“This is a direct attack, not only on my state, but on our ability to innovate, to lead and indeed to breathe clean air. This is bad policy, clearly, certainly, yes. But it is also a dangerous abuse of the process in this house that will lead to other harmful consequences to get this done.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor, calling out the Republican Party, so-called champions of states’ rights, for their hypocritical vote to overturn California’s clean air waivers. Schiff recounted the Roaring Twenties, a decade of innovation and illusion that created smog and pollution and the comparison to Republicans’ decision 100 years later to rollback important clean air policies.
Watch his full remarks HERE. Download remarks HERE.
Key Excerpts:
On the implications of Republicans’ going nuclear:
This is a direct attack, not only on my state, but on our ability to innovate, to lead and indeed to breathe clean air.
This is bad policy, clearly, certainly, yes. But it is also a dangerous abuse of the process in this house that will lead to other harmful consequences to get this done.
To repeal California’s statutory waiver to set its own air pollution rules, Republican leadership have decided to blow a procedural hole in the filibuster. And let’s call it what it is: this is a dangerous new kind of nuclear option that dispenses with the filibuster. But they would have us believe only here, only when it’s necessary to cater to the oil industry. It is the oil exception to the filibuster rule.
On history repeating itself:
The Roaring Twenties were a time of reckless optimism. The stock market soared, inequality deepened, and political leaders told Americans not to worry, everything was under control. Until it wasn’t.
Because the same decade that gave us jazz and swing also gave us the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a disastrous attempt to protect American industry by walling off our economy to the rest of the world. It sparked global retaliation, strangled trade and helped turn a market crash into a full-blown depression.
And what are we seeing now? New tariffs, retaliation, threats, political attacks on states that lead. And now an attempt to tear down environmental progress and green innovation, just as the global economy is demanding more of it, much more of it.
The Roaring Twenties gave us invention, yes, but also illusion. A false belief that we could grow forever without rules and without consequences. We are in danger of making the same mistake again. We should be building the EV infrastructure for the future, not dismantling climate progress.
We should be investing in clean energy, not clinging to combustion engines. We should be protecting the rules of this chamber, not torching them when they become inconvenient to the oil industry.
The gutting of these norms doesn’t end in prosperity. The sacrifice of clean air doesn’t end in making us healthy again. It ends in cancer. It ends in an enfeebled economy. It ends in a country going backward and shrinking in on itself. It ends in crisis. Let’s not go there.
Read the transcript of his remarks as delivered below:
Madam President, members.
Welcome to the Roaring Twenties. Not the ones you may have read about in F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, not the ones with jazz and liberation and industrial boom. I mean these Roaring Twenties.
The ones where instead of flappers, you get fossil fuel and dirty air. Where instead of innovation, you get obstruction, tariffs, isolationism, blinding nostalgia for a world that no longer exists.
Instead of leaders who want to tackle the climate crisis head on, you get votes to tear down the tools that we need to fight it.
The reason I stand here today and was here last night until 1:30-2:00 in the morning, is that Senate Republicans have pushed through resolutions to revoke California’s authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards, to set its own rules about what kind of air we breathe in California.
This is an authority that my state has had by statute for more than 50 years.
We’ve had the right to deal with our unique problems of congestion, our topography, our smog. We’ve had the right to demand of ourselves cleaner air for ourselves and for our children, and that is under attack right now.
And not just California’s ability to set its standards to protect its people, but because other states have also followed California’s lead, this will affect the quality of air all around the country.
And that is the gravamen of the problem for my colleagues in the GOP. And that is that it’s not just California. It’s the fact that so many other states have followed our lead. So many other states have decided they’d rather have fewer cancers than more cars with the combustion engines.
That was their choice. That was their right. They weren’t coerced into joining California. They made the decision about what was best for their constituents.
And it is not for us in this body to arrogate to ourselves to decide we know better for Californians, or we know better for people in other states than what their own leaders have decided about the quality of their air.
This is a direct attack, not only on my state, but on our ability to innovate, to lead and indeed to breathe clean air.
This is bad policy, clearly, certainly, yes. But it is also a dangerous abuse of the process in this house that will lead to other harmful consequences to get this done.
To repeal California’s statutory waiver to set its own air pollution rules, Republican leadership have decided to blow a procedural hole in the filibuster. And let’s call it what it is: this is a dangerous new kind of nuclear option that dispenses with the filibuster. But they would have us believe only here, only when it’s necessary to cater to the oil industry. It is the oil exception to the filibuster rule.
Now, the nuclear option has been used over nominees in the past, and there has been debate about doing away with the filibuster entirely. But today, what we’re talking about is only carving out the oil industry from the filibuster.
So not carving out protection for voting rights, not carving out protection for reproductive freedom, not carving out fundamental rights for the American people, for which there would be a strong case to have a carve out from the filibuster.
But no. Today, we’re talking about an oil industry only carve out. And they’re using it to overturn some of the most successful clean air policies in American history.
Since the 1960s California has had the obligation and the ability and the authority to lead, and they’ve used it. We’ve used it to reduce pollution, to increase fuel efficiency and drive innovation across the country. And much of the country has California to thank for the development of electric vehicles, for the improvement in fuel efficiency standards because, as we have led, others have followed, and industry has adapted. Despite the naysayers and those always saying it’s too hard. It can’t be done.
America got cleaner cars, thanks to California and consumers got more choices, thanks to California. Now some in this chamber want to go back in time. Not because the policy failed, but because it succeeded.
Imagine if, just after Henry Ford unveiled the Model T, Congress passed a resolution demanding we double down on bigger, stronger horses, because that’s what this is: a deliberate attempt to deny the future because it threatens the status of Big Oil.
The president says that he is for energy independence. That’s our mantra. Make America Energy Independent. But that is not what they’re doing.
They’re killing clean energy all over the country. You know what just came out of the House in the dead of night, last night, in their reconciliation bill, their big, ugly bill? A provision to essentially kill every clean energy project in the country that’s not almost all finished.
If it isn’t going to be operational in a very short period of time, they want to pull the plug. Now, why would they do that?
Why would they do that, when, in fact, most of those projects are in red states, not blue ones, not states like California, but states like Indiana and Kentucky. Why would they do that?
Because the obligation here is not to their state or constituents. The obligation here is to the oil industry. They would sacrifice the jobs in the clean energy industry all over the country to their own constituents. They would put those people out of work and why? Because of fealty to the oil industry. This is not about energy independence. It is about oil dependence.
Today, we are in a full transition to a clean transportation future, or we could be. And Senate Republicans are trying to bring back the smog. They’re trying to make America smoggy again.
We’re seeing the climate crisis, and they’re trying to cut the brake lines on progress. We’re literally standing at the gates of the future. A future that we will lead, or China will lead. A renewable energy future. And some would rather turn it all around and ride off in a horse and buggy, because that’s what this vote means. That’s what these votes mean.
Not just being stuck in a past technology behold to an old way of doing things but also stuck in a dirtier and more toxic world.
Millions will be stuck breathing in hazardous emissions unnecessarily. What is the pay for here? What is the pay for this? This gift to the oil industry? Cancer. Cancer is the pay for.
We will pay for this repeal of clean air rules with cancer. Maybe your cancer, maybe your father’s cancer, maybe your sister’s cancer, maybe your child’s cancer. That will be the pay for.
Because this is about power. And it’s about profit. And it’s about punishing states that dare to lead. It’s about undermining the Senate’s own rules to score a short-term win that will do long-term damage but will placate the oil industry.
Because once you start twisting the CRA into a weapon to attack anything you don’t like, rules, waivers, facts. You don’t just hurt California, you hurt the country.
Because don’t think for a second it ends here.
If this gambit works, it will not be the last time this tactic is used.
Today, we blow a hole in the filibuster for the oil industry. Tomorrow, we blow another hole in the filibuster for what other polluting industry. Or more broadly, should we expect this majority to use it to strip away protections for workers or privacy rights or reproductive freedom?
This is the real fight here, not just over emissions or waivers or vehicles, but whether we are a nation led by and empowered to shape the future or held hostage by the past.
The Roaring Twenties were a time of reckless optimism.
The stock market soared, inequality deepened, and political leaders told Americans not to worry, everything was under control. Until it wasn’t.
Because the same decade that gave us jazz and swing also gave us the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a disastrous attempt to protect American industry by walling off our economy to the rest of the world. It sparked global retaliation, strangled trade and helped turn a market crash into a full-blown depression.
And what are we seeing now? New tariffs, retaliation, threats, political attacks on states that lead. And now an attempt to tear down environmental progress and green innovation, just as the global economy is demanding more of it, much more of it.
The Roaring Twenties gave us invention, yes, but also illusion. A false belief that we could grow forever without rules and without consequences.
We are in danger of making the same mistake again. We should be building the EV infrastructure for the future, not dismantling climate progress.
We should be investing in clean energy, not clinging to combustion engines.
We should be protecting the rules of this chamber, not torching them when they become inconvenient to the oil industry.
The gutting of these norms doesn’t end in prosperity. The sacrifice of clean air doesn’t end in making us healthy again.
It ends in cancer. It ends in an enfeebled economy. It ends in a country going backward and shrinking in on itself. It ends in crisis. Let’s not go there.
I yield back.
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