PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE RELATING TO "GROSS PROCEEDS REPORTING BY BROKERS THAT...

On 2025-03-26, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered a floor speech titled "PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE INT" in the Senate. The speech addressed healthcare and also covered the economy, climate policy. It referenced legislation including S1856, S1864, S1857, among other bills.

PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE RELATING TO "GROSS PROCEEDS REPORTING BY BROKERS THAT...

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025)] [Senate] [Pages S1856-S1864] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE RELATING TO ``GROSS PROCEEDS REPORTING BY BROKERS THAT REGULARLY PROVIDE SERVICES EFFECTUATING DIGITAL ASSET SALES'' The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution by title. The bill clerk read as follows: A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 25) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Internal Revenue Service relating to ``Gross Proceeds Reporting by Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales''. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to the provisions of the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 802, there will now be up to 10 hours of debate equally divided between those favoring and opposing the joint resolution. The Senator from Rhode Island. Climate Change Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he would reconsider over 30 rules and policies that protect human health and the environment, calling it ``the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.'' With a barrage of press releases, Administrator Zeldin threatened to replace the central mission of EPA--to protect the environment and the health of Americans--with a newer and more sordid mission: to protect the financial interests of President Trump's Big Oil polluting mega donors. EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment has guided the Agency for more than 50 years, with bipartisan support. The Agency was created by Republican President Richard Nixon, and conservative Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush chose administrators like Bill Ruckelshaus and Christine Whitman, who took the Agency's mission seriously. EPA's bipartisan pedigree and mission matter little to Trump, Zeldin, and their crew of fossil fuel donors. Administrator Zeldin claims that slashing these protections will ``unleash American energy.'' Huh. In reality, these rollbacks will keep Americans dependent on expensive dirty fossil fuels, while other countries keep moving forward with energy innovation, developing cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient energy. We are deliberately losing a competition. Trump is exalting an antiquated polluting fossil fuel industry and degrading the lives of the American people. Administrator Zeldin gleefully declared, ``We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.'' But the protections EPA threatens to roll back mostly relate to keeping air and water clean. In the wealthiest country in the world, does it make sense to increase uncertainty about whether water is safe to drink? Administrator Zeldin likely can't juice substantially more fossil fuel production, but slashing these protections will unleash tons more pollution--more pollution from oil and gas producers, powerplants, manufacturers, cars and trucks; fewer protections for drinking water, wetlands, and streams. Coal-fired powerplants will release more mercury into the air we breathe, settling into our water and our soil and eventually finding its way into our food. We will experience more bad air days like we get in Rhode Island from upwind out-of-State polluters, when the air is thick with soot and other pollutants, triggering asthma attacks and respiratory diseases. They threaten even to overturn the good neighbor rule that gives States the ability to push back when upwind States foul the air, as happens to us in Rhode Island. The ability to pollute another State with impunity deliberately is a core thing for EPA to stop, and yet they are caving in to the polluter States. And, yes, these rollbacks do threaten to remove limits also on carbon pollution from powerplants, oil and gas facilities, and vehicles, turbocharging the ongoing heating of our planet. Let's be clear: Climate change ain't religion; it is science--and well-understood, established, mature science at that. My Republican colleagues in this building all have home State universities that teach climate science. Greenhouse gas emissions--science knows--from the production and combustion of fossil fuels are heating our planet, raising sea levels, increasing the severity and frequency of violent storms, worsening droughts, and causing more intense wildfires. Even the fossil fuel industry's own scientists understood the climate risks of unchecked fossil fuel emissions. Exxon's own climate scientists warned that the burning of fossil fuels was changing our planet's climate and correctly modeled the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures. When Zeldin testified in January before the Environment and Public [[Page S1857]] Works Committee, he pledged to ``work with the scientists'' and ``leave the science to the scientists.'' What happened to that Lee Zeldin? Where did he go? Because the Lee Zeldin of January has been replaced by a Lee Zeldin willing to ignore his own scientists and ignore the facts for the benefit of President Trump's Big Polluter donors. These fossil fuel industry favors will increase costs for American families. The fossil fuel industry spent almost $100 million--that we know of--to boost Trump in the last election and hundreds of millions more on Congress. Trump famously asked industry executives for $1 billion in exchange for delivering an industry wish list, and here is Zeldin producing that industry wish list. But for people who are not fossil fuel billionaires, the growing exposure to hazardous pollutants and the increase in carbon pollution will increase costs. Tonight, colleagues will talk in more detail about various protections that Zeldin threatens to end and the safety and health policies he is curdling. I will discuss Zeldin's mischief with the social cost of carbon. What is the social cost of carbon? It is a measure of the costs of each additional ton of carbon pollution released--increased mortality, for instance, from heat and storms; increased sickness from heat and air pollution; damage to agriculture and infrastructure from droughts and floods; even insurance collapse. The Biden EPA estimated the social cost of carbon at around $190 per ton, which is consistent with most knowledgeable estimates, and the Office of Management and Budget ordered that this number be used in cost-benefit analysis for regulations as well as in a wider suite of government actions. This analysis is nothing more than common sense. If the government is considering taking a step that would increase carbon pollution, it should consider the costs of doing so. If it is doing something that would decrease carbon pollution, it should understand and enjoy the economic benefits. Zeldin is proposing to have the government ignore the facts. He wants to ignore the science, he wants to ignore the economics, and he wants to utilize a social cost of carbon whose value is deliberately and falsely set close to zero. If he succeeds, the Federal Government will no longer accurately assess the true costs and benefits of climate decisions. This isn't new math or even fuzzy math; this is fake math--fake math to benefit Trump's oil and gas donors, who get to pretend, falsely, that the American people aren't picking up the tab for their industry's carbon pollution. The International Monetary Fund, which is not a green institution, pegs the costs the public bears from fossil fuel pollution at more than $700 billion every year in the United States alone. Last Congress, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, I organized hearings on the economic and financial costs of climate change. We heard warnings from economists, scientists, medical professionals, insurance and investment executives, the new Prime Minister of Canada, a former Prime Minister of Australia, and even a former Republican Senate majority leader. Throughout the hearings, witnesses emphasized the systemic economic risks that climate change poses and warned that if we don't shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels, things will get much worse. ``Systemic'' was the word I emphasized in that last sentence. ``Systemic'' may sound like a bland academic term, but a systemic risk in economics is one which threatens to bring down the entire economy, much the way failures in the mortgage market led to the great recession of 2008. Zeldin's promised rollbacks will have real economic consequences for families. American families will bear increased healthcare costs. Even with an honorably functioning EPA, healthcare costs from fossil fuel air pollution and climate change are estimated to total nearly $820 billion in the United States each year. Doctors appointments, emergency room visits, rehab and home health support, and prescription drugs all strain the pocketbooks of American families. Lost work and school days and reduced labor productivity cost both families and the broader economy. Last year, the United States suffered a recordbreaking 27 separate billion-dollar disasters, pushing up prices, damaging insurance markets, and burdening the families who were in harm's way. Economic losses from natural disasters reached more than $200 billion. Climate-related extreme weather--hurricanes, wildfires, and floods-- damages property, damages infrastructure, damages agriculture, and damages supply chains. These recurring disasters are disrupting insurance markets across the country. Turmoil in the insurance markets bleeds over into turmoil in the mortgage and housing markets. If you can't get insurance on your house, the next buyer can't get a mortgage on your house, and that reduces the pool of buyers and results in plunging property values. 

Referenced legislation: HJRES25, HJRES25