Floor Statements

First of all, right after the conference luncheon, we are going to have my amendment having to do with Gitmo. This is a very simple one-page amendment that states that none of the funds appropriated, or otherwise made available by this act--on MILCON--or any prior act may be used to construct or modify a facility or facilities in the United States or its territories, to permanently or temporarily hold any individual who is detained as of October 1 of 2009 at Gitmo.

You might wonder, we have been talking about this, and I have actually had pass two amendments that do almost the same thing. We passed an amendment to the 2007 resolution 94 to 3--a bipartisan amendment to the war supplemental offered by me and Senator Inouye from Hawaii. It passed 90 to 6 in the current Senate Defense appropriations bill. It is in conference. My concern is, in conference, it may be removed. Keep in mind, we sent this language to conference once before, and it came back and merely said that if the President announces a plan of what to do with those individuals who are incarcerated at Gitmo, we would have 45 days to discuss that. It doesn't say we have to agree with the plan he gives.

Consequently, there are no teeth in that. This may be our only chance. This is an issue that has always passed by over 90 votes. So I will have that amendment. I hope people will understand the whole country was upset when they found out on Friday the 13th--and that was kind of an interesting day for this--when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as announced by the President, was going to be tried in New York City, and they were going to move five terrorists into the New York City area. I will not debate this thing. It has been worn out in the press.

People realize that if we are going to bring these terrorists to the United States, they will become targets for terrorist activities. Besides that, you cannot try someone under our court system who should be tried under a tribunal. The rules of evidence are different, and we have a perfect place for that down in Gitmo. Again, I will be offering that amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about the President's trip to China. It appears evident--which we have known all along--that we are not going to be passing anything in this country on cap and trade. We have the bill that is up right now by Senators Kerry and Boxer, who have talked about this now for 8 years. Every time they talk about it, there is more and more opposition to it. Right now, the interesting thing is that the most recent polling shows that only 4 percent of the American people think this is a problem. Four percent are wrong and the 96 percent are right.

Nonetheless, in China, keep in mind, their output of CO2 emissions could amount to twice the combined emissions of the world's richest nations, including the United States, the European Union, and Japan. Consequently, the problem there is China, India, Mexico, and the developing countries. We all know nothing will pass this body that doesn't treat the developing countries as developed nations.

I will not dwell on this. At a later time, I will. I plan to make a very long--well over an hour--talk. I am trying to get some time now to do that. This will be the fifth time I have done this in the last 6 years concerning this particular subject, which is the alleged global warming attached to the CO2 emissions.

I will say this: As far as what is going on right now in China, the Chinese are not going to line up and agree, in Copenhagen or anyplace, to start reducing their own emissions. Frankly, they are the ones who are the big beneficiaries. This is kind of interesting, because even if we did it and the developed nations did it, it still wouldn't have any material reduction in CO2. Even if you believed CO2 or anthropogenic gases caused global warming or climate change, it is still not going to work, as Tom Quigley said it would back when Senator Gore--Vice President Gore at that time--tried to do a study to determine what wonderful things would happen if we joined the Kyoto treaty. The question was, to his own scientists: If all nations, all developed nations, including the United States, the European Union, and all of them, were to sign the Kyoto treaty and live by its emission requirements, how much would it reduce the temperature? Tom Quigley, a renowned scientist, came out with this report and said it would reduce it by less than seven one-hundredths of 1 degree Celsius by 2050. So all of the pain, all of the taxes, the largest tax increase in the history of America, and it does not reduce anything. Consequently, I don't think it is necessary to belabor that. China is not going to do it, no matter what the President does on his trip to China.

As I am rounding third and heading home, I am concerned that we are going to be voting this afternoon on the nomination of David Hamilton to be a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I think Hamilton is, without question, a liberal activist judge. He believes judges do not simply interpret the Constitution of the United States but that judges have the power to actually change the Constitution when deciding cases, stating that--this is his quote, Mr. President--``part of our job here as judges is to

write a series of footnotes to the Constitution.'' This is exactly what our Founding Fathers did not want us to do. Judges are supposed to interpret what we do in this Chamber.

When he was nominated to the district court in 1994, the American Bar Association rated him as not qualified. I voted against him for a number of reasons back in 1994. I don't very often agree with Vice President Biden, but I have to say this. Vice President Biden made a statement some time ago with which I do agree. That is, if you are in the Senate and you have a judge who is coming up for confirmation by the Senate, and if you oppose that judge when he comes up to be a Federal judge, then later on when he wants to become a circuit judge or even a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, if you opposed him at a lower position, you have to oppose him at the next position because the bar necessarily goes up. For that reason and many other reasons, I will be opposing him.

I think it is important that in 2003, in A Woman's Choice v. Newman, Hamilton issued an injunction against an Indiana law that required abortion clinics to give women information about alternatives to abortions in the presence of a physician, nurse, or somebody else--just to have that information. This is inconceivable to me this could happen.

