Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I like that. Madam President, I yield to the Senator from South Dakota for 7 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I heard the Senator from California talk about 78 percent of the people in this country want to reduce mercury. I am part of that 78 percent. The problem is this bill does not address that. By their own numbers, the EPA said the cost is around $10 billion. Of that, less than $6 million would be addressing mercury. The rest of that is in particulate matter, something already recognized under the Clean Air Act. I yield to the junior Senator from West Virginia for 6 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to Senator Risch.

Mr. INHOFE. The question was asked by the Senator from California: Whom do we trust most, elected Senators or unelected bureaucrats? I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Kentucky.

Mr. INHOFE. I understand our time has expired. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kyl have 2 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I understand there is 1 minute remaining, so let me just clarify a couple things. First of all, several have made comments about the Clean Air Act. I was supportive of the Clean Air Act. It has done a great job, and I think that should be clarified. We have had three medical doctors testify as to the health implications on this. I would only say this: If we are truly concerned about what is happening, keep in mind what the Senator from Alaska, Ms. Murkowski, said. The maximum achievable control technology is not there. So if we vote against this amendment and they allow this rule to continue, we are effectively killing coal in America that has accounted for almost 50 percent of our industry. I thank the Chair.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I now ask that the Senator from Georgia be recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, I ask now that the Senator from Wyoming be recognized for 6 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we have used this element of our time. The Senator from New Hampshire will be recognized for 10 minutes, after which time we will be recognized for 18 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, the next speaker will be Senator Hoeven for 6 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator, and I now recognize the Senator from Alabama for 6 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding that we would have our three speakers after that, but not necessarily restricted to 5 minutes. It will not be much more than that. But since our speakers will be speaking in these three sessions, I would like a little latitude, maybe 6 or 7 minutes on those three.

Mr. INHOFE. For my three who come after Senator Carper, 6 minutes apiece.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, that would be fine.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I would ask that the Senator from Nebraska Mr. Johanns be recognized for 7 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. How much time do we have remaining, including the 40 seconds we didn't use?

Mr. INHOFE. First, let me comment on something I am glad the Senator from Alabama brought up because it is very significant. The frailty in the CRA, for a lot of our fellow Members who are not familiar with the history of that, is that the President can veto it. I am a little hopeful in this case, if we are successful, because I wonder if the President wants to veto, a few months before the election, a bill that is going to cost the American people over 200,000 jobs this year, along with all of the other costs they admit. The EPA itself says it will cost $10 billion, but it is going to be considerably more than that in nearly everyone else's view. So I hold that out as a hope, that even though he would love to veto it, if we are successful, I don't think he will do it because he wants to get reelected more than he wants to veto this. I would also comment that I think it is worth bringing up that the other side had an opportunity to do something about real pollution--and we are talking about NOX, SOX, and mercury, not CO2. Remember the Clear Skies Act that was such a successful operation? That was back during the Bush administration. That would have mandated the 75-percent reduction the Senator from Alabama talked about in SOX, NOX, and mercury. Those are real pollutants. But it was held hostage because it didn't include CO2. At that time that was the crown jewel of their efforts. So all I can say in this remaining time we have is that everything has been said, although it hasn't been said by everybody, and I am not going to repeat that and be redundant. But I think the points were made by all the Senators who spoke, looking at the economy of this and how devastating this would be in terms of jobs in America. But if you look at Utility MACT, it is not about public health, it is about killing coal. And everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. People from coal States are trying to act as if that is not the case, but it is the case. I think we are all very much aware of that. According to EPA's own analysis, Utility MACT will cost $10 billion, though others have it up higher than that. However, if $10 billion a year to implement it is correct, then it will only yield $6 million in projected benefits--health benefits. This is the EPA talking, not me. And that is at 1600-to-1 ratio. That is not a very good ratio to depend on. I wish to address the myth that top EPA officials are perpetrating, and that is the idea coal is not being killed by the EPA regulations but by the cheaper price of natural gas. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said recently it is simply a coincidence that EPA's rules are coming out at the same time natural gas prices are low, so utilities are naturally moving toward natural gas. So her message was, don't blame the EPA. The truth is the EPA itself has admitted the agency deliberately and consciously made a decision to kill coal. EPA Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding was caught on tape saying: Lisa Jackson has put forth a very powerful message to the country. Just two days ago, the decision on greenhouse gas performance standard and saying basically gas plants are the performance standard which means if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem. He also went on to say the decision by the EPA to kill coal was ``painful every step of the way'' because you have got to remember if you go to West Virginia, you go to Pennsylvania--and he could have included other States in there too, such as Ohio, Illinois and Missouri--but he said ``and all those places, you have coal communities who depend on coal.'' And they are going to put those people out. This is a very serious attack that is taking place right now, I think, when we saw the attack on fossil fuels, as presented by Region 6 Administrator Armendariz, when he said the truth is EPA's ``general philosophy'' is to ``crucify'' and ``make examples'' of oil companies and gas companies. I only bring that up because many people think this is just about coal. No, it is very clear about fossil fuels. This has been a relentless war of this President on fossil fuels; that is, coal, gas, and oil, ever since he has been in office. It was the president of the Sierra Club who said a short while ago, yes, Utility MACT is about killing coal. Fine, we can kill coal, but that doesn't mean we want to change and start using natural gas because it is also a fossil fuel. It may be that over in the House it took Nancy Pelosi 6 months to recognize natural gas is a fossil fuel, but it is. So this is just the beginning. This is the one where they are admittedly trying to kill coal because it is an easier target. In their belief, there are fewer States that are the big producers of coal, so go after them first. I know my time has expired. I only want to say in closing that we will have another opportunity tomorrow. There are many other people wanting to be heard who don't want to kill coal and have this dramatic negative effect on our economy, our jobs, and our ability to produce the necessary energy to run this machine called America. If we are dependent upon just under 50 percent for our entire generation ability on coal, imagine, if they are successful, what is going to happen to the price of the remaining available fuel? And of course they would be subject next. So I would urge our people to forget for a short period of time this President's obligation to certain small groups and oppose the Utility MACT. We went through the same thing with greenhouse gases and we fought that battle before, I say to my good friend Senator Boxer from California. At that time, there were many legislative efforts to kill greenhouse gases, and yet every time there was a vote, the people who were answerable to the American people were the ones who voted it down. Now there might be, at most, 25 left in the Senate in favor of greenhouse gas emissions. I urge Members to pass my CRA and let the President decide what he is going to do about vetoing this issue.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, as we know, the Senate will take a vote this week on the CRA that I have offered concerning Utility MACT. Utility MACT is a requirement. MACT, of course--M A C T--means maximum achievable controlled technology. One of the problems with the overregulation we have with a lot of these emissions is that there is no technology to accommodate this. In the case of Utility MACT, I think everyone understands now that this is an effort to kill coal. I know there are a lot of reasons people have, but recently some things have happened, and I thought I would mention them as we look toward this bill. It looks as though it is going to be on Wednesday. It looks as if there will be some speaking time on Tuesday, and on Wednesday we will actually have the vote. As we all know, a CRA is an effort for elected officials to reflect upon overregulation and to stop a regulation. After all, we are the ones who are accountable to the people and not the Environmental Protection Agency. The breaking news is that President Obama just issued a statement this afternoon that he will veto my resolution if it passes. Just before that announcement from the White House this afternoon, Representatives Ed Markey and Henry Waxman came out fighting with a new report detailing what Representative Waxman has called the most anti- environmental House of Representatives in history. I wish to remind my Democratic friends that 19 House Democrats supported the companion legislation in the House--the same thing we will be voting on here. Democrats and many of the labor unions have sent letters in support of my resolution, so it is not just Republicans whose constituents are feeling the pain of the EPA's regulations. To my Democratic friends in the House, I beg to differ--it is not that this Congress is anti-environmental; it is that the EPA is the most radical EPA in history, aggressive to the point that even the left-leaning Washington Post has called out the Agency for ``earning a reputation for abuse.'' Of course, this is the same EPA whose top officials have told us they are out to crucify the American energy producers. We all remember the sixth area of the EPA, when Mr. Armendariz came out and made this statement to some of his supporters: We need to do the same thing the Romans did. We remember back in the old days when they were going around the Mediterranean and they would go into the towns in Turkey and they would crucify the first five people they would see. That gets them under their control. He said: That is what we have to do. He said: That is going to be our operation. Well, we went through that, and of course he is no longer there. Over the course of President Obama's Presidency, whatever they could not achieve through legislation they have tried to achieve through aggressive, onerous EPA regulations. They tried first of all to do it through legislation. Remember the cap-and-trade legislation--they tried for 10 years to get that done. Finally, each year they brought it up, more and more people in this body, the U.S. Senate, were opposed to a cap-and-trade system to do away with greenhouse gases and to put regulations on them. Well, every