[Pages S4973-S4978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Republican Administration

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to start tonight by addressing 
those on my side of the aisle.
  My friends, I am taking the floor with a simple message to you: Don't 
give up. We cannot give up. We can't afford to give up. The American 
people are demanding we don't give up. They are demanding we get up, 
and we fight back.
  We have to fight back against the attacks on our healthcare system, 
against the attacks on families across our country--especially the 
poorest--on reproductive rights. We can't give up on our neighbors 
seeking asylum or education through our country's lawful processes. We 
can't give up on affordable energy that keeps the lights on, bills low, 
and our air clean--wind, solar, all-electric vehicles, battery storage 
technologies; the future. We can't give up.
  Republicans have taken a battering ram to the American healthcare 
system, a system that was already too expensive, too inaccessible, too 
complicated for too many Americans. And what have they done? They have 
passed legislation to slash $850 billion from Medicaid, $500 billion 
from Medicare, $300 billion from the Affordable Care Act, and they are 
slashing NIH research--research on Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes. 
Alzheimer's--slashing the funding to find a cure for the diseases which 
run through every family in America, just slashing it. Slashing the 
Centers for Disease Control, slashing it. Just an absolute evisceration 
of the healthcare system in our country.
  And what are we going to see? According to the Yale University, 
51,000 additional deaths per year over the next 10 years. A half a 
million people dying because of those cuts in those programs. That is 
what the Republicans have done in their Big Beautiful Bill. People are 
going to die because of that.

  And how have they done it? Well, Trump and his backers have done this 
by breaking the basic functions of democracy, violating institutional 
norms, and treating people's lives as expendable. He has done it 
through corruption, intimidation, illegal power grabs, and plain 
cruelty.
  Already, the Republicans cut $2.5 billion from the National 
Institutes of Health, $11.4 billion from the Centers for Disease 
Control, and cut programming for mental health, environmental health, 
and reproductive health. People are about to receive notices that their 
insurance costs are going up. They are going to be skyrocketing. 
Hospitals and Planned Parenthood clinics are already closing. Americans 
aren't experiencing this one at a time because it is happening all at 
once across our country.
  Republicans acted on Trump's Big Oil-funded vendetta against wind and 
solar energy by cutting incentives for the cleanest and the cheapest 
sources of electricity, all to pad the pockets of their fossil fuel 
friends: the oil, the gas, and the coal industry.
  The companies that have created the climate crisis are the ones that 
have

[[Page S4974]]

given hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump for his election 
last year, and now they are collecting by promising to destroy wind and 
solar and all-electric vehicles and battery storage technologies--the 
competitors to the energy sources of the 20th century and the 19th 
century--destroying the future for young people, who are looking to a 
clean energy future in the 21st century.
  Trump's ``One Big Ugly Bill'' eliminated the residential clean and 
efficient energy incentives; they ripped out the funding for heat 
pumps. They are pretty much pulling them out of the walls, pulling 
solar panels off of roofs--in other words, committing highway robbery 
on homeowners who want to lower their bills, breathe clean air, and 
ensure a livable future for their families.
  The ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to mean a lot of big, ugly healthcare 
and big, ugly, higher energy bills arriving in the mail by the millions 
for families all across our country.
  Republicans are forcing us backwards. Republicans are looking at 
America in a rearview mirror, not straight ahead toward the future 
which we should have for every family--a cleaner, healthier, more fair, 
and more safe future for everyone. No, that is not where they want to 
take us.
  Democrats must stop the bleeding and fight hard for something better. 
And that means us. As part of that fight, we should not agree to a 
government funding deal that makes Americans' lives harder and more 
expensive. We can say loud and clear that we want to reverse Medicaid 
and Affordable Care cuts; no cuts for research into cancer and 
Alzheimer's and diabetes; no attacks on affordable, renewable energy; 
no cuts to affordable housing; to save public broadcasting; to protect 
public weather services; to save the EPA from being destroyed.
  The Republicans are turning the EPA into ``Every Polluter's Ally.'' 
It is an open door for the oil, gas, coal, and polluting industries all 
across our country over at the EPA right now. DOGE is just saying: 
Welcome. Tell us what other environmental protection you want us to 
take off of the books that have helped to increase life expectancy in 
our Nation.
