quorum call:

a senator: the senator from washington. ms. cantwell: i ask that the

quorum call be dispensed. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. cantwell: i rise to voice my opposition of andrew wheeler for the environmental protection agency. those standing up are not just opposing environmental protection agency. you don't have to take my word for it because this unprecedented assault has drawn strong criticism from former democrat and republican environmental protection agency administrators. and my constituents don't buy the false tradeoff between protecting the environment and jobs. to them they come hand in hand. the fact on the ground is that these have been red herring arguments, and that's what we are hearing more of today. there are so many examples of how this administration's

discontain for science has led them to try undo decades of progress on the environment. i want to focus on thee issues that are particularly damaging and an indication of why mr. wheeler's nomination and record is troubling. first is the example of mr. wheeler lobbying on behalf utility. the issue is mr. wheeler would have a prominent role in reviewing very air pollution rules that govern coal plants, rules that he got paid millions of dollars to help attack. a number of press reports expressed how murray energy was a driving force behind secretary perry's ill considered resilience proposal. that proposal ignored the department of -- department's own staff report and this was an attempt to try to say that coal

was the only reliable source of energy for the electricity grid which would have citizens paying more in their utility rates. they said that is a wrong conclusion. and it was a transparent attempt to try to prop up one of the administration's favorite energy sources, which really would have made everything more expensive for consumers and certainly would have changed the focus of what we were trying to do to decarbonize. but the biggest problem here was the proposal hit consumers, as i said with billions of dollars in added costs, adding to multiple costs that we didn't need to see. bailing out old coal plants wasn't just bad policy, it was a breathtaking raid on the consumer pocketbook. the regional grid manager found that the secretary's proposal would nearly double the cost of wholesale energy in the nation's

largest electricity market. fortunately the federal regulatory energy commission unanimously rejected this proposal. but if mr. wheeler comes to e.p.a. as the number two, what other proposals like this are they going to propose or try to fight or even though the science within the own agencies say they are wrongheaded. how much time will we have to waste exposing these bad ideas? we should instead be making investments in policy and infrastructure that will help us be more competitive in the future. i'm also troubled by the administration's backward view on how the u.s. can achieve so-called energy dominance by focusing more on coal. in my assessment, the kays of -- days of this strategy have been numbered. selling away our cheap natural gas and eeking out a little more life out of our grandfathered coal plants are drilling now as the administration has proposed

in every part of the united states and off our shores is not the way to be competitive for the future. i am concerned that mr. wheeler holds and will support these views. when he was criticizing the paris climate agreement, he called it a sweetheart deal for china because it gave them a manufacturing edge, yet he got it backwards. that is because china itself has been investing in renewable energy. by 2040 it will invest over $6 trillion in clean energy technologies according to the international energy agency and they adopted a five-year solar plan calling for 105 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020. so they have proposed an aggressive stance moving forward, and i want to make sure that u.s. companies who have great technology get a fair crack at making investments there, and particularly in the area of energy efficiency, which is really accounting for about a $2.2 trillion investment in

2016. so we know that we can move forward on a cleaner energy economy, and we want to know that we have people that are going to do that. i am perhaps most troubled that during his confirmation hearing, mr. wheeler refused to acknowledge the indies indispute reality that humans can have a cause and dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases. the fact that greenhouse gases are going to warm our planet and cause acidity in our oceans is something my state knows well. in washington, climate change has serious consequences for human health and our economy. climate change has resulted in extreme weather patterns, putting lives and property in danger. it has impacted water quality and it has caused other impacts to our salmon and shellfish, big parts of our seafood economy. climate change has created drought conditions and have jeopardized our farm economy and is even changing the impact and

chemistry of puget sound. mr. president, responding to climate change is more than just an environmental issue. it's an economic imperative. i know that senator collins and i requested from the government accountability agency important information about how much climate is costing us now. that is because after seeing how it impacted us with fires, how it impacted our shellfish industry, how it impacted so much of our coastline, we wanted to know how much is climate costing taxpayers. well the g.a.o. report said it will cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion in the next 10 to 15 years. so i know that mr. wheeler thinks that this may not be part of his day job, but rolling back strong environmental laws that help us move forward will put us further and further behind and cost us billions of dollars more than we need to be paying. we need to uphold these standards of clean air and clean water laws so that we can make

progress, we can diversify our economy, we can make the right investments. i believe that mr. wheeler is the wrong choice for this position. i think he's the wrong person to help us meet those standards. we need an administrator who isn't there trying to just jam a hole down the american consumers and american businesses throat but advocating nor -- for the next generation of americans that will be able to compete and compete in a cost-effective way. i urge my colleagues to join me in voting no on andrew wheeler to be the deputy administrator at e.p.a. i thank the president, and i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that my fellow, sharmaine said be granted privileges to the floor for her time in office. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. in federalist paper 776 alexander hamilton wrote it was the job of the president to stop unfit characters. to make sure unfit characters do not have roles of power and influence within our government. the nominee who is before us, andrew wheeler, for the number-two job at the environmental protection agency, raises a series of questions and concerns related to whether or not he is fit for office.

