Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about S.J. Res. 53. We will have a chance to vote on that tomorrow. I am joined by my colleague from Maryland, Senator Van Hollen, and my colleague on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island. I also want to thank Senator Carper for his leadership as the senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee in regard to this resolution. This resolution will be voted on tomorrow. It deals with the CRA-- Congressional Review Act--vote in regard to the Trump administration's affordable clean energy rule. That is probably a misnomer. It is what I call the dirty powerplant rule. The CRA would repeal that so that we can go back to the Clean Power Plan that was promulgated under the Obama administration in 2015. Let me explain what the Trump-era rule would do. First, it would repeal the Clean Power Plan that was issued in 2015. That plan had real results in it. It set limits on a powerplant's production of dangerous carbon. It made meaningful progress. The rule promulgated by President Trump's administration would repeal that and substitute it with a plan that would be a powerplant judgment in each powerplant--coal-burning only--and would not take into consideration the powerplant mix of individual States. The previous rule allowed the States to figure out how to reach those goals. So a State could do a mix. They could start using natural gas. They could start using renewable energy.…”