00:00Mr. President, as you know, in the final days in office, the Biden administration gave California, the liberal state of California, permission to export its far-left electric vehicle mandate to the entire country.
00:20This week, this Senate will end California's mandate madness.
00:25Now, I listened to some of the Democrats' arguments on the floor yesterday.
00:29Mr. President, there was a lot of huffing and puffing going on about the sanctity of the Government Accountability Office and about the filibuster, which, let me remind you, every single Democrat has promised to eliminate.
00:43There were wild accusations that the sky was falling on the United States Senate.
00:48What nobody who tuned in heard is what these California rules would actually do to our country.
00:57Well, why not, Mr. President?
01:00Isn't that why Democrats are really so panicked?
01:03Isn't that why Democrats and Joe Biden waited until after the election, after they lost the election in the House, the Senate and the White House, to spring this whole thing on the American people?
01:14They were losers going out the door, and they said, we're coming after you, the American people, with our leftist dreams.
01:21Isn't that why they spent months coordinating this release with their allies at the GAO?
01:28So they could avoid, or at least try to avoid, Senate scrutiny under the Congressional Review Act?
01:34Isn't that what they were really up to?
01:36Well, it is what they were up to.
01:37So why are the Democrats so darn desperate to talk about anything and everything except what these punishing rules will actually do to America, American workers, and the American economy?
01:49Let me tell you why.
01:52California EV mandates ban, ban, ban the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.
01:59No more in America.
02:00Gas-powered cars.
02:01Can you imagine that in Oklahoma or my home state of Wyoming?
02:03They threaten, the Democrats want to threaten the freedom of every American to choose what they drive.
02:11That's what this is about.
02:13EVs currently make up 7%, 7% of the U.S. market.
02:20Even in California, they account for only 20% of vehicle sales.
02:24And you know what else?
02:24The sales are stalling.
02:26They're stalling out.
02:26People don't want these.
02:27Even with the big government subsidies, people don't want to buy these things.
02:31Yet California's radical mandates require that by next year, and it's coming, we're already in the May of this year, by next year, by January, that all vehicle sales in the state of California, 35% of them, have to be electric.
02:47That's six months from now.
02:48Seven months from now.
02:49By 2035, it'd be 100% of vehicle sales in California have to be electric.
02:57Big penalties if it doesn't meet that.
02:59For the people that are making the cars, the people that don't want to buy.
03:05This is a whole new meaning in California of fantasy land.
03:09That's what we're dealing with here.
03:11America can't meet these impossible standards.
03:13Not next year, not 10 years, and the American people don't want to meet those standards.
03:18For car makers, the consequences are severe.
03:21If you don't sell enough electric vehicles, California is saying to them and to the other states that sign on to this, even when Americans don't want to buy them, too bad, California, these people will pay a fine of $20,000 per vehicle.
03:37$20,000 per vehicle because people don't want to buy what the government says they've got to buy.
03:43There are ways to avoid this fine, and one way is limiting the sales of gas-powered vehicles.
03:51Well, that's rationing.
03:52That's what we're seeing.
03:54The Democrats want to ration the sales of gas-powered vehicles to live in their fantasy land of everybody driving an electric vehicle.
04:03The harms of this mandate extend way beyond just car makers.
04:10The Democrat mandates would cost the economy about $100 billion a year.
04:14$100 billion.
04:16The impact would be about 330,000 jobs lost.
04:21The Democrat mandate would punish hardworking families.
04:25Prices would be higher.
04:27They're trying to buy these regular gas-powered vehicles because it would be fewer for sale.
04:33They would bury small businesses under crushing compliance costs.
04:37In my home state of Wyoming and rural states like ours, farmers, ranchers, they'd suffer both from EV's limited reliability and clearly from their limited range.
04:46And people drive long distances in Wyoming to school, to the grocery store, to work.
04:53Every American citizen would lose options, whether you live in California or not.
04:57So you have the California EV mandates, and the Democrats don't want to talk about that part of it.
05:03They're expensive, they're expansive, and they are economically destructive.
05:07They would hurt our economy, hurt our workers, hurt the pocketbooks and purses of Mr. and Mrs. America.
05:13This isn't just a California problem, it's a nationwide assault on gas-powered cars in America.
05:21The California mandates cover over 40% of all new cars in the country.
05:26They span 11 states, including big population states, New York, New Jersey, here in the District of Columbia.
05:32All of them signed on to California's radical attempt to set a new national standard.
05:37So it's not just a California standard, everyone's impacted.
05:41The California senators, the members of this body, they actually brag about this overreach of this mandate on EVs.
05:50The junior senator from California, he says he's, quote,
05:54very proud that his state's liberal agenda can control the country.
06:02How many members of this Senate, and certainly on this side there,
06:04want to share the pride of California's liberal agenda controlling the country?
06:12The American public on Election Day rejected the liberal agenda of California.
06:17Whether it comes to electric vehicles, whether it comes to open borders,
06:19whether it comes to sanctuary cities or sanctuary state, their efforts to defund police,
06:25people have rejected all across the country the liberal agenda controlling our country.
