[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 18 (Thursday, February 2, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S634-S653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL OF A RULE SUBMITTED BY THE 
                   SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (H.J. Res. 41) providing for congressional 
     disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, 
     of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission 
     relating to ``Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction 
     Issuers.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 802(d)(2), there will now 
be up to 10 hours of debate, equally divided between the proponents and 
the opponents of the joint resolution.
  The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the regulatory 
burden imposed by the SEC's extractive resource rulemaking and offer my 
support for the resolution to disapprove it.
  I will take a few minutes to talk about the complicated history of 
this rule and then about the concerns with the way it was formulated.
  The SEC originally adopted the rule in 2012 and was challenged in 
court by the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute. 
In 2013, the U.S. district court threw out the regulation, contending, 
among other things, that the SEC misread the requirements of the 
statute. The SEC did not appeal the decision, acknowledging that it 
needed to rewrite the rule.
  The SEC's proposed timetable for a new rule was delayed several 
times, and in 2014, Oxfam America sued to compel the SEC to move 
forward on a new rulemaking. The court ordered the SEC to file an 
expedited schedule and, as a result, a new rule was proposed in 2015 
and finalized last year.
  As one can see, this rule and its various iterations have been 
fraught with controversy for many years. Advocates of the rule have 
said that it will combat corruption in resource-rich nations. The SEC's 
final rule raised doubts about this. The final rule stated several 
things, including: The direct causal relationship between increased 
transparency in the extractive industry and social benefits is 
``inconclusive.'' In fact, it noted that ``research and data available 
at this time does not allow us to draw any firm conclusions.'' Unlike 
the potential benefits, though, the costs are reasonably certain.
  The SEC estimated up to $700 million in initial costs and up to $590 
million in ongoing annual costs. Put another way, each company would 
endure between $560,000 and $1.6 million in initial costs, and between 
$224,000 and $1.3 million in

[[Page S635]]

additional costs each year. We cannot view these costs as affecting 
only the largest companies, but must consider the plight of the smaller 
ones.
  Just under half of all companies covered by this rule are considered 
smaller companies, and they would be disproportionately impacted by 
millions of dollars in fixed costs--money that could be better spent on 
jobs and growth.
  Finally, the President's statement of administration policy also 
endorses this resolution. Some of the reasons it highlights include:

       In some cases, the rule would require companies to disclose 
     information that the host nation of their project prohibits 
     from disclosure or is commercially sensitive.
       The rule would impose unreasonable compliance costs on 
     American energy companies that are not justified by 
     quantifiable benefits.
       Moreover, American businesses could face a competitive 
     disadvantage in cases where their foreign competitors are not 
     subject to similar rules.

