April 10, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 62 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S2362-S2363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Socialism

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, thanks very much. Before I talk about the 
auto industry, the strength of our economy, and climate change, I want 
to say a word about socialism.
  I am a Democrat. I am not a socialist. I was a naval flight officer 
for 23 years, plus 4 years as a midshipman before that. I had three 
tours in Southeast Asia, and I am the last Vietnam veteran standing.
  I have no interest in supporting a socialist agenda--none at all, 
none at all. In fact, I don't know if many of my colleagues feel that 
way, either.
  I do know this, though. I know an election was held in November of 
2008. We were in the worst recession since the Great Depression. Banks 
stopped lending money. The unemployment rate reached 10 percent. Banks 
were not lending money to people to go to school, to start businesses, 
to buy cars. It was a terrible time.
  We had an election. The voters of this country decided to change 
horses, and Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush. Joe Biden was 
elected Vice President.
  They started at the bottom. It hadn't been that bad in this country 
in terms of our economy since the Great Depression. Eight years later, 
we had another election, and the new administration inherited the 
longest running economic expansion in the history of this country.
  I will say that again. The Trump administration inherited in January 
of 2017 the longest running economic expansion since the Great 
Depression.
  Add to that the tax bill that pumps up the economy, and now we are 10 
years into an economic recovery. That is the good news. It has been 10 
years.
  The unemployment rate is low. I think one of our earlier speakers 
said that GDP growth from last year was 3 percent. That was actually a 
little bit under 3 percent. He said it hadn't been that low for a long 
time. I think that low was reached maybe in a couple of quarters of the 
last year or so of the Obama administration.
  But what I am concerned about are two things. One, a lot of money 
that goes to businesses through the tax bill--a lot of it--has been 
used for stock buybacks. It pumps up the value of stocks. It pumps up 
the value of the stock exchange, and it gives us a feeling of elation 
and jubilation. But we need to temper that a little bit with something 
else, and that ``it'' is called a deficit.
  We had 4 years of a balanced budget. We hadn't been able to balance 
our budget from 1968 to about 1998. We couldn't balance our budget. The 
last 4 years of the Clinton administration, we had four balanced 
budgets in a row.
  We also had a great recovery from an economic recession inherited in 
1993, beginning with the Clinton administration, and we turned over a 
strong, robust economy to the George W. Bush administration in 2001. He 
also turned over to him a balanced budget--about four in a row.
  Eight years later, we didn't have a balanced budget anymore. We had a 
huge deficit, and we were in the worst recession since the Great 
Depression.
  Sometimes we reimagine history. I just want to set the record 
straight.
  I used to be the treasurer for the State of Delaware when we had the 
worst credit rating in the country. We were at 29. We couldn't balance 
our budgets for nothing. We had the worst credit rating, tied with 
Puerto Rico. We were dead last. The people in Puerto Rico were 
embarrassed to be in the same shoes as us in terms of our credit 
rating. So I have some idea of what it is like to be in debt and some 
idea of how to get out of debt.
  We are looking at debt right now in this country, coming off of the 
debts of the last fiscal year, of $750 billion--``billion'' dollars. 
This year's deficit is expected to reach $850 billion--``billion'' 
dollars. Next year, it is expected to reach almost $1 trillion in 1 
year--in 1 year.
  That is no way to run a business, no way to run a government.
  As a guy who is the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security 
Committee and viewing what is going on at the Department of Homeland 
Security, when we worked so long on a bipartisan basis to stabilize 
that Department and to enable them to do their job and to have the 
resources they need, to see the kind of turmoil that is going on in 
that Department breaks my heart. It breaks my heart.
  That is the bad news.
  The good news is that we had a markup today in the Environment and 
Public Works Committee. My colleague Sheldon Whitehouse was there. We 
passed three pieces of legislation, all with bipartisan support. I 
think all of them passed unanimously.
  One is called the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act. What does it do? It 
reduces emissions from diesel engines. The good thing about diesel 
engines is that they are in cars, trucks, vans, trains, boats, and 
locomotives. There are probably several million diesel engines in this 
country. They last a long time. A lot of them are really old, and a lot 
of them put out a lot of pollution.
  Did you ever watch a diesel truck at a stoplight? The light changes 
and the diesel truck starts out, and black plumes of smoke come out of 
the back of the diesel truck. That is called particulate matter, and 
some of that particulate matter is called black carbon.
  What does that black carbon do? It is about 1,000 times worse for our 
climate and our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. There is actually an 
American-made technology that will reduce emissions from those diesel 
trucks by as much as 90 percent.
  If we are serious about doing something about climate change and 
reducing the impacts of climate change--extreme weather and all kinds 
of things--and if we are interested in doing that, we can reduce black 
carbon. Again, unanimously, our committee supported bipartisan 
legislation to do just that.
  We have been doing this since 2005--using American technology and 
creating American jobs to do good things for our climate and our 
atmosphere. Those are the kinds of things we can do and we ought to do. 
Those are the things we can do and we ought to do.
  It shouldn't all be blaming one side or the other. Let's find things 
we can work on together. I think for me the Holy Grail in terms of 
public policy, as the senior Democratic Senator serving with Mr. 
Whitehouse and John Barrasso, our chairman, is this: How do we clean up 
our air? How do we clean up our water? How do we do good things for 
climate change and reduce the extreme weather?
  How do we do those things and create jobs? By doing those three 
things, we do create jobs. Today in this country about 157 million 
people went to work. Three or four million of them went to work on jobs 
that have something to do with sustainable energy, clean energy, 
climate change, and holes in the ozone--prohibiting them and fixing

[[Page S2363]]

them. Three to four million people went to work on those kinds of jobs. 
That is a good thing.
  The point I am trying to make is, Is it possible to do good things 
for our planet? Well, President Macron of France, down the hall about 1 
year ago, spoke to a joint session of Congress and he said these words: 
We only get one planet. There is no planet B.
  He was right. This is our planet, and it is going to belong to these 
young people--these pages sitting down in front of me this afternoon. 
It is your planet. It is already. We want to make sure that we turn it 
over to you in better shape than we found it.