EPA because of Lee Zeldin, because of the White House, and because they are just completely beholden to these special interest, polluting companies that are in the favored class of Donald Trump acolytes.
But that wasn't enough. Then he came for the rest of the country. He came for projects to plant trees, to shade us on hot summer days, to get water to drink from our taps that is free from lead and build cheap solar energy to power our homes--projects that have been illegally shut down, shut off, shut out of funding in red and blue States alike. That is how ideological, that is how obsessed they are with giving the polluters everything they want.
Zeldin illegally came for the National Climate Bank, based on my legislation with Senator Van Hollen, which would have lowered energy bills, created good-paying jobs across the country, and built cleaner, safer, and healthier communities. And why did they come for the green bank, for the climate bank? Well, that had $20 billion in it, and McKinsey, a renowned and respected consulting firm, estimated that that $20 billion would unleash $150 billion of private sector investment in clean energy solutions, and that is an existential threat to the fossil fuel industry.
So Zeldin just said: It is gone. It is gone. I can't, on my watch, said Zeldin, be part of a plan that allows for competition with clean energy technologies to reduce the profits of the natural gas and the oil and the coal industry.
So he just abandoned American families, and his polluter pals refused to follow the law, so he decides he will just break it for them.
Lee Zeldin is rolling back soot prevention rules that could have prevented 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma over just the last 6 years. Under Lee Zeldin, ``MAGA''--M-A-G-A--stands for ``Make America Gasp for Air.'' More asthma, more lung cancer, more disease in our society--that is what the Trump-Zeldin EPA looks like.
He set up an email inbox for polluters to receive automatic exemptions from nine air quality standards, allowing for complete noncompliance and unchecked pollution before any scientific review, public input process, or regulatory consideration.
Zeldin is shirking his duty to enforce the Clean Air Act that exists to ensure we don't breathe mercury or lead or arsenic--all because he wants polluters to make more money while they make us sick.
Just 1 year into this administration, the United States saw an increase in powerplant emissions after decades of emissions decline. That is not a coincidence. That is a diabolical scheme, written by the Heritage Foundation and its fossil fuel backers, and executed by Lee Zeldin, but that still wasn't enough for Zeldin. Last month, Lee Zeldin moved to repeal the endangerment finding, which is the bedrock of air pollution and emissions regulation in our country.
Senator Whitehouse has already made reference to this most important environmental Court decision in the history of the United States. That case is Massachusetts v. EPA. It was a decision that was rendered in April of 2007, and it was a very simple decision which was made, driven by the devastation that climate change wreaked on my home State of Massachusetts. Massachusetts sued, and the Supreme Court agreed that greenhouse gases were air pollutants, and they made that decision almost two decades ago. The Supreme Court also agreed that the EPA needs to regulate air pollutants if the science shows they endanger our health and our welfare.
Now, that may seem like a no-brainer to you. Climate change is real; the science is clear; and the harm from climate change is more obvious and more damaging every single year. The EPA acknowledged the connection between greenhouse gases and climate harm back two decades ago.
What makes Lee Zeldin think he can change the facts now?
Well, here is why. It is that Zeldin and Trump have taken a page straight out of ``1984,'' when George Orwell wrote:
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears.
Americans aren't stupid. Americans know what this crisis means. We are living through climate change, and we can see it with our own eyes that these extreme weather disasters are here now, making headlines, and making their communities more dangerous than ever before.
Over 10 years, from 2000 to 2009, the United States experienced 67 extreme weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more. That is over a 10-year period. In the last 5 years alone, we have lived through 116 disasters that have cost $1 billion or more--nearly twice as many disasters in half the time just 10 years later.
Climate change is real; climate change is happening; and the evidence is in the damage that it is inflicting upon our Nation. It is drought. It is storms. It is making groceries more expensive. It is making insurance, as Senator Whitehouse constantly points out, for homeowners and small businesses go skyrocketing across our country. The heat waves are making our air-conditioning bills more expensive. Wildfires and rising tides are making home insurance again more expensive all across our country. Lee Zeldin would rather sell us a lie than make our lives more affordable.
Even if Trump and Zeldin try to put EPA's science in shackles, the law is clear. The EPA is still beholden to its mission to protect human health and the environment. Trump's EPA might break the law, but they cannot rewrite the law. All they can do is break the law. Greenhouse gases are air pollutants, and the Clean Air Act says the EPA must act. By repealing the endangerment finding, the Trump administration will be creating a clear and present danger to the public because climate denial costs lives. This isn't a deregulatory agenda; it is a deranged agenda.