  I have repeatedly stressed the need for the U.S. financial system and 
markets to remain the preferred destination for investors throughout 
the world, and this rule harms this status.
  I urge my colleagues to support this resolution and to preserve the 
integrity of our securities laws and capital markets.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to at this time enter into a 
colloquy with my colleague from Georgia, Senator Isakson.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President and chairman of the Banking Committee, I 
appreciate the time and the recognition. As the chairman knows, I am a 
member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a former chairman of the 
African Subcommittee, and I have traveled to both of those continents 
for many years. I have seen resource-rich and poverty-poor countries 
where they have a natural resource investment and wealth, but they 
never reinvest in their people.
  I think transparency is important in seeing to it that the resources 
they receive for selling those natural resources are made available to 
their people so that the resources go to the benefit of the people and 
not the government.
  Are you also aware that I am not a big supporter of the Dodd-Frank 
disclosure bill, but I also have concerns that simply vacating the rule 
implementing the Lugar-Cardin amendment without providing for a 
replacement would create a setback for U.S. leadership in anti-
corruption efforts around the world?
  Because of what we have done in transparency and anti-corruption, 
countries like the United Kingdom, the EU, Norway, and Canada have 
followed our lead, and I do not want to lose that. Therefore, I wish to 
ask the chairman of the Banking Committee a couple of questions to ease 
my fears about this question.
  First, I would like to direct a couple of questions to the chairman. 
It is my understanding that this joint resolution does not--underscore 
not--repeal section 1504 of Dodd-Frank law; is that correct?
  Mr. CRAPO. Yes, that is correct. What this resolution does is to 
cause the current SEC rule to not take effect. As it was characterized 
yesterday on the House floor and will be characterized further today on 
the Senate floor, what the SEC will need to do is to go back to the 
drawing board and come up with a better rule that complies with the law 
of the land.
  Mr. ISAKSON. I thank the chairman for that answer.
  I would like his commitment to work with me and other members of the 
caucus who are concerned and who want to be assured that the SEC will 
move forward with the implementation of this replacement provision as 
soon as possible.
  Mr. CRAPO. I thank my colleague. I will work to ensure that the SEC 
implements all of its congressional mandates.
  Mr. ISAKSON. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President--
  Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator from Ohio yield for a request?
  I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks of the 
Senator from Ohio, I be recognized for up to 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. BROWN. Up to 5 minutes?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. OK, as long as I get to speak after this issue is over.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the resolution 
before us, which really ought to be titled the ``Kleptocrat Relief 
Act.''
  My Republican colleagues today are trying to repeal a critical 
bipartisan rule initiated by Senator Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, 
and Senator Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. It is a critical 
bipartisan rule to prevent corruption.
  This transparency rule is part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform 
law. It is one of the best anti-corruption tools that President Trump 
now has to keep his promise to, in his words, ``drain the swamp'' in 
Washington and around the world.
  But now, in just week 2 of his Presidency, Republicans are racing to 
use an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act to wipe it out. 
The CRA was not intended to hand a new President the power to roll back 
regulations that protect workers, protect the environment, protect 
investors, and protect consumers.
  In this case, Republicans are using the CRA to target rules that have 
gone through extensive years-long administrative and public review, 
including on issues that agencies were specifically ordered by this 
Congress to study and address.
  Republicans' unprecedented use of the CRA is not about Congress 
performing due diligence or agency oversight, it is a gross abuse of 
power to make their big corporate allies happy. I heard my friend from 
Idaho talk about the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum 
Institute. That is just a start.
  The rule they are trying to repeal protects U.S. citizens and 
investors from having millions of their dollars vanish into the pockets 
of corrupt foreign oligarchs. It does that by requiring all oil, gas, 
and mineral companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to disclose the 
royalties and the bonuses and the fees and the taxes and other payments 
they make to foreign governments.
  This kind of transparency is essential to combating waste, fraud, 
corruption, and mismanagement, as Senator Isakson talked about the 
poverty he sees in these resource-rich countries.
  Yet Rex Tillerson, whom this body just, I believe yesterday, 
confirmed with a pretty much partisan vote--Rex Tillerson and 
congressional Republicans want to strip it away. Rex Tillerson, in his 
years as CEO of ExxonMobil--and we will talk about that in a moment--
strongly opposed this rule, almost by himself, with ExxonMobil as the 
head of that company.
  At Mr. Tillerson's confirmation hearing, Senator Kaine from Virginia 
introduced into the record a 2008 report by Republican Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee staff. That report was the basis--Republican staff, 
I assume at the behest of Senator Lugar and others--that report was the 
basis for what eventually became section 1504 of Dodd-Frank, known as 
the bipartisan Cardin-Lugar amendment to fight corruption in mineral-
rich developing countries. That report concluded that many resource-
rich countries are poor because their vast mineral resources often 
breed corruption. That corruption lines the pockets of the 
kleptocrats--read ``thieves''--increases poverty, increases hunger, and 
increases instability.
  As Senator Lugar said:

       Paradoxically, history shows that rather than a blessing, 
     energy reserves can be a bane for many poor countries, 
     leading to fraud, corruption, wasteful spending, military 
     adventurism and instability. Too often, oil money that should 
     go to a nation's poor ends up in the pockets of the rich or 
     is squandered on the trappings of power and massive showcase 
     projects instead of being invested productively and 
     equitably.

  That is called the resource curse. It prevails all over the world 
today. For example, oil-rich Venezuela is running out of food and 
medicine. Resource-rich Nigeria is in an economic mess wracked by 
terrorism and poverty. Armed groups have fought for years

[[Page S636]]

