[Pages S1856-S1864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, 
   UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNAL REVENUE 
    SERVICE RELATING TO ``GROSS PROCEEDS REPORTING BY BROKERS THAT 
     REGULARLY PROVIDE SERVICES EFFECTUATING DIGITAL ASSET SALES''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by 
title.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 25) providing for 
     congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United 
     States Code, of the rule submitted by the Internal Revenue 
     Service relating to ``Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers 
     That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset 
     Sales''.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to the provisions of the 
Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 802, there will now be up to 10 
hours of debate equally divided between those favoring and opposing the 
joint resolution.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this month, Environmental 
Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he would 
reconsider over 30 rules and policies that protect human health and the 
environment, calling it ``the greatest day of deregulation our nation 
has seen.'' With a barrage of press releases, Administrator Zeldin 
threatened to replace the central mission of EPA--to protect the 
environment and the health of Americans--with a newer and more sordid 
mission: to protect the financial interests of President Trump's Big 
Oil polluting mega donors.
  EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment has guided 
the Agency for more than 50 years, with bipartisan support. The Agency 
was created by Republican President Richard Nixon, and conservative 
Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush chose administrators 
like Bill Ruckelshaus and Christine Whitman, who took the Agency's 
mission seriously.
  EPA's bipartisan pedigree and mission matter little to Trump, Zeldin, 
and their crew of fossil fuel donors.
  Administrator Zeldin claims that slashing these protections will 
``unleash American energy.'' Huh. In reality, these rollbacks will keep 
Americans dependent on expensive dirty fossil fuels, while other 
countries keep moving forward with energy innovation, developing 
cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient energy. We are deliberately losing 
a competition.
  Trump is exalting an antiquated polluting fossil fuel industry and 
degrading the lives of the American people.
  Administrator Zeldin gleefully declared, ``We are driving a dagger 
straight into the heart of the climate change religion.'' But the 
protections EPA threatens to roll back mostly relate to keeping air and 
water clean. In the wealthiest country in the world, does it make sense 
to increase uncertainty about whether water is safe to drink?
  Administrator Zeldin likely can't juice substantially more fossil 
fuel production, but slashing these protections will unleash tons more 
pollution--more pollution from oil and gas producers, powerplants, 
manufacturers, cars and trucks; fewer protections for drinking water, 
wetlands, and streams.
  Coal-fired powerplants will release more mercury into the air we 
breathe, settling into our water and our soil and eventually finding 
its way into our food.
  We will experience more bad air days like we get in Rhode Island from 
upwind out-of-State polluters, when the air is thick with soot and 
other pollutants, triggering asthma attacks and respiratory diseases.
  They threaten even to overturn the good neighbor rule that gives 
States the ability to push back when upwind States foul the air, as 
happens to us in Rhode Island.
  The ability to pollute another State with impunity deliberately is a 
core thing for EPA to stop, and yet they are caving in to the polluter 
States.
  And, yes, these rollbacks do threaten to remove limits also on carbon 
pollution from powerplants, oil and gas facilities, and vehicles, 
turbocharging the ongoing heating of our planet.
  Let's be clear: Climate change ain't religion; it is science--and 
well-understood, established, mature science at that.
  My Republican colleagues in this building all have home State 
universities that teach climate science.
  Greenhouse gas emissions--science knows--from the production and 
combustion of fossil fuels are heating our planet, raising sea levels, 
increasing the severity and frequency of violent storms, worsening 
droughts, and causing more intense wildfires. Even the fossil fuel 
industry's own scientists understood the climate risks of unchecked 
fossil fuel emissions. Exxon's own climate scientists warned that the 
burning of fossil fuels was changing our planet's climate and correctly 
modeled the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures.
  When Zeldin testified in January before the Environment and Public

[[Page S1857]]

Works Committee, he pledged to ``work with the scientists'' and ``leave 
the science to the scientists.'' What happened to that Lee Zeldin? 
Where did he go? Because the Lee Zeldin of January has been replaced by 
a Lee Zeldin willing to ignore his own scientists and ignore the facts 
for the benefit of President Trump's Big Polluter donors.
  These fossil fuel industry favors will increase costs for American 
families. The fossil fuel industry spent almost $100 million--that we 
know of--to boost Trump in the last election and hundreds of millions 
more on Congress. Trump famously asked industry executives for $1 
billion in exchange for delivering an industry wish list, and here is 
Zeldin producing that industry wish list. But for people who are not 
fossil fuel billionaires, the growing exposure to hazardous pollutants 
and the increase in carbon pollution will increase costs.

