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Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I don't want to make this a bouquet- tossing contest. The fact is, the four Senators on the floor have together put in decades and decades and decades prosecuting the cause of clean energy. And the fact of the matter is, we had tried a lot of things over the years. We tried cap and trade.

I was a strong supporter of Senator Markey's efforts. We tried carbon taxes. We tried border adjustment. And particularly three of the four Members over here are from the Finance Committee--they were willing to take the risk of saying we ought to basically, if not throw the Tax Code in the garbage can as it relates to energy, get pretty darned close in terms of creating a whole new set of incentives.

I am going to speak about Martin O'Malley's candidacy here for a few minutes. But I just wanted to say to these four, we would not have even gotten a major climate bill out of the Senate Finance Committee to break 50 years of gridlock. That is how the New York Times described it: 50 years of trying. And the Finance Committee broke that gridlock. It wouldn't have happened without these four Senators. I want them to know that.

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