over mineral wealth in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa.
  Resource-rich countries in Asia have similar problems. The natural 
resource sector in so many countries is famously corrupt--the world's 
single most corrupt industry, according to the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation and Development. But oil companies can no longer 
hide behind the excuse of confidentiality. Increasingly, companies are 
expected to disclose what they pay in taxes and other payments to 
governments whose natural resources they extract. That is what this 
language from Senator Lugar, Senator Cardin, and Senator Leahy did. 
That is what the rule does. That is what we should do. This Congress 
wants to undo that. This is now required under the laws of the United 
States and 30 other countries, as well as international initiatives. In 
other words, what we did here was followed by 30 other countries, and a 
number of more responsible energy companies, I would say, passed this 
language and began to implement these laws.
  The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a global 
standard that aims to put information about government revenues from 
natural resource deals into the public domain in 51 countries, 
including ours. This includes telling us what taxes the companies pay, 
which is key to ensuring citizens know what benefits they get--from 
Venezuela or Nigeria or Congo--from their own natural resources.
  Let me offer some concrete examples of the kind of corruption we are 
talking about. This just turns your stomach.
  In Equatorial Guinea, according to anti-corruption groups, oil 
companies, including Exxon, have had a long history of problems on this 
front. The regime of President-for-life Obiang, who executed his brutal 
uncle to gain power almost 40 years ago, has been tarnished with 
allegations of corruption, cronyism, brutal political repression, 
routine human rights violations, and drug trafficking for years and 
years.
  Years ago, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 
released a report and held a public hearing which revealed that a 
number of oil companies--again, ExxonMobil; they keep coming up in 
this--were making direct payments into an account in the name of the 
Republic of Equatorial Guinea located at Riggs Bank in Washington, DC. 
Virtually all of the money in the account, tens of millions of dollars, 
consisted of royalties and other payments from oil companies, 
primarily--surprise--ExxonMobil, to the country of Equatorial Guinea 
for the right to explore and produce oil in that country. But instead 
of paying the money to the government or the national treasury of 
Equatorial Guinea, the companies sent the money to the account at Riggs 
Bank. That account was controlled by President-for-life Obiang and two 
of his relatives. The account signatories were the President-for-life, 
his son, and his nephew. Imagine that. Instead of paying the national 
treasury, the oil companies made payments into this account in another 
country, controlled by a dictator and his relatives. I can't believe we 
in this body support that. How could the citizens of Equatorial Guinea 
know how much royalty money was coming in for their oil in their 
country and where it was going when it was in a secret account 
controlled by a dictator? The answer, obviously, is they couldn't.
  The report from the PSI--the committee that investigated--documented 
that some of the funds from that account were used to make suspicious 
transactions. The United States then investigated the President-for-
life's family finances. Prosecutors noted that President-for-life 
Obiang's son ``received an official government salary of less than 
$100,000 a year but used his position and influence as a government 
minister to amass more than $300 million worth of assets through 
corruption and money laundering.'' He paid himself $100,000 but found a 
way to amass $300 million more--all in violation of the laws of his 
country and our country both.
  In 2014, the son settled a case brought by Federal prosecutors. He 
agreed to sell his $30 million mansion in Malibu, his Ferrari, and 
various items of Michael Jackson memorabilia he had collected.
  The New York Times reported earlier this month that he is still 
working to delay his trial on corruption charges in France, where 
prosecutors say he amassed a personal fortune of $115 million, which he 
used to indulge his tastes.
  When he served as Agriculture Minister of Equatorial Guinea, 
prosecutors say he used his influence over the timber industry--next to 
oil, the most important export industry in the country--to line his 
pockets.
  Last November, prosecutors in Switzerland seized luxury cars 
belonging to him, and last month, at the request of the Swiss, the 
Dutch authorities seized his 250-foot, $100 million yacht named the 
``Ebony Shine'' as it was about to sail to Equatorial Guinea. He said 
the yacht belonged to his country's government. All the while, his 
people are starving.
  You can't make this stuff up. If the bill before us were adopted, the 
Obiang family would be celebrating. They would be celebrating in 
Washington, in California, and in Equatorial Guinea.
  In Nigeria, again according to Global Witness, a major oil deal 
struck by--surprise--ExxonMobil with the Nigerian Government is being 
investigated by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, a 
law enforcement agency that investigates high-level corruption. The 
probe centers on a protracted and controversial deal agreed to by 
ExxonMobil and the Nigerian Government in 2009 to renew three lucrative 
oil licenses, which at the time accounted for around a quarter of 
Nigeria's entire oil production.
  ExxonMobil agreed to pay $600 million to renew the licenses and 
construct a powerplant at a cost of $900 million to the company, making 
a total contribution of $1.5 billion. Yet documents suggest that the 
Nigerian Government may have valued the licenses at $2.5 billion and 
that the Chinese oil company CNOOC offered to pay $3.7 billion for the 
same licenses--over six times the amount reportedly paid by ExxonMobil.
  Other incredible and notorious examples abound. It would be reason 
enough for us to act to try to help the millions of people around the 
world who are victims of this corporate collusion, but in today's 
world, the resource curse doesn't just impact far-off countries; it 
affects Americans every day. It has empowered anti-American dictators 
in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, situations which cost American lives and 
American taxpayer dollars. It worsens global poverty, which can be a 
seedbed and a fertile growing ground for terrorism against us and our 
allies. It leads to the instability that threatens global oil supplies. 
It raises gas prices at home.
  That is why we need this rule--all of the above--to protect American 
national security interests by combating the corruption and secrecy, 
with all these oil companies at the table with them. That has caused 
conflict, instability, and violent extremist movements in Africa and 
the Middle East. As ISIS has demonstrated, nonstate actors benefit from 
trading natural resources in order to finance their terrorist 
operations.
  Despite all this, the Republican-led House of Representatives, as 
Senator Crapo said, voted yesterday to repeal this bipartisan 
initiative--an initiative that holds Big Oil accountable and protects 
the American people. Today, the Senate Republican leadership is 
following suit. It is a little ironic in light of the fact that 
Candidate Trump, at almost every rally in my State, almost every rally 
in State after State after State where he was campaigning, talked about 
draining the swamp.
  Since the rule's creation, ExxonMobil, led by Mr. Tillerson--now the 
Secretary of State--and Big Oil allies, such as the American Petroleum 
Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Heritage Foundation, 
have fought to kill it.
  Who else opposes this rule besides Senate Republicans, House 
Republicans, and President Trump? There are the autocrats in Russia. We 
know about the connections between Russia and the Secretary of State. 
We don't know quite enough about the connections between our President 
and President Putin because we can't get the President's tax returns. 
We know something is going on. Everybody knows it. Nobody knows quite 
what.

