congressional_record: CREC-2025-02-26-pt1-PgS1367-3
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| CREC-2025-02-26-pt1-PgS1367-3 | 2025-02-26 | 119 | 1 | LEGISLATIVE SESSION | SENATE | SENATE | SLEGISLATIVE | S1367 | S1383 | [{"name": "Tim Kaine", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Martin Heinrich", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Mark R. Warner", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "John Hoeven", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "James Lankford", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Deb Fischer", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "James C. Justice", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Mike Lee", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Lisa Murkowski", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Jeanne Shaheen", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Sheldon Whitehouse", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Richard Blumenthal", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "John W. Hickenlooper", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Chris Van Hollen", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Richard J. Durbin", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Mark Kelly", "role": "speaking"}] | [{"congress": "119", "type": "SJRES", "number": "10"}, {"congress": "119", "type": "SJRES", "number": "10"}, {"congress": "119", "type": "S", "number": "750"}] | 171 Cong. Rec. S1367 | Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 38 (Wednesday, February 26, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 38 (Wednesday, February 26, 2025)] [Senate] [Pages S1367-S1383] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] LEGISLATIVE SESSION ______ TERMINATING THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED WITH RESPECT TO ENERGY The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now resume legislative session. The Senator from Virginia. S.J. Res. 10 Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that will take place, during today, about S.J. Res. 10, which is a resolution that my colleague Senator Heinrich and I have filed to challenge President Trump's day-one declaration of a U.S. energy emergency. And you will hear from a number of our colleagues today, expressing the basic point that the declaration is a sham. There is, in fact, no emergency, but it has been declared so as to gut various environmental laws passed by Congress, still part of U.S. statutory law, in order to advantage certain kinds of energy--i.e., oil, gas, and coal--and punish other forms of energy--wind, solar, et cetera. I am very, very happy to have the support of my colleague Senator Heinrich, who is the energy expert on the Democratic side in this body, and very, very happy to have so many colleagues who will be speaking on this matter today on the Senate floor. President Trump took a number of actions on his first day in office, and many of them got a lot of attention. One that didn't get so much attention was his decision, on day one--on day one--to declare that the United States was in an energy emergency and, therefore, we needed to bypass environmental laws. I want to dig into the sham nature of the emergency declaration and then explore why President Trump actually has done this, and, finally, conclude with a request to my colleagues that the article I branch should not just roll over and play dead when a President [[Page S1368]] declares an emergency that does not actually exist. So let's first talk about the claim that President Trump has raised that the United States is in an energy emergency. This is a chart that shows U.S. energy production from 1950 until essentially today. The chart goes through about 2023 and does not include the 2024 numbers. But I am proud to stand here and tell you, especially as one who has supported many of the policies that have led to this growth in American energy, that America is producing more energy today than at any point in the history of this Nation. America is the leader in the world in energy production, and for the last few years, we have been an energy surplus nation, producing more than we consume. You will see that the chart includes different kinds of energy--oil, gas, coal, renewable--but the direction of the chart shows steady increase in production. Let's go into the kinds of energy we are talking about here. In 2024, America produced more natural gas than at any time in the history of this country. In 2024, America produced more petroleum than at any time in the history of this country. And in 2024, America deployed more renewable energy than at any time in the history of this country. In fact, in 2024, more than 90 percent of the energy added to the Nation's energy grid was from renewable sources--wind, solar, and battery storage. The United States, recently, in the past few years became--there may be a technical term for this, but I call it an energy surplus nation. We produce more than we consume. That moment happened in 2019, when our production started to outpace consumption. In every year since 2019, that surplus has grown, and the surplus in 2024 was at record levels. And it is a good thing to produce significantly more than we consume. Why is it a good thing? Because we are able to sell energy to others, reducing our trade deficit. I participated with Senators in lifting the ban on export of crude petroleum a few years ago, and that plus exports of liquid natural gas have helped us with our trade deficit. But more directly related to this moment in time, the export of American energy has also helped us help other nations that are reliant on energy from petrol dictators. The nations in Europe that had to rely on Vladimir Putin, nations in other parts of the world that have had to rely on Iran or Venezuela, now, increasingly, are able to access U.S. energy. I was in Finland over the weekend, visiting Virginia Guard troops exercising with the Finnish Army. Finland is importing liquid natural gas from the United States and using it for their own energy needs and also for the energy needs of other European nations. So where is the emergency? More oil than ever, more natural gas than ever, more renewables than ever, and a record surplus of production over consumption. Where is the emergency? The emergency is not in the energy sector. The emergency is Donald Trump self-creating an emergency, because Donald Trump in other actions taken in the first week of his administration has gone full tilt to challenge energy projects that are creating jobs and lowering prices all across this country. Donald Trump and his administration are attacking wind projects. They are attacking solar projects. They are attacking clean energy projects that aren't oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. And by doing so, they are reducing supply and likely raising prices on American consumers. There are a number of projects in Virginia, as an example, that have benefited from tax breaks that were included either in the Inflation Reduction Act, for clean energy projects, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, for rollout of electric vehicle charging, for example. President Trump's administration has attacked those projects, has put them on hold, and the Virginians who were intending to invest billions of dollars hiring people to build these projects are now uncertain about what they can do. Why would a President declare an energy emergency and then attack homegrown clean energy projects in my State and elsewhere? And that is exactly what President Trump is doing. Why would he do that? Well, we don't have to speculate about the answer. We know the answer. In the summer of 2024, President Trump held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with the CEOs of major oil and gas companies, and they reported upon the substance of that meeting. And here is a headline from the Guardian, and other publications carried the same news: ``Trump promised to scrap climate laws if U.S. oil bosses donated $1 billion'' to his campaign. One of the oil executives at the meeting quoted Donald Trump saying: ``You'll get it on the first day.'' Oil and gas will get preferential treatment on the first day, with end runs around environmental laws passed by Congress that are still part of the statutes we take an oath to implement in our jobs. And, in fact, the oil and gas guys did get it on the first day. What did the Trump fake energy emergency deliver to those he had promised to support? Here is what was delivered in the emergency order. The President said: There is an emergency, and so we need to bypass laws passed by Congress. We need to bypass the Clean Air Act. We need to bypass the Clean Water Act. We need to bypass the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act. Because of this fake emergency that he has created out of thin air, we need to take all of these laws that Congress has passed--many of which have been in statute, like the Clean Water Act, for more than 50 years--and we need to give energy producers and transmitters the ability to bypass these laws in order to produce and transmit energy. It is interesting, though. When you read the Executive order, it talks about energy production, but you have to go to the last section of the order to read what ``energy'' means. And President Trump is calling for a national emergency and bypassing all of these laws, if you want to produce using oil or gas or coal or nuclear or hydro, but not for wind, not for solar, not for clean battery storage. If your homegrown American low-cost energy is wind, solar, and battery storage, you don't get to bypass environmental laws. You have to comply with the letter of the law as Congress intends. We are only giving a break to the guys who supported Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry. Donald Trump is so willing to give away the farm to Big Oil and Gas that he even, in the first provision in the emergency order, said: We also need to bypass property rights. He encouraged Federal Agencies to make aggressive use of eminent domain to produce fossil fuel energy. Those watching understand what this means. Eminent domain is the government taking the land from private property owners, and there is a set of rules in the Federal Code about when you can use eminent domain for energy projects, but Donald Trump has said: You know what, if you want to do oil, coal, and gas, you don't have to follow the rules. You can even take people's private property by bypassing the rules for oil, gas, and coal--but, of course, not for wind and solar, not for wind, solar, and battery, the clean energy that has been 95 percent of the power added to the grid just last year. So we know what the game is. ``You'll get it on the first day,'' Big Oil, and they did. And Donald Trump is now giving them an E-ZPass lane to speed by clean energy projects that are lower cost and cleaner because he told them he would do it if they supported his campaign. This is no emergency. It was declared for a corrupt purpose, and it is an unacceptable effort to undermine laws passed by the article I branch. And so I am on the floor with my colleague Senator Heinrich-- and I am going to yield to him in a second--to just ask Congress: Be Congress. Be the article I branch. If a President can just stand up and make up an emergency and then gut laws that Congress passed, what is to stop President Trump from making up another emergency and gutting other laws? What is to stop any President, Republican or Democrat, from fabricating a complete emergency and using it to gut laws that Congress has passed? You know, if President Trump doesn't like the Clean Water Act--I happen to like it. I don't think it is perfect. But the Clean Water Act has [[Page S1369]] helped us to restore the James River in the city of Richmond, where I live, which won an international river prize a couple years ago as the most improved river in the United States. A river that was a sewer, that was closed off to fishing for 50 years, now has fishing, swimming, rafting, kayaking, bald eagles that had been extinct along the river because of chemicals now breeding in one of the most dense population of bald eagles in the United States. I like the Clean Water Act. I think it served a valuable purpose for 50-plus years, but maybe President Trump, who was elected, has decided that the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act or property rights protections have outlived their usefulness. And if he has decided that these laws have outlived their usefulness, well, he has got two Republican Houses. He can introduce a bill to repeal the Clean Air Act or repeal the Clean Water Act. That would be the right way to do this, not invent a bogus fake emergency and unilaterally gut these laws. But the President has got a problem. If he introduced the bill to repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, not even Republicans--some Republicans would--but not even Republicans would support it. In two Republican Houses, he would have zero luck in repealing these laws that have protected the public health and the environment. So his attitude is, Wow, I could benefit my Big Oil cronies by repealing these laws, but that is a nonstarter in the article I branch. So why don't I kick the article I branch to the side, create a fake emergency, end-run them, and that is how I benefit my cronies. Congress should stand up against this and vote for S.J. Res. 10 because it is the right policy, and we shouldn't gut these provisions, except by doing it in the course of ordinary legislative business, should that be the will of the appropriate majority of both bodies. That would be the way to do this. So I am asking my colleagues to stand up and support S.J. Res. 10. This would be horrible policy. But more than a horrible policy on these laws, it would also set a horrible precedent, a precedent that a President of either party can invent a sham emergency and then grab away from Congress powers that Congress has under article I. Let's not be sheep in this place. Let's not have this be the ``Silence of the Lambs,'' just doing whatever Donald Trump says he wants to do, with the article I branch not saying or mumbling a word, not willing to issue a peep, not showing a backbone, not showing a voice. We have got a backbone; we have got a voice; but more importantly, we took an oath to a Constitution that gives Congress certain powers. We should not let the President trample on those powers. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sheehy). The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Virginia for bringing this resolution to the floor. And it was a little less than a year ago, I met with workers at several manufacturing facilities in New Mexico. These are the workers who are making the solar and wind technologies that are generating record quantities of clean, affordable, American-made energy. And at a groundbreaking ceremony for Array Technologies, at their factory in Albuquerque, I met with over a dozen New Mexicans, and they told me about the impact of our investments on their lives, their abilities to support their families. I talked with folks like Ramon Romero, who joined Array Technologies as an entry-level machinist, worked his way up to have a career as a production manager. I met with Daniel Beltran, who explained how Array's expansion has created new job opportunities for himself and many others in his community. He told me that the company's growth has been ``life- changing'' for him. And I met with Ray Muddaluri, who spoke about how significant a role Array has played in supporting her growth as a young professional and her ability to serve her community. Here is what every one of those New Mexicans had in common: They were able to create better lives for themselves, better lives for their families, because of the jobs that were available for them. This is what I mean when I say these industries, these clean industries, are creating careers that New Mexicans and other Americans can build their families around in their home communities. And thanks to the investments that Democrats made in the last few years, we have seen record growth in new American manufacturing facilities. More than 400,000 new jobs have been announced across the country as a part of this ``Made in America'' clean and affordable energy manufacturing boom. In New Mexico, we celebrated the first wind towers coming off the line at Arcosa Wind Towers, a new factory in Belen. It was a shuttered plastics factory. And now Arcosa's workers are creating the huge steel towers. They are heading straight to the SunZia Wind and Transmission Project, a 3\1/2\ gigawatt project. That project, SunZia, brought in more than $20 billion to States like New Mexico and Arizona in capital. And when it comes online, it is going to generate more clean power with its wind turbines than the Hoover Dam. It is the largest ever built clean energy project in the Western Hemisphere. America is actually building big things again. So these projects have enormous scope. But our affordable, American-made energy boom is already under threat because of the uncertainty that President Trump has foisted on the energy sector. And if you are thinking about opening a new factory, like Array or Arcosa did in my State, you don't know what your tax structure will be after the Republicans take up their Trump tax bill. If you are trying to site and build a new transmission line, the Federal Agencies and the staff that you work with just had their expert staff sacked, making it hard to get a permit when no one is on the other end of the phone. And thanks to Trump's so-called national energy emergency, many of the lowest cost, 100-percent clean additions to our grid can't get permits. Make no mistake, Americans' electric bills are going to go up. I am going to say that again: Americans' electric bills are going to go up because Trump and his loyal Republicans are picking winners and losers on the power grid. That is why I am joining my friend and colleague Senator Kaine to force a vote to put an end to all of this before any more damage is done. And I want to be clear about something, and certainly Senator Kaine raised this point, but America is the world's leading energy producer. And before Trump injected all of this uncertainty, our country was producing record quantities of both conventional and clean advanced energy. There is no energy emergency. It was made up to skirt the law. It was made up to favor some sources and not others. But if Trump gets his way, his faux declaration may very well create a real emergency, an energy emergency and an economic emergency. I also want to be clear to my colleagues across the aisle that this clean energy phenomenon has created 400,000 jobs around the country. But most of them--most of them--are in Republican-led States. This is not a red States or a blue States issue. This is about good-paying, blue-collar, skilled jobs in all of our States. So what is at risk because of all of this? Let's take a look. In North Carolina, there is a new nearly $13 billion--with a ``b''--$13 billion Toyota battery plant, which will employ 5,000 workers. Where are we getting our batteries now? We are getting them from China. This is progress. This is putting Americans to work to make batteries here. In Louisiana, First Solar announced a billion dollars for a new solar energy project that is projected to create 700 new jobs, making that technology here, not being dependent on China. In Kentucky, Ford is building a new battery plant, which will employ another 5,000 workers and manufacture batteries here instead of China. In Georgia, an estimated billion dollars in projects to modernize the power grid--and our power grid needs a heck of a lot of modernization. We are going to have more and more demands on this grid in coming years, especially with the growth of data centers and AI--a billion dollars sidelined to upgrade that power grid in Georgia. Do we really want all these jobs to disappear because President Trump [[Page S1370]] wants to create a war on affordable, American-made, clean energy? Do we want to import more batteries from China? I don't because that is what is going to happen if we turn our backs on these factories and these energy sources. And among other things, Trump's so-called national energy emergency declaration would allow his administration to use eminent domain, one of the most controversial powers that a government can have, to take private land for oil and gas infrastructure at the expense of our American jobs and livelihoods. As we speak, President Trump's chaos and incompetence are jeopardizing and fueling the real energy emergency in our country. Trump's plans to eliminate dozens of advanced energy tax credits, those have unleashed more than $165 billion in private sector capital, moving into over 1,000 factories and expansions across the country. The President has also halted many of the Department of Energy's loan guarantees, which will further jeopardize the U.S. energy manufacturing expansion and will lead to higher energy bills for millions of Americans. This is blatant hypocrisy, as Trump's favorite billionaire ``bro'' Elon Musk actually took a $465 million Federal loan guarantee from that same Department that literally saved Tesla from bankruptcy in 2010. And when these massive, multibillion-dollar construction projects stall, it is not Trump's billionaire friends who will suffer; it is everyday Americans who work in these factories. It is all the families who will be stuck with higher electric bills. I want to emphasize something that my colleague from Virginia raised. More than 90 percent of the electricity generation projects currently in line to connect to the grid all across this Nation--in red States and in blue States--waiting interconnection are clean energy projects. They are wind, solar, storage, nuclear. Just last year, 93 percent--93 percent--of new electricity generation was carbon-free. That is a record. We added 52 gigawatts--50 nuclear power generating station quantities' worth--of solar, wind, and storage to the grid in the last year alone. There is a reason for that. In addition to being clean and carbon-free--and many of the big companies that procure energy care about that--these power sources are cheaper, they are faster, they are less capital-intensive than older technologies, like coal-fired plants or gas turbines. Put simply, clean energy is the cheapest electricity on the grid. You can see it right here. Onshore wind and solar are by far the cheapest. We have combined cycle natural gas. Guess what? You can't get a gas turbine these days. If you order a combined cycle natural gas turbine today, you are going to wait 3, 4, 5 years before that is actually delivered, without permitting. Nuclear is great. I hope we build more of it, but we have to get the cost down. It is 18 cents a kilowatt hour, average. If we don't plug these clean sources into the grid, especially at a time of surging demand, the outcome is obvious: Prices will go up. And it is not physically possible to stand up enough costly gas plants to keep growing power demands and keep prices down. As I said, the wait times to just get a turbine is 4 or 5 years. If Trump has his way and he keeps blocking American-made clean energy projects, we know that significantly higher energy and electricity costs are on the way. Is that what we want to do? We want to impose on working families that are already struggling to pay for eggs--if they haven't crossed that off their grocery list already--the rising cost of milk, groceries going through the roof, rent payments going up--we are going increase their electric rates because that is what this fake emergency is going to do. A couple of weeks ago, an Alabama utility company sent a letter to customers saying: Sorry, you owe us another $100 because what we credited you based on the law is no longer valid. Trump's EO took that away, so pony up. Write us another $100 in your electric bill this month. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Advanced groups who do the analysis, folks like the Rhodium Group, have looked at what his crusade will mean regarding American clean energy investments and electricity costs. And they say that, on average, American families' electricity bills could go up by nearly $500 a year as a result of these actions. Trump's war on American-made clean energy is going to kill thousands of jobs in the skilled trades. Huge construction projects are going to get stalled. The biggest winner in all of this is going to be China. China wants to become even more dominant in the global renewable energy marketplace. They will happily take the private investment that could have gone to the United States and take those jobs back overseas. The biggest loser from this is our economic competitiveness, our national security, our families. Trump has claimed that his so-called natural energy emergency order is needed to unleash more American fossil fuel development. He is also wrong about that. Not only is our production--13 million barrels a day on average; a little over that--not a record-producing number, but oil and gas executives will tell you the truth. Look at what ConocoPhillips' CEO said in response to a question about this: Would he really increase production with the gloves coming off? He said, ``Not really.'' Why is that? Because American oil and gas production is already at a record high, and it is not economically advantageous to push production further. I know this firsthand because we are producing more oil and gas in New Mexico than most other States combined, with the exception of one. Clearly, we need to put an end to this stuff that will fuel a real energy emergency, kill thousands of jobs, and raise electricity costs on American families. The most important decision of our energy future--worth hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector investment, factories, thousands of high-quality jobs--remains in the hands of our Senate Republican colleagues. If you want to have an ``all of the above'' approach, if you want to continue to bring down energy costs, if you want to protect jobs for hard-working Americans in our States, and to help America remain the global leader in energy production, I would urge you to vote in support of this resolution and against higher electricity bills. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia. Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today in support of my colleagues'--Senator Heinrich and Senator Kaine--resolution. I appreciate their part of the presentations, but I strongly support this resolution. I want to also acknowledge one of many reasons we vote for this resolution is because it is also Senator Kaine's birthday. I think nothing would be a better birthday present for my friend of 40, 45 years than having this body make a firm statement about being against rising utility costs. The resolution--I know they both spoke on it extensively--would repeal President Trump's flawed and misguided national emergency declaration. We all know on the first day in the midst of signing Lord knows how many Executive orders, President Trump declared a ``National Energy Emergency'' and issued an Executive order titled ``Unleashing American Energy.'' Let me be clear. Frankly, I have some fights on this side of the aisle because I actually support all of the above in terms of our energy mix. Part of that does mean LNG--and for national security reasons, to make sure we ship it to our partners in Europe. It also means we need to bring more of these energy jobs back here to America. I was at a fascinating presentation yesterday with the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion. Commonwealth Fusion is a company out of Massachusetts, but they are making a major development in Virginia. We have been talking about fusion since the seventies. Those kind of jobs ought to be here in America, and they can provide an abundance of energy. But if you actually read the President's Executive order, you will see he is not really about promoting energy security. He is interested in, frankly, only favoring certain parts of the energy sector. I think that is a huge mistake. I have the honor of having been the chair of the Intelligence Committee. I [[Page S1371]] am now the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee. One of the things we tried to do on the Intelligence Committee is redefine national security so it is not simply who has the most tanks and guns but who wins the battle for technology. If we are going to win the battle for technology and, particularly, in AI, that is going to require enormous amounts of additional energy in the United States. It is terribly important that the United States remains in its role now as being the world's energy leader. But the truth is, China has also made this kind of commitment. In certain ways, China--although they are still using, many times, coal-based power--they have made massive investments in renewable energy. Today, China is the world's top supplier of long-duration energy storage batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Just last year, China added 357 gigawatts of solar and wind generation. That is nearly 100 more gigawatts of renewable energy than the United States added. That is why Congress said: We have to catch up. In a very bipartisan way, with both the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, we made a record set of investments to incentivize the build-out of a 21st century energy economy here in the United States so we can actually beat China in these fields. Unfortunately, the President's ``Unleashing American Energy'' Executive order is actually attempting to rein in or potentially reverse much of the progress that has been made. His Executive order actually calls for the pause of any disbursement of funds lawfully appropriated and obligated by the Inflation Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That unlawful withholding of funds, which already has been rejected by the courts--I know my colleague from Virginia has already said this--really jeopardizes a whole lot of large-scale manufacturing projects around the country. I don't know if Senator Kaine mentioned, but a number of those projects are in Virginia. We worked years with our Republican Governor to try to get these projects funded. They include things in solar, in wind that are extraordinarily important. They were funded because they would support this growth of American energy. This is printed on both sides of the paper. I will cut to the chase. The fact is, what President Trump did on that first day by putting out this Executive order which denies the fact that America is already the energy leader in the world--we need to make additional investments in cutting-edge additional energies where China is making these investments--solar, wind, battery. I am a big advocate for small modular nukes, both efficient and fusion, which I have talked about. A lot of that comes from blending the infrastructure bill and the IRA. Why in the heck would we put a halt on all of that? Why in the heck would we cut back on cutting-edge energy investment in the United States? Why would we cut back on American energy jobs? I am all for the natural gas jobs coming out of the Presiding Officer's State. I am all for ``all of the above.'' Why restrain us though in areas where we have some catching up to do? I think about fusion again. We are going to spend about $800 million--hopefully--in some of this legislation. China is spending about twice that amount. If we want to truly create the ample sources of energy that is needed in the United States, if we want those jobs to be in America, if we want to think about a National security regime where we are the leader in the world in cutting-edge energy, then we have to support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution to overturn this phony national energy emergency. If we don't and we give up on these projects that have been vetted--some for years--then we, frankly, are going to allow our national security to fall behind China, because I can assure you--I get classified briefs on a regular basis-- China is not giving up in investment in all these new domains. China is pedal to the metal on the ``all of the above'' energy strategy. That should be our strategy, as well. I urge all my colleagues to support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution. I look forward to that vote later today. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Waste Emissions Charge for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss our continued efforts to reverse the Biden administration's regulatory overreach, specifically as it relates to energy. This includes our efforts to work with President Trump to unleash America's full energy potential and truly make our Nation energy dominant--not just energy secure but energy dominant. Energy security is national security, and so it is vitally important for our country. We have worked diligently in the Senate to swiftly confirm President Trump's Cabinet officials, and we continue to do that. We made it a priority to ensure that the President's Department heads are in place as we work to empower the United States to produce more energy from all of its abundant and affordable coal, oil, and gas reserves. The key to this effort was confirming Doug Burgum of North Dakota--my State--as Interior Secretary, Chris Wright to be Energy Secretary, and Lee Zeldin to serve as Administrator of the EPA. We look forward to working with President Trump's newly established National Energy Dominance Council, chaired by Secretary Burgum and vice-chaired by Secretary Wright. We also continue legislative efforts to get our country back to energy dominance. Soon, the Senate will vote on my resolution to nullify the Democrats' natural gas tax rule, using the Congressional Review Act. We will be voting on that today. This new tax was mandated by the Democrats in their so-called Inflation Reduction Act. It should have been called the Inflation Acceleration Act. Not only did it increase spending for their Green New Deal, it also put taxes on things like natural gas. No wonder, under their watch, inflation went up to 9 percent. That hits low-income, hard-working Americans the hardest of all. So we are going to change that. This tax actually puts a fee on emissions from facilities that produce natural gas. It starts at $900 a ton and goes up from there, eventually up to $1,500 per ton. So essentially what you are looking at is putting a 5-percent-plus added tax on natural gas. Now, think about that. Everybody uses natural gas to heat their homes or to cook their meals and for many other purposes as well. So it is a tax on every consumer, and it is regressive. It hits low-income individuals the hardest. This, of course, has a disproportionate effect on small oil and gas producers in States like mine, in North Dakota, Montana, and other States. It hits small businesses the hardest. Of course, ultimately, it is paid by consumers. It will impact the energy bills of consumers across the country who, as I said, are already struggling with high inflation because of the Biden administration. Today, the United States is the world's largest oil and gas producer, and at the same time, we have led the world in emissions reduction. Here is a stat I am going to talk about for a minute, and it is important to focus on this because at the very same time that the Biden administration is putting additional taxes and fees on natural gas, we are reducing emissions from natural gas. Since 1990, we have reduced emissions from methane by 20 percent. Now, that sounds pretty good, right--a 20-percent reduction in methane emissions since 1990. But think about this: In that same time, we have doubled how much natural gas we produce. So we have doubled the amount of natural gas we produce and still reduced overall emissions by 20 percent. Remarkable. Remarkable. Biden's and Democrats' response to that is, well, gee whiz, let's raise taxes on everybody that uses natural gas. Obviously, not only does that drive up prices, it curtails production. Instead, what we need to do is support [[Page S1372]] the innovation and empower the technology development that has enabled us to reduce emissions while producing more natural gas. That is the answer. That is the solution. That is exactly what President Trump and Republicans have done and will continue to do, and that is an important part of, again, making our country truly energy dominant. We are also working with the Trump administration to replace the Biden administration's rules that closed off access to vast areas of taxpayer-owned energy resources. That includes both offshore and onshore. For example, in my State, the Bureau of Land Management's--BLM-- public lands rule essentially enables environmental groups to lock away Federal coal, oil, and gas reserves under the argument that they are somehow undertaking conservation. The reality is, in North Dakota, for example, this Biden administration--what they call their Resource Management Plan closes off leasing to 45 percent of the Federal oil and gas acreage in our State and nearly 99 percent of Federal coal. But it doesn't just end there. When they close off those Federal lands from development, they also impact everybody else because Federal minerals are often colocated in our State and other States with privately owned minerals under non-Federal surface acreage. Their Resource Management Plan prevents other mineral holders and owners, private owners, from exercising their private property rights and limits the ability to develop minerals that are owned by the State, by the Tribes, and by private individuals. That is why I am working with Senator Cramer, Congresswoman Fedorchak, and Secretary Burgum to overturn the BLM's Resource Management Plan and maximize access to North Dakota's energy resources. That approach is not just important in my State, it is vital for energy-producing States across the country. This truly is about taking the handcuffs off our energy producers and empowering them to increase supply and help bring down prices for American families and businesses. There is an energy component in every product and service we consume, and when we make energy more plentiful and bring down that price, that helps reduce inflation. When we bring down energy and make it more plentiful, that helps us grow our economy, create more jobs and opportunities, and, in fact, not only provide for national security through energy security but help our allies as well so that they are not dependent on Russia or on OPEC or on Venezuela or anyone else--any of those bad actors--for their energy because they can get it from the United States. All these things go with producing more energy. All those benefits, all those things go with truly making America energy dominant. That is absolutely what President Trump and that is absolutely what Republicans intend to do. With that, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from Oklahoma. Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, President Biden liked to be able to say over and over again that we are producing record amounts of oil and gas. Some of my Democratic colleagues have even come to this floor in the last couple of days and have said: We don't have an energy emergency. Those two things together are kind of a message going out to the American people: There is nothing to see here. Move along. Everything is fine on energy. But if you talk to electricity-generation companies, regional distribution networks, and ask them ``How are things going with electricity generation? How are we doing with capacity?'' they will give you a very different story. The feeling is, when you walk into your own house and flick on the lights and the lights turn on, you are like: Yeah, the lights are fine; there is no emergency. But if you talk to the electric company behind it and say ``Two years from now, what does it look like for capacity for you?'' they will probably shake their head and say ``We have a problem coming.'' Now, we can either deal with that problem 2 years from now when we are having brownouts and don't have enough electricity or we can deal with it now. I would rather deal with it now so we don't have the challenges ahead. How do you do that? Continue to be energy dominant in, actually, the energy that we are producing here in the United States and to be able to make sure that we are producing truly ``all of the above'' energy but we are actually producing energy at a price Americans can afford and at the amount Americans need. If we are going to be the world leader in AI, if we are going to be the world leader in data centers, if we are going to be world leaders in innovation, you can't be that if you don't have the power behind it. You can't be that if the price continues to go up, up, up for continuing subsidies. Under the Biden administration, the price of gasoline went up 30 percent--30 percent in 4 years. Under the Biden administration, in 4 years, the price of electricity nationwide went up 28 percent. Every American feels it. When we pay our light bill, when we put gas in our car, we feel it. So now the question is: What do we do about it? How do we actually engage to be able to make this better? Well, there are multiple things that we can do. We have already started some of those already. Quite frankly, President Trump, in his earliest days in office, stepped in and started the process of turning around some of the policies to increase more American energy so we can begin to bring prices down and availability up, because sometimes it is not just about price; it is making sure, 2 years from now, we are not running out and we are not having brownouts all across the entire Nation in our electric grid. So there are a couple things President Trump did right away. He actually changed all the cancellation of leases in Alaska to actually drill in the area literally set aside, decades ago, for drilling. That is an area that should be a no-brainer, but the Biden administration stepped in and said: No, we are not going to allow anyone to drill in the area set aside for oil exploration in Alaska. They canceled that. President Trump canceled the mandate for electric vehicles, not because he hates electric vehicles. There happens to be a guy who hangs around him a lot that runs a company that sells electric vehicles. The problem is not electric vehicles. The problem is the mandate to try to force Americans to be able to shift to that when we don't see that in the grid. Quite frankly, the electric grid is not prepared, even, for Americans to be able to do all-electric vehicles, and frankly, most Americans aren't either. If you talk to Oklahomans in rural areas and say, ``Are you willing to have an electric vehicle when it is 35 miles to the next town from where you are and to be able to take the risk?'' they are not. And even for a lot of our farmers and ranchers that will say, ``Well, there is an electric pickup out there,'' if you ask the question, ``How far does that electric pickup go if you are towing a trailer?'' the answer you will get from the manufacturers is 80 miles. Do you know what? Our farmers and ranchers need to go a little farther than 80 miles with their vehicles. So there are a lot of issues that are out there. To be able to take the mandate away and say, ``Let people choose what vehicle they want to be able to choose,'' we think is a better option, and, quite frankly, with our grid not prepared for the strain on that long term, it is a wiser option for everybody in the process. Decisive action has taken place on the issue of drilling in Federal waters. President Biden, literally in the final hours of his administration, put a ban on actually drilling on 625 million acres offshore. So 625 million acres that have oil and gas in them, President Biden just banned it. Well, President Trump flipped that and said: No, we are going to allow that to be able to happen--quite frankly, as every other President has on that. So these are basic things the President can do and has done, but what do we, as Congress, need to be able to do? We have engaged in several areas already. We have chipped away at what we call the methane fee that has been put on. Every single homeowner that has a hot water tank that uses natural gas--or even if their electricity that is [[Page S1373]] coming into their house is produced by natural gas or they cook with natural gas--had a new fee added on to them at the end of the Biden administration. We have now voted to be able to take that away and say: We are not going to raise the prices of everybody because they happen to use natural gas to cook their food or to be able to heat their homes or heat their hot water or that they get electricity from as well. We have also now voted on, quite frankly, a regulation that was done by the Biden administration at the very end of their time that was intentionally designed to be able to raise the price of offshore oil drilling, where they intentionally placed a new fee on any company that is drilling offshore. That could be $1 million per well. The reason for that is to try to block more development offshore on that. What does that actually do? That doesn't decrease the need that we have in the country. It increases the number of imports that are coming into our country. So we are buying more from Saudi Arabia, more from Venezuela, rather than actually producing from our own jobs and our own locations. I don't have a problem with ``all of the above'' energy. In fact, I have had this conversation with multiple people in this body. I am willing to put the Oklahoma portfolio for energy against any State that is here, as far as our use of renewables versus fossil fuels. Forty- five percent of the electricity produced in my State today is done with wind. We do wind, solar. We do hydro. We do oil, gas, coal. But we are working to be able to make sure that we can actually produce electricity that is needed for manufacturing and for our homes. That shouldn't be a difficult issue for us. That should be what it is actually all about. Quite frankly, the frustration that we have had is this has been a challenge for energy companies just to produce energy in the last 4 years. This is something that should be normal. America needs energy. Every single American needs energy. Every person sitting in this room or watching this right now is using energy. We need access to that. So let's find the best ways to be able to do it. A couple of things that we are working on right now: One is that I have a bill dealing with what we are talking about, with the tax treatments that we are all debating right now, as well, on this floor, called Promoting Domestic Energy Production Act. That act is very straightforward. It treats oil and gas companies the exact same way for taxation as every other manufacturer is treated. Now, a lot of Americans may say: Well, they are not treated the same now? No. When Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act--which was bizarrely named because, actually, inflation spiked after that, with all they put into it. When the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, it created a new tax on oil and gas companies, specifically designed to be able to reduce new wells coming into America and increase the price of oil and gas. That was the design of it because their goal was, if they could make it so expensive to get gasoline, then more people would actually run to an electric vehicle, and they would buy an electric vehicle. Well, guess what is happening. The more expensive gasoline is definitely happening, but more and more people aren't running to an electric vehicle. They want to be able to choose. And that is a pretty fair option for them for that. So the bill that I have actually moves us back to treating oil and gas companies the exact same way as every other manufacturer is treated in our tax policy. There is another bill that is not just an oil and gas bill. It is called the ALIGN Act. This handles what we call bonus depreciation. When a company actually buys a big piece of capital equipment, they are going to pay their tax that year on it, but they have to decide, for that big piece of equipment, how many years it takes to be able to depreciate the value of that. The ALIGN Act just says: In the year that you bought it, you can also depreciate it, and you can take it off your taxes. Now, this doesn't change the amount of income coming into the Federal Treasury one bit. You are either going to have it over several years or you are going to have it over one year. It doesn't change the amount at all, but it does make a huge difference to that business, in the year they do a big capital investment, that they also get to write that off on that same year. Well, I think it is just good policy to be able to say: Let's incentivize every manufacturer to be able to do additional manufacturing. Our economy needs it right now because, when they do more manufacturing, that is more jobs in the country. And for energy, that means more pipelines, more capabilities to be able to move energy at a cheaper rate. Those are commonsense things that don't hurt our deficit as a nation but actually benefit our economy and benefit jobs. Energy policy should be just commonsense conversation. It shouldn't be political. It should be: What do Americans need? And we should look beyond just today that the lights are on. We should at least look 2 years in the future to say what is about to happen in the country with our electric grid, anticipate the problems that are coming, and make changes in policy here to make sure we don't have an emergency there. So let's declare the American energy emergency. Let's fix it before we have the challenges that are coming in just a few short months. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska. (The remarks of Mrs. Fischer pertaining to the introduction of S. 750 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'') Mrs. FISCHER. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. JUSTICE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JUSTICE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to address the Senate while seated when necessary. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. JUSTICE. Mr. President, well, to this great Senate body and to all of you, I will speak from my heart. I won't have hardly any notes, but I will speak from my heart about something that I think is absolutely key to Emerald City, and that is all about energy. Absolutely, I am an energy guy. I am from an energy State. In my backyard, two-thirds of the population of this entire country is within a rocks' throw of West Virginia. If we don't watch out, we are going to awaken to a situation, as far as energy in this country, that is really, really, really bad. I believe this with all my soul. Secretary Burgum is a really good man, and I always called him ``the pick of the litter.'' I think President Trump's nominees are absolutely great, but with all that being said, I think about Doug Burgum--our Secretary of the Interior--a guy that is supersmart, really, really experienced, compassionate, and has an unbelievable knowledge. Now, with all that being said, if we could just go back to just this, we could think about Chris Wright. Chris Wright gets it. He knows what we need to do, and if you just step one step further, I would just say just this: President Donald Trump understands it. He knows exactly just this, and this is all there is to it: Energy is everything. It is everything right now. It solves the inflation bubble. It insulates us from the standpoint of wars all over the place. Why in the world do we in America need to blow our own legs off and turn China loose, India loose, whomever it may be? That is what we are doing. I am an absolute believer--and you have seen it in West Virginia, if you are paying attention. I am an absolute believer to embrace all the energy forms. We did 100 percent. But if you believe today that we can do without our fossil fuels--our great fossil fuels--and absolutely if you think we can do without them today, I say you are living in a cave. You are absolutely living in fantasyland. Absolutely, if you don't believe that today--a year and a half from today--that we are going to have a crisis in this country, off the chart, as far as electricity, you need to wake up because that is what is coming. [[Page S1374]] Now, let me go one step further, and let me just say just this: Let's just say we awaken to an opportunity of AI, data centers, whatever it may be, industry, manufacturing, whatever it may be. Do we want to say: Nope. We can't do that. We can't do that because we are going to be in a situation with our grid and with our energy production in a year and a half from today. I promise you, a year and a half from today, we are going to be in a situation that we are going to have to decide: Are we going to have opportunity and jobs and manufacturing and AI and data centers--are we going to have that--or are we going to choose with our electricity amounts that we have--we are either going to be able to support industry or we are going to have to support homes. For God's sake of living, we don't want to go and get cold. We don't want to be hot in the summer. We don't need a choice between industry and our homes. What we need to be doing is exactly what I am saying. We have got to realize that energy is the key to everything here. That is all there is to it. You know, it does solve all the things that I have already said, whether it be inflation or the war situation or our national security and on and on and on, but there is something else that it does. And it just goes just simply just this: We have a $37 trillion--none of us has any comprehension what a trillion dollars really is. None of us has any comprehension--can possibly imagine what a trillion dollars is. We have got a $37 trillion deficit. How are we going to get out of it? Please tell me. Please tell me how are we going to get out of it? First of all, what we should do is mind the store. That is what we have got to do. Mind the store. That is the first thing you have to do. That means cut as much waste as we possibly can. But after we do all of that, I will bet you this in every way. See, I am a business guy. I am not a politician. You can tell by the way I talk. For crying out loud, I am a business guy. With all that being said, I have never seen--never have I seen a situation to where you can cut your way out of a problem. We will absolutely have to mind the store. President Trump is dead on point. The DOGE is absolutely real, and we can absolutely make a real dent, but it won't be a dent nearly big enough. At the end of the day, the only way you can truly get your way out of a mess--mind the store, and it grows. That is what we have got to do. You have got to grow revenue. Say what you want, but at the end of the day, you have got to grow revenue. How are you going to grow revenue in America? For God's sake of living, the last thing on the planet that anybody would ever want to do is raise taxes. That would be the worst thing we could possibly do. That would kill us in every way imaginable. We need to be supportive of President Trump's tax cuts. We absolutely need to grow revenue one way. This is the only way to do it in West Virginia. You won't hear me all the time just standing up on a soapbox going on and on, but really this is a West Virginia guy that is telling America and telling the world just this: We sit on so much energy it is off the chart. Why can't we be Saudi Arabia? I mean, for crying out loud, it absolutely is the answer, period. If you want to grow revenue in this country, absolutely it will start with energy, and it will end with energy. That is all there is to it. Think about this for just 1 second: Every single country in the world--the gigantic countries or the real small countries--every country in the world today, the people will live longer and the people will be healthier if they have more energy--guaranteed. Every single country in the world, the more energy they have, the longer their people live, and the healthier they are. Absolutely just go back and think just one more thing: Civilization only progressed--only progressed with abundant, cheap energy, and now it is abundant, cheap, clean energy. America produces the cleanest energy on the planet. Our coals are so clean it is unbelievable compared to China's coals or other countries. Absolutely our natural gas is so good, it is off the chart. Embrace all the alternatives. All the wind, all the solar, embrace them all, but for gosh sake of living, you cannot--you cannot--forget the very thing that God above gave us in our fossil fuels. So with all that being said--I didn't even look at the notes--but I would just say to you just this: We have a real opportunity in America today, a real opportunity to move forward in a way that absolutely can solve a lot of the riddle. The riddle is tough. The riddle is tough, and absolutely when you step back from it and you think about, Well, what are we going to do? Here is a guy that has come to you not as a politician. I came to you not as a 40-year-old, you know, aspiring to someday being the chairman of some committee. I came to you with white hair as a 73-year-old because of one reason and one reason alone: I meet up with being a patriot. I am the real deal. I challenge the media all the time: Tell me something that, knowingly, I have told you is not true. They can't do it because I am going to tell the truth. My parents taught me that. It is not OK to just tell anything and say: Oh, it is just politics in my world. It is not. I am telling you from my heart as a business guy and absolutely as a West Virginian but first and foremost as an American: I love you with everything in me. I love this country with every single thing in me. I want nothing but goodness. I don't want one thing for me--nothing. I don't want the next hot tip. I don't need the next perk. I don't need the next invite. I don't want a thing for me. I am telling you, energy is our ticket. It is everything. It always has been everything. Now, we have got to do something about it. America, you have got to listen to me on this one. We have got to do something about it, and we have got to do something about it right now. I mean, there is a bad day coming, and it is coming right at us like a freight train. Let's do something about it, America. God bless each and every one of you. Thank you so much for having me. Mr. President, I will follow these guidelines correctly and make sure I do. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah. S.J. Res. 10 Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the American people are being told once again not to trust their own eyes. Democrats are telling them not to worry about their soaring electricity bills, telling them to ignore rolling blackouts. Republicans are just fearmongering, they say. But, of course, the reality is that Americans have seen the power shortages. They have paid the higher bills. They have felt the weight of the past 4 years of the failed policies of the Biden administration, and we cannot ignore the resulting crisis anymore. The power grid is buckling, energy demand is exploding, and the very people who created this mess are now telling us, quite audaciously, that there is no emergency. Why? Well, they claim that the United States is producing more energy than we have in American history, but what they conveniently omit is that we are consuming more energy than at any time in American history, and we are expected to need much, much more within just the next few years--much more than we are producing, much more than we ever have produced. So it is not enough to just look at how much we are producing relative to what we have produced in the past when you don't take into account the demand, what we need, and what we need is going way, way up. Now, according to Goldman Sachs, artificial intelligence alone--just artificial intelligence, nothing else; not population growth, not any other uses, household or industrial, of energy--just artificial intelligence alone is likely to drive a 160-percent increase in data center power demand by 2030. The largest data centers can consume more power than 700,000 households. That is equivalent to the energy use of a city of 1.8 million people. But there is no emergency, according to them. According to the sponsors of this resolution, this is just a handout. It is a handout to Big Oil, as they characterize it. Now, good luck with that. Try telling that to the American families and businesses that struggled during the January 2025 polar vortex when the U.S. power grid was pushed to its absolute limits. Electricity demand hit historic [[Page S1375]] highs, forcing grid operators to rely heavily on coal and natural gas-- the very sources of power that Democrats want to eliminate and have been working aggressively, with some effectiveness, to do precisely that: to eliminate--just to keep the lights on. It is not Big Oil that will suffer in the winters if we fail to keep the power on. Across multiple power market regions, electricity demand during that event set new single-day records, as heating demand across sectors spiked. In response, grid operators had to rely heavily on dispatchable generation--primarily coal and natural gas--to ensure system reliability and stabilize supply during the extreme event. Now, during that time, coal-fired powerplants dramatically increased their electric power output--that is, those coal-fired powerplants that have not yet been torn down at the demand of Democratic-backed policies. In many regions, coal capacity factors soared above 80 percent, far exceeding typical winter levels. On the other hand, wind and solar were challenged by unfavorable weather conditions. On peak days, wind and solar generated only 3 percent and 0.2 percent of the incremental electricity needed to meet demand. But what exactly are Democrats worried about? What is their concern amidst that very emergency? If that is not an emergency, I don't know what is. What is it they are worried about? Not grid failures. Not surging energy costs. Not the reliability of our power supply. No. No. They are concerned that President Trump is making things worse by canceling the wind and solar projects that failed to generate enough power to meet demand at those peak moments when it was so badly needed. They are using the same old playbook that they always have: Do anything to prevent President Trump from getting a win regardless of whether his policies might actually bring relief to the American people, which, of course, they would. I have spent my career fighting against unchecked Executive power. I authored the ARTICLE ONE Act to curb the abuse of Presidential emergency declarations, requiring congressional approval within 30 days. But let me be clear. This is not an abuse of those powers--not by a mile; not at all; not in any way, shape, or form. It is a real emergency, and if President Trump's declaration were put to a vote today, this Chamber would affirm it. Congress has had countless chances to fix this problem and failed every time. Republicans have fought for years to reform our outdated permitting laws, only to be met with Democratic resistance at every turn. NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act--Democrats treat these laws as if they were sacred texts, untouchable even when they are clearly broken; a sacred text that can't be not just repealed but even amended meaningfully to avert the disaster that they have created--especially created in the hands of the previous administration. Now, at this moment, we hear that they are ready to play ball. Now and only now do they say: Oh, yeah, we need to deal with this. Now, if that is true, great, but let's see. If Democrats are serious about fixing it, now is the time to prove it. Until Congress acts, how can anyone really blame the President for stepping in to address this emergency? Which it is, which it has become, which it undeniably is. In some cases, an emergency can be created by the government itself or at least severely exacerbated, and that is the case here. His Executive order tells Agencies to do exactly what Congress has neglected to do for years, exactly what Congress has been unable to do--in large part because Democrats have resisted that, getting back to the sacred text theory of these same laws that have become part of the problem. However, rather than working with President Trump and Republicans in a productive way to try to make energy more accessible for Americans and more reliable and, of course, remain affordable, Senate Democrats are forcing a vote on a resolution to terminate President Trump's declaration and reinstate the restrictive energy policies from the Biden administration's Green New Deal. Look at where those policies have left us, where they have put us, where we are, and where we are headed. Energy prices increased by 30.54 percent, gasoline prices increased by 30.5 percent, electricity prices increased by 28.55 percent, and natural gas prices increased by 33.3 percent. Meanwhile, Democrats' message to American families is clear: Pay more, expect less. That is the sort of gospel of scarcity, the idea that we have to live off of scarcity because that is what they demand because government wants it that way for reasons that only they can fully articulate but that the American people do not find persuasive. This is a problem. The United States is, in fact, in an energy emergency--not because of a lack of resources but because the Biden administration's unrelenting regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production in blind adherence to the climate cartel has put us in this position. Now, President Biden's Executive orders--including orders he issued on his very first day as President of the United States back in January of 2021--pausing all new oil and gas leasing on Federal lands, where nearly 25 percent of U.S. oil production occurs, significantly hindered U.S. energy independence. Even after courts mandated the resumption of these leasing programs essential to our energy development, Secretary Haaland slow-walked the process, offering the fewest acres for lease since World War II and holding a record-low number of offshore lease sales. The chilling effect of the Biden administration's anti-production policies is as undeniable as it is indefensible as a matter of public policy. Oil companies are withdrawing from investments in Federal lands due to the uncertainty created by erratic leasing decisions and hostile regulatory policies. Now, let's remember, of course, this is made more severe by virtue of the fact that the U.S. Government is not just the largest landowner in the United States, but it owns around 28 percent--between one-quarter and one-third of all land in the United States. We compound that by giving enormous discretion to Federal land management Agencies, to the executive branch, and then you put in place an administration that wants to preach and live by the gospel of scarcity, and that is a recipe for disaster. Biden's EPA contributed meaningfully to the problem as well. The Biden EPA introduced methane fees starting at $900 per metric ton in 2025 and increasing to $1,500 over just a fairly short period of time. That imposes significant financial burdens on producers, particularly small operators. Now, lest anyone led by the Democratic talking points might be tempted to look at this and say ``Oh, but they are businesses. They can afford it. Suck it up. Just deal with it,'' that is not really who pays for this, no. These things get passed on. The wealthy folks--at least the wealthy folks who own these businesses--they are not the ones hardest hit by this. Those hardest hit are American families, particularly in low- and middle-income brackets, those who, like so many Americans, live paycheck to paycheck. It is those people whose way of life, whose livelihood, whose ability to afford life is so dramatically affected by these regulatory intrusions into the marketplace. Those are the people who get hurt, and that really is a problem. Meanwhile, as our domestic production slows, our reliance on foreign oil increases. In 2023, we imported 1.3 million barrels per day from OPEC, up nearly 50 percent from 2020 levels. Meanwhile, critical mineral dependencies on foreign nations--particularly China--threaten everything from titanium in pacemakers, to cobalt in batteries, to copper in transmission lines and antimony in semiconductors. The absence of just one of these minerals would devastate the sectors they serve. Yet the Biden administration, with its vast discretion as it invented and reinvented Federal regulations and as it presided over this Byzantine labyrinth of Federal regulations--laws put in place by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats--can make those things much worse, and it did make those things much worse, and the American people, hard- working Americans, are paying too high a price. The American people are done. They are done with Joe Biden's failed policies. Over 77 million Americans voted [[Page S1376]] for President Trump just a few months ago, and a recent poll shows that 60 percent of Americans support expanding American oil and gas production. Senate Republicans will not let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer. They have created and exacerbated an emergency. President Trump is addressing it, as the law allows him to do. We will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results that the American people justifiably expect, demand, and truly do deserve, because the facts are undeniable. America is in an energy emergency because of the Federal Government and specifically because of the previous administration's failed policies. Instead of embracing abundant, affordable, and reliable energy, Democrats--again preaching and living by the gospel of scarcity to which they are so closely wedded--are doubling down on a radical agenda to make everything, from gasoline to electricity, more expensive for working families. Remember, as the price of those energy inputs goes up, so, too, does the price of everything else because it becomes more expensive to make, to process, to buy, to sell, to transport all of those same things. Instead of learning from those failures, Senate Democrats are trying to block President Trump from taking action to fix it. What? Are they too afraid that their own policies will be exposed as the source of a significant amount of the problem? You will have to ask them about that. But one could certainly make that argument, and it certainly appears to many that this is the case. They are standing in the way of relief for American families, hoping that if they delay long enough, the American people will simply accept high costs as the new normal. Only in Washington could you light the house on fire and then act shocked when someone else tries to put it out. Make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here. We refuse to let that happen. We applaud President Trump for taking action to address an emergency created by our own government--presided over, directed, embraced, and now defended by the Democratic Party. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska. Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Utah, the chairman of the Energy Committee, in speaking today in clear opposition to S.J. Res. 10, which would terminate the energy emergency that has been declared by President Trump. I think my colleagues here on both sides of the aisle know that I am not afraid to suggest when I think that the President may be heading in the wrong direction. But, folks, on this one, he absolutely, positively clearly hit the mark, and I think that the chairman of the Energy Committee has outlined in pretty good detail how that has come about. We know that our country is blessed with extraordinary-- extraordinary--assets. We have the potential to become the world's leading resource superpower. But in order to do that, we have to be able to produce more energy domestically, and that means we have to be able to extract more minerals. We have to be able to build more transmission lines. We need to be able to overhaul what is clearly a broken Federal permitting process. And we can do this. We can do this in a way that is cheaper, that is more reliable, more clean, really, than any other nation in the world. But we have got to kind of dig out now from where we have been over these past 4 years, where we saw setback after setback for resource-producing States like mine, the State of Alaska. Let me give you a little detail in terms of what we are facing in the State of Alaska--a State that, again, is known for its resource wealth. But right now, in the south central part of the State, we are on the verge of importing LNG to meet the needs of some 75 percent of our population during the colder winter months. I will just repeat that. Alaska, the place where everybody knows we have got extraordinary oil resources--we have extraordinary natural gas potential, not only in the North Slope but down in Cook Inlet. Well, Cook Inlet reserves are on the decline, and we are actually talking about importing LNG from Canada. That ought to just be considered a nonstarter for anyone who knows and understands the extraordinary potential for resource development that we have in our State with the wealth that we have. Right now, in some of our remote communities across the State, residents are truly in what I would describe as an energy emergency. They might not use that term anymore because they have just gotten so used to the fact that they are paying so much to keep their lights on and to keep warm. We have residents in many communities that are spending up to one-half of their incomes on energy just, again, to keep the lights on and to keep warm. Think about what that means when you are spending half of what you make for just the basic necessities. It means that you have less to feed your family, to educate your kids. We have got communities where power costs 10 times the national average, where gasoline can easily exceed $10 a gallon, and that includes diesel as well. And those costs, of course, impact everything--everything--because you have got to move your food, your goods, usually by airplane, sometimes over the water, sometimes you are able to drive it. But when you are paying this much for diesel, for gasoline, for avgas, it impacts everything. So it is not unusual to go into a village store, and if you can find a gallon of milk, see that it costs 18 bucks a gallon. I do my comparison shopping by checking the prices of a box of Tide. People need to be able to wash their clothing just for sanitary purposes. Almost in every village that I am going to, you are looking at prices over $50 a box--$50 for a box of Tide laundry detergent--and it is not because Tide is any more expensive than anything else. It is just the reality of what we are paying here. So I think we have got an energy emergency when it comes to affordability. Right now, in our State, we have an oil pipeline that is one-quarter filled. We have this pipeline that has been pumping oil safely from the North Slope to delivery down in Valdez, going to other parts of the country for refining. That oil pipeline was completed in 1974 and has been producing for America ever since. But right now, it is about one- quarter full. That pipeline starts in, again, one of the most geologically prospective regions on the Earth. But what is happening is you have Federal Government control that surrounds most of the lands there, and it has led to decreased opportunities to expand production up there and a pipeline that, again, is about one-quarter full. I mentioned the benefits of oil here and talked about natural gas, but we also have known deposits of about 50 critical minerals, the building blocks of our modern society and our national security. We have just about everything that our Nation needs to break its deep dependence on China, to be able to rebuild our supply chains. But if you can't access it, you can't produce it, and we can't benefit from it. When we try to build a road from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District--this is explicitly provided by a 1980 Federal law--we did this as part of a grand compromise. The road corridor was in exchange for the creation of a massive national park and preserve. But we can get that project approved in one administration, only to have the next one come in, reopen it, ignore the law, and then make a political decision to reject it. And then, here in Congress, we run into a partisan wall with some less interested in the rule of law than the whims of the very same environmental groups that pushed this resolution. And then, meanwhile, what is happening when we are not able to produce in our own home States, China is cutting us off from its mineral exports, including the gallium and the germanium that we could produce from the Ambler District, if only the Federal Government would uphold its promise to allow Alaskans to responsibly access it. So, yes, when I look at my home State, when I look at Alaska, I do see an energy emergency--I see several, actually--and I see even more reasons to be concerned nationally. As the chairman of the Energy Committee just noted, electricity demand is growing, and yet we can't permit new powerplants or build transmission [[Page S1377]] lines. We can't build pipelines in the Northeast or almost anything, particularly mines, on Federal lands in the West. And, you know, I guess I am listening to some of the arguments that are being presented here, and maybe I would feel differently if my home State was producing more than 2 million barrels of oil per day, as some are. But we are not, and it is not because we can't. It is because we have been denied the opportunity to do so. And that is why I am very thankful for President Trump and the administration for the focus that they have given to the State of Alaska with a specific Executive order to allow us to unleash Alaska's energy and resource potential. I have shared with the Secretary of the Interior, as well as the Secretary of Energy, that we need to stop treating energy like it is some kind of an evil or a bad thing. We need to recognize that it is good. When I was chairman of the Energy Committee, we had a little bumper sticker, and I summed up my whole policy with ``Energy is good.'' I haven't deviated from that policy. Energy makes us stronger, makes us less vulnerable, and it is an asset, not a liability, like we have seen it treated as such. We need to be unleashing our resources, including--including--all of our renewables, because that is all part of the energy basket as well. So it is not an either-or in my view. It is all of the above. And that is good for our economy. It is good for our security. It is good for our geopolitical power. America's resource production is good for the global environment because, when we are producing our resources--where we stop paying countries that have little to no environmental standards, no interest in reducing their emissions, and that often rely on child or slave labor and that, frankly, don't even like us--so why not seize the opportunities that we have here, benefit our own people, our own economies, and, again, benefit the global environment as well. So if an energy emergency helps us figure this all out, then I am good with that. And if it helps us take the Federal sanctions that we have seen placed on Alaska and return my State to the heart of our national strategy for resource production, then that is also good. I think we will all be better off. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire. Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in support of S. J. Res. 10, which would terminate the misguided national energy emergency that President Trump signed on his first day in office. It has been 37 days since President Trump declared, for the first time in this Nation's history, a national energy emergency. This is an attempt to throw red meat to the base of the Republican Party and to seem like Donald Trump is the oil and gas President. But there is no evidence to support that. In fact, the evidence we have points in exactly the opposite direction. This emergency was declared despite the fact that the United States is producing more oil than any other country ever in this Nation's history. And we have been doing that for the past 7 years. The emergency was declared despite the fact that the United States is in the midst of a clean energy boom and a manufacturing renaissance. We generated 17 percent more electricity in 2023 than the high point of the first Trump administration. Clean energy jobs are growing at twice the rate of the economy overall. And this emergency was declared despite the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal headline noted after the election: ``Trump's Oil and Gas Donors Don't Really Want to `Drill, Baby, Drill.' '' They are very happy to lock in demand for the long term. But increase supply and potentially undercut profits? Not so much. So we find ourselves with an emergency declaration in search of an emergency. But it is not without consequences. President Trump has assumed vast power for the executive branch through this emergency designation. He is encouraging the use of eminent domain that could literally allow the government to take your land away. He is waiving away key protections for clean water. And he is suggesting that a timeline of just 7 days is sufficient for public comment on projects that could cause irreparable harm to historic and cultural resources. President Trump campaigned on ``lowering the cost of everything'' and he promised: Your energy bill within 12 months, will be cut in half. Voters responded to those promises, and Americans do want to see lower energy costs. I am all for that. I focused, as Governor, on how we could address the high energy prices in New Hampshire. We permitted two gas pipelines through the State--both gas coming from Canada. And we negotiated a deal with our largest utility company that lowered rates 16.5 percent. I am all for lowering energy costs. We absolutely should be talking about that. But let's take a step back here, and let's talk about what President Trump's energy policies actually are and how they affect the American people. In the first 37 days, we have seen the Trump administration cut off funding for solar, wind, and clean manufacturing projects that are cheaper and faster to build than fossil fuel infrastructure. We have seen him halt energy efficiency programs and we know energy efficiency is the cheapest, fastest way to deal with our energy needs. He has prepared a 10-percent energy tax in the form of tariffs on heating oil, propane, gasoline, and other energy we import from Canada. And that hits New Hampshire really hard because of the energy sources we get from Canada. I talked about the two gas pipelines that come down from Canada. And because we have so many households that burn No. 2 fuel oil to heat our homes and because it is cold in New Hampshire at this time of year, that hits us really hard. He has fired more than 1,000 workers at the Department of Energy, including those who were keeping State energy programs and weatherization up and running to respond to emergencies and to help folks like we have in New Hampshire stay warm this winter. And tomorrow, what we expect is that Senate Republicans will roll back a commonsense fee on venting or flaring of methane rather than capturing it for productive use. If that passes and the President signs it, it will cost the taxpayers $2.3 billion over the next 10 years, effectively lighting money on fire to save Big Oil a few bucks. In New Hampshire, as in other States, President Trump's actions have sown chaos and uncertainty. They are raising costs for families, for farmers, for small businesses, and for town budgets. For example, the tariffs that are set to go into effect--and I understand the President has now decided he is going to wait until April--but they could mean about $150 to $250 more for the average family in New Hampshire who are using heating oil just to keep warm through the winter. President Trump's efforts to cancel promised funding for electric charging infrastructure in New Hampshire harms our travel and tourism sector, particularly in northern New Hampshire where ski areas and other outdoor recreation drive our local economies. A recent study found that the State risks losing an estimated $1.4 billion in overall economic impact if we don't build up our charging infrastructure. One small business owner in Barrington, in the seacoast of New Hampshire, told me that he has nearly $3 million in projects. Those projects are on hold this year, including work for school districts with the State and with other customers to install solar projects that provide long-term taxpayer savings. They are on hold because of what President Trump has ordered. Farms and local shops across rural areas of New Hampshire are nervous about receiving promised reimbursements for energy-saving work through the Rural Energy for America Program, the REAP program. At least one business owner at Seacoast Power Equipment has been covering interest with the bank until his grant--which he has a signed commitment for--is actually paid out. Of course, this is affecting his bottom line. Then we have Super Secret Ice Cream in Bethlehem, NH, the northern part of our State--an award-winning small business that provides the best ice cream you have ever eaten. They were gearing up to install solar panels using $15,000 in Federal funds. Now that project is on hold. Many family-owned [[Page S1378]] businesses like Super Secret Ice Cream have very tight margins, and this small investment of $15,000 would help Kristina and Dan grow their business and lower the electric costs that they are paying to store their ice cream. Then we have the town of Peterborough in the western part of New Hampshire. They plan to use funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to enhance much-needed workforce development. But, of course, they have had to wait far too long for Federal approvals. And in rural towns like Berlin in the northern part of our State, residents eagerly signed up for federally funded projects that will insulate and add solar arrays to their manufactured homes. This is a real solution to their high utility bills. But these projects are now on hold because the contractors are uncertain that they are going to be paid. I could go on, as I know my colleagues could, but since we have people waiting, I want to close with a point of agreement. In his Executive order, President Trump stated: We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation's manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness. That makes sense to me. I agree with that. But, unfortunately, that is about the only thing he said related to energy in the past 37 days that does make sense. Lowering energy costs, creating good jobs, and increasing America's economic competitiveness in the world--those ought to be things that we can all agree on. But if we give up our leadership on clean energy now, the People's Republic of China, who President Trump claims is our greatest competitor--and I agree with him on that. I just don't understand how the Trump administration policies are allowing us to be competitive--but China is going to be more than happy to fill the void for its own economic advantage. I think we should also agree Americans deserve clean air, clean water, and a chance to have a say in what happens in their communities. I want to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on these goals. That work starts by ending this disastrous, misguided emergency declaration and by stopping the chaos. I hope my colleagues will join me in voting to restore Congress's appropriate role in setting energy policies that benefit the American people by supporting this resolution. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to join my colleagues in objecting to President Trump's fake energy emergency, which is part of the Trump continuing strategy to hurt families and help billionaires-- in this case, the fossil fuel billionaires who put at least $100 million into getting him elected, probably a good deal more because so much of the money was dark money. We don't know. But there is every reason to believe it was multiple hundreds of millions of dollars spent to get him elected and it is payback time for the big donors. Tough bounce to the families whose bills are going to go up as a result. How are families bills going to go up? For starters, renewables are less expensive than fossil fuel. When you add them to the mix, the grid runs on a cue, and it takes the cheapest sources and puts them in the line. And as you demand more and more electricity, you finally get to the more expensive energy sources. And inexpensive renewables coming in drives out the expensive fossil fuel from the top, and it lowers energy costs overall. So when you stop doing that, the most expensive plants have to come back online, and that will raise utility bills but, most importantly to Trump, profits for fossil fuel billionaires. We make ourselves, with this, more vulnerable to the OPEC fossil fuel cartel, the oil and gas cartel. They raise prices by manipulating international markets. The American oil and gas companies follow up. Even if they don't need to make that much money, they will follow the OPEC prices. As a result, they have declared the biggest profits in the history of humankind at the expense of American families both at the fuel pump and at home on their electric bills. It doesn't matter to this administration. It is a win for the fossil fuel billionaires who paid good money to get this administration in, and families will be hurt to help the fossil fuel billionaires. Another one is LNG export. What happens in the natural gas market when you take our natural gas, liquefy it, and send it offshore someplace else? It doesn't go into the pipelines here in America. It pinches the supply available to Americans, which raises prices for Americans, unless you want to repeal the economic laws of supply and demand. So over and over and over again, these pro-fossil fuel, mega donor policies hurt American families, raise families' electric utility bills, and provide huge benefits back to the big donors who spent good money to get him into office. Who gets hit the most when you attack solar and attack wind power? Well, here are the top solar States by installed capacity. Start with California. Obviously, it is the fifth biggest economy in the world, but the next four are Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. There are a lot of red voters in those States who are going to pay the price for this bad policy. Look over to wind. The top State is Texas, the next is Iowa, the next is Oklahoma, and the next is Kansas. Again, red States will pay the price for this donor-oriented policy. The Trump administration doesn't even concede that solar and wind power are energy. When they use the word ``energy,'' they only mean fossil and nuclear. They have literally defined solar and wind out of the energy mix by a process of vocabulary magic. So we are headed for a bad place, and consumers are going to pay--all to make big fossil fuel barons even richer than they are. The shame here is that there actually is an emergency out there. There actually is an energy emergency out there, and the energy emergency is happening because fossil fuel emissions are changing the weather and the natural systems of the Earth so that the risk of weather disasters, whether it is wildfire or flooding, is getting so bad that property insurers can't keep up. So we are having a crisis in property insurance markets that is fully developed in Florida, and California is not far behind. What the chief economist for our mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, has warned of is that the property insurance crisis morphs into a mortgage crisis because if you can't get property insurance on a property, guess what else you can't get on a property--you can't get a mortgage on it. And the mortgage crisis devolves into a property values crash because if you can't find buyers because nobody can get a mortgage on that property, your property's value just collapsed. Then that morphs into a nationwide economic crash on the scale of 2008. That is what they said just about coastal property values. Now we have the wildfire risk coming along side by side--the evil sibling. So is there an emergency? Yes. It is coming on, and it is coming on soon enough that the Fed Chair, in testimony just over a week ago here in the Senate, said: After a decade goes by, there will be regions of the United States of America where you can't even get a mortgage any longer. What is that going to do to property values and people's homes? By the way, if that is the case for 10 years out, markets are going to start to move sooner. So this is a problem that is on us now. We have a real emergency coming. It is going to clobber us economically. Our friends on the Republican side don't want to listen to us because of all the fossil fuel money that goes into their party. The President doesn't want to listen to it because he got paid so many hundreds of millions of dollars in political funds to get himself elected. But nature's rules can't be repealed by man. This is coming on. We ought to be prepared for it. With that, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut. Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am pleased to follow my colleague and friend from Rhode Island and to join with the Senator from Virginia, Senator Kaine, in supporting S.J. Res. 10, which is a joint resolution to terminate President Trump's illegal Executive order declaring an energy emergency. [[Page S1379]] It is not only nature's rule that is being violated, as Senator Whitehouse just said so eloquently; it is also this Congress's rule. In effect, the President is flouting and defying this Congress--this independent, separate body of the U.S. Government--in the money that has already been appropriated for projects that will help avoid an energy emergency in the future and reduce the prices of energy for American families. To the families of America, let's just be very clear. President Trump is illegally withholding appropriated funding for for projects in your communities and your neighborhoods, not only projects to increase energy efficiency but also to strengthen the electrical grid that brings electricity into your home and projects to build out America's clean energy infrastructure that will avoid pollution in your neighborhoods. This funding freeze sweeps a range of programs having nothing to do with unleashing American energy, whatever President Trump thinks it is--we are talking about funding for clean drinking water projects that will enable better drinking water for your homes; brownfield remediation so that businesses can be developed in places that now are polluted; heating assistance for low-income households during the end of this winter--causing confusion and consternation across the country. But make no mistake, if this funding is withheld, the projects and the needs and the challenges don't go away. There will still be a need to clean up those brownfields, to deliver through the electric grid, to make energy efficiency real in communities and neighborhoods, but you will pay. Your taxes will be increased at the State level and the local level, and those projects will become more expensive. So there is a double and triple whammy here. Increase the costs now and in the future for projects that are absolutely essential to the health as well as the energy efficiency of our country. The Republicans say they are for an ``all of the above'' approach to energy, but then they turn around and they attack renewables. They say they are for cleaning up brownfields, but then they support this kind of Executive order that is illegal and also stymies or stops that brownfield remediation. Like all of the actions by Executive order President Trump has taken in his first month of office, it isn't actually solving the problem; it is exacerbating it. It is lining the pockets of his billionaire buddies--in this case, oil and gas executives--at the expense of everyday Americans. If there is an energy emergency, it will be created by President Trump--it won't be solved by him--and congressional Republicans will be complicit in it. There is also an effect on jobs. In fact, thousands of jobs are threatened by this Executive order. Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act by Executive edict threatens 400,000 new jobs that have been announced since August of 2022. Connecticut alone has around 50,000 workers in the clean energy sector. All of those jobs are at risk. They are threatened by President Trump's attack on the industry. To my colleagues across the aisle, make no mistake, this is going to affect your constituents as well. Studies have found that a majority of clean energy jobs created during the first full year after the Inflation Reduction Act passed actually were in the South, in Republican States. Jobs in clean energy are not in one State or just blue States; they are across the country. Eight out of ten congressional districts that received the most funding under these laws were represented by Republicans. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. It is, as we say all the time, an American issue. We stand ready to work with anyone who wants to lower costs for consumers and support domestic energy production by building on historic investments made by the Infrastructure Investment and JOBS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, but President Trump's order in no way helps; it simply harms that effort. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this resolution. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado. Mr. HICKENLOOPER. Mr. President, the United States is in an energy boom. Our Nation has never produced more electricity or oil and gas than we are producing right now. This ``all of the above'' approach to energy using everything--including solar, wind, and geothermal--is keeping energy prices as low as possible for working families but at the same time is recognizing that climate change is real and moving toward a clean energy future. Excluding coal, the United States produced more energy than any other country in the history of the world in 2023. It appears that some in this administration are determined to undo that progress. Despite American leadership in energy, the President signed an Executive order on his first day declaring a national energy emergency. That sounds dramatic, almost theatrical, because it is meant to be. Let's call this political theater for what it is--an attempt to accelerate oil and gas projects while at the same time holding back our renewable energy. Of course, there are things that we need to be doing to keep energy cleaner, prices lower, and to cement American energy independence. For starters, we need to increase energy production. We need to meet our energy future by streamlining the permitting of our new energy projects--of all of our energy projects--while at the same time being mindful of the environmental impacts and giving impacted communities a public forum. We need to upgrade our grid. We need to increase clean, domestic, critical mineral production. But that is not what this Executive order will do. In fact, it won't do a single one of these things. They claim we are in an emergency, an energy emergency, but they continue to block Federal wind and energy permits. They claim we are in an emergency, an energy emergency, but then they ship oil and gas overseas. They claim we are in an energy emergency, and yet their actions would cede complete control of what eventually will be an enormous global market in renewable energy to China. The administration has also fired thousands of government workers who play vital roles in American energy--all in the name of government efficiency and giving tax cuts to the ultrawealthy. Listen, I am all for making the government more efficient. I have worked on that most of my public life. If you want to seriously look at how we spend money and where we can actually cut fraud, waste, and abuse, I am game. But hastily, almost randomly firing Department of Energy employees or letting go 300 workers who maintain our nuclear security and safety--I don't think that is the way to do it. Our office has even heard from a private company that worried that the Federal employee responsible for managing their permitting process is about to be fired, placing the entire success of their project at risk. They help bring energy to our local communities. This will stop them dead in their tracks and raise prices for households at the same time. America's energy economy is booming, in large part because of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act--bills that make historic investments in American-made energy. These bills have created more than 400,000 good-paying jobs. Yet there is an effort by some in the Congress--mostly Republicans; I should say all Republicans--and the administration to slash and impede the progress that we have made, even though an estimated 70 percent of the benefits--the jobs, the investments, the increased energy--are going to red States. Cutting funding from these critical pieces of legislation is going to hit our rural communities the hardest, where it could provide the greatest benefit. It will shrink county government revenue; it will force layoffs; and, ultimately, it will increase the cost of energy. Clean energy isn't just some liberal boogeyman. It is not some notion. In fact, most of the energy that is ready to go as we expand our capacity--it is ready to go--is clean and affordable. Solar, wind, and storage, they make up 95 percent of the capacity of new energy ready to connect to our grid. Wind generates 10 percent of our electricity now and will provide much more affordable renewable energy if more permits were made available. Withholding funds already appropriated by Congress through these laws [[Page S1380]] could balloon energy bills by up to 12 percent for American families. That is at least $240 a year for working families that they will have to come up with one way or another. When you are struggling to afford eggs at the grocery store, trying to balance your checkbook at the end of the month, the last thing you need is an increase in your energy bill. Some in Congress, some Republicans, have introduced their budget which strips critical services for Coloradoans while adding $4 trillion to our national debt, all primarily so they can give tax breaks, which more than half go to the ultrawealthy who, at least many in Colorado, don't even want them. I put an amendment on the floor that would strip any provision from their budget that would raise energy costs for Americans. How can people be opposed to that? Yet every Republican voted against it. I think they are putting politics over people. We are able to keep energy prices low for working families because we use everything: oil, gas, geothermal, wind. So rather than limiting energy sources, proclaiming a false emergency, or firing critical government employees, let's meet the moment and usher in a new energy future that helps everyone, a future marked by a resilient energy grid built by American innovation that delivers low-cost, reliable energy for every Coloradan, for every American. If this administration is looking for a bipartisan roadmap on this, we have one. We should pass permitting reform that streamlines review for all energy projects, not just oil and gas. We can build a modern electric grid that will reduce energy prices for all. Let's continue supporting emerging technologies like advanced geothermal and nuclear so that we can remain dominant in the markets that are emerging. And let's stop picking winners and losers. The vast majority of new electricity is coming from low-cost solar, wind, and energy storage. Let's follow the law and let the investments in energy from the past few years go to the communities that need them. Let's cut the nonsense. This isn't an energy emergency; it is an emergency opportunity. This administration's actions certainly would cause an emergency for many Coloradoans and American working families. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland. Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague from across the Potomac River, Senator Kaine of Virginia, and also Senator Heinrich of New Mexico for bringing this resolution before the U.S. Senate. We are now witnessing in realtime two of the most corrupt bargains in American history. One of those corrupt bargains is the one that President Trump made with Elon Musk. Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump President of the United States--$280 million--and President Trump has handed the keys of Federal Agencies over to Elon Musk. He even appeared at the Cabinet meeting today with other members of the Cabinet that went through the advice-and-consent process of the U.S. Senate. Elon Musk didn't do that, but he did spend $280 million to help elect President Trump. And now the actions that Elon Musk is taking are designed to rig government Agencies to do the bidding of people like Elon Musk and other billionaires. In fact, we have been reading more and more about the billions of dollars of Federal contracts that Elon Musk has gotten and more to come. Just within the last 48 hours, we are talking about an FAA contract for Starlink. This has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it did, you would not start by firing all the inspectors general across the U.S. Government whose job it is to look out for waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, what you would do when you get rid of the inspectors general is open the door to waste, fraud, and abuse. So we should be on full alert here in the U.S. Senate as to what is happening. As others have said, we are also watching them claim to make savings, which actually they have had to change their, sort of, tally board every day because of misrepresentations. But they do want to clear the way to provide tax cuts to very, very wealthy people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else in America. And, of course, the House just passed a budget resolution to set up that process last night. So that is one corrupt bargain that is playing out right now, and thousands of patriotic Federal employees around the country who do the people's work are being fired based on lies. I say ``lies'' because they are claiming they are firing them based on performance, only to find out that these Federal employees are coming forward with glowing performance reports as part of their most recent assessments. So that was a lie because that was the standard that had to be met, even if they had to make it up. All these cases are now finding their way through the courts. We have over 60 court proceedings. Many Federal judges have issued temporary restraining orders to put a halt to this rampage of illegal activity. The other corrupt bargain is the one that brings us to the Senate floor today because it was in May of last year, during the campaign, that Candidate Trump promised the Big Oil executives that he would deliver their wish list if they spent a billion dollars to return him to the White House. So much has happened since then, I think some people forget, but here is the Washington Post headline from May 9, 2024: What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign. The story describes how the CEOs there were stunned--stunned--when he went on to say: You are all wealthy enough . . . that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. [And] he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden's rules and policies. And as the article indicates, among the things he promised to scrap were the efforts to develop more clean vehicles, more electric vehicles, and to develop more wind energy. So he promised to provide more opportunities for the big oil companies while harming their competitors in the clean energy industry. He promised he would do all of this on day one. He also made another promise as to what he would do on day one. He promised the American people he was going to lower prices on day one. We all know that that is just not happening. Prices are going up. Grocery prices are going up. Rents are going up. Home prices are going up. The price of eggs is through the roof. So President Trump is not delivering on that day-one promise. He is delivering on his promise to the Big Oil executives to issue that order that has made it even easier for them to produce, when they are already producing close to maximum current levels. In fact, as my colleagues have said, for the past 6 years in a row, the United States has been producing more crude oil than any other nation at any other time ever, ever. In fact, the last administration actually approved more oil and gas leases during those 4 years than Donald Trump did during his first term in the White House. And there is plenty of room to grow. Under existing leases, about half of U.S. oil and gas leases are currently not being used. So here he issues an Executive order to allow even more to move forward, even when a lot of potential is still not being tapped, but doing it in a way that will negatively impact the public health, sacrifice clean air and clean water. That is only half the problem. That is half the problem because what President Trump is doing is not only giving a blank check to the big oil companies, he is also sabotaging clean energy in the United States of America. They, of course, provide competition to the big oil companies. So by throttling and sabotaging efforts when it comes to solar power or wind power or electric vehicles, you are actually producing less overall energy. You are actually giving the big oil companies a competitive advantage. That means prices go up, not down. I can tell you that in my State of Maryland, people are feeling the impacts of higher electricity prices. We need to generate more electricity. We have got data centers coming onboard. AI consumes a lot of energy. So why in the world would President Trump be trying to cripple the clean energy industry? [[Page S1381]] Well, that is what he told the Big Oil executives he would do: He is going to crack down on wind power. I will tell you that solar and wind energy are among the cheapest forms of energy in the country. And at a time when American pocketbooks are tight, renewable energy will help keep energy bills down. In fact, renewable energy is expected to save Americans $38 billion on electricity bills by the year 2030 and produce more than 350,000 jobs in America. So why is President Trump trying to sabotage bringing that additional energy onto the grid and to Americans? In Maryland, we are planning investments in offshore wind that will create 2,600 local jobs and power over 718,000 homes. That is wind power energy. That is what Donald Trump is trying to sabotage. So if you really want to create more energy and you want to reduce energy prices, you wouldn't be doing what Donald Trump is doing when it comes to putting the screws to clean energy production. I do want to mention one other way in which this is really going to harm America's interests, and that is, it is going to open the door even wider to our adversaries who are competing in the space-- principally China. We spent a lot of time trying to improve our supply chains, develop supply chains for minerals that we need to develop electric vehicles, and by sabotaging this sector, we are opening the door to China just to run into this market and leave us behind. That is not ``America First''; that is America in retreat, just as it is America in retreat for us to vote with Russia and North Korea at the U.N. General Assembly the other day, against the people of Ukraine and freedom-loving people around the world. So, Mr. President, I hope we will support this resolution. I hope we will ensure that we can develop our clean energy sources that will produce more energy supply for the American people and help lower prices. I know, back in May of last year, Candidate Trump told the big CEOs that not only was he going to help them develop more but he was going to help them by hurting their competitors in the renewable energy industry. That is no way to conduct an energy policy for the United States of America. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it has been almost 6 weeks--maybe a couple of days beyond 6 weeks--of the new administration of Donald Trump and his second term. It is a lot different than his first term. I was here for that occasion as well. What we have found is unique is a blizzard of Executive orders issued by President Trump from the beginning of his administration. Among those Executive orders was his declaration of an energy emergency-- energy emergency. It turns out that claim is not based on fact. There is no energy emergency in America. Under the Biden administration, we saw record deployment of wind, solar, biofuels, batteries, oil, gas, and nuclear. In fact, the United States is producing more power than ever. Last year, the United States of America produced more oil than any other nation in the history of the world. Yet President Trump continues to insist that America is on the verge of nationwide blackouts and that clean energy will raise prices. It is simply not true. So what is the reason for the President to try to mislead the American people? The short answer is that he wants to give handouts to his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. Before Elon Musk showed up with his multibillion-dollar fortune, it was reported that then-Candidate Donald Trump invited fossil fuel executives to Mar-a- Lago to ask for--hold on to your seats--a $1 billion campaign contribution--1 billion bucks. Now that he is in office, President Trump is doing everything he can to keep those billionaires happy. That means tax cuts for the ultrawealthy--which is on its way, I am afraid--opening up Federal lands and waters for drilling, and, yes, declaring this phony energy emergency. Why is he doing it? Declaring an emergency grants the President additional statutory authority. Donald Trump is using these authorities to fast-track pipelines and drilling in the Gulf of--may I say it?-- Mexico. But there is nothing in this declaration to support fossil fuel's cleanest competitors: wind and solar. If Trump doing the bidding of billionaires wasn't bad enough, his so- called emergency will also raise the electric bills of thousands of families. Wind and solar are the cheapest energy in the world, and those cheap prices get passed on to the families who take advantage of them. I know personally. A few years ago, my wife and I made the decision to install solar panels on the roof of our home. Our home project gave union workers in my community a good-paying job, and it was just one project contributing to hundreds of thousands of jobs created in the Biden administration. Since Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act was enacted 2\1/2\ years ago, more than 1\1/2\ million Americans have installed solar panels. Was it a good idea? Well, I compared the electric bills I had been receiving in my home before and after the solar panels. Before the solar panels were installed on my roof, my monthly bill was about $115 for electricity. Now it is $15 because of the solar energy. Every one of these installations also helped to create good-paying jobs for electricians, carpenters, and other workers, and supplying those panels created thousands of new jobs at factories around the country. But President Trump is not impressed. He wants to eliminate those jobs. We have an opportunity to undo the harms of one of President Trump's many lies today. I want to thank Senator Kaine of Virginia for leading this effort. We need to raise up American workers, lower utility bills, and put America back on track to lead the world on clean energy. I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine measure. January 6 Pardons Mr. President, on January 6, 2021, a solemn constitutional proceeding was disrupted when a mob of thugs, egged on by President Trump, attacked and trashed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of a Presidential election. The grim result of that insurrection was the subsequent death of 5 law enforcement officers and injuries to approximately 140 others, many of whom are still paying the price to this day. It came as a shock when, on the first day of Donald Trump's Presidency, he issued a blanket pardon for those who had been convicted for that January 6 attack on the Capitol. We all saw the videos. We all saw the photographs. Here is an illustration of one of them. Listen to what President Trump said about 1,600 pardons at a recent press conference when he was asked: Why did you pardon all those people who attacked the police officers at the Capitol Building? He said: I pardoned people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government. . . . They didn't assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity. The American people overwhelmingly disagree with the President, and they disagree with his decision. In fact, 83 percent of them oppose the pardons that he gave. That includes 70 percent who lean Republican in their voting. Despite this overwhelming opposition, the Justice Department has now broadened the scope of President Trump's pardons for January 6 rioters to include separate charges stemming from searches conducted during those investigations. I will describe a couple of them to you. Federal prosecutors recently dropped explosives and firearm crimes being pursued against two January 6 defendants pardoned by President Trump: Daniel Ball and Elias Costianes. Ball and Costianes had both been charged in separate proceedings with illegally possessing weapons that law enforcement discovered during the January 6-related search. Ball had been accused of throwing an ``explosive device that detonated upon at least 25 officers'' during the Capitol riot and of ``forcefully'' shoving police who were trying to protect the Capitol. Ball was barred from possessing firearms because of his prior criminal [[Page S1382]] record. Listen to this prior criminal record of a man who was pardoned by Donald Trump: Before January 6, Ball was convicted of domestic violence battery by strangulation, resisting law enforcement with violence, and battery on a law enforcement officer. President Trump says that poor man was assaulted by the police. Does it sound like it? Remember, President Trump told us Ball and his fellow rioters were the actual victims. No wonder so many of the January 6 perpetrators have shown a stunning lack of remorse. Just last Friday, just a few days ago, a number of these pardoned individuals decided to hold their own press conference outside the U.S. Capitol to announce their intent to sue the Justice Department for prosecuting them for this--dangerous individuals, including former Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, who had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before the Trump pardon; Proud Boy Ethan Nordean, who had been serving an 18-year sentence; Dominic Pezzola, the first rioter to breach the building on January 6, who was serving a 10-year sentence for stealing a police riot shield and using it to break a window. I will bet you saw that video. I did. The group paraded through the Capitol after the press conference, following the same route they took on January 6, 2021. They posed for photos, chanting as they did that day: Whose house? Our house. After the press conference, Mr. Tarrio was even arrested again outside the Capitol for assaulting a female counterprotester. Tarrio also posted video of himself stalking Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, former police officers who had defended the Capitol on January 6. Tarrio was following them through the lobby of a hotel where the officers were attending a conference. While Tarrio followed them, he was calling out at them that they were ``cowards'' and telling them to ``keep walking.'' Does this sound like a man ashamed of his actions on January 6 and full of remorse? Does this sound like an innocent victim of assault? No. This sounds like a man who now thinks he is above the law with his Trump pardon and expects to be bailed out by President Trump for every crime he decides to commit. In another horrifying turn, the same hotel that I discussed earlier where these rioters were stalking policemen had to be evacuated after someone claiming to be MAGA emailed a threat about four bombs--two in the hotel and one in Officer Fanone's mother's mailbox. After listing the names of several of the conference attendees and singling out Officer Fanone, the email said they ``all deserve to die.'' These are men and women in police forces who risked their lives for Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives on January 6. The perpetrator of this tweet claimed to be acting ``to honor the [January] 6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump''--his words. These are just last week's updates on the January 6 rioters President Trump pardoned. The list of crimes committed by these thugs just keeps growing longer and longer. We must be clear that these individuals are a threat, and the more power and freedom they are given, the more danger they pose to our democracy and the law enforcement officers and families of those officers that they are harassing. Just this month, dozens of January 6 offenders joined forces on social media to compile and publicize the identities of at least 124 individuals who had been involved in their convictions, including prosecutors, judges, and FBI agents. The post, which has received at least 60,000 views, included names, photos, disparaging remarks, and demands for accountability. In January, another pardoned January 6 defendant who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, Ryan Nichols, Sr., identified in a Twitter post ``officers in the DC Jail who need to be investigated for corruption and abuse,'' adding the names and LinkedIn profile photos of two DC jail employees. This is stalking and harassment of law enforcement men and women who were assigned to this Capitol to protect us. The men and women who bravely defended the Members of this body deserve better than this, and we should honor them for their heroic efforts on that day, not excuse the rioters who attacked this Chamber and the ideals it represents. Government employees should not fear for their safety or that of their families for simply doing their job. I hope that all of us, regardless of our political persuasion, will finally agree on one thing: Violence has no place in a democracy, and Donald Trump's pardon of these 1,600 January 6 attackers is not only an insult to the Capitol Police who risked their lives to stop them but has emboldened these convicts to harass these officers and their families. The question for the Senate is simple: Whose side are you on--the police or the rioters'? I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona. S.J. Res. 10 Mr. KELLY. Mr. President, I want to state the obvious: The United States has real energy needs. We have to produce enough reliable energy to make utility bills affordable for families and to bring online the advanced manufacturing and data centers that are powering our economy and will power our economy into the future. We are seeing this in Arizona. The demand for energy keeps going up. It is going up rather quickly. Now, here is the good news: The United States is producing more energy than ever before. We are using everything at our disposal. We are finally bringing the manufacturing of solar panels and batteries and wind turbines back to America. Now, that creates great-paying jobs across the country, jobs that you can actually raise a family on, jobs that are in places like Arizona and Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas. We are investing to develop new technologies to produce even more energy. Now, for years, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have raised very legitimate concerns about the need to reform our permitting processes to cut redtape and unleash American manufacturing. Well, Mr. President, here is the bad news: President Trump is now throwing redtape around our energy production, which will raise utility bills and send American manufacturing back overseas. One of his first actions as President--one of the first things he did--was to block approvals of new wind projects on Federal land and then freeze loans and freeze grants for clean energy projects. He is making permitting harder or impossible. That is the opposite of what my Republican colleagues--your colleagues--wanted done. Now, he also wants to change the definition of energy to only include fossil fuels. Mr. President, it is 2025. We all need to live in the real world. More than 90 percent--get this: 90 percent--of new energy production connected to the grid last year was renewable energy. And it takes 3 or 4 years just to build a natural gas powerplant. There is no good reason to block wind projects, to block solar projects that, by the way, are already underway to bring more energy to American homes and businesses. President Trump, what he is doing is he is trying to pick winners and losers. When it comes to energy, he wants to decide, and the winners are fossil fuel companies and China. And the losers, Mr. President--the losers--that is everybody else. That is you. That is your family. That is your business. And families especially--families--are going to face higher utility bills. And manufacturers, they are going to lose the support that they were relying on. And workers are just going to see their jobs go back overseas. You think China doesn't want to make more of this stuff and sell it to us? Of course, they do. They will be happy to do that, and we will pay the price. They would love to see President Trump drive clean energy manufacturers that are in America out of business. China would want us to cancel our manufacturing plants and cancel these energy projects. We should not let this happen. We have got an opportunity this week to turn this around. So I am going to be voting for Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's effort so that we can focus on our energy future. Now, fortunately, there is so much that we agree on: the need to modernize our power grid, to bring manufacturing back to America, to create [[Page S1383]] jobs and reduce our reliance on imports, and to develop the energy technologies of the future right here in the United States of America, not in another country, not in China. And all of this supports American jobs, and, at the same time, it keeps utility bills low for American families. Now, some of it will require us to cut some redtape and make things more predictable and efficient for utilities and for energy producers. Me and many of my colleagues, we have shown that we are willing to work on these reforms on a bipartisan basis. So let's do it. And Mr. President--not you, but the President of the United States-- let's reverse the shortsighted targeted attacks on our energy supply. If we do that, I know that we can work together and continue to expand the amount of energy this country has at its disposal and bring down the prices for American families and American businesses. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The Senator from Colorado. ____________________ |