he's a man whose entire career working for the fossil fuel industry stands in direct opposition to the mission of the environmental protection agency. the mission to protect the health of the american people and the well-being of our planet. at such a volatile moment for the e.p.a., an agency plagued by scandal and ethical misbehavior and pandering to polluters, this nomination deserves the closest of scrutiny. after all, it is quite possible that before long whoever fills the role of number two at the e.p.a. could be acting in the number-one spot. and it is clear that andrew wheeler is not fit to be that person. when president richard nixon created the environmental protection agency in 1970, he recognized that we all share, and i quote, a profound commitment to the rescue of our

natural environment and the preservation of the earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man. and for more than 47 years, the e.p.a. has worked under democratic presidents and republican presidents to protect our natural environment and preserve a planet as a habitable and hospitable place. that has included controlling toxic and poisonous chemicals, improving air and wall street -- water quality, enhancing water efficiency and mission control. the list goes on and on but can be summed up like this. americans value clean air. americans value clean water. scott pruitt does not. and mr. wheeler does not. administrator pruitt has turned his long-standing disdain for the e.p.a. into a crusade to destroy it.

think about the hard work of protecting our air and protecting our water. there's a lot that goes into that. you can think about the equivalent of constructing a house. you need to have somebody who knows the foundation and knows the plumbing and knows the wiring and knows the carpentry and knows the dry wall and knows the roofing. you've got to combine all that. somebody to get the windows installed right and installation installed right. it's a lot of work to create a structure that protects our air and water from the thousands of chemicals that can do it harm. but it only takes one person to knock down that carefully constructed house. one person. one wrecking ball. and scott pruitt is that wrecking ball in the e.p.a., knocking down the carefully constructed work of decades of efforts by some of the nation's leading scientists and most

dedicated team members. there's a lot of frustration among those dedicated scientists. 700 employees have left or have been forced out. critical clean air and clean water regulations have been stalled, left in limbo. enforcement of existing regulations has virtually disappeared. regional e.p.a. offices have been routinely stripped of the power to investigate, while advisory committees that have usually been made up by scientific objective individuals are now being filled with industry shills. to put it bluntly, e.p.a. under scott pruitt is conducting a war against clean air and clean water. this is really a shameful

situation, and that's just the policy side. and then we have the ethical side. the administrator's desire to waste our taxpayer money on $40,000 private phone booths, first-class travel, swanky accommodations. the administrator's determination to retaliate against those who have pointed out the restrictions he is violating, an administrator who has increased the salaries of his friends in an unapproved fashion. and there's little to think that any of this would be changed with andrew wheeler in either the number two or number one positions. neither man takes seriously the profound threat to our planet from carbon pollution.

i believe that these individuals are smart, that they actually know the enormous damage that carbon pollution is doing to our planet. after all, it's hard to miss. you can see it. this last year in the ferocity of the hurricanes irma and maria and harvey. and why were they so fierce? because 90% of the heat produced by climate chaos is trapped by the oceans, and that hotter ocean energizes the storms to a higher level of impact. or you can see it in the forest fires that rage from montana across from oregon and down into california. fire season year after year longer, fiercer, more forests burned. you can see it in the insect population. you can see it in the mosquitoes that carry zika. you can see it in the success of the pine beatles when it's --

pine beetles in the winter. or you can see it in the oysters that now have to have the water in which they are born, the artificially buffered because it's now too acidic for baby oysters. and why is it too acidic? because the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the air creating carbonic acid. it's hard to imagine, hard to imagine when you see the ocean that so much carbonic acid has been placed into our ocean through polluted air that it's changed the acidity of the ocean, but that's exactly what it's done. now the e.p.a. does a lot of wonderful work under a normal administration, be it a democratic or republican. it tracks greenhouse emissions. it works on money-saving regulations like the renewable fuel standard program. it conducts analyses to compare different policies to see which

one would be more effective and what the range of impacts would be. it conducts world-class research on the science. it partners with the state and local communities and governments on efficiency and renewable energy. but that's under a normal administration and a normal administrator. but there's no partnering now. it's just simply the wrecking ball. scott pruitt said scientists disagree about the extent of global warming and its connections to the acts of mankind. actually nasa has very precise estimates or recordings of the change in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the temperature changes that are occurring from that. you can find people, primarily those who are funded by the fossil fuel industry, who dispute that, who sow confusion. it's a strategy certainly of the fossil fuel folks who are taking

their greed over our planet. they are selling out america. and those who sow for them are selling out america. they say out of 100 scientists we can find two or three who disagree. well, how often do you have somebody who would go to 97 doctors and have them say you have cancer and they say oh, but wait, i can find one doctor somewhere. if i pay them enough then i don't have cancer and then i'm healed except they wouldn't be healed and they'd soon be dead. we've seen in oregon the impact on the klamath basin, the worst ever droughts time after time over the last 15 years. talking to people in texas and louisiana and florida and puerto rico and the virgin islands, communities devastated by last year's hurricanes. we have seen in the last ten years half the coral reefs

around the world die are deeply damaged in the time since i was elected in 2008. but the fact that our economists have calculated the monetary terms of damage to the united states from last year's storms and fires, well over $300 billion, the fact that quality of life will be profoundly affected by the movement of diseases, the fact that the moose are dying in new hampshire and the lobsters are migrating north from maine, none of that matters because these folks keep coming back and saying you know what, it's just not clear what's happening. there's not even an understanding of the basic scientific principle. really? that's just such a lie. as far back as 1959, edward teller, the emintent scientist, was -- the eminent scientist was warning folks in the petroleum industry.