  Who else opposes it? Autocrats in Iran, where Advisor Flynn made some 
interesting and provocative comments today, autocrats in Venezuela, 
autocrats in Africa with oil wells, gasfields,

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or copper mines who want to keep their payments a secret. It is working 
for them. It is working for the autocrats. It is working for Exxon. 
Apparently it is working for Republicans in the House and Senate too. I 
am not sure exactly how, but I know it is working.
  More than 30 countries--mostly the United States, Canada, and 
European nations--have adopted similar anti-corruption standards. 
Senator Lugar, Senator Leahy, and Senator Cardin's law passed as part 
of Dodd-Frank, and the SEC is adopting this rule. More than 30 other 
countries in the world followed our lead, and some of the more 
responsible oil companies were prepared to comply. So to be clear, with 
Europe and Canada in the same disclosure system, the playing field is 
now level. It is working.
  Many companies already report such payments under European rules and 
are doing just fine, so this is hardly causing them undue burdens in 
the regulatory framework that my colleagues like to talk about. That is 
why many in industry support the rule, despite the actions of Exxon, 
the bad actor here, and the CEO of Exxon--now, amazingly, our Secretary 
of State.
  BP and Shell--two major, large oil companies--have publicly endorsed 
payment reporting and lining up U.S. rules with those in other markets. 
Foreign and state-owned oil companies from China and Brazil, including 
CNOOC, PetroChina, Sinopec, and Brazil's Petrobras, are required to 
disclose under U.S. rules, leveling the playing field for U.S. 
companies. Gazprom, Rosneft, BP, and Shell already report under UK 
rules. The largest mining companies in the world, including Newmont 
Mining, BHP Billiton, and Rio Tinto, have supported similar reporting. 
Oil, gas, and mining workers unions, such as United Steelworkers, back 
the rule.
  Notice who doesn't back the rule: Exxon, the American Petroleum 
Institute, and autocrats in Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.
  Investors also support it--including investor groups with $10 
trillion under management--so they can better understand and manage the 
reputational, expropriation, sanction, and other risks facing firms in 
which they invest. It is supported by the American Catholic bishops, 
the Presbyterian Church--all kinds of religious groups.
  Who is against it? Republicans in the House, Republicans in the 
Senate, the President of the United States, ExxonMobil, the Secretary 
of State, who used to be CEO of ExxonMobil, and autocrats in Iran and 
Venezuela. We get the picture.
  All these groups who care about justice, who care about fair play, 
who care about doing business with predictable and fair rules, like BP 
and Shell, all of them support it--Global Witness, the ONE Campaign, 
Oxfam, and Publish What You Pay.
  We need to be clear on one other thing my friend from Idaho said: 
This rule won't cost a single American job. Everything oil companies 
can legally do today is still allowed under the anti-corruption rule. 
They only have to do one more thing: They have to report their numbers 
to the Securities and Exchange Commission. How can that cost millions 
of dollars?
  The Cardin-Lugar rule makes Big Business and government more 
transparent, fights corruption, and does it all without hurting 
taxpayers. It is a creative approach to global problems that our 
leaders did embrace until we had a President who wants to ``drain the 
swamp,'' he says--should be embracing, not rejecting at the behest of 
just a few actors.
  Again, who is lobbying to overturn this rule? It is autocrats around 
the world. It is Exxon. It is the American Petroleum Institute. It is a 
very small number of companies, when so many people are on the other 
side.
  If we repeal this measure today, shareholders, investors, and poor 
communities around the world will continue to see their money and 
natural resources stolen by crooked oligarchs. We will be undoing the 
moral leadership. This is in so many ways a moral question that Senator 
Cardin, Senator Lugar, and Senator Leahy brought to us bipartisanly, 
with broad support by both parties. We will be turning a blind eye to 
corruption, we will be betraying our principles, and we will be 
undercutting our allies in Europe and Canada who followed our lead and 
crafted their own rules based on ours.
  Under the terms of the Congressional Review Act, any future 
``substantially similar'' rule will be forever prohibited from being 
written by the SEC. That makes no sense.
  I hope this effort fails. I know my Republican colleagues understand 
this because enough of my colleagues recognize the merits of this anti-
