[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 93 (Tuesday, June 19, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4253-S4266]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   FLOOD INSURANCE REFORM AND MODERNIZATION ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
                                Resumed

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 250, 
S. 1940.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 250, S. 1940, a bill to 
     amend the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, to restore 
     the financial solvency of the flood insurance fund, and for 
     other purposes.


                                Schedule

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the 
Republican leader, there will be 2 hours equally divided and 
controlled, with the majority controlling the first half and the 
Republicans controlling the final half.


                           Order Of Procedure

  The hour that is under the control of the majority has been given and 
I ask unanimous consent now that Senator Kerry be recognized for the 
hour we have allotted to us.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. That will be a full hour to Senator Kerry and a full hour 
to the Republicans.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REID. The Senate will recess from 12:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. to 
allow for our weekly caucus meetings.
  Last night, we reached an agreement to complete action on the farm 
bill. As a result, there will be several rollcall votes beginning at 
2:15 p.m. today.
  Everyone who has amendments here should understand, if you know the 
result of your amendment--it is pretty easy to figure out most of them 
because Senators Stabenow and Roberts will tell almost everyone how the 
vote is going to wind up--we should be able to dispose of a lot of 
these by voice vote. I hope so. Otherwise, people can look to some very 
long nights the next night or two.
  We will also begin debate today on the joint resolution of 
disapproval regarding the EPA's mercury and air toxics standards. That 
will also occur during today's session.


                             The DREAM Act

  Mr. President, Republicans in Congress are fond of complaining that 
this country's immigration system is broken. We have heard it for 
months and months, going into years. But they are less interested in 
working with Democrats to fix this problem they say is broken. We have 
tried. They are totally opposed to our doing anything. We have tried, 
but we just get a handful of Republican votes.
  No one I know disagrees that our immigration system needs repair. It 
certainly does. But every time we as Democrats offer to work together 
on comprehensive immigration reform, Republicans find an excuse to 
fight sensible change.
  And every time Democrats propose bipartisan legislation to provide a 
pathway to citizenship for children brought here illegally through no 
fault of their own, Republicans have found an excuse to oppose our 
practical reforms.
  There is no better illustration of Republicans' hypocrisy than their 
phony outrage this past weekend.

[[Page S4254]]

  On Friday, President Obama announced the administration would suspend 
deportation of young people--upstanding young people--brought here by 
their parents as children, provided these young people attend college 
or serve in the military.
  More than 800,000 young people who have done well in school and 
stayed out of trouble will benefit from this policy and become 
productive members of society. That is what we should all be very happy 
about.

  In this Congress, and the last Congress, Republicans expressed broad 
support for the principles of President Obama's directive.
  Senator Mark Rubio, the junior Senator from Florida, has even talked 
up a similar idea to the press for months, although he never actually 
produced a proposal. This was just talk. There was not a single word 
ever in writing.
  Yet Republicans' glowing expressions of support for the President's 
decision were not forthcoming. Instead, Republicans have cried about 
the way the directive was issued. They prefer a long-term solution. 
Well, of course we all do. They do not like the timing; they should 
have been consulted; and an issue this important should have been left 
to Congress. Being left to Congress--we have tried to do that for 
years, and we cannot because they will not let us. They stopped us 
procedurally.
  Their complaints are varied, but they have one thing in common: None 
of them actually takes issue with the substance of President Obama's 
directive. And with the polling results today announced in the national 
press, clearly, it is overwhelmingly supported by Independents, 
overwhelmingly supported by Democrats, and, frankly, Republicans are 
not that much opposed to it either. But the only Republicans who are 
opposed to it by a large margin are the Republicans in Congress.
  Leading Republican voices on immigration have yet to actually 
disagree with the decision. They just do not like the way the President 
made the decision--I guess because he will get credit for bringing out 
of the shadows 800,000 trustworthy young men and women who know no 
other home but the United States. America is their home. It is the only 
home they have known.
  I talked about a girl here yesterday from Nevada, Astrid. She came 
here to America as a tiny girl. She does not know anyplace else. This 
is her home. She is an American. She pledges allegiance to her flag.
  So I remind my colleagues in both Houses of Congress, the next move 
is yours. This reprieve for DREAMers should not be seen as a free pass 
for Congress. We have lots of other issues we have to deal with dealing 
with immigration. Instead, we should see it as a chance for Democrats 
and Republicans to work together on a lasting answer to the serious 
shortfalls of our broken immigration system. And as we work, we will 
have the benefit of knowing the specter of deportation no longer hangs 
over the heads of hundreds of thousands of young people.
  Now is hardly the time to walk away from the DREAM Act, which would 
have created a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the 
country through no fault of their own. And it is certainly no time to 
abandon calls for comprehensive immigration reform that is tough, that 
is fair, and is practical. But that is exactly what Republicans are 
doing. They are taking their marbles and saying: Well, OK, we will quit 
and go home. Quite frankly, a number of them have not been here anyway 
to go home. They have not helped us anyway.
  Since last Friday, leading Republican voices on immigration reform 
have all but ceded the debate until after the election. Republicans who 
once favored a permanent solution for America's broken immigration 
system are now abandoning efforts to find common ground.
  And the same Republicans who complained they were not involved enough 
in the President's decision are now giving up any involvement in the 
broader immigration conversation. It makes you wonder whether they were 
committed to passing the DREAM Act or tackling immigration reform at 
all, because Senate Republicans have twice had their chance to vote for 
the DREAM Act. Both times they filibustered the measure to a 
legislative death. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that my 
Republican colleagues are more interested in complaining about a system 
that is broken than in working with Democrats to fix it.
  Will the Chair announce the business of the day.


                       Reservation Of Leader Time

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
leadership time is reserved.
  Under the previous order, the following 2 hours will be equally 
divided and controlled by the two leaders or their designees, with the 
majority controlling the first hour, and the Republicans controlling 
the second hour.
  The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Colorado.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from 
Massachusetts for generously yielding to me.


                                Wind PTC

  Mr. President, I am on the Senate floor today to continue urging this 
body to extend the production tax credit for wind. I intend to return 
to the floor every morning until the PTC has been extended, and I am 
going to talk about the economic and jobs effect on the nonextension in 
each State, and I am going to press my colleagues for an immediate 
extension.
  Today I want to focus on a wind giant in our country--Texas. Texas 
leads the Nation in wind energy production. The Lone Star State has 
more turbines than all but five countries.
  As you can see, this chart I have in the Chamber outlines all the 
installed wind projects in Texas. You can see that across the State--
from the south to the west, from El Paso to Galveston, from the 
Panhandle to southern Texas--the wind industry has created thousands of 
jobs and it has helped boost the manufacturing and construction sectors 
with good-paying American jobs.
  For example, Sweetwater, a town of 11,000 people, has become the new 
Spindletop: You drive past it on the interstate and there is a forest 
of giant wind turbines. Among the cotton fields of this west Texas 
rural community, Sweetwater is home to one of the largest wind farms in 
Texas. And the wind industry, using Sweetwater's open spaces, constant 
winds, and transmission capacity, has helped revitalize this rural 
community--and really all of Nolan County.
  Even oil-rich Houston has become something of a wind power capital in 
Texas--thanks to developers such as EDP Renewables Pattern Energy, and 
Iberdrola Renewables, as well as BP and Shell.
  They say everything is bigger in Texas--and that certainly applies 
when it comes to their vast energy resources. Texas has it all, from 
traditional sources, like oil and gas, to renewable energy, like hydro 
and wind.
  Texas' success in harnessing wind energy is no accident. Thanks to 
smart State policies, including a renewable portfolio standard, which 
passed in 1999, and was later amended in 2005, as well as strong 
Federal support from the wind PTC, the Texas wind industry has grown 
dramatically.
  Texas has an all-of-the-above energy strategy. The Senator from 
Massachusetts supports that kind of strategy. I support that kind of a 
strategy. Texas embodies this. They have shown great promise when it 
comes to renewable resources--growing and coexisting with traditional 
energy sources.
  So if you look at what is happening in Texas, Texas' wind energy 
industry supports almost 7,000 jobs. With more energy from wind than 
any other State in our country, wind powers over 2.7 million Texas 
homes, and almost 7 percent of Texas' overall electric power comes from 
wind. It was the first State to reach 10,000 megawatts of wind 
installations, and that wind power has helped avoid greenhouse gas 
emissions in the equivalence of 3,725,500 passenger cars.
  As well, the supply chain of the manufacturing opportunities in Texas 
stands out. It is home to wind turbine manufacturers such as DeWind and 
Alstom, five major tower manufacturers, blade manufacturer Molded Fiber 
Glass, and many component suppliers.
  This is an example of why we have to act, why we have to extend the 
PTC. Without certainty, wind energy companies are not able to grow, and 
they, frankly, will shed jobs and whole projects.

[[Page S4255]]

  In the Senate, we have a bipartisan coalition. Senators Grassley, 
Boozman, Scott Brown, Hoeven, Moran, and Thune have engaged with many 
of us on this side to extend the wind PTC.
  Let me end by quoting Karl Rove, who is known as a proud Texan and 
former senior adviser to President George W. Bush. He explains the wind 
PTC as follows:

       It is a market mechanism, you don't get paid unless you 
     produce the power, and we're not picking winners and losers, 
     we're simply saying for some period of time we will provide 
     this incentive.

  Let's extend the PTC now. The solution is simple. We have to act. It 
will help American jobs. It will help the American economy. It will 
help our energy security efforts.
  So, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts again, and 
I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would ask I be notified when I have 
consumed about 25 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator will be notified.


                         Global Climate Change

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, 20 years ago this month, a Republican 
President of the United States helped bring together all of the world's 
largest economies in Rio, in Brazil, to confront the issue of global 
climate change. The President was unequivocal about the mission. George 
Herbert Walker Bush said simply:

       The United States fully intends to be the world's 
     preeminent leader in protecting the global environment. We 
     have been that for many years. We will remain so. We believe 
     that environment and development . . . can and should go hand 
     in hand. A growing economy creates the resources necessary 
     for environmental protection, and environmental protection 
     makes growth sustainable over the long term.