he said in a speech first of all, niece energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. sure enough there's more in the ground than anyone thought in 1959. then he said, second, that it turns out that carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels has a big problem. you can look through it and you can't smell it but it turns out it traps heat, and he proceeded to say that this would be a big problem because it would melt ice in the world and raise the sea levels and that would flood our cities. he didn't have all the science that had been generated since 1959, but he had a basic understanding of the physics of the problem. what did we see? we have seen from that time until now a 25% increase in carbon dioxide in the

atmosphere, and that's a big deal. and so we've seen year after year be hotter and hotter. in fact 2050 -- 2015, 2016, 2017 with the three hottest years ever recorded, and yet these individuals stand up and say do not worry, be happy, there is no problem, but there is a big problem. and putting folks whose bread is but therred -- butte red by the -- buttered by the fuel industry is a colossal mistake for our country. mr. wheeler sent a letter to the e.p.a. on his stationary accusing regulators of overstilting how much air

polluters were drilling new gas wells were causing and it was almost word for word by a company, not by any scientific expert. and this type of cozy relationship has continued through his tenure at the e.p.a. take for instance delaying implement -- livelihood of millions of americans. he's issued member dumb saying that the regional e.p.a. offices have to seek positions from headquarters before investigating polluters, and investigating violations or requesting information so he sought to really completely stop the investigation into malfeasance and misconduct, damaging our environment all to help his associates who are in

private industry. the list goes on and on and we see the same thing with mr. wheeler working so closely as a lobbist for the same fossil fuel industry, specifically murray energy. how can you say an individual will enforce the rules when he represents the industry? that is the challenge. mr. president, our united states president said he was going to drain the swamp, but scott pruitt is the swamp. he is the person who is proceeding to fail to enforce our clean air and clean water laws. he is the person who is stopping his team have investigating

violations. he is the person who is allowing his friends to have their pay increase or actively working to increase their pay when it is outside of the regulation. he is the person wasting our taxpayer money in so many kinds of way that is documented from security details to trains of cars blowing lights so he can get someplace in the city five minutes faster, violating rules, demoting people who homed him accountable. -- holding him accountable. every possible ethical violation. and the nominee before us is a straight backup to that kind of misconduct, absolutely not -- should absolutely not be confirmed by the united states senate. should not get a single vote from a single member here because the american people want

the rules on clean air and clean water enforced. so let's vote for enforcement. mr. president, just shortly ago i was in the hearings regarding michael pompeo to be our secretary of state. and i think my concerns can be summed up by this. i read to him the two provisions of the war powers act that give the president the power to put our troops in motion on foreign soil. one of those is a direct and explicit congressional authorization and the second a direct threat or attack on the united states or our forces or our assets. i asked him, do you think the president of the united states can put force also into action outside of those two provisions?

congressional authorization or direct attack on america, and he said yes. in other words, he absolutely, 100% disavows our constitution which says the power to make war rests in congress, not at the whim of the president. this was one of the most important provisions in the debate about the design of our constitution, it that it should not be easy to go to war. so the constitution gives that power explicitly to congress, and mike pompeo says it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter even if there's not a threat to the united states, an attack on the united states. it doesn't matter even if there's no congressional authorization, the president can do what he wants. you really can't make that argument and honestly take an

oath of office to abide by the constitution, and that's why i will adamantly oppose his nomination as secretary of state. thank you, mr. president.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: we're not in a quorum call. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, i know of no further debate on the nomination. the presiding officer: is there any further debate on the

nomination? hearing nor further debate, the question occurs on the wheeler nomination. mr. mcconnell: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators wishing to vote or change their vote? if not, the yeas are 453, the nays are 45 -- are 53, the nays are 45. the nomination is confirmed. the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent that any further roll call votes in this series be ten minutes in length. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. the clerk will report cloture motion: we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on. the clerk: cloture motion: we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions

of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on john w. broomes of kansas to be united states district judge for the district of kansas, signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of john w. broomes of kansas to be united states district judge for the district of kansas shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators wishing to vote or change their vote?

if not, the yeas are 74. the nays are 24. the motion is agreed to. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the clerk will report the nominati nomination. the clerk: the judiciary, john w. broomes of cans is to be the united states district judge for the district of kansas. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: majority leader. mr. mcconnell: could we have order in the senate. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. the senate will be in order. the senate will be in order. mr. mcconnell: i no of -- know of no further debate on the nomination. the presiding officer: if there's no further debate, the question is on the confirmation of the nomination. all in favor say aye. all opposed say no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed.

the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing liewls of -- rules of the senate do hereby move to bring which he of the debate of rebecca grady jennings signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is, is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of rebecca grady jennings of kentucky to be united states district judge for the western district of kentucky shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote: