Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, some really big things are happening right now that are happening under the radar; people are not aware of them. One of them is the fact that the Obama war on fossil fuels is officially over now and good things are happening. This coincides with a time when we have a shale revolution. We have a situation where we are actually reviving an industry that had been pushed for the last 8 years. Oil and gas accounts for over 5 percent of the jobs in the entire country and accounts for over $1 trillion in economic impact in the U.S. gross domestic product. In my State of Oklahoma, the industry directly employs nearly 150,000 people, and each of those jobs support more than two additional jobs in the State. Thanks to the election of President Trump, help has arrived. There are some very vocal sectors in America that want to put the fossil fuel industry out of business. We know that. They are out there. They are alive and well, and the attacks will keep coming. While most inroads were made toward that goal during the Obama administration, the environmental extremists will continue to use our court system and the media to ensure that the war on fossil fuels continues, putting American jobs and the economy at risk. Back in Oklahoma--it is kind of funny--I have an established policy for the last 20 years that every year, at the end of every week, I will either--if I don't have to be in Afghanistan or someplace else--I am always back in the State, never here. I have been in aviation for many years so I get one of my airplanes and travel around the State and talk to people--real people. People don't understand this because you don't get logical questions asked or responded to here in Washington. They will say, for example--and this happened early in the Obama administration. They would come up to me and say: Explain this to me, Senator Inhofe. We have a President who has a war on fossil fuels, trying to do away with fossil fuels. He doesn't like nuclear either. Yet nuclear and fossil fuels, which is oil and gas, account for 89 percent of the energy it takes to run this machine called America. So if he is successful, how do you run the machine called America? The answer is that you can't. With the election of a Republican-led Congress and a Republican in the White House, we should be working together to address the concerns of the industries that provide cheap, reliable fuel for American energy. Unfortunately, as what always seems to be the case when we are in power, Republicans can't seem to get together and work toward a common goal, dividing themselves over some of the issues. Healthcare is no better example. But the threat against the industry and fossil fuels should be a priority of all Republicans and Democrats, whether or not they come from a State dependent on these resources for jobs, because cheaper and more reliable energy is an issue that affects all Americans, helping them to get to work, to heat their homes, and to cook their meals. Yet we already have examples of Republicans not working together to defeat threats to our energy sector. We only had one CRA vote fail, and that was the one on the BLM venting and flaring rule. It was held up by some of the Republicans who want to expand a mandate they already have, and that is the renewable fuels standard. It was ultimately defeated by another Republican. Now, the oil and gas industry considered this to be one of the real key regulations that was imposed by President Obama and that needed to be released. If anyone is interested, in my office we have accumulated all 47 of the regulations this administration either is in the process of doing away with or has already done away with, and these are the things putting people out of business. So some good things are happening right now. We know that programs were created at the time in our history when we were dependent on foreign oil or when our energy production at home was receding, and that all has changed. Some might not be old enough to remember. I am. Back in the early 1970s, OPEC in the Middle East retaliated against us for helping Israel against Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur invasion by imposing an oil embargo. This resulted in long lines of cars at the pumps and in rationing. It was pretty traumatic. In the late 1970s, unrest in the Middle East again disrupted the oil market, once again causing shortages and prices to skyrocket. There is the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards program, as we call them. The CAFE standards program was created during this time of uncertainty in the oil and gas market, when we were dependent on oil from the Middle East. But the bleak future we were facing at that time didn't happen. It wasn't the end of the world as they said it was going to be. In fact, just the opposite happened. The United States is no longer dependent on foreign sources for oil and gas and is in the position to export our resources and provide for better security for us here. I was very proud of the President the other day when he was in Poland and he made a speech with Putin right there. He talked about the fact that we are going to start exporting our oil and gas--and we are already doing it now--to some of these former satellite countries of the Soviet Union and other countries where they want to import from us but Iran and Russia have had a lock on the exports and so they were forced to be dependent on them. That is not the case anymore. I would say, parenthetically, to anybody who believes this President was trying to cater to Putin at any time, that he stood up and said: We are going to be the ones exporting, instead of Russia, when their economy is dependent upon their exports. That is actually happening right now. The cost of cars went up, even though that didn't work. The CAFE standards were by government officials who thought they could force the public into smaller cars, more mileage, and all that, but that is not the way the American people responded. The cost of cars did go up $3,800 per vehicle from their standards put together for 2016. This was significant when it happened, but it didn't change the behavior of the American people. So any small benefit of new standards estimated at 0.007 degrees by 2100 is outweighed by the fact that consumers are doing something different than the government predicted--I am happy about that--which always seems to be the case when the government starts messing with industry. None of this touches the effect the California waiver has on the fuel economy debate and the consumer market. If California and the States that have followed had their way, liquid fuels would be phased out altogether and consumer demand and prices wouldn't really matter. Another way Congress has tried to manipulate the fuel market when the energy future was uncertain is through the renewable fuels standards. This is not a partisan issue because it is really more of a geographical issue. People up in the core area are very strongly supportive of the renewable fuels standards. Some other people are not. So it is not a partisan thing, as most of the things we talk about on the floor of the Senate are. In 2005--and then expanded in 2007, despite my best efforts--the RFS was created to address decreased energy production at home and to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. However, with the shale revolution, our dependency on foreign energy stopped. The more we learn about corn ethanol, the more we know RFS has not been the environmental solution as sold to us. In case we forgot--it has been a while ago--Al Gore was the guy who invented ethanol. This was supposed to solve all the problems out there, until Al Gore realized that the environmental community, which motivated him to get involved with this issue, said: No, that is the worst thing in the world for the environment. So he had to back down. Land is increasingly set aside for the production of corn to feed the mandate, and the more corn that is diverted to ethanol production, the less there is for our food consumption and for ranchers who need corn to feed their livestock, making the cost of our food rise. That is another major issue nobody talks about anymore. Fuels with corn ethanol are less efficient than gasoline diesel by 27 percent. So while consumers may pay less at the pump than conventional fuel, they are coming back to the pump more often, and the math works so that it costs them more. This also translates into more greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere to make up for the efficiency lost in using corn ethanol. Oklahomans know this and demand for clear gas remains high. This is very common in Oklahoma. I actually took this picture myself. People know, No. 1, that it is bad for the environment; No. 2, it is not good for mileage; and, No. 3, it destroys small engines. So in Oklahoma, this is what you see in almost every community. They know the demand for clear gas--gas which doesn't have any additives--remains high in my State. Retailers in Oklahoma continue to advertise it. They also don't like corn ethanol because they understand it is not good for their engines. We heard testimony from people in the small- engine business, such as outboard motors and those things, talking about how they are quite often sued and then have to defend the thing because the damage was actually caused by the ethanol as opposed to the manufacturer. Ethanol supporters claim the warning labels on the pump are sufficient to alert customers, but studies show consumers make fueling choices by price, and they have ruined boats and small engines, causing manufacturers and retailers to invest in a nationwide campaign to prevent misfueling. Furthermore, the mandate is not living up to its promises of advancing biofuels. In fact, over the last 5 years, the EPA has had to lower the total renewable volume requirements to amounts below statutory requirements because advanced biofuels have not been developed in the capacity drafters of the RFS had hoped, even with a mandate. To comply with the RFS, we have become reliant on foreign imports of soybeans and ethanol from South America to count toward the RFS--the exact opposite of what the mandate was supposed to prevent in the first place. Meanwhile, supporters of the RFS want more. They want a waiver for even higher ethanol levels in gas. Currently, gas with 15 percent ethanol or higher can't be sold during the hot summer months because of its negative effect on ambient air quality. Ethanol supporters want a waiver now so that E15 and higher can be sold year round. Right now, it can't be sold during the hot summer months, for obvious reasons. With all the problems with RFS, we should not give them this waiver without addressing the larger issues with the program. Between CAFE and RFS, the fuel industry has had its hands full. But the war is being waged on all fronts, and I will continue to work to make sure that doesn't happen. There are no guarantees that the next administration after President Trump will not return to the ``regulate to death'' plans of the Obama administration. I am not talking about the war on fossil fuels. We need to work together to address the regulations that we were not able to address with the CRA process. By the way, the CRA process, the Congressional Review Act process, is one of the two ways that you can minimize or eliminate onerous regulations. It has been very effective. The mandate was the only one that has not been successful. All the rest of the CRAs have been successful. We went 20 years, using it effectively once in 20 years, and we have used it 47 times now. So times have changed. We are going to work with our colleagues to get as much as we can on any legislation that looks like it might be moving both in my committee of jurisdiction and on the Senate floor. Any regulation that is a threat to the energy sector should be addressed so we don't find ourselves in the situation of hoping for favorable court rulings again, which is what we relied on before. There are many regulations that threaten the availability of cheaper energy, and I will be pursuing any means available to address them. As for the waters of the United States rule, when we talk to the farmers and the ranchers around the country and ask what the major problems are, they say: It is nothing found in the farm bill; it is the overregulation by the EPA. Which one regulation do they single out as being the most serious one? It is the waters of the United States. In my State of Oklahoma, the Panhandle is a very arid area. If we change the jurisdiction from the States to the Federal Government, I am sure it will become some type of a serious problem with all of the water that is not out there. We have the waters of the United States, the Clean Power Plan, the EPA, and the BLM methane rules, and fixing compliance issues with the most recent NAAQ standards. I will also be pursuing ways to amend the RFS and CAFE programs--from rescinding the California waiver that drives CAFE issues and harmonizing the EPA and DOT rulemaking to reforms of the RFS program, including requiring that any E15 or higher blend be tied to the commercial availability of cellulosic ethanol, or requiring that certain criteria be reached before an E15 waiver is triggered. There are many ways in which I will be looking to address the issues I have outlined here today, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that not only is the environment protected but that the entire fuel industry is, as well, and that we have the available fuel. The latest battle on fossil fuels was won with the election of President Trump, but the war is still being waged. I will continue to defend that industry and any industry that employs that number of people and provides cheap energy for Americans. Again, the question that I got back in Oklahoma--where the real people are, I might add--if the Obama administration had been successful--and we are dependent upon the very thing he was trying to do away with for 89 percent of the industry--how do we run the machine called America? The answer is, we can't. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, this is a little out of character. Confession is good for the soul. One of my very favorite--maybe my most favorite--of spectator sports is, of all things, girls' softball. Now, a lot of people don't even know anything about the sport. It is pretty incredible. I am pleased to tell you that Oklahoma City is the home of a very famous ASA Hall of Fame stadium, which is the world's No. 1 softball field. This is where the Big 12 Softball Championship and the Women's College World Series are held. This past May, the Sooners won the championship game at the Big 12 softball tournament between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, which also has a great team, at this impressive stadium. The Sooners won. Then, on June 6, they became the 2017 Women's College World Series national champions in Oklahoma City. After facing diversity in the earlier game against North Dakota State in the NCAA regionals, the Sooners proceeded to win 11 consecutive games--think about that, 11 consecutive games--ultimately achieving a 5-to-4 victory over the University of Florida Gators. In the first game of the championship series, Oklahoma outlasted Florida in a recordbreaking--I was here; we were actually in session at that time--17 innings. It went until 3 o'clock in the morning. Of course, we won. It was the longest game in the history of women's college series of all time. This win is the women's softball team's second consecutive national championship and the third in the last 5 years. This is a big deal. These girls come from all over the country and end up playing softball there. It is something where they are clearly national champions. It makes me very proud to see that they are doing so well. I would like to take a moment to congratulate all of the players. Their hard work clearly paid off. It is important to thank the coaches as well. Thank you for your skills, your tenacity, and your dedication, which helped lead these ladies to victory. Their remarkable head coach, Patty Gasso, has been with OU since 1995, and was inducted into the National Fast Pitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2012. I bet you didn't even know there was such a thing, but there is. She and her staff have worked together over the last few decades to build a legacy that has a strong community following. These women will continue to make Oklahoma proud through their various roles as students, athletes, and leaders. Just last week, junior pitcher Paige Parker was warming up before she threw the ceremonial first pitch of the game between the Kansas City Royals and the Boston Red Sox. It was during this warmup that the Royals players were able to see firsthand how impressive girls' softball pitchers are. The catcher even missed some of them and almost fell over. I wish the best of luck to these players and the coaches for next year's softball season. Enjoy your success, and bring home another national championship next year. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the team roster of all the players and coaches, who made this a great championship victory, be printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, as we begin the markup--that is what we are going to be starting on right away. We have already had an initial meeting with the Senate Armed Services Committee on the National Defense Authorization Act. I want to express my deep concern over the continued malign behavior by the overtly hostile nation of North Korea. I often talk to people, and they shake their heads in disbelief about a country that is run by a mentally deranged individual who is rapidly developing the capability of hitting the mainland United States with a missile. I think it is important that we immediately get to our Defense authorization bill, so we can start addressing this and many other problems that we have. It is important to us in the Senate to communicate to the American people the incredibly grave situation we are facing right now in North Korea. The Kim Jong Un regime has expressed a desire to destroy the United States of America. Normally that wouldn't be a concern because he wouldn't have the credibility, but right now we are seeing progress being made in their technology and their ability to actually hit major areas. In April, North Korea's official newspaper relayed the threat of a preemptive strike to ``completely and immediately wipe out not only U.S. imperialists' invasion forces in South Korea and its surrounding areas but the U.S. mainland and reduce them to ashes.'' That is a threat--a threat that has come directly from the leader of North Korea. This is the most recent in a long line of threats by that individual. In addition, North Korean leaders constantly threaten our friends and allies in South Korea and Japan. These threats are not just hollow words any longer. North Korea's capabilities are rapidly improving to meet their long-stated intent. We thought that Kim Jong Il was bad, but in 6 years, his son Kim Jong Un has conducted as many as 75 ballistic missile tests. In comparison, over a 17-year period, his father conducted about 30. In other words, he has done over twice as many in a fraction of the time. Additionally, Kim Jong Un has sped up North Korea's nuclear program since taking power in 2011. North Korea's nuclear technology is advancing at an alarming rate. For example, the bomb North Korea tested in its most recent test last September was 10 times more powerful than what the regime could have produced in 2006--10 times more. At the same time, North Korea has actively worked on miniaturizing nuclear weapons so that they can deliver by way of a ballistic missile. Earlier this year, analysts detected activity at a North Korean nuclear test site, indicating another nuclear test may be imminent. Intelligence and military experts have repeatedly argued that it is prudent to assume that North Korea has successfully miniaturized their nuclear weapons. That means the only technology they need to conduct a nuclear strike on the U.S. mainland--that is us; that is right here-- would be a functional intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In January, Kim Jong Un said North Korea is in the ``final stage in preparations.'' Let's make sure we understand what we are talking about. We know that their capability is getting very close to it, and they have already said that they would send something over to the mainland United States. Unfortunately, when you talk to people in the real world, they can't believe this could be true--that one guy who is mentally deranged could be heading up a country that has the capability of blowing up an American city. Yet we know this is going on right now. Recently, in the Armed Services Committee--and I was in attendance at that time--the Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, told the Armed Services Committee: ``If left on its current trajectory the [North Korean] regime will ultimately succeed in fielding a nuclear-armed missile capable of threatening the United States homeland.'' That is a direct quote by the guy who knows more about this than anybody else. Lieutenant General Stewart added that ``the North Korean regime is committed and is on a pathway where this capability is inevitable.'' I will say that again. Our intelligence experts assessed that, unchecked, North Korea will inevitably achieve the capability to strike the U.S. homeland with a nuclear missile. Even without the ICBM capability, the missiles we know they already have can range U.S.--that means it can reach the United States-- military personnel and other citizens in South Korea, Japan, Guam, and many other areas. North Korea's known missile inventory now includes a missile that North Korea successfully tested for the first time on May 14. That missile represented a major breakthrough in North Korean ballistic missile technology. The reports indicate the missile traveled over 1,300 miles at an altitude and successfully exited and then reentered the Earth's atmosphere--a key requirement for nuclear capable ICBMs. If fired at its maximum range, the missile could reach Guam. Though the missile itself was not an ICBM, the technological breakthrough demonstrates a significant advancement that North Korea has made in their ballistic missile capability. This is actual. This is happening. This is today. This is reality. Another significant advancement that occurs to me is the solid- fueled, road-mobile missiles the regime is developing. Kim Jong Un has successfully tested two such missiles already this year--one in February and another last month on May 21. Solid-fueled missiles mounted on mobile launch vehicles can be prepared ahead of time. They can build up an inventory and come back and use that inventory whenever they desire to do so. What can we do? It is clear that North Korea does not respond to international pressure. All of these ballistic missile tests violate multiple U.N. resolutions. Yet North Korea carries them out, despite sanctions and international condemnation. The normal type of negotiation doesn't work with those guys. Furthermore, conventional wisdom has led us to believe that China--North Korea's main trade partner in that region--holds significant sway over the regime. That conventional wisdom has been called into question recently. I commend the Trump administration for recognizing this and for working with China on this issue, but we can't assume that China will be able to help us close the deal in a diplomatic way. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to take all appropriate steps to defend ourselves from this threat that exists today. We have to keep in mind that as we formulate this year's National Defense Authorization Act--that is what I am talking about now--we have to do it. For 53 consecutive years, we have passed the Defense authorization bill, and right now there is some doubt as to whether we will get enough cooperation from those in this Chamber to make that happen again. I remember 4 years ago, when I was ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, we didn't get this done until the latter part of December. If you wait around until the latter part of December and it passes midyear, we will have our soldiers over there not getting what they need to be getting in the way of hazard pay and other things. It would be an absolute disaster. Right now, they are watching us. Our kids are over there watching us now to see what we will do with the most important bill we pass every year. We are going to get started. I applaud the President for the fiscal year 2018 budget request that calls for increases to defense spending and aims to fill critical readiness gaps. Right now, in Congress, we need to build on that even further. First, we need to bolster our national ballistic defense capabilities to address the threats we face from North Korea. That is a no-brainer. We all understand that. Since 2006, the Missile Defense Agency budget has fallen 23 percent when adjusted for inflation. While we have taken positive steps in recent years, we need to ensure our last-resort defenses are airtight. We should heed the recommendations of defense experts like Gen. Lori Robinson, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, who testified in April before our committee. I am quoting her now, Lori Robinson: ``As adversaries continue to pursue credible and advanced capabilities, we, too, must evolve our missile defense capabilities to outpace increasingly complex threats.'' I think that is a recognition by her-- the one who probably knows more about it than anyone else--that we are not keeping pace right now. Simultaneously, we have to boost our military. Our forces are smaller than the days of the hollow force. I chaired a committee not too long ago that had the Vices of all four services. They all came in. The conclusion was--even though some of them were not old enough to remember, as I remember, the 1980s at the end of the Carter administration, but they made the statement that we are in a situation now that we have never been in before and that we are, in fact, a hollow force, just as hollow as we were back in 1989 after the Carter administration. We really owe our brave service men and women better. We owe them an obligation. It is our obligation to let them know what we are doing. Our forces are smaller than the days of the hollow force in the 1980s. Our equipment is aging, and our base infrastructure requires critical maintenance and upgrades. We went through 8 years of the Obama administration. We paid our price in not really giving our brave young warriors the equipment they needed. Through this year's NDAA, we ought to prioritize across the board end-strength increases and additional investments in maintenance to fill gaps in existing formations and to get our existing equipment back to par. The first thing that happens when you are on a starvation diet is you let your maintenance and modernization go. We have done that. I hear people say defense spending is out of control. The truth is, defense spending, as a proportion of total government spending, has steadily decreased since World War II. How many people are aware that in 1964, we spent 52 percent of our total resources on defending America? Today, it is 15 percent. No one seems to care about it because they don't know about it. Nonetheless, that is where we are today. In the recent years, despite waging multiple wars and facing unparalleled global threats, our spending has