  When he was asked about his own target for subsequent meetings of the 
global stakeholders, President Bush could not have been more clear. He 
said the United States ``will be there with specific plans, prepared to 
share, but more important, that others who have signed these documents 
ought to have specific plans. So I think this is a leadership role. We 
are challenging them to come forward. We will be there. I think the 
Third World and others are entitled to know that the commitments made 
are going to be commitments kept.''
  That was the President of the United States speaking on behalf of our 
Nation and indeed the aspirations of the world 20 years ago. How 
dramatic and sad it is that 20 years later, shockingly we find 
ourselves in a strange and dangerous place on this issue, a place this 
former President probably would not even recognize.
  Thomas Paine actually described today's situation very well. As 
America fought for its independence, he said: ``It is an affront to 
treat falsehood with complaisance.'' Yet when it comes to the challenge 
of climate change, the falsehood of today's naysayers is only matched 
by the complacency indifference of our political system.
  It is well past time that we actually heed Thomas Paine's admonition 
and reaffirm the commitment first made by President George Herbert 
Walker Bush. As a matter of conscience and common sense, we should 
fight today's insidious conspiracy of silence on climate change, a 
silence that empowers misinformation and mythology to grow where 
science and truth should prevail.
  It is a conspiracy that has not just installed but demonized any 
constructive effort to put America in a position to lead the world on 
this issue, as President Bush promised we would, and as Americans have 
a right to expect we will.
  The danger we face could not be more real. In the United States, a 
calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the 
consensus momentum for action on climate change and replaced it with 
timidity by proponents in the face of millions of dollars of phony, 
contrived talking points, illogical and wholly unscientific 
propositions, and a general scorn for the truth wrapped in false 
threats about job loss and tax increases.
  Yet today the naysayers escape all accountability to the truth. The 
media hardly murmurs when a candidate for President of the United 
States, in 2012, can walk away from previously held positions and 
blithely announce that the evidence is not yet there about the impact 
of greenhouse gasses on climate.
  The truth is scientists have known since the 1800s that carbon 
dioxide and other greenhouse gasses trap heat in our atmosphere. With 
the right amount of those gasses, the Earth is a hospitable place for 
us to live. It is, indeed, the greenhouse effect that makes life 
possible on Earth. But if too much is added, which is what we are doing 
now at a record pace, temperatures inevitably rise to record-breaking 
levels. It is not rocket science.
  Every major national science academy in the world has reported that 
global warming is real. It is nothing less than shocking when people in 
a position of authority can just stand up and say, without 
documentation, without accepted scientific research, without peer-
reviewed analysis, just stand up and say: Oh, there is not enough 
evidence, and they say it because it suits their political purposes to 
serve some interest that does not want to change the status quo.
  Facts that beg for an unprecedented public response are met with 
unsubstantiated, even totally contradicted denial. Those who deny the 
facts have never, ever met their de minimus responsibility to provide 
some scientific answer to what, if not human behavior, is causing the 
increase in greenhouse gas particulates and how, if not by curbing 
greenhouse gases, we will address this crisis.
  In fact, when one measures the effect of taking action versus not 
taking action, the naysayers' case is even more confounding. Just think 
about it. If the proponents of action were somehow incorrect, contrary 
to all that science declares, but, nevertheless, if they were incorrect 
and we proceeded to reduce carbon and other gases released in the 
atmosphere, what is the worst that would happen?
  Well, under that scenario the worst would be more jobs as we move to 
the new energy economy, the opening of a whole new $6 trillion energy 
market with a more sustainable policy, a healthier population because 
of cleaner air and reduced pollution, reduced expenditures on health 
care because of environmentally induced disease, an improved outlook 
for the oceans and the ecosystems that are affected by pollution 
falling to the Earth and into the sea, and surely greater security for 
the United States because of less dependence on foreign sources of 
energy and a stronger economy. That is the worst that would occur if 
the proponents were wrong.
  But what if the naysayers are, in fact, wrong, as all the science 
says they are? What if because of their ignorance we fail to take the 
action we should? What is the worst then? The worst then is sheer, 
utter disaster for the planet and for all who inhabit it. So whose 
``worst'' would most thinking people rather endure?
  The level of dissembling--of outright falsifying of information, of 
greedy appeal to fear tactics that has stalled meaningful action now 
for 20 years--is hard to wrap one's mind around. It is so far removed 
from legitimate analysis that it confounds for its devilishly simple 
appeal to the lowest common denominator of disinformation. In the face 
of a massive and growing body of scientific evidence that says 
catastrophic climate change is knocking at our door, the naysayers just 
happily tell us: Climate change does not exist.
  In the face of melting glaciers and ice caps in the Arctic, 
Greenland, and Antarctica, they say we need to ``warm up to the 
truth.'' And in the face of animals disappearing at alarming rates, 
species being destroyed, they would have us adopt an ostrich policy and 
just bury our heads in the sand and pretend it can go away.
  Just last week, a group of State senators in North Carolina passed a 
bill that bans planning for rising sea levels when creating rules for 
housing developments and infrastructure in coastal communities. 
Jeffress Williams is the lead author of the U.S. National Climate 
Assessment Report. Ask him what he thinks about his legislation, and he 
will tell you it is ``not based on sound science.'' That is an 
understatement. But somehow the State senators who voted for this bill 
know better.
  Al Gore spoke of the ``assault on reason.'' Well, exhibit A is 
staring us in the face: coalitions of politicians and special interests 
that peddle science fiction over scientific fact, a paid-for, 
multimillion-dollar effort that twists

[[Page S4256]]

and turns the evidence until it is gnarled beyond recognition, and 
tidal waves of cash that back a status quo of recklessness and inaction 
over responsibility and change.
  In short, we are living through a story of disgraceful denial, 
backpedaling, and delay that has brought us perilously close to a 
climate change catastrophe.
  Nothing underscores this Orwellian twist of logic more than the facts 
surrounding the now well negatively branded cap and trade program. Cap 
and trade was a Republican-inspired idea during the debate over ozone 
and the Montreal Protocol in the 1980s. It was actually inspired 
by conservatives looking for the least command and control, the least 
government-regulated way to meet pollution standards. It was 
implemented and it worked, and it is still working. But, lo and behold, 
when the strategists for the political right decided to make it a 
target because Democrats were leading the charge to address climate 
change, suddenly this free market mechanism was transformed into ``cap 
and tax'' and ``job killing tax.'' And guess who. Coal. Coal, the 
leading carbon polluter was leading the funding for those efforts. What 
is worse, we have all stood by and let it happen. We have treated 
falsehood with complacence and allowed a conspiracy of silence on 
climate change to infiltrate our politics. Believe me, we have had our 
chances to act in these last years. But every time we get close to 
achieving something big for our country, small-minded appeals to the 
politics of the moment block the way.

  The conspiracy of silence that now characterizes Washington's 
handling of the climate issue is, in fact, dangerous. Climate change is 
one of two or three of the most serious threats that our country now 
faces, if not, in some people's minds, the most serious. The silence 
that has enveloped the once robust debate is staggering for its 
irresponsibility. The cost of inaction gets more and more expensive the 
longer we wait, and the longer we wait, the less likely we are to avoid 
the worst and to leave future generations with a sustainable planet.
  In many cases what we are talking about is vast sums of money 
funneled into gas-guzzling industries and coal-fired powerplants. We 
are talking about pollution--pollution on a wide scale, the kind of 
dirty, thick suffocating smog that poisons our rivers, advances chronic 
disease like asthma, lung cancer, and creates billions in hospital 
costs and lost economic opportunity. It is the same pollution that 
Rachel Carson warned us about in ``Silent Spring'' when she said:

       Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in 
     insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not 
     quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough 
     relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world 
     which is just not quite fatal?

  Well, today we do live in a world where there is an absurdity in the 
air, and it has complacence written all over it. Fish are dying in 
water polluted with pesticides. Roadless forests are being threatened 
by indiscriminate drilling. Industrial chemicals are sweeping into all 
of us. Young children are born with a burden of chemicals unprecedented 
in their amount. The burning of fossil fuels has overloaded our 
ecosystems with nitrogen and ravaged our plant life.
  Just go out and look at the forests and look at the change in the 
topography of our country. Bottom line: We have substituted fantasy for 
reason, sheer whimsy for proven epidemiology, and it is wreaking havoc 
on our environment. You do not have to take my word for it. I am 
confident a lot of our colleagues will not. But you can see it across 
the planet with your eyes. Ice caps are melting; seas are rising; 
deserts are expanding; storms are more frequent, more violent, more 
destructive; pollution, famine, natural disasters, killing millions of 
people every year.
  These are changes that many experts thought were still years down the 
line, but climate change is now radically altering our planet at a rate 
much faster than the scientists or even the pessimists expected.
  All you need to do is look out your window. We just had the warmest 
March on record for the contiguous United States. The naysayers will 
tell us that one hot year does not prove global warming. But just look 
at this chart which charts the acceleration of warming in the United 
States after 1970. This is not an anomaly. It is a giant step in the 
wrong direction, and 2010 was the hottest year on record. The last 
decade was the hottest decade since we have started recording the 
weather. April, May, and June of this year are already continuing the 
trend.
  For the first time in memory, the Augusta National azaleas bloomed 
and wilted before the first golfers teed off at this year's Masters. At 
the Boston Marathon, temperatures hit 89 degrees in April, more than 30 
degrees higher than the average. People talk about official jackets and 
gloves and coffee? Who are you kidding? They are talking about hats and 
sunscreen and Gatorade and medical tents that were filled with heat-
exhausted runners starting at mile 10 of the 26-mile course from 
Hopkinton into Boston.
  I have been working to connect the dots on this issue for a long 
time. In 1988, 24 years ago, on an already hot June day, Al Gore and I 
took part in the first hearings on climate change in the Senate with 
Jim Hansen, who testified then that the threat was real, that climate 
change was already happening in our country--24 years ago.
  Four years later, we joined a delegation of Senators to attend the 
first Earth Summit in Rio, where we worked with 171 other nations to 
put into place a voluntary framework on climate change and greenhouse 
gas reductions. Back in 1992, we all came together for a simple reason: 
We accepted the science.
  President George H.W. Bush personally traveled to the climate change 
talks in Rio to help plant the seeds of this new beginning. We knew the 
road ahead would be long, but we also knew this was a watershed moment; 
that it created the grassroots momentum that made people sit up and 
start to listen and understand the damage we were doing to the 
environment. Sit up and listen they did. The principles that came out 
of Rio transformed into a mandatory requirement under the Kyoto 
Protocol. Each of the developed nations accepted its own target goal. 
The European Union reduction would be 8 percent and Japan's would be 6 
percent and so on. We were thinking big back then, and our goal was to 
reach a total decrease in global emissions of 5.2 percent below the 
1990 levels and reach it by 2010.
  Well, 2010 has come and gone and so, too, have the targets. We all 
know the story: Global political leadership was distracted or absent. 
International negotiations in Buenos Aires and The Hague turned tense. 
The less-developed nations saw the targets and timetables for 
greenhouse gas reductions as a Western market conspiracy. Then there 
were trumped up, industry-funded so-called studies that challenged the 
scientific assertions for climate change scenarios.
  Looking back, it is not hard to understand why the final agreement 
got sidetracked in the Senate. After all, the developing countries were 
excluded from the treaty's reduction targets, even though it had 
already become clear by then that China and India were significant 
enough as industrial powers that to exempt them entirely would be a 
mistake. Nations left out were deemed capable of undoing all the 
reductions that would have been achieved by the developed nations.
  It is no wonder people were reluctant, no wonder American companies 
were understandably reluctant to put themselves at a competitive 
disadvantage. Many in Congress had not yet digested the science of 
climate change, even though we knew climate scientists were already 
studying the phenomenon of greenhouse gases.
  The question is not whether the Kyoto treaty had flaws; the question 
is whether we got the fundamentals right. I believe the evidence is 
overwhelming, beyond any reasonable doubt, that we did. As I remind my 
colleagues, the view from 2012 is a whole lot different from 1992. 
Countries such as China, South Africa, Brazil, and South Korea have now 
made far-reaching choices to reshape their economies and move forward 
in a new and very different global area. Take China. China is already 
outspending the United States three to one on public clean energy 
projects. In the last year alone, China accounted for almost one-

[[Page S4257]]

fifth of the renewable energy investments, with the United States and 
Germany trailing behind. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, said it 
best:

       For centuries, America has led the world in innovation. 
     Today, that leadership is at risk.

  Our indifference to climate change is putting America's economy and 
leadership, with respect to economics and the future of energy policy, 
at risk. So the United States is now the laggard. We are missing out on 
achieving sustained economic growth by securing enduring competitive 
advantage through innovation. The facts speak for themselves. Today's 
energy economy is a $6 trillion market, with 4 billion users worldwide, 
growing to 9 billion in the next 40 years. By comparison, the market 
that made people so wealthy in 1990s in America and created 23 million 
new jobs and lifted everybody was a $1 trillion market with only 1 
billion users. This is $6 trillion with 4 billion users today.
  The fact is it is projected to grow to a $2.3 trillion market in the 
year 2020. America needs to get into this. We need to get our skin in 
the game or we are going to miss the market of the future--if not miss 
the future itself. We would be delusional to believe China, given the 
evidence, or any of our other competitors are going to sit on the 
sidelines and let this market opportunity fall through the cracks. They 
are not doing it now and they will not do it in the future. Only the 
United States is sitting there with an indifference toward these 
alternatives and the renewable possibilities.
  I realize some will argue we cannot afford to address climate change 
in these tough economic times. Frankly, nothing could be further from 
the truth. Nothing could be more self-defeating. We will recover from 
this slowdown. When we do, we need to emerge as the world leader in the 
new energy economy. That will be a crucial part of restoring America as 
a nation in a way that honors the hard work and innovation and measures 
prosperity in those terms.
  Anyone who worries whether this is the right moment to tackle climate 
change should understand we can't afford not to do this now at the risk 
of our economic future. It is now that the most critical trends and 
facts actually all point in the wrong direction. The CO2 
emissions that caused climate change grew at a rate four times faster 
in the first decade of this new century than in the 1990s.
  Several years ago, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change issued a series of projections for global initiatives. Based on 
the likely projections of energy and land-use patterns, today our 
emissions have actually moved beyond--this chart shows the emissions 
are going up from the 1960s all the way through to 2010. Today, we have 
moved beyond the worst-case scenarios that were predicted by all the 
modeling that was done by the IPCC. Meanwhile, our oceans and forests, 
which act as the natural repositories of CO2, are losing 
their ability to absorb more carbon dioxide. This means the effects of 
climate change are being felt even more powerfully than expected, 
faster than was expected.
  The plain fact is there isn't a nation on the planet that has escaped 
the steady onslaught of climate change. When the desert is creeping 
into east Africa and ever more scarce resources push farmers and 
herders into deadly conflict, that is a matter of shared security for 
all of us. When the people of the Maldives are forced to abandon a 
place they have called home for hundreds of years, it is a stain on our 
collective conscience and a moral challenge to each of us. When our own 
grandchildren risk growing up in a world we can't recognize and don't 
want to, in the long shadow of a global failure to cooperate, then, 
clearly, urgently, profoundly, we need to do better.
  Frankly, those who look for any excuse to continue challenging the 
science have a fundamental responsibility they have never fulfilled: 
Prove us wrong or stand down. Show with some science how this theory, 
in fact, is not being borne out. Prove that the pollution we put into 
the atmosphere is not having the harmful effects we know it is and that 
the science says it is. Tell us where the gases go and what they do if 
they don't do what the scientists are telling us they do. Pony up one 
single cogent, legitimate, scholarly analysis. Prove that the ocean 
isn't actually rising. Prove that the icecaps aren't melting or that 
deserts aren't expanding. Prove, above all, that human beings don't 
have anything to do with it.
  I will tell you here right now, they cannot do it. They have not done 
it and they can't do it. There are over 6,000 peer-reviewed articles, 
all of which document clearly, irrefutably the ways in which mankind is 
contributing to this problem. Sure, we know the naysayers have their 
bought studies that don't stand up to scientific review and a few 
scientists who trade in doubt and misdirection about things such as Sun 
spots and clouds. But there is not a single credible scientist who can 
argue and withstand the peer review that climate change isn't 
happening.
  In fact, even the naysayers are starting to come around, in their 
judgment. Just this year, a well-known climate skeptic, Dr. Richard 
Mueller, released a series of reports that were funded in part by the 
Koch brothers. Dr. Mueller thought his results were going to show 
something different than all the other climate studies, and what he 
found was not what the Koch brothers sent him looking for. Here is what 
Dr. Mueller, in his own words, said:

       You should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.

  Bottom line: His studies found exactly what all the other credible 
climate studies have been telling us for decades--that global warming 
is real.
  If we just step out and look around for a moment, we can see the 
effects everywhere: floods, droughts, pathogens, disease, species and 
habitat loss, sea level rise, storm surges that threaten our cities and 
coastlines. No continent is escaping unscathed: increasing ground 
instability in permafrost regions, increasing avalanches in mountainous 
zones, warmer and drier conditions in the Sahelian region of Africa 
leading to a shorter growing season, and coral bleaching events in the 
Great Barrier Reef. All these are attributed to this change in climate.
  I wish to take a moment to bear down on the science, the cold, hard, 
stubborn facts that ought to guide us in addressing this challenge. It 
is detailed, to some degree, but it is the very detail that detractors 
can never address or refute. It is important to see the detail in its 
cumulative force. Unlike the naysayers, I am going to give point by 
point to some of the falsehoods and lay out a summary of the critical 
evidence that ought to lead America and the world to action.
  Here is what the science is telling us: Atmospheric carbon dioxide 
levels have increased by nearly 40 percent in the industrial era, from 
280 parts per million to over 393 parts per million in the atmosphere. 
Before long, we are likely to see a global average of concentration at 
400 parts per million and more. Within the last few months, monitoring 
stations in the Arctic region, for the first time, reported average 
concentrations of CO2 at 400 parts per million. Because of 
the remote nature of those monitors, they generally reflect long-term 
trends as opposed to marginal fluctuations in direct emissions near 
population centers.
  As atmospheric scientist Pieter Tans, with the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration points out:

       The northern sites in our monitoring network tell us what 
     is coming soon to the globe as a whole. . . . We will likely 
     see global average CO2 concentrations reach 400 
     ppm about 2016 [4 years from now].

  Why is this important? This is important because scientists have told 
us that anything above 450 parts per million--a warming of 2 degrees 
Celsius--could lead to severe, widespread, and irreversible harm to 
human life on this planet. When concentrations of other greenhouse 
gases, such as methane and black carbon, are factored into the 
equation, the analysis suggests that stabilizing concentrations around 
400 parts per million of equivalent carbon dioxide would give us about 
an 80-percent chance of avoiding a 2-degree Fahrenheit increase above 
the present average global temperatures.
  Considering what a 2-degree Fahrenheit increase would mean, 
scientists obviously are urging us not to take the risk. James Hansen, 
Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has done the 
math. His analysis shows that we need to be shooting

[[Page S4258]]

for a stabilization level of 350 parts per million in order to increase 
our chances of avoiding the 2-degree Fahrenheit increase. We have 
already exceeded that. So we are going to have to find a way to 
actually go backward in order to be able to prevent what scientists are 
telling us could create huge damage.
  Even if we slam on the brakes now, science tells us we could be 
headed for a global temperature increase of 2 to 4 degrees by the 
century's end and greater warming after that. Let me share what some of 
the ``postcards from the edge,'' if you will, look like when you 
examine what is happening to our air, our health, and our environment. 
Warming temperatures, first of all. The first 10 years of this century 
were the warmest decade on record. And 2010 was tied with 2005 as the 
hottest year ever recorded. NOAA has reported that 2011 was the second 
warmest summer on record, just .1 degrees Fahrenheit below the 1936 
record, and the U.S. Climate Extreme Index--a measure of the area of 
the country experiencing extreme conditions--was nearly four times the 
average.

  Last year many Northeastern States experienced their wettest summers, 
especially those States caught in Hurricane Irene's destructive path. 
Meanwhile, persistent heat and below-average precipitation across the 
Southern United States created recordbreaking droughts in Louisiana, 
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, and these were of greater intensity 
than the 1930s famous Dust Bowl. Texas endured the country's hottest 
summer ever recorded for any State, at an average temperature of 86.8 
degrees.
  What is shocking is that the evidence of the rate of this 
transformation is happening faster and to a greater degree than the 
scientists predicted. So one would think reasonable people would say: 
Wait a minute, they predicted this, but we are getting this way up 
here, and everyone would sort of stop and take stock of what is 
happening.
  According to the new climate report from NOAA, the lower 48 States 
elbowed their way into the record books this spring with ``the warmest 
March, third warmest April, second warmest May . . . the first time 
that all three months during the spring season ranked among the 10 
warmest since records began in 1895.'' In fact, the average temperature 
this spring was so far off the charts that the lower 48 States beat out 
the old 1910 record by a full 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
  Inland, worsening conditions are going to create persistent drought 
in the Southwest and significantly increase western wildlife burn area. 
That is critical. We have already seen the damage done to millions of 
acres of forest because of the pine bark beetles, which actually live 
longer because it doesn't get cold and therefore they do not die in the 
normal cycle. But in recent years, due to warmer winters, pine beetle 
populations have exploded, devastating these once majestic forests.
  It is also having an impact on our health. As average temperatures 
rise, we can expect to see more extreme heat waves during our summers, 
and, as we know from history, that impacts people with heart problems 
and asthma, the elderly, the very young, and the homeless. In the 
United States, Chicago is projected to have 25 percent more frequent 
heat wave days by the end of the century. In Los Angeles, we could see 
as much as a four- to eightfold increase.
  Climate change may also heighten the risk of infectious diseases, 
particularly diseases found in warm areas and spread by mosquitoes and 
other insects, such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever. In some 
places, climate change is already altering the pattern of disease. In 
the Kenyan Highlands, for example, it is now one of the major drivers 
of malaria epidemics.
  It is not just the health costs that are sounding the alarm. As many 
have seen with their own eyes, the Arctic is among one of the most 
startling places to witness the adverse effects of global climate 
change. Great sheets of ice have been breaking off of glaciers--sheets 
of ice the size of the State of Rhode Island. Marine mammals are now 
struggling to survive. Where there used to be only frozen landscapes, 
there is now open water.
  Every new report that is public suggests the situation is getting 
grimmer in the Arctic. Last year the multi-country Arctic Monitoring 
and Assessment Program released a new assessment of the impact of 
climate change in the Arctic. It found that the period from 2005 to 
2010 was the warmest ever recorded. According to AMAP researchers, the 
changes in icemelt over the past 10 years ``are dramatic and represent 
an obvious departure from the long-term patterns.''
  Their conclusion is startling. They expect the Arctic Ocean to be 
nearly ice-free within this century, likely in the next 30 to 40 years.
  Think about that for a second. Within our children's lifetimes, one 
of Earth's polar icecaps will be completely gone. Average annual 
temperatures in the Arctic have increased at approximately twice the 
rate of average global temperatures. Within a generation, maybe two, 
kids will grow up learning geography on maps and globes that show 
simply an empty blue expanse on top of the world, no longer the white 
one to which we have grown accustomed.
  In terms of impact, all of us who have been following this issue 
understand that the melting of the Arctic is at least partly mitigated 
by the fact that the ice is already floating, so the displacement in 
the ocean as it melts is not that significant. But what if there is an 
ice melt from the glaciers, as we are now seeing not only in the Arctic 
but we are seeing in Greenland and in Antarctica and across North 
America, South America, and Africa--when you realize that all over the 
globe, glaciers and icecaps are losing volume--that means other day-to-
day, practical problems for our communities.
  This is a photograph of the glaciers that exist out in the western 
part of our country, or used to. That was 1909, and this is 2004--
almost gone. Here is another vision of National Glacier Park, where it 
has almost disappeared. It is obvious for all to see the degree to 
which the glaciers are disappearing.
  Many people may not also realize that a lot of communities in the 
United States rely on annual glacial melt for municipal water supplies 
and for hydropower. So as this disappears, the energy sourcing and 
water sourcing for the United States disappears with it. Just ask 
Washington State, where glacial melt water provides 1.8 trillion liters 
of water every summer, or talk to the folks in Alaska, where glacier 
melt plays a key role in the circulation of the Gulf of Alaska, which 
is important to maintaining the valuable fisheries--the halibut and 
salmon--that reside in this body of water. All these impacts are 
interconnected.
  Again, the skeptics say: Hey, there are a couple of glaciers that are 
actually expanding. Yes, there are some glaciers that are responding to 
unusual and unique local conditions and increasing in snow and ice 
accumulation, but the overwhelming evidence, when we look at the vast 
majority, shows that most of America's glaciers are shrinking. Over the 
last four decades of the 20th century, North American glaciers have 
lost 108 cubic miles of ice. That is enough ice, translated into water, 
to inundate California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado with 1 foot 
of water if it happened all at the same time.
  In 1850 there were approximately 150 glaciers in what is now Glacier 
National Park. Today, due to warmer temperatures, there are only 25 
named glaciers remaining, and some models predict that the park's 
glaciers could disappear in just a few decades. But trust your own 
eyes, if you prefer. The photographs here depict glacial melt over 
various time periods in Glacier National Park, Montana, and Holgate 
Glacier and Icy Bay, Alaska. As you'll see, the effects are just 
staggering.
  We all remember Wordsworth's lines about ``the Lake that was shining 
clear among the hoary mountains.'' Well, these mountains are no longer 
hoary, and soon, lakes will reflect not snow-covered peaks, but naked 
ridges and sun-splashed steeps.
  To make matters worse, temperatures are likely to increase 
exponentially in the next coming years. Because the environment is a 
closed system, the more conditions change, the faster they change 
because each change has an impact on some other interconnected 
component of the environment.

[[Page S4259]]

  As the ice and permafrost melt, methane plumes from under the surface 
that have been trapped for hundreds of thousands of years are now 
emerging. During a survey last summer in the east Siberian Arctic seas, 
a team of scientists encountered a high density of methane plumes, some 
more than 1 kilometer across. They were emitting methane into the 
atmosphere at concentrations up to 100 times higher than normal. There 
are people who have stood by these methane plumes, lit a match, and 
they light on fire. The fact is, over a period of 100 years, methane 
has a warming potential roughly 25 times greater than CO2.
  So we may become the victims not just of the climate change itself 
but of a vicious kind of feedback and feedback cycles in the climate 
system. Cycles associated with less cloud cover, changes in aerosols, 
peatlands, soils, and Arctic ice cover all can lead to accelerated 
climate change. One study estimated that thawing permafrost may turn 
the Arctic from a carbon sink--that is to say a place that gathers and 
stores carbon--into a carbon source by the mid-2020s, releasing 100 
billion tons of carbon by the end of the century. What does that mean? 
One hundred billion tons of carbon is about equal to the amount of 
CO2 that would be released worldwide from 10 years of 
burning fossil fuels. So that is the future we are looking at if we 
don't respond.
  Here is another postcard from the edge, Mr. President. North Carolina 
doesn't think they need to worry about the sea level rise, but take a 
look at the evidence. Our best studies predict a higher sea level rise 
than previously projected. With the melting of the west Antarctic ice 
sheet alone, global sea levels could rise by as much as 3.26 meters in 
the coming years, and the Pacific and Atlantic coasts could be in for a 
25-percent increase above the average level by the century's end. In 
all, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet has the potential to raise 
global sea levels by about 7 meters, and the ice sheets of Antarctica 
have the potential to contribute to 60 meters of sea level rise.
  Now, when people say, ``Well, global--it may not melt,'' there are 
Senators who have traveled to Greenland, who have stood on the ice 
sheet and looked down into it, into a hole 100-feet deep, and seen a 
massive, torrential river running underneath the ice out to the sea as 
the ice is melting.
  Some scientists are even worried about the effects of that river 
under the ice. Could it act as a slide, where actually whole chunks of 
ice break off and slide down on this watery base on which the ice is 
sitting?
  Think about what this all means. As the New York Times reported in 
March, some 3.7 million Americans living within a few feet of high tide 
are at risk from the rising sea. So all of you state senators out 
there, listen up: the effects of climate change will spare no one--from 
Tampa to Asheville, from Sausalito to Staten Island, all coastal 
communities are vulnerable.
  NOAA's Benjamin Strauss, coauthor of a smart new study on topographic 
vulnerability, said the following:

       Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force 
     while we do almost nothing. . . . We have a closing window of 
     time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.

  I think that is exactly right, and that is why city officials in 
Boston are currently actively planning for how to manage 100-year 
floods that are now arriving every 20 years. We don't have 100-year 
floods anymore, we have them every so often--every 5 years or 20 years. 
In the face of a global sea level rise of 3 to 6 feet by the end of the 
century, there will be massive amounts of flooding. So we ought to pass 
legislation at the State level to plan, not to ban the planning. It is 
easy politics to ban it, but it is not smart politics, and it certainly 
isn't courageous leadership. Just ask those living in Tuvalu and the 
low-lying nation of Kiribati. Think they could use some advance 
planning to deal with the ``king'' tides that may soon drown out life 
on their shores? You bet. But instead of learning from them, we've 
succumbed to the siren call of short-term interests.
  One resident of Tuvalu poignantly asked: ``What will happen to us in 
ten years' time?'' I wish I could delay her fears. I wish I could tell 
her that the climate change would only be limited to occasional sea 
level rise, and that--naturally, surely--the king tides would recede.
  But the truth is much more harrowing. We also have raging floods and 
water scarcity--a dichotomy--in various parts of the world. From 
Veracruz to Songkhla Province in Thailand, floods are devastating crops 
and stealing away opportunities for millions. In my travels, I have 
seen children orphaned by raging flood waters, families deprived of 
basic necessities, such as food, clean drinking water, and medicine. I 
have also seen the ways in which climate change has interacted with 
conflicts, food insecurity, and water scarcity. People are fighting and 
killing each other over water scarcity in various parts of the world. 
In Darfur and in South Sudan, there are tensions over arable lands. 
Think of drought in Syria and its impact on farmers in southern Dara'a. 
Think of water scarcity in Yemen--and the list goes on. These are the 
invisible tsunamis Benjamin Strauss spoke of, and they develop slowly 
and quietly and determinately, and they devastate communities just as 
surely as they should kindle our sense of urgency about the cost of 
inaction.
  In addition, although I am not going to go into the details now, 
there is major decimation of animal life and plant life and species 
life as a consequence of this interconnectedness. In addition, forests 
are under siege from drought and experiencing more fires and more die-
off as a consequence of insect infestation because it doesn't get cold 
enough anymore to maintain the previous cycles of those insects dying 
off.
  So the fact is that unmitigated climate change is creating enormous 
economic dislocations already, and it is only going to get worse if we 
don't act. Professor Frank Akerman, a prominent economist at Tufts 
University, found that inaction in the face of climate change could 
cost the American economy more than 3.6 percent of GDP--``or $3.8 
trillion--annually by the end of the century. And he is not alone. 
Harvard economist Joseph Aldy estimates that if temperatures push past 
the 2 degrees mark, up to 2 to 4 percent of world GDP would be lost.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has used 45 minutes.
  Mr. KERRY. I thank the Chair.
  So developing countries are going to face similar costs. According to 
a major international initiative on ``The Economics of Ecosystems and 
Biodiversity'', developing countries will spend an estimated $70 to 
$100 billion a year from 2010 to 2050 just to adapt to a two degrees 
Celsius change in global temperatures, with the majority spent on 
protecting infrastructure and coastal zones, managing the water supply, 
and protecting against the effects of floods.
  The ``grow now, clean later'' approach is no longer viable--if it 
ever was. Before you know it, one quarter of the world's land surface 
will bear the marks of soil erosion, salinization, nutrient depletion 
and desertification. Imagine what this will do to agricultural 
productivity and water supplies.
  Another way of looking at this is to consider not the cost, but the 
economic benefits of keeping our ecosystems intact.
  Back in 2005 the World Bank estimated the total value of the world's 
natural assets to be $44 trillion. The countries that manage their 
forests, agricultural lands, energy, minerals, and other natural assets 
are going to be the economic leaders in the 21st century, and they will 
be able to reap the benefits of the ecosystem services like coral 
reefs, which provide food, water purification, tourism and genetic 
diversity--services valued at $172 billion annually. And they'll be 
able to invest more in the ``intangible'' drivers of growth like human 
skills, education, and innovation.
  Mr. President, the message from all of this could not be more clear. 
Over 40 years ago, 20 million Americans--fully one-tenth of our 
country's population at the time--came together on one single day to 
demand environmental accountability.
  It was called Earth Day. And they didn't stop there. They elected a 
Congress that passed the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking 
Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, 
the Endangered Species Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. They 
created EPA. America didn't have an EPA

