Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I listened to the statements made by my colleagues, and I have come to a different conclusion. I think this nominee is actually the wrong person at the worst time. At a time when the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, when 14 million Americans are looking for work, I would think the President would want to respond appropriately and nominate someone to lead the Commerce Department whose record was consistent with the mission outlined for the Commerce Department. That mission is to promote job creation, to promote economic growth, to promote sustainable development, and improve standards of living for all Americans. So I would think the President would want to nominate someone who has a record of robust job creation.

Instead, the President has nominated someone whose political advocacy is, in my opinion, detached from the financial hardships facing tens of millions of Americans today.

Most Americans recognize that cap and trade--or, as I call it, cap and tax--is job killing. It is a job-killing energy tax. Yet this nominee has repeatedly advocated for cap-and-trade legislation. He even called the Waxman-Markey legislation a moderate but acceptable bill. There are colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support that legislation. I do not. I view it as a tax. The nominee even went so far as to say the legislation was good precisely because it was a good way to hide--to hide--a carbon tax. But is that the role of the Secretary of Commerce: to hide taxes on American businesses, on American families, to make American businesses less competitive, to make it more expensive for them to hire new workers?

Mr. BARRASSO. I want to find ways to make it easier and cheaper for the private sector to create jobs, not for ways to hide taxes and make it more expensive and harder for the private sector to create jobs.

Finally, I wish to point out what happened during the confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. The chairman of the committee, who is here on the floor, questioned Mr. Bryson about coal. Coal is important to the chairman's State, and it is very important in my State, a big part of our economy. He asked for straight, direct answers, which the chairman did not receive, to the point that he actually invited the nominee to visit with him privately in his office to discuss the issue.

So I come here today to say, we need a Commerce Secretary who is committed to making American businesses more innovative at home and more competitive abroad--more innovative at home, more competitive abroad. We need someone who will address the problems of high unemployment, slow economic growth, and rising consumer costs aggressively and dispassionately. In my opinion, John Bryson is not that person. Therefore, I will not support nor will I vote for his nomination.

I yield the floor.

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