Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I wish to compliment my good friend, Senator Coons from Delaware, for something he has done recently along with Senator Isakson as the chairman and the ranking member of the African Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They have responded to my request to have a hearing on the tragedies and what is taking place right now in Cote d'Ivoire. Let me mention, there is only one thing I take issue with in the letter that has gone out to make the request. One sentence says: Mr. Gbagbo has sought to forcefully thwart the will of the Ouattaran people and his forces, reportedly, including mercenaries, who have targeted innocent civilians, including women, as well as United Nations missions. I only want to get into the Record--I have already done this. I have given three very lengthy speeches about what is happening over there. I have been there, I am sure, more than any other Member of the Senate. I would say that if you read the Guardian, the British Guardian, in their--I am quoting now--two big slaughters have taken place, one in a small western town called Duekoue and another in Abidjan, the capital. The article says: The UN mission said traditional hunters, known as Dozos, fought alongside Ouattara's forces. Let's keep in mind who we are talking about here. The President, who has been now for the last 10 years, has been President Gbagbo, Laurent Gbagbo, and the person who had run against him 10 years ago, and then this time, and who was declared to be winning the election, is Alassane Ouattara. Anyway, they are talking about Ouattara in this case. The UN mission said traditional hunters, known as Dozos, fought alongside Ouattara's forces and took part in killing 330 people in the western town of Duekoue. Then the Red Cross weighed in and they came in with a new count. They said they are responsible for 800 who have been killed. Recently--and I certainly want my friend from Delaware to know this--I have talked to close friends of mine who are in Abidjan now. Abidjan is where the bad things are happening. I hope anyone who questions the fact that it is Ouattara's forces that are creating the problems in Abidjan access my Web site and pull up the YouTube video that was taken of what happened on what I call ``Black Monday,'' Monday night, when they went out with helicopters and they mowed down thousands of people. We don't have a death count of how many people have been murdered in the last 5 days. This could not have been the former President--or maybe he is still the President--in fact, he is, since he has not been replaced, President Gbagbo. It is factual that he had no one in the field, so as of an hour ago, I have had reports that these forces, Ouattara's forces, are going around knocking on doors and murdering people, stealing everything in the houses and then burning them down. Yet no one can go out and even move bodies out of the streets because they will get shot by snipers. Are those President Gbagbo's people? No. He doesn't have anybody. He is hunkered down in the basement trying to save the lives of himself and I think 15 of his relatives along with his wife Simone. I only want to say while I am very happy we are going to have the hearings, it is going to be necessary--I have witnesses. I have one witness whose name is Mel Phiodore. Mel is actually the head of the opposing party to Gbagbo. He is the one who actually ran against him for President one time and lost. He is currently a Parliament member. Yet he is defending him, saying he is the one who is right in this case and they stole the election. This needs to come out. I will make one comment. I am equally troubled. I tried to explain to people in Oklahoma how all these billions and trillions of dollars we talk about really affects the people who pay the taxes. Back during the time we spent on the floor trying to defeat the efforts of the EPA in their cap-and-trade efforts, the costs put on there were between $300 billion and $400 billion. I recommend particularly to some of the new Senators to count the number of tax returns the families file in their States, and then do the math. In that case, that would have cost--if they had been able to continue, and right now they are trying to continue, or if any of the legislation had passed cap and trade, that would have cost each family who files a tax return in Oklahoma $3,100 a year. When we start equating that to some of the numbers floating around, it is just--I remember so well coming here and standing at this podium in 1995 when Bill Clinton was President. He came out with his budget for fiscal year 1996, I think. It was a $1.5 trillion budget. I was outraged and said we can't do that, it is not sustainable. Yet this last budget from the Obama administration has deficits that are higher than $1.5 trillion. In other words, the deficits are higher than the amount it took to run the entire country of the United States of America in 1996. It is something that everybody knows is not sustainable. We looked at these large numbers, and we know it will be difficult. My major concern, as second ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, is our troops. We have an opportunity to do something right now with our troops, help them to be funded. I think this offer from the House is good. I opposed the last three that came over. This one I am supporting. Why? Because not only does it have cuts--and it is also only 7 days, and I understand that--but it takes the innocent defense and all of our troops there in harm's way out from under all this foolishness going on on the floor of the Senate now and funds them through the rest of the fiscal year. It funds them at a low level. With all the high spending coming out of the Obama administration, DOD funding has remained level, while the rest of the funding has averaged an increase of 25 percent. So they have already taken a hit. Let's at least make sure we can make the payroll, that we can support our troops and, to do that, we can take up the House bill and pass it. It is only for 7 days. If somebody doesn't like it, they can try something else. It takes care of our military. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I know we are rotating back and forth. I am the only one on the Senate floor, I think, who is requesting time. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for, let's say, 15 minutes. I probably will not use that much time, but I ask that unanimous consent.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me, first of all, speak in response to what the Senator from Texas talked about. This is very significant. I happen to be maybe one of the few who voted against the last three extensions that were requested--these 1-week extensions. That is no way to run government. I understand that. But this one is different, and I rejoiced when I saw we had an opportunity to pass a 1-week extension that would do three things: No. 1, substantial cuts--not these just imaginary things we have been talking about--No. 2, continue the funding for what we must do in Israel for the end of this fiscal year; but, most importantly--and I say this as the second ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee--this would be a huge help to our military so there would be certainty, they would know what we are going to be doing between now and the end of this fiscal year. That absolutely has to be done. It is unimaginable to me that in the middle of what I call two, maybe three conflicts right now that we are not lining up and making sure we have the funding that is necessary for what is going on in Afghanistan and other places where we have our troops in harm's way. It is something that is inexcusable, and I just cannot believe there is going to be a veto. In spite of the veto threat, this is our opportunity to have time to be fiscally responsible, and I hope we are.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized as in morning business until such time as somebody else comes in and wants the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. That is not why I am here, however. I want to be sure that something I have been talking about over the last days has now come to a peak where we must do something. I have been concerned about what is happening in Cote d'Ivoire, in west Africa. I am very close to the situation. I have had occasion to be there over the last few years nine different times. I know the President is there, the current President and his wife, Laurent and Simone Gbagbo. I was familiar with the election that came around, so I have been on the floor talking about what I believe should happen there, that we should call for a new election. Unfortunately, the United States and our State Department--I will be very critical of them--have joined with the United Nations and with France in taking the side of Alassane Ouattara from the north who was the challenger, who has been challenging this administration now for at least 10 years that I know of. I got a scathing reply from the Ambassador to the United States from France. I am not going to read it. I am not going to enter it into the Record. It doesn't make any sense. I only wish to respond to a couple of things in that letter. First of all, they talk about the fact that this was a legitimate election and it was certified properly and it was in accordance with the Constitution of Cote d'Ivoire, and I don't believe that. I will respond to that by saying the independent electoral commission did not fulfill its constitutional mandate to announce the final provision vote tallies within 3 days. That is what the Constitution says in the country of Cote d'Ivoire and west Africa. It announced then, almost 16 hours after it was constitutionally mandated, to report them to the Constitutional Council. It is my understanding it is the Constitutional Council of Cote d'Ivoire and not the electoral commission which certifies and declares the winner of Presidential elections. On three occasions now I have talked about this election and the abuses that were taking place. In one case we had information that was given to me by members of the opposing party to President Gbagbo where they submitted that in one of the five regions in the north--let's keep in mind the challenger, Ouattara, is from the north, a Muslim area up there. They had, in five of these regions--in one of them--149,598--and I showed how it was calculated. I showed the actual results that were there from the electoral process, and this was just one of five northern cities. But when the total was officially reported in the total vote column, Ouattara received 244,000 votes, a difference of almost 95,000 votes. If you do your math and you say this happened in all five of these areas in northern Cote d'Ivoire, that would be more than enough to declare--enough mistakes that would take the election away from the duly reelected President, President Gbagbo. If you don't want to get into the weeds that far, all you have to do is look at the results they had. In that election they came out with the results that said Gbagbo in those northern precincts--we call them precincts, they call them something else--that they actually had thousands and thousands of votes in what we would call the primary, but when the primary runoff came up, he got zero votes. That is a statistical impossibility. So I have given all those things to our State Department, and I haven't gotten any positive response. In the accusations in the letter the French say he refused to accept--he being Gbagbo--refused to accept proposals by the African union, a high-level group, while these proposals have been formally accepted by President Ouattara. It is not true, just flat not true. As late as March 27 the African Union sent former Cape Verde Foreign Minister Jose Brito to mediate between Ouattara and Gbagbo. Gbagbo accepted the mediation, Ouattara didn't. I have a whole list of the accusations that were made and my response to these accusations, and I am going to be submitting them at this portion in my presentation in lieu of reading them at this time. I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record.

