Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013 -- Motion to Proceed -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Wyoming Mr. Barrasso be recognized, followed by the Senator from Arkansas Mr. Pryor.

Madam President, I modify the unanimous consent request and ask that Senator Pryor be recognized at the conclusion of my remarks, followed by Senator Barrasso.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. THUNE. Madam President, yesterday USA Today and the Pew Research Center released a new poll that found Americans, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, were dissatisfied with the direction the country is going. Sixty-two percent of Americans rate their personal financial situation as poor or fair. A whopping 65 percent want the next President to pursue policies different from those of the current President.

What I would suggest is that the American people are tired--they are tired of seeing their bills go up while their paychecks don't. They are tired of having to work harder just to stay in place--to say nothing of getting ahead. They are tired of economic promises that are often repeated but never fulfilled.

Our economy has supposedly been in recovery for years, but it is a recovery that feels a lot like a recession to ordinary hardworking Americans. More than 10 million Americans are unemployed, and more than one-third of them have been out of work for more than 6 months.

While unemployment finally declined last month, the decline was driven more by the fact that 806,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce entirely than by any meaningful surge in the number of those who are employed. Had the number of Americans participating in the labor force stayed flat last month, the unemployment rate would have actually gone up, not down. In fact, if the labor force participation rate today were the same as it was when President Obama took office, our Nation would have an unemployment rate of 10.4 percent.

So what is happening is more and more people are leaving the labor force. They are completely discouraged. But the labor force participation rate has fallen, and one of the main reasons it has fallen is because so many Americans have grown so discouraged that they have given up looking for work entirely.

Our country has experienced recessions before, but we have always bounced back. But our recovery from this recession has been so slow--at times, seemingly nonexistent--that many are wondering if the last 5 years of sluggish growth and recession-level unemployment could be the new normal. And they are right; it could be, if we continue the policies of the last 5 years.

The widespread dissatisfaction with the economy reflected in the Pew poll may not be what Democrats want to see, but it is the natural outcome of their policies. They have spent 5 years pursuing policies that have not only been unsuccessful in creating jobs but have all too frequently actually hurt job creation.

Take ObamaCare. It is hard to even know where to start when talking about the damage ObamaCare is wreaking on the jobs and the economy. There is the ObamaCare tax on lifesaving medical devices, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, which has cost thousands of jobs in this industry already and is going to cost thousands more. There is the 30-hour workweek rule, which has forced businesses, State and local governments, and nonprofits to cut the hours of workers in this country. There is the employer mandate, which has caused many businesses to rethink their plans to expand and hire new workers. Then, of course, there is the burden the law places on small businesses.

The title of an article that appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal over the weekend summed it up nicely, and the headline went like this: ``Own a small business? Brace for ObamaCare pain.'' This article pointed out something that is often overlooked in discussions of the law--that the people who will suffer the most from the small business health plan cancellations that ObamaCare will cause in Nevada and around the country are those who can least afford it--the kind of people the law was supposed to help.

To quote from the article:

Some workers are at higher risk than others of losing company-sponsored coverage. Professional, white-collar companies such as law or engineering firms will bite the bullet and renew at higher prices. ..... But moderately skilled or low-skilled people making $8 to $14 an hour working for landscaping businesses, fire prevention firms or fencing companies could lose work-based coverage because the plans cost so much relative to salaries.

That is right, Madam President. It is low-income workers in places like Nevada who stand in the greatest danger of losing their employer-sponsored coverage. That is frequently the story when it comes to the Democrats' so-called job-creating policies. Democrats like to suggest that Republicans are indifferent to workers' plight, and that only Democrats really have a plan to offer help. But in fact the Democrats' plans to help often pose the most danger to low-income workers.

There is ObamaCare, of course, as I mentioned, but there is also the minimum wage proposal, which the Congressional Budget Office says will eliminate up to 1 million jobs. Those 1 million jobs that will be eliminated are not doctors' jobs and they are not lawyers' jobs. They are positions held by low-income workers who will be the first to suffer when employers have to cut back on hiring or on hours as a result of the minimum wage hike.

Then, of course, there is the Keystone Pipeline, which we are talking a little about today, and which the President has resolutely refused to approve, despite the fact that it would support, according to his own State Department estimates, 42,000 jobs without spending a dime of taxpayer money.

The people who will be hurt the worst by the President's decision to cow to the relentless pressure of far-left environmentalists are the workers who would actually build the pipeline and the restaurants and small businesses who would benefit from pipeline workers' business during construction.

It is not just Keystone. Almost all of the President's energy policies would do serious damage to our economy and to working Americans. Take the restrictions on ground-level ozone levels the President's EPA is scheduled to release by December of this year.