  Beyond our fights for programs that help working families, we should 
not agree to a government funding deal that doesn't stop the 
lawlessness of the Trump administration. The Trump administration must 
spend what Congress allocates. If Republicans won't say that out loud--
that Donald Trump should follow the laws passed by this legislative 
body--what good are the funding laws that the House and Senate passed 
that are signed by the President? What is the whole point of having a 
House and Senate if Donald Trump and Russell Vought over at OMB say: We 
don't have to pay any attention.
  OMB is not written into the U.S. Constitution. There was no 
revolution to make sure that Russell Vought at OMB gets to decide which 
programs get funded. When people were going down Mass Avenue in 
Massachusetts--from Arlington, to Lexington, to Concord--they were 
saying: No taxation without representation. We want a House. We want a 
Senate. We are going to have a revolution. We don't want a King. We 
want controls. We want safeguards.
  If we can pass a bill that funds programs that better the lives of 
Americans in every State but Republicans refuse to commit that they 
won't then cut that same funding with a partisan vote later because 
Trump tells them to, what good are our funding laws? What was the whole 
point of bipartisanship in the first place?
  Even if Republicans say that they will keep the promise of that 
funding, how can we believe them? How can we buy their promises when 
they have broken them before, over and over again? As recently as this 
month, they broke their promise.
  Republicans are the ones who started the government shutdown on 
January 22, the day of the first Executive orders to cut funding across 
the government. We started this administration with Trump unilaterally 
and illegally withholding bipartisan-passed funding from whole 
Departments, like USAID, to targeting individual recipients, such as 
Harvard University in Massachusetts--cutting the funding at Harvard for 
cancer, for Alzheimer's, for diabetes, for Parkinson's, for the 
diseases for which they were looking to find a cure for families.
  Republicans then unilaterally passed a continuing resolution last 
March because they and Trump refused to negotiate with Democrats. 
Republicans unilaterally passed a reconciliation bill to fund only 
their priorities, including lavish tax breaks for the wealthy and huge 
increases to the Defense Department budget, while gutting Medicaid and 
food assistance and Medicare and kicking 10 million Americans off 
of healthcare--10 million Americans are going to lose their 
healthcare--halting funding to clean up our air; causing energy bills 
to spike by attacking affordable, renewable energy.

  Republicans also raised the debt limit in that bill because they 
didn't want to negotiate with Democrats over that.
  Republicans unilaterally passed, in the dark of night, cuts to public 
broadcasting and global health just a couple of weeks ago, even though 
Congress had previously passed that funding on a bipartisan basis.
  Democrats and Republicans vote for it, it goes down to the White 
House, and the President signs it. And the President says: Oh, not 
binding on me. I can now do whatever I want.
  So everything that is taught to kids in the sixth grade about how our 
bills become law--that is just going into a shredder. That is just Etch 
A Sketched right out of history.
  The President wants to be a King.
  And that is where it all started 250 years ago, right along 
Massachusetts Avenue in Massachusetts: The redcoats are coming. King 
George wants to be controlling us without any representation from the 
people who are in the Colonies.
  That is what we fought for--right here. The whole revolution was 
fought to build this building so that there was representation. 
Republicans just don't care about that.
  Just this month, Trump's budget czar Russell Vought said he wanted 
the appropriations process to be less bipartisan--less bipartisan.
  Remember when Trump said he didn't know anything about Project 2025? 
Remember when he said that? They asked him in September of 2024: What 
about Project 2025?
  Don't know anything about it, says Trump.
  In October: What about Project 2025?
  Don't know anything about it, he said.
  Well, Russell Vought is now the head of OMB. He wrote Project 2025. 
Trump gave the job to Russell Vought to then implement Project 2025.
  Would you all agree that the President had a very high prevarication 
coefficient as he was talking about his knowledge of Project 2025? Do 
you all agree he knew exactly what he was doing; he was just lying to 
the American people? I think so.
  The White House and Vought are saying they will use their own pocket 
rescissions--just another term for illegal impoundment of taxpayer 
money--to enact DOGE cuts in anything that Congress passes.
  So I will quote Mark Twain to my Democratic colleagues. ``There is 
nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule'' to your behind.
  Maya Angelou put it more nicely: When someone tells you who they are 
the first time, you should believe them.
  So Republicans are already plotting to eliminate the Department of 
Education through another partisan vote to steal taxpayer money for 
their own purposes. And I don't want to urge them to do the right thing 
because I have no confidence and no evidence that they will do the 
right thing, regardless of our request that they remember the 
bipartisan spirit that has always defined the appropriations process. 
