Providing for Consideration of H.R. Climate Action Now Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I thank my very good friend, Mrs. Lesko, for yielding.

Well, we are here again, Madam Speaker, on yet another bill that isn't going to pass the Senate, isn't going to become law, and doesn't really do anything.

As they have done over and over again over the past few months, my Democratic friends seem content to bring up virtue-signaling messaging bills as a substitute for passing real bipartisan legislation to solve problems facing the American people.

Today's bill purports to force the President to return the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change, never mind that he hasn't actually pulled the United States from that agreement yet, nor can he until the day after the next Presidential election in 2020. But on that day, to be fair, I think he will.

Ineffective though it may be, the bill does nothing to address the serious fundamental flaws in the Paris Agreement, nor does it offer any substantial legislation to consider the problem of our own changing climate.

Instead, like many other bills the majority has offered in Congress, today's legislation is all talk, no action. It is simply another messaging bill to allow the majority to go on record in opposition to President Trump. That is not legislating.

Madam Speaker, it didn't have to be this way. We had an opportunity to improve this bill both at the committees of jurisdiction and again at the Rules Committee this week, and we could have made the bill better if we had made more amendments from both sides of the aisle in order for consideration on the floor. Legislating is better and more effective when all Members can have their ideas considered before final passage.

Making more amendments in order is a pledge that we have heard time and time again from my good friend and my good chairman, Mr. McGovern, so it is unfortunate that this rule misses a perfect opportunity to have robust debate on ideas from both sides of the aisle.

At the Rules Committee Monday night, 91 amendments were proposed and considered. Of those, 45 were proposed by Democrats, 44 by Republicans, and 2 were bipartisan. Of the 44 Republican amendments, 35 had no points of order against them or any parliamentary issues, yet when the final rule was proposed and passed out of committee, it made in order 30 amendments: 1 bipartisan amendment, 26 Democratic amendments, and just 3 Republican amendments.

Is that really how the majority wants to operate going forward, 58 percent of the Democratic amendments allowed to come to the floor, but just 6 percent of the Republican amendments and just 8 percent without points of order? That is an abysmal result.

For example, my good friend Rodney Davis of Illinois proposed an amendment that simply would have noted that the 2018 farm bill is relevant to achieving the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and would have required the President to add the Committee on Agriculture to any reports he sends on this topic to the Foreign Affairs and Energy and Commerce Committees. This is a commonsense amendment that takes into account the role agriculture can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet the amendment was blocked from consideration on the floor.

What is the harm, I ask, in debating that amendment here on the floor and bringing our Nation's farmers into the discussion?

Dr. Burgess, my fellow member of the Rules Committee and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, submitted two amendments that required the President to consider how carbon emission-free nuclear power and other forms of renewable energy with zero emissions, like hydropower, could contribute to meeting the United States' obligation under the Paris Agreement.

It seems logical to me that, when you are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, using energy sources that are emission-free makes sense, yet the majority didn't even want to discuss that on the floor and blocked both of Dr. Burgess' amendments. What harm was there in discussing them?

I could go on and on, but the reality is that the majority has used its power at the Rules Committee to block consideration of dozens of amendments that could have and should have been discussed on the floor.

When the Democrats took majority control in the House, they promised a more inclusive process with more minority voices heard, more Republican amendments considered.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me additional time.

When the Democrats took majority control of the House, they promised a more inclusive process, more minority voices heard, more Republican amendments considered. If today's action is any indication, we have a long way to go in making that promise a reality. Instead, we are moving forward with a deeply flawed bill that could and should have been improved through the amendment process.

I have been a member of the Rules Committee for a long time, including many years in the majority. It is fair to ask: How did we do when we were in the majority? Let's look at the record.

In the 115th Congress, under Republican control of the Rules Committee, 45 percent of the amendments made in order were Democratic, 38 percent were Republican, 17 percent were bipartisan. The statistics for today's rule is a far cry from the fairness of that record.

If the majority truly wants to address the environment and wants to legislate, then we can all certainly do better than the bill before us today, and we can do better than the process we saw with this bill. All Members should have an opportunity to be heard, and we should all have an opportunity to make the bill better today.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation.

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