Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my defense fellow, MAJ Kevin Hadley, be given floor privileges during the consideration of this bill.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks from the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Manchin, and the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Coats, that I be recognized as in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding that I have as much as 5 minutes. Mr. President, I appreciate very much what has been described. Perhaps people can look at this in terms of the overregulation we are doing in this country, the fact that there is a direct relationship between the amount of revenue that comes into the government and the amount of regulations. I have always used this--in fact, it is still permissible to use it. According to OMB, for each 1 percent addition to the GDP, it creates an additional $50 billion of revenue. There are other ways of doing it other than tax increases. To turn it around, look at what this administration has done. They have regulations such as the greenhouse gas regulation, which would be between a $300 billion and $400 bill loss each year. The ozone--which they postponed, but nevertheless they proposed it--would be $676 billion in lost GDP. You can do your math on that. For each 1 percent-- and 1 percent is $140 billion--for each 1 percent, it would be about a $50 billion loss in revenue. Boiler MACT is a $1 billion loss in GDP. Utility MACT, which is what they have been talking about, across State lines, is $140 billion in compliance costs. Cement MACT--all of these are huge losers in terms of revenue that can be generated. So I would only like to say--and I wish I had time to get into more detail on this--that shortly we will be voting on McCain amendment No. 928. It has a lot of great features in it, but one that has been almost overlooked is the feature that would take away the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. This was the Upton-Inhofe bill. My bill, actually, was tested here, and we had a majority of people who were in support of it. It passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives. So part of this amendment addresses what would have been done by the Waxman-Markey bill, which would cost us, not just once but every year, between $300 billion and $400 billion. The big question was, since the President could not get this body to pass a bill on cap and trade, he decided he would do it through regulation. But doing it through regulation would still cost between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. So what they had to do was to come up with an endangerment finding. That endangerment finding was based on flawed science. In fact, we have a recent response to a request by the IG of the EPA who said, in fact, that was true--that the science on which this was based was faulty science. So after we realized that--and everyone else realized it--we went back to these people who were on record opposing the legislation regulating greenhouse gases and tried to get a bill passed that would take away the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases. So that is what this was all about. We were not able to get that, but that provision is in amendment No. 928 by Senator McCain and others. I hope people will realize, in addition to those things being talked about, and the new jobs that would come with the passage of that amendment, there is also this provision which would be a huge boost to our economy and would eliminate an unnecessary tax increase of between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for the time. This is a critical subject she is dealing with right now, but the thing in common is the problem we are having right now with regulation. I think we are going to be talking about that this afternoon. I only wanted to get one thing in, and that is about something the Chair is fully aware of because he was there all morning. Something very significant happened this morning. In our Environment and Public Works Committee we passed out a highway reauthorization bill. We have not done this since 2005, and this morning we did. This is one where we sat down--one of the few times that Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, can get in a room and hammer out their differences and get things done. I wish the committee would be successful in doing that as we were this morning in getting a highway bill. So we are going to have a highway bill at the current spending level which, if my colleagues remember back in 2005, it was $286.4 billion, and that was for a 5-year bill. That spending level right now would be, to sustain that, somewhere between $40 billion and $42 billion a year for 2 years. This is a 2-year bill, and the 2-year bill cannot pass until we locate an additional $12 billion to make this happen. I think a lot of us don't want to take what would constitute a 34-percent cut in funding for our roads and highways and bridges throughout America and be able to sustain that. This is a life-and-death type of issue. I wanted to say how proud I am of the staff and of every Democrat and every Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee who made this happen this morning. So while we have much more we are concerned about, I think it shouldn't go unnoticed at this time that we have now started that ball rolling and that is good news. One last thing I wish to say about overregulation. When we talk about the jobs bill--and we always are talking about revenue and jobs and all of this--we seem to forget that the overregulation is costing us a lot. I can remember fighting the cap-and-trade bills ever since back during the Kyoto convention, and impressing upon people that the bills being offered would cost between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. That is every year, not just the first year. Right now, since they have not been able to pass that here, they are trying to do that with regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency. Congressman Fred Upton over in the House and I had legislation that would take away the jurisdiction of the EPA to get this done. I think this is going to be offered as an amendment this afternoon. I think it is very critical that we pass that. I thank the Senator from Texas for giving me this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I apologize to the Chair. I had a misunderstanding as to where we were, and I only wanted to try to get the point across, which I think I failed to do, regarding the cost of these regulations. I think I used as an example the five--I mentioned, actually, six when you consider hydraulic fracturing also as one of the regulations. By far, the one that is the most expensive is the regulation that would be for the greenhouse gases. I think we have pretty much established the cost to do a cap-and-trade bill and the range being from $300 billion to $400 billion. The quotes I used, which I won't repeat now, were from Administrator Jackson and Senator Kerry and others stating that doing it through regulation would be far more expensive. So I think we need to be looking at it in terms of about $400 billion a year. This would be a tax on the American people. This would be the cost to our GDP. I remember back in 1993 when we had the Clinton-Gore tax increase. It was the largest one in four decades at that time. It was an increase in the death tax, an increase in marginal rates, an increase in capital gains--an increase in almost all taxes--and it was a $30 billion tax increase. What we are talking about here is a tax increase that is 10 times that great--10 times. We are using the figure now of $400 billion because we know that through regulation, it will cost more. Again, I go back and repeat the quote we had from Administrator Jackson of the EPA, who said in response to my question, live in our committee, if we were to pass legislation--at that time, I think it was the Waxman-Markey bill, although it doesn't really matter because cap and trade is cap and trade--would that reduce overall emissions, and she said no because it would only apply to the United States. I would carry it one step further. If we were to pass or do anything through regulation here, all it will do is cause our manufacturing base to go out and find the energy necessary to operate. And where do they go? They go to places such as China, India, and Mexico--places that have almost no emission standards. So if there is a pollution problem, it becomes much greater, not less, in terms of overall emissions. Another situation I often talk about is the time before I left to go to the Copenhagen United Nations event, where they were going to try to convince the rest of the world that we were going to pass legislation that would be cap and trade and impose this tax on the American people. In a committee hearing, I said to Administrator Jackson: I have a feeling that as soon as I leave town, you are going to have an endangerment finding. Sure enough, that is what happened. I said: When you have an endangerment finding, it has to be based on science. So what science would you be using? She said: By and large, it would be the science developed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ironically, right after that, climategate came up and really destroyed the legitimacy of the IPCC. I have read some of the quotes that were given by different people when they talked about climategate. One of them is a British writer George Monbiot, who is known for his environmental and political activism, and he is on the other side of this. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He said: Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Here, he is referring to climategate and the fact that they were cooking the science. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. Again talking about the participants in IPCC. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologizing where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again. I also mentioned the Daily Telegraph in the UK. Quoting from it: This scandal could well be the greatest in modern science. Then the Atlantic Magazine, which generally is editorializing the other side of this issue, 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. That was the loss of credibility of the whole idea of the science that was put together by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations. But to make it even worse, we requested that the inspector general do a study and report back as to the science and how the science was developed by the IPCC and whether it followed the guidelines that were necessary. They came back just 1 week ago with a report that says the EPA has failed to follow the responsible guidelines. In fact, even before the scope of the study was finalized today, the EPA was already collecting data samples at the undisclosed fracking sites, so they are going in now to using the same type of flawed science and going after other parts of their agenda. In this case, it would be hydraulic fracturing, which I mentioned just a few minutes ago, is an attempt to stop our ability to develop our own resources. In the course of this overregulation, I think we have to keep in mind and to keep talking about these six greatest and most costly regulatory problems that we have out there and how much it is going to cost the American people. Again, the one that is the most serious right now is trying to regulate and do a cap-and-trade through the regulations as opposed to doing it through legislation. We are going to keep talking about that. It is not going to go away. People think time will make people forget. But we don't forget something of that magnitude. I did a calculation in my State of Oklahoma; as I always do, I get the number of families who file a tax return each year. When something comes along that will cost something, I do the calculation and I do the math and then I go back to the American people and say: Get ready. This is what it is going to cost. If we were to have passed any of the bills that were like the Kyoto Protocol, and the last one being the Waxman-Markey bill, the cost would have been at least $300 billion. If we take that annual cost, that would cost my tax-paying families in Oklahoma in excess of $3,000 a family, and they get nothing for it. We can do an awful lot of talking about the deficits and the spending of this administration. Let's don't overlook perhaps the most expensive thing to the American people; that is, the overregulation that makes us noncompetitive with the rest of the world. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, after the vote today, I think that any effort to pass a bill such as the ones we just voted on would be very difficult. But something good does happen from that; that is, we had the vast majority of people in the Chamber recognizing that we need to do something that would be stimulative to the economy--something unlike the stimulus bill we had before, where only 3 percent of the money actually went to building roads, highways, maintenance, and that type of thing. I do appreciate the fact that we are now in a position where I think, with this behind us, we can be looking at a good, legitimate highway transportation reauthorization bill. I have been working very closely with Senators Boxer, Vitter, and Baucus--we are considered the ``big four'' in the Environment and Public Works Committee--to come up with something. I have to say that we have worked very hard, and I am talking about hours and hours. Anytime you can get Senator Barbara Boxer from California and me to agree on something, you know we have gone through a lot of work--and we have. We have gone through a lot of give and take. Senator Boxer and I, along with Senators Vitter and Baucus, recognize that we desperately need to have a transportation reauthorization bill, and we need to do it the right way. All these things we have been doing with extensions don't work. There is not a Member of this Chamber who doesn't go back every week and talk to his transportation director and say why can't we quit these extensions and get a good bill. We have a good bill, and we are talking about reforms. It is our intention next week, I believe, to mark up this bill. We are looking forward to that. I have a very strong bias toward transportation. For the years I was in the House, I was on that committee. We didn't have these problems then. We had a highway trust fund that always had a surplus because we were very aggressive at that time and, of course, a lot more people were purchasing gas at that time and revenues were up. So we had a surplus. Unfortunately, this always happens in Washington, DC. Members came along and looked at the surplus, and that was a target. Everybody wanted in on it, so they put their deals into the highway trust fund. That is partly why we got to where we are today. I appreciate the conversation we have gotten from the President. He talks about how he wants infrastructure, and he has a picture of where he was standing in front of a bridge making a speech about creating jobs. But he doesn't have anything in his program that does anything with infrastructure. Our problem is that President Obama has been talking the talk, and he has spoken more about infrastructure than any other President since Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway System. But when you get up to the $800 billion stimulus bill, in doing the calculations, only 3 percent--about $27 billion of that--was in highway construction or maintenance. Senator Boxer and I made an effort on the floor--a bipartisan effort--to try to raise the percentage. I wanted it up to 10 percent or higher, but we were unable to do it. The President was not on our side on that. I think the good news is that today's votes, of both Democrats and Republicans, showed that they are very interested and supportive of a highway bill. We have gotten a lot of that out of the way and we can concentrate on a highway bill. I think both parties are trying to create jobs and economic growth through the building of highways and bridges. Most Americans are unaware of how damaging regulations are. When I stop and think about proposing a massive program, which is what we are talking about now--reauthorization program--it is massive in that the funding level would probably stay the same as it has been since the highway authorization bill of 2005. But when they talk about that, we are always faced with the regulation problems. We are trying to address in this bill the regulation problems that are out there to try to have some shortcuts, to try to get some things done that otherwise would take a lot longer. Regulations have been a huge problem. EPA Regulations This administration's Environmental Protection Agency alone has an unprecedented number of regulations, and they are destroying jobs. The results are there. I will mention the five most expensive regulations of all the regulations that have come out. First is the greenhouse gas regulation. I think we all know what that is. That is them trying to do something through regulations they were unable to do through legislation. Second, ozone, the national ambient air quality standards. That would be about a $678 billion loss in GDP by 2020. Incidentally, I failed to mention the greenhouse gas regulations, which would be in excess of $300 billion to $400 billion a year. The boiler MACT regulations--that would be a $1 billion loss to GDP. Utility MACT--MACT is maximum achievable technology. In other words, one of the problems with all these MACT bills coming out of the administration is that there is no technology available to carry out the mandates on emissions. Cement MACT is another, with $3.5 billion in compliance costs. Fortunately, in September, President Obama withdrew the EPA's proposed toughened ozone standards. There is good reason for that, and one is that ozone standards are supposed to be predicated upon new science. This was on the same science that the last ozone changes were based on. I think when people caught on to that and recognized what it would cost--in Oklahoma, we would be looking at some 15 counties that would be out of attainment, and there is nothing more dreadful that could happen to a State than have your counties go out of attainment so that you are not able to recruit jobs, or even keep the jobs you have. We would be talking about around 7 million jobs throughout the United States. Because of that, politically, he postponed that. Frankly, I think he is postponing it until after the next election. If he should be reelected, I can assure you we will see that again. Democrats always say we need to have tax increases and that is the best way to grow. I look at this sometimes. Recently, the Office of Management and Budget came up with a calculation that is consistent with one I have been using for 20 years: For each 1-percent increase in economic activity in this country, or 1-percent growth, that equates to about $50 billion of new revenue. Interestingly enough, this is all a Republican idea. President Kennedy, who was a Democrat, said we have to raise more money for the Great Society, and the best way to raise money is to reduce marginal tax rates. He did it and it worked. We saw what President Ronald Reagan did in the years that followed that. During the 8 years he was in office, the proceeds for marginal rates went from $204 billion to $466 billion. That was at a time when rates were reduced more than any other 8-year period in history. We are looking at other opportunities to reduce regulations and all that so we can resolve the problem. There is one thing that is very important--and I know there is nobody in this Chamber who doesn't recognize the concern I have expressed over the years about the legislation proposed ever since the Kyoto treaty on legislative cap and trade. Every time there is an analysis made-- whether by MIT, or by the Wharton School, Charles Rivers, or any of the rest of them--the range of the cost of cap and trade legislatively is always between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. We found out that if you do it by regulation, it is going to be far more than that. These are Democrats who are on record as saying that. Lisa Jackson, for whom I have a great deal of respect, is the Obama-appointed Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Every time I ask her a question, she gives me an honest answer. She said: I have said over and over, as has the President, that we do understand that there are costs to the economy of addressing global warming emissions, and that the best way to address them is through a gradual move to a market-based program like cap and trade. Yes, they would cost a lot of money. Nobody refutes the $300 billion to $400 billion figure. John Kerry said this: If Congress does not pass legislation dealing with climate change, the administration will use the Environmental Protection Agency to impose new regulations. These regulations would be more expensive. I think the EPA admitted that if they were able to accomplish this through regulations, they would need to hire an additional 230,000 employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its greenhouse gas regime. All of this economic pain is for no gain. As EPA Administrator Jackson also admitted before the EPA committee, these regulations will have no effect on the climate. I want to mention that. That is significant. A lot of people disagree with me in terms of the impact of CO2 emissions and all of that. Let me say this. Two things having to do with that issue are very important. One is that if we were to pass legislation or do something through regulation that would be aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, would this have an effect on the reduction of emissions worldwide? I asked that question to Lisa Jackson, and her answer was ``no.'' Obviously, the problem is not here in the United States, it is in China, India, and other places. In looking at it that way, I have to also mention that we all know what happened with climategate. We all know, when we went in and started an endangerment finding, it was based on the science that came from the IPCC, which has now been totally discredited. When I have more time, I will go into the details as to how that was discredited. For example, this was such a great scandal, the Daily Telegraph said: This scandal could well be the greatest in modern science. So that is what was happening. They were cooking the science at the United Nations and the IPCC. Now we are at the point where we asked for an inspector general opinion as to whether the EPA had followed the proper guidelines in trying to regulate greenhouse gases, and, in fact, they did not follow the right guidelines. So I would only say that the inspector general's investigation uncovered that the EPA failed to engage in the required record-keeping process leading up to the endangerment finding decision, and it also did not follow its own peer review procedures to ensure that the science behind the decision was sound science. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson readily admitted the science that was used was flawed, the science used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So I would say this: We are concerned about what is going to happen now. We are concerned about the overregulations. We are concerned about the process that has been used and how regulations are used to support an agenda the President has. I will mention one last thing, and that is a regulation I didn't mention before. Of the five most expensive regulations, this isn't one of them, but it could end up costing the most. We know for a fact that the United States of America--we have a report now that shows that with all the findings and with all the good things that are happening in the shale throughout the United States and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, we could be totally free from dependency on any other country if we would just get politicians out of the way and develop our own resources. We have enough natural gas to meet America's demand for 90 years and enough oil for 50 years, but in order to do this, they have to use a process called hydraulic fracturing. Ironically, that was started in my State of Oklahoma in 1949 and has been used ever since that time, and there has never been a confirmed case of groundwater contamination. Nonetheless, right now we see that they are going through this process of saying: We are going to take over the regulation of hydraulic fracturing from the States and place it with the Federal Government. I have to be suspicious that there is motive behind that, and that motive is to restrict the use of hydraulic fracturing. We could open the east coast, the west coast, the gulf coast, the northern slope, and everything else, but if we can't use that process, we will not be able to achieve energy independence, which we can do. We don't have to use anything new that is out there other than oil, gas, and coal. With what is happening right now with hydrogen, we have an opportunity to become self-sufficient. With that, I will yield the floor so my good friend can make his comments.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. First, let me thank my good friend, the Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, for speaking because I asked her to do it. A lot of people are surprised on how well we get along. The committee she chairs is called the Environment and Public Works Committee and I am the ranking member. When Republicans were in the majority, I was the chairman. I look forward to being chairman again, but that is another conversation for another day. But the reason I wanted to speak is, because we do. A lot of people are surprised to see this. We get along very well. Right now, we are doing everything we possibly can to get a highway reauthorization bill. She prides herself on being a very proud liberal and I pride myself on being a very proud conservative. Yet we both know that one of our primary functions here is to do something about infrastructure. I have often been ranked as the most conservative member of this body, the Senate. I often have said I may be conservative, but I am a big spender in two areas: national defense and infrastructure. That is what we are supposed to be doing. Right now, we have the most deplorable problem in the condition of our roads and highways and bridges. My State of Oklahoma goes back and forth being dead last or next to the last behind Missouri as having the worst conditions of our bridges. We had a lady not too long ago in my State of Oklahoma, in Oklahoma City, the mother of two small children, who was driving under one of the big interstate bridges and a block of concrete fell off and it killed her. She was the mother of two small children. We have people dying every day on the highways because of the condition of the highways. For that, I applaud Senator Boxer for joining me to put together this coalition. I don't want to say anything that would be improper at this time, but it is my expectation--not just hope but expectation--that we are going to be able to come up with a highway reauthorization bill, and it is going to be one that is at least holding the current spending level. If we are to have to go back to the level of the proceeds of the highway trust fund, that would be about 34 percent less than what we are spending today. I defy any one of my fellow Senators from all the 50 States to tell me one State that isn't having just as serious a problem as my State of Oklahoma is having. I think that it is important we recognize there are some things the government is supposed to be doing and some things that bring us all together. Again, that is what is going to happen. I can remember back, the last reauthorization bill we had was 2005. At that time, I was the chairman of the committee. We all worked together. We came up with a $284.6 billion, 5-year bill. Yet as robust as that was, that did very little more than just maintain what we have today--no new bridges, all these new things we need to have. I think a lot of the people who are my good friends, and primarily over in the House, who came under the banner of the tea parties and all that, they recognize, yes, they can be a conservative. But when they got home, they said: Wait a minute. We want to not be spending on these big things, but we weren't talking about transportation. So we have to single out transportation for my friends to recognize there is a place we need be spending more money, not less money. So I look forward to that, and I hope we will have an announcement to make, as one of the most liberal and one of the most conservative members joining and coming up with a highway reauthorization bill. There is not unanimity in what it will look like, other than the spending level should remain where it is today and it should be something that is going to address these problems. There will be a lot of sacrifices along the way. I know that when we mark up a bill there are going to be a lot of things in it that I don't like and that Senator Boxer doesn't like and we are going to have to give up some of these things. I have made it very clear that back in the early days, when I was actually serving in the other body, we always had surpluses in the highway trust fund and we were able to take care of these needs. Then, as typical as politicians are this way, they see a pot of money and they want in on it. So we had all these groups, and a lot of them were environmental groups that wanted to have their own agenda attached to it. We are going to have to get serious and make this a highway bill. By the way, this would also be certainly the biggest jobs bill we have had during this administration, since this administration has done a lousy job of providing jobs. But having said that--and I said that because I want to draw a contrast. We are about to consider and vote on the President's nominee, John Bryson, to be Secretary of Commerce. He is President Obama's choice, and there is a clear indication he has no indication of backing down on his job-killing war on affordable energy. But I have to say this. With John Bryson, this isn't Van Jones we are talking about. This is a guy who is a nice guy, and we have a lot of mutual friends. I have been contacted by people who are friends of mine who are friends of his, and clearly he is a person who is well received in terms of being a good person. But he is dead wrong on the issues that will provide jobs for America. At a time when unemployment is sky high, President Obama chooses the founder--and I will characterize it differently than my friend from California did--of one of the most radical, leftwing, extreme environmentalist groups, the National Resources Defense Council. It is a leftwing organization which, in the name of global warming, seeks to cut off access to our natural resources and increase drastically the price of electricity and gasoline across America. We know this is true, because we know that if they would merely develop the resources we have today in the United States of America, we wouldn't have to be dependent upon the Middle East for one barrel of oil, and we wouldn't have to worry about our supply of gas and coal, because as I will explain in just a minute and document, we have the largest recoverable resources in coal gas and oil of any country in the world. Mr. Bryson once called the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill moderate. This particular cap-and-trade bill was probably the most liberal of all the cap-and-trade bills that were there. By the way, I have to say this one thing. I understand I am the last speaker tonight. What do all the speakers who are in favor of this have in common? They are all supporting cap and trade, with the exception of Senator Hutchison, and she is retiring. But stop and think about it: Boxer, Feinstein, Rockefeller, Kerry, McCain, they are all strong supporters of cap and trade. That is what I am going to talk about tonight because I know where John Bryson is on cap and trade. He told some students at the University of California Berkeley last year that ``cap-and-trade has the advantage politically at sort-of hiding the fact that you have a major tax.'' To me, the fact that they are supporting something that is a major tax increase on the American people is bad enough. But when they say one of the good things about cap and trade is you can hide the fact that it is a major tax increase--and we know now what this would cost. Cap and trade is cap and trade. It doesn't make any difference if it was back during the Kyoto days. It doesn't make any difference if it was in any of the bills that were passed. Still, the analysis is that the cost of a cap-and-trade bill would be between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. Again, this is legislation that would cost the taxpayers $300 billion to $400 billion a year and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and hurt families and workers by raising the price of gasoline and electricity. Yet the nominee for Secretary of Commerce believes that was a moderate bill, the Waxman-Markey bill. The Secretary of Commerce should have a record of promoting, not stifling, economic growth. John Bryson's career shows he has a clear record of the latter, and it makes no sense to have the Secretary of Commerce who is against commerce. I am not the only one who thinks so. Let me just share. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal states: President Obama nominated John Bryson to head the Commerce Department on Tuesday, praising the Californian as a business leader who understands what it takes to innovate, to create jobs, and to persevere through tough times. That's one way of describing someone with a talent of scoring government subsidies. We keep hearing--and I think they hit the nail on the head there and they answered the question. People say: This man has been very successful for 18 years. He ran one of the major utilities out in California, and one of the interesting things about it is this utility out there is not one that is using coal; it is using renewables. Obviously, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out: If they have the very heavy expenses and they raise the price of energy, it doesn't hurt the utilities. They pass it on. They pass it on to the consumers who ultimately have to pay for it. Quoting the Washington Examiner: But there is another side of Bryson, one that fits squarely in the tradition of radical Obama appointees like green jobs czar Van Jones, a self-proclaimed Marxist; Medicare head Donald Berwick, who swoons over Britain's socialized National Health Service; and National Labor Relations Board member Craig Becker, the former labor lawyer who never met a union power grab he couldn't back. Here is Investors Business Daily: The nominee for commerce secretary founded an anti-energy group and believes in redistribution of wealth to help poorer nations. At this rate, we will be one of them. If personnel is policy, there can be no better choice to help implement President Obama's anti-growth energy policy and redistribution of wealth plans than his choice to be the next Secretary of Commerce, John Bryson. Again, that is the Investors Business Daily. The ACU came out and said: ``Putting John Bryson in charge of the Commerce Department is the dictionary definition of putting the fox in charge of the hen house.'' That is exactly what it is, and that is one reason I would prefer we not have this vote tonight. I would like to have all of us go back for this 1-week recess and let the people know this is about to be voted on, and I think that is one reason they are going to be doing it tonight. By the way, I am not critical of the leadership, certainly not the Democratic or Republican leadership. In fact, I went to them and said: As long as you give me a 60-vote threshold, I