Jim McGovern

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, they did nothing to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Then we had an election in November, and the big issue was healthcare. People didn't want to have their healthcare protections ripped away. And now, all of a sudden, they are converts, and they say they want to protect people's healthcare and expand healthcare protections. The bottom line is this: We are not perfect all the time, and we need to do better, but I believe that we are improving the process. I look forward to working with the gentleman, the ranking member from Oklahoma, to try to find ways forward. But on the legislation here today that we are going to consider, this is important legislation. This is historic legislation. Quite frankly, every Member of this House who wants to end discrimination in this country ought to support the Equality Act, and every Member of this House who wants to deal with the high cost of prescription drugs ought to support that bill as well. Madam Speaker, with that, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 329 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 329. It provides for the consideration of H.R. 9 under a structured rule that makes 30 amendments in order. It also provides for 90 minutes of general debate, with the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs controlling 60 minutes, and the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce controlling 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the measure we are considering today makes clear that under this Democratic majority science is once again respected here in the House of Representatives, that facts matter, and that the word of the fossil fuel lobby is not going to rule the day, because there is no debate on our side about something as basic as climate change. The evidence is overwhelming. It is happening, Mr. Speaker, and human beings are playing a defining role. Now, you don't have to take my word for it. You can ask virtually any scientist working in the field today, because 97 percent of all climate scientists agree that it is happening--97 percent. There is a United Nations body charged with looking at the science here called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Do you know what it has found? That the evidence is unequivocal. The facts are as clear as day. But you don't even need to read the report to know that something is happening here. Just look out your window. Once-in-a-generation hurricanes are becoming commonplace; record-breaking storms are becoming the norm; and drastic temperature swings are now just the way it is. My district is home to more than 1,800 farms, and I visit with farmers often. Climate change isn't just an issue on their minds; it is sometimes the top issue on their minds when they are asked about the challenges that they face. These farmers have told me about how heat waves disrupt what was once a reliable growing season and how unexpected frosts have completely wiped out their crops. Rainfall that once ran like clockwork has given way to droughts that could wipe out their entire profits. They don't question what is going on. They are not debating the science of whether climate change is real. They know. They know. They can see it, seemingly every day as it impacts their livelihoods. I wish the Republicans took climate change as seriously. But instead of treating it as a threat, they treat it as a punch line. A Republican Senator once brought a snowball onto the Senate floor, trying to prove that climate change isn't real because it still snows sometimes. You can't make this stuff up. Just the other day, President Trump mocked clean energy by suggesting that windmills cause cancer. Are you kidding me? That is the President of the United States. I won't pretend to know what goes on in the President's head, but I know this: His announcement in June 2017 that he would be pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement was indefensible. This agreement set an ambitious goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius and established binding commitments for countries to meet to reduce emissions. It recognized climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. If the President gets his way and actually withdraws the United States, we would stand alone as one of the only nations in the world not to be part of it. Even Syria, a nation embroiled in war, announced that it would sign on. Thankfully, we are not out of it yet, but we could be starting as early as 2020. H.R. 9 would ensure the President wouldn't get his way by requiring him to develop a plan to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement. It is called the Climate Action Now Act because we can't wait, Mr. Speaker. Climate change isn't some far-off threat. It is not a problem for our great-grandchildren or even our grandchildren to solve. It is our problem. It is here today, impacting our Nation and our future. It is not just about the weather. Climate change also negatively impacts public health and our national security. Experts have even developed a new term to describe those displaced by its destructive impacts, ``American climate refugees.'' This is not the time for handwringing or indecisiveness and not the time to let the fossil fuel industry that funds some campaigns outweigh the facts. It is certainly not the time for more stunts or snowballs on the floor. This is the time to act boldly, to listen to what the scientists are telling us, and to protect our planet for future generations. That is what H.R. 9 is all about. I ask my colleagues to let the facts rule the day once again in the people's House of Representatives. Let's support this rule and the underlying legislation and send an undeniable message that, under this majority, we value science and recognize the urgent need to act on climate change. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Before I yield to the gentleman from Texas, let me make a couple of points. First of all, just so the Record is clear, under President Trump's policies, which are now taking effect and are now reversing some of the advances that we made under previous administrations, basically, these policies have consequences. In 2018, our emissions rose by 3.4 percent. We are going in the wrong direction. When the gentlewoman talks about all these other alternative energy sources that are clean and green that my Republican friends support, she neglects to point out that this President hasn't seen a fossil fuel that he hasn't wanted to embrace. In fact, he wants to go back and invest more in coal, which is hard to believe, given all the scientific evidence that exists about the dangers of coal for our atmosphere. There is no question where this President is coming from. He doesn't believe in climate change, and that is what is so shocking, that the whole world, the scientific community all over the world, has warned us time and time again that this is a real problem, and we have a President who doesn't believe it. It is stunning. It is stunning, but that is what we are dealing with. Basically, this is an attempt to try to get us back on the right track, to take this problem, which is already having significant negative consequences in our country, and do something about it. It is time to come together and tell the President, who doesn't believe in science, that science is real, that it is something we ought to take seriously, and that we ought to do something about it. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the words from our distinguished minority whip, but I would point out that the cost of climate inaction will far outweigh the cost associated with acting now. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, by 2090, lost wages will reach $155 billion, mortality from extreme temperatures will surpass $140 billion, and coastal property damage will approach $120 billion. All told, the U.S. economy could lose more than 10 percent of its GDP under the worst-case scenario. So people can deny that this is a problem all they want, but they do so at great economic risk for our country and for other economies around the world. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, let me just say to my ranking member, whom I have great respect for, that I think we always need to figure out a way to do better and to be more accommodating, and I will continue to work with him to try to do that. But I will point out for the record that the committee has made in order 30 amendments, a total of 31 pages of amendments on a 6-page bill. I think we have a long way to go to achieve the record of closed rules that the previous Congress had, well over 100 closed rules. That broke, I think, every closed rule record in history. We certainly don't want to get there, but we need to continue to figure out ways we can be more accommodating, and he has my word that I will do that. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, oh my God, just listening to the gentleman from Washington State give his remarks. He was on the Rules Committee when the Republicans were in charge last time and voted for a record number of 103 closed rules. That meant that not a single amendment, Republican or Democrat, could be made in order. Never once, never once, did I hear him express reservation about the historic closed process that the Republicans embraced. And as far as his amendment goes, as the gentleman knows, the Paris climate agreement operates under the theory that parties should be able to satisfy their compliance plans any way they choose. There are neither preferred nor prohibited ways to reduce emissions. Since the Paris Agreement is fuel and technology neutral, we think this bill should be too. But I just find it hard to sit here and to listen with any level of seriousness to the gentleman's complaints. When he was on the Rules Committee, they broke every record in the history of Congress being the most closed Congress in the history of our country. Can we do better? Yes, we can, and we should do better. But I will remind the gentleman, again, that there were 30 pages of amendments made in order on a 6-page bill, a bill, by the way, that the gentlewoman, Mrs. Lesko, said is not a serious bill anyway. So, I am not quite sure what the messaging is here: that it is not serious or that it is serious enough where we need to have more amendments. I can't quite figure their logic out here. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, let me just remind my colleagues that the impact on our economy is astronomical if we do nothing. We are already seeing the negative impacts on our economy because of climate change. It is hard to believe that we are having a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives where people are denying that climate change is a real threat or that our constituents somehow don't care about this issue, which they do. And just one other thing. I want to make sure that the Record is clear on process. This bill went through two committee hearings-- Foreign Affairs and Energy and Commerce--and two markups before it went to the Rules Committee where we granted a structured rule and we are having a debate here on the floor. That is called regular order. I know some of my Republican friends don't know what regular order is, because when they were in charge bills routinely came to the Rules Committee that bypassed committees of jurisdiction and then were closed up and sent to the floor with no amendments at all. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the distinguished chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a Washington Post article entitled ``Trump on climate change: `People like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers.' '' [From the Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2018] Trump on Climate Change: `People Like Myself, We Have Very High Levels of Intelligence but We're Not Necessarily Such Believers' (By Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney) President Trump on Nov. 26 reacted to a major report issued Nov. 23 that said climate change will challenge the economy, environment, and human health. (The Washington Post) President Trump on Tuesday dismissed a landmark report compiled by 13 federal agencies detailing how damage from global warming is intensifying throughout the country, saying he is not among the ``believers'' who see climate change as a pressing problem. The comments were the president's most extensive yet on why he disagrees with his own government's