  Tonight, colleagues will talk in more detail about various 
protections that Zeldin threatens to end and the safety and health 
policies he is curdling. I will discuss Zeldin's mischief with the 
social cost of carbon.
  What is the social cost of carbon? It is a measure of the costs of 
each additional ton of carbon pollution released--increased mortality, 
for instance, from heat and storms; increased sickness from heat and 
air pollution; damage to agriculture and infrastructure from droughts 
and floods; even insurance collapse.
  The Biden EPA estimated the social cost of carbon at around $190 per 
ton, which is consistent with most knowledgeable estimates, and the 
Office of Management and Budget ordered that this number be used in 
cost-benefit analysis for regulations as well as in a wider suite of 
government actions.
  This analysis is nothing more than common sense. If the government is 
considering taking a step that would increase carbon pollution, it 
should consider the costs of doing so. If it is doing something that 
would decrease carbon pollution, it should understand and enjoy the 
economic benefits.
  Zeldin is proposing to have the government ignore the facts. He wants 
to ignore the science, he wants to ignore the economics, and he wants 
to utilize a social cost of carbon whose value is deliberately and 
falsely set close to zero. If he succeeds, the Federal Government will 
no longer accurately assess the true costs and benefits of climate 
decisions.
  This isn't new math or even fuzzy math; this is fake math--fake math 
to benefit Trump's oil and gas donors, who get to pretend, falsely, 
that the American people aren't picking up the tab for their industry's 
carbon pollution.
  The International Monetary Fund, which is not a green institution, 
pegs the costs the public bears from fossil fuel pollution at more than 
$700 billion every year in the United States alone.
  Last Congress, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, I organized 
hearings on the economic and financial costs of climate change. We 
heard warnings from economists, scientists, medical professionals, 
insurance and investment executives, the new Prime Minister of Canada, 
a former Prime Minister of Australia, and even a former Republican 
Senate majority leader. Throughout the hearings, witnesses emphasized 
the systemic economic risks that climate change poses and warned that 
if we don't shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels, things will 
get much worse.
  ``Systemic'' was the word I emphasized in that last sentence. 
``Systemic'' may sound like a bland academic term, but a systemic risk 
in economics is one which threatens to bring down the entire economy, 
much the way failures in the mortgage market led to the great recession 
of 2008.
  Zeldin's promised rollbacks will have real economic consequences for 
families. American families will bear increased healthcare costs. Even 
with an honorably functioning EPA, healthcare costs from fossil fuel 
air pollution and climate change are estimated to total nearly $820 
billion in the United States each year. Doctors appointments, emergency 
room visits, rehab and home health support, and prescription drugs all 
strain the pocketbooks of American families. Lost work and school days 
and reduced labor productivity cost both families and the broader 
economy.
  Last year, the United States suffered a recordbreaking 27 separate 
billion-dollar disasters, pushing up prices, damaging insurance 
markets, and burdening the families who were in harm's way. Economic 
losses from natural disasters reached more than $200 billion.
  Climate-related extreme weather--hurricanes, wildfires, and floods--
damages property, damages infrastructure, damages agriculture, and 
damages supply chains. These recurring disasters are disrupting 
insurance markets across the country.
  Turmoil in the insurance markets bleeds over into turmoil in the 
mortgage and housing markets. If you can't get insurance on your house, 
the next buyer can't get a mortgage on your house, and that reduces the 
pool of buyers and results in plunging property values. If your 
insurance premium quadruples, say from $2,000 a year to $8,000 a year, 
your home's value will fall, as the carrying costs associated with 
owning it have dramatically increased.
  Last year, the Budget Committee obtained county-level data for the 
entire country, showing the evolution of nonrenewal rates for 
homeowners insurance from 2018 to 2023, and what we showed is that 
nonrenewal rates were rising--indeed, skyrocketing--as insurers retreat 
from areas of the country battered by the storms and wildfires that 
climate change makes both more likely and more intense. While the usual 
suspects are Florida, California, and Louisiana, nonrenewals are also 
skyrocketing across areas of southern New England, the Carolinas, 
Oklahoma, New Mexico, the Northern Rockies, and Hawaii.

  We found that nonrenewals increased the most in the counties most 
exposed to climate risk--not surprising--and also that where 
nonrenewals were spiking, premiums were surging as well.
  Earlier this year, the nonpartisan First Street Foundation took a 
look at the data we had looked at in the Budget Committee and looked 
forward and made some prediction about what increasing premiums and 
declining availability of insurance will mean for property values. They 
looked at the 30-year period of a mortgage entered into today, and they 
found that property values will decrease--decrease--in many counties by 
20, 40, 60, or even 100 percent. Change in home value due to insurance 
costs: minus 100 percent. If you are in that category--and there are a 
few of them and more coming in the future--your home will lose all its 
value during the period of your mortgage, and you can bet the people 
selling you that mortgage are going to notice.
  Let's not forget that for most Americans, their largest asset is 
their home. Home ownership is how most families build wealth. So 
something that is going to systemically reduce home values is hurting 
Americans. In a future gripped by climate change, the home ownership 
path to economic security breaks. What Zeldin is proposing will 
accelerate that danger forward, bringing the inevitable day of 
reckoning closer.
  In Administrator Zeldin's home of Suffolk County, NY, for instance, 
nonrenewals nearly tripled from 2018 to 2023 and annual premiums have 
already increased by almost $800. And that is just a taste of what is 
to come.
  By the way, it is not just me saying this. Fed Chair Jerome Powell 
warned the Senate Banking Committee that in 10 to 15 years, there will 
be entire coastal and wildfire-exposed regions of the United States in 
which it will no longer be possible to get a mortgage. That is our 
future.
  When your insurance premium goes up by hundreds or by thousands of 
dollars, that is Republican climate denial in action. When your grocery 
bill goes up because orange juice, sugar, coffee, chocolate, and olive 
oil are more expensive because of climate-related extreme weather, that 
is climateflation in action.
  Before I yield, I will close with one last thought. We are where we 
are, entering the era of climate consequences, because American 
politics failed to get this right. Our political system failed because 
the American political process became corrupted by the big money 
influence of the fossil fuel industry. Our politics got corrupted, and 
that is why we have so grievously failed at addressing climate change.
  We have Senators here from States whose State universities teach 
climate

[[Page S1858]]

