[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 56 (Wednesday, April 18, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2457-S2462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2011--MOTION TO PROCEED
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1925,
which the clerk will report by title.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to S. 1925, a bill to reauthorize the
Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the first
hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or
their designees, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and
the Republicans controlling the second 30 minutes.
The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
[[Page S2458]]
Leadership in Washington
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, to follow up briefly on the subject
of leadership in Washington, perhaps the Speaker of the House could
show some leadership on jobs by calling up the bipartisan--75 to 22--
jobs highway bill that passed this Senate, which is widely supported
and its delay is actually costing us jobs because of the summer
construction season wasting away as these extensions go on. There would
be some leadership that would mean something for jobs in America.
Madam President, I rise today to address the need we have in the
Senate for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. I ask unanimous
consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Cybersecurity
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, our Nation's inadequate
cybersecurity poses an ever-growing threat to our safety, our
prosperity, and our privacy. Attackers go after our intellectual
property, our national security, and our critical infrastructure. The
McAfee Night Dragon Report, for example, concluded that foreign
intruders had access to major oil, energy, and petrochemical companies'
computer networks for at least 2 years and likely as many as 4 years.
Government reports are equally sobering, though usually classified.
One that is not classified is the Department of Homeland Security
report recently that attacks on computer systems that control critical
infrastructure, factories, and databases increased almost eightfold in
just the last 12 months. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned
that ``the next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber
attack.''
Majority Leader Reid has recognized the severity of this national and
economic security threat and intends to bring cybersecurity legislation
to the Senate floor soon. We recognize too the hard work of Chairman
Lieberman and Ranking Member Collins of the Homeland Security
Committee, as well as Chairman Feinstein of the Intelligence Committee,
and Senator Rockefeller of the Commerce Committee. The Cybersecurity
Act of 2012, which they introduced--and I am proud to cosponsor--is a
good start toward addressing the many cybersecurity threats that face
this Nation.
The SECURE IT Act, introduced by Senator McCain and seven colleagues,
seeks to improve the sharing of cybersecurity threat information; the
Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA, which governs
cybersecurity at Federal agencies; and our cyber research and
development. There is considerable overlap between these bills, which
signals that the Senate could legislate on cybersecurity in a
bipartisan and serious manner.
Support for cybersecurity legislation is also bicameral. The
Cybersecurity Task Force constituted by House Republicans produced
recommendations that share key points with our Cybersecurity Act of
2012. Numerous bills are working their way through the House on a
bipartisan basis. Central to that work in the House are the
contributions of Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin. His leadership
is a major reason the House has come to recognize the dangerous
vulnerabilities within our critical infrastructure and that we now
stand on the verge of a breakthrough in improving the security of those
networks.
When a test at the Idaho National Labs showed hackers could blow up a
power generator from thousands of miles away, Congressman Langevin
brought the owners and operators of our electric grid before Congress
and investigated their promise the issue was being addressed. When he
found out that wasn't true, he called them out. His subsequent work as
a cochair of the Center for Strategic and International Study
Commission on Cybersecurity, along with other experts from within and
outside of government, resulted in many of the recommendations
reflected in our legislation. Then, in 2010, Congressman Langevin
passed a landmark cybersecurity amendment in the House that provided a
legislative template for setting standards for critical infrastructure.
I thank Jim Langevin, my colleague from Rhode Island, for his
relentless commitment to keeping America safe in cyberspace.
I am here this morning to stress four points I believe we must keep
in mind as we take up cybersecurity legislation. The first is that
cybersecurity legislation should improve the public's limited awareness
of current cybersecurity threats and the harm those threats present to
our national security economy and privacy. The public, for years, has
been kept in the dark, and that is wrong.
The corporate sector systematically underreports cyber attacks for
fear of scaring customers, for fear of encouraging competitors or for
fear of triggering regulatory review. I was pleased the Securities and
Exchange Commission, after prompting by Senator Rockefeller and myself
and others, issued guidance for when registered companies must disclose
breach information.
