Maria Cantwell

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I would like to call on the Senator from Massachusetts to offer an amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. I know our colleagues have been working throughout the day on these amendments, and I applaud them for their cooperation. As the Senator from Alaska said, oftentimes these needed side-by-sides-- people need to see these. We have various committees that have been involved in these amendments, so I appreciate the patience of our colleagues. I think going back and forth tonight on getting another set of amendments pending is a good idea because we have many Members on our side who have amendments they are very interested in having votes on. I appreciate them being here tonight. So I call on Senator Cardin to offer his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, the original agreement said that, further, that all these amendments be limited to 60-vote affirmative threshold adoption, except for Cornyn and Menendez, and that no second- degrees be in order. So the original agreement we entered into allowed for this vote.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, speaking against the Lee amendment, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this because it is an amendment relating to oil and gas permits on Federal land. I guess if colleagues want to keep trying to loosen environmental regulations, then maybe they should support this amendment. This amendment would impose new limitations on the Secretary of the Interior and their ability to process permits for drilling and provides a waiver for the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act if necessary reviews have not been completed by an arbitrary deadline, and it waives judicial review of these actions. So I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. I yield to Senator Boxer so she can call up her amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. On behalf of Senator Manchin, I call up his amendment, No. 99.

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Ms. CANTWELL. I call on the Senator from Delaware to offer his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Menendez amendment, No. 72, be modified with the changes that are at the desk.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska. I am certainly tired of hearing about deflate-gate. I don't know if our bantering on the floor can keep the focus on the real talent of the football team and the individuals, but I certainly want to say that she has proven she is a true 12, and that is important to us in the Northwest. I thank the Senator for her comments. We are here today to continue the debate on the Keystone XL Pipeline, and I see my colleague from Vermont is here, and he probably wishes to give comments about his amendments. Hopefully we will be voting later today on the various amendment proposals we discussed yesterday. We will be talking to Members about other amendments they would like to see on this legislation. Before I turn it over to Senator Sanders, I wish to draw focus for a few minutes to the fact that this process, debate, and discussion about the protection of environmental issues, property rights, and environmental laws is incredibly important in the United States of America. I say that because I want to submit for the Record two news articles that just came out today. One is entitled ``Montana oil spill renews worries over safety of old pipelines,'' and the other story is headlined ``Cleanup Underway for Nearly 3M-Gallon Saltwater Spill In ND.'' The reason I bring that up is that as we are sitting here today discussing whether we are going to override current environmental law and give special carve-out exceptions to a foreign company to basically build a pipeline through the United States of America, the fundamental question in my mind is, What is the hurry in giving them exemptions to these various laws as a way to get the pipeline built? These are things U.S. businesses don't get. They don't get these exemptions and they certainly don't get the U.S. Senate voting to basically override the President's authority--I should say to pass a bill that would basically prohibit the President from using his authority on what is in the national interest. To me, the Montana spill in the Yellowstone River is similar to our current pipeline debate on Keystone XL and whether we have the right safety provisions in place. So, if anything, we should be discussing what we can do to further pipeline safety in the United States of America and not let a foreign company roll back existing U.S. laws on environmental issues that they should be complying with. This is such a beautiful part of our country, and this article talks about how oil is floating 28 miles downstream from the Poplar Pipeline spill. This is an issue we should be really thinking about. I get that there has been an explosion of both tar sands and Bakken oil. The question is not are we going to rush to try to help these companies override rules; the question is whether they comply with rules and whether the United States of America has enough protections in place to make sure the safety and security of our citizens as this new opportunity and explosion of product is occurring. I can say from my perspective in my State, I have worked with practically every city council in the State about how they want new safety regulations for crude oil transported by rail--something they are very concerned about, given the explosions that have happened on oil railcars. Again, regarding this particular issue, I know my colleague from North Dakota thinks that somehow this alleviates the Northwest from having trains go through there, but I assure him it doesn't. So we will still have concerns about the safety of our citizens as more crude oil is being transported by rail. But we shouldn't now be trying to exempt a foreign company from complying with U.S. laws; we should be saying they should follow the rules. In the meantime, we should be asking the NTSB--we should be asking our agencies--whether there are enough safety protections in place, given the large amount of crude that is now moving and the issues we have seen as a result. There is nothing more important to me than protecting farmers and landowners to make sure they are actually treated fairly, and to make sure that resources such as clean water are protected. Just because the discussion has been going on for a long time doesn't mean we should overrule existing environmental laws and exempt a foreign company from complying with it. I would rather them follow the rules all the way through the process. So, with that, I yield the floor. I see my colleague from Vermont is here to discuss his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. I wish to recognize the Senator from Rhode Island to call up his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I will speak for the Senator from New Jersey, although this is a foreign policy question in general. Let me say this: In the next 10 years, 50 percent of the new buildings that are going to be built in the world are going to be built in China. They are the most energy-inefficient buildings on the planet. So when we reached an agreement through the President of the United States to work together as a way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases, guess what is going to win. American business, American product, and we are selling it to them because we have an agreement to work together to be more energy efficient. So I don't want to slow down this President or any President in cutting deals to get U.S. products into markets because they agree we need to deal with this issue. Please don't slow down the ability to get U.S. product into foreign markets. Oppose the Blunt amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hoeven be followed by the Senator from Vermont to speak for 10 minutes about an amendment he has filed.

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.

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. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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.

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.

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.

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. CANTWELL. My colleague from Hawaii, Senator Schatz, wishes to speak on his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I know we are running against a time clock here in getting ready for the State of the Union Address tonight. I appreciate my colleague from Alaska going back and forth on these amendments and allowing both sides of the aisle to set up some pending amendments. I will just say the Toomey amendment asks for an exemption of the Clean Air Act which I wouldn't support. I know we will have a chance later on to have that discussion. Our colleague from Nebraska came to the floor and offered an amendment that would make it incredibly difficult without first proving there was negative management of Federal land to get any more national monuments. National monuments have been big economic drivers in a lot of communities and have preserved some very unique parts of our country. We will have a chance to talk about that a little bit later. But I wish to make sure we get our colleague recognized so he can offer his amendment. Then, I think we will probably, as my colleague from Alaska said, be finished for this afternoon as it relates to offering amendments back and forth. I wish to recognize the Senator from Rhode Island for his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, as we go back and forth on offering amendments, I wish to turn to the Senator from Hawaii for him to offer his amendment.

Ms. CANTWELL. I would like to call on the Senator from Illinois to offer his amendment. Amendment No. 69 to Amendment No. 2

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, just to reiterate our opposition to this legislation, new polling has come out showing that the American public really does--over 60 percent--support going through a normal process and not subverting what are environmental laws. But we are going to move forward in getting this legislation voted on. My colleague just outlined a process for this afternoon. So I would encourage Members to come to the floor to offer their amendments. I know Senator Franken is coming to speak on his amendment, and I see the Senator from Massachusetts here to speak on his amendment. So hopefully while they are speaking we can get a vote schedule firmed up and talk about other amendments besides the three we have pending. But I would agree with the Senator from Alaska that Members should come down here and talk on their amendments and we should keep the process moving. With that, I am not sure who is queued up to speak.