Mr. INHOFE. I came to the conclusion that on Wednesday, April 6--that marked the 17th anniversary of the terrible thing that happened in Rwanda, the genocide--and we have information that actually Secretary General Kofi Annan had knowledge of that. It wasn't shared. We didn't have warning, and we all know 800,000-plus people were brutally murdered in Rwanda during that genocide. What I wish to do now is make sure we are on record in warning the United States, France, and the United Nations what is going on right now. First of all, if we look--they say it is all decided, everyone has made up their minds, yet President Obiang--President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. He is also the current President of the African Union, or the chief of the African Union. He is on record saying that Africa must be allowed to manage its own affairs, and this is a quote: Africa does not need any external influence. Africa must manage its own affairs. This is the President who is the head right now of the African Union. President Sarkozy has said--so there is no doubt about whether he has authorized his troops to go in there and participate in these raids that have taken place, two of them that I will describe in a minute. French President--this is reported on BBC News--Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement he had authorized 1,600 strong French Licorne forces in the country. That shows definitely, and I don't think anyone is questioning that. Here is another one: One source said soldiers from a 1,000-strong French Licorne force-- This is a very strong force-- in the Ivory Coast has been deployed in Zone 4, in the south of the city. I think also it is important to see that France has authorized its military--and I am reading now from the same report: France has authorized its military to participate in a United Nations operation in the Ivory Coast to protect civilians against escalating violence there. The Elysee Palace said the operation aimed to neutralize heavy weapons belonging to troops loyal to President Gbagbo. So he is talking about sending them in. Of course, I think most of us--I will go ahead and read one more thing here that I think is significant: ``French helicopters opened fire on a military camp in Abidjan on Monday.'' That is going to go down in history as ``Black Monday.'' If anyone wants to see what was happening with helicopters and rockets firing on all kinds of targets near the palace in the residence in Abidjan of Ouattara, go to my Web site. We have pictures of that. Earlier, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said he had authorized France's military to join a U.N. operation against forces loyal to Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo. So, clearly, they are the ones who had--I want to say this: There are two major assaults on Cote d'Ivoire. I mistakenly thought that the French were involved in the one in a city called Duekoue. I find out later that they weren't. They were supporting, of course, Ouattara--the forces that were there, but they did not have a direct participation in it. A man named Guillaume Ngefa, who is the head of the United Nations mission in Cote d'Ivoire, said that Ouattara's forces had carried out the killings in Duekoue, and we have pictures--I am quoting them now: We have pictures. We have evidence. This is retaliation. That is what the deputy head of the mission in Cote d'Ivoire of the United Nations mission said. Then: ``We have credible reports of serious abuses being committed by Ouattara's side.'' That came from Corinne Dufka, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Dakar, Senegal. It is raising very serious concerns. Then further quotes. It goes on and on. I will enter all of these quotes into the Record. But the bottom line here is that Ouattara's forces are the ones that were involved in Duekoue when they--the estimate they have right here is that--it comes from Patrick Nicholson, a spokesman for the Catholic aid agency Caritas, saying that an agency team in town last week on a routine aid mission had found a lot of dead bodies. ``We estimate between 800 and 1,000 dead,'' Nicholson said in a telephone interview from Rome. They are primarily killed by gunshot, though some of the wounds were made by machetes. I don't think they were killed in crossfire. It is interesting, because the forces of President Gbagbo had left that area of Duekoue a week before all of that happened. So that had to have happened with those forces that were Ouattara's. Well, anyway, I am still quoting from this, which was printed in the Washington Post: Ouattara's forces have also been accused of carrying out reprisal killings and extrajudicial executions of prisoners during their march to the capital. Gbagbo's forces had vacated a week before. We have pictures showing the French flags that were on the major massacre that took place and that was the one that took place on Monday night. I have already said all of this on the floor. We have talked about this and the problems. One thing I haven't mentioned is one of the first things Ouattara did when he marched on Cote d'Ivoire in the south and on Abidjan is to turn to release all of the prisoners in one of the major Abidjan prisons-- that is some 5,000 prisoners--and military sources loyal to the incumbent leader Gbagbo said the doors of the MACA prison--that is the big prison in that area--were opened by forces loyal to the President, Presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara, in the midst of an offensive aimed at Gbagbo. Afterwards, they go into detail as to hearing the gunfire; in other words, releasing prisoners to fight against the sitting President. Residents near the jail said thousands of youths streamed out of the prison, which had the capacity of 3,000 prisoners, but was believed to be holding over 5,000, into the neighborhood in Abidjan. We heard gun fire early this morning and afterwards the doors of the prison were opened and prisoners were left shouting for joy. That is something I have not had in the Record before. One of the things I have to repeat that I have stated before--let me ask the Chair how much time I have remaining.