decreased to about 15 percent of our total spending. The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Milley, said it best when it comes to funding our military. This is really significant now when people are talking about spending too much. He said: The only thing more expensive than deterrence, is actually fighting a war. And the only thing more expensive than fighting a war, is fighting one and losing one . . . We're expensive. We recognize that. But the bottom line is, it's an investment that is worth every nickel. So we have to immediately make up for the damage done by the years of the dangerous defense cuts and recognize what the government is really supposed to be doing. I refer to that old document nobody reads anymore called the Constitution. You read that, and it tells us what we are supposed to be doing here; No. 1, defending America; No. 2, they called it post roads back then but infrastructure. That is what we are actually supposed to be doing. The good news is, under the leadership of President Trump, we have already started that process working. The appropriations bill last month stopped the decline in Army strength. Instead of the planned 460,000 Active soldiers, we now have 475,000. We added 1,000 marines, a few hundred airmen. In total, we currently have 24,000 more servicemembers than we would have had under the previous administration. More good news is that we have exceptional patriots like the airmen at Tinker, Vance, and Altus Air Force Bases and those who are protecting the skies with F-16s out of my city of Tulsa. Soldiers like those in Fort Sill and in Oklahoma's 45th Infantry Brigade, who are right now in Ukraine training our allies there. People don't know that the policy we are following under this new administration is, we are using our resources to help others train themselves. In the case of Ukraine--what happened in Ukraine should never have happened. Ukraine had this great parliamentary election. I happened to be there at the time, about 4 years ago. For the first time in 96 years, Ukraine doesn't have one Communist in its Parliament. They did that because they love us. They love the West. Consequently, when Putin came in right after that--this is back during the Obama administration--he started killing the Ukrainians, who were seeking their freedom--our best friends over there--and our administration refused to let us even send defensive weapons over there. We are correcting that. In fact, the bill we are talking about right now, the Defense authorization bill, is one where we are going to be addressing that problem. I am optimistic we will rise to the occasion and meet the challenge presented by the agnostic North Korean regime and confident President Trump has taken the appropriate steps to address this threat diplomatically. We, in Congress, need to follow his lead to ensure that our men and women in uniform have the resources required to answer the call quickly and effectively. We don't have the luxury of time. Just think of the statement I read a minute ago, where Gen. Vincent Stewart told the Armed Services Committee a week ago: ``If left on its current trajectory the regime will ultimately succeed in fielding a nuclear- armed missile capable of threatening the United States homeland.'' While we have a lot of problems right now on this floor--and we are trying to address these problems--the No. 1 problem is what is happening to our military and the absolute necessity of getting a defense authorization passed very rapidly. We are starting today.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for such time as I may consume as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say that I am really glad the junior Senator from Georgia has taken this on. This is something that some of us who have been around a little bit longer have gone through before. I think everyone realizes that what was attempted to be done by President Obama was a single-payer system. Ultimately, that is what liberals want. I remember back in the 1990s what was referred to at that time as Hillary healthcare during the Clinton administration. I remember so well the efforts that were taking place. Sometimes I go back to my State of Oklahoma just to be around logical people, and they will ask the question: If this system is not working in Canada, is not working in Sweden, and is not working in Great Britain, why do they think it will work here? Liberal individuals will never tell you this, but what they are really thinking is this: It would work if I were running the show. So we are going through a similar thing again, and I am so happy we have leaders, as the occupier of the Chair, and we have more doctors right now in the Senate. This is the time to make these changes and really accomplish things. But that is not why I am here.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion in the media over the last couple of weeks about what President Trump is going to do and should do with the Paris climate agreement. We know all about this agreement. It was entered into by President Obama in December of 2015 at the U.N. annual party that they hold, the 21st annual Conference of Parties meeting. Let me explain what this is. It was 21 years ago they decided--the United Nations had always been quite offended every time something happened that they were doing in the United Nations that was not in the best interest of the United States. Several of us would call and threaten to withhold some of our funds supporting the United Nations. Of course, the United Nations has always wanted to be independent. They wanted to not be accountable to anyone so consequently they put together these parties. The best way for them to do that is if they could somehow be funded independently and not be accountable to the various countries--not just the United States but any of the rest of them. So they hold this meeting in December of every year, and they hold it in very exotic places. Everybody gets really excited. They have 192 countries come in. What they are trying to do is get them all to limit their CO2 emissions. Of course, they all come in because 99 percent of the 192 countries are ones who want to get money out of this deal. I ran into a friend of mine from Benin, West Africa. This was several years ago. I said: Why are you here? You are not really going to agree with this stuff. He said: No, this is where the money is. This is the biggest party of the year. One of the worst things that ever happened at their big party was-- they headed to South America someplace, I don't remember where--when they ran out of caviar. They have these big meetings every year. Well, the last one I went to was December 2009. It was in Copenhagen. You might remember that was just after President Obama was elected. He and his administration were pledging to the 192 countries that we were going to pass a form of cap and trade. Well, they all went to Copenhagen--Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, John Kerry, Barack Obama--they all went there and told them we were going to pass cap and trade here in the United States so they all needed to follow form. This is interesting because of the 192 countries he was talking to, most of them didn't even know our form of government. They didn't know that we had a Senate that had to confirm these things or that we even had a legislature. They assumed that was going to happen. I remember, right after they left, I went to Copenhagen. I had to go in the morning and get back in time for votes all in 1 day. I did that. At that time, they termed me as the ``one-man truth squad.'' I told them under no circumstances--this is 2009--were we going to pass any kind of cap and trade in this country. I was right. They were shocked over there because they assumed if the President said we are going to do it, that we are going to do it. The legislation was estimated at that time to cost between $300 and $400 billion--that is per year--to implement. It never came to a vote because the Democrats knew they had at that time--keep in mind this is 2009--they had control of the White House, they had control of the House and Senate, and they had, at that time, 60 votes in the Senate, but they couldn't get the votes because it was too expensive. So many people thought it was the first time we would consider cap and trade, but it wasn't. We had been working on that for years. They first tried it in 2003. In 2003, we had a bill for the U.S. Senate. I remember being down here--because at that time I was chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment and Public Works. They had that jurisdiction. So I was down here to try to make sure that thing wasn't going to pass. Sure enough, it didn't. We defeated it, 43 to 55. Then the same group tried it again in 2005. At that time, they only got 38 votes, and that failed. Then, in 2008, Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman tried it again. Of course, at that time, it failed again. Now, that is a far cry from the 60 votes necessary in order to get something like that to pass. We have been looking at that with various forms of legislation for quite a number of years. After suffering those embarrassing defeats in the Senate, President Obama sought to do by regulation what he couldn't do through legislation. That is how we got the Clean Power Plan. I think it is important to think back where we got to this point. There has also been an implementation cost, by their own admission, some $300 billion a year, and it made it impossible at that time for us in the United States to build a new coal-fired powerplant. It is interesting. Some people say: Why do you go back so often to Oklahoma? I said: Well, I like to talk to real people. I can remember being at Shattuck, OK. I bet the Chair doesn't know where Shattuck is. It is in Western Oklahoma. A guy said: Now, explain this to me. This was actually during the Obama administration. He said: If we in the United States are dependent upon fossil fuels-- that is, coal, oil and gas, and nuclear--to produce 89 percent of the power it takes to run this machine called America, and if President Obama is successful in doing away with coal, oil and gas, and nuclear, then how do we run this machine called America? For that reason, the President decided he was going to do this with regulations. I ask unanimous consent that this list of all of the regulations--47 of them--we have been able to do away with in the first 100 days be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. A few weeks ago, he signed an Executive order instructing the EPA to unwind the United States from this regulation. That is exactly what my friend, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, is working to accomplish right now. While the President has disavowed the Paris Agreement, he has not pulled out as of this time. He has been kind of busy doing other things. I understand there are a lot of competing voices on this front. Many people don't believe the Paris Agreement is binding. While that is true, to a certain degree, it is kind of shortsighted. I am speaking today because I believe the President should make a clean exit from the Paris Agreement and avoid a lot of confusion. There are two key reasons I want to do that. The first one, reason No. 1, is that if we remain in the agreement, we are putting ourselves at significant litigation risk. The Paris Agreement commits the United States to lowering its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. This is interesting because in the Paris Agreement that took place, the President at that time, President Obama, was getting just a little bit panicky. He had already gone to seven of these and had been unable to pass any kind of an agreement that would accomplish his goal of putting coal, oil, and gas out of existence. So this agreement that he made, he made unilaterally, saying: I agree on behalf of the United States of America that we will reduce our emissions of CO2 by between 26 and 28 percent by 2025. Well, we all know that the environmental community wants to do whatever it possibly can to regulate carbon. There is a reason for this. You might wonder why this is. There is a professor named Richard Lindzen. Richard Lindzen is a professor at MIT and is one of the top professors in this discipline. He said: If you control carbon, you control life. It makes it a bureaucrat's dream. So yes, in fact, that is what he was trying to do. That is all they want. So if we stay in the Paris Agreement, environmentalist groups--radical groups--would be able to sue the EPA to force it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under section 115 of the Clean Air Act. Section 115 of the Clean Air Act is entitled ``International Air Pollution.'' This section is triggered when a country asserts that our pollution is harming them, establishing an endangerment finding, and when there is a reciprocal agreement between our countries and those countries that have such a regulation. It is not difficult to imagine that if we remain in the Paris Agreement, the environmentalists, NGOs, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and others, will file lawsuits against the EPA as it takes legal steps to deregulate the Clean Power Plan. While there has not been an internal endangerment finding, the environmentalists would be working to force the issue. Further, they would make the case that the reciprocal requirements of section 115 of the Clean Air Act are met by the Paris climate agreement. Even though it is not binding at the international level, the environmentalists could, with a sympathetic judge, make a case that the administration has made the reciprocal agreement by staying in Paris. It would sound good. It is not too hard to find a sympathetic judge nowadays. This is something they have been planning to do all along. They