[[Page S4260]]

until the 1970s when people said: We don't want to live next to wells 
that give us cancer. We don't want to live next to rivers that actually 
light on fire. So we made a huge transformation.
  We need Congress now to do what the science tells us we have to do, 
to do what our economists tell us we have to do, to do what common 
sense demands that we do: It's time for Congress to stand up and do its 
part on climate change.
  I don't know how many have read David Orr's terrific book, ``Down to 
the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse,'' but it is important for 
everyone to understand his argument. Nowhere is the challenge of our 
moment more clearly expressed. He says:

       The real fault line in American politics is not between 
     liberals and conservatives . . . it is, rather, in how we 
     orient ourselves to the generations to come who will bear the 
     consequences, for better and for worse, of our actions.

  As Orr reminds us, we are at a tipping point--and it is going to take 
leadership to respond to it. Unfortunately, we have been witnessing 
just the opposite. In a talking point memo to his fellow Republicans 
last summer, House majority leader Eric Cantor of Virginia took aim at 
environmental safeguards. Job killers, he called them, listing the 
``top 10 job-destroying regulations,'' seven of which dealt with 
reducing air pollution from industrial incinerators, boilers and aging 
coal-fired power plants.
  Job killers? The facts just don't support that.
  The Labor Department, however, keeps close tabs on extended mass 
layoffs, and in 2010 the Department found that of the 1,256,606 mass 
layoffs, employers attributed just 2,971 to government regulation. That 
is only about two-tenths of 1 percent of all layoffs.
  In fact, decreasing carbon pollution actually presents a huge 
economic opportunity in terms of new jobs and innovation.
  For every $1 we spend, we get $30 in benefits. The U.S. environmental 
technology industry in 2008 generated approximately $300 billion in 
revenues and supported almost 1.7 billion in jobs. The air pollution 
sector alone produced $18 billion in revenue.
  If we're going to remake the world before 2050, and this is one area 
where I agree with my Republican friends, we're going to have to 
harness the power of the good old American market economy. And one way 
to do that is to put a price tag on carbon and other global warming 
pollutants.
  With a price tag, we more accurately reflect the consequences of 
these pollutants, not just for the environment but also for the quality 
of our lives and the health of our families. If we understand the 
consequences of our choices, especially in economic terms, we'll make 
better choices.
  One way to do this is to levy a pollution fee that reflects the true 
environmental cost of coal and oil. But there's no chance the current 
Congress will enact any tax, especially one on smokestack industries.
  Over the course of 2011, the Republican-controlled House held nearly 
200 votes to weaken our environmental safeguards, including the bedrock 
legislation spawned by the very first Earth Day--the Clean Air Act, the 
Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, even the agency created to 
enforce those laws, the Environmental Protection Agency.
  If we don't use the market, the other option is, inevitably, direct 
regulation of carbon emissions by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The 
conservative-dominated Supreme Court has already given the green light 
to the EPA to do this. But this invites even more bitterness and 
political partisanship.
  Besides, pricing pollution has already shown itself to be effective. 
During the 1980s, instead of imposting regulations, we used a cap-and-
trade system to reduce the sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants 
that caused plant- and soil-destroying acid rain. The system included 
cash incentives to over comply: polluters received allowances for every 
ton of sulfur oxide under the limits, and they could trade, sell or 
bank the allowances. The system worked so well that regulated plants 
reduced emissions 40 percent more than required.
  There is every reason to believe some variation of that system would 
work just as well to curb carbon emissions. But anything related to or 
resembling ``Cap And Trade'' isn't the best rallying cry these days 
thanks to the concerted, cynical re-branding of the concept. But 
whatever rallying cry is used, the point is the time for action is now. 
We need a ``Million Man-Million Woman-Million Child'' March on 
Washington and the voting booths of America. We need people marching up 
the steps of the Capitol, pounding on the doors of Congress, demanding 
a solution to our climate crisis.
  We also know we need deadlines to instill a sense of urgency. There 
is a deadline coming up this week in Rio where they are now having Rio 
Plus 20, the 20-year anniversary of that meeting I referred to at the 
beginning. Much has changed since the first Earth Day summit back in 
1992--and much of it for the worse. True, we're seeing innovation and 
entrepreneurship flourish in countries that were once considered among 
the poorest. We should celebrate that. But I'll tell you: Twenty years 
after Rio and 15 years after Kyoto, we are still further behind than 
ever. The science is screaming at us, and the planet is sending us an 
SOS.
  We obviously failed to be held accountable or to implement the 
commitments we put in place 20 years ago. Earlier this month, the 
United Nations Environmental Program issued the official summit report, 
which noted ``significant progress'' in only 4 of 90 environmental 
goals over the past five years. We can--and we must--do better.
  I spoke earlier of the need to take advantage of the green energy 
economy. Our best economists say to ward off catastrophic climate 
change, the green revolution has to happen three times faster than the 
industrial revolution did. I believe that is why America and the rest 
of the world are facing this moment of truth.
  Will we step up and put in place the policies that galvanize our 
green entrepreneurs, that drive development of new clean technologies, 
reenergize the economy, and tackle climate change all at the same time? 
We are the country that invented solar and wind technology, but the 
Germans, the Japanese, and the Chinese are the ones who are developing 
it. It is a tragedy. Today, of the top thirty companies in the world in 
solar, wind and advanced batteries, only six are based in the United 
States. If we do this right, I truly believe that the next four or five 
Googles will emerge in the energy sector. The question is not whether 
the twenty-first century economy will be a green economy--it has to 
become one, and it will. The question is whether it happens in time to 
avert catastrophe, and whether America will continue to lead.
  Accelerating the transition to a new energy paradigm is the most 
important single step the world can take in order to reduce the threat 
of climate change. And Rio is as good a place as any to make that 
happen. At the Summit, nations are expected to announce commitments to 
the Sustainable Energy for All initiative. Tackling the challenges of 
energy access, energy efficiency and renewable energy in an integrated 
way is absolutely essential. That's why a wide variety of 
stakeholders--from governments to businesses to civil society leaders--
have indicated that they will be coming to Rio with national action 
plans in hand that can be monitored over time as part of a new mission 
of the United Nations and its partners.

  I am convinced countries that take advantage of the opportunities are 
going to be the leaders of the 21st century. I have already seen that 
success in Massachusetts. Massachusetts was recently ranked first in 
the Nation in energy efficiency and clean energy leadership, edging out 
California for the first time ever.
  I think my State is an example of the speed in which we can turn 
things around. Our unemployment level just went down to the 6-percent 
level, and it is because we do have that diversity and we are moving in 
that direction.
  Now, obviously, the government alone can't solve this. Government can 
help create a structure. Private sector is the key. But we need to put 
in place the policies that send a message to the marketplace that we 
are serious about doing this.
  The bottom line is we need to face up to this challenge once and for 
all--not just as individuals or as separate interests but as a nation, 
with a national

[[Page S4261]]

purpose. The Pew poll recently showed a 46-point gap between 
Republicans and Democrats on the need to protect the environment. And 
I'll give you one guess which party fell by 39 points in its support 
for protecting the environment since 1992. So I understand if there is 
a 46-point gap and we have had all this discounting and disinformation, 
this is going to be hard still.
  But David Orr is right on the mark: Our challenge is fundamentally 
political. It is not about budgets. It is not about regulations. It is 
about leaders in the country who are unwilling to deal with the truth 
about climate change and who have cowed the silent majority into 
submission with their contrived and concerted attacks without facts.
  I've spoken before about this country's crisis of governance and the 
dangers of being held hostage to one party's remarkably cynical and 
selfish drive for power that comes at the expense of all common sense. 
Today, we need a transformative moment in our politics. David Orr spoke 
to that in the book I already cited.
  He said:

       Our situation calls for the transformation of governance 
     and politics in ways that are somewhat comparable to that in 
     U.S. history between the years of 1776 and 1800. In that time 
     Americans forged the case for independence, fought a 
     revolutionary war, crafted a distinctive political 
     philosophy, established an enduring Constitution, created a 
     nation, organized the first modern democratic government, and 
     invented political parties to make the machinery of 
     governance and democracy work tolerably well.

  Colleagues, we have made transformative changes before, and there are 
other kinds of examples. We once burned wood for our fuel. Then we 
transitioned to relying on oil and coal, and now other things. We can 
make the leap to a mix of renewable energy sources--hydro, wind, solar, 
and others--but we need to set our sights on that next transformation.
  As the old saying goes from the Arab oil minister in the 1970s:

       The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, and 
     the oil age is not going to end because we run out of oil.

