Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act--
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I join the ranking member of the Rules Committee with a parliamentary inquiry of my own.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, is it true that unless a piece of legislation is privileged under a rule or a statutory provision or is the subject of a unanimous consent agreement, motions to proceed to that legislation are generally fully debatable?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is correct. And for those of you following this at home, ``fully debatable'' means 60 votes are required to end debate, which Republicans do not have. Parliamentary Inquiry
Mr. President, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Is it commonplace for Senate offices and for whichever Senator is presiding over the Senate to consult with the Parliamentarian to determine whether and in what manner expedited procedures apply under a host of statutes, including the War Powers Act, the National Emergencies Act, the Congressional Budget Act, and the Congressional Review Act?
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Again, for those of you following this at home, that means that this is the commonplace way in which the Senate operates and when it becomes the Parliamentarian's call on a matter and not anyone else's call.
So in the Congressional Review Act matter before us, here is what happened: Both sides drafted written memoranda to the Parliamentarian. Both sides presented oral arguments to the Parliamentarian. The Parliamentarian asked questions of both sides, and the Parliamentarian, our neutral referee, reached a decision.
That all took place here in the Senate--actually, over there in the L.B.J. Room. The GAO was not even in the room when the arguments were made. And that decision, the decision of the Parliamentarian, is what is now at hand in what is about to happen here in the Senate.
And with that, let me note the presence on the floor of the Democratic leader and yield the floor.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me start with just a quick overview of the Congressional Review Act which brings us here to the floor today.
Under the American legal system, administrative Agencies can make rules, and there is a very robust process for doing so. The Agency often gives a notice of proposed rulemaking so the world will know what they are considering doing and then solicit comment from affected stakeholders, the public, a wide variety of people.
So you start with an Agency that seeks to make a rule. They have to follow the processes of the Administrative Procedures Act, which is a very careful statute, well-policed by the courts, with a very robust precedent around that. And at the end of the day, the Agency creates a rule, and they adopt the rule.
Now, you could always appeal that rule to a court, but what Congress decided many years ago was that in that situation where an Agency had gone through the APA process and had promulgated a rule, that there would also be a congressional review of that rule, not just a court.
And the filing of the rule here in Congress triggers a period of review in which Senators or Members of the House can call up the Congressional Review Act and seek to disapprove the rule.
So this whole thing was originally designed and--for all the decades since the Congressional Review Act was first passed--has always been to address Agency rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act.
Well, the fossil fuel industry pretty much runs the Republican Party here in Washington. And for a long time, it has objected to California having clean air standards that many States, including my State, voluntarily follow because it is good for the health of our people to have clean air; it is good to have less smokestack emissions, less exhaust emissions.
But it means less gas sales for the fossil fuel industry. Efficient cars may mean lower costs for consumers, but those lower costs for consumers are lower sales for the fossil fuel industry.
So the majority here has decided to jump outside that tradition that it takes a rule developed by an Agency to kick off the Congressional Review Act.
In this case, again, for decades, pursuant to a statute, California has had the right to set emissions standards, and it was never done by rule; it was always done by an Executive action--in this case, called a waiver. And what is now being done is a real violence to that distinct and clear process.
This breaks the Congressional Review Act in at least three ways: First, it breaks the time limits of the Congressional Review Act. Again, in the ordinary course, a rulemaking goes through its ordinary process under the APA; and when it is done, it then comes here to the Senate, and we have got a short period of time in which to make a determination whether to try to disapprove it or not.
Under the proposal that is threatened here, you will be able to take any Executive decision in decades and simply by dropping it into the Federal Register, making that submission, and sending it to Congress, let the majority party say: OK, we are going to overrule that. Not a rulemaking, nothing done under the Administrative Procedures Act, just an Executive decision. So the window back in time outside of the ordinary 60 days is the first thing that they broke.
The second thing that they break is that it has to be a rule. Like I said, pretty much any Executive action could be plowed through the process that is being created here. And so however settled the reliance on a particular permit or a particular license or a particular Executive decision from years ago, it is all up for grabs under this.
And the third, of course--other than breaking open the time horizon of the Congressional Review Act and breaking open the subject matter horizon of the Congressional Review Act--is to clear out the police of the Congressional Review Act, and that is the Parliamentarian, who made what, in my view, was not a difficult decision, to say: This is not a rule, never was a rule. Year after year, administration after administration, Congress after Congress, California has used this waiver, and it was never a rule. And now, the Parliamentarian's plain, clear, obvious decision that this was not and is not and never was a rule is what they are planning to overturn.
So you are breaking open the time horizon; you are breaking open the subject matter boundary; and you are knocking out the neutral police officer who is supposed to keep us living by the rules. This does not end well.
