[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 125 (Tuesday, August 4, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6271-S6286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CYBERSECURITY INFORMATION SHARING ACT OF 2015--MOTION TO PROCEED--
Continued
Mr. HELLER. Mr. President, I would like to talk about personal
privacy rights for American citizens. It was just 2 months ago that the
Senate took action to restore privacy rights of American citizens
through the USA FREEDOM Act--part of action that was taken, as I
mentioned, just 2 months ago. Both Chambers of Congress and the
President agreed it was time to end the bulk collection of American's
call records pouring into the Federal Government.
I was a proud supporter of the USA FREEDOM Act and believed it was
the right thing to do on behalf of U.S. citizens. My constituents all
across Nevada--from Elko, to Reno, Ely, and Las Vegas--all understand
how important these rights are and will not accept any attempts to
diminish them. Today, I am here to continue protecting these privacy
rights and uphold our civil liberties.
Protecting privacy will always be important to Nevadans. It is
nonnegotiable to me, very important. Similar to many of my colleagues
in the Senate, I believe addressing cyber security is also important.
When I was ranking member of the commerce committee's consumer
protection subcommittee, I worked on these issues in detail. I
understand very well the impact of data breaches, cyber threats. In
fact, back in my State of Nevada, one of the top concerns is identity
theft. Not only can these identity thieves wreak financial havoc on a
consumer's life, but these threats also pose a serious national
security concern.
We saw with OPM's breach that personal information for 21.5 million
Federal employees, even those who received security clearances, was
compromised. In my office, in fact, a member of my staff was breached
three times in just the last 4 years. These thieves cross international
borders. They break and enter into private homes. They hack their way
to intrusion with a keyboard and a simple click of the mouse.
So I share the desire to find a path forward on information sharing
between the Federal Government and the private sector as another tool
in the cyber security toolbox, but I have always stood firm with these
types of efforts that they must also maintain American's privacy
rights.
The bill I see today, including the substitute amendment, does not do
enough to ensure personally identifiable information is stripped out
before sharing. That is why I filed a fix. Let's strengthen the
standard for stripping out this information. Right now, this bill says
the private sector and the Federal Government only have to strip out
personal information if they know--if they know--it is not directly
related to a cyber threat.
I would like to offer some context to that. Let's say you are pulled
over for speeding, not knowing the speed limit does not absolve you of
guilt. If your company fails to follow a Federal law or regulation, not
knowing about the law does not exempt you from the consequences of
violating it. Ignorance is no excuse under the law, so why should this
particular piece of legislation be any different?
My amendments ensure that when personal information is being stripped
out, it is because the entity reasonably believes--not knows but
reasonably believes--it is not related to a cyber threat. One of my
amendments addresses the Federal Government's responsibility to do
this, and the other addresses the private sector's responsibility to do
this.
This term ``reasonably believes''--let me repeat that--``reasonably
believes'' is an important distinction that this bill needs. It creates
a wider protection for personal information by ensuring these entities
are making an effort to take out personal information that is not
necessary for cyber security. Our friends over in the House of
Representatives already agree the private sector should be held to this
standard, which is why they included this language in the cyber
security bill which they passed. I hope to see this important
protection retained in any conference agreement should this bill move
forward.
Furthermore, in a letter to a Senator last week, DHS directly
acknowledged the importance of removing personally identifiable
information and even went so far as to say this removal will allow the
information-sharing regime to function much better. Even DHS agrees
that with this amendment it would function much better. So what it
comes down to is our Nation's commitment to balancing the needs for
sharing cyber security information with the need to protect America's
personal information.
I believe my amendment, No. 2548, to hold the Federal Government
accountable strikes that balance, and I will continue strongly pushing
forward to get this vote. I encourage my colleagues to support this
commonsense effort to strengthen this bill and keep our commitment to
upholding the rights of all U.S. citizens.
As we discuss this issue, I hope we will continue having the
opportunity to truly debate and make improvements to this bill. I
believe that if given the opportunity, we can strengthen this
legislation even more to protect against cyber security threats while
also protecting American citizens' private information.
No bill is perfect, as the Presiding Officer knows, but that is why
we are here and that is why there is an amendment process. That is why
I wish to see
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the Senate openly debate and amend this bill, including my amendment.
The privacy rights of Americans are too important an issue and a very
important issue to all of us.
I acknowledge that some of my colleagues want the opportunity to
debate issues related to the bill and those issues that are unrelated
to the bill. I recognize there are many important issues Members would
like to see addressed before August--or at least the August recess--
such as my friend from Kentucky, who filed an amendment regarding
firearms on bases. Like my colleague, I recognize the importance of
this issue, which is why I introduced this legislation days ago. My
legislation would simply require the Secretary of Defense to establish
a process for base commanders in the United States to authorize a
servicemember to carry a concealed personal firearm while on base. Men
and women who serve our country deserve to feel safe and should be able
to defend themselves while stationed in the United States. That is why
I feel strongly that Congress should give our Nation's base commanders
the authority they need to create a safer environment for our heroes
serving across America.
At this time I recognize it is unclear if there will be an
opportunity to debate this issue on this particular piece of
legislation, but it is an important issue. Once again, I hope that as
we continue to debate this bill that we will find a path forward on all
amendments.
I appreciate the willingness of both Senator Burr and Senator
Feinstein to work with me on my amendments, and I look forward to
continuing this debate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next 30
minutes be equally divided between Senators Schumer, Boxer, Whitehouse,
Markey, and Schatz.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I ask for a modification that I be
able to speak for 1 minute on the cyber issue before we go into that 30
minutes?
With that modification, I have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you.
Mr. President, in my 1 minute, I just wish to respond to what my
friend, the Senator from Arizona, said. We are very keen to get a good,
strong cyber security bill passed.
My concern about the amendment process is that amendments that will
strengthen the bill and make it a better cyber bill ought to have a
chance to get a vote. I have one that I worked out with Senator Graham,
who I think has good national security credentials and whom Senator
McCain respects, and another one with Senator Blunt, who also has good
national security credentials and whom I think Senator McCain also
respects. I believe both of the bills have now been cleared by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, so they don't have a business community objection.
But I also fear that if we followed the majority leader's proposal, he
would file cloture and they wouldn't survive a germaneness test.
So I think our leader's offer, basically, of a specific list of
amendments--none of which are ``gotcha'' amendments, all of which
relate to this bill--would be a very good way to proceed, get on the
bill, and get something passed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. First, I thank my friend from Rhode Island. I think
there is a broad agreement--I certainly do--that we want to move to
this bill and, if given an agreement on a limited number of amendments,
all relevant to cyber security, with no intention to be dilatory, and
with time limits, we can get this done. But it is only fair on a major
bill to offer some amendments and not just to fill the tree and have no
amendments at all.
Climate Change
On the issue at hand, I thank Senators Whitehouse, Markey, Schatz,
and Boxer for speaking today and participating in this colloquy. I join
my colleagues in appealing for meaningful action on climate change in
this body, which thus far has been stymied by my friends on the other
side of the aisle on behalf of special interests, and that is an
absolute shame.
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. Left
unchecked, the changing climate and rising seas will threaten our
shoreline cities and communities, as I personally witnessed after
Superstorm Sandy buffeted New York. Left unchecked, a changing climate
will have dramatic consequences for our children and grandchildren.
Pope Francis's papal encyclical represents as much. He said climate
change ``represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in
our day.''
We know we have to act. We know the American people want us to act.
According to a New York Times-Stanford University poll, 74 percent of
Americans said the Federal Government should be doing a substantial
amount to combat climate change. That is 74 percent.
Democrats agree the Federal Government must do something. We tried to
pass several bills through Congress, but my friends on the other side
of the aisle blocked action time and time again on behalf of the
special interests in the fossil fuel industry.
Now the President has a bold plan to reduce carbon emissions, which
he announced yesterday and today, but already the groups on the other
side are marshaling their forces. The New York Times reported today
that fossil fuel lobbyists and corporate lawyers have been working
since 2014, over 1\1/2\ years ago, to bring down these new rules.
Some of these Republicans admit that climate change is real and a
threat. Yet they still block and block and block. My friend, the
distinguished majority leader, has urged governors across the country
to simply ignore the new climate rules while they cook up lawsuits to
delay and frustrate their implementation.
OK. So you don't like the actions we propose or what the President
proposes. Fine. What do you propose? I say to those on the other side
of the aisle: What is your plan to meet this existential challenge? I
have heard none. That is why this chart says:
--WANTED--
A GOP plan to combat climate change and reduce dangerous
air pollution
#WhatstheGOPClimatePlan
There is none. We all know it is happening. Just look at the news,
read the weather reports, and ask what scientists who are totally
impartial and nonpolitical say. Unfortunately, I have a funny feeling
that our colleagues on the other side are using the same playbook they
are using on health care, immigration, and a host of other issues.
Block, repeal, oppose, but propose nothing.
So I conclude my brief remarks by repeating the question. What is the
Republican plan to act on climate change? Let me ask again in case they
didn't hear me. What is the Republican plan to act on climate change?
Let me suggest that my friends on the other side join us in seeking
solutions on climate change rather than obstructing our efforts and the
wishes of the American people on behalf of special interests. Again, I
thank my friends for organizing this colloquy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, what is the order in terms of time
allocated?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Thirty minutes have been allocated. Each
Senator has about 6 minutes to speak.
Mrs. BOXER. Will the Chair remind me when I have spoken for 5 minutes
so I can wrap up?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be so notified.
Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
In 2007, in its landmark decision called Massachusetts v. EPA, the
U.S. Supreme Court found very clearly that carbon pollution is covered
under the Clean Air Act. I think it is important to note that the Bush
administration took the position that carbon pollution could not be
covered under the Clean Air Act. They wasted about 8 long years
litigating the matter, and we lost a lot of time. But when the Supreme
Court finally spoke out, this is what they said, and I quote from the
decision:
[[Page S6273]]
Because greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act's
capacious definition of ``air pollutant,'' we hold that EPA
has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such
gases. . . .
Following the Supreme Court decision, the Obama administration issued
an endangerment finding which showed that current and future
concentrations of carbon pollution are harmful to our health. This
finding built on the work of the Bush administration, and we found some
of the raw data from the Bush administration, and we went public with
it. This is what the endangerment finding said, among other things:
No. 1, severe heat waves are expected to intensify, which can
increase heat-related death and sickness.
No. 2, climate change is expected to worsen regional smog pollution,
which can cause decreased lung function, aggravated asthma, increased
emergency-room visits, and premature deaths.
So once that endangerment finding was made, the Clean Air Act clearly
requires the Environmental Protection Agency to act to control
greenhouse gas pollution because it is determined that that pollution
causes harm.
I wish to say, when I still had the gavel of the Environment and
Public Works Committee, we called four former EPA administrators who
served under Republican Presidents from Richard Nixon to George W.
Bush. Every single one of those Republicans called on us to act now to
reduce carbon pollution.
In that hearing, former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who
served under George W. Bush, summed it up best--and I know my friends
remember this. She said:
I have to begin by expressing my frustration with the
discussion about whether or not the Environmental Protection
Agency has the legal authority to regulate carbon emissions
that is still taking place in some quarters. The issue has
been settled.
This is a former Republican EPA administrator under George W. Bush.
Continuing:
EPA does have the authority. The law says so, the Supreme
Court has said so twice. That matter, I believe, should now
be put to rest. Given that fact, the agency has decided,
properly in my view, that it should act now to reduce carbon
emissions to improve the quality of our air, to protect the
health of our people and, as part of an international effort,
to address global climate change.
Now, I was so proud in that particular hearing because I haven't
found a Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee who
really even believes that climate change is real, to be honest. So to
have a Republican--the former head of the EPA under George W. Bush--
tell us it is time to move was very heartening to me because I believe
action can't come too soon. The impacts that scientists predicted years
ago are all around us and they are happening now.
I wish to share a couple of charts. The prediction quite a while ago
was that we were going to see extreme heat more frequently all around
the world. Well, 2014 was the hottest year on record, according to NASA
and NOAA, and 2015, the first half of this year, is the hottest on
record, according to NOAA.
Then, heat waves are more frequent. In Australia, in 2014, towns 320
miles northwest of Sydney hit 118 degrees.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has consumed 5 minutes.
Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Chair.
