February 27, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 36 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S1519-S1520]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           The Green New Deal

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I just listened to the other debate on the 
floor, and it reminded me of the fact that our friends on the other 
side of the aisle introduced a resolution calling on the Federal 
Government to adopt what they call the Green New Deal.
  From my point of view, the legislation is pretty far outside the 
mainstream in what it is proposing and how it is proposing the problems 
we should be debating. I don't have any problem with that. Those 
problems should be solved, and even though it seems pretty far outside 
the mainstream of thought, at least 12 of our colleagues in the Senate 
have cosponsored it. The majority leader thought it would be fair if we 
had that idea out there--it is

[[Page S1520]]

getting a lot of public attention--to have a chance to debate this 
legislation and vote on it in the Senate.
  The Democrats have called it a sham. They said: Why should we have 
debate on this piece of legislation? Why would we want to vote on this 
piece of legislation?
  Now, it is not cosponsored by a majority of the Members of the 
Senate, but it is cosponsored by over 25 percent of the Democrats in 
the Senate, and one would think that if 25 percent of their conference 
is sponsoring a bill, they would be glad to come to the floor and talk 
about that bill and talk about what it does.
  So let's talk for just a couple of minutes about what that bill 
actually says. One of the things that it does is that it calls for the 
United States to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. That is just 
a little more than 10 years from now. It says, basically, that we want 
to have a zero-carbon-dioxide emissions by then.
  I know there was some discussion in the rolling out of this bill that 
that would mean that ground transportation and air transportation would 
either be eliminated or minimized--at least the way we travel right now 
would be. At some point in the future that may happen, but it is highly 
unlikely it is going to happen in the next 10 years, which is what the 
bill calls for. Maybe that is why they don't want to debate it. Even 
President Obama's former science adviser says that this is not 
feasible. Harvard University professor John Holdren was quoted in the 
New York Times saying: ``As a technologist studying this problem for 50 
years, I don't think we can do it.''
  So that is a pretty good source who indicates that what we are 
talking about here can't happen. So that big headline goal appears to 
be impossible, but we probably could debate it anyway. Let's hear from 
the other side, particularly the 12 cosponsors, to say why it is 
possible, why we should be able to do that, and why that is in the 
legislation that they filed.
  The rest of the legislation goes really beyond things that don't 
relate to the environment. There is a laundry list of policies that 
appear to be popular right now in the so-called progressive discussion. 
One is a single-payer health system and the other is a Federal job 
guarantee. The talking points suggested that that would be a Federal 
job guarantee for people who can't work or aren't willing to work. Of 
course, that was so controversial that immediately people began to say: 
Well, maybe that is something that the Republicans snuck into our 
talking points. But it turned out that wasn't true.
  There is a provision calling for ``repairing the historic oppression 
of . . . youth.'' That is sort of what this whole Green New Deal seems 
to focus on--accepting responsibility in a debate for things that 
really don't make the kind of sense one would want them to make as you 
move toward legislation. They don't really say what the ``historic 
oppression of youth'' was. Probably that is not related to the economy 
or the environment or the greenness of the Green New Deal.
  But even if we agree that these ideas are good ideas, the other 
question is this: How much is it going to cost?
  The American Action Forum looked at the biggest parts of the 
legislation, and they estimated that the total would run anywhere from 
$51 trillion to $94 trillion over 10 years. To put this in perspective, 
the Congress right now appropriates about $1.5 trillion a year. We 
spend more than that through programs that are in place like Social 
Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but we appropriate $1.5 trillion a 
year. If the estimates of the Green New Deal are right, that would 
suddenly become $5 trillion to $9 trillion a year. That is a pretty 
good multiplier of $1.5 trillion a year--six times, in fact, of what we 
are spending now--at the $9 trillion level. That works out to be about 
$65,000 per family per year. That would probably be more government 
than we could afford, but that is how it works out.
  There is nothing that talks about how families are supposed to come 
up with their share of the bill.
  While some of the ideas in the Green New Deal--Medicare for all or a 
job for everybody, guaranteed by the government--sound like good ideas, 
I don't think they are going to stand the test of the debate. I think 
that is one of the reasons that maybe the other side doesn't want to 
have the debate.
  Some talk about: Well, maybe we will all vote present or we will not 
vote at all.
  I think it is pretty hard to defend what you are out there talking 
about when you are not willing to come to the floor and talk about it. 
That is a debate we are going to have. I suspect we are going to have 
it sometime this month, and I look forward to engaging in that debate.
  This week, we are having another debate on nominees. Right now, the 
debate is on the nominee for the Administrator of the EPA. There has 
been some discussion of the environment in the debate on the 
Administrator of the EPA. Next, we are going to go to someone to serve 
on the TVA commission. This is somebody who has been voted out of 
committee two times in bipartisan voice votes and never allowed to have 
a vote in the Senate.
  I will remind my colleagues again that under President Reagan, the 
average time in days from when a person was voted out of committee--and 
remember, as all of us on the floor would know, the committee is where 
questions are asked, and the background check has been completed. That 
may take a substantial amount of time, depending on the nominee and how 
complicated their information is--sometimes less time, sometimes more. 
That has all happened in the committee.
  Under President Reagan, the average number of days from the time a 
person was voted out of committee until they were voted on, on the 
floor was 5. The total number of times the majority had to file cloture 
to get that vote was less than a handful in the entire first 2 years.
  For President Trump, the average number of days for a nominee to be 
voted on is 55, and the majority leader had to file cloture 128 times 
even to get a vote. We are going through some of those votes this week. 
The 30 hours of debate almost never includes debate about the nominee 
who is using up floor time that could be used for debating how we spend 
our money, how we defend our country, or what our foreign policy 
oversight responsibilities are going to be.
  We are going to continue to look at the options and continue to talk 
to our friends on the other side about how 60 Senators can work 
together to change the rules in a way that they would be changed going 
forward to get the rules back more to the days of Ronald Reagan, George 
Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and all of their predecessors, where 
nominees were never used as a way to use up time. Nominees were never 
held hostage so that other legislation or debate couldn't occur.
  We are working hard to find 60 of us who want to return to a time 
when legislative priorities in the Senate still had the protections of 
the minority that have always been there, but those protections 
couldn't be used to the disadvantage of people who have stepped up and 
are willing to serve and are often voted out of committee on a 
bipartisan basis, only to be held up on the floor.
  I look forward to the debate on the Green New Deal. I look forward to 
the other debates we are going to have on the floor of the Senate this 
year.
  For the people who are willing to serve, who have been reported out 
of committee, who have been thoroughly questioned and investigated but 
can't get that vote and get to work, that is not what we want to do. 
That is not who we should want to be. I hope we can work together to 
find a way to change that rule as well.
  I see my good friend, the Senator from Hawaii, is here. We are 
working on some things together right now that we would like to get to 
the floor and have those bills voted on later.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Hawaii.