Let's keep in mind also this is the same judge who had a ruling-- perhaps the most infamous because of his 2005 decision while presiding over the case of Hinrichs v. Bosma in which he enjoined the Speaker of Indiana's House of Representatives from permitting sectarian prayers to be offered as a part of that body's official proceedings, meaning that the chaplain or whoever opened the proceedings with a prayer could not invoke the name of Jesus Christ in his prayer.

In his conclusion, Hamilton wrote:

If the Speaker chooses to continue any form of legislative

prayer, he should advise persons offering such a prayer (a)

that it must be nonsectarian and must not be used to

proselytize or advance any one faith over another. This is

the first time and only time I believe this has happened in a

nomination. This will be coming up for confirmation. I hope

all of America will be aware of the fact this is happening.

Mr. President, I understand my colleagues are getting very close. I want a couple more minutes and that is to mention something that is happening today in the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Feingold has an amendment with which I wholeheartedly agree. It is actually not an amendment. It is a bill having to do with the LRA. Let me explain quickly what that is.

The LRA, the Lord's Resistance Army, has for about 25 years, led by a guy named Joseph Kony in the northern part of Uganda, been mutilating kids. We have heard of the Child's Army. They go into the villages and kidnap these kids, take them out, teach them how to be warriors, and once they join up, they send them back to the village to murder their own parents, their own family.

This has been going on for a long period of time. This bill is something about which I am very excited. Finally, we have the attention of the people in the United States, and that is to join in and go after this animal named Joseph Kony.

In the last 18 years, the LRA has captured over 20,000 kids. I have been to northern Uganda. I have been up Guru. I have watched these kids after they have been dismembered, after they cut their lips off, cut their ears off, and all of this.

When this bill first came out, I was opposed to it because Senator Feingold had to pay for this bill with a reduction in some of the funds that would otherwise go to the U.S. Air Force. That has been taken out. So I join him now in saying this is something that has to take place. This is the first time we have actually had the opportunity to bring up this issue, to let it surface.

I personally talked with President Museveni in Uganda, President Kagame of Rwanda, and President of the eastern part of Congo. I have been to Goma where Joseph Kony has kidnaped these kids, murdered these kids, mutilated these kids. I can tell from personal experience this is something we need to get involved in, and we are doing it by virtue of this bill.

I have gone 1 minute past. I apologize to the managers of the bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, inquiry. Is this the final argument before the vote on the Inhofe amendment?

Mr. President, this amendment has been here three times before. In fact, this amendment has been supported with over 90 votes each time it came through. Unfortunately, once one of the bills went into conference, it was taken out. They replaced it with a 45-day provision.

What this does--it is a one-sentence amendment, very easy to understand. It says:

None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available

by this Act may be used to construct or modify a facility or

facilities in the United States [to house terrorists].

If you want terrorists here, then vote against this amendment. This may be the last shot you have at it. We have the Inouye-Inhofe amendment already passed in the Defense authorization bill, but it is in conference. We do not know whether it will come out. This is the second shot we have to try to keep terrorists from coming into the United States.

I retain the remainder of my time.

Let me repeat. We have voted on this amendment before. We voted three different times. This was actually structured as the Inouye-Inhofe amendment once and the Inhofe-Inouye amendment once. It has passed overwhelmingly. This is the only way we can see that we can assure we are not going to have those individuals who are now at Gitmo in the United States. I think we have discussed this several times. I strongly support this amendment.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to recognize the courageous actions of six brave Oklahomans. On August 25, 2009, in the evening hours of the day, these six men, Daniel Richards, David Cox, Nick Niemann, Cody Click, Luck Tucker, and Casey Johnson, saved a life. That evening a call came in about a man having severe chest pains and possibly a heart attack at a residence in a rural area east of the town of Roland, OK. Roland Fire Department first responders were paged to respond, and upon their arrival they found a male subject lying on the ground not breathing. The six first responders immediately started CPR and hooked the individual up to an automated external defibrillator and delivered a resuscitating shock from the AED. The first responders continued CPR and working with the patient for 12 minutes until an EMS unit arrived on scene. When the patient was placed in the ambulance he was breathing and had a pulse. The patient was transported to Spark's Medical Center in Fort Smith, AR, where the

emergency room doctor stated that the ``firefighters saved this man's life.'' The patient needed to have a stint placed in the main artery of the heart and suffered some-short term memory loss, but he recovered and went home from the hospital in about 7 days. These men are true heroes. The town of Roland, the State of Oklahoma, and I are extremely thankful to them for their service and honored to have them serving one of Oklahoma's finest communities.

