Trade Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, back in August several western States and Indian tribes suffered an enormous environmental disaster. It has been called the Gold King Mine spill. In this disaster, the Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado. This plume of toxic waste threatened people in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It stretched to the land of the Navajo Nation and the southern Ute Indian Tribes.

Last month, I chaired a hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee that looked at the spill. The EPA was there to testify. The EPA claimed that it was taking full responsibility, and then it did everything it could to deflect actual blame. They said they were taking full responsibility; then they did everything they could to deflect actual blame.

The agency administrator actually told our committee that this spill was inevitable. She said it was ``inevitable.'' Does that sound like someone who is actually taking full responsibility?

Well, last week we got the results of the investigation by the Department of Interior about what actually happened at the Gold King Mine. On Friday the Washington Post reported: ``EPA gets blame for mine spill into rivers.'' Well, according to this report, the EPA's crew didn't take engineering into account when it was working on the mine. It didn't take engineering into account. The agency didn't understand that waters in these mines, according to the report, ``can create hydraulic forces similar to a dam.'' How could the experts from the EPA, the U.S. Government's Environmental Protection Agency, not know that? The report also said that ``the conditions and actions that led to the Gold King Mine incident are not isolated or unique, and in fact are surprisingly prevalent.''
Remember, the EPA said it was inevitable. This spill was inevitable only because the EPA is so inept, so negligent, and so incompetent that it was inevitable the agency would cause a disaster like this someday, and now they have. It is inevitable that the agency is going to keep making the same mistakes unless something changes at this irresponsible, incompetent agency.

What has changed? It has been almost 3 months since this disaster happened. The Environmental Protection Agency has not named a single person whom it is holding responsible for poisoning the river. If the EPA's incompetence is ``surprisingly prevalent,'' as the investigation found, you would think that this agency should be trying to get its house in order before it takes on new jobs. That is not what the Obama administration is doing. Oh, no, it is not slowing down at all. It is not slowing down in its quest for power or in finding more ways that it can control what people do.

On Friday, the Obama administration published the final rule for what it calls its Clean Power Plan. This regulation would create more Washington control over how electricity is produced across the country. That very same day 26 States, including mine and that of the President's, filed lawsuits in Federal court to stop this disastrous rule. These States say that the Environmental Protection Agency went far beyond anything that the law allows and far beyond anything Congress ever intended. I completely agree. This rule is too expensive, it is too extensive, and it is too extreme.

The EPA does have a job to do, and it is failing dramatically at its job. Instead of going back to basics and doing its job right, the EPA wants more power, more control, and less accountability. This so-called Clean Power Plan will cost billions of dollars. According to one estimate, it will destroy the jobs of more than 125,000 Americans. None of that seems to matter to the President of the United States or his administration and the EPA. They are driven by ideology, not by the facts, and their ideology is driven by their desire for more control. That is why it is so urgent that we focus our attention on all of the ways this Washington bureaucracy is trying to restrict people's freedom and take more control for themselves.

The Obama administration isn't even satisfied telling States how to get their energy. Now the Obama administration wants to be involved in making these decisions for the whole world. It is trying to negotiate a climate change treaty that will impose broad new limits on American energy. This treaty will also do incredible damage to the American economy. At the same time, the administration wants to pay billions of American taxpayer dollars--hard-earned dollars--to other countries. In return for these other countries adopting green energy sources like solar panels, the Obama administration will help prop up their economies, not at their expense but at America's expense. It wants to do all of this behind closed doors without any oversight from Congress or the American people.

The administration wants to make sure that nobody can do anything to stop it until after it is too late. It wants to tie the hands of the American economy, dole out billions of taxpayer dollars, and not even ask the American people if that is what they want. The U.S. Congress cannot stand for that. It is the wrong choice for America, and it is the wrong choice for the rest of the world as well.

There was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday by Bjorn Lomborg. He is the director of a nonpartisan international group called the Copenhagen Consensus Center. The headline is ``This Child Doesn't Need a Solar Panel.'' It has a photo of a child in a slum in Mozambique. The author points out that the Obama administration is wrongly focused on the kind of climate change payoff that the President is promoting.

In the op-ed he writes:

This effectively means telling the world's worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria, or malnutrition, that what they really need isn't medicine, mosquito nets, or micronutrients, but a solar panel. It is terrible news.

He goes on:

In a world in which malnourishment continues to claim at least 1.4 million children's lives each year, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, and 2.6 billion lack clean drinking water and sanitation, this growing emphasis on climate aid is immoral.

That is the assessment coming out of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. The President's actions are immoral. There are some very real dangers facing the United States and other countries today, such as the threat from global terrorists and from countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea. There are desperate humanitarian crises around the world. That is where the Obama administration should focus its foreign policy.

Here at home, the EPA should be cleaning up the environment, not poisoning America's rivers and lakes. Until the Obama administration gets its priorities straight, Congress will have to act to stop it.

Republicans have introduced legislation to block some of the administration's most egregious new rules. Senator Ernst has filed a resolution against the so-called waters of the United States or the WOTUS rule. I have introduced legislation to replace the WOTUS rule with one that actually protects waterways while preventing Washington's takeover of nonnavigable waterways. Senator McConnell and Senator Capito have filed resolutions against the extreme limits on powerplants. Senator Flake has filed one on the burdensome new ozone standard.

We are going to keep a spotlight on this administration as it negotiates this new climate change treaty. We are going to stop it from committing this country to another bad deal--and the rest of us will be paying for that bad deal long after President Obama is out of office.

Congress is going to hold the Obama administration accountable--accountable--and rein in the Washington bureaucrats before they do additional damage.

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