  Truer words could not be spoken.
  In the end, the question is not whether we are going to pay for 
climate change; we are already paying for it--in warmer temperatures, 
rising sea levels, melting glaciers, floods, droughts, wildfires, 
decimation of animal and plant life, loss of crops, insurance on homes, 
increased storms. We are paying for it. The real question is whether we 
are going to walk a path that now addresses it in a responsible way and 
helps us break humanity's addiction to the easy way--to oil--and turn 
away from the other alternatives that face us that clean up our 
environment and create jobs. The question is whether we are going to 
suffer the consequences later on a massive, unpredictable scale in the 
form of environmental devastation, war, human misery, famine, poverty, 
and reduced economic growth for decades to come.
  I close by saying that the fork in the road points in two directions. 
The task for us is to take the one less traveled. At the height of the 
American revolution Thomas Paine wrote about the ``summertime soldiers 
and the sunshine patriots'' who abandoned the cause. The science has 
shown us, and continues to show us, that we cannot afford to be 
summertime soldiers.
  So in this time of challenge and opportunity, I hope and pray 
colleagues will take stock of this science, will take stock of the 
choices in front of us, will understand the economic opportunities 
staring us in the face. I hope we will confront the conspiracy of 
silence about climate change head on and allow complacence to yield to 
common sense and narrow interests to bend to the common good. Future 
generations are counting on us.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arizona.


                       Recent Intelligence Leaks

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, over the last 2 weeks several Members of 
this body and I have raised serious concerns about a series of leaks 
that recently appeared in several publications concerning certain 
military and intelligence activities--activities the authors themselves 
cite as among the Nation's most highly classified and sensitive. These 
enormously troubling leaks have raised concerns amongst both Democrats 
and Republicans in Congress, including leaders of our Intelligence, 
Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Homeland Security Committees.
  According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence:

       These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing 
     intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our 
     intelligence capability to act in the future. Each disclosure 
     puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to 
     recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners, and 
     threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national 
     security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats 
     worldwide.

  For these reasons and more, 26 other Members and I filed a resolution 
that conveys the sense of the Senate that the Attorney General should 
appoint an outside special counsel to investigate these leaks.
  I have been around for quite some time. I think there is no doubt 
that these leaks are almost unprecedented in that they are ongoing 
covert operations that are directly involved with the greatest threats 
to our Nation's security. I certainly understand that robust public 
debate about the Nation's offensive use of cyber-related and unmanned-
strike capabilities is valuable and warranted, that debate and 
discussion is valuable and warranted. The use of these kinds of 
military capabilities is new, and how these secretive warfighting 
capabilities should be deployed by a modern democracy deserves careful 
and thoughtful discussion, and we will have discussions in the future 
about these new aspects of warfare and counterterrorism.

  But the detail with which these articles lay out particular 
counterterrorism activities--and as one commentator recently described, 
the ``triumphalist tone of the leaks--the Tarzan-like chest-beating of 
[the] various leakers,'' greatly exceeded what is necessary or 
appropriate for that discussion. Something else--something very 
different--is going on.
  Considering how closely in time these items were published and how 
favorable of an impression they left upon the President's approach to 
national security, it is not unreasonable to ask whether these leaks 
were part of a broader effort to paint President Obama, in the midst of 
an election year, as a strong leader on national security issues. That 
is the strong impression that is given.
  The most compelling evidence is the obvious participation of some of 
the administration's senior-most officials. Among the sources that New 
York Times journalist David Sanger cited in the passage of his recent 
book pertaining to U.S. cyber attacks on Iran are ``administration 
officials'' and ``senior officials,'' ``senior aides'' to the 
President, ``members of the President's national security team who were 
in the [White House Situation Room] during key discussions,'' an 
official ``who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a 
classified program,''; ``current . . . American officials . . . [who 
would not] allow their names to be used because the effort remains 
highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day,'' and several 
sources who would be ``fired'' for what they divulged--presumably 
because what they divulged was classified or otherwise very sensitive.
  Some of the sources in recent publications specifically refused to be 
identified because what they were talking about related to classified 
or ongoing programs.
  In his book, which describes the administration's use of drones in 
Yemen, Newsweek journalist Daniel Klaidman writes:

       [W]hen I quote President Obama or other key characters, I 
     do so only if that quote was relayed to me by a source who 
     personally heard it.

  That certainly narrows down the number of people who could be guilty 
of these leaks.
  On Sunday, a reviewer of both Mr. Sanger's and Mr. Klaidman's books 
for the Washington Post found--as I did--that ``[both authors] were 
clearly given extraordinary access to key players in the administration 
to write their books . . . [i]n some cases, they appear to have talked 
to the same sources: 
[s]everal of their stories track nearly word for word.''
  Perhaps most illuminating in all of the articles and books is how, 
taken together, they describe an overall perspective within the Obama 
White

[[Page S4262]]

House that has viewed U.S. counterterrorism and other sensitive 
activities in extraordinarily political terms and taken on a related 
approach about how classified information should be handled. Both 
approaches would have predisposed the administration to the most 
recent, egregious national security leaks.
  There are plenty of examples of how the administration apparently 
viewed these highly sensitive matters through a political prism. In his 
book, Mr. Klaidman observed that then-White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm 
Emanuel, ``pushed the CIA to publicize'' successes associated with a 
covert drone program because ``the muscular attacks could have a huge 
political upside for Obama, insulating him from charges that he was 
weak on terror.'' Mr. Klaidman noted, that ``[as to the killing of a 
particular drone target,] [CIA] public affairs officers anonymously 
trumpeted their triumph, leaking colorful tidbits to trusted reporters 
on the intelligence beat, [with] [n]ewspapers describ[ing] the hit in 
cinematic detail.''
  A recent article in The New York Times similarly noted:

       David Axelrod, the president's closest political adviser, 
     began showing up at the `Terror Tuesday' meetings [by the 
     way, during which drone targeting was discussed], his 
     unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone 
     understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the 
     president's other aspirations and achievements.

  And, in his recent book, Mr. Sanger notes:

       [O]ver the course of 2009, more and more people inside the 
     Obama White House were being `read into' the cyber program, 
     even those not directly involved. As the reports from the 
     latest iteration of the [cyber-]bug arrived, meetings were 
     held to assess what kind of damage had been done, and the 
     room got more and more crowded.

  Let's look at another anecdote in Mr. Sanger's book that provides 
another powerful example of what I am talking about. In this excerpt, 
Mr. Sanger depicts a curious meeting that occurred in the fall of 2009 
in Pittsburgh at the G 20 economic summit. He writes:

       As often happens when the president travels, there was a 
     dinner organized with a number of other reporters and several 
     of Obama's political aides, including David Axelrod and Rahm 
     Emanuel. The talk was mostly politics and the economic 
     downturn. But just as coffee was being served, a senior 
     official in the National Security Council tapped me on the 
     shoulder. After dinner, he said, I should take the elevator 
     to the floor of the hotel where the president had his suite. 
     `We'll talk about Iran,' he whispered.
       Obama was not back at the hotel when we gathered that 
     evening outside his suite. But most of the rest of the 
     national security staff was present and armed with the 
     intelligence that had been collected over many years about 
     Iran's secret site. As they laid it out on a coffee table in 
     the hotel suite, it was clear that this new site was 
     relatively small: it had enough room, they estimated, for 
     three thousand centrifuges . . .
       Via satellite photos, the United States had mapped the 
     construction of the building--useful if it ever had to hit 
     it. It was clear from the details that the United States had 
     interviewed scientists who had been inside the underground 
     facility . . . We spent an hour reviewing the evidence. I 
     probed them to reveal how the facility was discovered and 
     received evasive answers . . . Then I went down to my hotel 
     room and began writing the story.

  It absolutely eludes me under what circumstances it would be 
appropriate for a senior national security official to provide a 
reporter the opportunity to review for an hour what appears to have 
been raw intelligence supporting the government's recent discovery of 
secret nuclear sites in Iran. Yet, this vignette is indicative of what 
appears throughout the book as a pervasive administration perspective 
that viewed even the Nation's most secretive military and intelligence 
activities in starkly political terms and was overly lax on how related 
intelligence should be handled. These stories provide a revealing 
context for the most recent leaks--leaks that everyone has conceded 
have compromised our national security.
  I would like to believe that the Justice Department will get to the 
bottom of all this. But after watching senior White House advisor David 
Plouffe's appearance on Fox News on Sunday, I highly doubt that it 
will. I was particularly troubled by Mr. Plouffe's inability or refusal 
to answer whether the White House will cooperate fully with the 
investigation and whether President Obama would agree to be questioned 
by investigators as President Bush was during the Valerie Plame case. I 
was also discomforted by Mr. Plouffe's statement that the White House 
talked to Mr. Sanger for his book but did not leak classified 
information, which of course prejudges the outcome of the 
investigations.
  As one commentator observed yesterday, Mr. Plouffe's answers:

     were so rehearsed, clumsy and full of forced distractions and 
     faux frustration that[,] if [his] interview [on Fox News] had 
     been conducted by law enforcement[,] Plouffe would have been 
     told he was going for a ride downtown to the police station 
     for further questioning.

  As this commentator noted, from these sorts of appearances, it's 
apparent that ``[t]he administration has something to hide. Plouffe 
could not have been more parsed, poorly prepared or unconvincing.''
  Moreover, just this past Friday, The Washington Post reported that 
Federal authorities have interviewed more than 100 people in the two 
ongoing leak investigations and, specifically citing ``officials 
familiar with the probes,'' described these interviews as ``the start 
of a process that could take months or even years.'' According to 
anonymous ``officials,'' the Post also noted that ``the pace of the 
investigations is partly driven by the large number of government 
officials who had access to the material that was disclosed and who now 
must be interviewed.'' The fact that details about these leak 
investigations are themselves being leaked does not inspire me with 
confidence that we are on the right track.
  Furthermore, according to the Post, citing ``officials who spoke on 
the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter,'' 
the two pending investigations focus on the Associated Press article 
about a disrupted terrorist bomb plot by al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen 
and The New York Times' report about the Obama administration's role in 
authorizing cyberattacks against Iran. In other words, there appears to 
be no probe of the leaks relating to U.S. drone operations. Apparently, 
``officials'' told the Post that such an investigation had not been 
requested.
  Why not?
  With the passage of time, the need for the Attorney General to 
appoint an outside special counsel to independently investigate and, 
where appropriate, hold accountable those found responsible for these 
egregious violations of our national security, becomes clearer and 
stronger. At the end of the day, can we really expect the 
administration to investigate itself impartially in the midst of an 
election on a matter as highly sensitive and damaging as this leaks 
case, especially when those responsible could themselves be members of 
the administration? Plus, we are not talking about an isolated instance 
of one leak. As my colleague, the chairperson of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein rightly observed, we 
are talking about ``an avalanche of leaks'' on national security 
matters--the implications of which are severe.
  To date, I have seen no evidence that suggests that the American 
people should rely on the direction that the White House has chosen to 
provide a full and timely investigation of these leaks. For these 
reasons, I once again call on the appointment of an outside special 
counsel to do so today. Just as former Senator Biden and former Senator 
Obama called for a special counsel in the case of Valerie Plame, a case 
far less severe as far as the implications to our national security are 
concerned.