science pretending that climate science isn't real.
  Mr. President, history will look back at us with anger and disgust, 
justifiably.
  I yield the floor to my wonderful senior colleague from Rhode Island.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleague Senator 
Whitehouse, the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works 
Committee and the foremost voice for sensible climate policies, someone 
who for years has warned us of the approaching dangers of climate 
change and today once again has demonstrated his great insights--
particularly with respect to the cost to homeowners--of climate change. 
He is raising the alarm about President Trump's environmental policy 
and the effect it will have on the health and well-being of Americans. 
I want to thank him for his leadership on this important issue.
  Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his 
Agency would move to repeal 31 environmental and health protections. 
This Trump environmental plan will undo restrictions on air pollution 
from powerplants, cars, and trucks. It would allow harmful discharges 
into our water systems, relax restrictions on emissions of mercury and 
other known neurotoxins, ease limits on soot and haze pollution, and 
the list goes on and on and on.
  These rollbacks appear to be a quid pro quo for President Trump's 
fossil fuel donors, whom he reportedly asked to donate a billion 
dollars to his campaign last year.
  One of Trump's most concerning proposals is the repeal of the EPA's 
longstanding scientific finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants. 
After losing in the Supreme Court in 2006, the fossil fuel industry has 
been out to overturn this so-called endangerment finding for nearly two 
decades. Repealing it would degrade the EPA's authority to regulate 
greenhouse gas emissions, meaning it could no longer act to curb 
emissions from vehicle exhaust, factories, powerplants, and many, many 
more locations. Relaxing these standards will result in more pollutants 
in our air and in our water.
  The fact is, these pollutants are not just numbers on a chart; they 
are the reason millions of Americans are suffering from asthma, heart 
disease, and other respiratory conditions. Several studies have shown 
that air pollution can negatively impact maternal health and lead to 
miscarriages and low birth weights. These health impacts will 
particularly harm low-income communities, where the effects are 
disproportionately severe.
  Mr. Zeldin claims these actions will ``unleash American energy,'' but 
really they will just unleash more pollution on the American people. 
Mr. Zeldin claims that these actions will drive down costs for American 
families, but the evidence shows otherwise. Indeed, EPA previously 
found that for every $1 the country spends to reduce air pollution, it 
is estimated to yield $30 in economic benefits in return.
  These actions will worsen climate change and contribute to more 
flooding and coastal erosion, which have cost homes and businesses in 
my home State of Rhode Island millions of dollars in just the past few 
years.
  Mr. Zeldin claims that by rolling back these protections, he is 
simply giving power back to the States, but we know that pollution does 
not respect State lines.
  We are all in this together to protect our air, water, and human 
health. The Trump administration is taking us backwards and hurting 
hard-working families in the process.
  I firmly oppose the Trump EPA's misguided plan and will continue to 
join Senator Whitehouse and my other colleagues in pushing back against 
this administration's harmful agenda.
  Once again, let me salute Senator Whitehouse for his leadership on 
this critical--indeed, this existential--issue.
  I yield the floor to Senator Welch.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues. You know, 
this issue of the environment is being completely--completely--ignored. 
Worse than that, the problems we have in our environment are being 
intensified by what the Trump administration is doing.
  You know the EPA mission is clear. It is about protecting human 
health and the environment. EPA regulations are intended, in some 
cases, to prevent mercury--that is what I am talking about--
contaminating our drinking water. They protect us--some of those 
regulations--from toxic gases, soot, and ash polluting out of the air.
  They keep lead out of our drinking water and asbestos out of our 
homes, and they do help fight climate change and prevent premature 
deaths caused by pollution.
  Now, there is a mantra in the Trump administration that regulations 
are bad--bad. There is not a single Member of this Senate--and that 
includes every single Democrat--who is not willing to make the most 
efficient regulations we can have to do the job that needs to be done 
to protect the health and safety.
  If there are regulations that need to be looked at, they need to be 
revised, they need to be reformed, let's do it. But the idea that the 
Federal Government would turn a blind eye to active pollution that is 
produced because it results in profit to the polluters is something not 
a single Member of this body should ever tolerate--ever, ever, ever.
  What you are seeing from the administration is that the repeal of 
these regulations is not about improving them; it is about giving 
license to the polluters.
  You know, Mr. President, shouldn't the polluter pay for the pollution 
that a polluter causes? Should large corporations have free rein to 
pollute our air and water, contaminating the environment, threatening 
the health and welfare of our kids?
  The Trump administration is trying to decimate the Agency that has 
protected us and the environment since the 1970s. Let me just 
emphasize: It is not their intention to reform it or to improve it. It 
is to, basically, destroy it.
  That is why the President has fired the members of EPA's Scientific 
Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. Get rid of 
the scientists is the answer they present as a way of getting rid of 
pollution. It doesn't work that way.
  So as I said, I have absolutely not only no problem, but I am 
completely--completely--committed to doing anything I can to make 
regulations to be practical and effective. I am absolutely, adamantly 
opposed to giving polluters a free rein to make profit at the expense 
of the health and welfare of the people that I represent and that we 
all represent.
  Nowhere is the Trump administration more clear than their attempt to 
rescind the endangerment finding, which affirms that greenhouse gases 
pose a threat to the health and welfare of the American people. That 
was a finding based on science
  You know, it is one thing if you don't like the finding. It is 
another thing to deny that the finding has a solid basis in fact and 
science. You can pretend climate change doesn't exist. You can pretend 
dirty air doesn't exist. You can pretend dangerous water doesn't exist.
  You won't be able to breathe it or drink it for too long without 
finding out that you are wrong. But when you are the President and you 
have a responsibility to the health and welfare of the American people, 
that is not a luxury you are entitled to take.
  Firing the EPA scientists on the SAB and on the CASAC, that won't 
change the facts. You can fire the scientists, but you can't change the 
facts. But it is the preference of the administration to want to 
blatantly ignore those facts so they can follow through on the 
President's campaign promise and make it easier for the polluters to 
pollute.
  Mr. President, I oppose--and oppose firmly--the Trump 
administration's attempts to weaken the EPA. I will always support 
making it more efficient, more effective, but the mission that the EPA 
has--an organization started during the Nixon administration--is to 
protect the health and welfare of the American people. And we can never 
step back from our commitment to do that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.


                        Tribute to Robert Nelson

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, before I begin my remarks, I want to take 
a few

[[Page S1859]]

minutes to thank Bob Nelson, the Small Business Administration's 
District Director for Massachusetts upon his retirement on Monday after 
30 years of Federal service.
  Bob is a paragon of public service--commuting each day more than 100 
miles from Connecticut to Boston to serve Massachusetts' small 
businesses.
  For 26 years, Bob has helped small businesses recover from everything 
from the economic downturn after 9/11 to the great recession of 2008 to 
the COVID-19 pandemic. Bob is known for giving small business owners 
his direct cell phone number so that they never have to go through a 
moment of uncertainty.
  His career is a testament to the impact that steady and passionate 
public service can have on everyday people and local economies.
  Everyone who has worked with Bob respects him; and that goes for me, 
my staff, and all of the SBA employees that he has worked with over all 
of the years and the thousands of small businesses that he has helped 
during those years.
  Bob Nelson is a small business champion, and because of him, 
countless business entrepreneurs and communities are strengthening our 
Nation, creating jobs, and making our economy the envy of the world.
  Thank you, Bob--thank you, Bob--for everything that you have done, 
for bringing a public servant's heart to your work, and for your many 
years of service making the Massachusetts Small Business Administration 
district office the best in the Nation.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, over the last 2 months, the Trump administration has 
made one thing painfully clear: They do not have an ``all of the 
above'' energy strategy. They have an ``oil above all'' energy 
strategy--oil above the law, above the economy, above the health and 
wallets of working families in our Nation.
  Gas prices are up. Electricity bills are up. Home heating costs are 
up. Yet instead of investing in working families, Donald Trump is 
launching a full-scale assault on the very programs designed to bring 
costs down and create jobs, all while spewing baseless lies that begin 
in the White House and then spread across his entire administration, 
but especially focused on his energy policy.
  At the Department of Energy, staff have been ordered to draw up a hit 
list of clean energy programs--programs Congress already funded, 
programs workers are counting on.
  These are not hypothetical investments. These are real dollars that 
could unleash real jobs and real benefits for communities across the 
country. And now they are being sacrificed to serve a political agenda 
that rewards polluters and punishes the public.
  Nowhere was this agenda more proudly displayed than at this week's 
CERAWeek--or as I like to call it, the Olympics of oil--where Energy 
Secretary Chris Wright gave a speech that would make Big Oil blush. 
Although, it is more likely that they just turned with a flush because 
of the incredible way in which they were treated.
  Big Oil had a big treat coming from the speech by Energy Secretary 
Chris Wright. Let's take a moment to fact-check Secretary of Energy 
Chris Wright's Big Oil-sponsored big lies at CERAWeek in Houston.
  Chris Wright said:

       The previous administration's policy was focused myopically 
     on climate change with people as simply collateral damage.

  False. Chris Wright is wrong. When Democrats controlled the White 
House and Congress, we invested in solutions that centered smart 
communities and a livable future. Since the Inflation Reduction Act was 
passed in 2022, the clean energy boom has created more than 400,000 new 
jobs and spurred $420 billion in investments, most of it in red 
districts; 70 to 80 percent of the funding is in red districts. That is 
a people-powered economy.
  That is an ``all of the above'' strategy. Everyone is included. So if 
we are talking myopic, look no further than Trump. It is the pot 
calling the kettle black.
  Trump has been exclusively focused on tax breaks for the rich with 
extensive collateral damage. New reporting shows that more than 50,000 
energy jobs have been lost or stalled since Trump was elected and that 
over $56 billion in U.S. clean energy investments were canceled or 
stalled in that same time.
  If he continues down this road and guts the IRA, he will be driving 
an estimated 790,000 jobs off a cliff while wiping $160 billion from 
our economy by 2030 and raising household energy costs by $32 billion 
over the next decade.
  In other words, President Trump and his energy policy are engaging in 
economic sabotage. So let's continue fact-checking Secretary Wright.
  Secretary Wright also said in that speech:

       Wind and solar . . . supply roughly 3% of global primary 
     energy.

  The truth: Renewables powered 30 percent of the world's electricity 
in 2023. Got it? Not 3 percent; 30 percent of the world's electricity 
in 2023. And in the first 9 months of 2024, 96 percent of all new 
electrical generation capacity installed in the United States was 
renewable--wind, solar, battery--96 percent of all new electrical 
generation capacity installed, with the majority actually coming from 
solar. It is the fastest growing, cheapest energy out there.
  Big Oil isn't just losing its monopoly; it simply cannot compete. The 
natural gas industry, they are petrified. Can you imagine if you are 
saying: Well, we are the only way in the future in which you can have 
predictable electricity which is generated; natural gas is the answer--
when in 2024, 96 percent of all new electrical-generating capacity was 
wind and solar and battery storage technology?
  If you knew that, for 10 years in a row, the natural gas industry is 
facing an existential moment, that is what they are afraid of. They are 
afraid of competition. They are afraid of alternative energy sources. 
Oil, gas, and coal, they got a tax break for 100 years from the Federal 
Government, and they were able to squash all of the competition over 
all of those years.
  But when finally we leveled the playing field and the alternatives 
show out that are nonpolluting, that don't have any greenhouse gases to 
go up into the planet, that don't warm the planet, all of a sudden, we 
are hearing: The Secretary of Energy in the Trump administration is 
lying about that? Because they have to lie. Otherwise, they would have 
to explain why they are planning on killing hundreds of thousands of 
new jobs in these industries, which are absolutely bursting at the 
seams.
  But, wait, there is more. Here is what else Secretary Wright said at 
the SARA conference down in Texas:

       The last administration recklessly pursued policies that 
     were certain to drive up electricity prices.

  Once again, false. False. The fact, however, is that onshore wind is 
the cheapest source of new electricity in America. It has been for 
nearly a decade. It beats fossil fuels even without subsidies and costs 
half as much as new natural gas on average.
  Again, existential threat to the natural gas industry--onshore wind 
beat it in the marketplace every day for 10 years in a row.
  So what is Secretary Wright saying? He is saying he is going to lead 
the effort to kill it and to kill solar--to kill all of it. And 
building new solar? Well, it is cheaper than running existing coal or 
building new gas projects in the United States. Solar is winning in the 
marketplace, and it is frightening to the natural gas industry--just 
absolutely frightening. It is fossil fuel volatility that has hammered 
families at the pump and on their power bills, with fossil fuel exports 
going to the highest bidder abroad. Now, in my home State of 
Massachusetts, many gas bills are double what they were last year. That 
is unacceptable.
  Let's keep going with the fact checks.
  In a pathetic attempt to justify the benefits of deadly pollution, 
Secretary of Energy Wright said:

       We've raised atmospheric CO<inf>2</inf> by 50 percent in 
     the process of doubling human life expectancy.

  Then he said:

       Everything in life involves trade-offs.

  Well, let me be clear. In the United States, climate-fueled disasters 
already kill more than 1,300 people every year. More CO<inf>2</inf> 
doesn't mean more life; it means more floods, more fires, suffering, 
deaths. There was $300 billion worth of damage between Hurricane

[[Page S1860]]

