Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to extend a warm welcome to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian Church. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will travel to Washington this week to receive the prestigious Templeton Prize, recognizing exceptional contributions to the fields of science and religion. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is widely known as the ``Green Patriarch'' for his longstanding commitment to protecting the environment. He has organized several international, interfaith summits to address some of the world's most pressing environmental problems. In his own wise words, ``We must respond in an opportune manner to protect life on earth from the worst consequences of human recklessness. May God grant us the wisdom to act promptly.'' Thank you to His All- Holiness for emphatically voicing moral urgency on the climate crisis.

I would also like to honor the many contributions of Orthodox Christians to America, with a special recognition to the parishioners of the Church of the Annunciation in Cranston, RI. Last week this parish, with Father Andrew George, Father Nicholas Lanzourakis, Charlie Samaras, Denise Panichas, and other proud parishioners, celebrated a touchstone of Rhode Island summers, the Church's 39th annual Cranston Greek Festival. Thank you for all that you have done for the Cranston community and the State of Rhode Island.

Mr. President, sailors and pilots know to look out for dangerous weather ahead. Politicians can get lost in the moment. We are on the verge of a major economic shock, but Congress is lost in the moment, not paying attention.

Well, when that economic shock hits, I want people to know how and why we failed to protect them. The shock is simple. Climate change makes property insurance unpredictable, so insurance prices soar, insurers withdraw from high-risk regions, and fake or flimsy insurance populates the market. As the insurance market goes, so goes the mortgage market, given the many linkages between insurance and mortgages.

As mortgage markets fail, property values fall since there is way less demand for real estate properties that are unmortgageable. The combination threatens a reprise of the 2008 great recession or worse. It is what economists call systemic rescue, the scariest word in the economic lexicon because it means the damage cascades throughout the entire economy, hitting everyone.

Remember 2008--everybody hurt. This cascade is pretty broadly predicted by insurers, economists, bankers, regulators, even the big, short guy who predicted the great recession. The Economist magazine has warned of a $25 trillion hit to global real estate values. Yes, I said ``trillion.'' Even climate-shy Fed Chair Powell predicted whole regions of the United States would soon go without mortgagees.

So why the big fail here? Why aren't we paying attention to the great climate insurance collapse that is looming and predicted? To understand that, you have to understand the four phases of climate denial because fossil fuel-funded climate denial is the root of the danger.

Phase one of climate denial for the fossil fuel industry was simple: Bury the evidence. Decades ago--many decades ago--scientists in the fossil fuel industry warned about climate change. Exxon, Chevron, Shell, American Petroleum Institute all got internal warnings decades ago of the danger ahead. Instead of facing up to the problem and looking for solutions, they buried the evidence and acted as if they had never been told.

Just keep it secret was phase 1.

Phase 2 was to begin actively misleading the public. Two things coincided to kick off phase 2. One was scientists outside the fossil fuel industry beginning to publicly discuss the climate dangers of fossil fuel combustion--and not just fringe scientists either but leading scientists from places like NASA. NASA is pretty good with science--you know, man on the Moon, rovers driving around Mars. Anyway, Congress perked up. Hearings were held, and what Exxon and others knew was brought out into the public daylight.

The second thing that kicked off phase 2 was a Federal court decision against the tobacco industry and its front groups for fraudulently misleading the public about the dangers of tobacco. Federal Judge Gladys Kessler--God rest her soul; she passed away 2 years ago in March--put the tobacco industry and its front groups under court order to stop the lying and knock off the fraud. No more lying? No more fraud? That decision put the tobacco industry's denial operation out of work, at least on tobacco.

But it gave fossil fuel a prefab denial operation to take over. And suddenly, a lot of people and a lot of front group who had been expert in how tobacco smoke wasn't bad for you suddenly became expert in how fossil fuel emissions wouldn't wreck the Earth's climate. So that kicked off phase 2 with public recognition of the dangers and attention of Congress. The tobacco fraud operation became the fossil fuel fraud operation--same entities, same people, same tactics.

For years, the fossil fuel industry used that operation. It actually expanded and multiplied that tobacco operation to sow false doubt about climate science and to fraudulently suggest we would all be worse off if we solved the fossil fuel emissions problem.

One sidebar here. That all seems terribly expensive. Well, yes and no. Yes, in that billions and billions of dollars were spent on the climate denial fraud operation. Just the work to capture the Supreme Court so it would be friendly to fossil fuel polluters has been estimated at roughly $600 million. And that work was just one aspect of the vast climate denial fraud operation.

On the other hand, you have to understand what the climate denial fraud operation was protecting. The fossil fuel industry floats on the biggest economic subsidy in human history thanks to its free-to-pollute business model. The value to fossil fuel interests of that subsidy from being allowed to pollute for free has been calculated by the International Monetary Fund at north of $600 billion every year--every single year, $600-plus billion worth of free pollution that we all pay for in various ways. Honest calculations of what is called the social cost of carbon pollution differ a bit, but they are all in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

So when the fossil fuel industry picked up the tobacco fraud operation and multiplied it, cost was no object. Imagine, for example, if they spent $6 billion a year on their climate fraud operation. That pays them back over $100 every year for every single dollar spent. If they spent $60 billion a year, it is a 10-to-1 payback. It makes the climate fraud operation likely the most lucrative segment of the fossil fuel industry.