Mr. President, today I am joining some of my colleagues from the Environment and Public Works Committee in introducing a bill to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, EDA. EDA works with partners in economically distressed communities to create wealth and minimize poverty by promoting favorable business environments to attract private investment and encourage long-term economic growth.

I have long been a strong supporter of EDA. I believe the agency does an outstanding job of providing relatively small grants that help secure significant amounts of private investment in distressed communities across the country. Contrary to what some people would say, the government itself does not--frankly, cannot--expand the economy and create long-term jobs. That is the role of the private sector.

What the government can do, however, is help provide the right conditions for private sector investments to flourish. EDA does this in a myriad of ways, but primarily through infrastructure investments. I only wish more of the so-called ``stimulus'' bill enacted earlier this year had been dedicated to programs like EDA that are truly successful at spurring economic development.

Unlike the majority of the spending in the so-called ``stimulus'' bill, EDA investments actually provide economic benefits. In fact, studies show that EDA uses federal dollars efficiently and effectively, creating and retaining long-term jobs at an average cost that is among the lowest in government.

In my home State of Oklahoma, for example, EDA has worked long and hard with many communities in need to bring in private capital investment and jobs. Durant, Clinton, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Seminole, Elk City, Muskogee, Woodward, Shawnee, Claremore, Miami and Elgin are just some of the Oklahoma communities that have made good use of EDA assistance. In fact, over the past seven years, EDA grants awarded in my home state have resulted in more than 9,000 jobs being created. With an investment of about $33 million, we have leveraged another 32.7 million in State and local dollars and more than 625 million in private sector dollars. I would call that a wonderful success story.

Authorization of FDA's programs expired on September 30, 2008. I had introduced a reauthorization bill in July, 2008, and the EPW Committee reported a bipartisan bill in September 2008. Unfortunately the bill was not enacted. I again introduced my own reauthorization bill in February of this year. Today I am happy to join my colleagues in introducing a similar bill that I hope will be approved by the Committee and the full Senate in the very near future. Particularly in these difficult economic times, we should be doing all we can to ensure the continuation of successful economic development programs, and EDA reauthorization is an important step.

Mr. President, today I am joining some of my colleagues from the Environment and Public Works Committee in introducing a bill to reauthorize the Economic Development Administration, EDA. EDA works with partners in economically distressed communities to create wealth and minimize poverty by promoting favorable business environments to attract private investment and encourage long-term economic growth.

I have long been a strong supporter of EDA. I believe the agency does an outstanding job of providing relatively small grants that help secure significant amounts of private investment in distressed communities across the country. Contrary to what some people would say, the government itself does not--frankly, cannot--expand the economy and create long-term jobs. That is the role of the private sector.

What the government can do, however, is help provide the right conditions for private sector investments to flourish. EDA does this in a myriad of ways, but primarily through infrastructure investments. I only wish more of the so-called ``stimulus'' bill enacted earlier this year had been dedicated to programs like EDA that are truly successful at spurring economic development.

Unlike the majority of the spending in the so-called ``stimulus'' bill, EDA investments actually provide economic benefits. In fact, studies show that EDA uses federal dollars efficiently and effectively, creating and retaining long-term jobs at an average cost that is among the lowest in government.

In my home State of Oklahoma, for example, EDA has worked long and hard with many communities in need to bring in private capital investment and jobs. Durant, Clinton, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Seminole, Elk City, Muskogee, Woodward, Shawnee, Claremore, Miami and Elgin are just some of the Oklahoma communities that have made good use of EDA assistance. In fact, over the past seven years, EDA grants awarded in my home state have resulted in more than 9,000 jobs being created. With an investment of about $33 million, we have leveraged another 32.7 million in State and local dollars and more than 625 million in private sector dollars. I would call that a wonderful success story.

Authorization of FDA's programs expired on September 30, 2008. I had introduced a reauthorization bill in July, 2008, and the EPW Committee reported a bipartisan bill in September 2008. Unfortunately the bill was not enacted. I again introduced my own reauthorization bill in February of this year. Today I am happy to join my colleagues in introducing a similar bill that I hope will be approved by the Committee and the full Senate in the very near future. Particularly in these difficult economic times, we should be doing all we can to ensure the continuation of successful economic development programs, and EDA reauthorization is an important step.

Madam President, I wish to recognize a gentleman who has served in law enforcement at the State and Federal levels since 1977. Steven C. McCraw is a native of El Paso, TX, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Arts degree from West Texas State University. Mr. McCraw began his career in 1977 as a State Trooper and later a Sergeant Narcotics Investigator for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Becoming an FBI Special Agent in 1983, Mr. McCraw served in the Dallas, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Antonio Field offices. He worked at FBI headquarters in assignments that included Unit Chief of an Organized Crime Unit; Inspector; Deputy Assistant Director; Assistant Director of the Office of Intelligence, which was established in February 2002; and Assistant Director for the Inspections Division where he was responsible for strategic planning, internal investigations and bureau-wide performance evaluations. He also served as the Inspector-In-Charge of the Southeast Bomb Task Force. After the attacks on our Nation on September 11, 2001, the President created the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and named Mr. McCraw as the director. At the point when our Nation seemed most vulnerable, Mr. McCraw led the charge to identify and locate additional terrorist threats.