would waive going through all the loops of filibustering and having cloture votes and all that. So I appreciate that. But my intent was to wait, and I still would ask formally if they would change this UC under which we are operating and allow this vote to take place when we come back from this 1-week recess. The choice of Bryson is also part of President Obama's green energy jobs push. In fact, the President said he specifically nominated-- listen to this--he specifically nominated Bryson because he is a ``fierce proponent of alternative energy.'' But with more than 9 percent unemployment and the complete collapse of the solar company Solyndra, the President's green agenda is clearly not creating jobs. In the end, Solyndra is more than just a bankrupt company, it is a metaphor for the failure of Obama's war on fossil fuel jobs. I have already called for hearings in the Senate on Solyndra and I hope it will not be long before they occur. President Obama has received the message loudly and clearly that his global warming green agenda no longer sells, but that doesn't mean he has given up trying to implement it. Bryson is just one figure in Obama's green team. He follows in the footsteps of Carol Browner and Anthony Van Jones, who also supported increasing taxes on America's energy, as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu. You remember Stephen Chu, the President's Energy Secretary, who said, ``[s]omehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of gasoline in Europe.'' That is about $8 a gallon. It is the intention of this administration to raise gas prices, to either force them into some other type of energy or to stop people from having the freedom of driving as we have always had in this country. That was Energy Secretary Steven Chu who said we have to bring our price of gasoline at the pumps up to that of Europe. Then we have also Alan Krueger. His nomination by President Obama to be the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers is yet another example. During his time at the Department of Treasury under President Obama, Mr. Krueger made clear his opposition to the development of traditional domestic energy. He even went so far as to say ``the administration believes it is no longer sufficient to address our Nation's energy needs by finding more fossil fuels. . . .'' I am still quoting Alan Kreuger. This is when he was in the Treasury Department. He is the nominee now for the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the advisory council. He even went so far as to say: The administration's goal is to have resources invested in ways which yield the highest social return. That is the current nominee to be Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for the President. He doesn't need that advice, he is already doing it. The Congressional Research Service reports America has the largest recoverable resources of oil, gas, and coal in the world. The Obama administration's failure to appreciate this fact is one of the many reasons why they are not making progress in creating jobs and improving our economy. This is a key here. When this discovery was made, the Congressional Research Service--nobody has denied this. That was less than a year ago when they said America has the largest recoverable resources of oil, gas, and coal in the world. That means we could be totally self- sufficient. All we have to do is develop our own resources. I defy anyone on this floor to tell me there is any other country that does not develop its own resources. We are the only one. So we have 83 percent of our non-shore public lands off limits. We have these huge reserves out there but we cannot go after them. Then there is Rebecca Wodder, who President Obama has chosen to be the Assistant Secretary for the Fish and Wildlife Department. That would be for the Department of Interior. As CEO of American Rivers, which works actively to shut down energy production in the United States, she--Rebecca Wodder--is a strong advocate for the Federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, a process which is efficiently and effectively regulated by States. This is interesting. It was not long ago that President Obama was lauding the virtues of natural gas, and at the end of his speech he said we have to do something about hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing started in my State of Oklahoma in 1948. I can't quantify the hundreds of thousands of wells that have been hydraulically fractured, but it has been in the hundreds of thousands--maybe 1.5 million. I have heard that figure. With the exception of one well back in 1986, where somebody actually went into an aquifer, there has not been one documented case in over a million hydraulic fractured wells where it has contaminated groundwater. Yet they are using that, knowing full well if you kill hydraulic fracturing you kill all the oil and gas in tight formations because you cannot get it without that. The selection of Ms. Wodder is a clear departure from her predecessor, Tom Strickland, who in testimony before the EPW Committee, our committee, said we should actively and aggressively develop our energy resources. Unfortunately, Ms. Wodder's support for regulation and advancement suggested she would do the opposite, which exposes the reality of President Obama's agenda of increasing energy prices and destroying jobs. These nominations--of course we are talking tonight about another nomination of a person who is a good guy and all that, but John Bryson, to be in a position to follow all the rest of these who are doing everything they can to kill fossil fuels, and when you kill fossil fuels, we know, and the President admitted, it would cause the price of electricity in America to skyrocket. These nominations are not surprising when you remember that President Obama said himself that he wants electricity rates to skyrocket. As he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, ``If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them. . . .'' That is what the Obama EPA regulations intend to do. The EPA is moving forward with an unprecedented number of rules for coal-fired plants and industrial boilers that have now become known as the infamous train wreck for the incredible harm they will do to our economy. They are set to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and significantly raise energy prices for families, businesses, and farmers--basically anyone who drives a car or flips a switch. The President himself has now publicly acknowledged this. When we stopped the Agency from tightening the national ambient air quality standards for ozone, his statement couldn't be more clear: The EPA rules create regulatory burdens and uncertainty. Just last week, EPA also pulled back on its plan to tighten regulation on farm dust, undoubtedly due to bipartisan concern that it would cause great harm to our farmers. I have given the speech on the floor, and I am not going to repeat it tonight, about what all the regulations this President is trying to put forth will cost, in terms of his maximum achievable control technology. He has the refinery MACT, he has the boiler MACT, he has the farm dust MACT. These are the things he is trying to do where the technology is not even there. I found out something the other day in Broken Arrow, OK. I can't recall the name of the company now. They make platforms for hydraulic fracturing. I don't know if the Senator from California has ever seen one of these platforms. I have seen a lot of them. They make a lot of them in Oklahoma. This young man who is the president of this company showed me these platforms. These platforms are about--you could put maybe four of them in this Chamber, that is how big they are. On these platforms, to do hydraulic fracturing, they have a great big diesel engine. This diesel engine is necessary to do hydraulic fracturing of oil wells. They came out with a regulation the other day I didn't even know about. They said, after a certain date--exactly where it was, in the next couple of months--that you would not be able to use the diesel engine on your platform that does hydraulic fracturing unless it is a tier 4 diesel engine. Here is the problem. They don't make them. They are on the drawing board. They are making them but they are not on market yet. So they are shutting down the people who are building the platforms to do hydraulic fracturing through regulations. Every day we run into new regulations. I can remember on the farm dust regulation, I had a news conference in the State of Oklahoma. In Oklahoma we went back--I had people coming out from Washington, DC, who had never been west of the Mississippi. We went down southwest in the town of Altus, OK. I said in my news conference, when the cameras were rolling: This President is trying to do something to regulate farm dust. Let me explain something to you. If you look down here, that brown stuff down there, that is called dirt. If you look at that round green thing down there, that is cotton. Put your finger in the air, that is called wind. Are there any questions? What I am saying is they all realized there is no technology to regulate farm dust. Yet they are trying to do it. Right now the major farm organizations such as American Farm Bureau, they are the ones who are saying that is the No. 1 concern right now, what they are trying to do to shut down farms in America. The EPA continues to push regulations to harm the economy, the Cross-Air State Pollution Rule, the so-called utility MACT--rules that are poised to destroy jobs. Let's not forget the economic ramifications of global warming. But before we leave the utility MACT, we have right now utilities that are notifying coal producers, saying if this goes through we are not going to be able to honor our contracts to buy coal from you. That is how serious it is. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of employees. Let's go to the big one now, the economic ramifications of global warming, regulations imposed by Obama which cost American consumers between $300 and $400 billion a year. The reason I want to mention this is because there have been attempts since the Kyoto treaty--of course we didn't ratify the Kyoto treaty for a good reason, and that is it would cause extreme economic harm to the United States of America. It would only affect the developed nations such as the United States and some of the European nations, but not the developing nations. It would not have any effect of reducing CO2 if you wanted to reduce CO2. Ever since the 1990s there have been about seven or eight different bills to try, here in the United States, to do away with--impose some kind of cap and trade. But they were not able to do it because the people in this body will not vote for it. In this body, right now you could not get maybe 25, maybe 30 votes. It would take 60 votes to pass it. You could not get more than 30 votes on a cap-and-trade bill. The President realized this. He realized with all the jobs that would be lost and the cost of this, the fact it would impose a tax of around $300 to $400 billion a year on the American people. I remember back in 1993, that was during the Clinton-Gore years, I remember when they came out with their big tax increase. I will never forget it because I was serving at that time in the other body. They were raising marginal rates, raising capital gains taxes, raising all the taxes, retirement-- all of it. The cost of that was some $30 billion a year. I remember coming down to the floor of the House of Representatives, saying: We cannot afford $30 billion a year. This tax would be 10 times that, between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. That is what they are trying to do. When the President realized that he was not able to pass this legislatively, he decided through regulations he was going to pass his own cap and trade. I have to say this. There are people out there who still believe--not very many--somehow we are having