In 2010, the EPA proposed lowering the permitted ozone levels from 75 parts per billion to 60 to 70 parts per billion. Energy industry estimates suggest that lowering the ground-level ozone concentration to 60 parts per billion would cost businesses--get this--more than $1 trillion per year--$1 trillion per year--between 2020 and 2030. Job losses as a result of this measure would total a staggering 7.3 million by 2020, devastating entire industries--most especially U.S. manufacturing. My own State of South Dakota would lose tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, natural resources and mining, and construction.

Take a look at what this would actually do. These are the areas under these proposals that have been put forward. Today there are probably a couple hundred counties in the country that are not in compliance, in what we call nonattainment areas--mostly urban, heavily populated areas. But if we take a look at what their proposal would do on this map, this map represents those who would be affected if we went to 60 parts per billion as opposed to the 75 parts per billion today.

So instead of focusing on those counties in this country that are not currently in attainment and getting them to full attainment first, we are talking about expanding dramatically the impact this would have all across the country.

Look at my State of South Dakota, for example. We have areas that wouldn't be in attainment. We don't think of South Dakota as being a place where we have problems with clean air and ozone issues, but this is clearly a regulation which, if put into effect, would cost the economy literally billions and billions of dollars--in one estimate $1 trillion per year between 2020 and 2030.

If we look at where this hurts people the most, again, it is the people who are in the lower and middle-income range--people whose budgets are more heavily affected by hikes in their energy bills.

Today the President will hold press events to raise the alarm about climate change and push for more job-killing, industry crippling energy policies, but it will be interesting to see if he spares a line or two for the millions of Americans whose jobs will be lost and whose household budgets will be shattered as a result of his proposals.

This week the Senate is going to be considering the Shaheen-Portman energy legislation. I plan to introduce three amendments to check EPA overreach and to protect American workers from the devastating effects of the EPA's ground-level ozone and greenhouse gas proposal.

The first amendment will require Congress to vote up or down on any EPA regulation that has an annual cost of more than $1 billion. Pretty straightforward. Let the people's representatives vote. If they are going to put regulations out there that are going to cost more than $1 billion, let us have Congress vote on those.

The second amendment would prohibit the EPA from finalizing greenhouse gas regulations for new and existing power plants if the Department of Energy and the GAO determine those regulations will raise energy prices or cost jobs. So if the Department of Energy and the GAO determine the regulations will not impact jobs or energy prices, the EPA can go forward and finalize those regulations.

It is time to be honest with the American people about the cost of these regulations. Taken together, these two amendments are a strong step toward placing a check on EPA's regulatory train wreck.

The final amendment I will offer is specific to the administration's upcoming proposal on ground-level ozone, which as I just mentioned is the most expensive regulation in EPA's history. The cost of this regulation is so great that when the EPA first proposed lower levels in 2010, the White House delayed those regulations until after the President's reelection.

My amendment is straightforward.

First, it would require the EPA to consider the costs and feasibility of new ozone regulations. Many Americans would be surprised to know the EPA isn't even allowed to consider costs when setting these new regulations. My amendment would fix that.

Additionally, my amendment would force the EPA to focus on the worst areas for smog before dramatically expanding this regulation to the rest of the country. As I mentioned on the map here, 221 counties across 27 States don't even meet the current standard of 75 parts per billion. It makes sense to focus on these urban areas before expanding ozone regulations to places such as western South Dakota, where we clearly don't have a smog problem.

Under my amendment, 85 percent of these counties would have to achieve full compliance with the existing standard before the EPA can move forward with a lower level which dramatically expands the reach of ozone regulations. I hope the Senate will get the chance to vote on these proposals.

I also hope the Senate will get a chance to vote on the Keystone amendment so we can get those 42,000 jobs opened to American workers.

It has been a long time since we have had a real energy debate in the Senate. But given our sluggish economy and the danger the President's energy proposals pose to any future growth, I am hoping the majority leader will decide it is time for a debate.

The election-year agenda offered by Democrats and the President is just more of the same job-killing, growth-stifling legislation that Democrats have been offering for the past 5 years. Like the legislation the Democrats and the President have offered for the last 5 years, it will do the worst injury to those Americans who can least afford it.

Pundits may warn that our current economic malaise is the new normal, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can get the economy going again. We can lift the heavy burden of government regulation and free businesses to grow and create jobs. We can make it easier, not harder, for middle-class workers to find stability and for lower income workers to make it into the middle class.

According to the Pew/USA Today poll, 65 percent of Americans want the next President to pursue different policies. It is still a couple more years until the next Presidential election, but there is no reason Congress can't start pursuing different policies today. The American people have been struggling for long enough.

I yield the floor.

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