Mr. McCraw retired as an FBI Assistant Director in August 2004. After more than 20 years of exemplary Federal service, he could have simply retired. Instead, he answered the call of Texas Governor Rick Perry and was appointed the Director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security. Mr. McCraw has been instrumental in leading the State's homeland security efforts, from border security to hurricane response, including the successful humanitarian relocation of hundreds of families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. His extensive background in law enforcement and intelligence has enabled him to make well- informed decisions in preparing for and responding to all hazards and threats in Texas.

On July 17, 2009, Mr. McCraw was selected as the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. He will be leading nearly 8,500 commissioned and non-commissioned personnel in the department where he started his law enforcement career.

On behalf of the Congress and the country, I would like to thank Mr. McCraw for his service to the Nation and wish him well as he continues his contributions to the safety and security of the State of Texas.

Madam President, it was my intention to ask unanimous consent to lay the pending amendment aside for consideration of amendment No. 2758. However, I will not make that request right now. It is my understanding, however, and I ask unanimous consent, that I be recognized for up to 7 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, it is my intention to go ahead in the morning and get this amendment in the queue. This amendment, No. 2758, is a simple, one-page amendment, and I will read the amendment because there has been a lot of confusion as to what is happening down at Guantanamo Bay. Amendments have been introduced to withhold funds from construction, to withhold the opportunities for people to come to the United States, but this is a simple, one-page amendment which states the following:

None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available

by this act or any prior act may be used to construct or

modify a facility or facilities in the United States or its

territories to permanently or temporarily hold any individual

who was detained as of October 1, 2009, at Naval Station

Guantanamo Bay.

Some may ask: Why are we adding another Gitmo amendment? Hasn't everything been covered by previous amendments? The answer is clearly no. In 2007, the Senate voted 94 to 3 on a resolution declaring:

Detainees housed at Guantanamo should not be released into

American society, nor should they be transferred stateside

into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods.

Then, on May 20, 2009, the Senate passed my bipartisan amendment with Senator Inouye to the war supplemental bill prohibiting the transfer, release or incarceration of Gitmo detainees in the United States or its territories. It passed 90 to 6.

Senator Inouye stated:

We have not provided funding for the closure of Guantanamo

because the administration has yet to produce a credible

plan.

Unfortunately, the supplemental conference deleted that language, allowing detainees to be transferred or transported to the United States for trial.

Then, in October of 2009, the Senate voted 97 to 3 to pass the fiscal year 2010 Senate Defense appropriations bill that included language that prevents funding for any transfers, releases or incarcerations of Gitmo detainees to the United States through fiscal year 2010. The bill is in conference now, and we don't know what is going to be happening to it.

On October 28, 2009, the fiscal year Defense authorization and Homeland Security bills were signed into law that would allow transfer of detainees 45 days after the President provides a plan.

That is kind of where we are right now. This amendment will put the MILCON-VA bill into sync with previous authorizations and appropriations of the bill. So I will be trying to get this in and trying to get it passed. I will not go into any of the details.

I could probably talk for 3 hours on this floor, explaining why it is we should not give up this valuable asset called Gitmo. There is no place else to send these people, and I cannot imagine why there are some people, including the President, who seem to be bent on bringing those detainees into the United States. They have tried Fort Leavenworth, they have tried Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and some 31 States have now passed legislation saying they are not going to be in any of their facilities. So I don't think it is going to happen, but we need to get language in there that is consistent to make sure we keep that resource open.

By the way, this is one of the rarer resources that is very worthwhile. We have had this since 1907, and there is no place else in the world that is set up to both incarcerate and try detainees in a military court.

With that, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, first of all, let me tell my good friend from Hawaii that I personally have no objection to the bill; however, I have been informed there are Members on our side who want to work out something. They feel very confident they will be able to work it out with the Senator, but for the purpose of today, to this unanimous-consent request, I have to object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for such time as I shall consume.

It will not be more than 15 minutes.

Mr. President, this morning we had the first of 3 days of hearings we are having on the proposed Kerry-Boxer climate bill. It was one I never quite had an experience such as that before. Senator Kerry came in, was given 30 minutes to talk about the same thing Al Gore has been talking about for the last 15 years, without any chance to rebut.

What I would like to do is take a few of the statements. It is a very confusing issue we have because we do not have a lot to work with. We were given a draft of a bill with some analysis. I think it was a couple days ago--not time to get into it. But the bottom line is, it is going to be the same thing, according to the EPA, as the Waxman-Markey bill.