Mr. INHOFE. I request an additional 10 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. I wish to speak about one of the testimonials in Duekoue. I spot four pigs eating something dark in a charred courtyard. Standing by a newly dug mass grave, a UN soldier from Morocco is choking with rage and grief. I asked him if any of the dead are children. He nods and begins to sob, quietly, into his facemask. This is something that has been happening again. We talked about this before. I don't want to abuse the time we have, but a few minutes ago I got a notice from somebody I happen to know and he says: I must admit that it was very difficult. This day too-- we are talking about in the last few hours-- has been very confusing with the rebels parading in the streets stealing and dispossessing people of their goods. This is what makes it very dangerous because it is a no law zone. Hundreds of people have started leaving town avoiding the danger in Abidjan. That is what is happening right now. The report we have now recently is that the Ouattara rebel army is deploying death squads, and I will read from this because I think it is very important that we get this down right, because I am going to make some accusations here that maybe have never been made in recent history on this floor. I have just received devastating news about the situation in Cote d'Ivoire. I have been told that there are ``death squads'' roving around the streets of Abidjan ``disappearing''-- they used the word ``disappearing'' supporters of President Gbagbo. Do they kill the supporters of President Gbagbo? Probably so, but they use the word ``disappearing'' because there is no accounting of it. These death squads are led by soldiers of Ouattara's rebel Army. They have already killed 400 people in the last few hours. I am talking about contemporary, right now. If we do nothing, this soon will include the murder of President Gbagbo and his wife Simone. Ouattara's armed rebels are supported militarily by the United Nations and the French government. I call on UN Secretary General Ban Kee Moon and French President Sarkozy to condemn and halt immediately these ``death squads.'' If they do not, I charge that they are complicit in allowing these death squads to operate freely on the streets of Abidjan. It also calls for immediate cease-fire. I will conclude and say that I remember well, because I was around when this happened, and when we knew--some people knew, we didn't know in advance, what was going to happen in Rwanda. President Kagame didn't know what was going to happen in Rwanda. Kofi Annan of the United Nations apparently did know what was going to happen and elected not to say anything about it, so that they weren't warned and 800,000 mutilations later, we know what the genocide was all about. We know now. We know the death squads are there. The death squads have already killed, according to these reports, some 4,000 people in the last few hours. If we don't do anything about it, I have in my own mind--I feel very certain that those death squads run by Ouattara's rebel army will reach the hiding place of President Gbagbo and his wife Simone and their family, and they, too, will be murdered. If we don't do anything, we have been warned that can happen. We can intervene and stop the death squads roaming around in Abidjan in the country of Cote D'Ivoire. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I didn't get a chance to elaborate on the subject that was covered by the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn. I think it is very important when we are faced with the shutdown of the government. I happened to be here in 1995, and I remember, frankly, it wasn't as bad as everybody said it was going to be. This is something that is totally avoidable now. We have an opportunity to do a 7-day extension that would take care of the military's needs, and I think it is important to do so. I wish to also mention the vote that took place yesterday--the last vote; we had four--having to do with the overregulation, I will call it, of the Environmental Protection Agency. The first three amendments before they came to mine were offered by Democrats for whom I have a great deal of respect. In each amendment, they made it clear that the author--all Democrats--thought it was not the place for the Environmental Protection Agency to do what Congress is supposed to be doing in terms of regulation of greenhouse gases. The votes were overwhelming in terms of the fact that they didn't have Democrats supporting them because they were temporary fixes. The only real vote that took place was on mine. I introduced legislation several weeks ago, in concert with my colleague over in the House of Representatives, Fred Upton, to take out from the Environmental Protection Agency the jurisdiction of regulating greenhouse gases. We all know how it happened. We know that since 2003, Members of this Senate have introduced legislation to call for cap and trade under the assumption that catastrophic global warming is taking place from anthropogenic gases, and we have been able to defeat all of those. So while there has been a real effort by this administration to regulate greenhouse gases and do it by legislation, when they finally realized that wasn't going to happen, that they were not going to be able to garner sufficient votes to pass a bill that would allow for a cap-and-trade system--by the way, the cap-and-trade system would have amounted to between $300 billion and $400 billion a