The government itself systematically underreports cyber attacks
because it overclassifies information about cyber attacks on government
systems. Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, for example, recently explained that cybersecurity has a
unique problem in that some of the most reliable data is classified. It
was a rare exception when a November 2011 report by the Office of the
National Counterintelligence Executive identified China and Russia as
responsible for the systematic theft of American intellectual property
through cyber espionage. The legislation that we pass must shed light
on the scale and severity of the cyber threat to the American public.
In that vein, I am pleased the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 includes
provisions from the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act, S. 813, which I
introduced with Senator Kyl. These provisions will at least begin to
improve the public's awareness of the current cyber threat environment
we face.
Second, we must recognize that inadequate awareness and inadequate
protection against cyber risks is endemic among our largest
corporations. Part of the problem is a gulf in cybersecurity awareness
between corporate chief information officers and corporate CEOs.
Carnegie Mellon's CyLab recently reported:
Boards and senior management still are not exercising
appropriate governance over the privacy and security of their
digital assets . . . These findings are consistent with the
complaints by CISO/CSOs that they cannot get the attention of
their senior management and boards and their budgets are
inadequate . . . There is still an apparent disconnect.
Nor is this an area in which the market can be trusted to work. As
former Bush Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has
explained:
The marketplace is likely to fail in allocating the correct
amount of investment to manage risk across the breadth of the
networks on which our society relies.
This is not an area where corporations manage adequately on their
own. FBI Director Robert Mueller recently explained:
There are only two types of companies: those that have been
hacked and those that will be.
Even more trenchant, the McAfee report on the ``Shady RAT'' attacks
similarly stated it is possible to divide ``the entire set of Fortune
Global 2,000 firms into two categories: those that know they've been
compromised and those that don't yet know.''
Kevin Mandia of the leading security firm Mandiant has explained:
[I]n over 90 percent of the cases we have responded to,
government notification was required to alert the company
that a security breach was underway. In our last 50
incidents, 48 of the victim companies learned they were
breached from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Department of Defense or some other third party.
The National Cybersecurity Investigation Joint Task Force, led by the
FBI, told me the same thing: more than 90 percent of the time the
corporate victim had no idea.
What we can conclude from this is that improved sharing of
cybersecurity threat information is necessary but is not sufficient to
protect our Nation's cybersecurity. Even a perfect information-sharing
process will not prevent cyber attacks if the information being shared
is incomplete. The blindness of most corporations to this threat limits
the effectiveness of corporate-to-corporate information sharing. The
NSA's Defense Industrial Base pilot--the so-called ``DIB'' pilot--
proved the government can share classified information
[[Page S2459]]
with trusted corporations, but it revealed significant risks and
limitations, particularly if the government were to share its most
sensitive intelligence information with a broad set of private
companies.
The third point I want to make this morning, and perhaps the most
important, is that this legislation on cybersecurity will have failed
if it does not ensure that our American critical infrastructure has
adequate cybersecurity. There must be a process for identifying
critical infrastructure, establishing appropriate security standards,
and ensuring that critical infrastructure companies meet the standard.
If an attack comes, we must be sure that America's most capable
defenses and countermeasures are pre-positioned to defend critical
American infrastructure. We simply cannot wait until an attack is
underway on basic needs and services on which we depend, such as our
electric grid, our communications networks, and the servers that
process our financial transactions. So there are two measures here: One
is that we must have a way to define critical infrastructure so we know
what it is and, just as important from a civil liberties perspective,
we know what it isn't. When we identify critical infrastructure on
which our safety and economic and national security depend, we are also
defining what does not qualify and where privacy concerns can be much
more important than national security concerns. Nobody wants government
in our chat rooms, e-mails, or social media; everyone gets why
government should protect the electric grids that bring power to our
homes.
The second is that once we identify our critical infrastructure, we
need to find a way for our national security assets to protect that
critical infrastructure. Our government has unique capabilities to
protect those basics, such as our electric grid.
As Kevin Mandia has explained:
[t]he majority of threat intelligence is currently in the
hands of the government.
