Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Relating to ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Lesser Prairie-Chicken; Threatened Status with Section 4(D) Rule for the Northern Distinct Population Segment and Endangered Status for the Southern Distinct Population Segment''

Floor Speech

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Ms. ROSEN. Madam President, as you have heard from my colleagues before me, there are serious concerns about the job-killing resolution that we will be voting on this evening and the effects it will have on our solar industry and American workers.

For years, solar has been a growing source of clean, low-cost energy and economic development in States all across our Nation. And it is a source of jobs--good-paying, union jobs--right here in the United States.

America's domestic solar industry is made up of more than 10,000 businesses--large and small--located in every single State, employing over 250,000 Americans. I will repeat that: employing over 250,000 Americans. In fact, my State of Nevada has the most solar jobs per capita of any other State in this great Nation.

When we talk about the solar industry, we are talking about an industry that is generating hundreds of thousands of American jobs and supporting American workers, while at the same time helping us to transition to clean renewable energy.

Thanks to historic investments we secured in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the American solar industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom.

Last year, a new solar project was installed in the United States every 44 seconds and, in fact, the demand is only expected to increase. This is only going to create more jobs and help make us more energy independent.

For example, the average solar installer in Reno, NV, makes about $80,000 a year. It is a good job. That is a job that lets a family pay their rent, buy groceries, put something away for their kids' college and for their own retirement. These are the kinds of jobs we should be creating, and we are, thanks to these historic investments.

That is why I have been a champion of our domestic solar industry and have been fighting back against attacks on it from my colleagues--well, frankly--on both sides of the aisle. That is why I led a bipartisan group of Senators last year to push President Biden to pause additional retroactive solar tariffs after a Commerce Department investigation. Well, they threatened to destroy our domestic solar industry and kill tens of thousands of American jobs.

But at this moment--this moment--our American solar workers are at risk. My workers in Nevada are at risk. Those $80,000-a-year jobs are at risk. And all of the progress we have made to transition to clean energy, all the good-paying jobs that we have created, and all of the solar projects that are lowering energy costs for families--well, they are all at risk, too.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a Congressional Review Act. This resolution rolls back the 2-year pause on these additional solar tariffs. If enacted, this resolution will decimate our American solar industry. So let me be crystal clear: Enacting additional retroactive tariffs on imported solar panels themselves will kill--will absolutely kill--the American solar industry, and it will kill any chance we have to meet our climate goals. It will kill the current American solar jobs.

I know that some of my colleagues have said that supporting this resolution is being pro-worker. Well, I am just going to say that that is wrong. No one can say they are pro-worker while at the same time voting to kill good-paying American jobs. And that is exactly what this resolution will do.

I don't even know why this is on the table. Are we seriously going to tell that solar installer that he is out of a job? Are we going to put his family on unemployment just for politics?

I am going to repeat it: Supporting this resolution and killing American jobs, it hurts workers and their families. Period.

Opposing this resolution means being on the side of American workers. It means being on the side of unions like IBEW, the laborers, the operating engineers, the carpenters union, who are all urging a ``no'' vote today.

All of us here in this Chamber agree that we have to strengthen domestic manufacturing; we all agree we have to be competitive with China; and we all agree that we have to be energy independent.

That is what this current pause on additional tariffs--that is what this current pause helps us to do because, right now, solar panel manufacturers in the United States can only meet about 15 percent of the demand for American solar projects.

So thanks to the investments made by the Inflation Reduction Act, we are going to greatly ramp up our domestic solar manufacturing, creating jobs, making us energy independent right here at home.

But it is going to take time. It will take time to ramp up domestic solar manufacturing so it can provide more than 15 percent of U.S. demand. Our current solar industry's best success depends on the steady supply of solar panels to install. We can't cut off supply of important solar panels by enacting massive retroactive tariffs that will just kill solar projects; it will kill American jobs; and it will hurt American workers.

So what can we do?

Well, what we can do is have a bridge that allows us to do both: keep our domestic solar industry alive while we invest and bolster our domestic manufacturing so that we can be competitive with China. That is exactly what this pause helps us to achieve.

Enacting retroactive tariffs will even directly harm U.S. solar panel manufacturing businesses by cutting off their major source of solar cells--a key component in the panels--making it that much harder for them and us to compete with China. That is why I am leading the effort to block this resolution and to keep the pause in place.

So I urge my fellow colleagues to join me and be on the side of workers by protecting good-paying American union jobs, to join me in fighting to meet our climate goals, and to join me in making our Nation more competitive with China by voting against this job-killing resolution and saving America's solar future. Hundreds of thousands of American solar workers, their families, and our communities--well, they are counting on us.

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Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I would like to continue finishing the letter from the Birmingham jail:

Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation--and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping ``order'' and ``preventing violence.'' I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather ``nonviolently'' in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: ``The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.''

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: ``My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.'' They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

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