Ron Johnson

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would like to make two points.

First of all, the law that is at stake here that we are discussing is the Impoundment Control Act--surprisingly, very poorly written.

The good Senator from Oregon said that the Government Accountability Office--the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office--believes that pocket rescissions are illegal. Well, the fact is that is a reversal of their previous position. Every President since President Ford believed he had--or she had--that ability to do a pocket rescission.

So, again, it shouldn't surprise anybody that Congress wrote an awful law that is hard to interpret. It will probably all have to be sorted out by the Supreme Court.

The modification that the Senator from Oregon is proposing certainly wouldn't fix it. It certainly wouldn't clarify it. If anything, it would probably even make it more murky. So that is one reason to object to this unanimous consent request.

The other reason--this is probably the more important one--is this is a pretty small pocket rescission. Personally, I wish it was a lot larger. This storied Chamber--``Chambers'' includes the House--has allowed this country to accumulate $40 trillion in debt with no end in sight.

Over the course of the next 10 years, the total estimate of additional deficits and added debt is $26 trillion. So I personally am glad--I don't care who the President is, out of what party. I will generally support that President reducing spending, and I would applaud it.

So I am happy to allow the President to do pocket rescissions, other types of rescissions--whatever it takes--because Congress is certainly not fiscally responsible.

But, in particular, this $810 million--that is what we are talking about, $810 million. That is not even pocket change in our budget. Seventy percent of it is for funding in HHS's Refugee and Entrant Assistance Program.

Now, the reason we can rescind that money is because President Trump secured the border. Under the Biden administration, they threw the border wide open, creating a clear and present danger to this Nation and also a clear and present danger to unaccompanied children.

The Biden administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of children who were probably sold into involuntary servitude, sex slavery. That is what the Biden administration did with the help and abetting of the Democrat Members of Congress.

So 70 percent of the $810 million--$567 million--is simply money we don't have to spend to try and handle unaccompanied children that the Biden administration lost track of and probably got sold into horrific situations. That money doesn't have to be spent, and it shouldn't be spent.

And I am glad that President Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought have recognized that and will do a pocket rescission so we don't spend it. We can't afford it.

So those are the reasons that I am happy to object to this unanimous consent request.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, my fine State of Wisconsin has a gray wolf population problem, but that was not always the case. Back in the eighties and nineties, we had the opposite problem. We had an endangered wolf population, as probably most of the lower 48 States did. So back in 1978, under the Endangered Species Act, the gray wolf was listed as one of those endangered species.

The good news is, it worked. You can see from the chart here--that starts in 1980 to about the year 1999--our wolf population slowly started coming back, to the point that in 1999, the Wisconsin DNR agreed that once we hit 250 gray wolves in Wisconsin, that would be the point at which we could delist the gray wolf as no longer an endangered species.

We didn't delist them. The population continued to grow and grow, and unfortunately, as much as we all value a healthy and sustainable gray wolf population, there is a point at which it gets too large and it starts threatening livestock, starts threatening people.

I think the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that fact, and so in 2007, the gray wolf was actually delisted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The problem is, in 2008, it was relisted by a Federal court here in DC. So in 2009, we took action once again. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf. That same year, that same court relisted it. Three years later--again, looking at the science, looking at the growing population--in 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted it. Three years later, the same DC court relisted it. In 2021, again, you can start seeing the explosion, quite honestly, in population. Our Wisconsin DNA states that about 1,250 is really the most population of gray wolf that the State can sustain. We had already hit that level, so U.S. Fish and Wildlife delisted it again, only to be overturned in 2022 by a Federal court decision in California this time, not DC.

Why is this a problem? We get report after report of families, farmers in Wisconsin who are bearing the burden of this back-and-forth, of the fact that the gray wolf is protected and the populations are really at the maximum level right now.

It is threatening livestock. I mean, throughout Wisconsin, wolves are killing cows, horses, goats, sheep, cats, dogs. We have a sheep farm in Wisconsin, and a multigeneration herd of sheep was all wiped out except for one sheep, in one night. In Price County, a dairy farmer had to sell his entire herd because the wolves kept killing his cows. Wisconsinites have to carry firearms just to walk their dogs. A Wood County resident was forced to drive their children to school because the bus route changed because wolf tracks were there at the bus stop.

So, Mr. President, you know, I am just asking what makes sense when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has--one, two, three, four, five-- four times taken the gray wolves off the endangered species list, which, again, we all agreed was required. We should have all agreed it was successful. We are way past the delisting baseline established by the Wisconsin DNR. We are at the maximum sustainable limit here.