To quote the great comedian Oscar Levant, they ``will double cross that 
bridge when'' they come to it. That is who they are. They are double-
crossers. We can all see what happened in that rescission process, and 
we know they are planning more double-crossing coming right down the 
line.
  Republicans are asking us not to believe our own eyes that have seen 
them cut funding to our States and to programs that save lives in our 
country. They are asking us not to believe our own ears that have heard 
them say they are going to cut and they are going to withhold funding 
for our special needs students, for cancer research, for farmers.

[[Page S4975]]

  Republicans and Trump do not care about working with Democrats. When 
they say ``bipartisan process,'' what they really mean is ``We are 
going to do whatever we want to do. We are the Republicans; we are in 
charge of the whole country. We don't need to talk to anybody.''
  Democrats don't have many tools, being in the minority, but an 
important one is doing everything we can to slow down this Trump march 
to increased costs, lost healthcare, and ultimately an economic 
catastrophe. So I have continued to vote against all Trump nominees 
because their only job is to execute Trump's illegal and 
unconstitutional agenda. I am voting no.
  Those who have gotten bipartisan support have acted in their jobs 
just as partisan as the rest of them. Anyone who has stood up for 
independence and the rule of law--they have been fired by Trump. Just 
show that you have independence. Just show that you are going to stand 
up for the Constitution. Just raise a question. They fire you in the 
Trump administration. And what have Republicans done about it? Nothing. 
More nominations for more unqualified candidates.
  I wasn't aware that Donald Trump placed one of his tariffs on 
courage, because we appear to be experiencing a Congress-wide shortage. 
And that is what is troubling, I think, to the American people because 
that is what is going to cause the problems that are about to be seen 
across our Nation.
  The Trump administration thinks Congress is irrelevant, and 
unfortunately Republicans don't appear to have any interest in 
disabusing them of that notion. Just look at the Department of Energy. 
This month, the Department of Energy announced openly that it is 
ignoring the appropriations law on funding for wind and solar and all-
electric vehicles--or, as young people call it, the future.
  Only today, the Government Accountability Office said that the 
Department of Energy broke the law by failing to distribute funding for 
the Renew America's Schools Program, as directed by Congress.
  We have to ask ourselves: How is passing another appropriations law 
going to address that lawlessness? It is like the definition of 
insanity--doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting 
different results.
  And it is just not about budgets. It is not just about dollars and 
cents. It is about common sense. That is what we are going to have to 
bring to this process because Trump and his henchmen have been on a 
deregulatory blitz.
  The latest and perhaps the most egregious is the Environmental 
Protection Agency Administrator's--Lee Zeldin--announcement this week 
that the Trump administration is repealing the finding that climate 
change endangers our lives and health and safety. That is like a doctor 
repealing the finding that smoking causes lung cancer--but that is the 
head of the EPA under Donald Trump working for the oil, gas, and coal 
industry--or a firefighter repealing the finding that a lit match can 
burn down a house. That is the head of the EPA for Donald Trump. He 
says there is no such thing as climate change that needs any kind of 
action by the American people for the next generation of Americans--to 
protect them.
  All I can say is, you can try to censor information, you can try to 
silence scientists--and they are firing them, the biologists and the 
chemists at the EPA, by the hundreds. They are just firing all these 
people who were summa cum laude in college, all the kids that sat in 
the first row in your high school class, all those biologists and 
chemists. They are firing them all. They don't want to hear about 
climate change. They don't want to hear about the science.
  So you can try to bury the facts, you can try to bury the reality, 
but you can't change that. You can't change it.
  The endangerment finding is backed by science. The endangerment 
finding is backed by law. It has withstood every single attempt to 
challenge it so far.
  You are saying: What is the endangerment finding? Well, in 
Massachusetts v. EPA, in a Supreme Court decision in 2007, the Supreme 
Court ruled that the EPA had to determine: Do greenhouse gases in large 
amounts endanger the lives and well-being and welfare of citizens in 
the United States? And the EPA made that finding under Barack Obama, 
using science, saying: Yes, there is an endangerment.
  That is the law we have operated under for 15 years. That is why we 
have cleaner cars. That is why utilities don't send up as much 
pollution up into the air--because of that finding. That is why we have 
lowered the temperature, lowered the thermostat in the United States 
and across the planet. We have just reduced the temperature.