analysis, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health of Americans, as well as to the country's infrastructure, economy and natural resources. The findings--unequivocal, urgent and alarming--are at odds with the Trump administration's rollback of environmental regulations and absence of any climate action policy. ``One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we're not necessarily such believers,'' Trump said during a freewheeling 20-minute Oval Office interview with The Washington Post in which he was asked why he was skeptical of the dire National Climate Assessment his administration released Friday. ``As to whether or not it's man-made and whether or not the effects that you're talking about are there, I don't see it,'' he added. Trump did not address the fundamental cause of climate change. The president riffed on pollution in other parts of the world. He talked about trash in the oceans. He opined on forest management practices. But he said little about what scientists say is actually driving the warming of the planet--emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. ``You look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including many other places, the air is incredibly dirty, and when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small,'' Trump said in an apparent reference to pollution around the globe. ``And it blows over and it sails over. I mean we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific. It flows and we say, `Where does this come from?' And it takes many people, to start off with.'' Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said in an email Tuesday that the president's comments risk leaving the nation vulnerable to the ever- growing impacts of a warming planet. ``Facts aren't something we need to believe to make them true--we treat them as optional at our peril,'' Hayhoe said. ``And if we're the president of the United States, we do so at the peril of not just ourselves but the hundreds of millions of people we're responsible for.'' Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, struggled to find a response to the president's comments. ``How can one possibly respond to this?'' Dessler said when reached by email, calling the president's comments ``idiotic'' and saying Trump's main motivation seemed to be attacking the environmental policies of the Obama administration and criticizing political adversaries. In his comments, Trump also seemed to invoke a theme that is common in the world of climate-change skepticism--the idea that not so long ago, scientists feared global cooling, rather than the warming that is underway today. ``If you go back and if you look at articles, they talk about global freezing,'' Trump said. ``They talk about at some point, the planet is going to freeze to death, then it's going to die of heat exhaustion.'' This may refer to an oft-cited 1975 Newsweek article titled ``The Cooling World'' or a 1974 Time magazine story titled ``Another Ice Age?'' But researchers who have reviewed this period have found that while such ideas were indeed afoot at the time, there was ``no scientific consensus in the 1970s'' about a global cooling trend or risk, as there is today about human-caused climate change. In other words, scientists' understanding of where the planet is headed, and the consequences, is far more developed now than it was in the 1970s. At present, Earth has warmed roughly one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above late-19th-century, preindustrial levels. Multiple analyses have shown that without rapid emissions cuts--well beyond what the world is undertaking--the warming will continue and could blow past key thresholds that scientists say could lead to irrevocable climate-related catastrophes, such as more-extreme weather, the death of coral reefs and losses of major parts of planetary ice sheets. On Tuesday, a U.N. report underscored again how the world is far off course on its promises to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The report found that, with global emissions still increasing as of 2017, it is unlikely they will peak by 2020. Scientists have said carbon emissions must fall sharply in coming years if the world is to have a chance of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. Trump also made reference to recent devastating wildfires in California, which scientists say have been made more intense and deadly by climate change. But the president instead focused on how the forests that burned have been managed. Previously, he has praised Finland for spending ``a lot of time on raking and cleaning'' its forest floors--a notion that left the Finnish president flummoxed. ``The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire, they have trees that were fallen,'' Trump said. ``They did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light--you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it's a massive problem in California.'' ``You go to other places where they have denser trees, it's more dense, where the trees are more flammable, they don't have forest fires like this because they maintain,'' he said. ``And it was very interesting I was watching the firemen, and they were raking brush. . . . It's on fire. They're raking it, working so hard. If that was raked in the beginning, there would be nothing to catch on fire.'' Trump wasn't the only administration official on Tuesday to shrug off the federal government's latest climate warnings. In a television appearance in California, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke acknowledged that fire seasons have grown longer in the state but added, ``Climate change or not, it doesn't relieve you of responsibility to manage the forest.'' Meanwhile, asked Tuesday about the findings of the nearly 1,700-page climate report the administration released on Black Friday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders echoed her boss. ``We think that this is the most extreme version and it's not based on facts,'' Sanders said of the National Climate Assessment. ``It's not data-driven. We'd like to see something that is more data-driven. It's based on modeling, which is extremely hard to do when you're talking about the climate. Again, our focus is on making sure we have the safest, cleanest air and water.''