catastrophic global warming and it is due to anthropogenic gases or CO2 emissions. I remember. I am very fond of Lisa Jackson, who is the EPA Administrator appointed by President Obama, because I asked her this question. I said: If we were to pass any of these cap-and-trade bills, would this reduce worldwide CO2 emissions? She said: No, because it would only affect the United States of America. This is not where the problem is. If it is a problem, that problem is in Mexico, in China, in India, in places that do not have any kind of restrictions. So that is what it is. He is trying to impose that tax. I know people get worn out when they hear talk about billions or $1 trillion. I am not as smart as most of these guys around here so I do it a little differently. I keep track of the number of families in my State of Oklahoma who file an income tax return. Then I do my math. If we were to pass cap and trade, or if he is able to do it through regulations-- which are sponsored, by the way, by John Bryson, the nominee we are talking about--if he were to do it, it would increase the taxes by between $300 and $400 billion a year. Now do your math with the number of people who file a tax return in the State of Oklahoma. It would be approximately $3,000 a family. What do you get for it? You get nothing by their own admission because it would not reduce the worldwide emissions. What this President fails to realize is that affordable, reliable energy is the lifeblood of a healthy economy and the foundation of our global competitiveness. Instead, he continues to favor the radical environmental agenda ahead of turning around our economy and putting Americans back to work. On the other hand, in my State of Oklahoma, oil and gas development has led to a tremendous economic boost in the creation of good-paying jobs. Right now in my State of Oklahoma--there is a 9.2-percent unemployment rate nationwide. In my State of Oklahoma, it is 5.5 percent--I am sorry, it is about 5.5 percent or 5.2 percent. That is about half of the national average. It is due by and large to the fact that we have this growth and people are in the energy business. So we can continue going down the path of President Obama's job- killing agenda or we can start to develop our Nation's vast natural resources, which are the key to the Nation's recovery. That is jobs. That is cheap gas at the pumps. We certainly have plenty of them. The CRS report I mentioned shows that America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth. In fact, our recoverable resources are far greater than those of Saudi Arabia, China, and Canada combined. We have 163 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the United States of America. That is enough to maintain our current levels of production as the world's third largest producer and replace our imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years. In other words, on oil alone, if we just developed what we have here, it would take care of our needs-- what we know is down there--for 50 years. We could say the same thing for natural gas. At the current consumption, America's future supply of natural gas is 2,000 trillion cubic feet, and at today's rate of use, that is enough to run the United States of America for 90 years. Just imagine that. The only problem is that our politicians will not let us develop our own resources. Finally, the report I referred to, which is a fairly recent report, also reveals that America is No. 1 in coal reserves, with more than 28 percent of the world's coal. That is a real solution to the energy security and the key to economic prosperity. John Bryson, if he were to become Secretary and the vote would take place, energy development and economic growth in Oklahoma and across the Nation could be in jeopardy, and that is why I am doing everything I can to tell the truth to the American people. It has been said to me by Democrats and Republicans alike that their phones have been ringing off the hook by people who serve on boards with John Bryson. And I said from the very beginning that he is a good person, but he is of the philosophy that he is an outspoken proponent of cap-and-trade, and that is what we can't afford. I know there is a lot of pressure put on Members of this body. I wonder where all of the conservatives are tonight. I appreciate Senator Barrasso coming here and talking, as I am talking, and telling the truth about the problem we have. Sometime, someplace, we have to draw the line. I named all of these appointments the President has made, the nominations he has made. We have to draw the line, and I think this is a good place to do it. I recognize there is going to be a lot of pressure on conservatives to kind of sit this one out, but I want them to keep in mind that this is the No. 1 concern of most of the conservative groups right now. I read the editorials that were out there. Everybody knows. Our eyes are open. This is not a vote where later on you say: Oh, I wish I had known that; I would have voted no. This is your chance to do it. Have I had calls from people on boards? Yes, I have. They have all said: He is a good friend of ours, and I don't want to weigh in. One of them was kind of interesting. He called up and went through this whole thing, and then after he told me how great John Bryson was, he said: Have you got that down? I called. You have written that down. Yes, that is right. Well, just ignore everything I said. We know the phone calls come in. These are important people. There are leaders out there, and I love them all. I love John Bryson, but we are going to have to draw the line. If you want to have an advocate for the largest tax increase in the history of America; that is, a tax increase that is called cap and trade, then this is the nominee for the Secretary of Commerce who is committed to cap and trade in America. I wish we were not going to take this vote until the end of the recess because I would love to have people go home and try to answer questions from people who are out there in the real world as to why is it that someone is not standing up for us to develop our own natural resources, our own energy, and reduce the price of electricity, reduce the price of gas, and think about us for a change. That is what is going to happen. I think right now, by rushing this vote before people have time to realize it, that very likely it is going to pass. I don't want anyone to say they were not informed because I am informing you right now. I thank Senator Barrasso for joining me. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding that the last 10 minutes would be equally divided, but perhaps the Senator from Arizona has already used maybe 2 of those minutes. Is that correct? I just want to be recognized for, say, 6 minutes in opposition.

Mr. INHOFE. Well, let me clarify. It doesn't make any difference to the Senator from Arizona or to me how much time I have. I need to have about 5 minutes to clarify a couple of things.

Mr. INHOFE. I think the appropriate time is here.

Mr. INHOFE. First of all, I disagree with the Senator from Washington for a different reason than the Senator from Arizona disagrees with her. I think his amendment goes too far--not just far enough but too far--and I think it is very important that people understand. Let me talk to the conservatives, let me talk to the Republicans, because this is certainly misunderstood. It wasn't drafted that way to carry out the intent of the Senator from Arizona, I am quite sure. This amendment doesn't eliminate the mandate that States have to spend 10 percent of their surface transportation funds on transportation enhancements. Now, for clarification purposes, the 10 percent really is not represented properly. It really should be 2 percent. It is 2 percent of the State's total highway program. That happens to equal 10 percent of the Surface Transportation Program. But let's go ahead and use the 10 percent. There are currently written into the law 11 eligible transportation enhancement activities. There is not room to put them all up, but we will put up this chart. What the Senator from Arizona is saying is that you still have to spend 10 percent of your surface transportation money on transportation enhancements, but he is saying the States have to use it on his transportation enhancements. Those are the bike and pedestrian facilities, the bike and pedestrian safety, rails to trails. The bikers are going to be very happy with this. They are the only ones coming out ahead should this be passed. Now, environmental mitigation in our law is restricted specifically to wildlife, bridges and tunnels, and to stormwater runoff enhancements. Now, stormwater runoff is taken care of anyway; these are the enhancements. So what this amendment is saying is that we are going to have to spend this 10 percent on bicycles and on various types of wildlife, bridges, and tunnels so that the turtles can get under the highways and not get run over, and that is not what I know the Senator from Arizona wants. In other words, we are taking the flexibility away from the cities, away from the States, and saying to them: You have to spend your 10 percent, and you have to spend it on these four things. I would just suggest to you that in my State of Oklahoma, these are not the four things on which we would want to spend it. I come down here all the time, and there is this mentality that we have in Washington: No idea is a good idea unless it comes from Washington. Well, in my State of Oklahoma, we have a great highway program. I want them to have the latitude to decide what is really best. Now, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Boxer, and I have disagreed on environmental issues tooth and nail. We have fought with each other more than any two people on the floor of the Senate. She knows I have done everything within my power to do away with all transportation enhancement requirements. I have done this. If this amendment had eliminated the mandate that States spend 10 percent of their Surface Transportation Program funds on all transportation enhancements, I philosophically would have supported it. If the McCain amendment had said that we want to do away with all transportation enhancements, I would have philosophically supported it. The problem with that is we would not be able to get a highway bill done. I often say that I have been actually ranked as the most conservative member of the Senate probably more than anyone else, but I have also said I am a big spender in two areas: No. 1 is national defense and No. 2 is infrastructure. That is what I think we are supposed to be doing here--roads and bridges. I am sure my colleagues will recall that during the debate on the extension of the highway bill last month, Senators Boxer, Coburn, Reid, and I worked out an agreement that reforms the Transportation Enhancement Program which would be included in the next highway bill that the EPW Committee will be marking up next month. I hope we will be marking this up next month. These reforms would allow the States to make a determination as to how they want to spend their funds. To go back to this 10 percent, the idea behind this is this would increase what we are able to do and let the States have the discretion, so they can totally eliminate all enhancements. The States can do that. But they also would be allowed to use the 10 percent of the surface transportation funding on the various programs that are out there having to do with endangered species and the burying beetle and all that. That is where the problems really are. So I don't think we should mistakenly vote for the McCain amendment and say to the people in this country: You have to spend 10 percent of your surface transportation funds on these four things. And again, the bikers would love the bike trails and all that, but I don't believe that is what we should be doing here. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. INHOFE. I would ask the Chair how much time I have remaining.

