Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Internal Revenue Service Relating to ``Gross Proceeds Reporting By Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales''

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he would reconsider over 30 rules and policies that protect human health and the environment, calling it ``the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.'' With a barrage of press releases, Administrator Zeldin threatened to replace the central mission of EPA--to protect the environment and the health of Americans--with a newer and more sordid mission: to protect the financial interests of President Trump's Big Oil polluting mega donors.

EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment has guided the Agency for more than 50 years, with bipartisan support. The Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon, and conservative Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush chose administrators like Bill Ruckelshaus and Christine Whitman, who took the Agency's mission seriously.

EPA's bipartisan pedigree and mission matter little to Trump, Zeldin, and their crew of fossil fuel donors.

Administrator Zeldin claims that slashing these protections will ``unleash American energy.'' Huh. In reality, these rollbacks will keep Americans dependent on expensive dirty fossil fuels, while other countries keep moving forward with energy innovation, developing cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient energy. We are deliberately losing a competition.

Trump is exalting an antiquated polluting fossil fuel industry and degrading the lives of the American people.

Administrator Zeldin gleefully declared, ``We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.'' But the protections EPA threatens to roll back mostly relate to keeping air and water clean. In the wealthiest country in the world, does it make sense to increase uncertainty about whether water is safe to drink?

Administrator Zeldin likely can't juice substantially more fossil fuel production, but slashing these protections will unleash tons more pollution--more pollution from oil and gas producers, powerplants, manufacturers, cars and trucks; fewer protections for drinking water, wetlands, and streams.

Coal-fired powerplants will release more mercury into the air we breathe, settling into our water and our soil and eventually finding its way into our food.

We will experience more bad air days like we get in Rhode Island from upwind out-of-State polluters, when the air is thick with soot and other pollutants, triggering asthma attacks and respiratory diseases.

They threaten even to overturn the good neighbor rule that gives States the ability to push back when upwind States foul the air, as happens to us in Rhode Island.

The ability to pollute another State with impunity deliberately is a core thing for EPA to stop, and yet they are caving in to the polluter States.

And, yes, these rollbacks do threaten to remove limits also on carbon pollution from powerplants, oil and gas facilities, and vehicles, turbocharging the ongoing heating of our planet.

Let's be clear: Climate change ain't religion; it is science--and well-understood, established, mature science at that.

My Republican colleagues in this building all have home State universities that teach climate science.

Greenhouse gas emissions--science knows--from the production and combustion of fossil fuels are heating our planet, raising sea levels, increasing the severity and frequency of violent storms, worsening droughts, and causing more intense wildfires. Even the fossil fuel industry's own scientists understood the climate risks of unchecked fossil fuel emissions. Exxon's own climate scientists warned that the burning of fossil fuels was changing our planet's climate and correctly modeled the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures.

When Zeldin testified in January before the Environment and Public Works Committee, he pledged to ``work with the scientists'' and ``leave the science to the scientists.'' What happened to that Lee Zeldin? Where did he go? Because the Lee Zeldin of January has been replaced by a Lee Zeldin willing to ignore his own scientists and ignore the facts for the benefit of President Trump's Big Polluter donors.

These fossil fuel industry favors will increase costs for American families. The fossil fuel industry spent almost $100 million--that we know of--to boost Trump in the last election and hundreds of millions more on Congress. Trump famously asked industry executives for $1 billion in exchange for delivering an industry wish list, and here is Zeldin producing that industry wish list. But for people who are not fossil fuel billionaires, the growing exposure to hazardous pollutants and the increase in carbon pollution will increase costs.

Tonight, colleagues will talk in more detail about various protections that Zeldin threatens to end and the safety and health policies he is curdling. I will discuss Zeldin's mischief with the social cost of carbon.

What is the social cost of carbon? It is a measure of the costs of each additional ton of carbon pollution released--increased mortality, for instance, from heat and storms; increased sickness from heat and air pollution; damage to agriculture and infrastructure from droughts and floods; even insurance collapse.

The Biden EPA estimated the social cost of carbon at around $190 per ton, which is consistent with most knowledgeable estimates, and the Office of Management and Budget ordered that this number be used in cost-benefit analysis for regulations as well as in a wider suite of government actions.