Our lives may be worth nothing to the Trump administration--and that is not an exaggeration because, under Lee Zeldin, the EPA is valuing human health at zero dollars in its rulemakings. But we know that we matter; that you matter; that every American matters. It is our voices, our lives, our futures that matter in this battle, and the EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment still matters. So that is what we are going to raise from now to the end of this year.
Donald Trump, today, in a press conference, with his Cabinet members, said that the country was going great, but he decided to take a little detour, he said, into Iran. Well, Trump's little detour is coming at a very high price--higher gasoline prices, higher home heating oil prices, higher natural gas prices, higher prices for jet fuel, higher prices as a result for plane tickets, higher prices for groceries because they have to be transported across the country. In fact, there are higher prices for everything in our country which needs oil or gas, which is every other product.
So, when you look at the stock market, you will always see the same thing. Whenever oil is skyrocketing, that means all of the funding from all of those businesses and consumers is all going to one industry, and right now, their stocks are skyrocketing. Their executives are cleaning up. Their executives are getting the return on investment that they made when they met with Trump in April of 2024, and he said: If you give me $1 billion, I will kill all of your clean energy competition. And, in the IRA, in July of 2025, with JD Vance coming here to cast the deciding vote, that is what they did to the wind tax credits, to the solar tax credits, to the all-electric vehicle tax credits, to all of the incentives that were in the books for a clean energy revolution. Yes, it was pay to play. The oil executives and the gas executives got exactly what they bought when they raised all that campaign cash for Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Yes, that is where we are right now. We have the United States over in a war against Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is, for all intents and purposes, shut down. The price of oil is skyrocketing. The stocks of the oil companies are skyrocketing. The pay for CEOs, you should be sure, is going to skyrocket this year for oil companies, and the whole rest of the stock market is cratering because they are all dependent upon oil and gas to fuel their industries.
Trump is now saying, because of what has happened over in the Middle East, that he is going to send in the Marines to attack Kharg Island, which is the center for the export of energy out of Iran. So he is going to take what is already a complete mess--what is already one of the most pluperfect violations of the first law of holes--which is, when you are in one, stop digging. He is planning on digging this hole even deeper because what happens in the Persian Gulf winds up at the pump for ordinary consumers and ordinary families. This is Trump at the pump. His picture might as well be on every single pump in the United States of America.
This is all as a result of Zeldin, Secretary of Energy Wright, and Secretary of the Interior Burgum all going along with this agenda to kill the all-electric vehicle revolution and the solar and wind revolution. They said we have energy independence. There is no energy independence with the price of oil and gas being set on the global market. If it goes up, you are going to see it at the pump in the United States no matter where you live.
So that was a big lie right from the get-go, right from the Trump administration--that they had achieved energy independence. No, we have not. We are reliving right now what we should have learned over and over and over again, but Trump could not learn it because there is an old saying: It is hard to learn something when you are paid not to understand it.
He got paid by the oil and gas industry not to understand that reality. The oil and gas industry wanted to be able to engage in these predatory practices--in this exploitation of families across our country--for their own self-enrichment. That is what this is all about. Every time you fill up your tank, it is Trump at the pump. He owns it.
What is he asking for right now from my Republican colleagues? He wants $200 billion more for the war. What does that mean? Well, it costs $2 billion a day to fight the war. If you give him $200 billion, which my Republican colleagues seem to want to do, that would be 100 days more of this war. That takes us into the summer.
So, if you are watching the deliberations here in the U.S. Senate, be mindful of the fact that their plan is to fund a war that will go on indefinitely, and as a result the price at the pump, the price for heating oil and the price for natural gas are going to continue to spike.
It doesn't make any difference whether you are just an ordinary family member with their car and they are trying to fill it up or if you are a small business person who is basically saying: Oh, my goodness. There has been a 40-percent increase in the price I have to pay for my home heating oil tank or to just keep my business warm or the air-conditioning on. It is everybody in America who is going to pay the price because of what Trump is seeking to perpetrate upon the American people because there is no energy independence when we depend upon fossil fuels.
