John Thune

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, when it comes to what is happening in Washington, DC, it is often the legislation Congress is considering that gets the lion's share of attention, but just as significant are the regulations being put out by the executive branch. Regulations may not seem as significant as legislation, but they can have just as far- reaching an effect as any law and can radically shift Federal policy. A look at the Presidential administration's regulations can tell you a lot about that administration's approach to government. Over the past 2-plus years, the Biden administration has built a record of regulation that reflects its big-government, big-spending priorities. Take the President's student loan giveaway, which, if the ``forgiveness'' portion is not overturned by the Supreme Court, is set to cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, or take his overreaching waters of the United States rule, which, if enforced, would give the Federal Government sweeping jurisdiction over most water features on private property, including things like irrigation ditches, ephemeral streams, and even prairie potholes. The ability to create regulations gives a Presidential administration a lot of power--and the ability to do a lot of damage. Checks do exist on the regulatory power, however, and one check is provided by the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to pass resolutions of disapproval that repeal the regulations in question. The President still has to sign the resolution for it to go into effect or else two- thirds majorities in both Houses of Congress have to override his veto. But the tool can be used to check excessive use of regulatory power. Senate Republicans have been making regular use of the Congressional Review Act this Congress to attempt to address some egregious Biden administration regulations. We have passed nine now resolutions of disapproval of Biden administration actions so far this year, every single one of which has been bipartisan, which goes to show just how extreme the actions in question are. I mentioned Senator Capito's resolution to overturn the administration's waters of the United States rule. It is an Obama-era relic resurrected by the Biden Environmental Protection Agency. As I mentioned, if enforced, this rule would give the Federal Government jurisdiction over a vast number of water features on private property, including things like irrigation ditches and even prairie potholes-- something we are very familiar with in my region of the country. Farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners could see parts of their land rendered useless for months while the Federal Government determines what restrictions to impose. Landowners could also be faced with huge compliance costs, and the value of their land could plummet. Now, I say ``if enforced.'' While nine Democrats in the House and five in the Senate joined Republicans to pass a resolution disapproving the President's WOTUS rule, the President vetoed the resolution. But, in a victory for landowners, the Supreme Court recently ruled to clarify and limit the Federal Government's reach under the Clean Water Act, which effectively overturns the President's WOTUS rule. I also mentioned the President's student loan giveaway. The forgiveness part of the President's student loan giveaway would cost taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of half a trillion dollars over the next decade. The President's legal authority to unilaterally forgive student debt is extremely dubious, not to mention how unfair it is to ask the many Americans who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never pursued college in the first place to take on the burden of student debt for individuals who took out loans for college or graduate school and agreed to pay them back. With Senator Cassidy's leadership in the Senate, Republicans in the House and Senate, joined by a handful of Democrats, passed a resolution disapproving of the administration's student loan forgiveness overreach, but the President vetoed it. However, the President's forgiveness plan could still be overruled by the Supreme Court, which is set to release his decision on two student loan forgiveness cases as soon as this week. Another terrible Biden administration regulation that Republicans, through Senator Braun's efforts, have attempted to check is the President's rule that allows pension plan fiduciaries--those are the individuals who manage Americans' retirement accounts--to consider so- called environmental, social, and governance factors and not just the rate of return when investing their customers' money. In other words, the individuals who manage $11.7 trillion of Americans' retirement are no longer required to make investment decisions based solely on maximizing return. It might come as a surprise to many of the people out there who have funds invested. Instead, they will now be allowed to opt for a less valuable investment if they prefer its environmental profile. House and Senate Republicans passed a resolution disapproving of this rule, but unfortunately, again, the President vetoed it, meaning that for now retirees may have to accept that environmental goals-- environmental goals--can come ahead of giving them a secure retirement. But it was important to bring attention to this regulation--one of a number of radical environmental regulations from the Biden administration. Senate Republicans have also passed resolutions from Senators Mullin and Marshall addressing Biden administration overuse of the Endangered Species Act; a resolution from Senator Lummis addressing the administration's expansive new definition of ``critical habitat,'' which could have major negative consequences for landowners and businesses; a resolution from Senator Fischer disapproving of an EPA rule on truck emissions that could drive some smaller trucking companies out of business entirely--and more. We have more resolutions of disapproval in the pipeline. While, unfortunately, President Biden has predictably vetoed attempts to check his administration's aggressive use of Federal power, we have had some successes. When Senator Capito announced her intention to challenge a Federal Highway Administration memo discouraging States from pursuing highway expansion projects and prioritizing funding for projects that reduce emissions, the Federal Highway Administration withdrew the memo and issued a revised version without the problematic language, which was a win for infrastructure investments in rural areas. As I mentioned, while the President vetoed the resolution disapproving of his overreaching waters of the