time a vote comes up, there is a larger majority opposed to it because the people of this country are concerned about the economy and the fact that this would be very costly. It was President Obama who said that with the cap-and-trade regulations, it would be very expensive. Now, when they couldn't pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, the same thing happened. Remember, that was introduced by Senator Feingold from Wisconsin and by Representative Oberstar in the House. And not only did they defeat overwhelmingly the Clean Water Restoration Act, but the two individuals who were the sponsors in the House and the Senate were both defeated in the next election. So just how radical is President Obama on environmental issues? By imposing these backdoor global warming cap-and-trade regulations through the EPA, President Obama is fulfilling his campaign promise that energy prices would necessarily skyrocket--his words. By vetoing the Keystone Pipeline, he gave the far left what one of his supporters called the biggest global warming victory in years. By finalizing the most expensive EPA rule in history, he is making good on his campaign promise that if anybody wants to build a coal-fired powerplant, they can; it is just that it will bankrupt them. And he succeeded in throwing hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars out the window on companies such as Solyndra, which he said would lead us to a brighter and more prosperous future. But President Obama is not running on this record of accomplishments. Why? Because Americans are worse off, not better off, for it. They are out of work, and they are struggling to make ends meet under the pain of regulations that cause their energy prices to skyrocket. So he is running as far away from that radical record as possible. So what are we trying to do in the Senate by stopping Utility MACT? We are trying to prevent the President from achieving another aspect of his radical global warming agenda and hopefully restore some sanity and balance to this out-of-control regulatory regime. I think everyone in this body can agree that we all share a commitment to improving air quality, that it should be done in a way that doesn't harm jobs and the economy and cause electricity prices to skyrocket on every American or do away with one of the most reliable, abundant, affordable energy resources--coal. We have to keep in mind that right now, in order to run this machine called America, 50 percent of it is actually being done on coal. I wish to address the public health debate which has long been the excuse for those in this administration who simply want to kill coal. It was certainly the excuse President Obama used today to defend his decision to veto my resolution. Let's be clear about one thing from the outset: If the effort behind Utility MACT were really about public health, then my Democratic colleagues would have joined our efforts way back in 2005 and passed the Clear Skies bill--a bill that would have put a plan in place to achieve a 70-percent reduction in mercury emissions--but they didn't. We all remember why. We wanted to include in this bill SoX, NoX, and mercury--the real pollutants--a mandatory 70-percent reduction, and they said we can't do it because we don't also have CO2 anthropogenic gases that are covered by this bill. So it was held hostage, and consequently we weren't able to get it passed. I can remember President Obama said: I voted against the Clear Skies bill. In fact, I was the deciding vote despite the fact that I'm a coal State and that half of my State thought I'd thoroughly betrayed them because I thought clean air was critical and global warming was critical. At an Environment and Public Works hearing in April of this year, Senator Barrasso asked Brenda Archambo from the National Wildlife Federation if the American people would have been better off if the Senate had passed the Clear Skies bill back in 2005, and her answer was ``absolutely.'' Of course, the National Wildlife Federation was not happy that we were calling attention to Ms. Archambo's admission, so over the weekend they accused my staff of twisting her words. My staff did nothing of the sort. Not only did Ms. Archambo say that mercury reductions in 2005 would absolutely have made Americans better off, she reiterated that same point later when Senator Barrasso asked her again, ``It would have been better if they had done it in 2005?'' Ms. Archambo replied, ``Sure.'' The entire exchange from the hearing has been posted on our EPW Web site for anyone who wants to see exactly what was said. I do not think it gets any clearer than that. Commonsense reductions earlier would have made us better off. That was 2005 when we would have had these reductions, mandatory reductions, in a very short period of time; and that time is more than 50 percent expired at this time. In a National Wildlife Federation blog accusing me of twisting Ms. Archambo's words, the author says: An odd part of Sen. Inhofe's attack: He's essentially saying a 70% reduction in mercury emissions would've been just dandy, but the 91% reduction proposed by the EPA would destroy the economy. Is that really such a huge difference? Or is he just playing politics with public health? That is a good question: What is the difference between Clear Skies and Utility MACT? It is very simple. Clear Skies would have reduced emissions dramatically--by 70 percent--now we are talking about reducing emissions on SOX, NOX, and mercury--but it would have done it without threatening to kill coal and the millions of jobs that coal sustains. On the other hand, Utility MACT is specifically designed to kill coal. It makes no effort whatsoever to balance environmental protection and economic growth. Now who is playing politics with public health? If public health were the priority, why did President Obama and his fellow Democrats vote against a 70-percent reduction way back in 2005? What is this effort about? It is about one thing: killing coal. And killing coal is the centerpiece of their radical global warming agenda. Remember then-Senator Obama said that he voted against the health benefits in Clear Skies because he