So what I would like to do is use them interchangeably, since that was the response we got from the EPA when we made a request that we be given time to get an analysis, an EPA analysis of the bill. I think the words were: You do not need an EPA analysis of the bill because it is the same bill, for all practical purposes, as Waxman-Markey.

So that is what we have. I would like to go over it point by point. Senator Kerry is correct that cap and trade will impose higher costs in the form of higher prices for electricity and gasoline. I think we do know these costs are there.

According to the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the bill--which I will refer to as ``the bill,'' it could be Waxman-Markey, it could be Kerry-Boxer--the bill would increase gas prices by 19 cents a gallon by 2015, 38 cents a gallon by 2030, 95 cents a gallon by 2050. Also, electricity bills would rise by about 4 to 5 percent in 2020.

I say this because the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce was an excellent witness. He brought the point home. Not only is this bill--this cap-and-trade bill--expensive, it would be something that would be regressive because the percentage of expendable income by a poor person is far greater than a rich person on such things as home heating and driving your cars. So his whole point was it was a regressive tax.

In a recent Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Jeff Sessions asked the government witnesses--the government witnesses were CBO, EPA, EIA, and the CRS--whether anyone disagreed with the finding that the net effect of cap and trade would be to reduce jobs. None did. Again, this morning, most of the witnesses responded in the same way.

Then Senator Kerry talked about the NASA scientists. ``The best experts we have,'' he said, ``tell us that the last 10 years have been the hottest in decades on record.''

Of course, we know that we have--in fact, just the other day, last week, BBC, which is certainly no friend of skeptics, in their lead story said: What happened to global warming? This headline came out as a bit of a surprise; so, too, might the fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not 2008 or 2007 but 1998. It went on to say that for the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. In fact, we have actually had the indication we are starting another cyclical cooling spell.

Senator Kerry said: That is why countries of the world, including India, China, and the United States, have agreed to limit the global rise in temperature to just 2 degrees Celsius. In fact, this is not true. I am sure he thinks it is true or he would not have said it. But China is the world's leading emitter of CO2. India is No. 3. India has been moving up. We have a quote from the top environmental minister in India, whose name is Jairam Ramesh: ``India will not accept any emissions reduction target, period.'' He went on to say: ``This is non-negotiable.'' You cannot get any more emphatic than that.

At the same time, when you talk about China, they may give you some lip service. Let's keep in mind, though, that China is cranking out coal-fired generating plants at two a week right now. So that does not show there is much interest in China to do anything close to what has been represented. The next statement made was that the pollution reduction measures in this bill are tightly focused on maximum impact.

Only companies emitting 25,000 tons of carbon each year are covered, 98 percent of America's businesses. The bill still covers three- quarters of America's carbon pollution. So what he is saying is that three-fourths, as near as I can determine, of the carbon that is emitted comes from only 2 percent of America's businesses.

The fact is, the Kerry-Boxer bill or ``the bill,'' I will say-- because it could be Markey or the same--contains no provision to stop the EPA's endangerment finding, which would trigger a flood of regulations under the Clean Air Act. As such, all the sources Senator Kerry mentions would be covered in some form of regulation under the act.

Second, Senator Kerry ignores the fact that the sources he mentioned would be severely impacted by higher energy prices, declines in productivity, fewer jobs in the sluggish economy that would arise because of Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey.

I mentioned what the National Black Chamber of Commerce had said about that. I think that should stand. He stated: Third, climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a threat to our national security. I agree with that. We are dependent upon foreign countries for our ability to run this machine called America.

Unfortunately, this is a very partisan subject because it is the Democrats who insist on having a moratorium on offshore drilling. The problems we are having right now--we have something, and this came out just last week. The new report from the Congressional Research Service reveals that America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal reserves are the largest on Earth.

We keep hearing people say: We do not have these reserves. We do. Far greater than Saudi Arabia's; they are No. 3. No. 4 is China. That is not even talking about including America's immense oil shale and methane hydrate deposits. So we have the largest reserves and the capability, I believe, and I will make this statement and, hopefully, someone will refute it because I cannot find anything to the contrary; that is, we are the only country that will not develop its own natural resources.

They say we are dependent on other countries. Well, yes, we are because politically they will not let us develop our own resources. I would say that between the oil and gas and the coal--and of course we are all concerned about nuclear, we want to do everything we can to overcome the obstacle that such a small percentage of our energy comes from nuclear. However, that is not going to be here tomorrow. We need to start working on that now.

I am talking about things where we can get energy produced right in the United States and stop--we could actually stop our dependence on foreign oil just by developing our own natural resources.

Then Senator Kerry talked about 11 former admirals and high-ranking generals who issued a seminal report warning that climate change is a threat multiplier.