United States water rule, the Supreme Court's recent decision effectively overturning this regulation is a win for farmers, for ranchers, and for other landowners--and, honestly, for common sense. While it wasn't a Biden administration regulation, Senator Hagerty led a successful charge in the Senate to overturn Washington, DC's crime bill that would have weakened penalties for a number of crimes. Congress, of course, has the legal authority to block DC ordinances thanks to Federal legislation rooted in the Constitution which gives Congress legislative jurisdiction over the seat of the U.S. Government--namely, Washington, DC. Republicans' effort to overturn DC's dangerous new crime bill ultimately persuaded the President to change his mind and sign the resolution of disapproval. As we move forward, Republicans will continue to use the Congressional Review Act to push back against overreaching regulations from the Biden administration. We may not always be successful, but at the very least, we can highlight the true cost of the Biden administration's regulations and the burdens they place on our economy and on hard-working Americans. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, at the end of last week, President Biden published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal touting his economic record. It was not exactly new material. The President is well known for attempting to put a rosy spin on his economic record. But I still have to marvel every time the President claims that he is building the economy from the bottom up and the middle out and working to give families ``more breathing room'' because if there is one thing that can be said about the Biden Presidency, it is that American families have lost a lot of their breathing room. The inflation crisis the President helped make is costing American families $880 this month. Let me just repeat that. The inflation crisis the President helped create is costing American families $880 this month--$880 for just 1 month. Meanwhile, real wages have declined for 26 consecutive months under President Biden--26 consecutive months; 2- plus years. So it is no surprise that in a poll last month, 49 percent of Americans reported that their personal financial situation is getting worse or that in another poll, 61 percent said recent price increases had caused financial hardship for them or their household. Let's be very clear. This is not a random situation that just happened to occur on the President's watch. The President bears direct responsibility for this inflation crisis, which was set off in large part thanks to the bloated, Big-Government American Rescue Plan spending spree the Democrats and President forced through shortly after the President came to office. You don't have to take my word on that. Here is what one former Obama adviser had to say on the subject: The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in the early days of the Biden administration will go down in history as an extraordinary policy mistake. ``Will go down in history as an extraordinary policy mistake''--that from an Obama adviser. Another former Obama adviser noted: The original sin was an oversized American Rescue Plan. Contrary to what he suggested in his op-ed, the President has done exactly nothing to bring down inflation since. Indeed, he has continued to pursue the same kind of Big-Government, big-spending policies that helped land us in this mess in the first place. It is frankly staggering to me that the President continues to have the audacity to say things like ``[h]ardworking families are reaping the rewards'' of his policies. Hard-working families are certainly reaping something from the President's policies, but it isn't rewards. As I said earlier, the President is well known for trying to put a rosy spin on his economic record, and he trots out some of his favorite misleading statistics in this op-ed. Since he took office, he claims, the economy has created more than 13 million jobs. That sounds pretty good, right? Until you realize that the vast majority of those jobs weren't newly created but are, rather, just jobs that were naturally added back after the pandemic. Currently, we are just 3.7 million jobs above where we were prepandemic--hardly the historic job boom the President portrays. The President also mentions that gasoline prices are down from their peak in June of 2022, but he neglects to mention that gas prices are currently up 50 percent from where they were when he took office. Then, of course, the President brings up one of his favorite claims-- that he reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion over the first 2 years of his administration. Here is how the Washington Post Fact Checker column has described that claim: ``highly misleading.'' Highly misleading. The President arrives at this highly misleading statistic by comparing his budget deficit in fiscal year 2022 to the fiscal year 2020 budget deficit, which was unusually large, to put it mildly, as a result of the COVID pandemic. A much more appropriate comparison would be to compare President Biden's actual 2022 budget deficit to what the Congressional Budget Office was projecting that deficit would be before the President's American Rescue Plan spending spree was enacted. That tells a far different story. The reality, as the Post points out, is that ``the data shows the deficit picture has worsened under Biden.'' The Washington Post Fact Checker column recently awarded President Biden a Bottomless Pinocchio for his deficit reduction claims--a rating the column gives for ``false or misleading statements repeated so often that they [become] a form of propaganda.'' I can't close without mentioning the President's staggering claim that he, again, ``fought so hard to bring Democrats and Republicans in Congress together to compromise on the budget and prevent a catastrophic default.'' As I have already highlighted, the President is fairly well known for revisionist history, but this statement might take the cake. Can the President possibly think that people have already forgotten that he spent months refusing to negotiate on a debt ceiling agreement and only came to the table at the last minute? Credit to the President for eventually recognizing that divided government requires compromise, but to suggest that he set out from the outset to forge a compromise between Democrats and Republicans is to skate the line between revisionist history and outright falsehood. After 2 years of painful price hikes at the gas pump and the grocery store, I think few Americans would recognize the positive picture the President paints in his op-ed. Unfortunately, it is clear from the President's column that he plans to continue to pursue policies that will further undermine the economic well-being of the American people. So much for giving American families more breathing room. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Braun), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott) would have voted ``no.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Florida (Mr. Scott) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, summer is almost here and with it, summer driving season. With gas prices up 48 percent since President Biden took office and inflation still a major problem, the cost of those family road trip miles is likely to be on the American people's minds. It is not just the cost of gas that can be challenging in the summer; hot temperatures can bring a corresponding increase in electricity bills as families rely more on their air-conditioners. With electricity prices up 22 percent since President Biden took office and, as I said, with inflation still a major problem, those bills can be a stress. It is not just energy prices that are of concern this summer. A recent article in the Washington Post entitled ``Fresh blackout threats emerge as power grid faces a stressful summer'' noted: The nation's power grid is in precarious shape heading into what could be an especially hot summer . . . with much of the country at risk for outages if it experiences scorching weather scientists say looks increasingly likely. Much of the country is at risk for outages. The reliability of our Nation's electric grid is becoming a serious concern, and it is being driven in part by attempts to move our country off conventional energy before we have the necessary technology to rely mostly on renewables. In February, the PJM Interconnection, which manages a substantial part of eastern America's electric grid, released a report warning that fossil fuel plants are being forced to retire at a faster rate than new renewables can be brought online, at a rate of roughly two to one. As the report underscored, that situation is being driven by anti- conventional energy policies. The Wall Street Journal, which weighed in after the PJM report was released, noted that ``most projected power-plant retirements are `policy-driven,' the report says.'' In other words, powerplants aren't closing because they have reached the end of their operating life; they are closing because the policy is designed to discourage conventional energy. I am a longtime supporter of renewable energy. In fact, I come from a State where 80-plus percent of the energy that is actually produced in my State is renewable. But the fact is, technology has simply not advanced to the point where our Nation can rely solely or even mostly on renewables, and attempting to move to zero-emission energy before we have the technology and resources to get us there is going to result not only in price increases but in serious deficiencies in our Nation's energy supply. I say ``going to result in,'' but, as I have mentioned, premature attempts to move us to a Green New Deal future are already compromising the reliability of our electric grid, and the Biden administration has been driving the problem with its anti-conventional energy policies. While the President has made isolated positive energy decisions--and I would note approving the sale of E15 fuel for this summer as an example--in general, his Presidency has been characterized by environmental extremism and hostility to conventional energy. This year alone, he closed off a substantial part of the Arctic to oil and gas development, and his Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule that threatens to close a number of fossil fuel-powered powerplants and undermine the stability of our electric grid even further. These are policies with far-reaching negative effects. An unstable electric grid, for one, can be a very serious problem. It is not just a matter of inconvenience. Electricity blackouts threaten key systems. Soaring temperatures without the relief of air-conditioning can leave elderly Americans vulnerable. The President's anti-conventional energy policies are not victimless. They have consequences, and we are well on our way to seeing those consequences in action. The solution here is simple. The President needs to stop undermining our Nation's energy supply with policies that attempt to prematurely push us onto renewables, and he needs to unleash American energy production, conventional as well as renewable. We did receive some good news on the energy production front last week with the passage of the debt ceiling agreement that the President reached with Speaker McCarthy. Thanks to the efforts of Speaker McCarthy, the Fiscal Responsibility Act makes a downpayment on permitting reform by placing a 2-year time limit on environmental impact statements and a 1-year time limit on environmental assessments. It also implements a ``one Federal decision'' framework that establishes a lead Agency and single document stream for permitting decisions. Currently, it takes an average of 4\1/2\ years--4\1/2\ years--for an environmental impact statement. These reforms will shrink that timeline and help both conventional and renewable energy projects get off the ground more quickly. However, there is more work to be done to streamline the permitting process, and I hope we will be able to find bipartisan agreement on further reforms. Bogging projects down in environmental review for half a decade provides no meaningful environmental advantages, delays valuable energy projects, and can discourage domestic energy production. Additional permitting reform should be a priority. Senators Capito and Barrasso have put forward comprehensive contributions to the discussion, the RESTART Act and the SPUR Act respectively. The House has passed H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act. Collectively, these bills would resume Federal lease sales for oil and gas developments, set timelines against endless legal challenges, and advance an American--American--``all of the above'' energy comeback. After 2\1/2\ years of demonstrated hostility to conventional energy production, the President seems unlikely to change his ways, but he still has time to embrace a more realistic approach to American energy. I hope that the increasing fragility of our electric grid--to say nothing of higher energy prices--will encourage him to take a more ``all of the above'' approach to energy production. Otherwise, he may be remembered for presiding over not just an inflation crisis but an energy crisis as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso) and the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis).