So let's just say, phase 2 was robust--over 100 front groups, billions of dollars, stables of fake scientists, massive Madison Avenue propaganda campaigns, even attack goons to go after scientists and reporters. It was and is probably the biggest fraud operation in history. But a fair campaign of lies against truth, even with billions of dollars behind the lies won't guarantee a win for the lies.

So phase 2, even with all of its billions, had its limits. That brings us to phase 3, unleashed by the Citizens United decision, a truly toxic decision delivered by an all-Republican panel of five on the Supreme Court. That decision did two things. One, as a legal matter, it unleashed infinite special interest money into our political system. Two, as a practical matter, it allowed that money to be anonymous--what is called dark money--flowing into the political system through front groups that obscure the actual donor, keeping citizens in the dark about who is who in the political arena and who is behind what they are being told--basic information to accomplish the office of citizen, in this great Republic, denied to the citizens.

The fossil fuel industry sought that decision, was prepared for that decision, and moved aggressively to flood dark money into elections.

It is a whole separate speech about fossil fuel's role in that Citizens United decision. But the important thing was that they won. Dark money corruption now could buttress climate denial fraud. In the contest between truth and lies, lies now had not only billions, but an enormous new dark money thumb on the political scale.

There is a famous saying that it is hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. Thank you, Upton Sinclair. Well, right away, the Republican Party came to depend on that fossil fuel money. And, no surprise, its understanding of climate change vanished.

It wasn't always like this. It was not always like this, not on corruption, not on climate denial. Super PACs didn't even used to exist. Nondisclosing 501(c)(4)s stayed out of political elections. Entities like DonorsTrust that exist solely to launder off donor identities just were not a thing. Shadowy political front groups and shell corporations weren't even worth setting up until secret political spending could surge into the billions. That whole new corrupting, toxic political ecosystem has developed to enable dark money power. It is all new, and it all stinks.

Climate denial is the same. In the 3 years after I came to the Senate and before the toxic decision in Citizens United, big, beautiful, bipartisan Senate climate bills were common. I can think of four offhand--real ones--that would have really reduced emissions. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain ran in 2008 on a perfectly decent climate platform--no denial, no fraud. Please remember, it once was that way. Then Citizens United was decided in January of 2010, and since that day, there has not been a single serious bipartisan climate bill in the Senate--not one. The echocardiogram of bipartisan Senate climate action blipped and flatlined.

Now, for over 15 years, the combination of the fossil fuel industry's massive climate denial fraud operation and the fossil fuel industry's massive dark money political corruption operation was a deadly combination. It was lethal. Just as the fossil fuel industry intended, these crooked, semicovert operations protected its annual $600 billion- plus freedom-to-pollute subsidy, and the pollution spewed and spewed and spewed.

The legendary political wheeler-dealer Mark Hanna said:

There are two things that are important in politics. The

first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is.

Historian John Barry observed:

When you mix politics and science, you get politics. Up

against that kind of money and politics, science never stood

a chance against fossil fuel's lies.

Now we are in phase 4, the phase where an increasingly desperate fossil fuel operation switches from defense to offense--burying the evidence, running the climate denial fraud operation, and corrupting politics with dark money. All were essentially defense at all costs--at all costs. Protect that free-to-pollute $600 billion-plus annual subsidy. Phase 4 is different. Phase 4 is fossil fuel on offense, using the power of government to crush fossil fuel's clean energy competition.

Phase 4 kicked off with Trump. Fossil fuel may be an evil industry in its politics, but it is not a stupid one. It knows it is losing. It sees the clean energy cost trends. It knows free, clean fuels like the Sun and wind must inevitably win. It knows that a commodity's price set by a foreign cartel will sooner or later blow up in its face. It knows that polluting for free--contrary to moral as well as economic and environmental principles--can only be protected for so long. It knows that last year, 95 percent of new power coming onto the grid in the United States was clean power--wind, solar, and battery storage.

Fossil fuel knows its days are numbered, so it has infiltrated the Trump administration and is running the U.S. Government for its own benefit from the inside. There is a kind of wasp, a wasp that injects its larvae into another bug, and its larvae then take over the command and control systems of that unfortunate bug from the inside. The larvae drive the bug around like you or I might drive a car around except that the larvae are eating it from the inside at the same time.

That is a good image to keep in mind about the corrupt Trump regime and who is driving it. Under Trump, the Government of the United States is being driven by those fossil fuel larvae to attack cheaper, cleaner, less subsidized energy competitors who are winning against polluting fossil fuel.

There was a time when Republicans used to say: Government shouldn't pick winners and losers. Like so many vanishing Republican principles, what a laugh that one now is.

Trump asked this industry for $1 billion in campaign cash, and who knows what he got, but it was provably hundreds of millions.

The Republican Party is as dependent on fossil fuel dark money as a deep-sea diver is on his air hose. Pinch that flow just a little, and the diver will dance whatever jig he is told to dance

to get his airflow back. So Republicans dance the fossil fuel denial fraud jig. Just the highlights reel is enough to expose the rot.

Trump's energy Executive order denied that solar and wind energy were even energy, violating the very dictionary.

Republicans went to bat using the Congressional Review Act to defend the worst methane leakers--the ones that weren't even meeting their own industry standards. ``Keep leaking, guys'' was the message.

Senate Republicans even went nuclear in overruling our Parliamentarian to undo the auto emissions standards followed by much of the country--never mind the damage to the auto industry.

Trump illegally shut down nearly finished wind farms whose clean electrons would displace gas-generated electrons as soon as next year. Those clean electrons also save consumers tens of millions--less pollution, more savings. We can't have that, said Republicans. They have even undone the social cost of carbon rules, as if the pollution wasn't real, and are trying to undo the endangerment finding as if the pollution isn't a danger.

It is all a pack of lies and nonsense, but it has a purpose: Crush America's clean energy industry. It is a separate speech, what economic damage that does to America in international competition as the rest of the world moves to clean energy and we get left behind.

So where are we?

Thanks to fossil fuel's massive climate denial fraud and dark money political corruption, storm clouds loom ahead. Florida is our preview of coming attractions: an insurance market in grave distress, mortgage markets beginning to tremble, middle-class families finding it hard to sell homes. The chief economist of Freddie Mac some years ago predicted this cascade--from insurance, to mortgages, to property values, to what he then called a ``coastal property values crash'' that would hit the entire economy like the 2008 great recession.

Note that word ``coastal.'' Well, it is not just coastal anymore. ``Wildfire'' now matches ``coastal'' as an added threat that can trigger that economic cascade into collapse.

On top of that looms the long-predicted carbon bubble. What is the carbon bubble? That is when the fossil fuel industry collapses in a sudden and disorderly fashion because we were irresponsible about a gradual and reliable energy transition.

By the way, it is not coastal or wildfire or carbon bubble collapse. All three could happen, each collapse making the others faster and more deep and dangerous and painful.

Remember Hemingway's notorious line that you go broke gradually and then all at once? What could provoke this already gradual collapse to suddenly go all at once? Well, there are a lot of ways this could happen.

One is related to OPEC. Say a low-cost oil and gas producer like Saudi Arabia decides to sell fuel at cost rather than at the OPEC cartel price. When they see it is time to make the move for the exits and sell what they can while they still can--when they do that, the American fossil fuel industry rapidly collapses because our fossil fuel industry can no longer compete. It is only profitable at puffed-up OPEC cartel prices, not at the price that Saudi Arabia could bring to the market if it chose to. So instant crash.

Here is another scenario: Fannie and Freddie--the mortgage giants-- stop accepting mortgages insured by Florida's flimsy, pop-up property insurance companies, over a dozen of which have already gone bust since Hurricane Irma in 2017. It is a huge taxpayer liability for Freddie and Fannie to assume all that risk without credible insurance. Local Florida banks won't hold those mortgages because the 30-year risk to a bank is not survivable. Florida becomes a region Chairman Powell predicted, where you can't get mortgages anymore. A massive asset repricing then follows. That triggers systemic economic damage, perhaps even cascading globally, as The Economist magazine warned.

The trusty sign that I have worked with all these years, through hundreds of speeches, is ``Time to Wake Up.'' I am not sure we can save ourselves any longer. We have blown so many chances. The remaining pathway to climate safety is steep and narrowing, and the climate chasm deepens by the day. The evil forces that put us in this danger are more powerful, desperate, and malevolent than ever. The massive economic shock so many foresee could come next week, next month, or next year. It may now be too late to prevent it. It may now be too late to wake up. I hope we can pull this off, but our chances have really slimmed.

So I am here because I, for damned sure, want people to know why we got to this dangerous precipice and who is to blame. Chalk it up to a massive, semicovert operation of industrial-scale disinformation and dark money influence run against our country from within by a polluting industry fighting to pollute for free and by the politicians who enabled them for money.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, on April 9, I voted for Ms. Kramer in the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Since then, the EPA has devolved into a cesspool of fossil fuel corruption. As ranking member of EPW, in my constitutional oversight capacity, I have sent 12 oversight letters to EPA asking for documents and communications, as is my duty and my right--also several QFRs. As of July, when we went through the closing nominations exercise, I had received substantive responses to precisely zero of those 12 letters.

So prior to that August recess, we explored a deal to include Ms. Kramer in the noms package for pre-August recess action if we could get the substantive oversight responses we were due on 4--4--of the 12 topics. These were EPA's grants freeze, Administrator Zeldin's false statements about the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, EPA's plans to rescind the endangerment finding, and EPA undoing the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program at industry request.

I actually considered that to be a minor ask because it is the Administrator's constitutional duty to answer honestly to congressional oversight. Plus, he had made a promise to the chairman and to the committee at his confirmation to be responsive. Nevertheless, EPA was not willing to provide responses to these questions.

I will emphasize--this was EPA's decision, not Chair Capito's decision. She is blameless in this. It is EPA that is stonewalling congressional oversight.

So that is where we are. We actually just received QFR responses from Administrator Zeldin which persist in unresponsive and unprofessional nonanswers and no provision of documents. In fact, prevarication, insult, and invective have characterized the so-called responses.

I say to my colleagues and to the distinguished EPW chair, I don't think it is a big ask that executive branch Agencies take congressional oversight seriously.

I believe that if former EPA Administrator Regan had ever responded to Senator Capito as then-EPW ranking member in such a manner or, frankly, to any other member of the committee, then-Chairman Carper would have hit the roof.

To me, EPA is augmenting its corrupt favoritism for fossil fuel polluters with an unconstitutional rejection of congressional oversight--perhaps because there is, in fact, much to hide.

Again, honest Agency answers to a ranking member ought not to be a big ask. It ought to be the ordinary course of business. A reasonable and good-faith effort to comply should be expected.

We asked for answers to 4 of 12 letters. There is an easy answer here: that EPA follow the law and the Constitution and the Administrator's own promises. But failing that, since EPA won't, I regretfully must object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I voted for Mr. McMaster in committee. Indeed, I pushed for his inclusion in a nominations package before the August recess. And I succeeded. He was included for confirmation at that time in that package.

I had asked DOT to release its new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program guidance, and to do so timely, as consideration for supporting Mr. McMaster's inclusion in that nominations package.

But then what happened? President Trump did not agree to the package. Indeed, he rejected it, adding for good measure an all-caps blast at the Democratic leader that he should ``GO TO HELL.''

And so Mr. McMaster did not get confirmed, even though he was in the package, because of President Trump losing his temper and objecting to the whole package.

DOT, nonetheless, has released the NEVI guidance, and it is very workable for States. For that, I am thankful, and I would like to support Mr. McMaster.

Unfortunately, last Friday, DOT announced, without warning, that it was terminating nearly $700 million in grant funding for 12 port projects, including an $11.25 million grant to the Port of Davisville, in my home State of Rhode Island. I got no prior call or explanation from DOT, just--boom. Friday. Friday.

The chairman has been kind enough to raise this matter with Secretary Duffy, and I would like to sort out how this new obstacle, thrown up Friday by DOT, will be resolved.

It is a bit soon after that unexpected punch in the face to want to resolve a nomination that is only still pending and not confirmed because of President Trump's objection. I would like to work with the chairman on a date to come to the floor in support of a unanimous consent for this individual. Indeed, I would be happy to do the same thing for Ms. Kramer, because I would like to get these issues resolved. But the port hit was an unexpected and, in my view, unjustified blow.

So for the moment, while I try to understand that with the chairman's gracious help, I must object.

And if I may, I would add that there was a third candidate involved in these conversations, Mr. Telle for an Army Corps position, who was also primed to be on that nominations list with my support. Senator Hagerty, whose chief of staff he had been, made the prudent decision to put him on to the voting list and get his nomination considered on the floor that evening and get him voted through before President Trump exploded the package.

So I just want to make a record of the fact that we were ready to support Mr. Telle as well, even before that vote was called to the floor.

With that, I yield back and renew my objection.

I would just like to offer one set of figures into the record in the hopes that it helps clarify things. My office tells me that Trump nominations that have been confirmed in the Senate as of September 3 number 135. President Biden's nominations confirmed as of that same date in his first months, September 3 of 2021, was 150, not counting judicial nominations. Biden has 141, and Trump has 130.

So the numbers are actually fairly close in terms of the outcome, although the processes have been different.

But, again, I want to reemphasize my desire to work with the chairman to get these cleared. I voted for all three, and I would like to support them as soon as we can get, what seems to me to be, fairly elementary problems resolved.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Reed, and I am very cognizant of the honor of having the chance to reflect on Judge Frank Caprio, who was indeed, as Senator Reed has said, a Rhode Island legend.

Judge Caprio was Rhode Island through and through. He was born on Federal Hill, an iconic Italian-American neighborhood in Providence. He started helping his milkman father about age 10. A lot of the apartments there were three-decker tenements. Somebody had to run the milk bottles up to that third floor. An energetic 10-year-old was just the one to do it.

He went on to study in Providence's public schools and, to earn money, served as a dishwasher and a shoeshiner while he was a student.

He graduated and went on to Providence College, the first in his family of dozens of cousins to attend college. And, of course, he graduated. And then he went back to teach at Hope High School to give back to the Providence school system that had lifted him up and taught him so well.

He also served in Rhode Island's Army National Guard for years.

Eventually, he became a lawyer. It wasn't easy. He had to work. So he had to take night classes up in Boston, and Providence to Boston for night classes is a considerable effort.

He became a Providence city councilman, and, ultimately, he became chief judge of the Providence Municipal Court, chief judge for 38 years. It was there where the man found his mission, and the mission found its man and that was, while presiding over literally thousands of cases, to become an exemplar of what is right and what is decent

when somebody is coming before you having a very bad day.

He heard cases related to unpaid parking tickets and traffic violations, and he listened to everyone who came before him.

His authenticity quickly captured the hearts and minds of Rhode Islanders. His TV show from the courtroom, ``Caught in Providence,'' first became a treasure of Rhode Island Public Access TV, but then it exploded. Judge Caprio and his court officer and straight man Ziggy Quinn turned the tedium of traffic court into a beloved and enduring human spectacle, and people from around the world tuned in. People told Judge Caprio their stories of personal hardship, and he listened. Whenever he could, he gave the benefit of the doubt and offered advice and encouragement, delivered in that signature Federal Hill voice.

Sometimes there were tears of relief. Sometimes there was laughter. Some of those moments went viral online, racking up more than a billion views. People were attracted to Judge Caprio because he did not fake authenticity. He was the real deal.

The show became nationally syndicated in 2018. And when that syndication deal was announced, Judge Caprio called it ``a dream.'' It was wonderful that he could have his dream come true in his lifetime.