Some of this information can be disclosed, but some cannot be, in
order to protect sensitive sources and methods. This requires us to
find other ways for our most sophisticated government capabilities to
protect our critical infrastructure. For example, we should think
seriously about the concept of secure domains and how they can be
deployed effectively while protecting civil liberties. I am glad
section 804 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 takes on that task by
requiring expert study of the advantages and disadvantages of
establishing secure domains for critical infrastructure.
If the business community can identify a workable alternative
approach, such as a voluntary or opt-in regulatory system, I am willing
to get to work, but we must not balk at taking on the hard question of
how to secure our critical American infrastructure.
The last point I want to make today is that Congress, in this bill,
should consider the appropriate structure and resources for the
cybersecurity and cyber crime mission of the Department of Justice, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and law enforcement components of the
Department of Homeland Security. We do not do enough to investigate,
prosecute, and take other appropriate legal action against cyber crime,
cyber espionage and other cyber threats. Last year's takedown by the
Department of Justice of the Coreflood botnet should be a regular
occurrence, not a special occurrence. But it will not be--it cannot
be--with our current cyber crime resources. The technical,
international, and legal aspects of these investigations are too
complex.
I spent 4 years as a United States attorney, I spent 4 years as our
State's attorney general. These are astonishingly complicated and
difficult cases. They are massively resource intensive. So it is time
for a fundamental rethinking of cyber law enforcement resources: both
the level of resources and the manner in which they are structured. We
should be discussing whether cyber crime should have a dedicated
investigatory agency akin to the DEA or ATF or whether existing task
force models should be used. These are important questions the
legislation has not addressed. Accordingly, I plan to offer a floor
amendment that will require an expert study of our current cyber law
enforcement resources that can recommend a proper level of funding and
structure of forces going forward.
Once again, I thank my colleagues for their hard work to date on
cybersecurity issues. I urge that all of us join together to pass
cybersecurity legislation into law as soon as possible. Two years ago,
I said that because of cyber we in the United States are on the losing
end of the largest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the
history of the world. GEN Keith Alexander, who leads the National
Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has reached the same conclusion
when saying recently that cyber theft is ``the greatest transfer of
wealth in history.'' McAfee likewise has recently evaluated the theft
of national secrets, source code, designs, and other documents, and
concluded that what ``we have witnessed over the past 5 to 6 years has
been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of
wealth.''
We are the losers in that transfer of wealth. We cannot afford to
wait to address this enormous and ever-growing threat.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
Postal Service Reform
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, shortly we will be turning to the
legislation to reform the Postal Service, and I wanted to take a few
minutes to talk about a particularly important part of that discussion.
In recent years there has been a revolution in how our citizens
exercise their right to vote. Instead of every American showing up in
person, more and more Americans are choosing to vote by mail, using
absentee ballots, no-excuse absentee voting or, in the case of my home
State of Oregon, the entire election is conducted by mail. This
amendment I will be offering and that I am discussing this morning--and
in which I join Senator Feinstein and other colleagues--is designed to
protect the millions of Americans who choose to use the post office to
exercise their right to vote. This amendment protects those millions of
Americans from any kind of postal delay that could disrupt their
ability to ensure their vote is counted.
My home State of Oregon has a system in which all ballots are cast by
mail.
In Oregon, if the ballots are not delivered by mail to the county
election offices by the deadline on election night, they are not
counted. So it is essential to the conduct of fair elections in my home
State that delivery of ballots cast by mail not be delayed.
To prevent the potential threat to our elections from delayed mail
delivery, the Wyden-Feinstein amendment would place a moratorium on the
closure of postal facilities until November 13, 2012, in States that
vote by mail or allow any voter to vote no-excuse absentee. It would
also require the Postal Service to notify election officials of
closings and consolidations and require the Postal Service to study the
effect of closing or consolidating a mail processing facility on the
ability of the affected community to vote by mail.