They talk about famines and catastrophes. These assertions, which were first made by Al Gore back when he did his science fiction movie, have all been refuted. Consequently, when I hear 11 former admirals and generals out of 4,000, if they could only find 11, I think they have a problem.

The other thing is the fact that the bills would do virtually nothing to stop the pandemics, droughts, floods, and the like. According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger of Master Resource:

No matter how the economic and regulatory issues shake out,

[Waxman-Markey] will have virtually no impact on the future

course of the earth's climate.

He went on:

By the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would

result in a global temperature ``savings'' of about 0.05

degrees Celsius.

That reminds me, back in the 1990s we had an analysis by, at that time, one of the top scientists around. This was done by then-Vice President Al Gore. The guy's name was Tom Wigley, a top scientist. Vice President Gore gave him the chart. He said: If we were to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty, if we complied with its emissions requirements, how much would this reduce the temperature in 50 years?

The answer was 0.07 degrees Celsius. That is not even measurable. He didn't use that afterwards, but we found the report. Nonetheless it was there, and it is quite obvious.

Stop and think about the fact that we have gone through these natural cycles year after year. We have the cycles, and they show what we are going through. It reminds me--and I am old enough to remember--of the middle 1970s when the same publication, Time magazine, and the rest of them, many of the same scientists said we would have to do something about global cooling because another ice age was coming, and we have to address it.

We have to keep in mind there is a lot of money in these statements. People like to think a disaster is occurring because there is a lot of money in it.

That reminds me of something else said this morning by Senator Kerry. He talked about Duke Energy and others. There are about five major corporations in America that joined a group called CAP USA. These were corporations that came in and said: We are stewards of the environment. We want to do something. We embrace cap and trade.

Then we stopped and did an analysis of the five that appeared before the committee only to find that without exception, each one of the five, if we were to have some type of a cap and trade--and it doesn't matter whether it was the Markey bill or the current Kerry-Boxer bill-- if we were to do that, we know what the results would be because we have gone through this before over and over again. The idea that we could have something like this and not have the problems come has been disproven for a long period.

Let's go back to the Kyoto Treaty. We actually have had five debates on the Senate floor. We had the Kyoto Treaty, then in 2005 the McCain- Lieberman bill, then the 2003 McCain-Lieberman bill, then the 2008 Warner-Lieberman bill. In each case we had analyses done by the Wharton School of Economics, by MIT, and other groups. They all agreed it would be an expensive proposition. They said it would cost the American public between $300 and $400 billion a year.

I know that is difficult for people to understand. How does that impact me? But we do have an analysis that breaks that down. For the average family, it would cost about $2,000 a year. In my State of Oklahoma, it would be more than that because the price would be higher in the central part of the United States than it would be on the east coast or the west coast.

The cost is going to be there, and it doesn't seem to make too much difference which of the five different approaches we soundly defeated in the past is under consideration. Senator Kerry also claims that India is working on its own domestic legislation to reduce carbon pollution. I already read what their top people have said. They have no intention of doing it. In fact, I have talked to people who are from China, people who are saying: We are sitting back and are kind of hoping maybe America will do this because, if they do, American manufacturers have to go someplace to find their energy.

Since we have rationed it in this country, if we should pass such a cap-and-trade bill, then that would send more manufacturing jobs to places where there is no rationing.

I appreciate very much Lisa Jackson, the new Director of the EPA. Several weeks ago--she was there again this morning--she was on the witness stand. I asked a question: If we were to pass one of these bills like the Waxman-Markey bill, and we were to pass it unilaterally, how much would that reduce emissions globally?

The answer was, it wouldn't. I would go one step further. It will not reduce them unless we include Third World countries, the major emitters--China, India, Mexico, and these other countries. If we don't do that, then we will chase our manufacturing bases where there are no restrictions, and that would have the effect, common sense would dictate, of increasing CO2 emissions.

We have gone through this now for 10 years. I think it is going to come to a climax in Copenhagen. Once every year the U.N. has this big party, and they have all these countries come in and say what they are going to do to try to stop emission of greenhouse gases.

I had one--I will not mention his name, but he was from the West African country of Benin--who was there the last time I attended one of these conferences. It was in Spain at that time, I believe. Milan, Italy. I went up to this individual and I said: You and I have talked about this before. You know there is no relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming.

He said: Yes, but this is the biggest party of the year. So you are going to have a lot of people to go to Copenhagen in December who really aren't strongly behind the effort of the United Nations.

One last time, it all started with the United Nations, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Climate Change Program. It started there. They are the ones who are perpetrating this thing. As we get into the debate-- and we will have more hearings tomorrow--I hope we will be in a position, before we send a bill to the floor from the Environment and Public Works Committee, to analyze it.