  As I said at the beginning of my comments, I have been around this 
town for quite a while. I, like the rest of my colleagues, have never 
seen leaks of this nature at such a high level concerning ongoing 
covert operations. They deserve an investigation which will have 
credibility with the American people. So far that has not been 
forthcoming from this administration.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator from Oklahoma.


                           Agriculture Reform

  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I assume we are in morning business. 
Because we are in morning business, I am going to use that time to talk 
about four amendments I have to the Agriculture bill. I want to make 
one acute observation to the American people on what is going on in 
Washington.

[[Page S4263]]

  The four amendments I will have on the Agriculture bill are a symptom 
of the disease that is in front of our Nation. This year we are going 
to run about a $1.3 trillion deficit. At the end of this fiscal year we 
will have 16.25 trillion dollars' worth of debt. I am 64 years of age. 
My children and grandchildren are going to pay back my portion of that 
debt. I am not going to be paying it back. The questions in front of 
our Nation are, No. 1, how did we get to this point, and, No. 2, what 
are we going to do about it.
  What we are going to hear today as we begin voting on the amendments, 
what we are going to hear from the Senate, is why we cannot cut 
spending, why we cannot limit our appetites, why we cannot end 
subsidies to some of the richest co-ops in the world, why we cannot 
stop sending money to the Republican and Democratic Conventions out of 
the Treasury, why we cannot limit some of the conservation programs 
that go to millionaires--why we cannot do it. We are going to hear why 
we cannot.
  This country cannot wait for us to continue hearing excuses about why 
we cannot trim our expenditures. The real problem is the Federal 
Government is going to take in $2.6 trillion, and it is going to spend 
about $3.8 trillion. That is the real problem. We ignore it politically 
by not making hard decisions, by not reforming the Tax Code for a 
progrowth, lower rates, broader base where everybody is participating 
in the Tax Code. People, through their well-connectedness, don't have 
to get out of special benefits to them, which is $30 billion a year for 
the very wealthy in this country in the Tax Code. We refuse to do those 
things. We have campaigns going on all across the country and nobody is 
talking about the No. 1 threat to this country, which is our debt and 
our deficits.
  The reason there is no job creation is not because politicians don't 
want job creation. It is because they refuse to reform the very things 
that are keeping job creation from happening.
  I am going to have four amendments. All of them actually save money 
for the American taxpayers, our kids, and our grandkids. They are all 
common sense. Most people outside of Washington will agree with them 
except the very people who are getting the benefits. They are the well-
heeled, and they are the well-connected who continue to get things for 
themselves to the detriment of our future.
  The question the American people have to start asking is when is 
Washington going to grow up? When are they going to start taking 
responsibility for their addictive behavior? Everybody who comes into 
my office who has lobbied me on these four amendments say: You can't 
take anything away from me. Do my colleagues realize what the answer is 
when anybody says: You can't take anything away from me? The answer is 
bankruptcy and a position, in terms of the economics of this country, 
that will be far worse than the Great Depression ever was and far worse 
than anything our country has ever experienced. But everybody says: 
What I am getting now I have to keep, regardless if someone is a 
multibillion-dollar conglomerate co-op and we are sending someone $100 
million every 10 years to advertise their product.

  The second point I will make before I outline these four amendments 
is the one thing we refuse to look at that can guide us on how to make 
these decisions is article I, section 8 of the Constitution. What is 
the real role for the Federal Government? I will tell my colleagues as 
we look at these four amendments, we are going to have trouble squaring 
what our Founders said was our role with what we are doing now in these 
four areas and then saying we are not violating the Constitution by 
spending money we don't have--money we are going to have to borrow to 
be able to spend--and spend it in areas that help the well-heeled and 
the well-connected.
  All of these amendments are very straightforward.
  I wish to make one other point. We spend $200 million a year through 
five separate programs of the government to promote agricultural 
products outside of this country--$200 million a year. That is $2 
million every 10 years. Let's show how effective they have been by 
looking at this chart. Whether one thinks it is constitutional, what 
kind of a job have they done since 1997? I don't think that trend line 
looks very good. So if we are going to spend $200 million paying for 
the promotion of agricultural products outside of this country, maybe 
we ought to ask the question: Why are we on a declining slope, as far 
as percentage of the world's agricultural sales, at the same time when 
farm income in this country has never been higher? Why is it? Because 
the Federal Government is not very good at doing things the private 
sector is very good at.
  We have five separate programs within the Department of Agriculture 
to do this, and the question the American people ought to be asking is: 
Why do we have five programs? If, in fact, it is a role for the Federal 
Government, which I highly doubt under the Constitution, why do we have 
five? So that is how well we are doing.
  I will talk about the first program. The market access program is one 
of the five programs the Federal Government has within the Department 
of Agriculture to do this. The Obama administration actually agrees 
with this amendment. In their budget, they put a recommendation to trim 
this. Yet all we have heard from everybody out there who gets the soft 
ride on this is that we can't take any money away from this program. If 
we can't take $40 million a year out of a program that is ineffective, 
history is here. We are going to be belly up, and the consequences of 
that will be devastating not just for our kids but for us, because it 
is going to come in the very near future.
  All this amendment says is out of these five programs, let's cut this 
one 20 percent. The Obama administration recommended doing that. The 
GAO says there is nothing to say that this is effective use of tax 
dollars. One would think we are pulling toenails, to hear the people 
scream. I won't go into the details on this amendment because my time 
is limited. It means we are still going to spend $160 million on this 
one program, which is one of five, to promote agricultural products 
when we are not being successful in spending that money anyway.
  The question is, Why would we vote against it? Because there is a 
parochial interest somewhere that we are going to be beholden to that 
is greater than our interest and fidelity to the U.S. Constitution or 
our interest and fidelity to the future of this country. That is why 
people will vote against this amendment. It doesn't have anything to do 
with common sense. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we 
are going to run this significant deficit when we have a $16 trillion 
debt. It has to do with how do I make sure I am not in trouble with the 
parochial interests rather than doing the right, best thing for our 
country.
  The second amendment--and I have received a lot of criticism for it--
is in conjunction with Senator Durbin. For those people with adjusted 
gross incomes of greater than three-quarters of a million dollars a 
year, all this amendment does is decrease the subsidy the middle-
income, hard-working factory worker or service worker in this country 
pays with their taxes to subsidize a crop insurance program that 
guarantees a profit and yield. Instead of a 62-percent subsidy by the 
Federal Government when they are making more than three-quarters of a 
million dollars per year, we take it to 47 percent. What do we hear? 
Oh, we can't do that. If a person is making $750,000 a year farming, 
that person's capital should be in pretty good shape and they should be 
able to afford to take on some more of the risks.
  We are going to hear: Well, this will be too hard to implement. There 
isn't another agriculture program that doesn't have an income payment 
limitation of some type associated with it, except this one. When, out 
of every dollar spent on crop insurance, the average, hard-working 
American is paying 62 percent of it, it is not too much to ask those 
who are on the upper income stream in the agricultural community to 
participate a little bit more in helping pay for that subsidy by taking 
a reduced subsidy. So all we are doing is taking 15 percent of it.
  Under this agriculture bill that is on the floor, there are three 
ways to ensure profit, and every one of them the American taxpayer who 
is not a farmer is paying for. There is no other business in this 
country where they are

[[Page S4264]]

guaranteed that profit and revenue will be there through an insurance 
policy that is paid for by the rest of us.
  The GAO report said we should actually limit it to $40,000 and we 
will save $5 billion over the next 10 years. This amendment will only 
save $1 billion over the next 10 years. But the way we get rid of $1 
trillion deficits is to ask everybody to share a little bit. All this 
amendment is doing is asking the most well-off farmers--the ones we 
have been subsidizing for years; the ones who are taking hundreds of 
thousands of dollars every year from the American taxpayers--to pay 15 
percent more on their crop insurance so the average individual in this 
country isn't taking off their table to subsidize somebody who is 
making three-quarters of a million dollars a year.
  The third amendment is an amendment to end conservation payments to 
millionaires. Almost every other program we have in terms of our farm 
programs has some limitations on it, but the Department of Agriculture 
has an exception where they can exclude this limitation. All this 
amendment would do is say to somebody who has an adjusted gross income 
of $1 million a year: Wouldn't that money be better spent somewhere 
else in the farm conservation area, No. 1; and No. 2, if it is in the 
best interests of the farm or production of agricultural acreage, and 
somebody has that kind of income, isn't it in their best interests to 
do these things?