My home State consistently has high voter turnout. Vote by mail has
been successful and it is popular. In my State, more than 85 percent of
registered voters participated in the 2008 elections, but this kind of
approach to voting is popular not just in my home State of Oregon. In
the 2008 election, 89 percent of ballots in Washington State were cast
by mail, as well as 64 percent of those in Colorado, over 50 percent in
Arizona, and it was nearly that high a percentage in California.
In my home State, the Postal Service is a place where people send and
receive packages and mail order prescriptions, and it is also a place
that community residents come together. It seems to me that if we are
going to close and consolidate postal facilities, not only will it harm
the delivery of ballots and campaign-related mail to voters and return
of the ballots to election officials, but it also will zap much of what
is vital to rural America; that is, the opportunity to come and gather
in one place.
Jordan Valley, located in beautiful eastern Oregon on the Nevada
border, is 457 miles from Portland. With the proposed consolidations,
the nearest regional processing center would literally be almost 500
miles away. If the U.S. Postal Service goes ahead with their proposed
closures and consolidations, then a ballot cast in Jordan Valley could
travel approximately 1,000
[[Page S2460]]
miles before it reaches the hands of election officials. This is
unacceptable for constituents who vote in the far corners--the rural
corners--of my State.
Cuts to the Postal Service mean that ballots mailed in the final days
before an election may not get to election officials in time to be
counted. Ballots sent the weekend before a Tuesday vote may not get
into the hands of election officials by the present-day deadline of
election day. Closing and consolidating postal facilities
disproportionately harms the ability of rural residents to have their
votes counted.
These issues raise important questions: Is closing postal facilities
in States that primarily vote by mail a responsible approach? For me
and many of my constituents and the millions of Americans who have
chosen to vote in this fashion, the resounding answer is, no, this is
not a responsible approach. Closing processing facilities and
potentially impacting the delivery of ballots in a general election is
a risk not worth it. Closing postal facilities will have unintended and
unforeseen consequences on the impact of elections.
That is why this amendment would place a moratorium until November
13, 2012, in States that conduct all their elections by mail or permit
no-excuse absentee voting to ensure that elections are fair. No-excuse
voting, of course, allows any voter to vote absentee without having to
offer additional reasons for their making that choice. Twenty-seven
States allow no-excuse absentee voting. So not only will the
constituents that I and Senator Merkley and Senator Feinstein and
Senator Boxer represent in Oregon and California be affected by this
amendment, but States such as Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa,
Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are part of the many states in
this country that this amendment would protect.
In September of 2011, election officials in California were doing
their jobs and preparing and mailing sample ballots for a September
election in an isolated community in northern California. Unaware that
the small post office that serves the area was closing on October 1,
the sample ballots were not immediately returned so they had no reason
to believe the voters had not received them. But as ballots slowly
trickled in, election officials grew a bit suspicious, and they learned
many voters had just received their sample ballot more than 3 weeks
after it was mailed, and many had not received their official ballot
yet. Election officials received no more than two or three a day
literally for the first week.
Voters explained to officials there was so much confusion over the
closure of the post office that they were much more concerned about
receiving their other first-class mail--bills and prescriptions--than
their ballots and hadn't been looking for them. They were told the
contents of their post office box were being directed to the Arcata
Post Office. But when they went to Arcata to retrieve it, there was no
mail for them in Arcata. For 18 days, they didn't receive any mail at
all.
Only 15 days before the election, the staff attempted several times
to contact the Arcata Post Office but could only leave a message for
the postmaster who was not returning their calls. Folks then contacted
friends at a local central processing center in yet another town,
Eureka, CA, who were able to give a direct line to the Arcata
postmaster.
At first, the postmaster indicated nothing was wrong, but the
residents, in his terms, were ``confused about the closure of their
post office.'' After checking the number of ballots that had been
returned from the precincts, election officials decided to resend all
those ballots. The postmaster finally provided election officials with
the change of address list for all residents, and they were able to
correct the database, cancel the ballots that had not yet been
received, and remail ballots to all voters who had not yet returned
their ballots.
Obviously, the bottom line is clear. The closure of small post
offices requires more preparation and sharing of information with the
residents of an impacted area as well as agencies and businesses that
rely on the post office to communicate with their customers. Had
election officials not had a contact in that area, they may not have
become aware of the problem until it was too late to resend the
ballots.
Under the amendment I will be offering later with Senator Feinstein,
the Postal Service would be required to notify election officials of
closings and consolidations to prevent the kind of calamitous repeat of
what I have described happened in a recent local election in
California. Additionally, the amendment would require the Postal
Service to study the effect of closing or consolidating a mail
processing facility on the ability of the affected community to vote by
mail and the ability of the Postal Service to deliver ballots on time
in accordance with applicable State law.
Disenfranchising voters or discouraging the millions of Americans who
now have chosen this new approach to voting is not a wise or prudent
step for the Senate to take at this time. Placing a moratorium until
after the elections will ensure that what is done in the Senate does
not negatively impact voting in Oregon, California or the scores of
other States that make extensive use of mail ballots in their
elections.
I hope it will be possible for us to win bipartisan support for the
proposition that ensuring the highest level of voting participation in
our country is fundamental to our democracy. I hope my colleagues will
support the amendment I intend to offer later with my colleague and
friend from California, Senator Feinstein, to protect the millions of
Americans who choose to vote by mail.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
Ten Years Ago Today
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I am here to point out that 10 years
ago this very day, this Senate decided not to drill for more oil in the
United States, where we know oil exists. At that time, the argument
that was used was why drill because it was going to take many years to
get it online. The Senate bought the argument we shouldn't drill
because it was going to take too long.
Today, we think about more opportunities to drill for oil in the
United States.
I wish to point out that the very same arguments that were used 10
years ago are being used today: If we drill today, we might not get
some of that oil online for several years down the road. We want to be
thinking about the future, as we should have thought about the future
in 2002, 10 years ago, when we decided not to drill.
Around the country, American consumers are paying near-record prices
for gasoline at the pump. The current average price for gasoline is
near $3.90. Since January 2009, the average price of a gallon of
regular gasoline has more than doubled. In 2011, consumers spent a
greater percentage of their household income on gasoline than any year
since 1981, when we thought 90 cents for a gallon of gas was a lot of
money.
Affordable energy is a major economic issue. Paying nearly $4 for gas
acts as a hidden tax and results in people having less money to spend
on other things. Rising energy prices also increase the cost of doing
business for job creators, taking away dollars that otherwise could go
to hiring workers. We should be doing everything possible to prevent
these high energy prices today or tomorrow.
The Senate had an opportunity 10 years ago today to take action to
increase our domestic oil supply. Unfortunately, the Senate missed that
opportunity. It missed an opportunity for lower prices today and
importing something less than the $830 million we spend every day to
import oil. We need to keep that money in this country.
Ten years ago today, the Senate considered an amendment offered by
then-Senator Frank Murkowski--father to present Senator Lisa
Murkowski--to open a tiny portion of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge to oil and gas development. A vote on the cloture motion was
rejected by the Democratic majority in the Senate on April 18, 2002.
During that debate, opponents argued that opening ANWR to development
would never supply more than 2
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percent of our Nation's oil demands. They opposed it based on the
belief that opening ANWR wouldn't address the real problems; namely,
our dependence upon fossil fuels. They said we needed to work toward a
comprehensive approach.
Opening ANWR was also portrayed as a distraction from the real
solutions, such as conservation, alternative and renewable energy, and
less environmentally sensitive fossil energy development. Some even
argued that fully inflated or low friction tires should be a larger
part of our national energy policy.
I recognize the need for a comprehensive, balanced national energy
policy. I truly believe in an all-of-the-above approach that includes
conservation, alternative and renewable energy, nuclear power, and oil
and gas development.
But the fact remains we were talking about these policies as
solutions to our energy problems in 2002. Yet gas prices are still near
$4 a gallon.
I listened to dozens of speakers in the Senate that day who argued
against opening ANWR because it wouldn't address our near-term energy
needs. They said it would take nearly 10 years to get that oil to the
consumers. Ten years ago we were told to forget about opening ANWR
because development was too far down the road to impact our energy
supply and energy security.
Here are a few quotes from my Democratic colleagues during the debate
in April 2002. I am not going to use their names. But this Democratic
Senator said:
I oppose the proposal to drill in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in ANWR will not increase energy
independence, even if we started drilling tomorrow, the first
barrel of crude oil would not make it to our market for at
least ten years. So it would not affect our current energy
needs.
Another Democratic Senator said--and these Senators are still here
today:
The oil exploration in ANWR will not actually start
producing oil for as many as 10 years. Exploring and drilling
for oil is not forward thinking.
Another Democratic Senator said this:
That oil would not be available for 10 years. This means
drilling in ANWR would not provide any immediate energy
relief for American families.
Another Democratic Senator said:
Developing ANWR is simply not a necessary component of a
progressive energy policy for this country. For a period
starting about 2012--
That is this year, understand; he was looking ahead 10 years--
For a period starting at about 2012, we would see an
increase of domestic production under ANWR, if ANWR was open
to development. So development would not address the near-
term prices or shortages with which people are faced.
Ten years down the road, here we are, but if we drilled back then we
would have this oil on line and we would not be spending $830 million
every day to import oil.
Another Senator said this:
When my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and
suggest to us that the crisis in the Middle East is a reason
to drill in ANWR, that is a misleading argument because no
oil will flow from ANWR until from 7 to 10 years from now.
That means if you open the refuge today, you are not going
to see oil until about 2012, maybe a couple of years earlier.
You see, a decision made in 2002--people were looking ahead 10 years
and saying it was not going to make much difference, but 2012 is here
and we could have been using that oil.
Another Senator said:
Oil extracted from the wildlife refuge would not reach
refineries for 7 to 10 years.
That is the end of my quotes of several Democratic Senators who are
now serving. If they are using the same argument now, are they going to
be smart enough to look ahead to 2022 when maybe we could start using
the oil we would start drilling for today? The defeat of the Murkowski
amendment back in 2002 was then enormously shortsighted. If we had
voted to open ANWR 10 years ago, that oil would be driving down the
price at the pump for consumers today. You know the rule of economics;
if you increase supply, you reduce price. And we would at least be
keeping the money in the United States instead of spending $830 million
every day to import oil. Time after time, opponents of domestic oil
production have argued that because it will not lower prices at the
pump today it is not worth doing. You know from the debate of 2002 that
is a bunch of hogwash. Does anybody wonder if the American people wish
that the Senate had opened ANWR 10 years ago?
It is past time to take action to ramp up domestic production of
traditional energy, energy we can harvest in this country instead of
importing it and paying $830 million to import it. Greater domestic
energy production would increase supply and help to lower prices. It
would create American jobs.
President Obama continues to push policies that contribute to higher
gas prices, including restricting access to Federal lands and
permitting delays, regulatory threats to refiners, and his decision to
deny Keystone XL. He says he is for ``all of the above,'' but when you
look at that list, he is for ``none of the above.'' By limiting
domestic energy production we have less supply and higher prices.
The Obama administration has made things worse by restricting access
to domestic energy sources. The President's record contradicts his
remarks that he is for an ``all of the above'' strategy. His policies
have prevented more oil production in the United States and resulted in
higher prices, lost opportunities for jobs creation, less energy
security, and shipping out of the country 830 million of our dollars
that could be used in this country and kept in this country, money we
are spending to import oil.
President Obama's denying of the Keystone XL Pipeline inhibits
energy-related development that could create 20,000 jobs. Greater
domestic energy production would increase supply and help to lower
prices, and it would create American jobs.
It is time to take action. Denying ANWR development 10 years ago was
a mistake, a mistake I hope we learn a lesson from. The Senate missed
an opportunity 10 years ago that would have brought gas price relief
and more supply, keeping more money in this country, creating jobs in
this country right now. We should not make the same mistake again. You
cannot repeat that statement too often. We should not make the same
mistake again. We should be looking ahead 10 years, as they were doing
in 2002, but they were using it as an excuse to do nothing. So don't
ever tell me don't drill today because it will not come on line until
10 years from now. That is not a very wise thing to say to me, after
you said that 10 years ago. We should have learned the lesson.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Gulf Oilspill
Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I come to the floor to recognize a
solemn occasion. In two days, on Friday, April 20, it will be the 2-
year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. I want to pause at
this moment of anniversary, 2 years, and offer a few thoughts about
what was clearly a very significant episode and challenge for our whole
country, but particularly for my State of Louisiana and for the gulf
coast.
First of all, I want to start where I think we should always start in
discussing and considering this event, and that is the loss of 11
lives. Eleven men were killed in that explosion. Again, we need to
pause, reflect, pray, and offer prayerful support to them and their
families. Those 11 victims were Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Aaron
Dale Burkeen, Adam Wiese, Roy Kemp, Jason Anderson, Gordon Jones, Blair
Manuel, Dewey Revette, Karl Dale Kleppinger, Jr., and Shane Roshto.
I ask unanimous consent that here on the Senate floor we pause for a
few seconds in silent, prayerful thought and consideration of those 11
men and their families.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
(Moment of silence.)
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. VITTER. Thank you, Madam President. The tragedy, of course,
started there with those 11 lives lost and we must never forget that,
including as we redouble our efforts to ensure safety in those sorts of
drilling environments in the future.
Of course, the second big impact was on the environment, particularly
the gulf environment where I live, in Louisiana--4.9 million barrels of
oil were discharged during the spill. That was
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about 50,000 barrels a day, every day for 3 months; 320 miles of
Louisiana coastline were oiled. That was a little over half of the
total coastline on the gulf that was oiled--600 miles. Over 86,000
square miles of waters were closed to fishing; about 36 percent of
Federal waters in the gulf were closed.
We did that on a very aggressive, proactive basis to make sure we
avoided any contaminated seafood ever reaching a store shelf, ever
reaching a restaurant. The good news is we accomplished that. Through
that proactive closing, not a single piece of contaminated seafood ever
reached a store shelf or ever reached a restaurant customer. That was
quite an accomplishment.
Lots of dead animals were collected--6,800; 6,100 birds and also
other sea turtles and dolphins. It was the biggest ever in American
history, a huge environmental disaster.
Two years later, as we pause and look at the environmental effect of
that, frankly, there is good news and bad news--or at least good news
and continuing challenges. The good news is I don't think anyone would
have predicted that the gulf would rebound to where it is today. Mother
Nature has proved again to be amazingly resilient. That is good news.
At the time there were all sorts of pretty dire predictions of huge
dead zones covering half the gulf. That has certainly not materialized.
So Mother Nature has proved amazingly resilient. But I don't want to
trivialize continuing challenges, continuing work. There is continuing
environmental work, I understand core projects that are ongoing that
are very important. First is the NRDA process, under Federal law, the
Natural Resource Damage Assessment. That is the process under Federal
law by which all stakeholders help assess the damage to the environment
so that the folks guilty of this horrendous incident pay for those
damages, pay the State, pay the Federal Government, pay others who will
work to restore the environment.
That NRDA process is ongoing. It is a multiyear process. But there is
some positive result from that process already. Step one of the process
was a settlement with BP for an upfront payment of about $1 billion.
Just today, two specific projects in Louisiana were announced as a
direct result of that first--not last but first--upfront payment of $1
billion. There is the Lake Hermitage Marsh Creation Project in
Plaquemines Parish. That will create approximately 104 acres of
brackish marsh from beneficial use of dredge material. That is being
announced today. And the Louisiana Oyster Culture Project--that is the
placement of oyster cultch onto about 850 acres of public oyster seed
grounds throughout coastal Louisiana. So those projects are the start
of that NRDA project coming to fruition.