Areas affected by drought will increase. Look at what is happening in
my great State, the worst drought, according to scientists, in 1,200
years. Fires are increasing--same thing--and I am just so disheartened
by the fact that we lost a firefighter, a visiting firefighter.
Firefighters are fighting those fires right now and putting their lives
on the line every single day. Tropical storms, hurricanes--this is all
happening--heavy precipitation, flooding events. Houston got 11 inches
of rain in 24 hours in 2015. And there is decreasing polar ice, and, in
addition, rising sea levels.
So I will close with this. The evidence of climate change is here. To
say you are not a scientist is no answer. We know you are not a
scientist. Politicians as a group are not. But we should listen to the
98, 99 percent of scientists who are telling us our planet is in
trouble. Our people are going to be in trouble.
As long as I can stand up on my feet in this body, I am going to
stand shoulder to shoulder--well, not quite; in my high heels shoulder
to shoulder--with my friends because this is a moment in our Nation's
history when our kids and grandkids will look back and ask: Why didn't
they protect us? Why didn't they save us? As far as I am concerned, it
is our duty and our moral responsibility.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to start my remarks with this
photograph I have in the Chamber, which is a photograph of--I guess the
miniplanet is what they call it now--Pluto. Why do I start remarks on
climate change and carbon pollution with a picture of Pluto? I do so
because of the amazing achievement it was for our NASA scientists to
fly a craft close enough to Pluto to take that picture. That is a heck
of an accomplishment by our American NASA scientists.
But that is not their only one. While this craft was shooting by
Pluto taking these pictures, they had a rover rolling around on the
surface of Mars. They sent a vehicle the size of an SUV to the surface
of Mars and are driving it around. Do you think these scientists know
what they are talking about when they say something as simple as
climate change is real? Of course, they do.
But our Republican friends can't acknowledge that. They have even
said these NASA scientists are in on a hoax. Can you imagine anything
more demeaning to the people who put a rover on Mars and shot this
picture of Pluto than to say: Oh, they do not know what they are
talking about. They are in on a hoax. Forget about it. That is just not
true.
The real issue is this. Here is Kentucky's electric generation fuel
mix. That is its fuel mix. Guess what the gray is? Coal. That is
basically all they have. There is a tiny little strip of blue at the
bottom for the hydro. There is a little tiny strip here of red for oil.
And there is a tiny little bit of natural gas here at the top, for
which you need a magnifying glass. You can look and, with a magnifying
glass, you can see this tiny little green line at the top that is their
entire renewables portfolio. Really?
The last I heard the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.
Right? So why no solar? None. How about wind? Do you think the wind
blows through the Kentucky hills? None. You have to use a magnifying
glass to see it. They are not even trying. They are not even trying.
The coal industry has that State so locked down they are doing nothing.
Go to Iowa. There are two Republican Senators from Iowa--hardly some
liberal bastion--and they get about 30 percent of their electricity
from wind. It is not a Communist plot. It is not a Socialist
fabrication. It is Iowa, and the farmers love it.
But no, we have to protect coal at all costs. So this is the GOP
signal for what they are doing on climate change. I think it would
probably be wise to take out the smile and actually put a little band
of tape over the mouth so that it is clear that nobody is allowed to
say a word.
This is really astonishing. Here we are, in which every State--just
ask your home State university if climate change is real. You don't
have to go far. Ask the University of Kentucky, ask the University of
Louisville, ask your home State university. They know. Everybody knows.
The problem is the coal industry and the Koch brothers have this place
locked down, and it is ridiculous.
The Koch brothers have pledged to spend $889 million in this election
through this group called Americans for Prosperity. And they have also
said that ``anybody who crosses us on climate change will be at a
severe disadvantage.'' When you are swinging a $900 million club and
you are telling folks, disagree with us and you will be at a severe
disadvantage, this is what you get--no plan on climate change.
You are going to hear endless complaining from our friends on the
other side about the President's plan. What are you not going to hear?
What their plan is. What is the alternative? What have they got? If you
have nothing, if you have nada, zip, you really have to get into this
conversation because even your own Republican young voters are
demanding it. Republican voters under
[[Page S6274]]
the age of 35 think climate denial is ignorant, out of touch or crazy--
their words in the poll, not mine.
So it is time we broke through. It is time the majority leader got
away from this 100-percent coal situation that he is defending, allowed
the future to take place, and allowed a conversation to take place here
in the Senate. We are ready for it. We are ready for it.
I yield the floor to my wonderful colleague, Senator Markey, who has
been working on this a good deal longer than I have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Rhode Island,
my friend from California, Senator Boxer, Senator Schatz from Hawaii,
and all the Members who work on these issues.
This is the big one. This is the issue. This is the threat to the
entire planet. Young people want us to do something about it. They are
wondering when the older generation is finally going to get around to
doing something about it, from moving to sending pollution up into the
air to moving to clean energy, moving to new energy technologies.
So as they look at this, they look at coal, they look at a 19th
century technology--coal--and they say: When are we moving to the new
era? Well, that is a good question because in 2005 in the United States
of America we deployed a grand total of 79 megawatts of solar. In 2014,
we deployed 7,000 megawatts of solar--100 times more--because we
started to have a plan.
Democrats put a plan in place by creating tax breaks for solar, by
incentivizing more investment in solar across the country. Individual
States started to put new regulations on the books--7,000 megawatts.
Now we have 20,000 megawatts of solar in the United States. But we only
deployed 79 in 2005.
Now, if you really want some great news as to what is possible, in
2015 and 2016, we are going to deploy 20,000 more--in just 2 years. So
we are going to double the total amount of all solar ever deployed in
the United States in just 2 years.
Over on the wind front, we are going to have about 80,000 megawatts
total deployed by the end of next year, bringing it up to 120,000
megawatts. How much is that? When you look at a big nuclear powerplant
and you see the picture of it, that is 1,000 megawatts. So we are
talking about 120 of them being deployed by the end of next year.
So the young generation looks at us and they say: Can we do this? Can
we meet the goals President Obama is setting? Can we meet the objective
of having 28 percent of all of our electricity coming from renewables
by the year 2030?
Well, if you hear from the coal industry or you hear from the nuclear
industry, if you hear from the other fossil fuel industries, they say:
Well, that is impossible. You can't do it. It is absolutely just going
to be a very small part of the total amount of electricity that we
generate in our country.
Well, they are just dead wrong. We are proving that in 2015 and 2016
because of the fight that is taking place at the State level--the tax
breaks for wind and solar that were put on the books largely by
Democrats here nationally. We are doing it. It is there. We now have
over 200,000 people working in the solar industry in the United States.
There are only 85,000 people who are in the coal industry. Got that? It
is 2015. There are 80,000 people working in the wind industry in our
country.
These are the growth industries. These are the Internet corollaries
in clean energy. This is where young people are going. This is where
innovation is going. This is where venture capital in America is going.
This is where the innovation around our planet is going. We can do
this. We can reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, increase employment
simultaneously, and create wealth and health for our planet.
The President's plan will reduce by 90,000 per year the number of
asthma attacks in our country. It will reduce by 90 percent the total
amount of sulfur that is sent up into the atmosphere. It will be
something that is supported by doctors and nurses and by Presidents and
Popes. That is what we have. That is what this plan is. It is a
beautiful plan. It is a plan that spans not just the technological and
the political but also the moral imperative that is presented by this
problem.
So yes, the big question that is being asked is this: Where is the
Republican plan? Well, of course, there is none because they are still
in denial that there is a problem, notwithstanding the fact that every
single national academy of sciences of every single country in the
world says there is a problem.
This is basically a small cabal of fossil fuel executives still
trying to peddle 19th century technologies in the 21st century. It
would be as though there were a cabal to stop us from moving from black
rotary dial phones to wireless devices so that people could walk around
with the new technologies. Oh, wait. There was a cabal. They fought it
for years and years and years and years because they had the monopoly.
The black rotary dial phone in the living room was all anyone would
ever need. We had to break down those monopolies, and we have to break
down these as well.
But here it is more than just having a phone in your pocket. Now it
is actually saving the planet. It is ensuring we put in place the
preventive measures that will reduce greenhouse gases while creating
new jobs.
Senator Whitehouse and I are part of a plan called the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative across New England, New York, Delaware, and
Maryland. We already have a plan in place that has, in fact, reduced
greenhouse gases, which has simultaneously seen dramatic increases in
wealth, creating $1.5 billion in savings for consumers. We can do this.
We can do this.
The auto industry said we could not increase the fuel economy
standards of the vehicles that we drive. We just went right past them.
The telecommunications industry did not want us to be moving to this
wireless revolution. We just went right past them. The coal industry
does not want us to act right now. For the sake of the planet, for the
sake of generations to come, we must go right past them and ensure
President Obama's plan is enacted.
I thank the Chair, and I now yield to the Senator from Hawaii, Mr.
Schatz.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts and
Senators Whitehouse and Boxer for their great leadership. I am really
appreciative of the senior Senator from New York for taking the time to
come to the floor to demonstrate his commitment to this issue.
There is an incredible opportunity here for American leadership. In
Hawaii, in various places across the State, in 1 month we had 33 record
highs--in the month of July. So we all know this is the challenge of
our generation, and we all know the next most important step is the
full implementation of the President's Clean Power Plan.
I wish to make a couple of points about the particulars of the plan.
The first is that this is really done well. Normally, regulatory
functions can be a blunt instrument. They can be a little less than
careful in terms of how they are going to impact the economy. But this
is done with great precision, with great care, and with great
interaction with the incumbent utility companies and distribution and
generation companies. So this is done with enough flexibility to say:
Whatever your mix in terms of energies, we are not going to dictate
exactly how you do it at a powerplant level, at a county level, at a
city level. All we are saying is you have to meet these targets. And if
you meet these targets through distributed generation or wind or solar
or geothermal or hydro, that is not the Federal Government's concern.
Our concern is that carbon is a pollutant--and that has been
determined by the courts, and it has been determined by scientists--and
the Clean Air Act requires that airborne pollutants are regulated. So
we are simply going to tell every State: This, like all other
pollutants, has to be reduced over time.
I think the EPA took great pains to make sure this was done in a way
that wouldn't cause too much upheaval in the economy. This is legally
sound. There is no question that the EPA doesn't just have the
authority and the discretion to move forward with carbon pollution
regulations, they are actually required to under the last Supreme Court
decision. And it is doable. Hawaii has a 100-percent clean energy goal.
The Northeast has its RGGI program.
[[Page S6275]]
California has a cap-and-trade program. And all of our economies
continue to grow. It is not that individuals and companies don't
continue to have their challenges, but it is not because of our leaning
forward into clean energy.
I will make one point about the kind of layering of obstruction. The
first layer, which I think we have been successful in the last 6 months
at breaking through, is the whole ``I am not sure whether climate
change is real.'' Then they sort of pivoted to ``Well, I am not a
scientist.'' So I don't think that is going to last for very long.
I think the next layer of obstruction is going to be ``I think
climate change is real. I am not sure what percentage of climate change
is caused by humans and how much of it is naturally occurring.'' I
think we will be able to punch through that opposition.
The next layer of opposition will be this: ``America should wait.''
They will tell us that America should not lead in this, that we should
wait for China, that we should wait for India, that we should wait for
Germany, that we should wait for Japan. So let me ask this question:
Since when does the United States wait for other countries to lead?
This is the challenge of our generation, and it strikes me as
preposterous that anybody who believes in American leadership would be
willing to say ``Let's see what other countries do about this problem
first. Why don't we give this a few years?'' We don't have a few years.
This is an incredible opportunity for America to display the leadership
it has always displayed in the international community. We finally have
the high ground going into the Paris discussions. We are on legally
sound ground, we are on morally sound ground, and I think politically
we are increasingly on sound ground.
I am a full supporter of the President's Clean Power Plan. The one
thing that causes me great dismay and I think causes some of the other
participants in this colloquy dismay is that we are not even having a
debate.
