On the recordNovember 13, 2012
I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, again I'd urge my colleagues to pass S. 1956. This does represent an honest effort to find a solution to deal with global emissions. They are a problem. We have tried to work with our European Union counterparts. Again, we've had meetings nonstop. When some of this issue began, we went there and talked. We took it to the international body of ICAO. They voted 26-36 to side with the United States' position; but sometimes in this business, you have to bring things to a head. We passed this legislation a year ago with bipartisan support--Mr. Costello, Mr. Rahall, our side of the aisle. It was a little bit tougher measure than what has come from the Senate. The Senate did give discretion to the DOT Secretary and the administration so that they had both the authority and also the discretion to act. I don't think yesterday that the European Union would have deferred to ICAO for a year if we hadn't pressed this; but we do need to bring folks together of goodwill, find a solution, something that is fair. And if we do want to clean up the environment and we want to have people pay a penalty for polluting, then we should ensure that that money goes back into cleaning up the pollution or at least developing the technology or offsetting the damage that's being done. The current scheme--and it is a scheme, which I have a definition of ``scheme'' here. A scheme is a systematic plan of action, a secret, or devious plan, a plot.…