So the world got to witness Judge Caprio's compassion. The empathetic judge from Rhode Island became an ambassador for our capital city and for our State and for his solid, old-school values. He did it his way. And we all got to enjoy it.

At the end, stricken with pancreatic cancer, he was still giving back and still being compassionate. At the last PurpleStride pancreatic cancer walk that he attended, he and I sat next to each other for 15 minutes chatting and catching up. He was, by then, quite the celebrity. He could have hustled in and hustled back out, gone to do other things. No. He wanted to just hang out with people and be there and make sure that the entire proceedings went off well. He did not treat himself as a star, but he was one.

Judge Caprio's son David said that the Judge's parting advice to him was this:

Take care of each other. Keep the family close. And help

people if you can.

That sums it up nicely.

I offer my condolences to his wife Joyce of more than 60 years and to their five children: David, who also served in government in Rhode Island; Marissa; Frank, who also served in government in Rhode Island, was our treasurer; Paul; and John. Quite a family. It has lost its patriarch. Our hearts are with them.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed, after a very brief remark, to engage in a colloquy with Senator Schiff from California.

Just one quick point of fact into this maelstrom of faux outrage about Democratic obstruction, and that is that the proposal that has been made to the Republicans to resolve the customary August jam-up where we clear nominees would actually put President Trump ahead of the number of appointees that Republicans had allowed President Biden at this same time in his Presidency. So you can take what is being said here with a bit of a grain of salt.

I see that the Senator from Maryland has come to the floor to make his unanimous consent request, so let me yield to him since we are kind of into his time here.

But what Senator Schiff and I can both tell all of you is that it is extremely rare for even a U.S. attorney to go and do a witness statement and unusual in most circumstances even for an assistant U.S. attorney to go and do a witness statement. The reason for that is you then become a witness to what took place in that room, and you don't want to be both the prosecutor and the witness in the same case.

So the fact that he went in either alone or with no FBI agent or with no stenographer and became a witness to what took place sends off flares of concern to everybody who has served in that line of work.

With that, I yield.

Mr. President, as the ranking member on the committee of jurisdiction, I concur with the Senator's remarks. I will be voting aye on this nomination.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from the Mountain State of West Virginia to talk about permitting reform. People listening should know that we work together well, that I like her personally, and that I am grateful to her for her support of important Rhode Island projects that we have gotten cleared.

On permitting reform, there has long been bipartisan interest-- interest to speed the construction of transportation projects on housing; interest to deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy for American families.

As I have often said, the Federal Government often moves far too slowly, and permitting is a prime example of this. Projects undergoing environmental reviews are frequently stuck in limbo if just one Agency drags its feet. ``Interagency process'' is the technical term for multiagency decision-making. And interagency process is too often the enemy of effective governance, too often the executive branch refuge for incompetence, too often the executive branch shield against accountability, too often the executive branch screen of bureaucratic delay.

Permitting reform is a golden opportunity to fix this. We should make Federal permitting faster and more efficient, all while incentivizing project developers to engage with stakeholders early on in the process rather than drag it out. It currently takes far too long to build important projects in this country, and while Federal permitting is not the only bottleneck, it is frequently a major one.

In the last two decades, China has built more than 25,000 miles of high-speed rail lines, while the United States has completed zero. We can and must do better. Chair Capito and I are both ready to do our part to move permitting reform forward and, ultimately, across the finish line. We are already engaging with our colleagues in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee because those two committees have to work together to make this work. And I hope Republicans in the House are able to move to responsible legislation as soon as this fall.

But I must remind everyone again, because I have said this frequently, that it makes no sense for Democrats to agree to permitting reform until the Trump administration stops its lawless disregard for legislative authority and judicial orders. The lawlessness is rampant, and it is hurting people and communities and projects. Until the administration shows it will honor its oath to faithfully and impartially execute the laws--its constitutional oath--how can we trust that any legislative compromise on permitting reform will be executed fairly? And if we can't trust that, what is the point?

Trump has fired independent Agency commissioners, defied court orders, and threatened to weaponize the government against his perceived political enemies. His rescissions destroy bipartisan appropriations accords. The Trump administration's record on this is bad, and on energy policy, it is particularly awful.

The President declared a fake energy emergency despite record energy production in America. He defied the very dictionary by defining ``energy'' to exclude wind energy and solar energy, the fastest growing American energy sectors. He directed a halt to offshore wind permitting, even stopping work on an offshore wind project actively under construction.

Hang up your hardhats, guys; we are shutting down the project.

So if we want a permitting bill, this unconstitutional lawlessness has to end. It is raising utility bills, and it is endangering our energy supply. Just last year, 95 percent of the new energy on the grid was wind, solar, and batteries--95 percent. This lawlessness kills that growth.

And--I will add--we need offshore wind. I have a permitting reform proposal for offshore wind. With demand skyrocketing, we need clean, reliable, and domestic resources like offshore wind. Just ask the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the impartial source on grid reliability.

Our constituents are now facing higher costs on everything from groceries to homeowner's insurance, thanks to climateflation. Permitting done right will deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy and help stave off the worst economic harms of climate change.

Let's be clear: Without domestic clean energy, we are looking at a vastly more expensive future. Renewable resources have near-zero marginal cost. They drive down the cost of electricity demand. States with more renewable resources do better heading off electricity price increases than States with fewer renewables.