  Well, the endangerment finding gave the EPA the power to regulate 
planet-warming greenhouse gases as air pollution under the Clean Air 
Act because climate change threatens our welfare, and that authority 
came from the Supreme Court of the United States.
  Driven by the devastation that climate change wreaked on its 
citizens, Massachusetts sued the EPA for not regulating the gases that 
contribute to climate change, and Massachusetts won. The Supreme Court 
agreed that the EPA was obligated to safeguard people from the actual 
and imminent threat that greenhouse gases pose to people everywhere, 
and that is known as the endangerment finding.
  Nearly two decades later, that danger has only gotten worse, more 
intense, more acute, and more personal for everyone in our country and 
around the world, and we have to be the leaders, not the laggards.
  You can't preach temperance from a barstool. You can't tell the rest 
of the world to do something if you are not doing it. You can't tell 
someone not to drink a beer or have a cigar in their hand if you have a 
cigar in your hand and a beer in the other hand. No one is going to 
follow you.
  That is where Donald Trump has taken us now on climate change. That 
is where Lee Zeldin has taken us on climate change. He has given away 
the moral authority, the technological leadership that should be the 
United States of America.
  And I breathed--I breathed--that dirty air from wildfire smoke. I 
have seen horrible floods steal the livelihoods of Massachusetts 
farmers and warming waters wreck the fishing grounds off of our coast 
of Massachusetts. I have grieved with those who lost lives in 
hurricanes, those who were forced from their family homes thanks to 
rising tides.
  Look at those families and tell me that this isn't dangerous. Look at 
those young people who worry about their future and see every year 
hotter than the last. Every year is warmer than the preceding one, and 
that is because the oil, gas, and coal industry continues to send more 
and more of these greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere. Look at the 
families paying skyrocketing electric and home insurance bills, 
wondering how they are going to keep their kids safe in a crisis and 
keep food on the table. Tell me their welfare isn't hurt by the climate 
crisis.
  This endangerment finding keeps us safe. It says that there is danger 
and something must be done about it because you can't fix what you 
won't face. There is danger from sending all of those pollutants up 
into the atmosphere. Then, like the ceiling here, it is captured, and 
then the heat is held in, and the planet gets warmer and warmer, and 
the fires become hotter and hotter, and the floods gets bigger and 
bigger, and the storms get more and more violent because we keep the 
heat in because of the greenhouse effect of all of those pollutants.
  This administration just continues to bury its head in the sand and 
will bury Americans along with it. We are going to lose a lot of lives.
  Now, we have discovered a second endangerment finding. Lee Zeldin and 
Donald Trump are a clear and present danger to the welfare of our 
Nation today.
  I think it is pretty clear to young people that they have made their 
own endangerment finding. They know Donald Trump is a danger to them. 
They know Lee Zeldin at the EPA is a danger to them.
  How did they justify this decision in the White House when all of the 
science in the world is against them? The Trump administration found 
five crank, faux scientists and gave them a platform for lies and 
misinformation. These known climate deniers argued that our seas aren't 
rising more quickly and that extreme heat caused by global warming 
can't affect our crops.

[[Page S4976]]

  Putting these five climate deniers in charge of a climate-science 
report is like putting a vaccine denier in charge of the national 
health Agency. Wait. Wait. I am sorry. They did that as well. They did 
that as well. A vaccine denier is running the Department of Health and 
Human Services. It is unbelievable.
  In an era where science should be venerated, in fact, it is just 
being disregarded across all of Trump's Agencies.
  This report put out by the Department of Energy ignored the 
overwhelming scientific consensus and ongoing body of evidence that 
climate change puts us in danger, evidence that we are already bearing 
witness to. You don't need to be a climate scientist to see that storms 
are becoming more furious and more deadly.
  Just this month, we saw extreme weather take the lives of loved ones 
in Texas in that flooding and in New Mexico, and those floods were 
supercharged by climate change. That climate change was driven by the 
greed of the fossil fuel industry, the oil, gas, and coal industries.
  This sham Department of Energy report is an attack on common sense, 
and it is an attack on public safety.
  Trump and Zeldin are arguing that American transportation emissions 
don't contribute to global climate change. EPA's own data shows that if 
our transportation sector was a country, it would be the fourth largest 
emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
  They argue that sea levels aren't rising, that warming temperatures 
can't kill. That climate denial is going to cost lives. They are just 
denying science. They are denying reality. They are denying what 
everyone sees 3 nights out of 7 on their television sets as the lead 
story--these wild storms and wildfires that affect all parts of our 
country. They are saying that warming temperatures can't kill. Well, 
again, climate denial costs lives.