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that I have 30 seconds remaining.

Mr. INHOFE. I only want to say that I agree with everything the Senator from Arizona is saying in terms of the bridges. I have fought for the bridges and highways. I have tried my best to get rid of all the enhancements--all of them. But to have an amendment that says to my State of Oklahoma: You still have to spend 10 percent of your surface transportation funds, but you have to spend it on bike trails and turtle bridges, I think that is wrong. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I would like to, and I would be happy to yield the floor to anyone else who comes to offer an amendment, if the Senator would alert me to that.

Mr. INHOFE. All right, I will. U.S. Troops in Northern Uganda

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I know there is a lot of confusion, and a lot of people are blaming President Obama for sending 100 troops into northern Uganda. First, I want to make sure everyone knows I am not a fan of President Obama. He is responsible for all these regulations that are driving out American businesses. He is responsible for the deficit. Actually, his three budgets have had deficits each year of $1\1/2\ trillion, and he is up to almost $5 trillion in deficits. It is coming not from the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the House or the Senate, it is coming from President Obama. And I disagreed with his position with Libya, sending our troops in there the way he did. I am on the Armed Services Committee, the second ranking member, and I am very much concerned about what is happening right now and what this President has done to our military in reducing our capability to the extent he has. But having said that, let me say that the criticism he has received for sending 100 American troops into northern Uganda is not justified, and let me explain what I am talking about. This picture here is of a guy whose name is Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is a monster. For 25 years, he has been in northern Uganda, but he has been in other countries too--Rwanda, now the new country of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Congo. Those five countries are where he has been. This is what he does. Many people don't know about him. In fact, 3 or 4 days ago Rush Limbaugh was commenting that nobody knows what the LRA is; that is, the Lord's Resistance Army, and so I am here to tell you and tell you why these troops were sent over. It was not President Obama; it was I who did this. We passed a law requiring that to be done. Let me explain why. I have been active in Africa for many years. Fifteen years ago, I was in northern Uganda, in an area called Gulu, and I found out there is a guy up there by the name of Joseph Kony. This is Joseph Kony. He is a spiritual leader. What he does is he goes into the villages and he abducts hundreds and thousands of young kids, usually between the ages of 11 and 14, and then he takes the girls and sends them into prostitution, but he trains the boys to be soldiers. We are talking about kids 11 to 14 years old. So he teaches them how to use AK-47s, and when they graduate, these kids have to go back to the villages from where they were abducted and kill their siblings and kill their parents. If they do not do it, they come back-- and this is significant--and they are then mutilated. These are all kids. See, they are holding their AK-47s and all that. This next chart shows what happens if one of these kids comes back and he doesn't kill his parents or do as Joseph Kony says. He mutilates the kids, and the way he does it is he cuts off their ears, cuts off their noses, their lips, or cuts off their hands. This guy here, John Ochola, his hands were cut off and his nose and ears were cut off. This one just went through it, and he is still bleeding. These are kids. These are kids, 12 and 14 years old. This is what he has been doing to thousands of kids for 25 years now. So having sympathy for that, I came back and talked to some of my colleagues here, and I said: We have to do something about this. At that time, we were not allowed to send troops in. This has nothing to do with sending combat troops into an area. Certainly this has nothing to do with what the President did in Libya. But we passed a law that said that we are sending assistance into northern Uganda and the other four countries, but they are specifically precluded from entering into combat. In other words, the 100 troops who went in cannot even carry a weapon. They cannot be involved by law. I put that in the law. Those words are there. So what we are doing is we are able to go in and assist them in intelligence, maybe loan them a helicopter or whatever they need to take this guy out or to bring him to the international court. That would probably be better. But this is what this guy has been doing for 25 years, and you have to go see it to really appreciate it--these mutilated little kids. Well, anyway, I will say this. Those who are critical of me for supporting sending our troops over are ill-founded in their criticism for two reasons. First of all, we already have troops all over the world in places such as Africa. In the continent of Africa, we have several thousand American troops in a program called Train and Equip. It is specifically called 1206 and 1208 funding. That means we go into these countries and we help train the African nations to prepare for when the squeeze takes place in the Middle East and the terrorists come down through Djibouti and the Horn of Africa and spread out through the African Continent. We are building five African brigades. We are training them so that when something happens, as it did happen in the countries where we are currently in battle, we don't have to send our troops in because we are training them so they can take care of their own problems. That is essentially what is happening. I was in this brandnew country the other day, South Sudan. We have all heard about Sudan and Khartoum and heard and been told about all the atrocities that are committed there, and it just makes you cry when you see what is happening. Well, they now have split off, so South Sudan has a separate country. I was there last week. I was the first one there in terms of Members of the Senate just to cheer them on. I had 25 members of the Parliament of this new country called South Sudan with me for a period of 2 hours. Do you know what they said, Mr. President. They said: If you really want to do something about terrorism, get this growing force that Joseph Kony has and help us take him out. This question was asked of me today on a talk radio show: Why is it we can't get Uganda or Congo or Rwanda to do this? I would suggest that the Presidents of these three countries came from the bush. President Museveni was a warrior in the bush, and he doesn't like to admit he can't take care of one monster named Joseph Kony by himself. The same is true with Paul Kagame, who is President of Rwanda. Remember 1994 when they had the genocide? And he came from the bush. He is a tough warrior, but he doesn't want to admit he would have to have help to take care of that. Joe Kabila, from the Congo, the same thing. Well, I was able to get the three of them together, and they agreed they would work together with each other, and they asked if they could have some support from the United States in the way of intelligence and maybe a helicopter or two, and I said yes. So we passed the law. This law we passed was right here in the Senate. There was not one Senator who voted against it. I had 64 cosponsors--the largest number of cosponsors on any bill addressing a problem in Africa in the history of this Senate. So we are all in accord. A lot of Members are not courageous enough to tell the truth about this. A lot join in saying: Oh, we are not going to send more troops over. Let me assure you, these troops are going to go over and save lives. And they could very well be saving American lives because if this terrorist movement is allowed to continue, then we will have another terrorist movement in that part of the world that should be getting a lot of our attention. So with that, just to repeat two things, first of all, we already have troops over there in Training and Equip. These same troops will be doing that while there. Secondly, there won't be one American troop in harm's way in northern Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Rwanda, or any of the other places where Joseph Kony might be leading his reign of terror. With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in a few minutes, I want an opportunity to, for clarification, talk about the LRA, troops who have gone over to northern Uganda, including Rwanda and south Sudan. I will wait now because a lot will want to speak subject to these amendments. I wish to mention something I think is significant because nobody is talking about it. People have heard me talking over the years about the overregulation being pursued by this administration in every area and what it is costing in terms of jobs. I know I talk about this quite often, but this time I am talking about a different area of overregulation. Most of the time I am talking about what the EPA is doing to destroy businesses in this country. I do that because I am the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the environmental regulations and the EPA. When we see what they are doing, it is something that is more serious--or at least as serious as all the deficits that are coming out of this administration because it is chasing jobs overseas. We will talk about that. This is a different area altogether. We talk about the overregulation that comes from the EPA in the EPW Committee, where we have jurisdiction. Today, I want to mention what is going on in the USDA. In the 2008 farm bill, the USDA was instructed to revisit and update the marketing regulations authorized to the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. That particular act is governed by the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration, or GIPSA, as it is referred to. That is all within the USDA. The agency is supposed to regulate and deal with the marketing practices within the livestock industry. I am from Oklahoma, and it is a huge industry in Oklahoma. This provision of the farm bill was heavily debated and amended when it was considered and, ultimately, the USDA was instructed to provide regulations for a few explicit objectives. Among them were broader contract cancellation rights for livestock growers; the disclosure of foreseeable future necessary capital investment required for contract growers within their growing contracts; and criteria for GIPSA to determine whether producers are treated with unreasonable preference or advantage. The House already considered this. In fact, they have done their Agriculture appropriations bill. Several months after the farm bill was enacted--the one I referred to--GIPSA released its preliminary rule, and the rule they published went far beyond the requirements that were explicitly stated in the law. One of the biggest problems with the rule is that it would allow GIPSA and the USDA to punish livestock producers and buyers for engaging in practices it considers unfair or unjust, even when there is no proof that their practices are actually harming competition within the industry. They want to do this in the name of leveling the playing field, which we hear a lot about around here, and that playing field would be between the packers and livestock producers, but what they are doing is regulating this industry in a way that would prohibit any real innovation or differentiation among companies in the industry. It forces a one-size-fits-all approach to running the livestock industry. For one, the new rule would require packers and stockyards to keep written documentation justifying any differentiation in price that one pays to different livestock producers. Can you believe this? The USDA wants stockyards to justify every pricing decision they make. If that isn't big government, I don't know what is. The USDA wouldn't require this if they didn't intend to review these documents to determine whether the stockyards provided this justification. When doing this, the USDA bureaucrats will have the power to punish and fine stockyards that it believes are behaving unfairly. This is government determining whether they are behaving unfairly. My question is this: In what other industry would this be considered acceptable or even appropriate? Can we imagine Walmart being forced to send the Federal Government justification for every price it negotiates with its suppliers? No. That would be ridiculous, and we all understand that. The livestock industry is no different. This is American business, capitalism, and the individuals participating are doing so voluntarily. No one is forcing anyone to be in the livestock business. Negotiating prices--where some folks get higher and some folks get lower prices--is part of the deal. Some get advantages and some disadvantages, but it isn't government making that determination. That is the way it should be. Another problem with this rule is that it would ban packer-to-packer sale of livestock. I don't know why the USDA wants to do this. Who cares if one stockyard sells or buys from another? It is none of their business. It seems perfectly American to me. But this will have a particularly negative impact in Oklahoma. Right now, we only have one pork packing plant of any size in my State of Oklahoma, and the next closest plants are in Iowa, Missouri or probably Nebraska--I am not sure--maybe hundreds of miles away. If packers or entities owned by packers are no longer allowed to sell hogs to other packers, it will force Oklahoma producers to ship hogs out of the State to get them to market. This would increase operating costs, it would be prohibitive, and it would take them out of the market. Even if Oklahoma pork producers chose to ship hogs out of State, the prohibition of packers to sell animals to other packers would force producers to incorporate a middleman to eliminate the direct sale between packers. All this would do is increase the cost of production. That would make us in Oklahoma less competitive. Let's keep in mind that the Oklahoma pork industry only took off after the construction of a pork processing plant. In 1987, before this plant was constructed, the annual cash receipts for pork producers were $33 million. That was it. The pork processing plant was constructed in the mid-1990s, provided necessary infrastructure to our State to do this. However, since then, the pork industry's annual cash receipts have risen more than tenfold to $555 million in 2007. So making this processing plant less capable of serving the needs of Oklahomans and our pork producers will undoubtedly hurt our industry and our consumers. Unfortunately, these are only a few examples of the bad provisions of the new GIPSA rule I have heard about extensively from my livestock producers, and I am sure everyone else from agricultural States has heard about the concerns their States have. They believe that if this rule is finalized, it will force them to completely change the way they conduct business, and no government rule should force private businesses to do this, especially when the industry practices they have developed have been very effective at safely bringing meat products to the market. Another problem with this rule is that the USDA has not publicly released the study it did to determine its economic impact. And we know why they haven't. It is very expensive. Several private studies have been done, and one of them estimated that the rule would reduce U.S. economic activity by $14 billion and would result in the loss of over 100,000 jobs. The USDA needs to release the economic impact analysis it did. There is no justification for their not doing this. So we have made that request, and we are waiting for that to happen. There is a nominee for Secretary of Commerce--a very nice person, a fine person named John Bryson--whom I oppose. The reason I oppose John Bryson is he has been very active in this whole movement on cap and trade. We all know what that is. We have talked about it for 10 years. We had the Kyoto Convention that we did not become a part of, and there have been several efforts to have bills on the floor to have cap and trade, supposedly to stop catastrophic greenhouse or global warming. Now people know the science has been debunked. It is not real. Yet they are going ahead and doing it. But if the President is able to pass these regulations, it will cost the American people between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. Now, I would say this. There are a lot of people out there saying: Well, it doesn't hurt to pass a tax increase of $300 billion if it is going to do something about global warming. Even President Obama's EPA nominee and choice, Lisa Jackson--now confirmed--has gone on record. In response to the question, if we were to pass any of these bills, whether it would be the McCain-Lieberman bill or the Waxman-Markey bill, any of these cap-and-trade bills that would be passing on a $300 billion to $400 billion tax increase, if that happened, would that reduce emissions, her answer was no. Just logically look at that. If we do that in the United States, it will not change the emissions because this isn't where the problem is. The problem is in China and India and in Mexico. So the cost of these regulations is unbearable for our economy, and here we are with over 9 percent unemployment. We are very fortunate in my State of Oklahoma because we have diversified, and our unemployment rate is down to 5\1/2\ percent. But nationally it is a disaster. So regulations are a very important part of this. I want to make sure we make it very clear that it is not just the regulations that come from the Environmental Protection Agency because these regulations we are talking about are going to be from the USDA. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor, unless there is no one waiting.