thought ``global warming was critical.'' In other words, global warming was more important than any of the considerations regarding health. And these are real pollutants: SOX, NOX, and mercury. Importantly, the Senate will take this vote on my resolution just as the world leaders are gathering in Rio de Janeiro. Right now they are down there gathering at the Rio + 20 Sustainable Development Conference. Let's remember what happened 20 years ago. In 1992, that was the conference in Rio where they all got together, and they were going to be doing all these things on anthropogenic gases and all of that. President Obama, who is now busy pretending to be a fossil fuel President to garner votes, will not be attending. But he is sending his ``green team'' to negotiate on his behalf. What is this conference about? As Fox News reported back in April: The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development . . . is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything--or, as one of the documents puts it, ``a fundamental shift in the way we think and act.'' Utility MACT is a huge part of this effort to change the way we live and to spread the wealth around, and that is what they are talking about down there. We have started invoking a new tax system. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposes how sustainable development challenges ``can and must be addressed.'' He included--now I am quoting him--more than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer countries, in the name of fostering ``green infrastructure,'' ``climate adaptation,'' and other ``green economy'' measures. He is advocating for new carbon taxes--that is on us--for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year or 0.6 percent of gross domestic product by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned but not specified. Also included are further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use, all of which would be radically reorganized. These cost changes would ``contribute to a more level playing field between the established, `brown' technologies and newer, greener ones.'' He has advocated for major global social spending programs, including a ``social protection floor'' and ``social safety nets'' for the world's most vulnerable social groups for reasons of ``equity.'' It is all talking about more higher taxes on the developed world to go to the benefit of the underdeveloped world. This is the same thing they were talking about 20 years ago. I think it is very timely that this is happening today. It is happening at the very moment we will be voting on Wednesday as to whether to kill coal. By the way, this is the only vote that will be taken this year or probably ever to ultimately kill coal. Once this is passed, then, of course, the contracts are all broken and we have to figure out: What are we going to do in this country? If you kill coal, how do we run this machine called America? The answer to that question is, you cannot do it. So it is very important, and I do not think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the real purpose of the vote that will take place on Wednesday is to kill coal in America. And America cannot provide the necessary energy to run its machine and be competitive without coal. So it is a critical vote, and it is one that I think people are aware of that is going to be taking place. 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. INHOFE. Mr. President, I don't think anyone is going to say we haven't done everything we could to go through the committee process to get a hearing. I just flat gave up. That is why we have this rule. I will be looking forward to taking the next steps. I know there are a lot of people out there who want to have this type of justice afforded the pilots of the United States of America, the same as every other citizen enjoys. With that, I appreciate the patience of my colleagues, because I know we have other business, and I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, in a moment I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. Before I do, I would like to say what it is on so people will understand the time and effort that has gone into getting legislation passed. I am referring now to S. 3268. When John Glenn retired from this body, that left me as kind of the last acting commercial pilot. Consequently, I ended up getting a lot more of the complaints and problems within the FAA and the way accusations are made and enforcement actions are taken. I have gone to bat for a lot of these people when I believed there was really a fairness problem. It was not until I had an experience, a personal experience, that I realized the depth of the problem. It is very hard for people in this room to understand. If you have been, as I have been, a private pilot, commercial pilot, and flight instructor for 55 years, what it would mean to have that license taken away from you if that were merely at the whim of some enforcement officer in the field. I think all of us know--when I was mayor of Tulsa, now and then we had a few police officers who could not handle the authority. It happens all the time. Certainly we hear about it with enforcement actions brought about by the FAA. What happened to me, and I will share this with you--I think it is very important--I have probably more hours than most airline pilots have and I was still active in aviation. I was flying down to the southern part of Texas, the furthest south part of Texas, way down by Brownsville, to Cameron County Airport. Papa India Lima is the identifier for it. In this effort, with several passengers with me, I was going by the controllers. This is what you do not have to do but I always do for safety purposes. I went through the Corpus Christi approach control. He handed me off to the Valley approach control. I was going into a field that was uncontrolled, so the only control is the Valley approach control. They are watching on a screen, and they have all the information they need to direct you and authorize you to do things. They are looking for traffic and you are squawking, so they know exactly where you are, how high you are, and all the things that