  This is Trump's America, where EPA stands for ``Every Polluter's 
Ally.'' It is just a revolving door. Come on in, tell us which 
environmental regulations are making you less profitable, and we will 
give you permission to ignore those environmental laws and send more 
pollution up into the air--more cancers, more asthma, more disease in 
children and pregnant women. We will just give you a permission slip to 
go and do it.
  Your health is sacrificed for their wealth.
  Trump and Zeldin and their whole cabal of polluters should be 
ashamed, and they should be held accountable.
  From day one, Trump has had it out for any technology that might save 
money for working Americans, usually for reasons that range from the 
personal, like his problems with water-efficient toilets, to the 
personally enriching for Donald Trump.
  Look at wind power. Trump's crusade against wind power dates to 2006, 
when he bought an 1,800-acre estate in Scotland near a planned wind 
farm that he warned would be ``really ugly.'' You know he just wants 
better views for the golf courses, for which he is willing to violate 
our ethics laws.
  Now look at his fossil fuel donors. In April of 2024, Trump demanded 
$1 billion in campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry, at Mar-
a-Lago. Give me $1 billion, he said, and I will take care of those 
environmental problems for you. And the fossil fuel industry has been 
cashing it in for favors ever since.
  In the first 2 weeks alone in the Trump administration, Trump's top 
15 fossil fuel billionaire donors--otherwise known as the 
``oilgarchy''--increased their wealth by a collective $2.4 billion.
  In the ``Big Ugly Bill,'' mom-and-pop taxpayers were forced to give 
$18 billion in handouts to Big Oil and Big Gas. That is the One Big 
Beautiful Bill that the Republicans brag about. Do they brag about the 
$18 billion they gave to the oil, gas, and coal industry? You are not 
going to hear that when you hear the litany of the things they were 
concerned about. That is on top of the $35 billion the fossil fuel 
industry already gets in tax breaks and has gotten for decades and 
decades and decades.
  Do you know what drives them crazy? When we give tax breaks for wind 
and solar, all-electric vehicles, battery storage technologies. That is 
what drives them crazy--when the competition can finally get up and 
compete.
  That is what Donald Trump is doing in return for the funding from the 
oil, gas, and coal industry. He is just unleveling the playing field so 
that the fossil fuel industry, as they were in the 19th and 20th 
centuries, can dominate in the 21st century, regardless of the 
environmental impacts and the health impacts on the American people.
  The result of Trump's showboating on trade, besides higher costs for 
American families--Trump said the European Union would buy $750 billion 
of energy resources from the United States over the next 3 years. You 
heard him say that just last week. This is more than pay to play; it is 
pay to slay our chance at a livable future--our clean air, our clean 
water, our affordable energy bills.
  The One Big Beautiful Bill's attacks on clean and cheap energy just 
absolutely are ahistorical. In the ``One Big Ugly Bill,'' Republicans 
took aim at the cheapest form of energy out there: renewable energy. It 
is cheaper than oil and gas and coal, and they hate that now. It is a 
young person's vision for the future.
  Their legislation essentially puts a new tax on cheap, clean power--
raising costs for ratepayers everywhere as projects to install new 
generation slow to a crawl, which is deeply ironic given that nearly 80 
percent of clean energy investments from the Inflation Reduction Act of 
2022 that they sought to destroy have gone to Republican districts, 
creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in red districts across this 
country. Think about that. Trump is actively working to destroy 
economic growth and jobs in the very places that got him elected.
  More demand, less supply. More costs, less relief. Bills going up by 
more than $100 a year per family. We are already seeing energy costs 
start to spike, rising nearly three times higher this year than during 
Biden's term and rising three times as fast as general inflation.
  This is a predictor of coming atrocities due to the Big Beautiful 
Bill. Electricity rates are spiking across our country. People are 
seeing it in their bills on their kitchen tables. Energy is getting 
more expensive more quickly for every family across our country, and 
that is all thanks to the Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill.''
  But that is not all. The ``Big Ugly Bill'' will increase emissions 
equivalent to putting 72 million new cars on the road and eliminates 
pollution-reduction programs, leading to approximately hundreds of 
additional premature deaths in our country every single year. This 
means more asthma, more heart attacks, more families losing loved 
ones--all because Republicans want to give billionaire polluters 
another bonus.