This analysis is nothing more than common sense. If the government is considering taking a step that would increase carbon pollution, it should consider the costs of doing so. If it is doing something that would decrease carbon pollution, it should understand and enjoy the economic benefits.

Zeldin is proposing to have the government ignore the facts. He wants to ignore the science, he wants to ignore the economics, and he wants to utilize a social cost of carbon whose value is deliberately and falsely set close to zero. If he succeeds, the Federal Government will no longer accurately assess the true costs and benefits of climate decisions.

This isn't new math or even fuzzy math; this is fake math--fake math to benefit Trump's oil and gas donors, who get to pretend, falsely, that the American people aren't picking up the tab for their industry's carbon pollution.

The International Monetary Fund, which is not a green institution, pegs the costs the public bears from fossil fuel pollution at more than $700 billion every year in the United States alone.

Last Congress, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, I organized hearings on the economic and financial costs of climate change. We heard warnings from economists, scientists, medical professionals, insurance and investment executives, the new Prime Minister of Canada, a former Prime Minister of Australia, and even a former Republican Senate majority leader. Throughout the hearings, witnesses emphasized the systemic economic risks that climate change poses and warned that if we don't shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels, things will get much worse.

``Systemic'' was the word I emphasized in that last sentence. ``Systemic'' may sound like a bland academic term, but a systemic risk in economics is one which threatens to bring down the entire economy, much the way failures in the mortgage market led to the great recession of 2008.

Zeldin's promised rollbacks will have real economic consequences for families. American families will bear increased healthcare costs. Even with an honorably functioning EPA, healthcare costs from fossil fuel air pollution and climate change are estimated to total nearly $820 billion in the United States each year. Doctors appointments, emergency room visits, rehab and home health support, and prescription drugs all strain the pocketbooks of American families. Lost work and school days and reduced labor productivity cost both families and the broader economy.

Last year, the United States suffered a recordbreaking 27 separate billion-dollar disasters, pushing up prices, damaging insurance markets, and burdening the families who were in harm's way. Economic losses from natural disasters reached more than $200 billion.

Climate-related extreme weather--hurricanes, wildfires, and floods-- damages property, damages infrastructure, damages agriculture, and damages supply chains. These recurring disasters are disrupting insurance markets across the country.

Turmoil in the insurance markets bleeds over into turmoil in the mortgage and housing markets. If you can't get insurance on your house, the next buyer can't get a mortgage on your house, and that reduces the pool of buyers and results in plunging property values. If your insurance premium quadruples, say from $2,000 a year to $8,000 a year, your home's value will fall, as the carrying costs associated with owning it have dramatically increased.

Last year, the Budget Committee obtained county-level data for the entire country, showing the evolution of nonrenewal rates for homeowners insurance from 2018 to 2023, and what we showed is that nonrenewal rates were rising--indeed, skyrocketing--as insurers retreat from areas of the country battered by the storms and wildfires that climate change makes both more likely and more intense. While the usual suspects are Florida, California, and Louisiana, nonrenewals are also skyrocketing across areas of southern New England, the Carolinas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, the Northern Rockies, and Hawaii.

We found that nonrenewals increased the most in the counties most exposed to climate risk--not surprising--and also that where nonrenewals were spiking, premiums were surging as well.

Earlier this year, the nonpartisan First Street Foundation took a look at the data we had looked at in the Budget Committee and looked forward and made some prediction about what increasing premiums and declining availability of insurance will mean for property values. They looked at the 30-year period of a mortgage entered into today, and they found that property values will decrease--decrease--in many counties by 20, 40, 60, or even 100 percent. Change in home value due to insurance costs: minus 100 percent. If you are in that category--and there are a few of them and more coming in the future--your home will lose all its value during the period of your mortgage, and you can bet the people selling you that mortgage are going to notice.

Let's not forget that for most Americans, their largest asset is their home. Home ownership is how most families build wealth. So something that is going to systemically reduce home values is hurting Americans. In a future gripped by climate change, the home ownership path to economic security breaks. What Zeldin is proposing will accelerate that danger forward, bringing the inevitable day of reckoning closer.