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last week, Congress successfully passed legislation, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default. I am pleased that the final legislation paired an increase in the debt ceiling with real spending reforms, but I don't need to tell anyone that things came down to the wire. President Biden wasted months refusing to negotiate on a debt ceiling deal before finally yielding to the political realities of divided government and coming to the negotiating table. And while we got about as good of an agreement as we could have hoped for in this situation-- again, including meaningful spending reforms the Democrats initially rejected--things didn't need to come to this crisis point. Had President Biden come to the negotiating table sooner, we might not have been passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act just days before our Nation would have defaulted. This isn't the first crisis of inaction in this Presidency. President Biden has made a habit of ignoring or failing to meet crisis situations, with predictably problematic results. The border crisis is one notable example. It took 2 years of recordbreaking numbers of illegal crossings at our southern border before the President made any real move to even begin to address the crisis--2 years--2 years in which he mostly pretended the border crisis didn't even exist. The President didn't want there to be a border crisis, presumably because he knew it would serve as an indictment of his open border policies. So he simply ignored the reality. Unfortunately, Border Patrol agents and our Nation's overwhelmed border communities didn't have that option. They had to spend 2-plus years now dealing with all the ramifications of unchecked illegal immigration at our southern border. While it is a good thing that the President has finally made some moves to address the crisis, his inaction has taken a terrible toll on Border Patrol agents and our border communities and on migrants themselves. We have seen a similar situation with inflation. Even as it became clear the Democrats' so-called American Rescue Plan had helped set off a serious inflation crisis, the President and his administration dismissed the problem. And they didn't just dismiss the problem; they doubled down on the strategy that got our country into this mess in the first place. While the President was eventually forced to, at least halfheartedly, acknowledge our inflation crisis, he still can't bring himself to acknowledge what caused it, and that is the Democrats' big spending priorities. And he has continued to pursue new government spending, from his nearly trillion-dollar student loan giveaway to a budget that, in a few short years, would have us spending $10 trillion annually. Perhaps the most devastating example of the President's failure to recognize and act on the realities of the situation came with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even as it was becoming appallingly clear that Afghanistan was headed for takeover by the Taliban, the President delayed or simply failed to take the necessary steps to withdraw American citizens and the Afghan allies who aided us. The result was a chaotic evacuation that saw the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers and scores--literally scores--of Afghan civilians and left both U.S. citizens and thousands of our Afghan allies behind as the Taliban took over the country. It is fortunate that the months President Biden spent refusing to acknowledge the need to negotiate on a debt ceiling agreement did not result in serious consequences for our country. Things were not looking good for a while, but the President ultimately recognized that divided government requires negotiation and compromise. But a lot of his other leadership failures have had serious and permanent consequences. The President's failure to acknowledge and address the reality of the border crisis has allowed hundreds of thousands of individuals to evade law enforcement and enter our country illegally, left border communities and American cities struggling to provide for the mass influx of migrants, and, undoubtedly, facilitated the flow of cross-border criminal activity like fentanyl trafficking. As I said, the President's failure to recognize and acknowledge the reality of the situation in Afghanistan, including by ignoring the State Department dissent cable, resulted in the deaths of American servicemembers and Afghan civilians. Meanwhile, the President's persistent failure to fully recognize the realities of inflation and its roots and Democrats' reckless spending continues to leave our economy and American families vulnerable to more of Democrats' big spending policies. There are around 18 months left in the President's current term and a lot of challenges for our Nation to address. I hope that the debt ceiling negotiations mark the start of a new era, one in which the President spends more time dealing with things as they are and less time pursuing an agenda divorced from the reality of the economic and security challenges that our Nation faces, because our country and the American people cannot afford a repeat of the first 2 years of this President's administration. I yield the floor.

Mr. THUNE

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

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Sullivan). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. THUNE

Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty). Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty) would have voted ``nay.''

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

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).

Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty).