Here’s to 2020!
I know things in Washington can seem hopeless, but 2019 gave me plenty of reasons to hope.
As one decade ends and another begins, here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the work my staff and I do. It’s a chance to learn about our strategy on important issues — and may give you a sense of why I’m hopeful for 2020.
Oceans, climate obstruction, dark money, and court capture remain constant targets for us. None of them is easy sledding; complaining won’t get the job done.
To make headway, we aim to set the conditions for victory. That’s why we make what Congressman Lewis would call “good trouble,” calling out evildoers and their schemes wherever we can. It lands us in more than our share of fights, but they’re fights worth having.
On climate, there is no use in fussing over fine details of legislation until we’ve outed the villains blocking progress. The fossil fuel industry continues its relentless campaign of obstruction using an apparatus of front groups. They pretend they want progress, but they keep their denial apparatus funded and obstructing. So we call that lie out.
Even powerful trade organizations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, do fossil fuel dirty work. The watchdog InfluenceMap rates those two corporate trade groups as the worst anti-climate forces in Washington. Meanwhile, fossil fuel trade groups spew happy talk to convince us that when it comes to carbon emissions, they’re “on it.” (Yeah, right.)
In 2019, we exposed that scheme. We got #ChamberOfCarbon trending on Twitter; called out the Chamber and other trade groups in the press and on the Senate floor; lodged a complaint on the Chamber’s dubious lobbying practices; filed comments and legal briefs pushing back on the fossil fuel industry’s phony arguments; helped organize scientists to counter fossil fuel lies; and outed Marathon Petroleum for its deceitful attack on fuel efficiency standards, even testifying in the House about Marathon’s mischief.
Communicating the economic stakes of climate change is an important condition for victory, so we spread the crash warnings coming from top experts about coastal property values and about the “carbon bubble.” A warnings binder went to every Senator; we sent a letter summarizing the warnings to every Banking Committee member; we sent queries to financial regulators; and the crash warnings have been a regular subject of my weekly climate speeches (now over 260 speeches).
We also pressed the rest of corporate America to fight back against fossil fuel obstruction. America’s biggest, most powerful companies say they’re behind bold climate action. And we know corporate America can fight hard when it wants to; see what beverage companies do when facing sugary drink taxes. Corporate America’s dirty secret is that it has put zero political effort into serious climate legislation. None. They might, however, if everyone knew their terrible record — so we’ve been shouting it from the housetops.
Whenever we could, we spoke out about how dark money has poisoned the climate fight. The unlimited money unleashed by Citizens United was quickly morphed into unlimited anonymous “dark money,” allowing big special interests like fossil fuel to spend secretly in elections and on other influence schemes. In our climate change battle — one involving a heavily subsidized industry — dark money is an evil force.
So we won’t stop pointing out the ways that dark money obstructs progress. It’s something we did at every turn in 2019. And I’m not alone. I’m proud that so many of my Senate colleagues joined me in shining a light on dark money in the climate debate.
We took a similar approach against the dark money capture of our courts. Corporate and right wing partisan forces are doing everything they can to rig government in their favor, and they see packing the courts judges as an easy way to do it. The results are clearest in the Supreme Court’s telling pattern of now 80 5–4 partisan decisions favoring corporate and Republican donor interests. (You read that right: 80 decisions, up from 73 the first time we looked.)
So we exposed that scheme, too: the dark-money-funded Federalist Society that picks Trump judges; the shadowy outside groups that campaign for those judges’ confirmation; and the dark money-funded litigants and amici who tell the judges which way to rule. We did this everywhere we could: the press, amicus briefs, speeches, hearings, and more. (Check out this profile in Newsweek, or see my piece in National Law Journal, which was that publication’s most-read column of the year.) Persistence is key.
It’s also part of my job to work across the aisle to deliver bipartisan wins for Rhode Island. As one of my Republican friends likes to point out, most senators can agree on about 80 percent of what needs to get done. We can make a lot of progress by focusing on that common ground.
On oceans and energy, that bipartisan approach paid off big in 2019. Building on the success of our first bipartisan oceans effort, we advanced an even bigger ocean plastic bill through three Senate committees, putting us in strong position to pass it in the New Year. We gained support for our bipartisan ocean data bill — a main project of our successful bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus. We passed a bill as part of the defense authorization to stand up the first federal program to research and deploy direct air and ocean carbon capture technology. We also made good progress on bills to reduce emissions from industrial sectors and to boost carbon capture.
The list of things we got passed into law shows that bipartisanship is more common than you might think. Here are bills we got signed into law this year:
SEA FUEL Act (to promote ocean carbon capture)
Tropical Forest Conservation Reauthorization Act (to aid forest conservation)
One-year extension for wind energy credit
Small Business Reorganization Act (to improve the bankruptcy process for small business)
Supporting Victims of Iranian Terrorism Act (to help recover terror judgments against Iran)
FAFSA Act (to streamline the process for students filing for financial aid)
Here are bills we got through the Senate:
Defending the Integrity of Voting Systems Act (to protect voting systems from cyber-attack)
USE IT Act (to promote carbon capture)
Some of the bills we got out of committee:
Clean Industrial Technology Act (to reduce industrial emissions)
Save Our Seas 2.0 (my second bill tackling ocean plastic)
Bipartisan congressional budget reform (to restore the broken congressional budget process)
Here are funding measures we got:
$113 million for my coastal resilience fund
$378 million in CARA grant funding to respond to the opioid addiction crisis in 2020
$20 million to find a cure for ALS
$6 million to launch research into pancreatic cancer
$75 million to implement criminal justice reforms in the First Step Act
$183.5 million for NOAA’s Cooperative Institutes
$40 million for negative emissions research (carbon capture)
I know things in Washington can seem hopeless, but 2019 gave me plenty of reasons to hope. We’re gaining ground, both in the big fights we need to have — climate obstruction, dark money, and court capture the top three — and also in areas where there’s room for bipartisan agreement.
Thanks for following us and encouraging us in 2019 — and here’s to 2020!