year as a tax increase, which would have been the largest one in the history of this country. When President Obama decided--in the wisdom of both the House and Senate--we were not going to pass anything that would be a cap-and- trade bill, he said: That is fine, we will do it through regulation. That is how this whole thing started. So the effort was for the EPA to come up with an endangerment finding which would say that greenhouse gases--anthropogenic gases, methane--were dangerous to health. Well, this has to be based on science. I remember asking the Director of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, whom I respect--I said: If you are going to have an endangerment finding, it has to be based on science. What would that be? Well, it was the IPCC, which, for the edification of anybody who is not aware, is the United Nations. They are the ones who started this whole thing, and they are the ones who would be in a position to try to force the regulation. Anyway, the time has gone by now, and since that time, we have almost unanimity in this body and in the other body, also, that we don't think the EPA has the ability or the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to do administratively what we refuse to do through our own bills we pass. That is where we are today. One of the things I am thankful for is that my amendment got 50 votes. It was 50-50, pretty much down party lines. But the people who are voting against my amendment are saying: We want to have the EPA have this authority--the authority of overregulation of not just the oil and gas industry but all other industries also. The primary target for them would be fossil fuels. The fact that we have oil, gas, and coal--by the way, there is a fairly recent finding by the Congressional Research Service that we have the largest reserves in the United States--recoverable reserves-- of oil, gas, and coal of any country in the world. This is not something you hear on the other side. We have heard President Obama say several times that we only produce 3 percent of the oil and yet we use 25 percent or whatever it is. Those are proven reserves. The difference is that a proven reserve means you have to drill and prove it is there. But the government won't let us drill. I am talking about the east coast, the west coast, the gulf, the northern slope--83 percent of our public lands are off limits. If we were to open that up, we could be completely independent of the Middle East for our ability to run this machine called America. That is why this issue is very important. I have already served notice, but I will do it again to make sure it is clear. While we needed 60 votes, we only had 50 votes. I am going to put that amendment on as many bills as come up so we have an opportunity for people to know the seriousness of this problem. I suggest to you--and I will not name names--that if people, prior to this vote, would have called different individuals, the staff would have responded: Well, we don't know how our Senator will vote, but he will certainly take your comments into consideration. Now we know because we have the votes in so that we can say which ones did vote for it, and anybody who didn't vote for my amendment is saying they believe the EPA should have that total control that we refuse to give it through legislation. Anyway, it is not over yet. In fact, I think that was a major milestone, a victory. We now know who is for it and who is against it. I know there will be another 10 Members who will see the light and realize that we still--it is fine, I am for all of the above, for the renewables--wind, sun, thermal--as well as the fossil fuels. We need all of the above to become totally independent and be able to run this machine called America. That is what is coming up. I am happy we have taken the next step, and I look forward to making another step after that. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks of Senator Boxer, who I understand wants to speak for 10 minutes, I be recognized for about 10 minutes. That will be about the timeframe we have.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I agree in one respect with the Senator from California. Actually, we agree on a lot of points. We agree on infrastructure and things that we know the country needs. But in the area of the Clean Air Act, she said: Show me one Republican who supported it. I supported the Clean Air Act. It has been a tremendous success. Stop and look at the real pollution. I am not talking about greenhouse gases. I am talking about the six real pollutants and what has happened. It is amazing the success of the Clean Air Act. I agree with that. I remind everyone, though, that the Clean Air Act would not be regulating CO2 except the court said: If you want to do it, you can. They did not mandate that it be done. That is worth considering. Since I have the time until we will be voting on the first of three cover votes before they get to my amendment, I wish to correct my good friend from California. She referred to it as the McConnell amendment. It is the McConnell-Inhofe amendment. In fact, it came from my bill that I introduced with Fred Upton sometime ago, a bill that is going to be voted on in the House Representatives today. So it is appropriate that we take it up now. This amendment has been postponed six or seven times. I applaud the majority leader for letting us have these votes. It is important that we do this. This is what I believe is important. People need to understand a couple of things: First, this is all about, starting in the 1990s when they had the Kyoto convention that we were supposed to ratify, President Clinton never did submit it to the Senate for ratification. Nonetheless, it was one that regulated greenhouse gases. I remember at that time the Wharton School did an analysis that asked: What if the United States were to ratify the Kyoto treaty and live by its requirements? What would the costs be? It came out somewhere in the neighborhood of between $300 and $400 billion. We never ratified it because the President never submitted it for ratification. Then in 2003, there came a number of votes. Almost every year we had legislation introduced that would do essentially what the Kyoto treaty would have done, which would have been cap and trade. We had MIT and others look at it to see what in fact would be the cost if we were to do this. I can remember when my good friend, the junior Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and I talked on the Senate floor the last time we defeated her bill--I think this might have been the Waxman-Markey bill, but it doesn't matter because they are all the same--I stipulated to the science. I said: All right. Let's assume the science is right. It isn't, but let's assume it is so we don't have to talk about that. Assuming it is, let's talk about the economics. That is where we developed what it would cost. In my State of Oklahoma, I have a policy that when we talk about billions and trillions of dollars I try to put it into context as to how it will affect taxpayers in my State. I have a very simple thing I do. I take the total number of families who file tax returns and then I do the math. If I divide that, say, $350 billion a year, that means the average taxpayer in my State would have to pay $3,100 a year in additional taxes in order to pay for the cap-and-trade regime that comes with any type of legislation. We talked about that. Continually, we defeated each bill that came along. This is the key. The Obama administration is very beholden to some of the far leftwing people. He had a commitment to try to pass some kind of cap and trade. He said: If we can't do it legislatively, we will do it through regulation. So we had all these regulations that EPA started coming down with. I have to mention, of these regulations, one was very significant because I remember when she was before our Environment and Public Works Committee, I said to her--this is right before going to the big U.N. party in Copenhagen about 18 months ago--I have a feeling, Madam Director, that you are going to come up with an endangerment finding. When you do, it has to be based on science. What science will you base it on? She said: Primarily on the IPCC. To make sure everybody understands, the IPCC is the United Nations. They are the ones who came up with this whole thing and said this is what the end of the world is going to be. I said: If you are going to have an endangerment finding that CO2 is an endangerment to health, then it has to be based on science. What science will it be based on? The answer was, the United Nations. It is going to be based on the science of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is the United Nations. Coincidentally, right after that is when climategate came, and they found that they had been cooking the science for about 10 years and that the legitimate interests and input of real scientists were rejected. So the science just flat wasn't there. That is why I said at the time that we had this bill up, I will stipulate to the science, even though the science is not there. I know it is not there, but what is there is the economics. Here we were, faced with a situation where we were looking at the possibility of the Environmental Protection Agency regulating CO2. I contend that they can do it if they have an endangerment finding, but they don't have to do it. The economic punishment to America would be tremendous. However, it wouldn't do any good. Here is the big question: What if I am wrong? People have asked me: Inhofe, what if you are wrong? You have been leading this fight for 9 years. What if CO2 does endanger health and cause global warming and all these scary stories we hear? My response to that is, if that is the case, it is not going to make any difference because even the EPA director admits if we unilaterally pass some type of regulation that stops the regulation of greenhouse gases, it is not going to affect the overall release of CO2 emissions. The reason is simple. If we do it only in the United States, we would argue that is not where the problem is. The problem is in China, Mexico, India, and Third World countries that don't have any emission controls at all. So I think everyone agrees if we pass something like these regulations of the EPA unilaterally, it would not reduce emissions at all. Consequently, we would be incurring economic punishment to achieve nothing. I would take it one step further. As we chase away our manufacturing base, as they say would happen, we would be in a position where they would go to countries where there is no emission controls. It would actually have the result of increasing emissions. Even if Senator Boxer is right in everything she says, she is wrong in the respect that if we pass it, it will not lower emissions. That is the fact. We are running out of time, but I have the time right up to 4 o'clock. I will go over four things that will happen, finalizing the vote that is going to be at 4.