Helene and Hurricane Milton last fall and $150 billion worth of damage 
in Los Angeles from climate-driven storms. By the way, only $50 billion 
of it was covered by insurance--catastrophic for all those communities.
  So let's talk about the real tradeoffs. Clean air traded for asthma. 
Safe homes traded for billion-dollar climate disasters. Lower bills 
traded for Big Oil windfall profits. This administration has made its 
tradeoff clear: your future for their profit. That is Trump's art of 
the deal, and what a great deal for the oil, gas, and coal industry. 
All they have to do is just raise money for Donald Trump, and in 
return, they kill the competitors which are killing the oil, gas, and 
coal industry in the market.
  Adam Smith is spinning in his grave so fast that he would actually 
qualify for a tax break under an IRA. That is how much they are lying 
about the marketplace and how it is responding to finally the 
incentives that are there to compete against oil, gas, and coal, which 
brings us to the Environmental Protection Agency because what is a 
fossil-fueled agenda without a full-on assault on the very Agency 
tasked with protecting our air and our water and our climate?
  Two weeks ago, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that he is 
taking more than 30 actions to unravel our bedrock environmental 
safeguards in a nauseating attempt to shock and awe us into submission. 
These are the regulations that keep our air breathable and our water 
drinkable. These are the standards that keep us healthy instead of 
sick. And all so that their Big Oil BFFs can make a few more big bucks 
while the rest of us will foot the bill with our health conditions that 
will be created by these fossil fuels, these pollutants going up into 
the atmosphere.
  These rollbacks are not a revolution for American progress and 
energy; they are a return to the same, tired fossil-fueled program of 
the past. For starters, they are attempting to eliminate EPA's 
authority to regulate dangerous greenhouse gases based on the threat 
they pose to public health or welfare--known as the endangerment 
finding.
  This finding came from a Supreme Court ruling in my very own home 
State, which brought the case to the Supreme Court--Massachusetts v. 
EPA--in 2007, which said something we all know: Greenhouse gases pose 
an ``actual'' and ``imminent'' threat to people everywhere.
  And it doesn't stop there. They are hoping to roll back air quality 
standards for particulate matter pollution that are projected to avoid 
4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma over just 6 years. 
That is all going to get wiped out if they have their way.
  We are going to fight them, by the way. We are going to fight them 
every single step of the way on this dangerous, health-endangering 
strategy which they are seeking to put on the books.
  They are aiming to gut wastewater regulations so coal plants can 
contaminate the water we drink from and swim in. They are trying to 
pump the brakes on clean car and truck regulations that reduce harmful 
air pollutants and save families money at the pump. The list goes on 
and on.
  They are dismantling the Federal Government before our very eyes. 
This isn't about efficiency; this is about sacrificing the health of 
our communities for the health of their pocketbooks.
  And just like Energy Secretary Chris Wright's speech, we know it is a 
lie. They aren't making America great again; they are selling America 
to the highest bidder--to the oil and gas and coal industry. That is 
what they are doing. They are just selling us out. We must continue to 
speak up for the truth and continue to fight.
  The natural gas industry--they are threatened by a wind and solar and 
battery revolution that will generate the electricity we need in our 
country. Natural gas doesn't like it. They want to kill it.
  The oil industry--we put 70 percent of all the oil we consume into 
gasoline tanks. They don't want to see the all-electric vehicle 
revolution continue to grow exponentially. They are going to try to 
kill that, too, so that we do not have that reduction in the amount of 
oil we put into the cars we drive around our country that spew that 
pollution up into the sky.
  So the oil and gas industry--they go to the White House, they go to 
Donald Trump, they go to Mar-a-Lago in order to get the protection they 
need against competition, the protection they need against clean 
energy, the protection they need against the creation of a million new 
clean energy jobs in our country that should be our future. And it is 
what young people want more than anything else. They want that 
revolution. They are the Green New Deal revolution. That is what they 
want. They want to see it happen.
  Because it is happening, oil and gas are having, unfortunately, this 
White House, Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, his entire 
Cabinet, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin--all of them just dismantle all 
of the protections which have been put on the books over a generation.
  This is a historic moment, and all we can say to you, oil, gas, and 
coal; all we can say to you, Trump White House, is that we are going to 
fight. We are not going away.
  There is a young generation out there that is rising up, and they are 
not happy with what is happening in this White House. They do not want 
to see their future sold for campaign contributions from polluters in 
our country.
  So we are ready to fight, and we are going to align ourselves with 
the young people in our country that want a different future, a better 
future, a clean future, and that is what we are going to get because we 
will not lose.
  I can't thank Senator Whitehouse enough for being our leader on the 
Environment and Public Works Committee and for bringing us out here 
this evening to have this incredibly important, historic discussion 
about the direction of our Nation.
  Thank you.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts 
yield for a question?
  Mr. MARKEY. I would love to have a conversation with the Senator from 
Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, you referenced the value to the fossil fuel 
industry of being able to run to Congress or run to the White House and 
throw money around and, as a result of that expenditure on politicians, 
earn the right to pollute for free and get enormous competitive 
advantage against clean energy.
  The industry clearly spends a lot of money. We know they spent a 
hundred million dollars getting Trump elected. He asked them for a 
billion dollars, which could have come through dark money, in order to 
deliver on this subsidy program they want.
  How lucrative do you think the fossil fuel political operation is?
  Mr. MARKEY. I think it is the most well-financed lobbying effort in 
Washington, DC. I think they have had an ownership of this building for 
a hundred years, and they are afraid it is about to slip away. Would 
the gentleman from Rhode Island agree with me?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would not be surprised, actually, if the political 
lobbying and dark money influence operation of the fossil fuel industry 
was not actually its most lucrative line of business because for the $1 
billion or $6 billion or $7 billion spent manipulating our politics, 
they protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, according to the 
International Monetary Fund. That is a $100 return every year for every 
$1 invested. They don't make that much off their tar sands. They don't 
make that much off their oil wells. They don't make that much off their 
methane leaks.
  Mr. MARKEY. You know, the Senator from Rhode Island is wise and 
precise in his analysis of the agenda of these companies.
  The Senator from Rhode Island and I have for 12 years led the effort, 
along with the Senator from Connecticut, to have offshore wind all 
along the Atlantic coast, and the Biden administration put in place a 
plan to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind.
  What Donald Trump, what Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, and 
the Secretary of Interior are now planning is to kill that entire 
revolution capturing the winds that blew the Pilgrims to our shores, 
capturing the wind that had the whaling crews go out in order to fuel 
the energy of the 19th century. But when it wants to be used for the 
energy of the 21st century, the oil and gas and coal industry say: 
Absolutely not. We can't allow that to happen.
  Why can't they allow it to happen? Because it would replace natural 
gas-