This is the Democrats asking you to come down to the floor and
disagree with us. Disagree with the President. Disagree with Gina
McCarthy. Tell Sheldon and me that our bill is a piece of garbage and
this is what should be done instead. But let's have the great debate in
the world's greatest deliberative body. Right now, it is entirely one-
sided. If we are going to display American leadership, we need some
Republican leadership as well.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question? I
don't know if the Senator is aware of this, but I do know Senators
Whitehouse and Markey know this since they serve with me on the
Environment and Public Works Committee. Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock,
the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee are going
to put forward two bills, and they expect to pass them. One would stop
the President's Clean Power Plan in its tracks without putting in
anything to replace it--as a matter of fact, putting up obstacles, as I
understand it, to any other plan. So it would stop it in its tracks and
set up huge obstacles for another rule. The other one would say that if
you spray pesticides on bodies of water and the pesticides get into the
water, that spraying should be exempted from the Clean Water Act.
I mean, it pains me. It pains me to say that this is coming from the
environment committee. Why don't they just rename it the ``anti-
environment committee'' when they are in charge because every week,
every day on the environment they go in the wrong direction for our
children and our grandchildren. I know my friend has young children. I
have young grandchildren.
Isn't it a shame that at the moment in time when the Environment and
Public Works Committee--they did a great job--we did a great job, all
of us, on transportation. We had a 20-to-0 vote. We are so proud of it.
But on the environment, we are split down the middle, with Republicans
trying to stop the Clean Power Plan, stop the advances in fighting
climate change, stop the ability of regulators to protect the waters
from pesticide spraying. Isn't it just shameful that this will be
happening tomorrow?
Mr. SCHATZ. Through the Chair, I understand the time for the colloquy
is about to expire. Just to respond to the Senator from California, if
there is no objection, I would just say that we really do need
Republican leadership here. Prior to about 10 years ago, the Republican
Party had a long history and an august history of working with
Democrats to protect our air and our water, and we are all sincerely
hoping we can get back to that place.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Prescription Opioid and Heroin Abuse
Ms. AYOTTE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about a public health
issue that is devastating communities and families in New Hampshire and
throughout this country; that is, prescription opioid and heroin abuse.
I actually see my colleagues from Rhode Island and Massachusetts
here. This is an issue where, on a bipartisan basis, we are focused on
important legislation to address this terrible public health crisis.
Right now in New Hampshire, heroin--sometimes combined with a very
powerful synthetic drug called fentanyl--is taking lives, ruining
families, and harming communities. Public safety officials are
confronting overdoses every single day.
My good friend, Manchester police chief Nick Willard, said recently:
``I'm up to my eyes in heroin addiction.'' Unfortunately, the
statistics underscore Chief Willard's statement. In all of 2014,
Manchester police seized over 1,300 grams of heroin. As of just last
month, Manchester police had seized over 27,000 grams of heroin in
2015. That is nearly 26,000 more grams in just 7 months. In 2014, there
were over 320 fatal drug-related overdoses in New Hampshire--up from
193 in 2013--and heroin and fentanyl were the primary drivers of nearly
250 of those deaths. In Manchester alone--our largest city--overdose
deaths so far have increased 90 percent over 2014 and over 269 percent
if we go back to 2013. That is the crisis we are facing. That is how
many lives are being taken by opioids, by overdosing on prescription
drugs and heroin, and it is devastating.
I worked with law enforcement when I was attorney general of New
Hampshire. I know how hard they are working on this. They are working
tirelessly to get these drugs off the streets. But they will tell you
that we simply cannot arrest our way out of this problem. I have
actually heard from law enforcement in New Hampshire that what they
believe we need most to confront this public health crisis and to
confront the public safety issues that go with it are more prevention,
more treatment options, and more support for individuals in recovery.
We know that addiction to prescription pain medication can often
become a gateway to heroin abuse. Unfortunately, right now the price of
heroin on the streets has gotten so cheap that people are often going
from prescription drug addiction to heroin addiction because of the
price and the high and the way they feel. It is so tragic. According to
a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, approximately 4 out of every 5 new heroin users
previously used nonmedical prescription opioids before using heroin.
I wish to briefly mention two pieces of legislation that I believe
represent critical steps in the right direction.
In February I helped reintroduce the bipartisan Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act. I thank my colleague from Rhode Island, who
is in this Chamber, as well for his important work on this legislation.
This legislation would expand opioid prevention and education efforts
and expand the availability of naloxone to first responders and law
enforcement. It would also support additional resources to identify and
treat incarcerated individuals suffering from substance abuse disorder
and encourage prevention by expanding drug take-back sites to promote
the safe disposal of unwanted or unused prescription drugs,
strengthening prescription drug monitoring programs, and launching a
prescription opioid and heroin treatment and intervention program.
This summer I had the privilege of doing a ride-along with the
Manchester fire department. Within half an hour of being at the fire
department, we were called to a heroin overdose. I watched the first
responders give Narcan to a young man who was on the ground who I
thought was going to die, and he came right back. But what I noticed
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was that in that room in a corner was an infant--an infant child whom
the firefighter gave to another young woman in the room. Think about
the impact of that. What chance does that child have when her father is
on the floor, is not getting treatment, and is getting back in this
cycle?
Often what I hear from our first responders is that when they save
someone's life using a drug such as Narcan, they see the same people
again because they are not getting the treatment they need to get the
recovery they need from this horrible addiction they have.
Earlier this year I also reintroduced the Heroin and Prescription
Opioid Abuse Prevention, Education, and Enforcement Act with Senator
Joe Donnelly of Indiana. This bipartisan bill would reauthorize
programs related to prescription drug monitoring programs that are
helpful to our physicians so they can get good information when they
are prescribing pain medication; grants for local law enforcement; and
establishing an interagency task force to develop best practices in
prescribing pain medication.
The headlines we are seeing in New Hampshire every day in our local
newspapers underscore the sad reality of this problem. Here are some we
have seen in recent weeks:
The Union Leader: ``Mom, dad overdose on heroin while bathing
child.''
The Nashua Telegraph in May: ``Nine die from drug overdoses in Nashua
so far this year, including three in one weekend.'' Nashua is where I
was born and where I lived.
The Telegraph on May 14: ``Toddler left in care of men, one of whom
died of an overdose.''
There was more on that same day: ``Hampton man on heroin causes 5-car
crash.''
May 29: ``Ossipee mom accused of selling heroin with 2 kids in the
car.''
These news stories mirror the heartbreaking personal stories of loss
I have been hearing about from families in our State. I want to share a
couple of these stories.
Recently, I met with the family of Courtney Griffin, a 20-year-old
young woman from Newton, NH. Tragically, Courtney lost her life to a
heroin overdose last September. I was very moved by her family's story.
Courtney aspired to join the Marine Corps and had already attended
boot camp. She was a charter member of the Kingston Lions Club. She
played the French horn in high school and was a member of the tennis
club.
During high school, Courtney started hanging out with a different
crowd, and at some point the Griffins' prescription medication in their
cabinet started disappearing. After Courtney graduated from high
school, her addiction grew worse. She was stealing from her father's
business and from her family in a desperate attempt to feed her
addiction.
Courtney entered drug treatment, but she relapsed. When she finally
admitted she had a problem, she tried to seek treatment but was denied
coverage because the Griffins' insurance company said it wasn't a life-
or-death situation. With some help from local law enforcement, Courtney
was finally able to find a place to receive treatment. Tragically, she
died of a heroin overdose about a week before she was set to begin
treatment.
Her father Doug is doing everything he can to turn Courtney's story
of tragedy into a cautionary tale so that he can save other families
from what his family has been through.
Doug and others like him have a perspective on this crisis that is
impossible for anyone who has not personally experienced a loss like
this to understand. I admire his courage in sharing the story of his
family so that he can save other families' lives.
Unfortunately, this story is all too common. In April, Molly Parks, a
waitress at Portland Pie Company in Manchester, lost her life to a
heroin overdose while she was at work. Her father is also speaking out
to warn other families of the dangers of drug addiction.
I want to share as a final point one story that really moved me on
Memorial Day. That story came from Keith Howard. He served our country
with distinction. I know him personally. When he returned home from his
enlistment, he struggled with alcohol and heroin abuse and he became
homeless. Unfortunately, we hear too many of these stories about our
veterans, what they are carrying with them, the wounds from war, and
they become addicted to drugs and alcohol. Keith was one of those
individuals who served our country and who became addicted. Today Keith
is sober, and he helps run Liberty House in Manchester, NH, which
provides sober housing for American veterans transitioning out of
homelessness and helps our homeless veterans. Keith has dedicated his
life to this.
On Memorial Day--on that important day on which we honor those who
have sacrificed so much and made the ultimate sacrifice for our
freedom--he shared stories with us of veterans who have come to Liberty
House and turned their lives around, but he also shared stories of
others who came but could not overcome their addiction, eventually
costing them their homes, their families, and in some cases their
lives.
Keith and Liberty House are doing incredibly important work for
veterans in Manchester, but he believes there is more to be done. On
Memorial Day of this year when we were honoring those servicemembers
who gave their lives in service to our country, Keith reminded us of
something else when he told a crowd at Veteran's Park in Manchester--
and you could have heard a pin drop when he said this: ``Let us honor
our dead by creating hope for our living.'' He is absolutely right.
It is clear to me that we need to work together. This is a bipartisan
issue. This is a public health crisis. This is about the quality of
life in our country. This is a problem on which we need to work
together at the local, State, and Federal level in partnership to
identify effective strategies to help save lives and take back our
communities.
For my part, I will remain committed to fighting against this public
health epidemic and taking it up at its roots to make sure for our
children that this addiction and heroin--that we get it off our streets
but that we get help for those who are addicted and that they
understand they shouldn't feel the stigma I know many of them do, that
we want them to come forward, we want to help them, and we understand
this is incredibly difficult. We want them to know we stand with them
so they can get the help and the treatment they need to lead productive
lives.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before the Senator from New Hampshire
leaves the floor, I wish to thank her for her work on the comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act. She has been a very good partner in that
effort. I know her home State, like Rhode Island, is suffering an
extraordinary wave of opioid addiction and opioid fatalities. I know
she is also working hard to make sure we get a hearing in the Judiciary
Committee under present leadership. I am getting good signals on that.
I hope we can pin that down before too long. I think this is a very
important issue for us to get a hearing on, and I think it is one that
all of the Presidential candidates are seeing. It is one so many of us
see in our home States.
One of the smallest towns in Rhode Island is a little town called
Burrillville. It is a beautiful place. It is in the northern rural area
of our State. People laugh when I say ``the rural area of Rhode
Island,'' but we really do have them. Burrillville is a very bucolic
area, and there are very wonderful people there.
In the first quarter of this year, in little Burrillville, six people
lost their lives to overdose. When I went to the Burrillville High
School to do an event there about this bill and to listen and get ideas
for our legislation, there were three recovering folks who came to talk
about their situation. Like so many folks in recovery, they were
unbelievably inspiring and noble in the way they discussed it. All
three of them had gone to Burrillville High School.
It is a real problem, and I appreciate very much the leadership of
the Senator from New Hampshire.
Climate Change
Mr. President, this is actually the time of the week for me to
deliver my 109th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech. I find it a little bit
frustrating these days because climate change used to be a bipartisan
issue. Over and over again, we
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had bipartisan, serious climate change bills. In fact, the first big
climate change bill in the EPW Committee was Warner-Lieberman--John
Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Joe Lieberman, Democrat of
Connecticut. But then came Citizens United and all that dark money
began to flow, all that fossil fuel money began to flow, all that Koch
brothers money began to flow. Now, even as the evidence of climate
change deepens to irrefutability, it is hard to find a Republican in
Congress who will do anything. Here is the formula: Duck the question,
deny the evidence, and disparage the scientists. Duck, deny, and
disparage. That is some strategy for an issue which so many people take
seriously.
As Congress sleepwalks through history, the warnings are painfully
clear. Carbon pollution piles up in the atmosphere. Temperatures are
rising. Weather worsens at the extremes. The oceans rise, warm, and
acidify. These are all measurements. This isn't theory. The
measurements confirm what the science has always told us about dumping
so much excess carbon into oceans and atmosphere.
So hurray for the President's Clean Power Plan. For the first time,
we have a national effort to reduce carbon pollution from powerplants,
which are the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions. This plan is
big. This plan is good. And this plan is urgently needed. I
congratulate the President, I congratulate Administrator McCarthy, and
I congratulate the good and public-spirited people of the EPA and other
Federal agencies who worked hard to listen and make this plan final.
