On the recordOctober 4, 2011
I wanted to come to the floor today because 2 days ago I got the results of an inspector general's report that I requested 18 months ago having to do with the endangerment finding of the EPA. While it is a little bit complicated, I will go back and put this in perspective. Back in the 1990s, we were asked by the then-Clinton administration to ratify a treaty called the Kyoto treaty. This was a treaty that was aimed at the reduction of greenhouse gases--anthropogenic gases and this type of thing. Well, it didn't pass. It went down 95 to 0 because of two reasons: We all declared in this body we weren't going to ratify any treaty that, No. 1, was damaging economically to the country; and, No. 2, we would treat developing countries differently than developed nations. Of course this missed on both those criteria. After that happened, it became popular by some of the more radical environmentalist groups who enjoy the overregulation we have so much of in this country to seek the introduction of different bills. We had the McCain-Lieberman bill of 2003 and again in 2005. We had the Warner- Lieberman bill and several others--the Sanders-Boxer bill--and then, I guess, the last one was a House bill called the Waxman-Markey bill. Anyway, these bills were all aimed at what we can do in this country in order to restrict our use of CO<INF>2</INF>.…