I am asking consent to pass a bill that would simply delist them so that Wisconsin farmers, Wisconsin families, and Wisconsin children can feel safe in their residences, in walking about their properties.

So, Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration of S. 1306 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table

Mr. President, I only stand to point out that Wisconsin DNR is not exactly an organization that is not willing to protect wildlife. It certainly is. It set the delisting baseline at 250. We are at five times that level.

From my standpoint, whether this legislation affects other States-- this ought to be looked at State by State and allow States to decide that. Wisconsin would certainly like this delisted, and it is just regrettable that my unanimous consent request was objected to.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I guess today is my day to refute the Democrats' false assertions and claims.

Earlier today, when chairing the Budget Committee hearing and Democrats falsely accused the Republicans of cutting and slashing Medicaid, I repeatedly had to remind them that the year that ObamaCare kicked in, in 2014--the first year of Medicaid expansion--we spent $300 billion on Medicaid. Five years later, which was the year before the pandemic, in 2019, we spent $400 billion on Medicaid. This last year, we spent $668 billion on Medicaid. Medicaid spending is up 10 percent, year on year, and we will probably spend about $735 billion. That is more than double the amount we spent the year that Medicaid expansion kicked in.

They apparently didn't like my correcting the record and refuting their false assertions; so they complained in the Budget Committee hearing that I was turning the committee into a debate society. Well, I don't know. I thought this was supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body.

So now I have come to the floor to rebut, once again, the false claims of the Senator from Rhode Island. He said he is making two true assertions here: that climate events are worsening because of climate change.

First of all, I will state that I am not a climate change denier. The climate has always changed, and it always will. The last time I was objecting to one of his false assertions--again, to one of his resolutions--I pointed to the Vostok ice core sample, which were four or five distinct cycles over 440,000 years of 22.7 degrees Fahrenheit variation. Yes. So climate has always changed. The question is, To what extent does mankind cause it? But the assertion that these climate events like hurricanes or wildfires are being driven to greater extremes because of climate change is just false. I mean, there is reputable science that completely debunks those claims.

The Senator from Rhode Island talked about billions of dollars' worth of property damage. Well, when you build multimillion-dollar homes right on the coast of hurricane regions, you are going to have higher dollar losses with normal hurricane activity. When you are as sloppy as California is at wildfire mitigation--there is an excellent article written by Representative McClintock, from California, saying that, back in the 1800s, I think it was like 2\1/2\ million acres of California that routinely burned, but through proper mitigation efforts, they reduced that to, I think, 250,000 acres per year; but then they stopped doing them under Democrat governance, and they are back up to over, you know, millions of acres burning a year. That is not because of climate change; that is just because of bad Democrat governance, bad Democrat policies. So that is the first assertion.

The second assertion is easy to rebut, which is that we are not funding the National Weather Service.

I mean, again, here are the figures. I know they don't like facts, and they don't like figures, but here are the facts: In 2014, the budget for the National Weather Service was $1.34 billion. The next year--again, when Joe Biden was President still for fiscal year 2025-- he did only increase it by 0.7, but it increased to $1.35 billion. In fiscal year 2026, it is up 8 percent to $1.46 billion. In the House, I think the President's budget calls for the fiscal 2027 spending of $1.6 billion. That will be a 9.5-percent increase.

So, again, we are not cutting or slashing Medicaid. We are not cutting or slashing the National Weather Service. Both claims in this resolution are false.

I also have to quote Secretary Chris Wright: ``We are in the midst of the greatest malinvestment in human history''--$10 trillion on a global basis has been invested nominally on fighting climate change. What do you get for $10 trillion? Well, to be very specific on energy sources, you get solar up to 1.2 percent of global energy and wind at 1.4.

As a quick aside, in 1973, global oil, gas, and coal energy consumption was 84 percent. In 2024, it was 83 percent. We spent $10 trillion on all of this renewable energy, and the mix hasn't changed at all.

And we certainly haven't satisfied the Chicken Littles claiming disaster. I have actually got a long list of these experts.

By the way, I think last week in Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, we tried to get answers out of one of these experts, Dr. Fauci, who directed our miserably failed response to COVID. He won't answer my questions.

But I have got a long list of these experts going back to the seventies, you know. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated: Civilization will end in 15 to 30 years unless immediate action was taken.

Let's go up to climate change, 1980, ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted the world would be 4 degrees colder--colder--in 1990 and 11 degrees colder in 2000. That didn't happen.

No, this then started--this global cooling, right? That was the fearmongering. Then it was global warming. Then when they couldn't decide, they just turned it into generic climate change.

