[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8] [Senate] [Pages 11334-11336] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]CLIMATE SECURITY Mrs. BOXER. I was hoping that I could engage my friend the majority leader as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He [[Page 11335]] has entrusted me, and my colleagues have, and I do not think we should leave here without me asking you a couple of questions because I think people who were watching this debate were very confused. I wanted to make sure I ask a series of questions to my friend, and then we will all go home because it is time to go home. We expected to have a robust debate on the global warming bill and finally get this country off of fossil fuel, off of foreign oil, off of big oil. And we found that although my understanding was the majority leader had no idea about this, the Republican side, of course, forced the clerks to read the amendment, which took us 6 to 7 hours or so and took us all the way into the night; is that correct? Mr. REID. I say to my friend, I have had the good fortune to be chairman of your committee twice; one of them was a very short period of time because we were in the majority for a little while. It is a wonderful committee, and I do not know of a better committee in the whole Congress--so many important things to do and deal with. Not only is the distinguished Senator from California, who represents almost 40 million people--she is a person who is suited to be the chairman of this committee like no other committee chairman we have ever had. I know where your heart is. I have known you for 26 years. We came here in 1982 together. And this piece of legislation--you worked on it on a bipartisan basis--is a good piece of legislation. Is it perfect? The chairman acknowledged it is not a perfect bill. But I would only say to the chairman of the Committee, I do not think the American people are confused at all. I think they know what has happened. We have seen today a situation where we have read into the Record the Republican's play book; that is, they are playing political games, they are stalling, they do not want to deal with the most important issues we face in the world today--global warming. They want to wait, hoping above hope that something will happen in November and that they will be in the majority. Mrs. BOXER. Isn't it true that as a result of these dilatory tactics and slowing us down and making us waste 30 hours to proceed, to get to a motion to proceed and then doing all this, isn't it true it puts us into a terrible bind here? We know the days have to be filled with legislative work. They have stopped work to fight for the status quo. They have stopped us in our tracks on this issue. I guess what I would like to say, yes, we will go to a vote. Because the Republicans don't seem--there is a few of them over there who help us, but most of them won't help us. We may not be able to move forward on this bill. At this late time of night, I ask the majority leader to comment, and that will be the end of my questions, I know there are a lot of people out there who are still up and watching, believe me, especially a lot of people in your home State and my home State. They understand this. They understand what is happening. Eighty-nine percent of the people polled said: Do something about global warming. The faith-based groups want it. The scientists are telling us this is right. Tomorrow or I should say later today, we will have an amazing press conference with John Warner, myself and others, with former military people testifying to the fact that global warming is one of the looming threats to our national security. Still, the other side would stop us from getting to energy independence, stopping us from getting off foreign oil, stopping us from getting off big oil and using these ludicrous arguments about gas prices when, under George Bush's watch and their watch, gas prices went up 250 percent in 7 years and, in less than 1 year, 82 cents. It is ridiculous. I hope the people hearing us tonight will pick up their phones and call their Senators first thing in the later hours of the morning and tell them to vote yes to allow this debate to move forward. I thank my leaders, my majority leader and the assistant majority leader, for their courage in scheduling this, for standing up for the American people, and for doing everything they could to get us to a full debate. If we don't have it now, we will have it when we have a President in the White House--and you know where I come down on that one--who is going to send over a bill here, and we will get started on this work and get it done. I guess, because I have to ask the question, I will ask you, my friend, if you look forward to that day. Mr. REID. I say to my friend, if not now, when? If not now, when are we going to debate this most important issue? I feel very good that this committee, led by Senator Boxer, was able to report out of that committee, under the most trying circumstances, because of the courage of one Republican by the name of John Warner of Virginia, was able to get enough votes to put this bill on the floor. I go to the playbook of the Republicans on this. Listen to this: The focus is much more on making political points than amending the bill. I didn't make this up. That is what they said. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader. Mr. DURBIN. Because it is after midnight and the staff has gone through so much today reading this bill, I will make my comments brief. It is hard to believe how much time we wasted today when we could have been considering the global warming bill and passing and considering important amendments. Now we find ourselves past midnight, after wasting hour after hour, when the Republican minority asked the amendment be read, every word of it read into the record, when that was totally unnecessary, an amendment which was available to us days ago, at least in summary form weeks ago, a total waste of time. It is a continued effort by the Republican side of the aisle to slow down and stop any effort to make progress on legislation people care about across America. It is all their party has left. GOP stands for graveyard of progress. They don't want us to do anything. Today they wasted an entire day of the Senate. I will close by saying, what troubles me the most is that the Republican minority leader would come to the floor with this sense of urgency about three district court Federal judges, a sense of urgency, yet does not share that same sense of urgency about the global warming that is changing the world we live in. The world will little note nor long remember those three judges, as good as they may be individually, but it will remember that we wasted an entire day and perhaps wasted our best efforts this session to take up the single most important issue for the survival of the planet. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama. Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will add my thoughts that it is an important issue for us to deal with, global warming, and energy security and elimination of pollution and a healthy economy not being damaged by excessive imports of oil or high prices of oil. We wish to deal with that. This bill is a tremendously large bill that dwarfs the prior Clean Air Act of 1990 in significance. I wish to say what happened tonight was the majority leader, utilizing the power of his recognition, has now filled the tree and not one amendment can be offered, as I understand the procedures, he does not agree to. When we did the Clean Air Act, some 200 or more amendments were offered, 5 weeks was spent on it, and 130 amendments, as I recall, were disposed of in some fashion. So we have this tremendous bill we want to talk about. I would suggest it is as plain as day that as people learn more about it, they are going to be even more concerned than they are today and less supportive of it and hostile to it. That is why it looks to me like an effort is under way to put the Republican Members who would like to offer amendments and discuss the bill in a position where they have no realistic possibility to do so in a meaningful way. This will end with a whimper. The bill can be withdrawn because the majority does not want to stay on it because they can't defend the massive nature of it, the incredible intervention into the [[Page 11336]] economy by Washington bureaucracies that will be created, the trillions of dollars that will have to be raised through this cap and trade, which is nothing more than a way to tax carbon. I wish to protest a moment. We know what is happening. Anybody who is sophisticated here knows this bill is not going to pass. It is losing what support it had. An effort is underway by the Democratic majority to figure a way to pull the bill and then blame the Republicans because we want to talk about it, and we want to entertain a discussion about it. We wish to offer amendments to make it better. That is the truth. It disturbs me a little bit to hear the comments that have been made earlier. I know we have had a long day. But I wish to make clear this is not an itty-bitty issue. This is a tremendous issue of great importance, both to the world, our economy, and to the environment. We need to do better. We can do better. I hope maybe in the morning things will be in a better posture. I don't think, with regard to the cap-and- trade bill, that the majority is going to want to see it go forward. That indicates a lack of confidence in their own legislation. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader. Mr. DURBIN. The record speaks for itself. First, the Republicans insisted on the entire 30 hours, that the 30 hours be set aside for general debate on the bill before we could reach an amendment. We gave them their 30 hours for general debate and asked them during that period of time to produce the list of amendments that they wanted to consider on the bill. We gave them a list of amendments we would start with. The first was a bipartisan amendment, Senators Biden and Lugar. When we asked them for amendments to the bill, once again, they failed to produce the list. It was very clear what was going on. Then they proceeded, unfortunately, to tax the energy and stamina of the staff by having them read every word of the bill into the record, a complete waste of time. First, we burned off 30 hours in general debate with no amendments being produced by the Republican side. Then they came to the floor and took another 5 or 6 hours, maybe more, for the staff to read this into the record. This was not a good-faith effort in amending the bill or even debating the bill. That, unfortunately, is a reflection of what we have seen over and over and over, a record number of filibusters, a record number of Republican attempts to stop or slow down the debate on pending legislation. It is because, of course, they don't want us to see us enact legislation. They don't want to see us address the issues of the day. They are hoping this Congress will be as unproductive as the last Republican Congress. We are not going to let that happen. We are still going to fight for important legislation. On this particular bill, on a global warming bill, we will have another vote. But if it goes down, if it doesn't move forward, it is because the Republicans are following their strategy that has been read into the Record, a strategy which focuses, as they say, ``much more on making political points than amending the bill.'' That is their strategy. It has been made a part of the Record. It is very clear what has happened. ____________________