  Kill the new industries, Trump says, Big Oil says. Kill those new 
industries. And they did.
  Undermining clean energy means all of us breathe dirtier air, costing 
Americans in expensive trips to the emergency room for asthma attacks, 
lost schooldays, lost workdays. Asthma is already responsible for 
nearly 1.8 million emergency department visits, over 94,000 
hospitalizations, more than 3,500 deaths annually. And what the 
Republicans have done in cooperation with Donald Trump is it is 
supercharging--it is supercharging--asthma visits to emergency rooms in 
our country.
  Cutting clean energy is making all of those health benefits go away, 
and the economic burden of asthma is staggering. Let me give you the 
numbers. It costs our healthcare system approximately $50 billion each 
year, almost $3 billion in lost school and work days, and $29 billion 
from mortality. The cumulative impact of breathing dirty air from 
living near a highway or a powerplant means your risk of lung cancer 
skyrockets. Nearly $24 billion was spent on lung cancer in 2020, and it 
costs each patient $200,000, on average. But wait, there is more.
  At the same time that the bill slashes Medicaid and slashes the 
Affordable Care Act as it pays out to dirty, expensive energy that 
pollutes your lungs, it also cuts billions in historic investments from 
the Inflation Reduction Act, in environmental justice, and air 
pollution reduction programs, even at schools.
  This included the $20 billion climate bank that I secured with Chris 
Van

[[Page S4977]]

Hollen in the Inflation Reduction Act, which is projected to spur more 
than $250 billion in public and private sector investment to create 
jobs, lower Americans' energy costs, strengthen our energy 
independence, combat the climate crisis, deploy solar, deploy charging 
stations for electric vehicles. That was the climate bank, which I was 
able to create with Chris Van Hollen. They want to eliminate that. They 
have taken it to court. It was working too successfully. Anything that 
is working to deploy clean energy technologies, they hate.
  Republicans also targeted clean car regulations that saved drivers 
money at the pump. Instead of the dawn of the clean energy future, 
Republicans are sunsetting incentives that would spur clean domestic 
manufacturing for industries.
  This bill is on track to destroy more than 840,000 American jobs by 
2030 in the clean energy sector. This is the largest job-destroying 
bill to ever pass Congress--killed 840,000 new jobs. Never before has 
Congress done anything like this, deliberately, intentionally killing 
all of those jobs. And that means fewer manufacturing, solar 
installation, home efficiency contracts all across our country.
  States with the largest job losses: Texas, Florida, Indiana, Georgia. 
They voted to destroy the jobs in their own States. They were going to 
be the center of this revolution. That is where the manufacturing 
plants were. But the oil, gas, and coal industry, they said to Donald 
Trump: Kill it. And each of them received, as it is said in ``The 
Godfather,'' part 1--they each got an offer they couldn't refuse. So as 
a result, they voted to kill all of that job creation.
  This isn't a red State or blue State issue; this is creating a 
national economic crisis. The States with the highest spikes in energy 
prices: South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 
Their prices are spiking right now and have been and are going to 
continue to spike because of this bill.
  This administration has made their tradeoff clear: your future for 
their profit. That is Trump's ``Art of the Deal.'' You give up your 
future, and we get to make billions. So this is absolutely something 
that young people in our country, the next generation, they are going 
to be devastated by these decisions. And it is going to unfold next 
year, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
  They are going to be looking back, saying: What did that generation 
think? How could that Congress kill wind and solar and all electric 
vehicles? Because the Republican bill is going to make the United 
States a laggard, not a leader, in innovation. Already China is 
investing four times more than the United States in renewable energy. 
Instead of catching up and overtaking China, this bill will cede more 
jobs and progress to China.
  In fact, in 2024, China installed 357,000 megawatts of wind and 
solar. That is roughly the amount of wind and solar that the United 
States has installed in our country's entire history. China did it last 
year. You would think we want to take them on. You would think that is 
a challenge for the United States in our innovation, our 
entrepreneurial spirit. And instead, Donald Trump said to the 
Republicans: Let's just surrender. Let's give up. Let's not compete in 
the energy sectors of the future. Let's let the Chinese sell the 
electric vehicles to the world. Let's let them sell the solar panels, 
the batteries, the wind technologies to the world. We are not going to 
do it.