built this back door into the agreement as the Obama administration was actually writing it. You ask, why would certain lawsuits be filed? A former general counsel at the Sierra Club, David Bookbinder, said that section 115 of the Clean Air Act is--these are his words--``the silver bullet de jour of the enviros, and they are dead serious about this,'' meaning that they believe the Paris Agreement clearly states that it meets the reciprocity test established by section 115 of the Clean Air Act. If you have noticed, the environmental groups have been very silent about whether the administration should stay in the agreement. We all know they want us to stay in the agreement, but why be so quiet at this time? Because we have not heard from them. Well, the reason is, I think the environmental groups who are trying to accomplish this see that there is real progress being made to convince the President to stay in the Paris Agreement, which means they could have their wish of greenhouse gas regulations. If we stay in the agreement, they could sue the EPA and force regulations under section 115. So they have been very quiet. They don't want President Trump to know they will also benefit if we stay in the agreement. Because of this, they are allowing people to believe that nothing will happen by staying in the agreement. I have heard this from Republicans and Democrats. It really does not make too much difference, because for ratification, the votes are not there, and everybody knows it. In the meantime, you are subject to the lawsuits. So they just don't want us to know it as well. Could it be that a Republican President would give them the tools they need to force greenhouse gas regulations even without meaning to? It is a possibility. This is why the President needs to make a clean exit from the agreement. If the President stays in the Paris agreement, he will be putting at risk our ability to accomplish his campaign goals; namely, ending the war on fossil fuels and rescinding the Clean Power Plan. He has already taken the Executive steps he needs on this front. The EPA is currently on solid legal footing. But we must not limit the effectiveness of these key steps by remaining in the Paris Agreement. So that is reason No. 1. Reason No. 1 is that if we remain in the agreement, we are subjecting ourselves to all of the lawsuits that will be out there. The other reason, the second reason I will mention, is that even if we pull out of the agreement, we will still have a seat at the table. I have heard the statement quite often, in fact, by some people in the Trump administration--they say: We don't want to pull out of it because we want to maintain a seat at the table. As they have these meetings every December, we want to be there so we can express what America really is planning to do and is not planning to do. But let's keep in mind that the seat at the table was established way back in 1992. That was when they had the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. This is the 1992 treaty that supports all the big parties that meet every December that are held in the exotic locations I mentioned. That group was the foundation of the Paris Agreement and the foundation of the Copenhagen discussion in 2009. Now, 2009 is when they had the event in Copenhagen. That is the one where all the people went and told them that we were going to pass cap and trade, which we were not going to pass cap and trade, and we didn't. Further, it was the foundation of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which was the first agreement that sought to set binding international greenhouse regulations. The Senate demonstrated its intent to defeat that with the Byrd-Hagel resolution. Let's remember what that was. The Berg-Hagel resolution--by Senators Byrd and Hagel--was right here in this Chamber. They said they were going to oppose the ratification of any treaty that does one of two things--either it is harmful economically to the United States of America, or that countries that are developing countries, such as China, are not a part of it. Well, that was the case. So the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was a natural follow-on from that decision that was made. So even if President Trump removes the United States as a signatory to the Paris Agreement, we will continue to have a seat at the table and the President will have the ability to negotiate further deals. That is already done. That was the done, and it is inescapable. It was done back in 1992. We have been a party to that protocol. We have been ever since then and we will continue to be regardless of whether the President pulls out of the Paris Agreement. In the event the President does decide to stay in the Paris Agreement, he will need the Senate for ratification because the Paris Agreement meets seven out of eight criteria established by the State Department to determine what constitutes a treaty. An agreement need meet only one of these, and this meets seven. So it would have to come in for ratification. If the President does not exit, the Paris Agreement will be considered as a treaty. It is in the best interests of the Nation and the President's agenda to make a clean exit from this agreement. That is why we sent a letter, which was sent out this morning by about 25 Members of the Senate, encouraging the President to pull out of the agreement. It is the best way to get everything he wants: a complete end to the war on fossil fuels--which has been ongoing since the day Barrack Obama went into power--without the risk of any further future litigation mandating that the EPA establish new greenhouse gas regulations, and a decent seat at the table for the United States, which we all agree that we want. If for some reason he decides not to withdraw, he will have to submit it to the Senate as a treaty, and it would be defeated. Let me mention two other things which I think are important and which I want to include in the Record at this time. You know, we have been talking about the Paris Agreement. The far left has been trying to get a forum of cap and trade ever since Kyoto in 1997. They have tried to do it through legislation, tried over and over again, as I mentioned. They could not do it, so they tried to do it through regulation. You might wonder, what was it way back in the beginning--what were the motives for this in the very first place? I carry this. I think it is very important to realize what people were saying about it. The former Minister of the European Union--her name was Margot Wallstrom. She said: ``Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big business worldwide.'' Then along came Jacques Chirac. He said during a speech at the Hague in November of 2000 that Kyoto represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.'' Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper once dismissed UN's Kyoto Protocol as a ``socialist scheme.'' Then Christiana Figueres, who was actually at Paris at the time this thing was put together, said that ``the real goal is to change the economic development model for redistribution of wealth among nations.'' Those are some of the original comments people have forgotten about. The last thing I will mention, because I think it is significant, is that I remember going to Copenhagen. At that time, the person who was the head of the EPA--an appointment by the President at that time--was Lisa Jackson. Lisa Jackson--actually, we became pretty good friends at that time. She had one problem: She had a hard time saying things that were not true. I asked her a question right before we left. I said: I have a feeling that once I leave town, once I go to Copenhagen, you are going to come up with an endangerment finding. This was live on the record, by the way, in the committee I was chairing. She kind of smiled, so I knew it was true. I said: Now, if you come up with an endangerment finding, it has to be based on science. What science would you rely on? She said: Well, on the IPCC. That is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now, I wouldn't say as luck would have it, but it is kind of coincidental that right after she made that statement was when the big scandal that was referred to as ``Climategate'' came along. They discovered that the scientists who were with IPCC were not getting the results they wanted. So they rigged the science, and they were caught doing it with emails. So there wasn't any question as to what they were trying to do. So that totally diffused the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the IPCC. In fact, Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph said: ``This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.'' So when people keep saying that science is settled, that is where it all came from--the IPCC. Clive Crook of the Financial Times said: The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any length to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. Well, I assumed at the time that that would end their providing the science and justification for passing what would have been the largest tax increase in the history of this country. So, anyway, back to the issue here, several of us feel that to avoid all of this from happening, the best way to do it is to have this President, when he gets back from his trip, do what he campaigned on and pull out of the Paris Agreement, and I anticipate that he will do that.

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President today I wish pay tribute to a great leader and an exceptional Army officer, MG Laura J. Richardson, the Chief Legislative Liaison for the Office of the Secretary of the Army, as she prepares to leave this position for one of even greater importance. Major General Richardson has served our Army and our Nation for more than 30 years. She was a true professional--a dedicated soldier, leader, officer, spouse, and mother. Throughout her career, she commanded our great soldiers at many levels, deployed to combat numerous times in defense of our Nation, and was assigned to some of the most critical positions in our military. As the Army's Chief Legislative Liaison, Major General Richardson continues to provide outstanding leadership, advice, and sound professional judgment on numerous critical issues of enduring importance to the Army, Congress, and this Nation. A native of Colorado, Major General Richardson was commissioned a second lieutenant of aviation upon graduation from Metropolitan State College in Denver. Her first assignment after flight school was in Korea with the 17th Aviation Brigade, where she served as a platoon leader, company executive officer, brigade staff officer, and company commander. She next served at Fort Hood, TX, on the III Corps staff and in the 6th Cavalry Brigade as a company commander and brigade adjutant. In 1999, General Richardson was selected to serve as the military aide to Vice President Al Gore at the White House in Washington, DC. Following that assignment, she moved to Fort Campbell, KY, to serve as the Division Deputy G-3 of the 101st Airborne Division, Air Assault, and later commanded the 5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, including a deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Major General Richardson has served in a variety of joint and Army staff positions to include: an assault helicopter battalion operations officer and executive officer; deputy director, then director for the Army's Transformation Office; and the Army's liaison officer to the U.S. Senate. She also served as the garrison commander of Fort McNair and Fort Myer, VA. Major General Richardson's assignments as a general officer include commanding general of the U.S. Army Operational Test Command, deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, TX, and most recently, deputy chief of staff for communications with Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. For the past 3 years, Major General Richardson was the Chief of the U.S. Army Legislative Liaison. During this period of extraordinary change and challenge for the Army, Major General Richardson implemented and fostered improved strategic partnership with Congress. Through her leadership, the Army significantly enhanced relationships with both legislative chambers, improving understanding and broadening congressional support for Army priorities. Major General Richardson managed some of the most complex issues our Army faced through three legislative cycles with unparalleled results, enabling the Army to receive the necessary resources to support combat operations in two theaters of war, sustain the All-Volunteer Force, and improve the quality of life for our soldiers, their families, and our civilians. On behalf of Congress and the United States of America, I thank Laura, her husband, MG Jim Richardson, and their entire family for their continued commitment, sacrifice, and contribution to this great nation. I join my colleagues in wishing her future success as she continues to serve our great Army and Nation.