And without domestic clean energy, we are looking at an energy future for America driven by Chinese innovation, Chinese industry, and Chinese power.

The global future of energy is clean. We are either part of it or we are left behind. Peak demand is expected to grow by 15 percent for summer peaks and 18 percent for winter peaks over the next 10 years, raising concerns about energy shortfalls.

What would reduce the risk of shortfalls? Better permitting, bringing more renewables onto the grid, building transmission lines. Instead, we are moving backwards, in the opposite direction.

Seventy percent of transmission lines are more than 25 years old, and they are showing their age. Last year, we managed to complete all of 322 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. It is the third slowest year in the past 15 years.

Thousands of electricity generation projects are waiting to connect to the grid. As of last April, they have added to 2.6 terawatts of power stalled for grid connections and millions of engineering, construction, and manufacturing jobs also stalled in part because of our inability to build the transmission lines for those connections.

We are entering a climate economic danger zone as climate upheaval hits property insurance markets and threatens to upend mortgage markets, which count on insurance, which threatens in turn to tank property values if you can't get mortgages, which could take down our whole economy. This is the path we are now on.

The Fed Chairman testified in the Banking Committee that in the next 10 to 15 years, there will be entire regions of our country where you can't get a mortgage anymore--entire regions.

Failing to permit and build the clean, modern grid we need isn't just foolish, it is dangerous. It helps put us on a path to climate and economic disaster.

Let's stop pretending fossil fuel giveaways are energy policies. Let's stop pretending that solar and wind are not energy. Let's stop revoking funds for transmission projects that we need. Let's stop acting like the clean, modern grid we need will build itself. Instead, let's build the clean energy future that brings down costs, creates jobs, and protects our communities, with the urgency this moment demands. And let's do it, Madam Chairman, together.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today is kind of an exceptional day. It is the 60th anniversary of the Medicare and Medicaid Act, which created two of the most successful programs for families really that the world has ever seen.

It should be a moment for celebration. Unfortunately, a bad turn has been taken, and there are now attacks on Medicaid and Medicare happening right in this building.

The ``Beautiful for Billionaires Bill'' that the Republicans forced through on a purely partisan basis cuts Medicaid explicitly--$1 trillion cut to Medicaid. So folks who are on Medicaid are going to see a real danger in their lives as a result of those cuts.

You may say: Well, I am not on Medicaid. I have private insurance. I have Medicare. I am going to be fine.

Not so. When the cuts are that big, they knock essential revenue away from hospitals, away from your family doctor, away from health centers, away from nursing homes. And I don't know about all the other States, but in Rhode Island, all those institutions are struggling. These are not easy times for people who are providing healthcare in our healthcare system. When you knock $1 trillion out of their pockets-- because that is where this goes. Medicaid money doesn't go to individuals, into their pockets, it goes to their providers. If you take away that revenue from the providers, you put them at risk.

You don't have to be on Medicaid to be harmed if your nursing home closes down because it has gone broke because Medicaid funding is no longer available.

So the Medicaid cuts are right in our face, and the damage they are going to do to healthcare institutions is obvious.

What is a little bit trickier and what I am calling out here on the floor today is the sneak attack on Medicare. I could run a tape here of all the Republicans who said: Oh, we are not going to cut Medicare. Oh, Medicare is different. Oh, we are going to protect Medicare.

We heard the President say it.

It was all hogwash. It was all complete hogwash. The sneak attack is underway, and I am going to tell you how it works. It works because the ``Beautiful for Billionaires Bill'' added $3.4 trillion or more to the debt. The Republicans had to lift the debt limit by $5 trillion, so it is a big number added to the debt. When that much added debt gets dumped onto our fiscal picture, it triggers another law. It triggers a law called the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act. Our technical term for it around here is that it triggers ``sequestration.''

When you create that much added debt, when you run up deficits that badly--as the Republicans have done to fund their billionaire tax cuts--here is what happens to Medicare. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. It triggers a $45 billion cut to Medicare in 2026, and it will increase each year to about $75 billion as an annual cut to Medicare in 2034. Between 2026, next

year, and 2034, this trigger will produce $535 billion in cuts to Medicare.

They don't want you to know that. They don't want to tell you that. They would like it to just happen automatically so they don't have fingerprints on it, but their fingerprints are all over it.

So what we should be doing is passing my bill to put Medicare and Social Security on permanently sound footing as far as the actuarial eye can see by simply lifting the cap on how much of your income is subject to Social Security and Medicare contributions. Easy to do. Very simple. Very fair. It makes Social Security and Medicare solvent essentially indefinitely if my bill passes.

That is what I would like to be talking about. Instead, we have a direct attack on Medicaid; a rebound attack from those cuts on the major institutions of our American healthcare system, like our family doctors and our doctors and our nursing homes; and a sneak attack--a sneak attack--through the pay-as-you-go provisions on Medicare to the tune of over half a trillion dollars.

Mr. President, this is not a good day. I regret that we are at this sorry pass.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is probably too late to do anything about the upcoming vote. I know a little bit about how this place works, and at this point, the proverbial die is likely cast.

But what we are about to do is so wrong, so unusual, that even if these remarks will have no effect whatsoever, I feel obliged to come to the floor.

We are about to vote into high judicial office an individual who managed to engage in three separate significant episodes of prosecutorial misconduct in 6 months. That is undoubtedly a Department of Justice world record.

These were not minor episodes of prosecutorial misconduct. These were not a file missing from a Brady disclosure. These were not an inopportune word dropped in an oral argument. This was planned, deliberate, serious prosecutorial misconduct.

I will briefly describe the three episodes. The first had to do with the political desire to freeze funds that Congress had already appropriated and obligated and that even had been disbursed out to a bank as the fiscal agent for the appropriated program. But because it involved clean energy, the Trump administration wanted to claw that money back.

The time for Presidential veto had long, long, long gone. There was no Federal hold on the money. It was in a private bank. So, really, that cow had left the barn. But they were so insistent because they hate clean energy so much, they had to get this money back. The White House was demanding it, presumably.

So here is the plan that they cooked up. Emil Bove and the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, they would create a fake criminal investigation. And on the basis of that fake criminal investigation, they would go to a judge and try to get an order to freeze the funds that they were so irritated about. Remember what I just said: a fake criminal investigation. It is kind of prosecutor 101 that you don't pursue fake criminal investigations. There is prosecutor language for how you go about starting a criminal investigation. You have to have something called predication, some reason to believe that there is a crime.

But they needed a criminal investigation in order to find a way to seize the money, so they started a fake one--or at least they tried to. How did that work out? Not that well, actually, because the Chief of the Criminal Division, a career, experienced attorney said: Boss, there is no crime here. We can't do a criminal investigation if there is no evidence whatsoever of any crime.

For her pains, she was driven out of the office, forced to resign. So then they shopped it around the office: Is there anybody else willing to sign this plead in; any career attorney in the very big U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia? None. No one would sign it because it was a fake criminal investigation.

So the U.S. attorney went in on his own--that almost never happens-- to try to get the order from the fake criminal investigation. And the magistrate shot him down, said: No, no chance. And that almost never happens, because U.S. attorneys don't go into court unprepared and they want to enjoy the credibility of the local bench.

So they go through all sorts of hoops, every conceivable effort to make sure that a request for a judicial order or warrant is well- supported. Not this time. It was too important. The fake criminal investigation is completely outside of what is appropriate for a prosecutor's responsibilities.

It gets--actually, if you can believe it--worse because they had a client in this, the rather corrupt individual who now runs the Environmental Protection Agency. And they let their client run all around in the media, on the news, publicly disparaging the recipients of those funds, which included groups as ominous and dangerous as Habitat for Humanity. But to whip up an atmosphere of criminality, accusations were made about crimes--false accusations were made about crimes.

Well, it is also prosecutor 101 that you don't disparage the subject of your investigation or the subject of your prosecution. Prosecutors have all the tools in the world to make cases, to take away people's property, to take away people's liberty. Where there is a death penalty, you can take away people's lives. You play within bounds. You let your pleadings do the talking. You don't go out on talk shows and talk about the supposed subjects of a criminal investigation--even a real one--in disparaging terms. You just don't do it. It is beneath most prosecutors. Not these characters.

That was episode 1.

Episode 2 was to stop an ongoing criminal case involving an elected official so that they could dangle that case over the head of the elected official as part of a deal to get that elected official to follow administration policy on immigration enforcement. You don't do that. Again, if you are not a prosecutor, it might not seem like this is

obvious, but it is obvious. It is prosecutor 101. If you have the case, you make it. If you don't, you don't. A criminal case against an elected official is not an opportunity for ``let's make a deal.'' That is way out of bounds, but that is what they did.

A judge ended up shooting it down and saying: Look, if you are going to dismiss this thing temporarily so you can hang this thing over this guy's head, no. You have to dismiss it with prejudice--done, over, finished.

But it took a judge to step in to break that scheme of prosecutorial misconduct.

Episode 3, Trump is trying to illegally deport lots of people. He is trying to do it in the dead of night. He is trying to do it around American constitutional due process, and somebody has gone to a judge to say: Whoa. This isn't right.

So lawyers have gotten involved, and now lawyers are in court, where you are supposed to tell the truth. The lawyers for the Department of Justice--in court, supposed to tell the truth--were being lied to by Trump administration officials, denied information they needed for court by Trump administration officials.

The crowning--the crowning--blow being told by this Trump administration official--the one whom we are about to put on the bench--is that they should be ready to tell courts ``f you'' if they try to interfere with illegal deportations--and it wasn't just an ``f'' in the transcript.

These are three separate, significant episodes of prosecutorial misconduct in just 6 months. Nothing like this has ever been seen at the Department of Justice. And it is so well corroborated, it is so well documented, there is no denying it. There is no question of, is this real or not?

In the first case, that criminal chief who got run out wrote it down. She sent a letter laying out everything that had happened. She was a live witness to that episode whom the Judiciary Committee could have called to hear from to help get to the bottom of this.

If there was any doubt on the question of the false allegations of fraud and crime, the Department of Justice's own lawyers, in a later civil proceeding, conceded to the court: Yep, we are not alleging fraud here. There is nothing we are saying here about any actual fraud. Never mind all those allegations of criminality that have been made on behalf of the government by the client in this case.

So that episode was very, very well corroborated.

In the next episode, the one involving the elected mayor, you had a similar letter from the acting U.S. attorney, who resigned rather than go along with this corrupt bargain; you had Trump's own border czar, who went on television to confirm that this was, in fact, an agreement, that they had, in fact, done ``let's make a deal'' with an elected official over a pending criminal case. Your own client at that point is confirming it on live TV. A whistleblower came forward, so you had a whistleblower as well. You had triple-decker confirmation of that second episode of prosecutorial misconduct.

As to the deportations and telling prosecutors to get ready to tell courts ``f you,'' there were multiple whistleblowers and lots of corroboration from actual emails and texts at the time. You had prosecutors texting each other about that ``f you'' comment. If it had not occurred, those text exchanges would have made no sense. The first response would have been: What are you talking about? But, instead, everybody knew what was being said in the text chain because they had been in the room, they had heard him say it, and now two whistleblowers have come forward on that.

So you have multiple whistleblowers, lots of written evidence from career prosecutors, and statements by Trump officials corroborating these schemes. And what have we got? Monkey see no evil. Monkey hear no evil. Shove this guy onto the court because Trump wants it. Oh, did I mention he was Trump's criminal lawyer in the cases in which Trump was convicted of crimes?

The hearing was a shocking disgrace. I guess it turns out that nowadays, in order to get through a judicial confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, all you need to do is to remember to say ``I don't recall,'' ``That would not be appropriate for me to answer,'' or ``That information isn't public.'' You learn three answers, and you get through the hearing because the majority will never force the witness to answer an actual question.

It actually gets a little bit worse with respect to the deportation matter because there was another line of corroboration that could have been developed to prove this character's involvement in this scheme to fool the judge and ultimately to simply refuse to obey a court order. That was that, after all this nonsense went down in front of the judge--judges aren't stupid; he knew he was being had--he found probable cause of contempt of court, opening the prospect of a hearing, with evidence, into contempt of court, where witnesses would have testified, where the full email and text chains would have come into the record, where there would have been an indisputable judicial record of what took place.

Well, what became of that? It got stopped by two Trump appointees who stopped the contempt proceedings through a device called an administrative stay over the dissent and objection of the third judge, the one who was not a Trump appointee. So two Trump appointees stop a hearing into contempt of court by the Trump DOJ.

An administrative stay is supposed to last hours or days. Not too long ago, Justice Barrett chided the circuit court of appeals for an administrative stay that had lasted 2 weeks. This administrative stay that stopped the development of the evidence of this individual's misconduct has been in place for 3 months without explanation, but it was just enough time for the Trump operatives in the DOJ to shove this individual through the confirmation process, where real questions and real answers never appeared, while the place that would have gotten this with cross-examination, under oath, with consequences of perjury, was stalled by two other Trump judges. This smells like a play, like a maneuver, and we are going to continue to look into it.

I will say to my colleagues: This is not going to go away. It took me 6 years to ultimately prove that the FBI had been instructed in the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation to do only what the White House told them, no more; that they had no rules, no practical guidelines--only what the White House Counsel told them. And what the White House Counsel told them is, you may not seek or find corroborating evidence.

Then, of course, all of our colleagues on the Republican side stood up and said: Oh, look, there is no corroborating evidence.

They didn't bother to share that it had been the White House's instruction to the FBI to avoid any corroborating evidence.

It took us 6 years to dig that out. So I can be persistent, and I will tell you, this is an episode that requires persistence.

First of all, there is a bar complaint against this guy for his misconduct that the New York bar referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice. Well, as soon as we confirm him, he is out of the Department of Justice, and the OPR has no jurisdiction any longer. So I see no reason not to go back to that bar complaint and get somebody to take a look into this since a MAGA OPR is not about to look into a MAGA Department of Justice employee.

Second, there is contempt here. At some point, that administrative stay is going to be lifted, and then there will be testimony. Then there will be evidence. Then people will be subjected to cross- examination. Then the truth will come out, and I strongly suspect it is going to be highly, highly embarrassing.

Perhaps to prevent that, the Department of Justice just filed a new complaint against the judge who will hold that contempt hearing. Presumably, their argument is going to be, ah, we have now filed a complaint against that judge; therefore, he is conflicted out, and that hearing can't go forward.

This is the Department of Justice--the MAGA Department of Justice filing a complaint, perhaps even in bad faith, against a U.S. district judge to try to conflict him out from a hearing that would show contempt of court by that very Department of Justice. What a tangled web we weave.

Last, there are going to be questions asked about those two Trump judges and why the administrative stay and why for 3 months and why the amazing coincidence that those 3 months of administrative stay was the period that it took to pick up this character, shove him through the nominations process, shove him through the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee, and stuff him onto the bench without that hearing taking place. That is too much coincidence for this lawyer.

So this is not over. I strongly suspect that my colleagues will come to regret and lament their vote for this character. Bad nature is hard to make disappear.

I will end where I began the first time I came to the floor to discuss the nomination of Emil Bove to the Third Circuit, and that is the story about the snake by the side of a path, injured and broken, who was picked up by the lady who was walking along and taken to her home, where the snake was fed and cared for until he healed. Then she took him back to where she had found him, back to his home. She set him down beside the path, and he bit her.

As she was dying from the snake's venom, she said to the snake: Why did you bite me--the one who picked you up, the one who cared for you, the one who fed you, the one who brought you back here to your home area?

The snake said: You knew when you picked me up that I was a snake. This is my nature.

This man's nature will out.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.