[[Page S1861]]

generated electricity that pollutes, it would just transform the way in 
which electricity powers our businesses and powers our homes all across 
the east coast of the United States, and we could wave goodbye to that 
natural gas-fossil fuel polluting future for the 21st century.
  So what is Donald Trump doing? After receiving tens and tens of 
millions of dollars in contributions from the natural gas industry, led 
by Harold Hamm, who promised Trump--the No. 1 natural gas guy in 
America--that he would raise the money for him in the campaign, well, 
the payoff, the payback is, kill offshore wind.
  So they say ``all of the above''--nah, they don't mean ``all of the 
above.''
  Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, says: People really don't like 
wind, so we have to make an exception because people don't like wind.
  Do you know who doesn't like wind? The natural gas industry. They 
hate wind. They hate it because it is the competition, because it is 
working, because it is cheaper, and because it is also cleaner, in the 
same way the oil industry hates the all-electric vehicle revolution 
because it kills oil as a business as we move to a renewable way of 
generating electricity that then powers the vehicles we have in 
America.
  So the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee as 
usual has just put his finger right on the problem, and it is the money 
that is sloshing through Mar-a-Lago and Washington, DC, the White 
House. It is an absolute disgrace, and I can't thank him enough for 
bringing this up on the floor for a full exposition.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And we welcome our colleague from Connecticut to join 
the festivities here on the Senate floor.
  All three States are downwind States from the pollution of the 
Midwest, of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio. There is nothing we can 
do about it, other than breathe in the waste that they don't clean up.
  Mr. MARKEY. What does that mean by ``downwind,'' just so people can 
understand it? What do you mean by that?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, it means that the prevailing winds that blow 
over West Virginia, that blow over Pennsylvania, that blow over Ohio, 
blow over their smoke stacks that have been deliberately built high 
into the air so that the pollution coming out of the smoke stacks gets 
caught up in those prevailing winds and ends up falling down in the 
form of ozone and particulate matter in Massachusetts, in Connecticut, 
and in Rhode Island. And the Rhode Island Department of Environmental 
Management and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection 
and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection can do 
nothing about it because those States have chosen to put it up into the 
sky above them so that it lands on us.
  Mr. MARKEY. And it blows into the lungs of the people in Connecticut, 
Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
  I yield to the Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. A perfect segue to my remarks, if I may be 
recognized, Mr. President?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, it is the perfect segue to my remarks 
because ``downwind'' means we are the recipient of their air and their 
pollution, which are the small particulates. They are often the size 
of, literally, a quarter of the head of a pin, and the reason that they 
are so dangerous is that they are inhaled to the very deepest parts of 
our lungs, where they do the most damage.
  And so I am grateful to be talking about the good neighbor rule. That 
is actually the purpose of my coming to the floor, to talk about the 
rule that applies to those powerplants and States that are supposed to 
be good neighbors. And, according to this rule, they would be good 
neighbors, but the EPA is rolling it back, withdrawing it.
  And so I am grateful to be here with two champions, my great friend 
and neighbor the Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, who has 
made this battle a constant struggle from his seat on the floor, in 
meetings, in townhalls, in forums, literally, around the world; and my 
neighbor from Massachusetts, the author of the Green New Deal, which I 
was proud to join in its first day and still represents a milestone in 
environmental advocacy. And we are here today to advocate.
  I am joyous, even though saddened by the need to be here--joyous--to 
be amongst this band of brothers and sisters who are going to stand 
strong and steadfast against the Trump administration's sellout.
  You heard it from Senators Whitehouse and Markey: These rollbacks are 
a gift. They are literally a payback to the lobby--the anti-environment 
lobby, the fuel and oil and gas lobby--that has so infiltrated and 
permeated our government, including, now, the Environmental Protection 
Agency.
  And so let me begin by highlighting for people who care, and that 
should be everyone. It really should be everyone who has children, who 
will inherit the mess we are creating. It should be everyone who cares 
about the planet and what we are leaving for others, our stewardship of 
the environment.
  The EPA is becoming a shell. Literally 65 percent of its workforce 
has been fired; 65 percent are planned to go. There is no way that the 
EPA, as a law enforcement Agency, can function with the remaining 35 
percent of its staff.
  But perhaps most egregiously, the Administrator of the EPA announced, 
just 2 weeks ago, that he was targeting 31 climate and health 
protections to roll back. He called it ``the largest deregulatory 
announcement in U.S. history.'' He said it was the most momentous day 
in the history of the EPA. In my view, it is a day that will live in 
environmental infamy. It marks a step back by decades.
  And for people who think, well, we need some disruptors like Elon 
Musk, who is behind these steps to decimate the Agency, disruption can 
sometimes be constructive, but not when you burn down the house, burn 
down an Agency, burn down a framework of laws that have been carefully 
built and reflect not only an intellectual commitment but also a 
deliberately constructed way to balance the needs of environment and 
energy and other interests that serve the public.
  This administration is destroying that balance. It is easy to destroy 
things. It is easy to burn down a house. It is much harder to construct 
it. And this administration is blatantly and malignly and cruelly 
destructive, firing 65 percent of a workforce that has dedicated itself 
to caring about the environment and acting on our statutes to protect 
the environment.
  So let's just call it what it is. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are 
using Lee Zeldin--I am tempted to say he is their puppet; certainly, he 
is their instrument--to take a wrecking ball to environmental 
protections that have safeguarded Americans from toxic air and water 
pollution for decades.
  And so, far from ensuring clean land, water, and air for all, Elon 
Musk and EPA are giving Donald Trump's big polluters a carte blanche to 
trash the planet--no exaggeration, really. I mean, come right down to 
it. Let's call it for what it is. The administration is running 
roughshod over our Federal environmental protection laws, writ large.
  I am going to focus today, as I mentioned just moments ago, on one of 
the rules that EPA is rolling back: the Good Neighbor Plan. And it is 
appropriately called the Good Neighbor Plan because it is a landmark 
environmental protection law that literally safeguards Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, and other States of 
New England against the pollution generated in Ohio and other 
Midwestern States that is brought by the prevailing winds.
  The polluters didn't create those prevailing winds, but, nonetheless, 
the pollution is carried on them toward the east coast. The funny thing 
about those little pieces of soot created in fuel-burning powerplants 
is they have no respect for State boundaries, none.
  I don't know why. You know, we have in Connecticut--as Rhode Island 
and Massachusetts do--strong laws that protect our air and water. And 
those pieces of soot, the nitrogen, the other pollutants have no 
respect for our boundaries.
  The Clean Air Act, through its good neighbor provision, empowers the 
EPA to step in when States' emissions are significantly contributing to 
the air quality problems of another State.