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the comments made by my colleague from North Carolina. It is even more meaningful to me because all during the time the regulations were coming on, I happened to be the one who was chairing the Environment and Public Works Committee, and we knew what was going to happen. I am almost speechless when I think about the success. We went 20 years only taking up 1 CRA, and then we end up passing 14 of them--all but 1. That is a huge, successful record. My colleagues understand, this gives us the opportunity for people who are answerable to the public--people who are elected and have to stand for elections--to have a part in what is sometimes considered to be the action of an unelected bureaucrat. We have had great opportunities here. I think the ``midnight'' regulations--a term that is used quite often--so that a party going out of office, such as President Obama, being very liberal--a very proud liberal, I might add--wanted to get as many of his rules in at the last minute. We were able to come in and pass these in the time required. We were able to pass 14 of these, in addition to the other regulations and other methods of doing regulations, which I want to address a little bit. It is just not something that we really anticipated would happen. Now, I am particularly proud because mine was the first CRA to be passed in 20 years, and that was the very first one that came from what President Obama wanted having to do with the oil and gas industry, but the fact that nothing passed in that long period of time just shows now that people are recognizing that we who stand for election should be involved in this process of doing away with these regulations. Now, the rule that I brought to the floor, which was the first one the President signed--we had a great signing ceremony and I enjoyed it very much--was the one that affected the oil and gas industry. It was an SEC ruling of the Obama administration that said that if you are a domestic producer of oil and gas--of course, that is the private sector--you have to release all of the information you are using in producing a bid against maybe another country. To use an example, in China, it is not in the private sector like it is in the United States. Their oil and gas business is in the public sector so they would have a distinct advantage. Quite frankly, it is consistent with what the previous President--President Obama--was doing in his war on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are coal, oil, and gas, and he was very proud to be opposed to coal, oil, and gas, and frankly nuclear too. I have often wondered--I go back to Oklahoma virtually every weekend that I don't have to be in one of the war zones or someplace like that. I go there really for my therapy because they ask questions that make sense. We don't get these questions in Washington. One of them I remember was in Shattuck, OK. When I was there, somebody said: Explain this to me. We have a President who wants to do away with fossil fuels and he wants to do away with nuclear energy. Now, we are dependent upon fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, and nuclear energy for 89 percent of the power it takes to run this machine called America. If he is successful in doing away with it, how do we run this machine called America? Well, I am proud to say that the war against fossil fuels is over. The particular CRA I sponsored came out of the Dodd-Frank Act. By the way, overregulation is overregulation. When I talk to people back in my State of Oklahoma, if they are in the banking business or the financial services business, they are concerned about the overregulation that comes from Dodd-Frank. If they are farmers, they are concerned about the regulation that would take the jurisdiction of regulating our water resources out of the States and putting it in the Federal Government. So that is what this is all about. So I will tell you how serious this was. The CRA that I had was so significant that the Federal courts came in, in July of 2013, and said that the SEC made several errors in rushing this regulation through. They actually vacated the rule. That was a major accomplishment. I was very proud that I had the courts on my side, for a change. Anyway, the SEC finalized the second rule under the authority of Dodd-Frank, section 1504, by making some--without any really substantial changes. Nonetheless, this is the one that he first signed. So thanks to the Congressional Review Act, oil and gas companies are not at a disadvantage when they are competing with State-owned oil and gas companies such as we have in China. We passed other critical CRAs because regulations tied the hands of our businesses and took local control away from the States. A lot of people in America--and I think a higher percentage of my people in Oklahoma--are really concerned about Second Amendment rights. Of course, we had one of the regulations that went through--in fact, Second Amendment rights, when we talk about the farmers and the ranchers and not just from my State of Oklahoma--we are a farm State-- but throughout America, they will tell you that there are problems. Their No. 1 concern was--and I asked the Farm Bureau representative. He said the greatest problem facing farmers is not anything that is found in the ag bill, it is the overregulation by the EPA and specifically what they call the WOTUS bill. The WOTUS bill, which is the one I just mentioned, would take the jurisdiction away from the State and give it to the Federal Government. I have to say this. When you talk about ``liberals,'' that is not a negative term. It is a reality. It is how much power should be in the hands of the Federal bureaucrats as opposed to individuals and the States. So we have a lot of these regulations. One of the things the CRA has done is, it has taken away an excuse that people will use--I am talking about people in this Chamber who are legitimately liberals and believe we should have more control in Washington--it takes the power away from the Federal bureaucrats because what they can do is go ahead and pass the regulations. Then you go back home and when people are yelling and screaming about being overregulated back in their home States, they say: Don't blame me, blame the unelected bureaucrats. A CRA takes away that excuse because it forces them to actually get on record. So as chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, we were involved with more of these regulations than any other committee because that is what we do for a living there. So I was very happy to see all of the successes we had. Let me just mention because I don't think it has been mentioned before--and I will submit this for the Record. There are two ways of doing away with these regulations, and one is through Executive orders. I think everybody knows that. But they don't realize what has already been done. I think we have had a total of 30, 31 regulations that have been done away with either through Executive orders or through the Congressional Review Act. Some of the Executive orders, for example, are the WOTUS, the one we have been talking about; clean energy, something which repeals the Clean Power Plan and something which officially ended the war on fossil fuels, I might add; the Executive order on rebuilding the military; the Executive order on the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines--we are all familiar with that and the ongoing debate. Some of the CRAs really aren't talked about too much, and we are talking about regulations that came from the Obama administration that now have been done away with through use of CRAs--the educational rule mandating Federal standards for evaluating teacher performance; the educational rule establishing a national school board, with an effort to get away from local control of the schools; the Interior rule that blocked Alaska from controlling their own hunting and fishing in that beautiful State; the Social Security rule that put seniors on a gun ban list--Second Amendment rights. All of these things are very significant, and I am very proud, quite frankly, of this body. With the exception of one, we passed all 14 of the CRAs, and I can't think of any time that has been done in the past. So it is a great thing. It did put the power back in the hands of the people who are elected here, and I am very glad to have been a participant in that. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the complete list of the Congressional Review Act resolutions passed and the Trump Executive actions be printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have 8 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on agriculture, nutrition, and forestry The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 9:30 a.m., in 328A Russell Senate Office Building, in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``Pesticide Registration under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act: Providing Stakeholders with Certainty through the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act.'' committee on armed services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 11, 2017, at 9:30 a.m., in open session, to receive testimony on Cyber Policy, Strategy, and Organization. committee on banking, housing and urban affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Status of the Housing Finance System After Nine Years of Conservatorship.'' committee on health, education, labor, and pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 11, at 9:30 a.m. in SD-106. committee on the judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on May 11, 2017, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. committee on small business The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 10:30 a.m. in 428A Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nomination of Althea H. Coetzee to be Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration.'' committee on intelligence The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the 115th Congress of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, May 11, 2017 from 10 a.m., in room SH-216 of the Senate Hart Office Building to hold an open hearing entitled ``Worldwide Threats.'' committee on intelligence The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the 115th Congress of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, May 11, 2017 from 1:30 p.m., in room SH-219 of the Senate Hart Office Building to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I would like to recognize Thursday, May 4, as Waste Management National Career Day and share with you the importance of hiring and promoting women in nontraditional female positions as drivers and technicians. I believe it is important that we support and encourage women to pursue these career opportunities that have been historically populated by men. Women comprise only 2 percent of current drivers and technicians. Waste Management National Career Day will provide an opportunity to share stories of women who have held these positions successfully and moved up into management. I support this initiative because I believe, as we continue to highlight economic opportunities for women, it is imperative that the private sector develop platforms where women can learn about careers they normally would not consider. This national career day is an excellent example of waste management being proactive in creating ways to increase the number of women in these types of careers across the country. Without a doubt, investment in women in nontraditional careers brings about significant returns. Women contribute every day to our skillful, effective, and talented workforce. I commend waste management for building a platform where you can increase hiring of females as drivers, technician, frontline management, and give them opportunity for advancement.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, small businesses play an integral role in Oklahoma's economy. They consist of over 52 percent of all employees in Oklahoma. Additionally, within Oklahoma, over 84 percent of all exports come from small businesses. Today I have the distinct honor of recognizing one of the many successful small businesses in my home State of Oklahoma for National Small Business Week. While there are many businesses worthy of recognition, I am particularly proud of HydroHoist. For over 53 years, HydroHoist has been not only a leader but an originator and industry innovator of the market for boat lifts, personal watercraft--PWC--ports, and boat protection packages. Their products range from 900-pound drive-on docking platforms for PWCs, to lifts with the holding capacity for 130,000 pound watercraft. HydroHoist launched half a century ago by an Oklahoma marina owner in Grand Lake, OK. By 1971, the company moved into an old World War II munitions plant in Claremore, OK, where it is still located today. HydroHoist's technology revolutionized the boating industry, and remarkably, some of these original hoists are still in use today. HydroHoist has expanded far beyond America's borders to international waters, too. I want to congratulate and thank president and CEO Mick Webber of HydroHoist for his outstanding and devoted work in creating a shining business model with over 4 distribution warehouses and over 600 dealers throughout the world. Mr. Webber's dedication to making these products in America should not only make Oklahomans proud, but all Americans. HydroHoist's success should be an example for all businesses, and I am proud to recognize their hard work and dedication.