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am here today to clear up a lot of misunderstandings that are floating around the country concerning the decision to have some of our troops--not combat, but some of our troops--go into sections of Eastern and Central Africa to cooperate with about five countries that have been trying, for 25 years, to eradicate the Lord's Resistance Army and their leader whose name is Joseph Kony. It has disturbed me quite a bit over the years that not many people care about Africa. I can remember back when President Clinton was in office that at that time I objected to sending troops into Bosnia and Kosovo because he was using as a reason to do that ethnic cleansing, and I said at that time, here at this desk on the floor: Why is he concerned about ethnic cleansing in Bosnia when on any one given day in any one country in Africa--at that time it was mostly in west Africa, and I used Sierra Leone as an example--in any one day there are 100 people more who are being ethnically cleansed in Africa than there are being ethnically cleansed in the same day in Bosnia or in Kosovo. But nobody cared. Fortunately, that changed when 9/11 came and people realized there was a serious problem. When our country was attacked, it became evident that we needed to take action against terrorists in the Middle East. As the Middle East was squeezed many of the extremists would move south through Djibouti, through the Horn of Africa. So, wisely, we decided-- and it was mostly the decision by the Senate Armed Services Committee, on which I serve--we would assist Africa in developing five African brigades located north, south, east, west, and central. That has been undertaken, not as rapidly as I wish it were, but, nonetheless, that is happening. The recognition there is, as terrorism goes down through Africa, if they are prepared--and I am talking about the Africans--to handle that terrorism and to stop that terrorism as it comes in, then we will not have to send our troops in. That is essentially what happened last week when the President decided to send these troops into the north central part of Africa to address the problem with the Lord's Resistance Army, or the LRA, and Joseph Kony. The past few days have been kind of interesting, Rush Limbaugh yesterday talked about this issue, and somebody brought it to my attention. Even though I disagreed, I do not disagree with him as often as some on the other side do. But he made a statement. I am quoting now: Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the Lord's Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Well, it is not true. Have you ever heard of [them]? He talked about it with three people who are always in his studio: Dawn and Brian and Snerdley. Have you ever heard of [the] Lord's Resistance Army, Dawn? ``No.'' How about you, Brian? ``No.'' Snerdley, have you? ``No.'' You never heard of [the] Lord's Resistance Army? Well, that proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Let me clarify, and in a minute I will talk about what their mission is there. We are not at war with them. In fact, we are specifically precluding our troops from any kind of combat in that area. But I wish to put it in proper context as to the significance of this. I have had an opportunity to spend a lot of time in Africa--more than any other Member of this U.S. Senate, or any other Member of any other Senate even before this. I have had many conversations over the last 15 years with President Museveni of Uganda and his First Lady Janet about the problem. It all started in northern Uganda. In the 1980s Alice Lakwena had a dream in which she was told to overthrow the government of Uganda. Alice founded the Ugandan ``Holy Spirit Movement'' and led a group of rebels against the government. Eventually, Alice was exiled and, her cousin, Joseph Kony took over her group. What happened was, Joseph Kony, who fancies himself a spiritual leader, has gone in and started building--you can call them a number of different things: a children's army or the ``invisible'' children--but to go in and build this massive army of young people--I am talking about kids from the age of 12, 13, 14 years old; young kids--he goes out and abducts them from villages. Then they come in, and they teach them how to operate AK-47s, how to join this army he has put together. If they do not do it, or if they fail in their training, then they are mutilated. I will show you a chart in the Chamber with a series of pictures. These are young kids. These pictures give you an idea of how young they are: 11, 12, 13 years old, with AK-47s. That is what their army looks like. See that little kid there, he is 11 years old. This one in this other picture is 12 years old. They are carrying heavy weapons. For the ones who do not do what he tells them to do, they mutilate them. Here is another chart with more pictures. As you can see, they do it by cutting off their nose, cutting off their ears, cutting off their lips--that is a big thing they do--cutting off their hands. You see this picture right here. His name, by the way, is John Ochola. He is one we have seen before. They have taken his ears off, his nose off, cut off both of his hands. Here is another picture up here, and one down here. This is a young child. His lip is cut off, his nose is cut off, and his ear is cut off. You can see that. That had just happened. They bandaged him up. Once they are in this army, to go back to their villages and murder their siblings, and murder their parents. If they do not do it, this is the price they pay. Anyway, we have made the decision to go and help them--and we also have a program that is called train and equip, which I will talk about in a minute--but to go in and actually be of assistance to these countries; in this case, taking out this particular maniac who has been there for 25 years. It is not just in Uganda. I went up to Gulu. Gulu is in the northern part of Uganda. Senator Mike Enzi was with me at this time. We went up and we saw a lot of these kids who came back who had been mutilated. We went down and talked to President Kagame, the President of Rwanda. You might remember, Rwanda, in 1994, is where the greatest, the most devastating murder by genocide in recorded history in Africa took place, killing 800,000 people, using machetes, torturing them to death. They had the same problem down there. Then, if you go over to the DRC, Democratic Republic of the Congo, that is Joe Kabila. Joe Kabila is one who is very much concerned. Of course, Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, is way over on the western side, and it is several time zones over to the eastern side where Joseph Kony was killing these kids at that time. In fact, the major city over there is Goma. We were in Goma shortly before Kony escaped and went north to the Central African Republic, and then back up to South Sudan. I had occasion to be in South Sudan last week. That is a new country. It was an exciting thing to go into a new country and sit down with their members of Parliament. We talked for a good 2 hours. We had 25 members of the Parliament of the brand new country, South Sudan, and they told me one of their major concerns right now is getting this guy Joseph Kony. He has now been making runs up into South Sudan and getting these people. So this is a major thing that many of these countries have joined in to try to do something about Joseph Kony. Well, anyway, last year, I got a little bit concerned that nothing was happening. One of the reasons--I have to say this, Mr. President-- nothing much was happening is because if you take these countries--like President Museveni and President Kagame, these Presidents came out of the bush. I think when they feel they are not able to get one renegade group such as this, they feel it is kind of a blow to their ego. Finally, I was able to get the three of them together--that was Joe Kabila, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and President Museveni of Uganda--and we were able to get them all to agree to do something to eradicate this monster. So they are now in a position to do that. That is another reason why our forces serve in a non-combat role. For the U.S. to capture or kill Kony would be a slap in the face to our allies. I respect them too much to do so. In 2009, I led a bipartisan group of Senators to pass into law S. 1067. It was called the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009. We had 64 cosponsors. This is the largest number of cosponsors on any kind of bill affecting Africa in history. We had these Senators cosponsoring the bill, and they all were very excited about it. Let me tell you what the law says. It directs the administration to develop a regional strategy to ``apprehend or remove'' Joseph Kony, his top LRA commanders, disarm and demobilize the LRA fighters through political, economic, military, and intelligence assistance, and protect civilians from further attacks. The law is kind of interesting because it specifically precludes us from entering into any kind of battle. I think that is the most important thing to talk about today because almost everyone who is reporting on this, including my good friend Rush Limbaugh, is talking about that our guys and gals are going to go into combat. No, they are not going to. They are specifically precluded from doing that. So it is not as it is in Libya. It has nothing to do with the War Powers Act because these are troops that are precluded from attacking except in self defense. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported out the FY12 Defense Authorization Act, and we specifically--I know this because this is my language that we put in--prohibit the U.S. military forces from participating in combat operations to ``apprehend or remove'' Kony and the LRA. This is my language I put in the bill. So not only are they not going to be in combat, but they are precluded from being in combat. That is what we have right now, and it is before us today. By the way, some people have mistakenly said this guy Kony is a Christian, and I want to make sure everyone knows he officially was disavowed by the Catholic Church in Uganda. I will read what a Catholic sister of the Comboni Catholic group said, who spent 15 years in Gulu-- that is a place where I was some 15 years ago--in northern Uganda. I quote. This is a Catholic sister. She said: I was in Gulu, North Uganda, when Joseph Kony took the leadership of this group that became famous for its atrocities. I saw people whose lips, mouth, ears, nose, were mercilessly cut without provocation. I still remember the 6 men who came to our premises in Gulu crying, asking for help as 3 of them had their right hand cut off-- As we saw a minute ago. and the other three the right foot [cut off by machetes]. It was all done by the LRA. I am going on, still quoting this Catholic nun: . . . people cut into pieces with the machete, burnt alive after smearing their bodies with palm oil, small children locked in the hut and set fire on it [burned alive], babies pounded in the container used to pound the maze. Let us not forget women and girls raped, killed or abducted as sex slaves. . . . a Congolese lady on Christmas Day 2008 lost 17 members of her family who had gone to church for prayer, all killed with the machete. This is brutality we have never seen anything like before. I think the other thing that is important to understand is we have several programs that affect Africa and other places around the world. One is called train and equip authorized by sections 1206, 1207, or 1208. What we do with train and equip is send people in to teach them how to train people, in this case Africa. We have over a thousand U.S. forces right now doing essentially what these 100 who the President sent over are there to do. Our military-to-military programs include counterterrorism, border security, maritime surveillance, and all this, but not combat. As I say, No. 1, the thing to remember is, we are already doing this. What we are doing with the 100 people who are sent over to Africa--we have a thousand there already doing this. Then, secondly, it is something that is very significant in our fight against terrorism in that area. We are not going to have any of our troops in combat. But this type of thing you see in these pictures right here--to see this guy here with his nose cut off, his ears cut off, his hands cut off--all of this--this is going on today, right now, at this moment, as we are speaking. I stand behind the President in his decision. I do not very often stand behind this President, but I do in this case because we passed it without a dissenting vote. Every Member in here--there is not one who voted against it. So let's keep that in mind, that is the truth about what is happening now with the LRA. Joseph Kony and the LRA are responsible for one of the longest, most violent, and costly conflicts ever on the continent of Africa. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Tennessee, I be recognized in morning business. What I am going to do is try to clear up some of the misunderstanding about the troops who have gone into Uganda and other areas on the LRA, Lord's Resistance Army.