In 1989, Noel Brown, a U.N. environmental official, said entire nations would be wiped off the Earth if rising sea levels from global warming were not reversed by the year 2000. It is 26 years later; I haven't seen these entire nations wiped off the Earth.

In 2007, head of the U.N. climate panel claimed it would be too late unless drastic actions were taken by 2012, and that is 14 years ago.

In 2004, a Pentagon climate change report said Britain will be Siberian in 2020. Didn't happen.

In 2008, Al Gore cited a claim from another climate researcher that the North Pole may be ice free by 2013.

Again, there are literally dozens of these Chicken Little scaremongering claims. Just not buying them.

These resolutions aren't harmful. There is a point to them. They are trying to lay a documentary record to promote more of this malinvestment--$10 trillion. Just think of what we could have done with $10 trillion that we just frittered away on climate change alarmists.

So, Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am down here now for the third time with a smile on my face. This is humorous. It would be humorous if it weren't so tragic.

The good Senator from Rhode Island, when he was chairing the Budget Committee, held hearing after hearing about these enormous costs caused by manmade climate change. But what he refuses to acknowledge is the fact that the reaction of the scaremongering, of this alarmism, has been that somewhere between $6 to $10 trillion is what we have spent globally trying to hold back the tides--$6 trillion to $10 trillion. The costs he is talking about pale in comparison to that massive--the largest malinvestment in human history.

So make no mistakes. The simple resolution--by the way, I don't deny climate change. Climate change is real. It has always changed; it always will. The debate is to what extent does man cause it, and I would argue that an even greater debate would be: What can we do about it?

I mean, he is down here, again, scaremongering and--in an alarmist fashion--obviously acknowledging that the $6 trillion to $10 trillion we have already wasted in this greatest malinvestment in human history hasn't even made a dent.

But I want to point out--I am glad he talked about measurements, about science, about a long dataset. Here is a long dataset. These are charts of the Vostok ice core sample. This is about 400-some-thousand years of climate history. I don't know how they do it, but they know how to measure different gas percentages in the atmosphere. They can calculate temperature going back actually more than 800,000 years. This one is 400,000.

The most famous dataset from this occurred in 1999--Petit, et al.

But as you can see--this is in Celsius. But these--it is hard to call them cycles, but we will call them cycles of temperature variation. We have had one, two, three, four of them in 400,000 years. They are approximately 100,000-year cycles. Almost a 23-degree Fahrenheit change in temperature.

Now, what the Senator from Rhode Island is all concerned about is a little moment in time here. Take a look at charts and blowing them up and doing the hockey stick effect and then freaking out about little, minute movements over geologic time.

Now--then he--then he--and all the climate alarmists do this, they blame it on us, fossil fuels. We weren't burning fossil fuels 400,000 years ago. Somehow, temperatures rose and temperatures declined four times over 400,000 years, almost 23 degrees.

That is why I am not freaked out about this. That is why I am not a Chicken Little. That is why I oppose this simple resolution that has all kinds of ideas behind it, all kinds of policy implications, all kinds of new proposed malinvestment, trillions of dollars' worth to try and hold back the tide.

You see this red line underneath here. Not only do they measure temperature over time, they measure CO2 levels over time. There is no doubt about it, it tracks very closely with temperature. Within that dataset of Petit, et al., not very well publicized, kind of understated, they say, well, this doesn't really mean anything is the fact that CO2 isn't the leading indicator; it is the lagging indicator.

First, temperature rises or falls, and then CO2 either rises or falls. There is approximately about an 800- to 1,000-year lag.

So again, they try and--you know, the climate alarmists try and put this--oh, look, the CO2 is up causing temperatures--no. Temperatures rose and then CO2 rose.

And there is actually a pretty easy explanation for it. Most CO2--CO2 is a trace element in our atmosphere, a trace element--not even a percent, a fraction of a percent.

Most CO2 on Earth is locked up in our oceans. So as the temperature rises probably because of solar activity, wobble in our axis, these macrotrends that actually cause climate change, the massive--the majority of climate change, as those factors cause temperatures to rise, temperatures of the ocean rise releasing CO2 and then CO2 raises. It is not the other way around.

It is not: CO2 went up causing temperature to increase. Temperature increased to cause CO2 to rise. These are measurements. This is science. This is a very long dataset. It just shows why--again, I don't know exactly to what extent man certainly can impact the environment. We all want a clean environment.

But the extent that man has caused climate change, obviously we weren't around back here to cause this climate change. Something else was doing it.

So again, I just don't freak out about it, and I certainly am not going to subscribe to any resolution that would cause policy here to spend trillions--misspend, waste, trillions of dollars on a fool's errand trying to hold back the tides.

Therefore, I object.