We have called upon the EPA to give us an analysis so that we will have something and we will know more specifically, is this just a warmed-over bill that passed the House, the Waxman-Markey effort, or is this something that is different? According to the EPA, it is about the same. I suggest it is about the same as it was back in 2005, 2003, and back during the Kyoto discussion.

We will move forward. We have seen certain incontrovertible truths that have come up. One is there is no question that if something like this is passed, something like the draft form we are discussing and having hearings on right now, if this should become a reality it would be the largest tax increase in the history of America. The last large tax increase we had was in 1993. It was called the Clinton-Gore tax increase. It increased marginal rates, inheritance taxes, gasoline taxes, capital gains taxes, all the rest. We were pretty outraged at the size of that increase. That was a $32 billion tax increase.

According to all the analyses we are looking at now, this would be 10 times the size of that tax increase.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, let me say to my friend from Texas, the wake-up call is out there. People are fully aware of what is going on right now--the fact that you have a government option; you have a form of socialized medicine; you have something that has proven not to work in areas such as Canada and Great Britain and elsewhere. It is kind of interesting to me that we see those countries trying to emulate something we are doing at the same time we are edging over in their direction. I do not think that is going to work.

Mr. President, I will tell you something else I do not think is going to work. During the August recess, people were upset mostly about--because it was the most visible issue at the time--the prospect of socialized medicine for America. But at the same time, as a close second, there was another issue that was very much of concern; that is, a cap-and-trade bill.

Just to refresh your memory, this goes all the way back almost 10 years when we had the Kyoto Treaty. That was back during the Clinton administration, and we were supposed to be ratifying the Kyoto Treaty, which would have been a big, massive cap-and-trade or tax increase. In fact, the analysis of that was done by the Wharton Econometric Survey, from the Wharton School of Economics.

The question put to them was, What would it cost if we ratified the Kyoto Treaty and lived by its emissions standards? The answer was it would be somewhere between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. I always go back, when I am trying to figure out what that would mean to individual families, and I recall that the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993 was the largest tax increase in three decades, increasing marginal rates, capital gains, inheritance taxes, and all other taxes. That was a $32 billion tax increase. So that would be 10 times larger. That was the Kyoto Treaty. We did not ratify it.

Then along came the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003 and then again the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2005, and the same thing was true. Other universities' analyses came in and tried to determine what the cost would be. I remember MIT came in and did an analysis of those bills, and it was somewhere in excess of $300 billion a year. Then along came the Warner-Lieberman bill--not the current Senator Warner but the past Senator Warner--and that was essentially the same.

What I am saying is, it does not really matter whether we are talking about Waxman-Markey or what we are going to be voting on sometime in the near future, I would assume, that is going to be a form of Waxman- Markey. By the way, I say that because when several Senators were trying to get information to analyze what it is we are going to be starting to have hearings on tomorrow and then ultimately marking up, they said the bill is a lot like Waxman-Markey, so just go look at the analysis of Waxman-Markey. If you want to do that, at least we now know there is a target out there. We have something we can talk about.

While I have serious problems with EPA's analysis of Waxman-Markey and its 38-page ``meta-analysis'' of Kerry-Boxer--that is 38 pages of a 923-page bill--the latter is not entirely EPA's fault. It is a drive to ram the Kerry-Boxer bill through the legislative process before people really know what it is. Now we know what it is because it is essentially the same thing we had in the Waxman-Markey bill that went through the House of Representatives.

It is kind of interesting. This massive tax increase called the Waxman-Markey bill passed the House after very little debate because it came up--in fact, they finished it at 3 o'clock in the morning the day they voted on it, so people had not had a chance to read any of it. So it passed by 219 votes in the House of Representatives. That is barely a majority. It is one that was--interestingly enough, the last time they had a massive energy tax increase such as this, it was called the Btu tax of 1994. That passed the House by 219 votes, the same margin. Obviously, that was killed later on in the Senate, as I believe this will be.

I come to the floor now to talk about this because tomorrow we start hearings, exhaustive hearings, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. They are not going to be talking about the specifics of the bill; it will just be more propaganda. The main thing we want to do is make sure everybody knows it

is going to be a very large tax increase. It wasn't long ago that Representative John Dingell, who is a Democrat from Michigan--he said it right. He said: Cap and trade is ``a tax, and a great big tax at that.''

So we have something we know we are going to be faced with. We know we are going to have hearings. The question has to be asked: If we know there are not votes to pass it in the Senate, why are we having our hearings now? I would suggest to my colleagues we are having them because there is a big party that is going to take place in Copenhagen. Every year, the United Nations throws this party. You might ask: The United Nations? Yes, that is where it all started, the IPCC. It is going to take place in Copenhagen during the middle of December. I thought it was interesting last night when President Obama announced he probably was not going to be going to this party in Copenhagen because it didn't look as if they had the votes to pass something in the Senate.