  And by the way, he did the same thing with the biotech sector. When 
you slash the NIH budget, China is saying: Thank you. We didn't like 
the fact that the United States was ahead of us. We don't know what we 
deserved to get this gift from Trump, but thank you for giving us the 
clean energy and biotech future for the 21st century--and asking for 
nothing in return. That is what Trump just did. That is what the 
Republicans are doing out here.
  Between January and May of 2025 alone, China added 198,000 megawatts 
of solar and 46,000 megawatts of wind. China now has more than 1 
million megawatts of solar energy on the grid. China also produces 80 
percent of the solar panels. Do you want to compete with the Chinese? 
No, says Trump. I don't want to compete. I don't like solar. I don't 
like wind. I don't like batteries. I don't like all-electric vehicles. 
I don't want to compete. America, we are 5 percent of the world. Let's 
just control the 5 percent of the world that is the population of the 
United States. Let the Chinese have the other 95 percent of the world 
for the clean energy future for the 21st century. That is the decision 
the President made, and Republicans went along with it just this month.
  By contrast, the United States had approximately 1,200 gigawatts of 
utility-scale power on our grid. The United States added only 50,000 
megawatts of solar and 4,000 megawatts of wind throughout the entirety 
of 2024--not too shabby but only a fraction of what China was able to 
accomplish. China sold over 11 million electric vehicles in 2024. China 
continues to be the world's EV manufacturing hub and is responsible for 
more than 70 percent of global production of electric vehicles.
  The United States remains a net importer of electric cars, with 
imports increasing by nearly 40 percent in 2024. How are we going to 
catch up if Republicans would rather hamstring the industry? We are not 
close to winning this race. The Republicans won't let us even get to 
the starting line.
  In fact, they don't even know where the ball game is. They are still 
driving around trying to find out where this game is. It is as though 
they don't understand that China is targeting our key industries: 
biotech, clean energy. And instead of responding with a plan--and we 
can beat China with a plan. You can't beat them without a plan. And 
what they did, the Republicans, in unison with Donald Trump, with JD 
Vance breaking the tie, the Vice President of the United States came 
here to cast the vote that said: We are giving up on biotech. We are 
giving up on clean tech. We are just going to let the Chinese have it. 
Just absolutely insane, economically.
  So since the start of the Trump administration through April 2025, 
the Trump administration has already cost America more than 62,000 
clean energy jobs, over $14 billion in private sector clean energy 
projects, and these vanishing projects were winners for the grid, for 
your wallets, for our economy.
  In 2024, 94 percent of all new electricity generation added was from 
wind and solar and batteries. That is 50,000 megawatts of solar, 4,000 
megawatts of wind, 11,000 megawatts of battery.
  So think of it this way: If you are the oil, gas, and coal industry, 
you are looking at 2024, and you are seeing 94 percent of all new 
electricity being wind and solar and batteries. It is driving them 
crazy because this year would be 94 percent and next year would be 94 
percent and the year after and the year after. And natural gas would, 
slowly but surely, just recede, recede into the rearview mirror of 
American history. And the coal industry would join them.
  So they hate it. They had to kill it. They had to kill the revolution 
that they said was never going to be competitive. And when it became 
competitive, they said: Now, we are going to kill it. Utility-scale 
solar, onshore wind are the cheapest energy technologies to operate and 
quickest to build even without subsidies. Solar panels today cost 1 
percent of what they cost 30 years ago.
  Can I say that? Solar right now costs only 1 percent what it did 30 
years ago, and these cheap, clean megawatts of power are powering our 
economy in red and blue States, and compare these with the fuels of the 
past.
  Last year, only 2,500 megawatts of natural gas were added and zero 
from coal. That is a losing streak if I ever saw one. Trump and 
Republicans like to characterize Democrats' interest in addressing 
climate change as quasi-religious.
  Well, here is the real gospel. Clean energy is not polarizing; it is 
popular in the polls. Seventy percent of registered voters support the 
IRA, with over 70 percent of voters saying the United States needs to 
use more renewable energy than it does today. That is not religion; 
that is stimulus in solar panels.
  That is why Republicans are using every trick up their sleeve to rig 
the game while eliminating programs and incentives that lower energy 
costs and reduce pollution. An energy demand that is increasing, driven 
by power-hungry AI data centers and natural gas

[[Page S4978]]

exports out of our country, Republicans are choosing to strangle 
America's supply of cheap solar and wind.
