Climate Security Act

Floor Speech

CLIMATE SECURITY ACT -- (Senate - June 05, 2008)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this is a bill where we are actually on our third version, I believe. The fourth version of the bill. I stand corrected by the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe. The last one I saw went from 342 pages to 491 pages. That was the one that was read yesterday. I daresay that not many, if any Senator who is going to be called upon to vote on that legislation, had a chance to read it yet in detail. So I don't think it was a wasted exercise to have the clerk read the bill yesterday to give people a chance to understand what is in it.

When you look at a piece of legislation that comes with a $6.7 trillion pricetag, and one that will raise and not lower the price of gasoline and electricity, will depress the American economy and literally put people out of work, I think we need to know what is in it and we need to debate it. We need to offer amendments to hopefully improve it.

There is not one among us who does not care about the environment. I don't know any person of good will alive who doesn't care about the quality of the air we breathe and the cleanliness of the water we drink. So I think those who would suggest that because there are questions about this huge bill, this huge tax increase, this huge increase in the cost of energy, that if you are asking questions and want to offer amendments to improve it suggests you don't care about the environment is demonstrably false.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I will yield.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alabama.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Cornyn is a fabulous and important Senator. He knows what has been happening here on all the important issues and he knows the importance of certain actions on the floor.

Senator Reid, last night, as I understand it, stood and filled the tree. As I understand it, that impacts directly the ability of persons on this side to freely offer amendments; is that correct, I ask Senator Cornyn?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I say to the distinguished Senator from Alabama that he is exactly right. To come out here on the floor, as the assistant majority leader has done this morning, and say, Oh, we are interested in full debate and amendments and we regret the delay that occurred yesterday from the reading of the bill, yet at the same time to say no Member of the Senate can offer an amendment because of the actions of the majority leader, unless the majority leader gives the green light, is at odds with that claim. It is not a demonstration, from my perspective, of a desire to have an open debate and an amended process.

Mr. SESSIONS. And so that act was a knowing and deliberate leadership act by the majority leader that fundamentally says unless he approves an amendment, whether it is offered by those who favor the legislation or oppose it, that is a significant event that constricts free amendments on this bill; is that not correct?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, again he is correct. I think what it demonstrates is that the professed desire to actually do something about this important issue is, in fact, nothing more than a political game. Because I predict what will happen is that because he is blocking any amendments and an open debate about the bill, we will have a vote on the cloture motion, it will fail, and then the majority leader will attempt to pull this bill from the floor and consideration. I hope Members of the Senate will prevent that from happening by denying cloture on any future motions to proceed to other legislation. I think it is important that we have the kind of debate that a bill of this import and this size deserves.

If I can refer my colleagues to this chart, which is produced, I believe, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Senator Dorgan, the Senator from North Dakota, the other day said this bill pales in comparison to ``Hillary Care'' in terms of its complexity. I remember seeing the charts at the time of the
huge bureaucracy that would have been created by that government-run health care system proposed by Senator Clinton when she was the First Lady of the United States. I think it was back in 1993.

But this chart, produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reflects all of the regulations and mandates of the Boxer climate tax and it indicates the complexity of what has been proposed here, and why I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the pricetag comes in at $6.7 trillion, and where the Federal Government, through a growth in the bureaucracy, an intrusion in the freedom and lives of the American people and small and large businesses alike, will be the one that will choose the winners and losers in this system, who gets the goodies and who does not; who gets permission to operate their powerplant and who does not. That is why the price of gasoline, that is why the price of electricity is expected to go through the roof as a result of this bill.

I agree with the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Corker, who called this bill the ``mother of all earmarks.'' There has been a lot of discussion about earmarks here and lack of transparency in the way Congress spends money. Well, this bill, if it is passed and signed by the President of the United States, would empower the Congress to dole out earmarks with a complete lack of transparency, in a way that would allow massive Government intrusion in the free market system. That is why the Wall Street Journal dubbed this bill ``the biggest government reorganization of the economy since the 1930s.''

The National Association of Manufacturers has estimated the economic impact on my State, the State of Texas. We are fortunate now. While some parts of the country are suffering through a headwind when it comes to the economy, we are doing pretty well, relatively speaking. Unemployment is at 4.1 percent. A lot of new jobs have been created, a lot of opportunity. We have seen a lot of growth in the population because people are moving to where the jobs and the opportunities are. But under the Boxer climate tax bill that we have before us on the floor of the Senate, it is estimated that 334,000 of my constituents would lose their jobs.

Why would they lose their job? Because this bill would be like a wet blanket on the economy, raising electricity prices, raising gas prices on everything from agriculture to small businesses, and it is estimated that it would cost the average Texas household $8,000 in additional costs. Now, that is on top of the $1,400 that most Texas households are currently having to pay because of increased gas prices due to the obstruction of Congress in failing to allow development of American natural resources, an American solution to our energy crisis. It would be a $52 billion loss to the Texas economy. As you see here, it is estimated that electricity prices would go up 145 percent and gasoline prices 147 percent.

I am sorry the assistant majority leader refused to allow us to offer an amendment designed to lower gas prices, because I can't think of any more urgent, any more targeted relief we could offer the American people today than to provide some relief for the pain at the pump. I think that should be our highest priority as we go about the process of developing a clean energy future for this country, as we transition out of an oil-based economy into one for renewable forms of energy and increased nuclear capacity, and one that will improve the climate at the same time.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a quick question? I don't want to use the Senator's time.

Mr. CORNYN. I will yield.

Mr. INHOFE. I want it made clear today, as we go into the debate, that when we look back at the clean air amendments of the 1990s, we had something like 180 amendments considered at that time and we had it on the floor for 5 weeks. This goes much further than those amendments did, and yet they are cutting us off.

Let us make it very clear: The Republicans on this side of the aisle want to debate this bill, want to vote, we want recorded votes on amendments, and we want to vote on the bill itself.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma is absolutely correct. That is why 74 Senators--I believe 74--voted for the motion to proceed, so that we could get on the bill, so we could offer amendments, and we have a list of amendments we wish to offer. We wish to have debate on those amendments because we think the impact of this proposal would be dramatic on the American people and on the economy and would, in all likelihood, not accomplish the goal Senator Boxer professes to want to accomplish.

If in fact we impose this Draconian bureaucracy and this huge expense on the American people, and our competitors in China and India are not going to do it, we are going to put people out of work in Texas while people in China and India are going to continue to do what they are doing now and enjoying the prosperity caused by their access to the energy which they need to grow their economy. This bill would do nothing to impose the same restrictions on them, the same high prices on them that the Congress proposes to impose on the American people, including my constituents.

So rather than increasing gas prices by 147 percent, I would hope our friends on the other side of the aisle would reconsider and let us take up that most urgent issue in the minds of most of our constituents: How do we bring down the price of gas at the pump? I suggest the first thing we should do is take advantage of the natural resources God has given this great country of ours, which Congress has put out of bounds because of the moratorium on that development going back to, I believe, 1982.

Mr. President, I yield the floor

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