On the recordJune 20, 2012
I thank the Senator for this time. I rise in support of this resolution. We have only been able to use the Congressional Review Act successfully one time, and I think that means at some point we need to look at the Congressional Review Act because these regulations often don't meet the commonsense standard, and this is one of them. However, it appears to meet the standards that the President would want his regulators to meet. In fact, in January of 2008, the President--while running for President--said that coal-fired plants would go bankrupt. He said later in the campaign that electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket under his plan to tax greenhouse gas emissions through what was then the cap-and-trade system. The House passed that system in 2009. Missouri utilities all went together, including the rural electric cooperatives, the for-profit utilities, and the municipal utilities and paid for a study in our State, which is in the top six States of dependence on coal. That study indicated that the average utility bill would go up 82 percent in the first 10 years and double shortly after that. You don't have to be a genius to get your utility bill out and multiply it by two. If it is your utility bill at home, it may be a utility bill you cannot pay. If it is your utility bill at work, it may mean that your job is no longer there because the utility bill went up. That House-passed bill would have had that result in our State.…