[[Page S1862]]

  In 2023, the EPA released its final Good Neighbor Plan, which would 
ensure 23 States meet the Clean Air Act's good neighbor requirements by 
reducing pollution that significantly impacts downwind States, like 
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
  Connecticut has some of the worst air quality in the country--let's 
be honest here--largely due to pollution traveling from powerplants in 
the Midwestern States. Data shows that anywhere from 90 to 95 percent 
of air pollution impacting Connecticut on high ozone days originates 
from outside our State, and it is causing serious harm to Connecticut 
and our residents. Last year, Connecticut exceeded the Federal health 
standards for ozone on 23 different days. That is almost a month out of 
the year.
  Three of Connecticut's cities--Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport--
rank within the top 100 most challenging cities to live with asthma 
last year. That is according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of 
America Annual Report. One of the top 100 most challenging cities in 
which to live with asthma is a pretty lamentable distinction.

  These consequences are cumulative. They mean more hospital visits, 
more healthcare costs, more missed school and workdays, and, 
ultimately, more serious illnesses, more premature deaths.
  They are the equivalent of imposing second-hand smoke on children or 
people with asthma or other kinds of respiratory problems.
  Zeldin, Musk, and Trump's rollback was touted as lowering the cost of 
living for Americans--lowering the cost of living. It is going to do 
just the opposite.
  Not only is protecting the environment the right thing to do for our 
planet; it also benefits America economically. The EPA projected: In 
2026, the first year the Good Neighbor Plan was set to be implemented, 
Americans would see significant health benefits because of this rule, 
including preventing approximately 1,300 premature deaths, avoiding 
more than 2,300 hospital and emergency room visits, cutting asthma 
symptoms by 1.3 million cases, and avoiding 430,000 school absence days 
and 25,000 lost workdays.
  One estimate found that this Good Neighbor Plan would provide over 
$16.2 billion in net monetary benefits when you count the hospital 
visits, the lost workdays, the school days, the doctors' treatments--
all that adding to $16.2 billion. That is no bargain for the United 
States of America. What you may say on day 1, you pay in multiples on 
day 5 or 10, throughout the year.
  Only the Federal Government is empowered to protect the people of the 
United States who live downwind from these powerplants. Connecticut 
cannot do it, nor can Massachusetts, nor Rhode Island on their own. It 
is legally and physically impossible.
  But protection is impossible if Musk and Trump, through Lee Zeldin, 
roll back this rule. And let's be, again, honest about what is 
happening here. This Good Neighbor Plan rollback is part of a larger 
pattern and practice to undermine and undercut and eventually 
eviscerate environmental protections. It is the reason they are firing 
60 percent of the EPA's workforce. It is the reason why they are 
slashing and trashing other Agencies that are vital to environmental 
protection. It comes as Trump's EPA has moved to cancel hundreds of 
grants for climate projects across the country.
  For every action they take to chip away at our bedrock environmental 
protection, the world is less healthy. The world is less healthy and 
our planet is more endangered.

  I urge my colleagues to stand in strong opposition to the Musk-Trump-
Zeldin shameless attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and on 
our environment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MARKEY. Would the Senator from Connecticut yield?
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Absolutely.
  Mr. MARKEY. Thank you. What I would like to talk about a little bit, 
if I could, with you and Senator Whitehouse, is this pollution agenda 
that they have for us in New England, that they have writ large for the 
whole country as well.
  Let's just take solar energy. In 2009, the total amount of solar ever 
deployed in the United States was 2,000 megawatts. That was it. In 
2024, 40,000 megawatts was deployed. It is scaring the natural gas 
industry. Combined with battery storage, it is just saying that New 
England doesn't have to import any more natural gas, any more 
pollution. Slowly but surely, in other parts of the country, they, too, 
will deploy wind and solar with batteries and reduce the amount of 
pollution that is sent up into the atmosphere that blows our way on the 
east coast from the Midwest.
  It actually is more economical for us. It is actually a job creator 
for us because the jobs are actually in New England, not in other 
States. We are doing it for ourselves offshore, on the roofs of 
people's homes, out along the highways as we deploy these renewable 
energy resources. It is absolutely frightening to them.
  In the same way--I will add this number, too--in 2009, there were a 
grand total of 2,000 total all-electric vehicles in the United States. 
That was all we had from Henry Ford to 2009, 2,000 all-electric 
vehicles. Why? Because the auto industry said we can't figure it out. 
It is just too hard.
  Then we put the incentives in place. The battery technologies were 
given incentives. There were incentives to buy all-electric vehicles. 
Last year, there were about one and a half million all-electric 
vehicles and plug-in hybrids sold in America, not just 2,000 total sold 
a year ago.
  So the direction is absolutely vertical. It is just taking off 
exponentially. And, again, with it goes a reduction in greenhouse 
gases, especially as each year goes by and more and more of those 
technologies are employed.
  I think that what Senator Whitehouse has done on the floor over and 
over again, just bringing out the fundamental corruption of how 
policies are made in the energy and environment sector, it just becomes 
more and more true as we are only 8 weeks into the Trump 
administration. But we can see that, almost like an Old Testament 
prophet, Sheldon Whitehouse has been shining a light on this 
corruption, and now it has all come to pass.
  I can't thank the Senator from Connecticut enough for his great 
leadership on these issues. We kind of consider ourselves to be 
innovation States. We are going to figure this out. And as we figure it 
out, it is absolutely frightening to those States that have been 
producing energy for generations--good for them and good for their 
citizens--but if we figure it out as well, we should not be stopped any 
more than we stopped them in the 20th century. We should be allowed to 
innovate in the 21st century what they are trying to put in place.
  The policies purchased from the Trump administration that block us 
from those issues, which were not just for ourselves, but like many 
other things invented in New England over the years, we can export them 
around the world. We can be the world leader in the development of and 
then export of all these technologies.
  I can't thank you enough, Senator Whitehouse, for your great 
leadership on the floor.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am delighted to be joined by all of you.
  I would make an observation of my own. I think Senator Blumenthal 
wants to join in. The observation I want to make is our three States 
are known for great universities--Yale University in New Haven, CT; 
Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; and Brown University in 
Providence, RI. They all teach climate science, and they all teach 
economics as well.
  But it is not just those three universities. If you go across the 
aisle and check in with our Republican colleagues, with their 
Republican home States, they have great universities in their own 
States, including State universities. And their State universities in 
their home States teach the very climate science that Republican 
Senators deny on the Senate floor.
  I have been through the syllabuses of home State universities for 
Republican colleagues and gone through the classes that teach climate 
science, and they teach economics. And you can go to Milton Friedman, 
the famous free market conservative economist, and what does he say 
about pollution? He says the cost of the pollution has to be in the 
price of the product or else it is a big fat subsidy, and it is not 
market economics any longer. It is a government

[[Page S1863]]

subsidy; it is corporate welfare; and that is what we see in this 
dispute.
  The climate science is real. Their own State universities teach it, 
and the economics is real. Their own State universities teach Milton 
Friedman. And what they are doing in this building, contrary to what 
their universities know, is to fight with political power, to keep 
polluting, and have the public bear all the cost of their pollution--
have the public bear all the cost of their pollution, not be a real 
market economy--which the price of the pollution, as a negative 
externality, gets baked into the price of the product--but pollute for 
free.
  This is a huge pollute-for-free scam, running to about $700 billion 
every year. So no wonder it has taken a while for wind and solar to 
take off fighting the headwinds of a multihundred billion-dollar 
subsidy from an industry that gets to pollute for free.
  And who bears all those costs? How are your fishermen doing in Long 
Island Sound as that water has warmed or mine or yours? And that is 
just one example.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. If the Senator from Rhode Island would yield.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I would add a footnote to that important 
conversation, which is they teach economics, and they teach that those 
externalities are, in effect, a subsidy if they aren't charged to the 
consumer and made transparent. But they can also distort the market.
  When those subsidies caused consumers to buy cars that are more 
polluting or to use fuel that is more contaminating to our environment, 
they also avoid the benefits, the public-interest benefits, of cleaner 
fuel and better cars.
  Just to give you an illustration, for many years, Senator Markey and 
I crusaded for safer cars--cars that were better built, cars that had 
seatbelts, cars that had airbags. The industry resisted--almost 
comically now in retrospect--because once they started installing these 
devices, once they made cars safe, you know what they found? Consumers 
wanted safer cars. They also wanted cars that were more energy 
efficient.

  Lo and behold, when they saw the benefits of these kinds of energy-
saving and environmentally friendly measures, consumers voted with 
their feet and their wallets and their dollars.
  If we did not have these kinds of hidden subsidies, consumers would 
vote for electric cars if there were more charging stations, if there 
were batteries that took them longer distances without having to 
recharge.
  I am kind of surprised that the President of the United States isn't 
having a showroom on the White House lawn for all electric vehicles, 
not just for Elon Musk's Tesla. Why not provide that kind of boost and 
elevation for electric vehicles generally? And the car manufacturers 
would bet on cleaner cars if they were given the true cost and enabled 
to enjoy the true benefits of electric cars generally, not just the 
ones produced by a billionaire--unelected, unappointed official, 
unconfirmed official--acting, in effect, on behalf of Donald Trump with 
Lee Zeldin as his instrument to fire hard-working people at the EPA and 
to roll back rules that benefit consumers.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank my colleagues for their colloquy.
  I see the Senator from South Carolina, whose time we are intruding 
on, has come to the floor.
  We yield to Senator Scott.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.


                              H.J. Res. 25

  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Mr. President, I rise to talk in favor 
of my CRA on the overdraft fees.
  President Biden and his politically motivated junk fee conversation 
was not about helping consumers. It was about trying to change the 
conversation away from the devastation that inflation was bringing to 
kitchen table after kitchen table after kitchen table all across 
America. The average American, because of Bidenflation, lost $1,000-
plus in spending power, devastated by the Biden economy.
  President Biden looked for something to change the conversation and 
it changed something called junk fees. One of the junk fees he talked 
about was the overdraft fee. Now, some would say: What is an overdraft 
fee? Your bank account goes beyond zero; you have to pay a fee; your 
bills are paid. Some people who live paycheck to paycheck use their 
overdraft option to pay their rent.
  So when you start capping these fee structures, you start eliminating 
overdraft. You start eliminating the possibility of people working 
paycheck to paycheck to make the decision--to make the decision--to 
continue to use their resources in the most effective way.
  Unfortunately, President Biden's devastating economy has reverberated 
for years now. This overdraft conversation is a critically important 
conversation, if you are, like me, a guy who grew up in poverty, 
single-parent household, who understands the difficulty, the challenge 
of single moms making those ends meet. I want every single hard-working 
American to have access to our financial system. That sometimes 
includes, as it did for us, free checking.
  A free checking account is not free, but with the revenue streams 
coming into the institutions, they can use those revenues as an option 
to provide free checking for those living paycheck to paycheck.
  Overturning the Biden CFPB's overdraft fee structure is good for 
consumers.
  Let me just quote from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that 
confirmed the overdraft fee caps hinder financial inclusion. As a study 
stated:

       [O]verdraft fee caps hinder financial inclusion. When 
     constrained by fee caps, banks reduce overdraft coverage and 
     deposit supply, causing more returned checks and a decline in 
     account ownerships among low-income households.

  To do the right thing for the working class is to give them all the 
options and let them decide. Trust them with their own resources. That 
is in the best interest of our Nation, and that is why I am offering 
this CRA tonight.

  I yield back all time on Calendar No. 27, H.J. Res. 25.


                          Vote on H.J. Res. 25

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third 
time.
  The joint resolution was ordered to a third reading and was read the 
third time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the 
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
  Mr. SCOTT of South Carolina. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) 
and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.
  The result was announced--yeas 70, nays 28, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 151 Leg.]

                                YEAS--70

     Alsobrooks
     Banks
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Booker
     Boozman
     Britt
     Budd
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Curtis
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fetterman
     Fischer
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hoeven
     Husted
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Justice
     Kennedy
     Kim
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lujan
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     McCormick
     Moody
     Moran
     Moreno
     Mullin
     Murkowski
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Paul
     Ricketts
     Risch
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Schiff
     Schmitt
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Sheehy
     Slotkin
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Tuberville
     Warner
     Warnock
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--28

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt Rochester
     Cantwell
     Coons
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Hassan
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Markey
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Shaheen
     Smith
     Van Hollen
     Warren
     Welch
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Gallego
     Schatz
       
  The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 25) was passed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). The Senator from North Dakota.

[[Page S1864]]

  

  Mr. CRAMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect 
to Calendar No. 27, H.J. Res. 25, the motion to reconsider be 
considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________