So I would only say to get ready. We are going to have more of the same. We went through it back during Kyoto, 10 years ago, and since then with four bills on the Senate floor and we are going to be talking about it more and more.

I just came from my office. This is kind of interesting. This is a hat signed by the Young Farmers and Ranchers, which is tied to the American Farm Bureau or the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, in this case. It says: ``Don't Cap Our Future.''

When you stop and think about what would happen to the farmers--I hate to even single out farmers or any other groups because it is going to be just as punishing to the entire manufacturing base. It was interesting the other day, when we asked the question of the newly appointed Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, as to what would happen if we were to pass the bill in the Senate and it would become law, as did the Waxman-Markey bill, how much would it reduce CO2 emissions. She said: Well, it wouldn't reduce them. Because if we act unilaterally in the United States, then things happen where--this isn't where the problem is. In fact, we know we would have a massive exodus of our manufacturing base to such countries as China, Mexico, India, and others.

But nonetheless, here are the farmers who are concerned about this because, if you look at the cost of fertilizer, one of the major ingredients there is natural gas, and you look at the cost of diesel and everything else, it is very serious.

Bob Stallman, the president of the American Farm Bureau, just the other day said:

Increased input costs will put our farmers and ranchers at

a competitive disadvantage with producers in other countries

that do not have similar greenhouse gas restrictions. Any

loss of international markets or resulting loss of production

in the United States will encourage production overseas in

countries where production methods may be less effective than

in the United States.

In other words, we can do it more efficiently in the United States, but if we don't have the energy, we will not be able to do it.

So I think the farmers, of all the people who should be concerned and are concerned, the wake-up call is out there. They better be ready when they come up with allocations. The allocations will not be available to us during the next 3 days of hearings. The allocations are something that are held back in secret so they can go to different elements of the society and say: Well, you are going to have an allocation where you can be a winner. They tried this with the Wheat Growers of America early on during the Warner-Lieberman bill, and they actually endorsed the bill until they realized it was a fraud and withdrew their endorsement.

I think Senator Kit Bond said it well. They did a study in the State of Missouri, and the study found that the proposed cap-and-trade legislation will cost the average Missouri farmer an additional $11,000 a year in 2020 and more than $30,000 a year by 2050.

So let me say to Tyler and to all my friends at the Oklahoma Farm Bureau: I have your hat, and I will wear it with dignity all the way to Copenhagen to make sure this thing doesn't pass.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, today, I recognize the service LTC Michel ``Shel'' G. Jones, on the occasion of his retirement from active duty in the U.S. Army. Lieutenant Colonel Jones is an exceptional officer who has served our great Nation for more than 28 years, including 22 years on active duty and 6 years in the Iowa Army National Guard.

I have personally come to know and respect Lieutenant Colonel Jones over the 2\1/2\ years he served as an Army congressional liaison for the Army's weapons and tracked combat vehicles programs, to include the Army's Future

Combat System. His expertise and commitment were instrumental in educating Members and staff in the Senate and House on Army combat systems, modernization programs and initiatives. His tireless efforts working with Members and staff of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees were instrumental in the successful authorization and appropriation of the Abrams tank, Bradley fighting vehicle, small arms and crew-served weapons, Stryker, elements of the Future Combat System and the Paladin Integrated Management programs.

Lieutenant Colonel Jones' congressional liaison assignment was only the capstone to what is an outstanding career of service to the Army and our Nation. He served as an armor officer in numerous command and staff positions. His operational assignments began in the Mojave Desert at Fort Irwin, CA, serving as a platoon leader at the National Training Center where he trained thousands of soldiers in desert warfare. He served as commander for Alpha Company, 4th Battalion 37th Armor, Heavy, followed by command of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd of the 70th Armor Battalion with the 1st Armored Division at Fort Riley, KS. After transitioning in to the acquisition career field, Lieutenant Colonel Jones was assigned to Fort Knox, KY, as a combat development officer and as a project manager for the Army's Future Combat System, FCS, in Detroit, MI.

The strength of our soldiers comes from their families. Lieutenant Colonel Jones' strength came from his wife Dynette, and his two sons Colton and Conner. This Nation is grateful for their commitment and personal sacrifices made throughout Shel's military service. We also thank his mother Joyce, who recently passed, and his father William ``Gerry'' Jones for raising such a fine son and patriot. Shel is from a military family. His father is a retired soldier and his brother, Dr. Keith Jones, serves as a major in the National Guard. This Nation remains indebted to your service.

On behalf of the Senate and the United States of America, I commend Lieutenant Colonel Jones for his tireless efforts in the support of our Army, our military, and our Nation. As Shel and his family prepare to start a new life in the great State of Oklahoma, I congratulate him on completing an extremely successful military career and wish all of them the best in all their future endeavors.