  And thanks to Republicans and their ``Big Ugly Bill,'' wind 
deployment is expected to drop from 200,000 megawatts and solar by 
150,000 megawatts by the year 2035 compared to prior estimates before 
they passed their bill.
  It is absolutely unbelievable the stuff that was working and cheapest 
and cleanest, they are destroying. The stuff that is dirtiest and more 
expensive, they are giving tax breaks to. It is the opposite of what 
the rest of the world wants. And China knows they are going to be 
selling the solar panels, the all-electric vehicles, the batteries, the 
wind to the rest of the world, 95 percent of the population. And we are 
pulling out of that competition.
  This is economics 101. High demand plus low supply means higher 
energy prices for everyone, forcing families to pay at least $130 more 
per month on energy bills in 5 years and $170 more per month in 10 
years.
  It goes even beyond the ``Big Ugly Bill.'' We are living in their big 
ugly world. Earlier this month, the Department of the Interior released 
a memo stating that all decisions related to wind and solar energy 
projects on Federal lands now require the Secretary of the Interior 
Doug Burgum's personal signoff. Who is Secretary of the Interior Doug 
Burgum? He was a fossil fuel guy. Now, you have to go to the fossil 
fuel guy to get permission to deploy wind and solar.
  A few weeks later, the Trump administration came out with new 
messages, new measures to further sabotage wind, and the staff at the 
Department of Energy are now full-time coal lobbyists.
  Can I say that again? The staff at the Department of Energy are full-
time coal lobbyists who have been brought in. Coal, yes, the dirtiest 
source out there, both a major contributor to the climate crisis and to 
the public health threat for communities nearby. That is who is running 
the Department of Energy.
  Just like Trump, coal is outdated, costly, dangerous. Perhaps it is 
no surprise that he is in a weird love affair with coal. It is just 
weird that he loves this technology from 100 years ago. He just can't 
move to the future.
  Coal has shrunk from nearly half the country's electricity generation 
in 2008 to only 15 percent at the start of this year, a trend driven 
primarily by competition from cheaper fossil gas and renewables. 
Building new solar, even solar plus storage, is now cheaper than 
running existing coal plants in the United States. It is already 
winning.
  From today's Twitter post of coal captioned, ``She is the moment''--a 
type of coal, mind you, that has not been mined in the United States 
for more than 80 years--to spreading misinformation that coal is 
critical to modern technology, some of the coal love affair has just 
been plain weird.
  But more concerningly, they are actively spending your ratepayer 
dollars to keep retiring coal plants online.
  With Trump's sham energy emergency Executive order, he has enabled 
the Department of Energy to use emergency authority to keep coal 
online, forcing working families to pay more in order to line the 
pockets of those Big Oil billionaires.
  That is not an energy emergency. This is a Trump energy tax on the 
American public. It is a deliberate strategy to make sure working 
families stay dependent on a damaging fuel source that makes a handful 
of billionaires richer by the day while everyone else pays the price in 
higher bills and a deterioration of their health.
  The truth is that Trump's gutting of cheap and reliable wind and 
solar has created a reliability risk to our grid, in addition to the 
rapid proliferation of massive, load-sucking data centers.
  AI is incredibly energy intensive. One ChatGPT search uses ten times 
the amount of power needed for a Google search. It took the energy 
consumption of 28,000 households to train ChatGPT4. Data centers are 
expected to demand 130 gigawatts of electricity load by the end of this 
decade, equivalent to the electricity used by about 100 million U.S. 
homes.
  This will require adding 10 to 20 additional gigawatts per year to 
the electricity grid. Data centers are expected to demand--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. MOODY). The Senator's time has expired. 
Do you need a moment to wrap up?
  Mr. MARKEY. I thank you, Madam President, and I will conclude, and I 
will be back because this subject is just too important.
  We are now in a climate crisis. It is only going to worsen. NOAA is 
predicting higher than normal hurricanes coming our way. They are going 
to be supercharged.
  The planet is running a fever, and there are no emergency rooms for 
planets. We have to engage in preventive care. The Republicans have 
removed that care, and so we have to have this debate, this discussion.
  And I thank my colleagues, but especially my Democratic colleagues. 
We have to continue to fight. We have to continue to stand. We have to 
continue to ensure that the American people know that we are in this 
battle for the clean energy future for the next generations of young 
Americans who are out there depending upon us to lead that fight for 
them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak up to 5 
minutes preceding this evening's scheduled vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.