  It is a very simple amendment that says: If you are making an 
adjusted gross income of $1 million or more a year, then we are going 
to put some limitations on how much money we spend on your property and 
then go spend it on other properties where we might, in fact, have more 
effective resource conservation.
  The final amendment I have to the bill has nothing to do with the 
agricultural bill but it has everything to do with the problems in this 
country. In February of this year, the U.S. Treasury wrote a check to 
the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National 
Convention for $18.4 million each. When the Presidential checkoff 
system was created, the politicians in Washington wired it so that we 
thought we were giving money to a Presidential campaign when, in fact, 
they took a percentage of it for both parties. We don't have $18.4 
million to spend on a Republican convention or a Democratic convention. 
The nominees of both parties are known. So what we have done, besides 
spending $100 million in security for both of those events--$50 million 
apiece--is we sent $18 million to the heads of both parties to spend 
any way they want to spend it. What is wrong with that? That $18.4 
million we borrowed from the Chinese. So we are borrowing money from 
the Chinese to fund a hallelujah party in both Tampa and Charlotte this 
year, each one of them getting $18.4 million. It is time that kind of 
nonsense stop.
  This amendment is going to require 60 votes. I don't know why they 
put it at 60 votes; maybe so a lot of people can vote for it but it 
still won't pass. But here is a test vote on whether the Senate gets 
the problems this country faces. If somebody votes against this 
amendment, what it says is they believe politics is above principle, 
that careerism trumps character, and that they can pull the wool over 
the eyes of the vast portion of American citizens. What could we do 
with $18.4 million times two? Well, there are tons we could do. The 
first thing is we could quit paying interest to the Chinese for it. The 
second thing is who could we help in terms of their health care or 
their housing? How many HIV patients who are waiting on ADAP who can't 
get the treatment they need could we help with $18.4 million?
  The point is this amendment is probably going to get defeated, but I 
want my colleagues to look in that realm of the universe in America 
where all the politicians reacted with disdain over the GSA conferences 
spending $880,000 in what was said to be a foolish way. If they made 
any comment about the excesses of governmental agencies on conferences 
and parties, how can they not apply the same standard to their own 
political party?
  My hope is that America will wake up. I am in the twilight years of 
my life. I have seen vast changes in our country, both good and bad, 
but we have maxed out the credit card in our country. We can't get 
another credit card without severe pain. We are trying to not do the 
right thing in the Congress of the United States. We are trying to kick 
the can down the road. We are trying to not make the hard decisions. 
And everyone who comes and lobbies says: Yes, I agree there is a 
problem, but please don't take anything away from me.
  The answer is leadership that says we all have to sacrifice to get 
our country out of the depths of the problems we are facing today. This 
will be a great key vote on whether the Senators understand priorities 
and the depth of the problems we are in.
  There is no way we should ever again send taxpayer funds to the 
Democratic Party or the Republican Party for a convention, and this 
amendment would eliminate that in the future.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I know we are in Republican time. I would 
like to use some of the Republican time to talk about an important 
issue in the farm bill, which is catfish.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, thank you for acknowledging me. I will be 
brief. I know we have other colleagues on the way, so I will be brief 
and I will yield when they get here and they are squared away.


                           Catfish Inspection

  Mr. President, let me just talk for a few minutes about catfish and 
something that I think is very important; that is, that catfish be 
inspected. This may sound like a no-brainer, something that is simple. 
We certainly would inspect and anticipate that all catfish that are 
raised in the United States would be inspected and follow all the USDA 
and other requirements--and it is. That is one of the good things, that 
we know our food supply is safe and wholesome and it is ready for 
consumption by Americans.
  However, that is not the case for catfish that is imported from Asia. 
By the way, I think people in my State and other catfish-producing 
States would dispute whether this is actually catfish in the first 
place. It is actually a variety of fish that is native to Asia, and it 
is grown in places such as Vietnam. I am certainly for trade and for 
fair trade and not for protectionism. But we need to make sure fish 
that is coming in from overseas--we need to make sure it is properly 
labeled but also that it is properly inspected.
  I think the way the bill is currently drafted is appropriate and 
proper. We should leave the language that Senator Stabenow and the 
Agriculture Committee have established. We should leave that language 
in the legislation as it currently is so the catfish will be inspected 
in the United States, and imported fish that is marketed as catfish 
will also be inspected by the same standards our domestic catfish are 
inspected under.
  In 2011, the FDA examined about 3 percent of all seafood entries and 
performed laboratory analysis on less than 1 percent of these entries. 
We have to understand this Asian fish is raised in places that, quite 
honestly, run a higher risk of contamination based on the growing 
conditions, based on the overall sanctity of their environment compared 
to ours.
  I think they present more health risks. I think it only makes sense 
once we know that one-third of these imports comes from southeastern 
Asia nations, places such as China and Vietnam where food safety 
standards are not as high as in the United States. Once we understand 
that, it makes sense that they would be afforded the same inspection 
regime that we would have here in the United States.
  These foreign countries are currently flooding the U.S. market with 
potentially harmful products, and those products could be putting U.S. 
consumers at risk. There have been several news reports about some of 
the growing conditions over there and some of the possible harmful side 
effects to human health if humans consume those.

[[Page S4265]]

  Here again, we have the safeguards in the farm bill to do the 
inspections as they should be done. The new inspection program would 
subject domestic catfish processors to daily USDA inspection, and 
imported catfish, much of which is raised in the unsanitary conditions 
I mentioned before--and it is also treated with antibiotics and other 
chemicals that are not deemed legal here in the United States, but that 
is the growing conditions they are in over there--it would require that 
they would receive more rigorous inspection than they are currently 
subject to.
  Again, I do not see this as protectionist. I think this is truly to 
make sure that all of the food supply, whether it comes from overseas 
or is grown domestically, meets our U.S. standards, and our people, our 
American citizens, understand that when they purchase fish, they are 
going to get something that will not make them and their families sick 
when they consume it.
  With that, I want to say that I appreciate all of my colleagues 
looking at this provision. I appreciate Senator Stabenow and her whole 
team and, in fact, all of the members of the Ag Committee who helped on 
this, and all of their staffs. They have been great on this issue. 
Catfish is a very small part of our agriculture picture in the United 
States, but it is an important part. People all over, especially all 
over the southern region of the United States, love to consume catfish. 
They need to understand when they buy catfish in the United States that 
it is going to be safe for them and for their families.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Utility MACT

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for S.J. 
Res. 37, and to express my deep and profound disapproval of the Obama 
administration's handling of the utility MACT rule.
  Let me first address what this debate is not about. This is not about 
a debate between one side that supports clean air and another side that 
does not. We all support and understand the importance of maintaining 
our pristine environment, maintaining the quality of human health in 
the ecosystem. My State, the great State of Utah, holds some of the 
greatest land resources in the country, some of the most beautiful 
landscapes. They are a source of pride for all Americans, and 
especially for all Utahns. They provide a significant economic benefit 
for my State in the form of tourism dollars.
  I would not support any legislation ever that would damage our 
environmental brand in Utah or that would harm our environment. What 
this debate does expose is this administration's vigorous, unfettered 
attempts to severely limit the use of coal technology and a complete 
and utter disregard for the economic benefits of this industry, and the 
economic effects of this kind of overly aggressive regulation.
  If implemented fully, the utility MACT rule would give utilities 
nationwide 3 short years to fully complete very costly upgrades to 
their plants. Many industry experts believe that these standards are 
nearly impossible to meet in that timeframe. Utilities will need closer 
to 5 or 6 years to make the necessary upgrades required by this 
regulatory scheme.
  Those who are unable to comply will have no choice but to shut down 
unless or until they can meet those standards. This inevitably, with 
absolute certainty, will result in sharp spikes to energy costs, 
increased power bills for all Americans, affecting the most vulnerable 
among us the most severely.
  Higher energy costs will, in turn, have a direct impact on the family 
budget. The more we as Americans spend on higher energy costs, the less 
we have available for savings, for education, and for other priorities. 
Although the President campaigns around the country by trying to 
convince Americans that he knows how to create jobs, this rule alone 
has been estimated by some industry experts as likely to kill 180,000 
to 215,000 jobs by 2015.
  So one has to wonder why it is this administration is nonetheless 
imposing rules it knows cannot be met, and that if they must be met, 
will kill this many jobs and hurt this many Americans. Why are they 
ignoring the obvious economic consequences of shutting down an industry 
that produces about half of all of the electricity we use in the United 
States of America today?
  It does not make any sense. We can have sensible regulations that 
keep our air and our water and other aspects of our environment clean. 
We need that. We want that as Americans. We can also have a balanced 
approach that considers the economic costs of new rules and 
restrictions on small businesses and on consumers. That is what we 
need.
  Utility MACT is an example of a regulation that does neither. It 
accomplishes none of these interests. I strongly urge my colleagues to 
support S.J. Res. 37. I stand with a growing bipartisan group of 
Senators, private sector unions, business interests that believe we can 
do better as Americans than imposing those kinds of regulations on the 
American people, and who also believe it is vitally important that when 
we do put these kinds of regulations on the American people we first 
have the kind of robust debate and discussion Americans have came to 
expect from their political institutions.
  Two separate provisions of the Constitution, article I, section 1, 
and article I, section 7, clearly place the legislative process, the 
power to make rules that carry the force of generally applicable 
binding Federal law, in the hands of Congress, not in an executive 
branch agency.
  The American people know this. They understand it. They expect it. 
They rely on it. Because they know if we pass laws the people do not 
like, that the people cannot accept, that kill jobs, that hurt those 
most vulnerable among us, that we can be held politically accountable 
come election time, every 2 years in the case of Members of the House, 
every 6 years in the case of Members of this body.
  When we circumvent that process, when we allow the lawmaking process 
to be carried out entirely within an executive branch agency consisting 
of people who, while perfectly well intentioned and well educated, do 
not stand accountable to the people, we insulate the lawmakers from 
those governed by those same laws.

  This is exactly why we need to exercise our authority under the 
Congressional Review Act by passing these resolutions of disapproval 
from time to time. But it is all the more reason why we need more 
lasting, significant reform, reform that can be had through the REINS 
Act proposal. This is a proposal that has already passed through the 
House favorably and needs to be passed in this body. It is a bill that 
would require for any new regulation promulgated that at the 
administrative level, any new regulation which qualifies as a major 
rule because it costs American consumers and small business interests, 
individuals, families, and all others in America more than $100 million 
in a year, it would take effect if and only if it were first passed 
into law in the House and in the Senate and signed into law by the 
President.
  This is how our lawmaking process is supposed to operate. This is a 
system that our Founding Fathers carefully put in place, assuring that 
those who make the laws and thereby have the capacity to affect the 
rights of individual Americans can and will be held accountable to the 
people for the very laws they pass.
  I tried to get the REINS Act up for consideration in connection with 
the Ag bill. We were not successful in doing that. Apparently some in 
this body, some in control of this body, were unwilling to have a vote 
on the REINS Act proposal as an amendment to the Ag bill. Sooner or 
later we need to have a vote on the REINS Act. We need to have this 
debate and discussion, to assure that the laws that are passed in this 
country are passed by men and women chosen by the people, accountable 
to the people, that we may yet still have that guarantee in our 
country, a guarantee of government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S4266]]

  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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