Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Alaska helping us to work through this process and being down here to talk about how we move forward. I heard her say we are obviously thinking about how we move through the amendment process, and I am sure she and I will get a chance to talk about the potential votes we will have later on as we continue with this amendment process.

Like her, I wish to add a few comments to this morning's comments about the State of the Union Address last night because I do feel as though it was the first time we heard a speech from a President of the United States that was all about an innovation economy.

As someone from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, I know a lot about innovation, and I was glad to hear he basically spoke about the whole perspective of what it takes to have an innovation economy and how we have to think about research and development and investing in our workforce. He mentioned trade and a variety of things that are all components of an innovation economy and how we can continue to move forward. I was very glad to hear that level of innovation, including his community college effort because it is about training the workforce for the future.

I also heard him talk about making improvements in infrastructure. The one thing I didn't hear him talk about was the issue of plug-in vehicles or electric cars. The reason I bring that up is because I think for most of the Bush administration, and maybe even some of the earlier days of this administration, I constantly heard talk about how we had to get electric vehicles and plug-in cars so we could get off our dependence on foreign oil.

We should take pride that in last night's speech we didn't have to listen to that because we have made progress in plug-in electric cars. Plug-in electric cars are in the marketplace, and we are making great progress in that area. We are also making progress in getting off foreign oil, and we are seeing how fuel efficiency is having a positive impact on our savings.

The President of the United States was asking what is the next level of innovation we have to do and how do we move forward while still protecting ourselves from what has been the deterioration of our environment from the greenhouse gases and the threat it makes to our planet.

Again, being from the Pacific Northwest, I consider those threats to be very real. The shellfish industry has been almost ruined due to the lack of oxygen in the water and the amount of carbon that basically sinks into our oceans and causes damage to the shellfish.

I see the Presiding Officer is also from the great State of Alaska.

When it comes to sources of feeding for Pacific Northwest salmon, there are not a lot of great food sources for the salmon.

Climate change is having an effect on the ecosystem and the economy, so you can bet that climate issues are very important to our State. Those issues are no longer hidden and there is no longer a way to escape from that. It is on our plate right now.

The President of the United States said: Let's deal with that and move forward, and instead of talking about one pipeline, let's talk about an energy plan and an infrastructure investment for the Nation.

I will point out to my colleagues: You are becoming dangerously close to saying we can't do something like Portman. How many times were my colleagues from Ohio and New Hampshire held up on energy efficiency because no one would let us vote on that? How long--1 year, 2 years? Then yesterday we finally had a vote, and 95 of our colleagues voted yes on moving forward on energy efficiency.

I will also point out that energy efficiency is, I believe, key to our economy of the future. If the United States is a leader in making energy--no matter what source it comes from--more efficient, we will write the playbook around the globe because so many people will want to make very dear energy resources more usable, better utilized, and have lower costs to their individual businesses and consumers.

Energy efficiency is incredibly important, but we never got to energy efficiency. It is almost as if the other side of the aisle is saying: You will only get energy efficiency if we pair it with other legislation where we are rolling back environmental rules, and that is the objection I have and the people from the State of Washington have as well.

People want people to play by the rules. They want to know that if you propose a pipeline, you will actually follow the laws to protect the environment, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and follow the process of what is in the public interest. We should be having that debate. We should not usurp the President of the United States in determining what is the national interest of this country.

At the very time the State Department was saying to this company, TransCanada, you have a pipeline proposal we don't like because it goes right through an aquifer, at the very moment when the State Department was telling them we don't like the proposal and you need to adhere to the environmental laws, the same people were in Congress trying to get Senators and House Members to vote on legislation that would have said pass the pipeline right through the aquifer.

I believe the President should be given the due diligence to drive home with this foreign company the fact that we have a national interest, that this national interest will be met, and that we will set the standard for whether these environmental laws are going to be complied with. I don't believe we should be usurping them. I think my colleagues are now offering amendments on the other side that also usurp other environmental laws.

I hope my colleagues will think about this because it will certainly give the Senator from Alaska and myself something to think about. As we try to move forward on energy legislation, we are going to have to think about how we are going to pass something that has bipartisan support.

Since I have been on the energy committee--and I have been on the committee now the entire time I have been in Congress--I have had the opinion that you should not hold up good energy legislation just to try to get bad energy legislation. I have the opinion that we should pass energy bills every year. That is the transformation our country is going under.

I wish we would have helped the Senators who wanted to usher in energy efficiency 2 years ago, but it is telling that 95 of our colleagues have always thought that was an easy lift. We should keep moving forward on those issues that are easy lifts and ensure the businesses that need predictability and certainty that we can move forward on that.

Another example is the clean energy tax credits. While we are trying to overwrite environmental rules to give a foreign interest a pipeline through our country--I should say, people thought the pipeline that went through Yellowstone was safe, and we just had a big spill there this past weekend. It is not as if these spills don't happen.

We had a colleague from Michigan talk about the spill that happened in Kalamazoo. I just saw the Commandant of the Coast Guard again last night at the State of the Union Address and we talked about how we don't have a solution for cleaning up tar sands in the water, and that is why we in the Pacific Northwest are so interested in this issue.

Let's not hurry through a process of special interest when we can do things that we need to give predictability and certainty on, such as the energy tax credits that are germane and are within the boundaries of what Congress is supposed to be deciding on. The American people are asking us to debate those issues and to come up with a resolution on them. I don't know that the American people are asking us to override a process and usurp what is the right of the President to make sure our national interests are considered in this policy debate.