Then the second important work that is ongoing that involves all of
us here in the Senate directly is the need to pass the RESTORE Act
through the highway reauthorization bill, the transportation
reauthorization bill.
The RESTORE Act language would dedicate 80 percent of the Clean Water
Act fines related to this disaster to gulf coast restoration. I thank
all of my colleagues again for an enormously positive, overwhelmingly
positive, bipartisan vote to attach that RESTORE Act language to the
Senate highway bill. I urge my House colleagues, including House
conservatives, to pass a House version of the highway bill today. That
is important for our country, for highway infrastructure, and it is
important because it is a vehicle for this RESTORE Act.
A third and final category I want to touch on that is not as
positive, frankly, as the environmental rebound is the impact of all of
this and the related moratorium on drilling to our economy on the gulf
coast and energy production. Immediately after the disaster, very soon
thereafter, President Obama announced a complete moratorium on activity
in the gulf on new drilling. That moratorium lasted several months. I
think that was a bad mistake, an overreaction to the disaster. I think
that has been borne out in several ways, including the panel of experts
that the President got together. Their report, we now know, was
actually doctored and edited at the White House to make it seem like
those true experts supported a full moratorium, when we know directly
from them that they did not.
This moratorium went in place anyway and it created a lot of
additional economic harm and hurt to a lot of gulf coast residents and
workers that was unnecessary. Of course we needed to pause and get new
procedures and some new safety regulations in place, of course we
needed to learn the lessons of the disaster and incorporate those into
practices, but we did not need an all-out moratorium for months. And we
do not need a continuing slowdown that continues to this day. An
analogy I have often used is when we have a horrible disaster such as
an airplane crash, we do not ground every plane for months after such
an incident. We allow the industry and that important travel and
commercial activity to continue as we immediately learn the lessons of
the disaster and incorporate it into safety proceedings.
Well, unfortunately, my point of view did not hold sway at the White
House. We had this complete, formal moratorium which lasted into
October 2010. But when that formal, complete moratorium was lifted, it
didn't just end there. For months and months after that, we had a de
facto moratorium, permits which were not happening. There was only a
trickle of permits. Now, even though permitting has increased somewhat,
we have a dramatic permit slowdown and a slowdown of activity in the
gulf. Now more than ever, our country and our citizens cannot afford
that. The price at the gas pump is about $4 a gallon. It has more than
doubled during President Obama's tenure. We cannot afford this
avoidable slowdown and decrease in important domestic energy activity.
Again, a lot of folks around the country don't realize it, but
permitting in the gulf is still way below pre-BP levels. It is 40
percent below pre-BP levels. Now, again, we need to learn and we have
learned the lessons of the BP disaster. We need to incorporate those
into our regulatory policy, and we have. But we cannot afford a permit
slowdown of more than 40 percent since before the BP disaster. Because
of that and because of other factors, energy production is down on
Federal property and all oil production was down about 14 percent in
the last year. Federal offshore production is down about 17 percent. So
that is some of the most lasting negative economic impact from the
disaster. The Obama administration's wrongheaded reaction to it and the
lingering policy on energy production is something we cannot afford as
the gulf region, we cannot afford as a country, and we can afford less
than ever now with the price at the pump.
Again, I hope we do learn the lessons of this disaster. I hope we
continue to ensure that those safety and other lessons are built into
our regulatory framework and best practices in the industry. I think
that has largely been done, and that work continues. I also hope we
honor the lifework of those 11 men who lost their lives, who worked
hard every day in that industry producing good American energy by not
only allowing that work to happen safely but allowing that work to
happen and allowing American citizens to benefit from that work.
The United States is the single most energy-rich country in the
world, bar none. For instance, we are far richer than any Middle
Eastern country, such as Saudi Arabia. The problem is that we are the
only country in the world that puts well over 90 percent of those
domestic resources off limits and says: No, no, no. No you can't do
this, and no you can't touch that.
We need to build a commonsense American energy policy that says: Yes.
Yes, we can. Yes, we can do it safely, and, yes, we can provide
American energy for American families and the American economy.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.
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