06:32So Democrats have this delusional dream.
06:35They want to eliminate gas-powered vehicles.
06:40The rest of us, we live in the real world.
06:43And that's what we're doing here today.
06:45Because in the real world, gas-powered vehicles keep our farms running, keep our ranches going,
06:50keep our businesses thriving, keep our economy moving.
06:53The Congressional Review Act provides the Senate a swift and permanent solution.
07:00With a simple majority here in the Senate, Congress can kill these rules and ban similar ones forever.
07:06Not just the Senate, the House as well.
07:08And the fight goes beyond party lines because it's not just about Republicans or Democrats.
07:13It's about common sense.
07:16It's about control.
07:17The House of Representatives voted on this, Mr. President.
07:20They wanted to end these punishing California mandates.
07:23So how'd the vote go?
07:24Well, every Republican voted to kill the mandate, as you can imagine.
07:27Thirty-five House Democrats voted to kill this mandate,
07:32including Democrats from the state of California
07:35who realized just how impractical and expensive and impossible it would be to comply
07:42with what the Biden administration forced, tried to force-feed the American people
07:47after they lost the election, lost the presidency, lost the House, and lost the Senate.
07:50A New York Democrat who voted with the Republicans and with these 35 other Democrats
07:58said, out of touch with reality is what these California mandates are.
08:04Out of touch with reality.
08:07Even the junior senator from Michigan, a Democrat,
08:10campaigned and won an election in 2024 against EV mandates.
08:15Well, we'll see how she votes today on the floor of the Senate
08:17after she campaigned last year in Michigan against the EV mandates.
08:23Will she be against them today when we vote on this?
08:25Well, time will tell, Mr. President.
08:28She actually told voters, drive what you want.
08:32We'll see today if she really believes that.
08:35Or she says, drive what you want, but you can only buy what I'm demanding that you buy,
08:40an electric vehicle.
08:41We will see in the vote today.
08:43Senate Democrats now want to force-feed electric vehicles to everyone in America.
08:49So Democrats are claiming the Congressional Review Act doesn't apply.
08:53They don't want to talk about the policy.
08:55They want to say, well, the Congressional Review Act shouldn't apply.
08:58These last-minute objections by Democrats are very flawed.
09:01What they're citing is a non-binding observation, observation by the Government Accountability Office,
09:10an observation that said, for the first time in history, an agency-submitted rule wasn't a rule.
09:20That's what they're saying.
09:22The argument collapses under scrutiny.
09:24The Environmental Protection Agency submitted these rules as rules to Congress this year
09:30after being released by the Biden administration in his final days in office.
09:36That's a fact.
09:37No one disputes it.
09:39The Democrats don't dispute it.
09:41They know what happened.
09:42They know they're trying to sneak one through.
09:45They know it.
09:48Under the Congressional Review Act, that makes these rules subject to review.
09:54Period.
09:55End of story.
09:56They're subject to review.
09:59The GAO has no veto power over this body, the United States Senate.
10:04Not a veto from the Congressional Review Act.
10:07Not a veto under the Senate rules.
10:08Not a veto under Senate precedent.
10:10They have no standing.
10:12More troubling, the GAO's actions suggest bias.
10:16Because left-wing bureaucrats at the GAO rushed a response in only 13 days to prop up the mandates.
10:24How do we know that?
10:25Because we know they colluded with Senate Democrats to do so.
10:30When Republicans challenged the GAO's observations, Senate Democrats turned to scare tactics now about the filibuster.
10:36It's ironic, since every Senate Democrat has either voted for or campaigned on eliminating the filibuster.
10:44This Senate vote on the California EV mandates, it's not about Senate rules, Mr. President.
10:50It's about Democrats' delusional dream to eliminate gas-powered vehicles forever.
10:56That's what they want.
10:57What their complaints are is a smokescreen to save a pillar of their Green New Deal.
11:07You know, years ago, Congress created a fast-track procedure.
11:10It was actually 1996.
11:13That's when Congress passed the Congressional Review Act.
11:16This week, the Senate must decide.
11:19Do we uphold our rights under the Congressional Review Act, or do we give the GAO a veto over the Congressional Review Act now and forever?
11:31Our decision is going to shape the future of the Congressional Review Act.
11:36Americans have spoken.
11:37They have rejected EV mandates in November at the ballot box.
11:40The House has acted in a bipartisan way, with 35 Democrats joining all the Republicans,
11:47and it's now up to the Senate to stop these EV mandates from taking hold on our nation.
11:54I want to thank my colleagues who led the effort.
11:57Chairman Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska,
12:03and Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma.
12:06Together, we're going to reject these far-left cheerleading for more regulations.
12:13We're going to protect consumers.
12:15We're going to protect affordability.
12:16And we're going to protect the authority of this institution.
12:21It's time to end this California mandate madness.
12:26Thank you, Mr. President.
12:28I yield the floor.
12:31Suggestion?
12:33Clerk, call roll.
12:34Ms. Osterbrooks.
12:36Thank you, Mr. Osterbrooks.
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