Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much. It is not often that the distinguished ranking member on the EPW Committee gets to say he is from a bigger State and give his advice in those terms. I appreciate that we from Rhode Island were able to give him this moment.
I also want to thank him for his leadership in trying to fight for strong fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for our automobiles.
The story of what is going on cannot be properly understood without understanding the oil industry's role in all of this. They are up to their usual mischief.
Our offices obtained a draft letter to the Deputy Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, urging her to weaken the auto emission standards. Well, we were able to look at the metadata on this document, and guess who wrote it. It was written by one of Marathon Petroleum's in-house lobbyists.
Marathon shopped this letter, which their lobbyist wrote, around to Members of Congress, convincing several to send similar letters in favor of weakening the standards. We took those letters, and we ran them through plagiarism software, and this is what we got. The red text is the text that is identical to the language of the Marathon lobbyist's letter. The black is where, in this case, Members of the Pennsylvania delegation added a little local information about Pennsylvania. It is an 80-percent match in the plagiarism software to the letter written by the Marathon Oil company lobbyist.
Marathon and the oil industry weren't just recruiting Members of Congress to copy their lobbyist language into letters to the Trump administration; they got their trade associations involved as well. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association lobbied, for instance, to weaken the standards, according to their lobbying disclosure reports. It is always better to have your trade association do your dirty work. What company really wants the public to know it lobbied to lower fuel economy standards so that consumers could pay more at the pump? It is not a good look.
In addition to cranking up its trade associations, the fossil fuel industry also cranked up its constellation of front groups that it has developed and funded over the years to kill laws and regulations that would reduce the carbon pollution that is driving climate change. The industry launched those front groups against the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission auto standards. These front groups provide a veneer of fake public support for the oil industry's anti-climate campaign.
Take Americans for Prosperity, for instance. It is a lovely, benign- sounding name. Who could possibly be against prosperity? Yet, in reality, Americans for Prosperity is a front group that is funded by the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers, whose company, by the way, also lobbied against the standards. Americans for Prosperity doesn't disclose its donors. It is a secretive organization. So what little we know about its funders comes thanks to the hard work of a few muckraking, investigative journalists.
We do know that both ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry's flagship trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, give the AFP money, and they give them big money. Since the Citizens United decision, the AFP has spent about $70 million on Federal elections. It is throwing its weight around.
To oppose the auto standards, the AFP created an elaborate online deception campaign that was centered on this petition against the standards. Unfortunately, for them, the public was not buying its nonsense. Despite an onslaught of online advertising, only 231 people signed up. It looks like no one wanted to spend more on gas and that no amount of fossil fuel lies could convince them otherwise.
FreedomWorks is yet another front group that has received millions in funding from the Koch brothers and fossil fuel interests like the American Petroleum Institute. It also started an online campaign against the standards, and that, too, bombed. There is a word for this stuff. It is called astroturf. It is fake grassroots. Real grassroots organizations don't need tens of millions of dollars from fossil fuel front groups. Real grassroots organizations thrive on the engagement and the passion of citizens, not on millions in special interest, dark money.
In having flopped at astroturfing, the oil industry organized its front groups to write directly to Trump administration officials and lobby them to repeal the standards. Here is one of these letters, and a dozen phony front groups signed it. Like I said, they built a constellation of these phony front groups, and a dozen signed this letter. These groups together have received--like I said, mostly of secret money--a minimum of $196 million from fossil fuel industry interests, including from the Koch brothers, API, ExxonMobil, and Chevron.
This $196 million did a lot of talking, for this letter found its way to an eager audience in the Trump administration, which is stuffed with fossil fuel lobbyists and flunkies. So they gave the oil industry exactly what it wanted--a proposal to freeze the auto emission standards and to challenge California and other States, like mine, our authority to set our own standards.
What is strange about this is that this proposal isn't what the auto industry says it wanted. Once the oil industry jumped into the fray, the auto industry let Big Oil take over, or it got shoved aside by Big Oil. Big Oil barged in and got exactly what it wanted--weakened standards that would allow it to sell--hold your breath here--up to $1 trillion in extra gasoline. For a mere expenditure of $196 million through these 12 phony front groups, they got to sell $1 trillion in extra gasoline. That is how you make big money--by renting out the U.S. Government. That, by the way, is $1 trillion that comes out of consumers' pockets and goes into Big Oil's. No wonder Big Oil is hiding behind front groups.
In the press, unnamed auto industry lobbyists have complained that the proposed freeze isn't what they asked for. Well, that is not good enough. Auto industry executives need to step up and tell President Trump and Secretary Chao and Administrator Wheeler that their oily proposal is not acceptable.
This car rule saga that we have seen play out is a microcosm of the climate change problem that we face. The fossil fuel industry, through its armada of phony front groups, fights to defend its own massive sales and massive, massive taxpayer subsidies for its product. The IMF has estimated that the fossil fuel industry receives a $700 billion-- with a ``b''--annual subsidy in the United States alone. So it has every incentive to spend whatever it takes to control things in Washington, like giving $196 million to these front groups. Meanwhile, the rest of corporate America, including car companies that claim to support reducing carbon pollution, just don't show up.
One side lobbies Congress against climate action, and the other side doesn't show up. One side spends tens of millions on attack ads against candidates who support climate action, and the other side doesn't show up. One side pours hundreds of millions of dollars into trade associations and phony front groups, and the other side doesn't show up. The result is entirely predictable--money talks, unfortunately, around here, and big money commands.
Things would change a bit if the rest of corporate America would challenge the fossil fuel industry's money and influence to help our colleagues on the other side get something done on climate change.
I close by pointing out that democracy and the free market are the twin pillars of our American example. What does it say for them as institutions when one industry--the fossil fuel industry--can simultaneously capture our democracy and pervert the free market with its massive subsidies? It is not a good story.
America's strength has always been our example. Our inaction on climate change--one of the foremost challenges of the world--sullies our American example. For the good of our country, for the good of those institutions, for the good of our American example, it is time to wake up.
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