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Senate

Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 557 (Executive Calendar)

2026-07-21 Issue 119 Showing 1–3 of 3

Official Congressional Record ↗

Sheldon Whitehouse

Democrat

“I want to hurry up and pass a bill from a committee. I don't want to wait for the normal rules. I want it done right now.”

Bernie Moreno

Republican

“I object to this resolution. It sounds mild, but it's actually a bunch of empty words. Democrats had control and they betrayed working Americans. They gave subsidies to rich people for luxury electric vehicles. Democrats never explain why they support bad policies like that. And they never mention that China is the biggest polluter. Democrats want to shut down American industry and let China pollute. They don't support clean natural gas from my state. Their policies are hypocritical. They want to ban cars, but don't mention bigger sources of pollution like forest fires. I'm tired of the hypocrisy. That's why I object to this resolution.”

Official Congressional Record

Madam President, reserving the right to object, let me say a few things. One, resolutions like this sound very much mild. It actually is just a bunch of words that basically just say: What is wrong with that? What is wrong with saying something like that? So let me explain where these kinds of ideas go. When the Democrats had control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, they had the opportunity to help working Americans--the people who work every day to build this country, the middle class that all of us should be advocating for, the very people that--the New England Democrats that I once knew--J.F.K., et cetera--would have made their entire party platform about helping working Americans. Instead, what did they do? They betrayed working Americans with a wide, open border that lowered and suppressed wages. They passed electric vehicle subsidies. Let me walk you through exactly what the Democrats did, taking this kind of resolution to the maximum. They passed a subsidy that gave multimillionaires the ability to get $7,500 of taxpayer money to lease a luxury imported vehicle. And 250,000 of the wealthiest Americans got $7,500 each to lease a luxury electric vehicle because for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that somehow would solve the issue of climate change. Not one single Democrat has ever answered the question: Why on Earth would you have possibly put forward horrific public policy like that? No. 2, if you notice, in the Senator from Rhode Island's presentation, there wasn't a single time he mentioned the largest polluter on Earth, which happens to be the People's Republic of China. We have been enabling the Chinese economy for decades. It was this body that normalized relations with China in 2000, that allowed them to come into the World Trade Organization and systematically pollute the planet. They are building coal facilities every week, while the Democrats, when they had control of government, were shutting them down. You could describe what was just discussed as an absolute China-first policy--America last, China first. One-third of all global pollution comes from China, and yet my colleague comes up here to talk about climate change and doesn't say a single word about that country. In fact, he continues to espouse policies that enable the Chinese. For example, in the aforementioned electric vehicle subsidies, most of those batteries that were in those electric vehicles came from Chinese battery manufacturers--made with slave wages, slave labor; using power derived from the very carbon emissions that you denounce. You live in a State that derives its electricity from the worst possible carbon footprint. You have electricity that comes over from Canada--propane, delivered on diesel trucks--because you refuse to build a pipeline from my State, where we can give you clean, natural gas that would reduce carbon emissions. The hypocrisy goes on and on. Then let's talk about recent events. My colleague, I have heard him, because I sit where you sit periodically, say the same thing many, many times in my 18 months that I have been here. He talks about electric vehicles: We have got to get off of internal combustion engines--a big policy of the Democrat Party. Let me give you a little statistic on automobiles. If you took every single car--automobile--off of the roads of America, nobody could drive a car for 12 months. That is nuts. I would suggest that is bad public policy. But follow me on that one: no automobiles on American roads for 12 months. The amount of carbon emissions that has polluted mostly the Midwest, over the last 2 weeks, because of mismanagement of Canada's forests, is equivalent to an entire year of carbon emissions from automobiles. Yet my colleague has not once called into question the fact that the Canadians do not allow our firefighters to go into their country to help, that they have mismanaged the way they coordinate these fire responses. They don't have a central entity to control it. No comment on the fact that millions of people in my State have been absolutely poisoned with carbon pollution coming from Canada. But what does he want? He wants our industries to be collapsed, our industries to be held to a different standard--not one word from China--and espousing policies like this electric vehicle subsidy for the richest Americans, while, at the same time, there are people flying around in private jets to global conferences to talk about climate change. Spare me the hypocrisy. And for all of those reasons and many, many more, I object. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The objection is heard. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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Sheldon Whitehouse

Democrat

“I don't want to debate your points. I admit the bill I support has flaws. But I want to talk about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels cause harm. We need to start somewhere. I want to start with this bill. My opponents want the Senate to do nothing. That's because of Citizens United and dark money. I want the Senate to do something. My opponents want to distract us. These warnings are serious.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. President, I am not going to go through a rebuttal of the factual misstatements to which we have just been treated, but I will add that I have objections to the IRA bill as well. We can all have objections to parts of the IRA. But the fact is that fossil fuel emissions continue to cause harm; they continue to cause danger. And the warnings that I have described are now very real. We can do nothing about it, and that has been the plan in the Senate ever since Citizens United dialed up the fossil fuel industry to influence us with dark money. But if we are going to do something about it, we must start somewhere, and I would recommend that we start with some really simple facts, like the ones that I brought to the Senate floor just now. These are serious warnings. Senators who wish to change the subject or distract us or prevent us from responding in any way to these serious warnings--well, that is everybody's choice. But I do think these warnings are serious enough that they merit attention. So if you don't like my suggestion, let's do something different. But let's just not sit here and do nothing.

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