Mr. INHOFE. Let me finish because I am going to need all the time.

Mr. INHOFE. Reserving the right to object, is the Senator talking about doing it after 4 o'clock?

Mr. INHOFE. If he would include me to speak for 1 minute at that time, I have no objection.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, a point of inquiry, not to be taken from the time I have. The inquiry is, When we get into the four votes, are we going to have additional time arguing for and against the amendments?

Mr. INHOFE. OK. I would ask the Chair, these 2 minutes are having to do with the Baucus amendment, the first one we will vote on; is that correct?

Mr. INHOFE. On the Baucus amendment?

Mr. INHOFE. Senator Baucus will have an amendment up. I think it is interesting. I refer to these three amendments as cover amendments. In other words, there are a lot of Democrats who don't want to vote to take away the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, so they have offered other amendments. The Baucus amendment is one that is going to exempt certain small people, some small farmers and all that. But that doesn't exempt them from having their electricity rates escalate. The American Farm Bureau says: We don't want any of the cover votes. We don't want the Baucus bill. We don't want Stabenow, and we don't want Rockefeller. Stabenow would also have a delay in certain parts of the regulation. The Rockefeller vote, which is going to be the third vote, is one that would have a 2-year delay. In other words, it says we can go ahead and do the regulation, but we will kind of put it off for 2 years. The real vote and the one that is critical--and if there is anyone out there who doesn't want to go home and say: I am responsible for passing the largest tax increase in the history of America by defeating the Inhofe-McConnell amendment, then go ahead and vote that way. That is going to be a serious problem--not for me but for the Senators who might vote the wrong way. The McConnell-Inhofe amendment will be the fourth vote. This is the critical one. The rest are cover votes. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. OK. I thank the Chair very much. Let me go first. In deference to my good friend, Senator Boxer, I said I would go first and she can go last. Let me mention, this is only on the Baucus amendment. Yes, the Senator is right in presenting his amendment that it does exempt farmers and some small businesses from the higher costs and all that. But here is the problem with that: All we have to do is read the statement by the American Farm Bureau where they say: Look, all of our farmers across America--even if this only affects the refiners and the manufacturers, that increases the cost of fuel and the cost of fuel is going to go higher and we do not get anything for it. For that reason, they oppose the Baucus amendment.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, let me join my friend from California and say that the Stabenow amendment is similar to the one we voted on before. It admits that the EPA will harm manufacturers, but it doesn't do anything to protect anybody from the higher price of energy. The farmers will tell you that, and everybody else will. With the 2-year delay, EPA can drop its regulatory hammer on farmers and businesses. I urge your vote against this amendment.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, the 2-year delay encourages bureaucrats to stall new permits. It does not accomplish anything. It delays new construction, and it delays new jobs. One of the interesting points about all three of these amendments is that everyone agrees EPA should not be regulating greenhouse gases. If you are going to have a root canal, does it help to wait 2 years? I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I think we learned something just in the last half hour, and that is that 90 percent of the Members of this body, of the Senate, do not think the EPA is qualified to regulate greenhouse gases. They voted against the Baucus amendment, the Stabenow amendment, and the Rockefeller amendment. I have referred to those as cover amendments. You don't get much cover when they get less than 10 percent of the vote. So now is the chance to really do something. If you really want to do something that is going to stop the overregulation we get that is so offensive to the majority of people, we can do it with the Inhofe- McConnell amendment. First of all, we know what the cost of this will be. The cost will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion a year. It will be the largest tax increase in the history of this country. Secondly, what do you get? People have asked: Inhofe, what if you are wrong? What if these greenhouse gases are going to destroy this country? If we are wrong, let's look at the response we received from the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. When we asked her at a public meeting, if we were to pass these regulations or any of these cap-and-trade bills, would this have the effect of lowering the greenhouse gases, the answer was no because it would only affect the United States of America. This is your chance to vote against a major tax increase to the American people.