By the way, I have heard it said that the argument from the other side is going to be they are not overruling the Parliamentarian; they are overruling the Government Accountability Office. Well, if that is what they wanted to do, there are ways to do that. If the Government Accountability Office says that the law says a certain thing and we disagree, we can go back and change that law. We can amend it so that it is clear what it is that we want the law to say and correct the GAO decision that way. We can pass a joint resolution that does the same thing. We could even pass a simple Senate resolution.
But guess what. All of those things are fully debatable. And as I said earlier, ``fully debatable'' means what? It means 60 votes to end debate, meaning that the minority party gets a vote, gets consideration.
They don't want that. They want to ram this thing through for their fossil fuel donors. Period. End of story. They don't care what they break. But, please, don't pretend that you are overruling GAO.
My team, along with Senator Padilla's team, was in the L.B.J. Room making those arguments to the Parliamentarian. There was robust debate. We filed briefs. Questions were asked. The whole thing was a very vigorous contest, and she ruled--and she ruled.
And GAO was not even in the room. That stage was long since passed.
The reason we are here is to overrule the Parliamentarian. The reason for overruling the Parliamentarian is to get a simple majority to get around this.
There are other ways this could have been done too. EPA didn't have to do it this way. EPA could have gone through the Administrative Procedures Act and done a proper rulemaking. We could have amended the Clean Air Act and had a proper debate about this on the Senate floor. EPA would have followed regular Administrative Procedures Act order. The debate about the Clean Air Act would have followed regular Senate order. But no.
Or the fossil fuel industry could have gone to California and said: Hey, things have changed a little bit. We would like to figure out a way to work with you. You change your rule. They are the real principal party here; Rhode Island follows the California standard. They could have gone and negotiated with the sovereign State of California instead of coming here to just roll the State using a sneaky parliamentary maneuver and choosing to go nuclear to do that.
So this is not a great day in the history of the Senate. We are opening up a Pandora's box of multiple abuses, and let me just point out that there actually are a lot of legitimate CRA, Congressional Review Act, targets out there--many dozens of decisions that have been made in this Congress that lend themselves to a proper use of the Congressional Review Act.
And, guess what, it takes 30 signatures to bring one of those up. The minority can do that.
So if the majority wants to start playing CRA games, well, even under existing CRAs, where we don't need a 51-vote majority, we can start bringing up CRAs of our own, expedite them to the floor, have vote after vote after vote after vote after vote.
There are ways in which we can respond. I intend to work with my leadership to make sure what the best way is but don't think that this nuclear option gets deployed here, gets deployed for the fossil fuel industry, gets deployed against a sovereign State, and gets deployed to make air dirtier and water dirtier, and we just walk away as if nothing happened. That is not what will follow.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I join my senior Senator today to honor our friend Dominick Ruggerio, who was both president and the dean of the Rhode Island Senate.
President Ruggerio, who passed away last month, was affectionately known as ``Donny.'' He leaves behind his children Amanda and Charles and four beloved grandchildren.
Donny was a graduate of two great Rhode Island institutions--La Salle Academy and Providence College. At La Salle, Senator Reed was his schoolmate and teammate on the football team.
After finishing college, Donny served as a policy aide for former Lieutenant Governor Tom DiLuglio, who was a Rhode Island classic in his own right. Donny went on to spend many years with Laborers' Local Union 271, serving in multiple leadership roles.
Donny's career in public service continued when he was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives, in 1981, where he stayed for a few years until making the jump to the Rhode Island Senate, in 1984, where then-State Senator Jack Reed was again his teammate in the State senate.
The senate was Donny's home. For over four decades, he was the champion for the residents of District 4, which includes parts of North Providence and Providence. After holding several leadership positions in the senate, he was elected by his peers to serve as Rhode Island's senate president in 2017. His legacy at the statehouse will be defined by his decades of forceful advocacy for working people and his practical, highly effective style of legislating.
He never forgot his background as a laborer and never stopped working to create opportunities for working men and women. To that end, he fought for a higher minimum wage and for specific projects that would create union, family-supporting jobs. He also led the charge to eliminate lead pipes, making our tap water safer to drink for Rhode Islanders.
Among his many accomplishments was his work to address the State's opioid crisis. He created a fund to support statewide opioid treatment, recovery, prevention, and education programs and shaped a law to ensure that filling a prescription for lifesaving anti-overdose medication would not create a barrier for Rhode Islanders getting life insurance.
I am grateful, in particular, for Donny's leadership on climate. He sponsored legislation that put Rhode Island on a path to 100 percent renewable energy by 2033. When that legislation was signed into law, it was the most aggressive statewide energy standard anywhere in the country.
Donny was beloved by his lifelong North Providence community, and he was always a pleasure to work with. In a profession that is not always gentlemanly, he was always a gentleman. He took pride in the senate being a place where people had, as he would say, always been able to disagree without being disagreeable.
So I thank Senate President Ruggerio for his dedicated and successful service to our State. I offer my condolences to his family. We will miss him.
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