Of course, we will still have the usual complaining from all of the
usual suspects. The Senate majority leader, the senior Senator from
Kentucky, opposes any serious conversation about climate change. In
fact, he is ready to lead his modern version of massive resistance
against the Federal Clean Power Plan. The Republican leader has written
to Governors urging defiance of the EPA regulations, calling them
``extremely burdensome and costly,'' which would be a more credible
conclusion had he not reached it months before the regulations were
even finalized.
Actually, if we want to get into the actual world here, a report just
out from that famous liberal, Socialist bastion Georgia Tech found that
the clean power rule could be enacted in a very cost-effective manner
and could lower folks' energy bills in the long term. But let's not let
the facts get in the way when there are fossil fuel interests to be
placated.
As the Washington Post reported, folks expect to comply with the
Clean Power Plan with relatively little effort, even in Kentucky. ``We
can meet it'' is what Dr. Leonard Peters, Kentucky's energy and
environment secretary, has to say about the Clean Power Plan. ``We can
meet it.'' In fact, Dr. Peters praised the EPA for working with States
like his to build this rule. ``The outreach they've done, I think, is
incredible,'' he said. EPA had an ``open door policy. You could call
them, talk to them, meet with them.'' The Kentucky experience was
echoed around the country, as EPA listened closely to the concerns of
utilities, regulators, experts, and citizens. They have made big
adjustments to accommodate the concerns of stakeholders in the States.
When the usual complaining comes from the usual suspects, please ask
them: What is your plan? How would you do a better job of addressing
the carbon emissions that are polluting our atmosphere and oceans? What
is your alternative?
Spoiler alert: You will look far and wide before finding a Republican
plan. Don't look here. Don't look in the Senate. Republicans in the
Senate have exactly zero legislation for addressing carbon pollution in
any serious way. None. Zip. Nada. Duck, deny, and disparage is all they
have. Don't look at their Presidential candidates. In recent weeks I
have used these weekly climate speeches to look at Republican
Presidential candidates' views on climate change. It is pathetic. There
is nothing. What are we up to--87 Republican Presidential candidates?
And not one has a climate change plan. OK, I was exaggerating about the
87.
Florida, ground zero for sea level rise, two Republican Presidential
candidates, and what do the two of them have? Nothing. Republican
mayors from Florida, State universities in Florida, the Army Corps
office in Florida--nothing gets through to the candidates. Duck, deny,
disparage is all they have.
The Wisconsin Presidential candidate ignores his own home State
university, his own State newspapers, and his own State scientists. But
Governor Walker can actually top duck, deny, and disparage. His
response to climate change? Use your budget to fire the scientists at
the State environmental protection agency.
How about our Presidential candidate, the junior Senator from
Kentucky? What do we hear from him? He has said that the EPA rules are
illegal, and he has predicted that they will result in power
shortages--no lights and no heat. But does he have an alternative he
would prefer? No. He has nothing, and, like all the other got-nothing
Republican Presidential candidates, he is out of step with his own home
State.
Kentucky isn't just easily able to comply with the Clean Power Plan;
agencies and officials all across Kentucky are working seriously on
climate change.
By the way, here is a look at why compliance is easy in Kentucky:
Kentucky's fuel mix, which this charts, is a wall of coal. As the song
says, the Sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, but good luck
finding any solar in there. You will need a magnifying glass to find
this tiny little green line at the top that is barely visible that is
solar and wind combined. I mean, really? Iowa can get to 30 percent
wind. Iowa has two Republican Senators. It is not impossible. In
Kentucky, they haven't even tried.
Kentucky's cities--Lexington, Louisville, Frankfurt, Bowling Green,
and Villa Hills--get it. They have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate
Protection Agreement in order to--quoting officials from Lexington--
``act locally to reduce the impacts of climate change by lowering
(manmade) greenhouse gas emissions.''
The hills of Kentucky are some distance from the shores of Rhode
Island and the shores of New Hampshire as well. Living by the sea, I
have to worry about climate change and what it is doing to our oceans
and coasts. Kentucky is landlocked. So imagine my surprise to read the
Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources warning about sea
level rise. I will quote them.
With the predicted increases in severity of hurricanes and
tropical storms, coupled with potential shoreline losses in
Florida and throughout the eastern seaboard, people may begin
migrations inland. If and when these events occur, Kentucky
may experience human population growth unprecedented to the
Commonwealth.
So I say to our candidate from Kentucky, the junior Senator, and our
majority leader, the senior Senator, with Kentucky, their home State,
projecting that people on the coasts will be hit so hard by climate
change that we may have to flee inland to landlocked Kentucky, I hope
the Senators from Kentucky will understand my persistence on this issue
when their own State thinks that my citizens might have to flee to
Kentucky to get away from this threat.
Kentucky is renowned for its horses. So I turned to Horse & Rider
magazine and found a great article on ``how climate change might affect
our horses' health.'' Horse & Rider's expert was none other than Dr.
Craig Carter of the University of Kentucky. He had specific concerns in
the article for equine health, but he also offered us this general
reminder:
It's not just horses (and people) at risk: crops are being
affected, as are trees, due to beetle infestations. Climate
change affects all forms of life.
That is from Dr. Carter of the University of Kentucky.
Kentucky Woodlands Magazine reports that ``the world is changing
right before our eyes. . . . [O]ur natural systems are changing as a
result of a warming climate.'' The magazine even warns that ``climate
change is happening as you read this article.''
Meanwhile the Senators from Kentucky are not sure why that may be.
The junior Senator has said that he is not sure anybody knows exactly
why all of this climate change is happening. The majority leader
invokes that climate denial classic: I am not a scientist. Well--and I
say this thankfully--the scientists are here to help, including
Kentucky scientists.
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At Kentucky's universities, the science seems pretty clear about
exactly why all of this climate change is happening. Dr. Paul Vincelli
is a professor at the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension
Service. He says:
In the scientific community, it is widely accepted that the
global climate is changing and that human activities which
produce greenhouse gases are a principal cause. Greenhouse
gases have a strong capacity to trap heat in the lower
atmosphere, even though they are present at trace
concentrations.
Elsewhere, Professor Vincelli and his University of Kentucky
colleagues write:
Scientific evidence that our global climate is warming is
abundant. . . . Practicing scientists consider the evidence
of human-induced global warming to be extremely strong.
The University of Kentucky is not the only place. Eastern Kentucky
University offers concentrations in environmental sustainability and
stewardship, including courses on global climate change. Northern
Kentucky University signed the American College and University
Presidents' Climate Commitment, pledging Northern Kentucky University
to ``an initiative in pursuit of climate neutrality.''
At the University of Louisville, Professor Keith Mountain is the
chair of the department of geography and geosciences. He has lectured
about ``how climate change is a measurable reality and how people have
contributed to the trends.''
Despite all of the experts in Kentucky saying that human-caused
climate change is real, despite the harms that State and local
officials foresee for Kentucky and the rest of the country, and despite
the easy steps being taken in Kentucky to comply with the President's
Clean Power Plan, the Senators from Kentucky have no plan--nothing.
They are part of the ``duck, deny, and disparage'' caucus.
And the Presidential candidates? There is almost nothing they won't
make up to try to jam a sick in the wheels of progress--imaginary wars
on coal when it is really coal's war on us, imaginary cost increases
that have been completely debunked by actual experience, imaginary
reliability failures when the real reliability problem is already
happening around us thanks to climate-driven extreme weather. On and on
they go. Yet they offer no alternative. Republicans simply have no plan
other than a shrug.
Why do they have no climate plan? Why do they present nothing by way
of limits to carbon pollution? Here is a clue: Look where the money
comes from. It comes from fossil fuel billionaires and fossil fuel
interests. Look at the beauty pageant hosted this weekend by the Koch
brothers in Dana Point, CA, where Republican Presidential candidates
went to display their wares to the big donors.
Do you think the Koch brothers want to hear about climate change?
Here is another clue: Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch
brothers' big-money political organization, has openly warned that any
client who crosses them on climate change will be ``at a severe
disadvantage''--subtle as a brick from an outfit threatening to spend
part of the $889 million total that the Koch brothers have budgeted for
this election. And yes, $889 million in one election is big money.
``For that kind of money, you could buy yourself a president,'' said
Mark McKinnon, a Republican and former George W. Bush strategist and a
good Texan. ``Oh, right,'' he continued, ``that's the point.''
Even the Donald called the Republicans out on this one, calling the
Koch brothers' California event a ``beg-a-thon,'' and saying: ``I wish
good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to
California to beg for money, etc., from the Koch Brothers.''
What a shame, to be a Presidential candidate willing to ignore your
home State universities, ignore your home State newspapers, ignore your
home State scientists--unless, of course, you are trying to fire them--
ignore your own home State farmers, foresters, and fishermen, all so
you can prance successfully at pageants for the big-money fossil fuel
interests that today control the Republican party. Duck, deny, and
disparage is what gets you through the beauty pageant. So duck, deny,
and disparage it is.
Eventually, the Republican Party is going to have to come up with a
plan on climate change. The American people are demanding it,
Independent voters, whom they will need in 2016, are demanding it. Even
Republican voters demand it, at least if they are young ones. And it
really matters that we get this right. It is the responsibility of the
United States of America, as a great nation, to set an example for
others to follow and not just sit back and wait for others to act.
Failing to act on climate change would both dim the torch we hold up
to the world and give other nations an excuse for delay. Failure, I
contend, when the stakes are so high becomes an argument for our
enemies against our very model of government. How do we explain the
influence of this special interest interfering with what must be done?
There will be no excuse when a reckoning comes to say: I really needed
the political support of those fossil fuel billionaires; so, sorry,
world.
President Abraham Lincoln, a native Kentuckian, warned us that ``the
dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.'' Before
the present gets too stormy, I urge my colleagues from Kentucky to heed
the experts in their home State, heed the local leaders in their home
State, and wake up to what needs to be done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). The majority whip.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I came to the floor expecting to hear my
friend and colleague talk about the bill that we are trying to get on,
which is the cyber security bill, but again, I hear him returning to
his favorite topic, which is climate change. I know he thinks that is
the most important subject that we could possibly discuss on the floor
of the Senate.
I will just say--and I certainly don't purport to be the expert he
is--that when you look at the President's proposed new rules with
regard to electricity generation, it looks to me like it is all pain
and no gain. The experts, perhaps that he has referred to, said that
CO2 reductions would actually be less than one-half of 1
percent, and, of course, energy prices on low-income individuals,
seniors, and people on fixed income would go up--people who have
already been suffering through flat wages and slow wage growth for a
long time. Of course, in this economy, which grew last year at the rate
of 2.2 percent, it would be a further wet blanket on economic growth
and job creation.
The Senator and I have worked together closely on a number of issues,
and I enjoy his company, his intellect, and his energy, but I would say
he is all wrong on this one. It sounds to me like so many of our
colleagues sound like Chicken Little: The sky is falling, the sky is
falling. Well, I don't think the facts justify it.
There are more important things we can do today and this week--for
example, to pass a cyber security bill.
Work in the Senate
But first, I want to take a minute to consider what we have done this
year under the new leadership. I know some like to focus on things that
we haven't done, but I assure my colleague that we are just getting
started, and there is a lot of important work that remains to be done.
Last November the American people elected a new majority in the Senate,
and I believe they elected us to represent their interests, to flesh
out legislation, and to get this Senate back to work. We were elected
to run the government and get things done; that is, of course, in a way
that is consistent with our principles.
I even heard some people suggest that working with folks on the other
side of the aisle in a bipartisan way is wrong, that we shouldn't do
anything with Democrats on the Republican side or that Democrats
shouldn't do anything with Republicans. That is a completely warped
perspective.
I think the better perspective is that expressed by one of our
conservative colleagues whom I asked when I got to the Senate: How is
it that you work so productively in an important Senate committee with
Senator Teddy Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate? This question
was asked to one of the most conservative Members of the U.S. Senate.
How can a conservative Senator and a liberal Senator work together
productively to the best interests of their constituents and the
American people? And he said: It is easy. It is the 80-20 rule. Let's
find the
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80 percent we can agree on, and the 20 percent we can't we will leave
for another fight on another day. I believe we have been applying for
the benefit of the American people the 80-20 rule, trying to find those
things we can agree on, and we have been making substantial progress.