are happening. Again, you don't have to do that. On this day in October, a year ago October, I did not have to do it, but I did it anyway. As I approached--the wind is always out of the south down there. The runway is 1 3--that coordinates with 130 degrees. When I was on about-- I would have to go back and listen again to the voice recorder--about a 2- or 3-mile final to runway 1 3, the controller said: Twin Cessna 115 echo alpha, you are cleared to land runway 1 3. When you do this, you dirty up your plane so you can land. This happens to be a pretty sophisticated twin-engine plane; you have to let the flaps down and gears down and all that stuff. You get to the point, if you have a full plane, beyond which you cannot go around. When I came in to make a landing, I did not see X on the runway because it was not very prominent, but nevertheless there was one there. But there were some workers on the far east side of the runway. This was a 8,000- or 9,000-foot runway. I only needed 2,000 or 3,000 feet. So I went over the workers and I landed. Immediately they got upset that I landed. A lot of people, because I am a Member of the U.S. Senate, started calling the New York Times and the Washington Post. They had a wonderful time with this. I started looking at it and talking to the people who do the enforcement action. I have to say they were good, and they were responding to a lot of hysterical people, frankly, who did not like me. So they came with an enforcement action against me which merely was to go around the pattern with a CFI, a flight instructor. So I did this. I am also a flight instructor. I had given him his license, as a matter of fact. I went through this procedure, and everything was fine. However, the problem was this: I was denied access to the information they were going to use against me. When I told them that I was cleared to land by the controller, it took me, a U.S. Senator, 4 months to get the voice recording to prove I was right. Second, there is a thing called Notices to Airmen. NOTAMS are supposed to be published every time there is work on a runway. Pilots are supposed to have access to NOTAMS. You look through your resources, as I always do, to see if there are NOTAMS on the runways where I land. When I go back on weekends, normally I will fly--gosh, I will be at five or six different towns, but I look up the NOTAMS on all the towns. I had done that. There were no NOTAMS on Cameron County Airport. We checked afterward. We could never find any. No one says there were NOTAMS now. So, No. 1, I was clear to land, and No. 2, there were no NOTAMS that were published. What they could have done--they could have very well done is taken my license away. It doesn't mean much to people who are listening to me right now because you are not pilots, but it means a lot to the 400,000 members of the AOPA who are watching us right now and to the 175,000 general aviation pilots with the EAA, Experimental Aircraft Association, who are watching us right now. They know that they, at the whim of one bureaucrat, could lose their licenses. Anyway, I came back and drafted legislation. I have to say this was way back a year ago now--July 6 of 2011. I introduced a bill with 25 cosponsors that would do three things: No. 1, it would let the accused have access to all relevant evidence within 30 days prior to a decision to proceed with an enforcement action. No. 2, it would allow the accused to have access to the Federal courts. As it is right now, the National Transportation Safety Board-- it goes to them, and they rubberstamp whatever the FAA does. In fiscal year 2010, there were 61 appeals, and of those only 5 were reversed. Of the 24 petitions in 2010 seeking review for emergency determinations, only 1 was granted and 23 were denied. It is a rubberstamp. Everybody knows it. Ask any pilot you can find, and they will tell you that is what it is. This way, they would have access to the Federal courts. It is not going to happen because I can assure you, that inspector in the field, the enforcement officer in the field is not going to put his reputation on the line knowing that someone is going to be looking at it with a sense of fairness. The district court doesn't have to know anything about piloting an airplane, it is just a fairness issue. In my case, they would have looked at this and said: Wait, you are cleared to land by the FAA, and there are no NOTAMS published. What did you do wrong? I did nothing wrong. They would make sure flight station communications are available to all airmen. They are supposed to be. But if it took me 4 months--and I am a U.S. Senator--to get a voice recording to show I was cleared to land at this airport, what about somebody who is not a Senator? What about somebody who would be intimidated to the point he would lose his license? The second thing this does is it forces the NOTAMS--Notices to Airmen--to be put in a place where they are visible, a central location. The third thing. If you talk to the aircraft owners and the pilots association, of all the problems that they get called to their attention, 28 percent of all the requests for assistance received by them relate to the medical certification process. In other words, someone might lose his medical and then find he has corrected any kind of physical problem and wants to get it back, and he gets it back. However, if he happens to live in a different town and there are hundreds of doctors around to do this, there is no uniformity to it. So it sets up a process or helps facilitate setting up a process by having general aviation, having the FAA, having the NTSB, having anyone who is relevant and interested in this to look at and coordinate the medical certification process. That is essentially it. I am prepared to go into a lot of detail. I know I now have 66 cosponsors in this body. I could have had a lot more; we quit after we got two-thirds. I think everyone knows that is normally what you do. I do know we may have one objection to this unanimous consent request, but I am going to make it now. As in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 422, S. 3268, that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.