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, when we lost the Honorable Justice Antonin Scalia, we were all saddened, as he was such a legend on the Court, and I am very proud that President Trump nominated a successor who is worthy of fulfilling his shoes. Judge Gorsuch has garnered respect and approval from people across the legal community, and he has unrivaled bipartisan support. It is unfortunate that the Democrats have tried to block his nomination. It is not going to work, but they have tried. Recently, I had the honor of meeting Judge Gorsuch. It is kind of interesting because I was not on his list to visit. In fact, I had even said: Don't waste your time on me, as I know your credentials and I am going to support you anyway, and I am not on the appropriate committees that would pass judgment. Yet he did call, and we met. I will tell you that you have to meet and talk to the guy in person to know what kind of an individual he really is. Of course, being from Oklahoma, I am sensitive to the fact that he is the son of the West. In fact, none of our Justices up there, with the exception of California, are from what we would call the Western United States--the area where people need to be properly represented. As a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, he has heard from Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and my State of Oklahoma. He knows the issues of the Western States and what we are facing, and he has expertise to deal with them. He has handled with a lot of care and fairness the issues that have come before him. Of course, we know this because Oklahoma is in the Tenth Circuit. His reputation is such that, regardless of party affiliation, countless groups, organizations, and individuals have come out in support of Judge Gorsuch, including Neal Katyal. Neal Katyal was the Acting Solicitor General in President Obama's Cabinet, so he was a Cabinet member of President Obama's. He testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Keep in mind, when you listen to this--this is a quote from an op-ed piece in the New York Times, and one of the individuals from the administration of President Obama said this: ``His years on the bench reveal a commitment to judicial independence--a record that should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the President who appointed him.'' That comes from an Obama appointee. Not only is he well liked, but he also has an impressive resume, serving as law clerk to two different Supreme Court Justices. He attended Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and it doesn't get any better than that. It is clear he has the qualifications, and as recently as the last administration, that was really all you needed to be confirmed to be on the U.S. Supreme Court. What the Democrats have done to block his nomination has never been done before. This is significant. People don't realize--people who are maybe critical of some of the procedures that were taking place, they forget the fact that there has never been, in the history of America, a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination--there has never been. This will be the first time this happened. I support the majority leader in changing the rules in the face of this unprecedented action by a minority party. There is really no reason for their filibuster of this highly qualified individual, other than partisanship and catering to their liberal base. Changing the rules for Supreme Court nominations had to be done, and if the situation were reversed, the Democrats would have done the same thing in a heartbeat, as we saw in 2013 when they did the same thing. Judge Gorsuch deserves to be on the Supreme Court. He does not deserve to be blocked because people are upset that we observed the Biden rule; that is, not providing for any action on a nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy once the election season is underway--and they lost the election. Now, that is Joe Biden, not Jim Inhofe. In addition to his impeccable job and experience and educational background, he is perhaps best known for his defense of religious liberty, including a role in the dispute during the Obama administration that required employers to provide abortion-inducing drugs to their employees as part of their health insurance. One of these employers was Hobby Lobby. Everyone knows who Hobby Lobby is, but not everyone knew them back when I knew them. I knew them back in the 1970s, when the Green family, who started Hobby Lobby, were actually operating out of their garage, making picture frames, and look at them today. I have known them for a long time. They started out their whole business with a $600 loan. Now they have over 700 stores across the United States and are the largest privately owned arts and crafts store in the world. Judge Gorsuch and the Supreme Court agreed with Hobby Lobby and upheld their religious liberty rights. I am going to read to my colleagues his concurring opinion. It is very profound. Judge Gorsuch wrote, after they made the determination that Hobby Lobby did not have to give these drugs to their employees: It is not for secular courts to rewrite the religious complaint of a faithful adherent, or to decide whether a religious teaching about complicity imposes ``too much'' moral disapproval on those only ``indirectly'' assisting wrongful conduct. Whether an act of complicity is or isn't ``too attenuated'' from the underlying wrong is sometimes itself a matter of faith we must respect the faith. Now, that is what he wrote in Hobby Lobby. In a very similar situation around the same timeframe, there was a case that is known now to be the Little Sisters of the Poor. He joined in an opinion defending the rights of nuns not to be forced to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans. This is another profound statement he made. He said: ``When a law demands that a person do something the person considers sinful, and the penalty for refusal is a large financial penalty, then the law imposes a substantial burden on that person's free exercise of religion.'' It is not just petitioners of the Christian faith whom Judge Gorsuch has sided with. He upheld the religious beliefs of a Native American prisoner and of a Muslim prisoner who found their ability to practice their faith restricted in one manner or another. He comes to his decision not because he is seeking some predetermined outcome; he comes to his decisions because that is where the facts of the law and the Constitution lead him. For example, in the Lynch case--another Oklahoma case--Gorsuch referred to Chevron deference as ``a judge-made doctrine for the abdication of the judicial duty.'' Chevron deference is the judicial rule that requires judges to defer to an agency's interpretation--we are talking about a bureaucracy--an agency's interpretation of the law if the law is considered ambiguous or unclear and if the agency's interpretation is reasonable. This defense to the agency gives them a lot of authority, a lot of power. Moreover, it can provide a lot of uncertainty to the regulated community. As Judge Gorsuch wrote, Chevron deference allows agencies to ``reverse its current view 180 degrees any time based merely on the shift of political winds and still prevail [in court].'' I know a little bit about this. I spent a lot of years being the chairman of a committee called the Environment and Public Works Committee. During the Obama years, we had a bureaucracy that was trying to change the law instead of following the law. It was exactly what Judge Gorsuch was talking about in this case when he talked about the Chevron deference, giving deference to a bureaucracy. You can imagine being in business, especially a heavily regulated one, that has to worry that every 4 to 8 years the rules might change then and how do you plan to make your plans. I think Gorsuch's opinion on Chevron deference is an important debate to have. Do we, as a coequal branch of government, continue to give up our powers to the administrative state or do we take our power back and write laws as they should be implemented? Furthermore, does the judicial branch, as a coequal branch of government, continue to give up their power of interpretation to the administrative state? These are important, fundamental questions that should be addressed, and I am glad the Gorsuch nomination has brought these cases to light. Although Judge Gorsuch was nominated by a Republican President, this doesn't mean my colleagues on the other side of the aisle should have any concern about Judge Gorsuch's decisionmaking ability. This is important to point out because being a judge is not about making decisions that are in the best interests of any political party but really about making decisions based on facts and the law and the Constitution without bias. During his confirmation, Judge Gorsuch stated his judicial philosophy, saying: I decide cases . . . I listen to the arguments made. I read the briefs that are put to me. I listen to my colleagues carefully and I listen to the lawyers in the well . . . keeping an open mind through the entire process as best I humanly can and I leave all the other stuff at home. And I make a decision based on the facts and the law. Who can argue with that? He has proven over a period of time that he will do that. Through the whole debate, it has become evident that the Democrats were asking him to rule in favor of causes and not to follow the law, which is what a judge does and should do. Regarding the roles and balance of our government, Gorsuch is what a judge should be. He believes Congress should write the laws, the executive branch is to carry them out, and the judicial branch is to interpret the laws. The confirmation of Judge Gorsuch will shape our Nation for generations to come, and all of us will be able to benefit from his wise decisions. I am looking forward to confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch. It is going to happen tomorrow, and then all of this will be over. I am proud to give him my vote. Justice will be well served as such. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am pleased the U.S. Senate voted favorably to add Montenegro as a permanent member to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, sending a strong signal of transatlantic unity. NATO plays a vital role in maintaining security and stability throughout Europe, and including Montenegro in this strategic alliance will strengthen NATO and encourage stability within the region. Montenegro is a growing democracy that has repeatedly proven itself to be a valuable ally since joining NATO's Partnership for Peace Program in 2006. They are partnered with our Maine National Guard, and have been a strong ally in the fight in Afghanistan since 2010. Having visited Montenegro, I can say, without a doubt, that it has demonstrated a commitment to NATO, the United States, and regional stability. This vote sends clear message of support to our friends in Montenegro. It also sends a strong message to NATO and gives notice that the United States will stand up for Western democracies, despite continued pressure from the Kremlin. We must deter Russia's destabilizing actions in the region, including Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued support for rebels in eastern Ukraine. Putin is learning lessons from these examples and will continue his quest to expand his influence as far as the world community will allow. This aggression by the Russian Federation undermines peace and stability not only in the Balkan region, but also in all of Europe, which constitutes a direct threat to U.S. security interests. Montenegro's accession to NATO is in the best interest of the United States, NATO, and peace and stability in Europe. This vote by the U.S. Senate sends a clear message of our commitment to NATO, to the people of Montenegro, and to improving stability in the Balkan region. I look forward to Montenegro joining NATO as a full member.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the remarks of the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Florida, I be recognized for such time as I may consume.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think tomorrow President Trump is going--or at least is planning--to sign an Executive order rolling back the Obama Clean Power Plan. I will have a lot to say about that, but I think it is important at an appropriate time to discuss the history of this issue. It has been going on a long time. At the start of the 114th Congress, the Senate voted 98 to 1 in support of the Inhofe-Whitehouse amendment, stating that climate change is real and not a hoax. That is something we can actually agree on; that climate has been changing since the beginning of time, and there is all the archeological evidence, there is the Scriptural evidence, the historic evidence. Climate has been changing and will continue to change. The hoax is that some on the far left believe man controls changes in the climate. We have endured 8 years of an administration that buys into the alarmist mentality that the world is coming to an end, and it is due to manmade gases. That is what the hoax is. Even though individuals--occasionally you will find some scientists who agree with this, but they will say that there may be some contribution, but it is minimal. It is not even measurable. The Obama administration has used climate change as justification for taking unauthorized actions, such as the so-called Clean Power Plan. Every administrative entity under Obama was forced to embrace his climate change agenda as a top priority and used it as a convenient sounding board. We have seen agencies such as the Department of Defense divert resources away from their core responsibilities and instead spend them on finding ways to justify statements from the President that climate change is the greatest threat, a greater threat than terrorism. So other agencies have spared no taxpayer expense in supporting the outcome-driven science in an attempt to bolster their claims. In fact, the Congressional Research Service has reported that the Obama administration spent $120 billion on climate change issues. That is a total waste of money. I don't think anyone can tell me what that $120 billion was spent for. It was not authorized, it was not appropriated, but it was spent. This comes from the Congressional Research Service. So this is a total waste of money, money needed to defend America. Despite the administration's efforts, as research and data around climate change continue to improve, the results do not support their claims but instead call them into question. This is especially true for all of the ``hottest month'' or ``hottest season'' or ``hottest year'' in history. This is something that is often claimed by those who are reading the script and trying to make