I do appreciate the Senator from Alaska working through this process, and I do appreciate the fact that I think she is serious about she and I sitting down and talking about a larger energy bill. I pride myself on having a Pacific Northwest view; that is, there are things that are good for both Alaska and Washington and we should work on them together. Maybe there are some things that are well and good for Alaska and Washington but maybe the rest of the country doesn't agree with, but we will work through a process together.

I say to my colleagues, as we look at these next tranches of votes, we should consider what the President said last night. We need a broader innovation strategy for our economy. I believe there are ways to get there. I think these amendments we are considering--I don't think we need to change the Antiquities Act. I am a big believer in the fact that there are some tremendous national beauties that have been established through the Antiquities Act both--actually by lots of Republican Presidents, and I don't feel we have to change the Antiquities Act. I certainly don't think we need to change the Endangered Species Act, and I don't think we need to overrule the Clean Air Act, as the amendment does of the Senator from Pennsylvania.

We will have more time to talk about these amendments on the floor, but I hope my colleagues will understand that we want environmental rules to be followed, and we want people to follow a process. We want these issues to move forward from an energy policy that will move America to a 21st century energy policy and not continue to hold on to the 19th century pollutions that are challenging our economy.

I am sure we are going to hear from our colleagues when they come down to debate these issues as it relates to greenhouse gases and other things. Again, I appreciate my colleague from Alaska helping us to work through this process. I appreciate that it is a debate and that all of my colleagues will have a chance to come down and express their opinions.

With that, I yield back to my colleague on whatever process we are going to follow to go back and forth on amendments.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, as my colleague from Alaska just said, we are making progress. We have another group of amendments we are going to be voting on shortly. I would encourage any of the Members on our side who would like to take a few minutes to go over their amendments before the vote--we have a few minutes between now and 3:15 p.m.--to do so. During this series of votes coming up, we will be working with our colleagues to get the next set of amendments and to continue to move forward.

I will have a little more to say, but I see a couple of our colleagues here, so I will give them a chance to talk about their amendments.

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Ms. CANTWELL. I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the Lee amendment, No. 33, which is going to be voted on shortly. I know my colleagues are going to have 2 minutes divided before the vote, so people can add comments as they wish.

This amendment makes it very difficult for citizens to retain counsel, particularly related to the Endangered Species Act. I don't know why we would be handicapping legal cases just because they deal with the environment. I mean, I guess if you are not interested in protecting the environment, you would want to make it harder for people to retain lawyers. But when I think about property rights and clean water and clean air and all of those issues, I think that is something on which we ought to go the extra mile and make sure they get representation and counsel, not handicap them and make it harder just because we don't want companies to adhere to environmental laws.

I believe this is important because my colleagues should remember that the ESA was signed into law in 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon and was intentionally drafted to manage and to engage citizens in the protection of endangered species.

Now, in general, litigants in the country must bear their own costs, and the prevailing party is not ordinarily entitled to collect his or her expenses in a defending suit from the loser. But both the courts and Congress have provided an exemption from that rule, and so they have allowed in certain circumstances for judges to shift the cost to litigants in the interest of fairness and to further protect the public interest.

So that is what is at stake this morning. I think the Endangered Species Act is a prime example of why the courts decided they wanted to have this kind of leeway and protection. Congress knew when it enacted the Endangered Species Act that it would be difficult and the Nation would want to make sure that ordinary citizens had the opportunity to help ensure compliance with the law. So Congress recognized that when a citizen did so, he or she did not do so necessarily by themselves alone but with the counsel of a private attorney. Congress recognized this reality in statute.

So this is what we are going to be addressing. In contrast, the Lee amendment would weaken the prevailing citizen's request for reimbursement under an Endangered Species Act--and narrow those restrictions of equal access to justice.

This is because the cap on fees would include the Equal Access to Justice Act, which often falls well below the market-based rate for attorneys. Basically, what the Lee amendment does is say you will not be able to recap on the attorneys' fees at the cost of doing business, and their hope is that citizens will then not have representation before the courts on issues such as clean air, clean water, and other environmental issues.

I say to my colleagues--and I have said this to the now-ranking member on the EPW Committee--I don't know why we are not taking up the Superfund bill. To me, getting the Superfund reauthorized--these are polluters that have polluted our country, and they are not even paying the tax that it would cost to clean up the pollution.

Instead, we are considering an amendment that says: Let's roll back the environmental law on this issue and make sure that citizens don't have the right to help enforce environmental law.

I ask my colleagues to defeat the Lee amendment when we get to it.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, in speaking in opposition to the Toomey amendment, it is an attack on the Clean Air Act. I want to speak in favor of making sure that we are doing everything the Supreme Court said we need to do, which is to enforce the Clean Air Act.

While my colleague is making a point, I do not know why we should give some powerplants in Pennsylvania an exemption to the Clean Air Act. Obviously, there are businesses all across America that have to comply with environmental laws. By voting against this amendment, we can continue to fight against these pollution issues and make sure that special interests are not getting another narrow carve-out in this legislation.

So I would ask my colleagues to make sure that we are not creating a special exemption for the mercury and air toxic standards in the Clean Air Act and vote against this amendment.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I again thank the Senator from Alaska for working through this process and the due diligence given. I think we are very close to having the side-by-side language, and once that is done, we will give it out to everyone for review. We need to get the Fischer amendment and the side-by-side figured out.

Everybody is asking about the process. If we could get the next set of amendments offered by colleagues, it will give us a chance to proceed on figuring out when the next votes will be scheduled.

With that, I understand Senator Sanders wishes to speak.

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