In Administrator Zeldin's home of Suffolk County, NY, for instance, nonrenewals nearly tripled from 2018 to 2023 and annual premiums have already increased by almost $800. And that is just a taste of what is to come.

By the way, it is not just me saying this. Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned the Senate Banking Committee that in 10 to 15 years, there will be entire coastal and wildfire-exposed regions of the United States in which it will no longer be possible to get a mortgage. That is our future.

When your insurance premium goes up by hundreds or by thousands of dollars, that is Republican climate denial in action. When your grocery bill goes up because orange juice, sugar, coffee, chocolate, and olive oil are more expensive because of climate-related extreme weather, that is climateflation in action.

Before I yield, I will close with one last thought. We are where we are, entering the era of climate consequences, because American politics failed to get this right. Our political system failed because the American political process became corrupted by the big money influence of the fossil fuel industry. Our politics got corrupted, and that is why we have so grievously failed at addressing climate change.

We have Senators here from States whose State universities teach climate science pretending that climate science isn't real.

Mr. President, history will look back at us with anger and disgust, justifiably.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts yield for a question?

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, you referenced the value to the fossil fuel industry of being able to run to Congress or run to the White House and throw money around and, as a result of that expenditure on politicians, earn the right to pollute for free and get enormous competitive advantage against clean energy.

The industry clearly spends a lot of money. We know they spent a hundred million dollars getting Trump elected. He asked them for a billion dollars, which could have come through dark money, in order to deliver on this subsidy program they want.

How lucrative do you think the fossil fuel political operation is?

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would not be surprised, actually, if the political lobbying and dark money influence operation of the fossil fuel industry was not actually its most lucrative line of business because for the $1 billion or $6 billion or $7 billion spent manipulating our politics, they protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, according to the International Monetary Fund. That is a $100 return every year for every $1 invested. They don't make that much off their tar sands. They don't make that much off their oil wells. They don't make that much off their methane leaks.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And we welcome our colleague from Connecticut to join the festivities here on the Senate floor.

All three States are downwind States from the pollution of the Midwest, of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio. There is nothing we can do about it, other than breathe in the waste that they don't clean up.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, it means that the prevailing winds that blow over West Virginia, that blow over Pennsylvania, that blow over Ohio, blow over their smoke stacks that have been deliberately built high into the air so that the pollution coming out of the smoke stacks gets caught up in those prevailing winds and ends up falling down in the form of ozone and particulate matter in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, and in Rhode Island. And the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection can do nothing about it because those States have chosen to put it up into the sky above them so that it lands on us.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am delighted to be joined by all of you.

I would make an observation of my own. I think Senator Blumenthal wants to join in. The observation I want to make is our three States are known for great universities--Yale University in New Haven, CT; Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; and Brown University in Providence, RI. They all teach climate science, and they all teach economics as well.

But it is not just those three universities. If you go across the aisle and check in with our Republican colleagues, with their Republican home States, they have great universities in their own States, including State universities. And their State universities in their home States teach the very climate science that Republican Senators deny on the Senate floor.

I have been through the syllabuses of home State universities for Republican colleagues and gone through the classes that teach climate science, and they teach economics. And you can go to Milton Friedman, the famous free market conservative economist, and what does he say about pollution? He says the cost of the pollution has to be in the price of the product or else it is a big fat subsidy, and it is not market economics any longer. It is a government subsidy; it is corporate welfare; and that is what we see in this dispute.

The climate science is real. Their own State universities teach it, and the economics is real. Their own State universities teach Milton Friedman. And what they are doing in this building, contrary to what their universities know, is to fight with political power, to keep polluting, and have the public bear all the cost of their pollution-- have the public bear all the cost of their pollution, not be a real market economy--which the price of the pollution, as a negative externality, gets baked into the price of the product--but pollute for free.

This is a huge pollute-for-free scam, running to about $700 billion every year. So no wonder it has taken a while for wind and solar to take off fighting the headwinds of a multihundred billion-dollar subsidy from an industry that gets to pollute for free.

And who bears all those costs? How are your fishermen doing in Long Island Sound as that water has warmed or mine or yours? And that is just one example.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank my colleagues for their colloquy.

I see the Senator from South Carolina, whose time we are intruding on, has come to the floor.

We yield to Senator Scott.

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