those claims. So 2014 was previously the warmest year on record, until a reporter pressed NOAA and NASA on the claim and the agencies were forced to admit they were only 38 percent sure that claim was accurate. A December 2015 study from the American Geophysical Union concluded that after analyzing over 1,200 ground-based weather stations: ``The warmest-ever claims by government scientists are inflated due to compromised U.S. temperature stations impacted by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioning exhaust.'' Because of NOAA's methods, they failed to account for these factors. Additionally, surface thermometers continue to be at odds with satellite data, which shows essentially no warming for the past 18 years, continuing the hiatus the Economist magazine originally wrote about in 2013. In fact, just a few weeks ago, a whistleblower alleged that a June 2015 NOAA report manipulated data in an attempt to discredit this 18- year pause. Now, the 18-year pause has been agreed to. People understand, this is what they call the hiatus. This is a time when temperature has not changed, but they have done this to influence the public debate surrounding the Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate conference. Conveniently, the computer with the data suffered a complete failure and none of the data was saved. It is not just the inflated temperature claims that can be called into question. A growing body of scientific study suggests variations in solar radiation and natural climate variability have a leading role in climate change. That is a novel idea, that the Sun has something to do with warming. A number of the incident studies assessing the impact of clouds have even suggested that water vapor feedback is entirely canceled out by cloud processes, as global data shows no increase in the number or the intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods, in spite of what they say on the Senate floor. Even the IPCC's 2013 report concluded that the current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century. No robust trends in the annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes--major hurricane count--have been identified in the past 100 years in the North Atlantic Basin, but we still hear it over and over again. When it comes to droughts, the IPCC report indicated that previous conclusions regarding global increase trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. The increasing observations from scientist Craig Idso suggests a much reduced and practically harmless climate response to the increased amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Further, there are benefits from the increase in carbon that have led to a greening of the planet and contributed to increased agricultural productivity. Now, this shows that the progression that has taken place--the green parts are the part where they have an increased amount of CO2 activity. The trend is in the annual gross productivity per decade by percentage. This is from 1982 to 2011. So you can see the great benefits. In fact, many people still remind us, over and over again, that CO2 is actually a fertilizer. It helps things grow. But these points were kept out of the Obama administration's press releases, and the media has been more than willing to go along. None of this is surprising. As I have given a lot of speeches on climate change, my message tends to be one that the alarmists on the far left do not want to hear and do not want to believe, but they have been proven wrong time and time again. Despite millions of dollars of the Tom Steyers of the world, Americans do care about climate change, but it is not high on their list. Right now, which I will state in just a moment, some of the polling activity that has taken place has surprised a lot of people. This is Tom Steyer. We keep hearing about the Koch brothers and other people who are putting money in the campaign, but Tom Steyer is the one who has said--that was his statement--that prior to the 2014 races, he was going to put $100 million in there to elect people to promote such things as Obama's plan. The Environment and Public Works Committee last Congress--and this is when I chaired that committee--held 10 hearings assessing the President's climate agenda, where we heard from a diverse group of expert witnesses who testified to the enormous costs, especially for low-income minority communities, the economic consequences, the legal vulnerabilities, and the miniscule environmental impacts. We had the president of the Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford, come to a hearing. He was the one who talked about how disproportionate the harm is that is done to poor people. He talked about the Blacks and the Hispanics who are at risk. I will elaborate on that in just a moment. Taking committee action is a further step that Democrats and Republicans in both Houses of Congress rejected Obama's and the radical left's key climate regulations. Then, in February of last year, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stay on the so-called Clean Power Plan because they too had significant legal questions surrounding the validity of this. Well, needless to say, there is a well-documented, substantive rejection to Obama's climate actions across the institution designed to keep the executive branch in check. I have not attended one of the United Nation's climate conferences since 2009, when I was kind of a one-man truth squad in Copenhagen. Let me mention what this is. The United Nations, they are the ones that started the whole thing in the very beginning in talking about global warming, talking about all the problems that were out there. We have a pretty documented case. In fact, there is a book that was written--I will not mention the name of the book--that comes to the conclusion that the United Nations was right in the middle of this whole discussion as far back as 1972. So what the United Nations does is every year they have a big party. This is the big party of the year. It is in December. They have had 21 in 21 consecutive years. What they do is invite everybody to come in who says that we will voluntarily reduce targets for CO2 emissions. Of course, most of them who come in are coming in to get some of the billions of dollars they say they are going to be distributing. This is really interesting because these parties--I can remember one time I was talking to someone I know from Benin in West Africa. In fact, the Chair knows this individual too. I saw him at one of these meetings. I said: Now, you don't go along with all of this. He said: No, but this is the biggest party of the year. So they have these every year. That is what I think is important for people to understand. Anyway, I hadn't gone to any of these since the big event in Copenhagen, but the message I carried to the international bureaucrats then is exactly what happened: Congress did not then and does not now support the radical climate change actions, and the U.S. role in any associated international agreement will be limited accordingly. The outlook for environmental activists and climate change alarmists is grim. With the significant losses in the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and a persistently skeptical public, their political leverage and relevance has dwindled. For the past 8 years, the Obama administration and the American economy have suffered under the effects of the climate agenda. That era is over, and President Trump is already delivering on his campaign promises. Just a few weeks ago, I was at the White House when President Trump signed an Executive order instructing the EPA to roll back the waters of the United States rule. This is the rule that would have allowed the EPA to regulate waters in the United States. I think most people know this has always been regulated by the States, but the true liberals, they want to have regulation taking place not by the States but in Washington. A guy named Tom Buchanan is the Oklahoma Farm Bureau chairman. He was talking about all the problems farmers have throughout America, farmers and ranchers. The biggest problem they have is overregulation by the EPA. Do you know what he singled out as being the most onerous of all of these regulations? It was the regulation on water. Of course, I was in there when the President did away with that particular rule. As I previously mentioned, President Trump has also committed to rolling back the Clean Power Plan and its $300 billion pricetag. This rule would lead to dramatic increases in energy prices and reduce the reliability of the grid. These two rules are examples of major expansions of Federal power and a departure from the core functions and responsibilities provided by Congress to the EPA. The steps taken by the Trump administration will return the rules of those agencies to their statutory intent. We have seen great successes in our air and water quality based on the EPA operating within its statutory limits. I can remember the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Right now, our pollution has dramatically dropped down. This is at a time when vehicle miles have actually doubled. So we are doing some things that are successful, and I look forward to continuing that success. That is the end of my prepared remarks. I want to visit just a little bit about what is going on and what we have been doing over the last quite a few years now. I think it is important. People ask me: What are the motives of those individuals who are promoting all of these regulations that are on greenhouse gases? There has to be a motive for that. I suggest, and this will surprise a lot of people, you go back originally--and I can remember when Koyoto first came out. Koyoto was the first regulation--they tried to get all the countries to join in. In fact, that was at a time when Clinton was President of the United States, and they were trying anxiously to get this thing--to join in the Koyoto treaty. The ones who originally were involved in it--and I could go back to people who have forgotten about this. The former European Union Minister of the Environment, Margot Wallstrom, said: ``Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big business worldwide.'' Then the French weighed in; that was President Jacques Chirac. He said during his speech at the Hague in November of 2000 that Kyoto represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.'' You know, it hadn't really changed that much. Christiana Figueres was the one in charge of the Paris convention that took place where they were talking about the great successes they had there, and she said the real goal was ``to change the economic development model''--in other words, redistribute wealth among the nations. So let's keep in mind that is what the original motivation was. Then the United Nations weighed in. This goes all the way back to 1972. In 1972, the United Nations held a conference on human environment in Stockholm, Sweden. Fifteen years later, in 1987, the U.N. published the report ``Sustainable development: Our Common Future.'' ``Sustainable development'' is a word that they changed--a phrase, because it is easier to sell to the public. That was 1987, and then you go forward to 1992 and the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They announced their intention to pursue sustainable development through the Kyoto Protocol. It is kind of interesting because Reuters wrote an article in 2012 that said: The ``sustainable'' branding for this year's summit, rather than climate, is by design, said Ambassador Andre Correa do Lagos, who headed Brazil's delegation to the U.N. climate talks in Durban and will be a chief negotiator for Brazil in Rio. That is behind us now, but this is an article that came out in 2012. Sustainable development is an easier sell globally than climate change, even though sustainable development is a way of tackling global warming and other environmental issues, he said. He said the end goal is not about the environment but about the redistribution of wealth. Again, if anyone doubts that he was accurate in that statement, the Secretary General of the United Nations at that time was Ban Ki-moon, and he proposed how the challenges must be addressed. In talking about what they were going to do at these annual meetings, he said: More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, in the name of fostering ``green infrastructure,'' ``climate adaptation'' and other ``green economy'' measures. So there again, after all these years, it is still about the same thing. Now we go into more science and the different weather events. I notice when people come to the floor and they talk about all the bad weather and the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the fires and that all that is as a result of these events, I would like to remind people that George Mason University reported that 63 percent of the weathercasters believe that any global warming that occurs is a result of natural variation and not human activities. Here is another one too. The Democrats will like this because Dr. Martin Hertzberg was a lifelong liberal Democrat, a retired Navy meteorologist with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. He also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. This is a quote from this guy. He said: As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap- trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science. The global warming alarmists don't even bother with data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be false. That is coming from a very liberal Democrat. So you start looking at some of the things they say are linked to CO2. NOAA, the scientists, rejected the global warming link to tornado. NOAA said that no specific consensus or connection between global warming