Since January we have delivered real results, proving that our back-
to-work model was not just another empty campaign promise. Early this
summer we passed the important trade bill, legislation that will help
American goods get to global markets. Then we passed the Defense
authorization bill, a bill that provides our men and women in uniform
the resources and authority they need to keep us safe in an ever more
dangerous world. We passed an important education bill, the Every Child
Achieves Act, legislation that would actually do what my constituents
in Texas want us to do, which is send more of the authority from
Washington back into the hands of our parents, teachers, and local
communities and out of the Department of Education here in Washington,
DC. Just last week we passed the 3-year highway bill. Actually, it is a
6-year highway bill. We were able to come up with funding for the first
3 years and left open for us work to be done to come up with additional
funding working with our colleagues in the House. Transportation
infrastructure is something that supports our States and local
communities and allows them to prepare for the growing infrastructure
needs in the future while keeping commerce rolling, public safety
protected, and protecting our environment.
Of course, we all know that we are just getting started. We have been
here in the new Congress for 7 months. We are now on another important
bill requiring every Senator's full and immediate attention. The Cyber
Security Information Sharing Act is legislation that is long overdue.
If it sounds familiar, it is for a good reason because we actually
tried to pass this earlier this summer before it was blocked by our
friends on the other side of the aisle. This legislation would provide
for greater information sharing by people who have been subjected to
hacks and would address the rampant and growing cyber threats facing
our country.
One of the things that is so dangerous now is when a private company
or an individual is hacked, they can't actually share that information
through a central portal with other people to protect them if they
haven't yet been hacked themselves. Of course, there are all sorts of
concerns about liability and the like, but we need to address this to
help the Nation deter future cyber attacks and to help the public and
private sector act more nimbly and effectively when attacks are
detected.
As I said, we had a chance to vote on this in June as an amendment to
the Defense authorization bill. Unfortunately, this was about the time
that some on the other side--I think most notably the next Democratic
leader--announced something they called the filibuster summer. These
are not exactly encouraging words when it comes to trying to work
together to get things done. In spite of the real and frightening
threats all around us, our Democratic friends filibustered that cyber
security bill in June. We know what happened soon thereafter. The need
for real cyber security legislation became even more apparent.
Many of us recall that in June there was an initial disclosure that
hackers had accessed sensitive background information used for security
clearance purposes at the Office of Personnel Management. The estimate
in June was that about 4 million people were affected--their personal
information. Then on July 9, after our Democratic friends filibustered
the cyber security bill on the Defense authorization bill, there was a
second report. This time that report informed us that more than 21
million people's private, secure information had been accessed. This
information, illegally accessed, includes passport information, which
would show anywhere and everywhere you have traveled; Social Security
numbers, which are portals to all sorts of secure financial
information; private information, background details, extensive
information from previous places of residence. You can imagine. On a
form you fill out in order to get a security clearance, you literally
have to give your whole life history. That is the kind of sensitive
information that was acquired on 21 million people as announced on July
9. Of course, it also provides the names of contact information, close
friends, and family members.
While many of these reports indicate that China, one of the worst
offenders along with Russia when it comes to malicious cyber attacks--
many reports indicate China was responsible. The Obama administration
for some reason has been unwilling to acknowledge that or tell us who
attacked and accessed 21 million sensitive pieces of information. Of
course, they have done nothing to respond to this growing threat of
cyber attacks.
The Office of Personnel Management was not the only government agency
affected. In early June, it was also reported that the Internal Revenue
Service had similar problems and that data from more than 100,000
taxpayers had been stolen--again, the kind of information that if you
were to disclose it about private taxpayers, it would be a felony. It
would be a criminal offense. This is sensitive information that has now
been stolen for 100,000 taxpayers. This breach included access to past
tax returns, sensitive information such as Social Security numbers,
addresses, birthdays--all stolen and potentially in the hands of
criminals. It is exactly the kind of information that identity thieves
want in order to pretend they are somebody they are not in order to
steal your money.
Clearly, we don't have time to waste when it comes to cyber security
legislation. I would point out that the Democratic leader himself,
someone who is quick to dismiss the earlier vote when we tried to do
this in the context of the Defense authorization bill in June, has said
that he is committed to getting cyber legislation done. Well, I would
ask: If not now, when?
This bipartisan legislation that passed the Intelligence Committee in
the Senate by a margin of 14 to 1 provides us another opportunity this
week. With cyber threats so clearly in evidence all around us, we
should act quickly to implement a solution. I would encourage all of
our colleagues to try to find that 80-20 solution on this bill.
No one is claiming it is perfect. I already talked to the committee
chairmen in the House who say they have some different views, but that
is customary around here. Once the Senate passes the bill, it can be
reconciled with the differences in the House bill in a conference
committee.
Surely we all agree that this type of legislation and the protection
it provides is desperately needed. As the vote in July suggests, this
is a bill in and of itself that will be the product of a functioning
bipartisan Senate. Let's continue our progress for the American people.
I would add, by way of closing, that more than 70 pieces of
legislation have passed the Senate since January 1, and 30 of those
have been signed into law. More than 160 bills have been reported out
of committee. That is what a functioning Senate looks like.
As I said before and I will say again, even our colleagues who are in
the minority must enjoy getting to do what they were elected to do,
which is to come here and cast a vote on behalf of their constituents
on important issues that the Senate is addressing. I hope we can get
this legislation passed this week.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Planned Parenthood
Mr. PETERS. Madam President, yesterday Republicans in the Senate put
forward legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, this
bill was a clear partisan attack on access to health care for women,
and especially women in rural and underserved areas.
One in five American women have relied on Planned Parenthood health
centers at some point in their lifetime. Often, Planned Parenthood is
the woman's only option for basic, preventive health care, including
prenatal care, physicals, and cancer screenings.
For example, take Mary, a 20-year-old student in my home State of
Michigan, who went through her campus health center when she found a
lump on her breast. They told her it was nothing and not to worry. When
she visited Planned Parenthood a year
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later for an unrelated matter, the clinician expressed concern that the
lump was still there. Through Planned Parenthood she got referred to a
program for low-income women with breast cancer, and she received the
treatment that she needed. Today, Mary is thankfully cancer free.
Planned Parenthood provides upward of a half million breast cancer
exams every year and can save the lives of women just like Mary across
the Nation.
Planned Parenthood also provides about 400,000 potentially lifesaving
cervical cancer screenings annually. Katie, another young woman from
Michigan, went in for her annual exam at a Michigan Planned Parenthood
center. Her exam revealed that she had cervical cancer, and Planned
Parenthood helped her weigh options to cover the biopsy and subsequent
surgery. Today she, too, is thankfully cancer free.
The doctors and nurses at these facilities provide affordable,
potentially lifesaving health care to 2.7 million people per year.
Michigan has 21 Planned Parenthood health centers, 11 of which are
located in rural or medically underserved areas. These numbers mirror
national numbers, with over half of their 700 health care centers
located in areas with limited access to medical care. Federal funding
for Planned Parenthood supports access to treatment at these health
centers for women like Mary and Katie in States all across this
country.
Let's be clear. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood or any other
organization is not used for abortion. Let me say this again because it
is a very important fact. Federal funding for Planned Parenthood or any
other organization is not used for abortion. This has been settled
Federal law for decades.
Despite this fact, we have seen the adoption of extreme measures that
restrict a woman's fundamental right to make her own decisions about
her reproductive health, including in Michigan. A woman should have
access to reproductive health services and the freedom to make her own
decisions about her health care, and I will fight to protect this right
each and every day that I serve here in the U.S. Senate.
Yesterday evening I voted to stop the Senate from moving forward with
legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. This bill would have
jeopardized access to health care for 2.7 million men and women who
rely on Planned Parenthood for their health care needs. While I am
pleased that the Senate did not move forward with the bill, it is clear
that we have not seen the end of these types of partisan attacks on
Planned Parenthood.
I urge my colleagues to move away from efforts to restrict access to
health care and, instead, focus on crafting bipartisan agreements to
fund our government, provide certainty to American employers and
workers, support small businesses, and grow our middle class.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Hatch pertaining to the introduction of S. 1922,
S. 1923, and S. 1929 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements
on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. HATCH. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Clean Power Plan
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
commending President Obama for putting forth his Clean Power Plan.
Theodore Roosevelt said:
Of all the questions which can come before this nation,
short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great
war, there is none which compares in importance with the
great central task of leaving this land even a better land
for our descendents than it is for us.
I think it captured very well the challenge we face with carbon
pollution and global warming because we are facing that great central
task of leaving this land better for our descendents than it is for us.
We are facing a situation in which there is an accelerating quantity
of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere, and it is having a
profound impact on, basically, the temperature of our planet. If we
simply look at the carbon pollution itself, scientists have said that
we are in trouble if it rises over 350 parts per million. Well, here we
are with pollution that last year hit 400 parts per million. So we are
above the danger zone. We are going deeper into the danger zone--let me
put it that way--and that is not where we need to be.
Furthermore, we are accelerating the rate at which we are polluting
the planet with carbon dioxide. It was just a few decades ago that the
rate of carbon pollution was increasing by about 1 part per million per
year, and now it is increasing by something closer to 2 parts per
million per year. So where we need to be decreasing the overall
pollution, bringing it down, we are increasing it and increasing the
rate at which we are polluting, and that is a very bad place for
humankind to be on this planet.
There is incontrovertible evidence of how quickly the planet is
warming. We have, by scientific record--14 of the warmest 15 years in
recorded history have occurred in the last 15 years. So 14 of the 15
warmest years over the centuries of measurement have all occurred in
the last 15 years. That is not just one little warm spell on some
little piece of land; that is a global temperature.
As carbon pollution is increasing, we see the global temperature
increasing, and it is reverberating all across the planet. We see
dramatic changes in the Arctic. The rate of warming in the Arctic is
roughly four times the rate of warming in more moderate latitudes. So
we are seeing an incredible decrease in the ice, huge changes that are
coming so quickly, it is very hard for animals to adapt. Of course,
people are well aware of the crisis the polar bears are facing, but
that is just one particular visible species as an indicator of the
challenges that are going on.
We are seeing the feedback mechanisms in the polar zone. We are
seeing the open waters where ice is not reflecting the sunlight back
up. More water is absorbing more sunlight, and that is creating an
accelerated heating impact. We are seeing that as thawing occurs in the
permafrost, we have these situations with what are called drunken
forests, where the trees that all stood straight are now staggering in
one direction or the other as they lean slightly, as the ground
underneath them that was frozen is melting. As it starts to melt, it
will start to release methane gas, which is a very potent global
warming gas. So that is another feedback mechanism we should all be
concerned about.
Let's take my home State of Oregon, and I think one could do this
type of checkup, if you will, on any State in the Union. In my home
State, we had a very severe series of droughts in the Klamath Basin,
which is a major agricultural basin. We have had the three worst ever
droughts in a period of 15 years. It corresponds with the period of the
warmest years on planet Earth in recorded history. And that has a huge
impact on our farming industry. So if you care about farmers, you
should care about global warming.
Then we had a big challenge with our forests because as these summers
are becoming dryer and as the types of storms we have are producing
more lightning strikes, we are having a lot more forest fires. The fire
season is getting longer and more devastating. Far more acres are being
burned. Over several decades, the fire season has increased by several
weeks in length, and the amount of acres burning each summer, on
average, is increasing. So if
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you care about timber, if you care about forests, then you should care
about global warming.
Another impact of this changing pattern is that we are getting very
little snowfall in the Cascades. Just as Glacier Park is now becoming
the park of disappearing glaciers--you have to look very hard to find
any glaciers left in Glacier Park--the Cascades also--a different
mountain range--are losing their snowpack. In fact, we have virtually
no snowpack now feeding the mountain streams that come down. So if you
are a fisherman, you are looking at smaller and warmer streams, which
is very unhealthy for fish.
That is not all. Right now we have sockeye coming up the Columbia
River and getting to the Snake River, and they are dying because the
temperature of the river is too warm for them to continue upriver to
spawn. Some estimates that I have seen in the last week are that as
many as 80 percent of the sockeye now returning are dying in the
Columbia River before they make it to the Snake River. So if you care
about fishing, you should care about global warming.
Then we look at our coastal shellfish and we discover that we have a
significant problem with our oysters. Oregon produces a lot of oyster
seed. Those are the baby oysters that get distributed to oyster
fishermen. There is a similar process going on in Washington State at
another hatchery. The challenge for the hatcheries is that the water
that is pumped out of the ocean to produce the baby oysters, get them
going, is becoming too acidic. This also is about global warming
because the higher rates of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are being
absorbed by the ocean, and that creates carbonic acid. It has been
enough that there is a 30-percent increase in the acidity of the ocean,
and that is causing a big problem with baby oysters as far as forming
shells. So if you care about the seafood industry, you should care
about global warming.
When we talk about the issue of global warming, we are not talking
about computer models and things that are 50 years into the future; we
are talking about real-life effects seen on the ground right now,
things that are having a big impact on our seafood, a big impact on our
fishing, a big impact on our farming, and a big impact on our forestry.
If you care about rural America's resource-driven economies across this
country, you should care about global warming.
As a nation, it is incumbent on us to take on this challenge. We are
the first generation--as has been said by others--to feel the impact of
global warming and the last generation that can do something about it.
It is incumbent on us, the Senators in this Chamber, the U.S. Senate,
to take on this issue. It is incumbent on the Presidents and the
executive teams they put together to take this on in partnership with
the rest of the world because this is absolutely a tragedy of the
commons.
Very clearly, if the United States takes some action to reduce our
carbon dioxide or to reduce our methane production, it will have a
modest impact but not enough. Nations across the planet have to act,
and they will act more or less as a community because very few nations
are going to say they will act alone knowing they won't have a big
enough impact unless nations join together. So it is up to our
leadership role in the world that we act actively, aggressively, and
reach out with other nations to partner.
Earlier this year there was an agreement struck with China. China is
going to produce as much renewable energy from electricity by 2030 as
all the electricity we currently produce in the United States. I am not
just talking about our renewable energy. If you take the U.S. renewable
energy, our nuclear energy, our energy produced from gas-fired plants,
our electricity produced from coal-fired plants, and you add it all
together, that is the amount of electricity China is going to produce
with just renewable energy between now and 2030. They are taking on a
massive commitment to renewable energy. They wouldn't be doing it if
the United States wasn't also responding aggressively. India is
starting to become interested in doing their share, seeing that other
nations are stepping up.
The United States should never be sitting on its hands and saying: We
will wait for everybody else to act--not when there is an issue that
threatens the success of the next generation of humans on this planet
and the generation after and the generation after.
I said earlier that not only are we the first generation to feel the
impact of global warming, but we are the last generation that can do
something about it. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that the
further you get into global warming, the further you get into carbon
pollution, methane pollution, and more feedback mechanisms, the harder
it is to stop. There is momentum that builds behind the warming of the
planet. It becomes much harder to take it on. That is why we need to
act decisively now.
So the Clean Power Plan the President launched, put forward
yesterday, is responding to the moral demand of this generation to take
on carbon pollution. It is doing so in a most cost-effective fashion, a
fashion that will create jobs in the United States, a fashion that will
reduce deaths in the United States.
Let me give an example of the health benefits. It will avoid up to
3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in
children, and prevent 300,000 missed workdays and schooldays. That is
incredible. It will save the average family nearly $85 in their annual
energy bill by the year 2030. So that is powerful.
In addition, we are going to create jobs in this fashion. It has the
tremendous impact of putting people to work--tens of thousands to work,
driving new investments in cleaner, more modern, and efficient
renewable energy technologies.
I close by turning back to President Theodore Roosevelt, who said
there is no more important mission than ``leaving this land even a
better land for our descendants than it is for us.''
There are individuals who will come to this floor and they will say:
Let's act someday but not now. Let's do it when it will not have an
impact on jobs. Well, this will actually create jobs right now. Let's
do it when it will cost less. Well, it never costs less if the problem
gets bigger. It costs less to invest now. Let's pass it on to the next
generation. They will solve it. That is morally irresponsible.
Every State is feeling the direct impact. Every rural community,
timber community, fishing community, shellfish community, and farming
community is feeling the impact today of our failure to address this
yesterday. Our children, our children's children, and our children's
children's children are counting on us in the Senate to act
aggressively, to support a strong plan to take on carbon pollution--a
strong Clean Power Plan. So let's do so.
I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business for 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Energy Policy
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I come from an energy State--Oklahoma.
We truly do all of the above. We have coal, oil, gas, wind, solar,
hydro, geothermal, and we are just missing nuclear. Quite frankly, we
probably would have nuclear if the regulations weren't so incredibly
high and so incredibly expensive to do. In my State and in my region,
we want diverse, inexpensive, healthy, plentiful, and reliable energy.
We don't think that should be such a high goal that it is only limited
to Oklahoma. Quite frankly, I think just about every area of the
country wants that.
In fact, that used to be a bipartisan goal. It used to be that
Democrats also supported ``all of the above'' energy. At some point,
they shifted to the ways of Solyndra and determined if you want to be
in that party, you have to commit to a certain environmental orthodoxy.
It makes it a tougher conversation to have about real energy policy
based around facts.
It is another day. It seems to be another day for the EPA to release
massive new regulations. People wonder why their paycheck doesn't go as
far nowadays, why food costs more, why products cost more, and why
energy costs more. I can tell you why. It is this ever-growing
regulation on the basic cost of energy. It changes the cost of
everything.
The EPA stated they are not responsible for determining the benefits
of
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climate change, just that it would happen. As they put out their new
Clean Power Plan, they said they didn't have to actually list or abide
by the cost. They did determine the cost anyway--$8.4 billion a year to
the American consumer; $8.4 billion on top of the energy regulations
that already exist.
They also said they weren't responsible for having to be able to run
through the actual effects on climate change, they just said it is
happening and so we need to do something. In fact, it has been
interesting for me to hear so many of my colleagues in the past 24
hours say: Republicans, put out your plan. We are doing something. You
need to put out a plan to show you are doing something as well.
We ran the numbers on it and tried to evaluate it through the EPA
models and looked for somewhere where someone who ran the EPA model
would note how much change there would be in the environment if this
plan is fully implemented. The model came back that it would slow the
rise of the sea 0.3 millimeters once this is fully implemented--0.3
millimeters of sea change difference. To give an example, the head of
this pen is 0.7 millimeters. So half the head of this pen is what we
are going to save in sea level change if we fully implement this plan.
This seems to be about fear--severe weather, imminent danger. If you
don't change everything in your life to the way we think you should
live your life, the whole Earth is going to fall into chaos and ruin.
We need to have an energy debate on this floor. I completely agree.
We even need to have a climate debate on this floor, but it doesn't
need to be out of fear. It needs to be about the facts--what really
needs to happen.
Let's start with some basic questions about energy policy and about
energy future: What will it take to have reliable energy for the United
States during a summer heat wave so we don't have rolling blackouts and
senior adults suffering from heatstroke during an August afternoon?
What will it take to protect our grid so that doesn't occur? What
will it take to have reliable energy for the hardest nights of winter
to make sure Americans are protected in those coldest nights so their
power doesn't go out because of rolling blackouts? What energy sources
are plentiful in the United States and what energy sources leave us
vulnerable to international pressures? What energy sources do we have
that we should export to gain economic benefits and geopolitical power
for the United States? What energy sources are economical so we can
attract manufacturing to the United States to create more jobs for
America? How can we ensure that the energy we use has the least amount
of health risks so we can have a healthy nation and a healthy world?
How about this question. What is the best way to keep energy diversity
and distribution to protect our economy from rapid price swings or
localized acts of terrorism?
That is how you begin to set an energy policy, which is to ask some
general questions and then start answering some of those and asking,
What is the best way to accomplish that? Instead, our energy policy is
being run by environmental policy and fear of what could possibly
happen in the future or protecting ourselves from 0.3 millimeters of
sea rise.
Over the past 10 years, CO2 emissions have drastically
been reduced. Since 2005, CO2 emissions from electric
generation has been reduced by 364 million metric tons to 2,051 metric
tons. The future goal, by the way, in this new Clean Power Plan is to
have 788 metric tons of reduction from 2005, but we are already 364
metric tons there because there has already been a pretty dramatic
reduction, much of that from a very slow economy--so 424 more metric
tons by 2030. That would mean, even with an ever-increasing population,
increasing energy needs, and hopefully a recovering economy, we need to
cut much more.
Let me try to set this in context. I am going to throw around some
numbers for a while, but I think we as a body can handle it. Let me
give some perspective on where things are going on this.
The last time the United States emitted this target amount for
CO2 that has now been laid out as the targeted amount was in
1985, with 237 million people. If you want a little bit of throwback
time, that is when Duran Duran, Huey Lewis, and the Commodores had all
the big hits. That is when there were no personal computers or cell
phones or iPads, cloud computing had never even been discussed, and
there weren't all the electric devices we have now. We had 237 million
people at the time.
The target is to get to that same amount of CO2 usage, but
we will have 363 million people at the time. That is the estimate from
the Census Bureau. So the plan is to have 126 million more people emit
less carbon and use less electricity. That sounds like an interesting
plan. If you want the real number by percentage, let me break that down
for you. In 1985, every 1 million people used 6.86 metric tons of
CO2--6.86 metric for every 1 million people. Now, in 2015,
every 1 million people use 6.38 metric tons of CO2.
That means, in the past 30 years, we have reduced for each 1 million
people about half a ton of CO2 because of energy
efficiencies, because of the changes in the way we do energy. We do it
much cleaner now than we did it in the 1970s and 1980s. Good for us. We
achieved a lot in 1985--a lot of changes--but we have half a ton less
CO2 per 1 million people.
What the administration is proposing in their plan is that for every
1 million people in the United States in 2030, we would use 4.48
million tons of CO2. That means, in the last 30 years, with
the energy efficiency movement, with everything that has been done,
with the remarkable shift in renewables, we have gained half a ton. The
administration wants us now to get 2 tons of additional amount in the
next 15 years.
Do you understand why a lot of people say this is just not rational?
You can't get to an acceleration that fast with that big a goal. Here
is what happens, though. I look at the facts and the requirements and
immediately I am called a Neanderthal who just wants dirty air and
dirty water. Actually, I have children, too, and I like clean air and
clean water, but facts are very stubborn things.
A government mandate doesn't create reality. Remember Jimmy Carter in
1979? He declared his policies would create an energy path so that by
the year 2000, 20 percent of America's energy would be produced by
solar power--20 percent by the year 2000. How are we doing with that?
Less than 2 percent of our energy in 2015 is produced by solar power.
Mandates don't create realities. If we drastically change all our
electric generation to wind, solar, nuclear, and some natural gas, we
will hit our annual number, but the amount of decrease per year will
amount to approximately what China puts out in 1 month. You see, they
are talking about reducing per year about 450-or-some metric tons of
CO2 that America would put out. China emits 800 metric tons
per month. This is why so many people say this is a very expensive goal
for America that will have no effect on the global reality.
Just to add a dose of cold water to the reality, it usually takes
more than 10 years for a powerplant to even get a permit and start the
construction because the Department of Energy, FERC, and EPA
restrictions are so high. So this plan that in the next 15 years we are
going to have all this rollout, we can't even get through the
permitting time in that time period.
I haven't even touched on the legal issues of the new mandates of the
administration. They haven't been in front of the American people or in
front of the Congress. The existing law--the Clean Air Act--does not
allow EPA to add another layer of regulations on top of the existing
regulations. That is clear in the law. You cannot do that. Even the
former Sierra Club general counsel, David Bookbinder, found this new
proposal is based on what he called a ``legally dubious ground.''
As a nation, we don't need more pie-in-the-sky energy ideas. We need
real solutions and a right direction that will benefit the United
States and the world. We lead the world in power and ideas. We should
set high goals. But our goals should help us as a nation, not hurt us.
Every American pays more at the pump right now because of the
increasing regulations in the ethanol mandates. Every American is
paying more for gasoline than we should. Every American is paying more
for electricity than we should because of
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the cost of all these mandates. People ask me all the time why their
dollars don't go as far; the regulations are the reason.
Many people want to talk about our energy future--great, so do I. But
I also want to talk about our energy present. The goal of a quarter of
America's electricity produced by renewables is a good goal. It is a
huge jump. We are just at around 5 percent right now in renewables. But
that will still leave us--even if that goal is accomplished--with 75
percent of our energy coming from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
That is base power. It is not effective at night or on hot still days
in the summer when the wind doesn't blow. It is base power.
Solar is more efficient than ever. Let's keep going. It is a good
thing. I am glad we are able to harness some of that. It takes a
massive amount of acreage. There is a new solar facility that just came
into Oklahoma. Great, we are glad to have it. It has 15 acres of
solar--15 acres of panels. It powers two neighborhoods--two
neighborhoods--and it takes 15 acres to get that accomplished.
Windmills are much more efficient right now than they have ever been.
In fact, they are efficient enough that we should probably stop
subsidizing them. They are not a startup anymore. We started
subsidizing utility-grade windmills more than 20 years ago, saying
someday this thing is going to be efficient enough that it is going to
work. I think we are already there. In fact, there are more than 48,000
utility-scale wind turbines in the country right now--48,000 windmills
in the country right now. To give some perspective, there are 36,000
McDonald's in the world. We have 48,000 windmills. There are 36,000
McDonald's in the world. I don't exactly think the windmill thing is a
startup anymore. I think maybe that is fairly well established. So
maybe the need for the subsidy is not there.
Geothermal is a great energy source. We have yet to tap the full
potential for heating and cooling our homes and businesses. But we
still need natural gas, oil, coal, and nuclear to provide power for the
foreseeable future. Even the Obama administration lays out over the
next 30 years what they anticipate energy use will be, and they still
anticipate we are going to need gas, coal, oil, basic base power.
So let's do it the cleanest way we can, the most efficient way we can
so the consumer is not punished for using energy. We should keep
innovating for the future, but we should make rational choices on
energy.
Let me give an example of an irrational choice. Can I do that? Here
is an example of an irrational energy choice: the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Now, I know everyone is going to say we are going to talk about
Keystone again. This is day 2,510 of a permit request to build a
pipeline. Today is day 2,510 of a permit request sitting on the
President's desk for a pipeline. Let me give an example.
All of these black lines that we see here are crude oil pipelines in
the United States currently there. This is how many thousands of miles?
More than 60,000 miles in the United States of crude oil pipeline--
60,000. It is another pipeline. Why does it take 2,510 days to be able
to make a decision on this? Oh, it is an international pipeline. That
is right. Well, let me add something to it. We have 19 international
pipelines currently running--19 of them. This would be No. 20. This is
not something new and radical. We are already buying a significant
amount of Canadian oil. That oil is coming from right up here. Look at
all of these pipelines already coming from the same spot. Look at that,
they cross the border, and it has been safe and reliable. This has not
been a big challenge for us.
That oil is not just being blocked from Canada. Many people think
that if we don't put in a pipeline, it won't come. Actually, it is
coming by rail already. It is already moving into the country. This is
just cleaner and more efficient to be able to move it that way. Canada
is discussing taking a pipeline and bringing it all the way over here,
dropping it off and bringing it to the coast, and bringing it by ship
over to the U.S. gulf coast.
Does someone think that is more efficient than bringing a pipeline
in? Now, it is not more efficient by rail. It is not more efficient by
this way. If we are going to bring it in and Canada is going to sell
it, why don't we have an international pipeline--that No. 20, right
there--and be able to bring it in?
Now, I have heard multiple people say it is because of the aquifer in
Nebraska. Let me try to discuss this because I have heard this over and
over: We can't run pipelines because of the aquifer in Nebraska.
Here is the aquifer that is being discussed all in the purple here.
Every line that we see is an existing pipeline running through that
aquifer. This tiny blue line is the proposed Keystone that is to go
right through there as well.
They make these comments: We can't run it through the aquifer
because, oh, my gosh, we can't run a pipeline there. That is how many
we already have in that spot. This is not radical. This is not
different.
In fact, let me give one more image. This is the number of pipelines
that we have in America right now of all types. This is both natural
gas and crude and all kinds of petroleum products that move through the
United States all the time--every single one of those lines. This is
irrational energy policy that is knee-jerk that is happening. To say
that we can't add one more pipeline because somehow that would go over
the top ignores the reality of what we already have in the United
States.
Moving energy by pipeline is clean and efficient. It is also a
rational way to do it. We have to move from fear-based energy policy to
fact-based energy policy--to look not only at our energy future but
what may happen in the decades to come. I hope my car one day runs on a
pinwheel on the hood ornament. That would be great. But that doesn't
happen right now. My car still runs on gas. So does everyone else's
here. And for every single person here that gets on an airplane every
week, it doesn't run on water. It still runs on energy that we pull out
of the ground.
So for the foreseeable future we need to deal with the facts. Stop
hurting consumers for some proposed future hope of what may happen.
Let's do it clean. Let's do it innovative. But let's not hurt consumers
in the process.
People want to know where their money has gone. It is being spent
away on regulations. Let's get to work on an energy plan.
I am glad to have this conversation, but this should not be a
conversation in the hallways of the EPA. This should be a conversation
in this room to determine where energy policies go.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
10 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Economic Growth
Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about seizing the
opportunity to drive real economic growth right now. But first, I wish
to give a little context by referencing our great Nation's desperate
fiscal condition.
Decades of overspending by both parties and mismanagement by both
parties have led to a crushing $18 trillion of Federal debt. Even more
sobering to me is the upcoming over $100 trillion of future unfunded
liabilities coming at us like a freight train. We have a fiscal crisis
in this country. Everybody can see it. People back home can feel it. As
an outsider, my role is to bring a new sense of urgency to Washington
to help solve this fiscal crisis.
While I am encouraged by the work my colleagues on the Budget
Committee completed this year--we completed a balanced budget for the
first time since 2001--it was merely a good first step in the right
direction. But we have a lot of heavy lifting to do. We must act right
now to get our fiscal house in order before it is too late.
Yes, we must cut unnecessary spending. Yes, there are redundant
agencies and programs that should be eliminated. And yes, we do need to
have a national dialogue on how we keep the commitments that were made
to our seniors, while saving those important programs for future
generations. However, discretionary spending cuts and long-term reforms
to mandatory programs alone will not solve this problem. The numbers
just simply don't add up to solve this crisis. Economic growth is
really the only answer.
Economic growth supports good-paying jobs across the entire country,
and economic growth eventually means
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more revenue for the Federal Government without raising taxes. If we
are ever going to get out of the hole that Washington has dug for our
country, we are going to have to grow our way out of it economically.
One of the biggest opportunities to infuse energy and investment into
our economy right now is before us as I speak, just waiting for us to
act on it.
There are approximately $2.1 trillion in corporate profits of
American multinational companies sitting abroad trapped by our archaic
tax laws. Imagine if we could lure just a portion of that back in terms
of capital investment in our economy. The multiplier effect alone would
be incredible as it rippled its way throughout our domestic economy.
In recent weeks we have heard a lot of talk about how we in
Washington can get those overseas earnings repatriated back into the
United States economy. For me, the solution is quite simple. We simply
eliminate the barrier to repatriation by completely eliminating the tax
on repatriation.
My approach isn't just based on my business career. It is not just
based on my desire to give our economy a much-needed shot in the arm.
Completely eliminating this tax on repatriation is an absolute
necessity for global competitiveness and to create a level playing
field with the rest of the world.
I rarely compare other countries to the United States for simple
reasons. No. 1, we have an 18 trillion economy. No. 2, we are the
innovator in the world. No. 3, we have the rule of law. No. 4, we have
really a very dynamic and diverse economy. Very few countries compare.
But this is one time where a comparison is warranted because it is
about how we compete for economic development and jobs with the rest of
the world.
A company headquartered in the United States not only has to pay
taxes in every single country in which it does business, but when it
elects to bring back the remaining profits from abroad, that
corporation is forced to pay an additional tax--a repatriation tax.
This doesn't happen if the corporation is based in Canada, France,
Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan or, indeed, the remainder
of the 39 OECD countries. In fact, there is only one country on the
list of 39 OECD countries that has a repatriation tax--the United
States. The United Kingdom actually eliminated their repatriation tax
in 2009, and over the last decade they have reduced their corporate tax
rate from 28 percent to 18 percent.
We continue to see companies leave the United States because they can
go pretty much anywhere else and benefit from much lower tax rates than
here in America. We have seen a rash of those inversions over the last
few years, and it is not going to stop until we deal with the
underlying problem; that is, our corporate tax rate is not competitive
with the rest of the world. The repatriation tax is a derivative of
that primary causal problem.
What I am talking about today is simply the elimination of the
repatriation tax. But sooner or later, we have to deal with the fact
that our corporate tax rate is simply not competitive. The question
simply before us is, Do we want multinational companies--in many cases
iconic American brands--to continue to call the United States home or
not?
As a former CEO of a large branded company that manufactured in
dozens of countries and sold in dozens more, I have firsthand
experience, and I can tell you that, based on that experience, we are
losing our competitive advantage with the rest of the world. In fact, I
see us now at a growing disadvantage for our American companies to
compete with companies in other countries.
The hostile regulatory environment the current administration has
created is killing American jobs, and our outdated tax system is
forcing them to expand abroad. Executive orders and regulatory mandates
have created a punitive atmosphere in which to try to grow businesses
or start businesses here in the United States. Unfortunately, in
typical Washington fashion, the dialogue on repatriation is focused on
how to get a short-term solution--a short-term Federal tax increase--
instead of using repatriation as a tool to grow the economy and make us
more competitive. In my estimation, this kind of thinking is dead wrong
and another example of how we got in this mess in the first price.
We should not be looking at repatriation as a way to pay for the
highway trust fund or any other short-term solution to Washington's
spending problems, for that matter. That kind of shortsighted thinking
will only make our fiscal situation worse. It will only cause more
American companies to look for a new home.
Repatriation is a big idea with a big potential impact for our
economy. If we encourage repatriation the right way, it means sustained
growth for our economy. It means more American jobs and innovation.
Ultimately, it means an organic increase in Federal tax revenue based
on pure economic growth. This growth can allow us to deal with our
economic and fiscal priorities and finally develop a long-term plan to
begin to pay down our overburdened debt.
Before I conclude, I have one final thought. I hope this thought will
compel my colleagues to act with a sense of urgency on this issue and
others that impact our economy. We actually have fewer people working
than at any time in the last 30 years. When I go back home, the number
one question that is put before me is: How can I get my hours up? How
can I get more work?
People back home know we have a crisis. It is not just bureaucrats in
Washington looking for a few more tax dollars so we can make government
bigger. This is about putting people back to work--helping us compete
against the growing economies of China, India, Russia, and other rivals
in today's world.
The approval rating of Congress today is somewhere in the mid-single
digits, and that is only because our mothers voted. I believe it is
because this town's priorities are not aligned with those of the people
who sent us here for their bidding. Folks back home know that
shortsighted, short-term solutions to the big problems are how
Washington got in this mess in the first place.
Today we can continue to argue about temporary ways to pay for trust
funds that are going bankrupt every few weeks, or we can simply finally
get serious about solving this systemic problem before we have to hand
it to our children and our children's children. I know the American
people expect the latter. In fact, they are demanding it. That can
happen, but we must make real tax reforms right now that will set us on
a new course for economic growth and opportunity for generations to
come. The time for serious debate about repatriation has come.
We have an opportunity. I implore my colleagues in the Senate to
debate this earnestly, and let's move on this right now and put people
back to work and make America more competitive for our children and our
children's children.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
ARENA Act
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, yesterday President Obama and his
Environmental Protection Agency announced their final clean power grab,
continuing the economic assault on energy-producing States like West
Virginia.
Yesterday, Alpha Natural Resources, one of the Nation's largest coal
producers, filed for bankruptcy. As of the end of 2014, Alpha had 4,870
employees at 33 active mines and 13 prep plants in West Virginia. Alpha
follows Patriot Coal, Jim Walter Resources, and James River mining--all
of which have filed bankruptcy since 2014.
According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, coal mining
employment has dropped from 143,437 in 2011 to 98,310 in the first
quarter of this year. That represents a 31-percent drop over the last 4
years.
Earlier this year when Murray Energy announced hundreds of layoffs in
northern West Virginia, the Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper reported
that the impact would mean almost $62 million in annual income lost
wages for Ohio Valley residents. Other communities have also been hard
hit. Nicholas County--a small county in my State--was forced to lay off
sheriff's deputies because they could no longer pay their county
commitments because of a decline in coal severance revenues.
Now, 17 coal units in West Virginia have retired due, at least in
part, to
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EPA policies. The electricity produced by these units is enough to
power 2.7 million homes. Put another way, the units that have already
closed in West Virginia would generate enough electricity to power the
entire State of Hawaii.
These are not the same old talking points, as the administrator of
the EPA and the President said. These are not stale. This is not
motivated by special interests. These are real Americans, real jobs,
real families, and real communities that have been negatively impacted
by this administration's overreaching regulations. These are people
like Tammy Rowan of Coalton, WV, who wrote me a letter:
My whole family has concerns with the regulations that seem
to be out of control. EPA, government officials, and the
president are putting families out of work.
Or Patrick Sparks in Warriormine, WV, who said:
I know the EPA has been trying to force strict regulations
on coal. It's hurting a lot of people, not just here in West
Virginia, but a lot of businesses are suffering from it.
And Theresa Simmons of Tridelphia, WV, whose family has worked in
coal mines for generations, wrote:
My husband was able to provide for our family with just his
income. We were able to donate money to local charities and
help needy families around the holidays. Now that is going to
be my family, looking for donations.
Put simply, yesterday's announcement will make an already bleak
situation in our State much worse. Working families across the Nation
woke up to the sad news that their jobs just don't count. Much has been
said about the open process that led to this final rule. In fact, West
Virginia, which is one of the States most deeply affected by this
regulation, was not even visited by the EPA after I and others extended
many invitations. Instead, they went to cities like Chicago, Boston,
and San Francisco. Talk about special interests. Talk about being bold.
The administration's final clean power grab will force States away
from affordable, reliable energy toward expensive, intermittent power
sources, many of which are heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. It
proposes benchmarks that are more stringent and less attainable.
In West Virginia, our emissions rate under the proposed rule was to
drop 20 percent. On Monday, the final rule requires our rate to drop by
37 percent--a drop that is almost twice as severe. There is no way for
West Virginia to comply with this rule without significant cuts to our
coal production, coal jobs, and coal use.
According to the EPA's own calculations, the final rule is worse for
coal than the proposed rule. Coal's share of electric generation will
go to 27 percent by 2030 under this rule--as compared to 39 percent,
which we currently have or did have in 2014.
If this misguided final rule is ever implemented, pain will be felt
by all Americans with fewer job opportunities, higher power bills, and
less reliable electricity. Studies of the proposed rule projected that
the Clean Power Plan will increase electricity prices in a State like
mine 12 to 16 percent.
What does this mean for American jobs? A recent study by the National
Rural Electric Cooperative Association found that a 10 percent increase
in electricity prices can mean as much as 1.2 million jobs lost.
Roughly one-half million of these job losses will be in rural
communities like those in West Virginia. Put simply, affordable energy
matters. It especially matters to those who the administration
incorrectly says will benefit the most from this rule, which is the low
and moderate income.
More than half of West Virginia's households take home an average of
less than $1,900 per month and already spend 17 percent of their income
on energy. These families are especially vulnerable to the
administration's clean power grab. While States are given additional
time to comply under the final rule, it does not change the fact that
the EPA is picking winners and losers in the energy economy. The losers
will be the American families who rely on affordable and reliable
energy. We can and we should innovate for the future but not with a
sledgehammer bearing down on us. Thankfully there are several
legislative options that Congress can pursue to challenge this rule.
Tomorrow the EPW Committee will be taking up my legislation--the
ARENA Act. Let me explain that briefly. This bipartisan legislation
would empower States to protect families and businesses from electric
rate increases, reduced electric reliability, and other harmful
effects. It will force the EPA to reconsider this misguided rulemaking.
The ARENA Act holds the EPA accountable by requiring the agency to
issue State-specific model plans demonstrating how each State will meet
the required reductions. It gives States the ability to opt out if the
plan hinders economic growth.
For existing powerplants, the ARENA Act delays implementation of the
Clean Power Plan until the courts determine the legality of the rule.
Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that EPA had unlawfully failed to
consider costs when formulating its MATS regulation. Because the rule
went forward while it was still being litigated, millions of dollars
were spent to comply with a rule that was ultimately deemed illegal.
States should not be forced to proceed until the legality of the rule
has been determined. I hope that many States will follow Leader
McConnell's suggestion and delay implementation of this rule until the
legal process is completed.
Mr. President of the United States, your clean power grab will
devastate already hurting communities in my State. It will cause
economic pain for working families across the country. It will forever
harm our energy landscape.
The proposed rule was bad. The final rule announced yesterday is even
worse, doubling down on the destruction of our economy. There is no
question that we must take steps to protect our environment, but it
simply cannot be at the expense of our families.
We can do better. Let Congress, the elected representatives, make
these decisions. That is the way it should be. I ask my colleagues to
join me by supporting the ARENA Act and sending these overreaching EPA
regulations back to the drawing board.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Wildfires in the West
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, as the Senate prepares for the month of
August in our home States, I want to discuss tonight what I believe to
be an urgent issue: The West is on fire. There is a really serious
prospect that my part of the country is going to get hit by what I call
the terrible trifecta--drought, high temperatures, and enormous fuel
load on the forest floor. When you couple that with a lightning
strike--which is not exactly a rarity in my part of the world--all of a
sudden you can have on your hands an inferno. The fires are getting
bigger, they are lasting longer, and they are doing more damage.
Senators here on both sides of the aisle--Democrats and Republicans--
have come to realize that our system for fighting fire is a broken,
dysfunctional mess. What happens is, historically, prevention gets
short shrift. The agencies can't do enough thinning; they can't do
enough of the preventive work to reduce the fuel load on the forest
floor. Then you have one of those lightning strikes, and all of a
sudden there is a huge fire because the fuel buildup is so great on the
forest floor.
The agencies then run out of money putting these fires out because
they are getting bigger, and they are lasting longer. The problem just
keeps getting worse because the agencies then have to rob the
prevention fund in order to fight these big fires. In other words, the
agencies borrow from the prevention fund, and the problem gets worse
because by shorting the prevention fund it creates the prospect of
still more big fires in the future.
With the West burning, the Western Governor's Association--a
bipartisan group--put out a new update of how big the recent fires
are. So far in 2015, nearly 6 million acres have burned. That is an
area bigger than the State of New Jersey, scorched in massive fires.
In my home State, a wildfire in Douglas County in southern Oregon has
spread to over 16,000 acres, with 1,400 crew members battling a blaze
that is threatening more than 300 homes. According to recent reports,
20,000 acres were scorched by one single fire in northern California in
a matter of only
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5 hours. That is 20,000 acres--nearly the size of the entire city of
Bend, OR--that burned in the time span of an extra-inning baseball
game.
With the Forest Service budget effectively flatlined and the higher
cost of fighting fires producing this robbing of other programs that I
have described--the fire borrowing--what you have is a vicious, self-
defeating circle of firefighting and shoddy budgeting, which, in
effect, will cause an even bigger crisis in the future because you
shorted the prevention fund. In 10 years, if this isn't fixed--what is
known as fire borrowing--the Forest Service says it will be spending
two-thirds of its entire budget on suppressing wildfires, and my
constituents say they will be calling the Forest Service the Fire
Service because that is essentially what they will be.
This is particularly serious right now, which is why I came to the
floor tonight to try to drive home the urgency of this issue, because
it is so dry in the West. This year Governor Brown of my home State has
declared drought emergencies in 23 of our 36 counties. All 36 counties
are experiencing severe drought, according to the National Drought
Center. It is a very dangerous mix of factors, what I have come to call
the terrible trifecta of drought and temperatures and fuel load. They
all came together and turned the West into a virtual tinderbox.
To try to fix this, my colleague Senator Crapo and I have worked
together for quite some time to in effect say that what we ought to do
is break this dysfunctional system of fighting fires and go with a
different approach. What we would say is that the biggest fires--the 1
or 2 percent of the megafires--we ought to fight them from the disaster
fund because they really are disasters. Use the prevention fund for
what it is intended, which is prevention, so we can keep from having
those megafires.
The good news is that the Congressional Budget Office--my colleague
is new here, but he already knows that the Congressional Budget Office
is our official scorekeeper--says that there really aren't added costs
for this approach because while you would spend a bit more money trying
to put out those megafires, you would save some money by not cheating
the prevention fund and not having so many fires in the first place.
In effect, it is a lot smarter for the agencies to focus on keeping
our forests healthy and clear of the fuels that go up in flames when
lightning strikes. So we do the preventive work and we no longer are
shorting it by all the fire borrowing which I have just described.
Senator Crapo and I have been able to get well over 250 organizations
to go on record in support of our idea. These are groups associated
with forestry policy, environmental folks, industry personnel, people
across the political spectrum. More than 250 groups have said they are
in support of this. The Under Secretary of Agriculture, Robert Bonnie,
noted in a recent letter that the proposal Senator Crapo and I have
offered is one that both fixes fire borrowing and provides the
resources needed to prevent these catastrophic wildfires down the line.
Fifteen of our colleagues here in the Senate have supported the bill,
and 123 Members in the other body have also supported the bill. The
administration is on board. The agencies that battle these fires are
waiting for the Congress to act.
Each day, the reality in the West is that immensely brave men and
women are on the ground fighting fires, and they risk their lives to
keep our homes and communities protected. It is long, long, long past
time for the Congress to step up, fix this budgetary mess, and
guarantee that the funding is there to fight fires and to prevent them
in the first place.
I filed our bipartisan bill as an amendment to the Transportation
bill. I filed a wildfire amendment to the budget resolution. I filed
the Senate Interior appropriations wildfire language as an amendment to
the Transportation bill. And I believe this is the fourth time in
recent months I have been on the floor talking about this issue, and
that is in addition to talking about it in the budget markup and in
several hearings in the natural resources committee that I had the
honor to chair in the last Congress.
I see my new colleague in the chair, and he has been doing good work
on this fire borrowing issue. And even with everything else we are
dealing with here in the Senate, I think it is very important that we
focus on an actual way to leave with an agreement on how this is
actually going to get fixed and get done. In that regard, I have been
talking in the last day or so with colleagues in both political
parties, and I think there is now this sense of urgency because we see
it not only on TV, but every time we are home, we go to fire briefings.
As the Presiding Officer knows, even fire briefings have changed very
dramatically. We used to have a fire briefing in July, and now we have
fire briefings--as I did--in the winter because the Forest Service and
the folks at BLM often say they are not even sure when one fire season
has ended and the next one has begun because these challenges have
gotten so great.
Senator Crapo and I, with this bill that has gotten more than 250
organizations sponsoring it, have talked in just the last few hours. We
want to work with all of our colleagues to make sure that we get some
sense because our constituents are going to ask about this. They are
going to ask about this issue this summer. They are going to ask: How
is the Senate actually going to get this done? How is the Senate going
to fix this broken, dysfunctional system of fighting fires? In effect,
year after year--and I gather there will be some new analyses coming
out--the entire budget for the Forest Service is getting eaten up in
fighting these counterproductive fires.
Senator Crapo and I have a proposal that received a favorable score
from the Budget Committee. I know my colleague in the chair has also
done very good work on these issues, as have a number of Senators on
both sides of the aisle. Given the good will I have seen among Senators
here in the last couple of days as we talked about what this really
means, given the urgency and because we are going home and seeing
constituents in August, I am convinced we can have an agreement on how
this is going to get fixed. That is why I wanted to come to the floor
tonight, because there are a lot of topics that are still going to be
tackled in the next few days before the Senate wraps up. I want it
understood that our part of the country is on fire. It is on fire. We
have communities burning up, and business as usual is unacceptable.
Senator Crapo and I have offered a proposal that we think will turn
this around, and other colleagues have very good ideas as well. What is
nonnegotiable is just saying: Oh, you know, maybe we will take care of
it at the end of the year or on standard congressional time. That is
not good enough for the West, which is burning up.
I invite my colleagues here, as we move forward in the last few days
before the August recess, to join me, Senator Crapo, and colleagues in
both political parties to make sure that people see--as we go home to
talk to the people we have the honor to represent--that this is now
going to actually get fixed and that the Senate is coming together to
make sure it actually gets done. We are going to turn this around so
that we can do more to prevent fires in the rural west, No. 1, and No.
2, fight them in a more cost-effective way.
With that, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________