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I do that because I want the Record to reflect this President's ignorance on an issue that is not only of national concern but of international concern. In the past three annual worldwide threat assessments, the U.S. intelligence communities have cited climate change as a national security threat and a multiplier of threats that create instability, food and water shortages, refugee and population migration, and economic disruption. This is a matter that we can't ignore anymore. We need to pass this bill. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Brownley).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from leading public health advocates in support of H.R. 9, as well as a letter signed by many of the leading environmental organizations in support of this legislation. April 29, 2019. Dear Representative: The undersigned public health and medical organizations urge you to support H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act. The bill would help ensure that the United States adheres to the science-based targets in the Paris Agreement and develops a plan to meet them, both essential steps to protecting public health from the impacts of climate change. Climate change is a public health emergency. The science clearly shows that communities across the nation are experiencing the health impacts of climate change, including enhanced conditions for ozone and particulate air pollution, which cause asthma attacks, cardiovascular disease and premature death; increased instances of extreme heat, severe storms and other destabilizing weather patterns that disrupt people's access to essential healthcare; increased spread of vector-borne diseases; and longer and more intense allergy seasons. These threats are no longer hypothetical, and Americans across the country have experienced them firsthand. Every American's health is at risk due to climate change, but some populations are at greater risk, including infants, children, seniors, pregnant women, low-income communities, some communities of color, people with disabilities and many people with chronic diseases. Evidence and experience shows that these populations will disproportionately bear the health impacts of climate change without concerted action to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. The science is also clear that limiting increase in global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius is essential. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found dramatic differences in health impacts between 1.5 and 2 degrees, including in heat-related morbidity and mortality, ozone-related mortality, and vector-borne diseases. The Paris Agreement's goals are to keep the world well under 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to further stay below 1.5 degrees. H.R. 9 is an important step toward what must become a comprehensive set of policies protect public health from the worst impacts of climate change. The nation urgently needs to implement strong, science-based measures to reduce the emissions that cause climate change. The U.S. must also invest in health adaptation strategies to help communities address the varied health impacts they are already facing. On behalf of the patients and communities we serve, we urge you to vote YES on H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act. Sincerely, Allergy & Asthma Network, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Children's Environmental Health Network, Climate for Health, Health Care Climate Council, Health Care Without Harm, National Association of County and City Health Officials, National Environmental Health Association, National Medical Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Health Institute.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin). (Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. This is like the theater of the absurd, when I listen to my Republican colleagues. We have a bill, H.R. 9, that says that the United States should not remove itself from the Paris climate accord. I have one colleague saying that it is a messaging bill that means nothing. I have other Republican colleagues saying that if we pass this, it is the end of the world because it is going to have all these implications. Then we get lectured to by my Republican colleagues for almost an hour now that 30 amendments are not enough on a 6-page bill, that we need more and more amendments in order. Then, the gentleman from Georgia comes to the floor and says: I want to offer the Green New Deal, and I want to offer it under a closed rule where nobody can amend it. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. The Republicans are saying: We don't want hearings, and we don't want markups. We want nothing. We just want to bring it to the floor under a closed rule so that nobody, Democrats or Republicans, can amend it. I support the Green New Deal. I have some ideas to make it a little bit better. I would like to have some amendments made in order. But my Republican friends say no amendments, closed rule, shut it all down. Old habits die hard. When the Republicans were in charge, they presided over the most closed Congress in the history of our country, and they just can't break that old habit. Well, you know what? We want to move on a Green New Deal, but we want to do it right. We want to do hearings, and you can have some of your friends and allies who are climate-change deniers come to testify against it if you want. We will bring experts and scientists because we believe in science. We will have them come to talk about why it is important and how we can improve it. We look forward to that, but not under a closed rule with no hearings and no markups. This is embarrassing. Madam Speaker, the United States has a unique role to play in fighting climate change, not just because we should be leading the way on innovation or because we have the largest economy anywhere but because we played a major role in furthering this crisis. Between 1970 and 2013, the U.S. ranked number one in total carbon emissions. We released more carbon into the atmosphere than China, Japan, or any of the other 40 global nations. That is according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. I don't think we should be turning our back on a problem that we helped create. It isn't a radical or partisan idea. Experts consider 1988 to be the year that the science behind climate change became widely known and accepted, and that is the year when a Republican Presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, pledged that he would fight the greenhouse effect with the ``White House effect.'' We have come a long way since then, Madam Speaker, and I don't mean positively. There was a time when Republicans cared about the environment, when they understood that issues like the climate crisis were something that we needed to work on in a bipartisan way. Now they have become the party of climate change deniers. This is the challenge of our generation. It is more important than petty partisanship. President Trump seems obsessed with dismantling anything that Barack Obama has ever done. That doesn't mean that Congress should sit idly by when it comes at the expense of the future of our planet. With climate change, public health is at risk and our national security is endangered. The President may be unwilling to rise to the challenge, but this Democratic majority is not. Congress shouldn't let another one of his temper tantrums ruin our planet. Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on this rule and the underlying resolution.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 274 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.