and tornadic activity exists. According to NOAA, hurricanes have been in decline in the United States since the beginning of records in the 19th century. The worst decade for major . . . hurricanes was in the 1940s. Journal of Geographical Research: Since 2006, global tropical cyclone energy has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the 1970s. Global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historic low. On droughts, the same thing: Severe droughts in 1934 covered 80 percent of the country, while the one they talk about in 2011--it was just 25 percent. On sea level, the Journal of Geographical Research: There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise over the past 100 years. Again, these are the people who know, and we are talking about in this case the Journal of Geographical Research. So enough of that. That is something that is a fact in terms of the weather events. The other thing I want to mention here, going back to my notes on Antarctica, this is kind of interesting because in September, according to NASA and the data on the National Snow and Ice Data Center website, Antarctic ice hit a new record high in recorded history as it has increased to more than 19.4 million square kilometers. That was happening in terms of the data center information. In January of 2010, Time magazine talked about the Himalayas melting. I remember people on the floor of this Senate standing up and talking about how the Himalayas are going to melt because of global warming. The article in Time magazine said: ``Himalayan Melting: How a Climate Panel Got It Wrong.'' Glaciergate is a black eye for the IPCC and the climate science community as a whole. Sometimes some humorous things do happen. They were trying to build their case back in 2013. This was a research expedition to gauge the effect of climate on the Antarctic. It began actually on December 24. There was a Russian ship carrying climate scientists, journalists, tourists, and crew members for the expedition until it became trapped in deep ice up to 10 feet thick. Now, here they were going up there to show that things were warming in Antarctica. The whole crowd was wanting this to happen. They got stuck in ice. Well, they were stuck there for 6 days. Then an Australia icebreaker was sent to rescue the ship, but efforts were suspended due to bad weather. On January 2, they were still there. A Chinese icebreaker sent out a helicopter and airlifted the 52 passengers from the Russian ship to safety on an Australian icebreaker. The Chinese vessel was also stuck in the ice, along with the Russian vessel. There were 22 Russian crewmembers onboard the Russian ship, and an unreported number of crewmembers remained on the Chinese ship. Finally, the U.S. Coast Guard came along, and they were able to get in there and pull them out. The ship was called Polar Star. I remember when that happened because they were going there with the express purpose of explaining to the world the problems they have in the Antarctic. OK. Let's talk about bears. You don't get people talking about this without dancing out the polar bears and talking about what is happening to polar bears. It is kind of interesting because when we look at the bear populations, they say that in the Davis Strait, they have flourished despite the shrinking Arctic Sea ice since the 1970s. In fact, in 2007 they escalated up to 2,158 bears, and they only had 1,400 in 1993. Another way of looking at it is, when Al Gore was born, there were 5,000 polar bears. In 2005, that number grew to 22,000. Today, there are 30,000 polar bears. So don't worry about the polar bears. If there is a serious problem there, it is because of overpopulation. But it looks so good. It is such good theater to dance out the polar bears and say the polar bears are all going to disappear. When Climategate happened, I was convinced that this whole issue was over. I can remember when we had Lisa Jackson before the committee that I chaired. This was actually in 2009. In 2009, we had sent over all of these people to tell the 192 people at the U.N. meeting in Copenhagen that the world was coming to an end, that they needed to all join in and sign an agreement on what they were going to do about CO2. So the day before I left for Copenhagen, Lisa Jackson happened to be in our committee. On tape, with live TV, I asked the question--I said: Well, Madam Administrator, I am going to leave town. I have a feeling that when I leave town, you will have an endangerment finding. For you to get the authority to do something about global warming, you have to have an endangerment finding. An endangerment finding has to be based on science. What science are you going to use? She said: Well, the IPCC. That is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is the United Nations. They set it up for that purpose. So as luck would have it, it happened in a matter of days after that, after she said everything is put on the science of the IPCC, the worst scandal--some people say the greatest scientific scandal in history-- took place. It took place at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit located in the UK. It revealed the scientific fraud. They have tapes and emails of individuals who were saying: We are going to have to rig this in order to come up with some facts to show that there is warming taking place. These were the scientists of the IPCC. It was such a scandal that one of the UN scientists resigned, and he said: The result is not scientific. Here is a good one. Clive Cooke of the Financial Times said: The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. Then we had Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph say: ``This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.'' So I had thought that since everything was based on that particular science, that would do it in, but it didn't happen. If you look at all the damage that has been done in the last 8 years by the concentration of all these issues, the defense is one that took the biggest hit. A lot of people don't really believe or don't understand or don't appreciate what has happened to the defense during the time Obama was President. In fact, we have been watching very carefully what our new President is going to do to try to undo the damage--what I call the disarming of America--the damage that was done to our military. They will say: Well, wait a minute, the Obama budget for the military was the same as the budget was before that, so it isn't any great reduction. The difference is, they changed the function of the military. How many people are aware that despite all of the problems, they wasted money on the Green Fleet. Remember the Green Fleet? They were actually paying $59 a gallon for biofuel to try to convince people that we could use the military to experiment for other more pleasing sources. Twelve million dollars for operation and maintenance to exercise painting ships, printing hats, and transforming fuel to show off the Green Fleet at the foreign military show, and $3.7 billion in solar panels and wind power. Why should the military be paying that? We have a Department of Energy. As I read the function of Energy, that is what they are supposed to be doing. Then we have Tom Steyer. The reason I bring this up is because we keep hearing about the Koch brothers. And yes, the Koch brothers are in production. Their job is to try to find energy to run this machine called America, and they have done a very good job of it. But they get criticized all the time. So I think it is important that people realize that there are a lot of liberal billionaires who have made pledges. In this case, this individual, Tom Steyer--I am sure he is a fine guy. He actually made a commitment of $10 million personally to try to promote the message that Obama had. Here is something interesting that we just found out or I just discovered: Even though this man is trying to kill fossil fuels, he made his money in fossil fuels. Since 2003, Steyer's hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, has played a pivotal role in financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal production in Jakarta and Sydney. All of this took place under Mr. Steyer's tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon. The coal mines that Mr. Steyer has funded through Farallon produce an amount of CO2 each year that is equivalent to about 28 percent of the amount of CO2 produced in the United States each year by burning coal for electricity generation. So it is worthwhile to note that he now is putting huge investments out to defeat the very people who were the source of his wealth. The other question I get quite often is, Why aren't more people talking about this? I have made an accumulation of various threats. There are two groups of people out there. We have those who are for the whole program that President Obama had, and they are the ones who are questioning and talking about the various science, and then we have threats coming from people such as James Hansen, who said that these are ``high crimes against humanity.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., said: ``This is treason and we need to start treating [people] as traitors.'' Barone: ``The warmists have `a desire to kill heretics'--Calls for capital punishment for `global warming deniers.' '' So it is not fun, and there are a lot of threats out there. If they don't have logic on their side and don't have science on their side, then the threats are what people use. We talked about cap-and-trade legislation. They tried for a long period of time to get legislation through, and when that didn't work, we might remember the first bills that were introduced were the McCain- Lieberman bills in 2003, 2005, and 2007. The first of those bills was a cap-and-trade bill that was defeated in this Chamber by 43 to 55. Two years later, they tried it again, and it was defeated by 38 to 60. Each year, the margin went up. President Obama came along and decided: Well, if we can't pass this stuff through legislation, let's do it by regulation. So we had cap-and-trade regulation. I have already talked about going to Copenhagen after Obama, Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry had gone there to a big United Nations party in 2009 and went with the idea of convincing everyone that we were going to pass legislation over here, and, of course, we didn't do it. In 2010, Japan under no uncertain terms refused to extend the Kyoto Protocol. They dropped out when they said: If we don't have India and China, we are not going to be a part of it. Canada finally went through. Canada was one of the first countries to join in on the Kyoto Protocol, but they dropped out in 2011 and 2012. That brings us to the Paris party that they had. They tried to make it look as if it was a success, when in fact it was a miserable, dismal failure. Our President said that we would reduce our CO2 emissions by 27 percent by 2025. Obviously, we couldn't do it. We even had a committee hearing asking how were we going to do that? We had the EPA in, and they admitted that it couldn't be done. Then they talked about the commitment that China made at the Paris conference. China has actually produced more--this diagram gives you an idea of where China is going. They are building a new coal-powered generation plant every 10 days, and they are not about to try to restrict their CO2. They said: Ok, we will do it. Let us increase our CO2 emissions until 2025, and then we will agree that we will do a waiver. That is the extent of the regulations that have not worked. The polling and the truth are coming out. The polling is now different than it was at first. I can remember when global warming was one of the first--either in first place or second place in the polls as to the dangers that face America. Look at the polling today. The FOX News poll last week said that 97 percent of Americans don't care about global warming when they stacked it up against terrorism, immigration, healthcare, and the economy. The Washington Post-ABC News poll just found that fewer Americans think climate change is a serious problem. On March 12, 2015, the Gallup poll said that climate change came in dead last of national problems of concern to Americans. Shortly after that, the Gallup poll did their annual environmental survey, and global warming came in dead last in terms of environmental issues--15th out of 15 concerns. So I am stating that the people of America have caught on. It is something that people are aware of now. When we stop, look, and think about the cost of the Clean Power Plan, that is what this whole thing is about. I think that tomorrow the President is going to come up with a plan to do away with the Clean Power Plan. The compliance costs would be between $29 and $39 billion a year, up to $292 billion over 12 years with double-digit electricity price increases in 40 States. It would be an absolute disaster, and it is not going to happen. What is worse than that is not just the cost but how it is hitting the most vulnerable people. Harry Alford, who is the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, found that the proposed Clean Power Plan would increase Black poverty by 23 percent, Hispanic poverty by 26 percent, reduce Black jobs by 200,000 and Hispanic jobs by 300,000, with a cumulative job loss of 7 million for Blacks and nearly 12 million for Hispanics by the year 2035. I have to state also that the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association found that high energy costs force seniors to forgo meals, medical care, and prescriptions in order to comply. I am very proud of the President. He is keeping his commitment. He is not going to allow our most vulnerable citizens to be taxed, and I thank him for his help. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.