Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the administration's Clean Power Plan. I think the first thing that must be said--and said over and over, especially this week, with so many critical issues facing our country, with appropriations bills pending, with the transportation bill pending, with perhaps a motion to go to conference on the education reauthorization--is that we are wasting floor time, that this piece of legislation has no chance. The threshold under the Congressional Review Act is 51 votes, and while it is very likely the threshold will be met, let's take this through the legislative process.

This will eventually, if it passes the House--when it passes the House--reach the President's desk. Can you imagine that President Obama is going to enact legislation that overturns his signature and environmental achievement? Whether you agree or not with the Clean Power Plan, the idea that he is going to sign this into law is preposterous. So it faces a veto. So then the only question is this: Can you get 67 votes in the Senate? And the answer is a resounding no.

So let's put this in context. This is an important debate, but this is not likely to result in any kind of legislation one way or the other. But here is what this is about. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA--it doesn't authorize the EPA; it requires the EPA--to regulate airborne pollutants. So it doesn't allow the EPA to pick among airborne pollutants and place limits; it requires that any airborne pollutant have limits.

In 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States determined that CO2--carbon--was in fact an airborne pollutant, which is kind of intuitive and consistent with what every expert in the field understands. So the only question is this: Do you believe in the Clean Air Act? Do you believe there should be an exception in the Clean Air Act for carbon pollution? Do you disagree with the consensus among scientists that carbon is a pollutant? That is what we are voting on today. So carbon is a pollutant, and this is a pretty straightforward policy issue, and it is a pretty straightforward scientific issue. The EPA must regulate emissions.

Let's also understand how CRA works. This vehicle is to overturn the Clean Power Plan. The way the statute runs is that it doesn't give the administration--or any future administration--any flexibility to do a different version of the same thing. It prohibits the administration from doing anything that is ``substantially similar.''

So the difficulty, of course, is that hasn't actually been tested too many times in court. But the assumption most attorneys on both sides of this question are operating under is that it would not just invalidate this Clean Power Plan but prohibit the EPA from regulating carbon on a going-forward basis.

So if you have a specific concern, if you have a specific objection to the way this thing is administered, that is fair enough, but you don't have the ability to tell EPA to go and do this again and submit it again. It will actually be illegal under a CRA. So CRA is an extremely blunt instrument. It is an extremely radical thing to do, and that is what we are contending with.

So why, if all of that is true, is there a CRA vote this week? My instinct is that it is designed to create confusion, to kick up dust, and to raise the possibility that the American government does not stand behind the Clean Power Plan as we go into the final throes of the Paris climate talks.

Now, we have an opportunity here. We have 160 countries for the first time in history committing to different versions--all executed from within their own governmental systems, but they are all committing to different versions--of emissions reductions. Some of them have cap and trade, some have incentives, some of them have regulations, some have financing programs, but all of them are committing to various programs to reduce carbon emissions. This is a significant international achievement.

In previous climate negotiations, folks who opposed international climate action would actually go to these negotiations to create confusion, to imply the American government was somehow not going to stand by its commitments. That is why I wanted to go through how the CRA works and what the inevitable outcome of this piece of legislation will be, which is that it will be vetoed and that veto will be sustained.

The hope, I think, among people who oppose international climate action is that there is enough confusion going into Paris that someone can point to America's national legislature and say: Well, there is no consensus. That is true. There is no political consensus. But there is no practical way to overturn the Clean Power Plan, and there is no going back. I mean that is the most important aspect of this. This year, 2015, of all the new power generation in the United States, the majority of it was clean energy. The majority of new power generation in the United States was clean energy--how exciting.

I am not exactly sure why people fear the clean energy future so much. I understand we need to make a transition. The State of Hawaii depends on low-sulfur fuel oil for the vast majority of its electricity. I understand we can't make that transition overnight, and I understand there is going to be disruption and there is going to be difficulty as we make a transformation of this magnitude, but we are going to have to make this transformation. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can create innovation jobs, it can attract investment capital, and it can be a new American economy.

This is already happening. This is not pie in the sky any more. This is already underway. The majority of new power generation in the United States is clean energy. Let's keep the momentum up. Let's support the Clean Power Plan.

I yield the floor.

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