We need to ensure that we move to real energy independence. That is a renewable energy agenda--an all-electric vehicle future. That is when we will have energy independence. We were heading in that direction before Trump cut the clean energy incentives, the clean energy programs, and these CEOs, you know, are now reaping the benefits of that--the fossil fuel CEOs personally. They are getting the windfall profits. They are able to engage in this profiteering out on the open marketplace.
By the way, the price of oil goes up like a rocket when the crisis starts, but it comes down like a feather, very slowly, so that the oil and gas industry can milk every last cent out of every single consumer, tipping them upside down at the gas station and shaking money out of their pockets so that they can enjoy those profits while they are chuckling that they won't have the competition from the wind and solar and all-electric vehicle industries that were moving at the most rapid pace that our country had ever seen, and it was endangering the business model of the oil and gas industry.
And Lee Zeldin? He was at the front of the line saying: We are going to end that threat. We are going to make sure that those oil and gas and coal executives don't have to worry about their business future.
And who is going to pay the price?
The price is going to be paid in higher taxes to fight this war by ordinary families, in higher prices at the pump by ordinary families to fight this war, and by the families who are going to, unfortunately, lose loved ones who are service people who are serving our country over there. The price is going to be very high for American families.
And who is going to benefit?
It is going to be the oil company executives. It is going to be the natural gas company executives.
That is where we are right now. We need to end this war, and we need to end the war on clean energy technologies because we have no energy independence as long as we are dependent upon fossil fuels. That is the big headline of what has happened over the first 28 days of this war, and that is why Senator Whitehouse, myself, and others on this floor are going to campaign all year long on these issues.
We are going to campaign against the Zeldin agenda, against the Wright agenda, the Burgum agenda, and, ultimately, the Trump agenda, which is nothing more than the oil and gas and coal industry agenda for our country--making us less healthy, less safe, more dependent upon fuels that get us into more and more danger the more that we allow ourselves to have this law of unintended consequences to its pluperfect form be invoked every single time we go over to the Middle East for a war.
So that is where we are right now. We have got this moment where, as a Senate, we can stand up and fight; or we can be like the Republicans out here, who can see the rising costs for all of these goods-- including healthcare; including their tariffs, the sales tax which Trump has imposed on pretty much every product in our country.
The American public is arriving with pitchforks, heading toward the Republicans at the polls this year, and they know it. And that is why, for the last several days, they have tried to squash Americans' right to vote, Americans' right to be able to go in and cast a ballot independently and freely without fear.
That is what the SAVE Act is all about. The SAVE Act is all about squashing the ability for minorities, for married women, for transgender folks to be able to vote this year, because they are afraid they are going to lose.
The SAVE Act is really the ``Save Their Asses Act.'' That is what it is all about. How do they protect themselves from all of these rising costs that are coming from Trump economic policies? That is what this is all about--the bottom line.
The way to protect themselves while enriching the oil and gas and coal industry, the insurance industry, all of those industries that are part of that MAGA coalition? Just suppress the vote. Just make sure fewer people show up at the polls.
So that is really at the heart of where we are right now on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are waiting for the Republicans to finally become responsible, to accept the responsibility of actually responding to the real harm that is being imposed upon American families.
So, from my perspective, we are at a historic inflection point, and I just hope that the Republicans finally--finally--hear the American people, because, otherwise, as Steve Bannon said, having these ICE agents go to the airports right now is only going to be practice for ICE agents at the polls in Georgia, in Ohio this fall, in order to suppress the vote of the American people. And it is all to protect this assault upon affordability, assault upon the budgets of ordinary American families.
And at the heart of it all is a failed energy policy, because every American driver is going to have to spend $500 to $600 more this year just to drive their car. And the same thing is true for home heating oil users and natural gas users, and that price is built into that family budget that they are seeking to figure out how to pay right now in every home across our country.
So this little detour that Donald Trump is taking has put a spotlight on his energy policy in a way that, in my opinion, requires us now to take this movement, to create the momentum, to create the moment where, next year, once again, we have a vote out here on the Senate floor; and that vote will be to restore all the tax breaks for wind, all of the tax breaks for solar, all of the tax breaks for all-electric vehicles, all of the tax breaks for all of those technologies which were flourishing and were reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions, while employing hard-working union employees all across our country.
That is what is about to unfold over the next 7 months in our country--this battle for the soul of our Nation, which, at its heart is: How do we protect ordinary American families? And included in that is the protection against the absolute exploitation of them by the most powerful interest in our Nation: the oil and the gas industry.
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