corruption measure and they refuse to kowtow to the dinosaur wing of 
Big Oil. It is not even all of Big Oil; it is the dinosaur wing of Big 
oil. It is the autocrats. It is the American Petroleum Institute. It is 
the Chamber of Commerce. It is ExxonMobil.
  I thank Senator Cardin and Senator Leahy for their work, and I thank 
former Senator Lugar from Indiana for the important work he did on this 
measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I know that President Obama is gone now, 
but his War on Fossil Fuels is alive and well. However, they are not 
winning that.
  Back in Oklahoma, they ask me the question sometimes: If all of the 
liberals are concerned and if they are all opposed to fossil fuels--and 
to nuclear, I might add; coal, oil, gas, and nuclear--if coal, oil, 
gas, and nuclear are responsible for 89 percent of the power it takes 
to run this country, how do you run the country without those? Those 
are the kinds of questions we get.
  I appreciate and--I know it is a very popular statement that was made 
by my friend from Ohio; unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the 
issues we are looking at right now.
  Back during the time Dodd-Frank was considered, it was dealing with 
banks and financial institutions. It had nothing to do with energy. Yet 
section 1504 was put in there. Part of section 1504 required that 
information be provided during the course of a competitive situation 
for some kind of a project.
  I will give you an example. We have a private sector in our oil and 
gas. For China, that is a government project. If we are competing with 
them--let's say for some cause that is in Tanzania or someplace--they 
said, so that there is a safeguard and there can't be corruption, so 
that if we should win--I say ``we,'' but I am talking about the private 
sector in the United States of America--then they have to report the 
information to the SEC, which in turn makes it published. Their intent 
was not to have to break down everything that was in that offer. It is 
the bottom line.
  What is the total cost that goes to these countries? What are the 
total costs? That is all they care about because if that money went to 
Tanzania--and there are some corrupt officials there and they might 
steal some of the money, but to keep that from happening, we want to 
report what the cost was in the winning party. You don't have to have 
all that information.
  In fact, in 2013, the court struck this down because they said that 
was not the intent. The intent was to have the total figure, so they 
said, even suggested--and our intent at that time was to vacate that, 
as the court did vacate that rule and send it back and have the SEC 
redo it in such a way that it would affect only the amount of money 
that would go that might cause some corruption at some time. That is 
what it was all about. Unfortunately, they put together another one 
that was very similar and required a lot of information that was not 
necessary.
  I would like to correct something on the CRA that the Senator from 
Ohio said. The CRA is there because when an unelected bureaucrat comes 
out with some kind of an unreasonable rule that is very costly to the 
people of this country and it is done by someone who is not an elected 
official, the elected official says: Look at this. Wait a minute. This 
is something that people are complaining about when I go home.
  They love that because they can say: This wasn't me. This wasn't me. 
This was an unelected bureaucrat that put these rules in.
  What a CRA does is make us in the House and in the Senate more 
accountable because we have to then stand up and vote on something, 
saying that we endorse this rule or we don't endorse this rule. That is 
what it is all about.
  Anyway, we have an opportunity here to go ahead, and I am certainly

[[Page S638]]

hoping that we will do this and change this rule so that it would make 
as a requirement nothing but the amount of money that is paid by the 
winning party in a situation where they are competing with each other.
  If that happens, then we will know how much money that was, and we 
will be able to go to the party and find out if they are stealing some 
of this money. Why is it necessary to have all of the components of 
competition when you have the private sector in the United States of 
America competing with countries like China where it is a government-
owned institution?
  That is all this is about. All we want to do is to be able say we 
want to report so that the public knows how much the total bid or, in 
this case, the total amount was, not all the components that went into 
the calculation of that. That is all it is about.
  My time has expired.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The majority leader.


                           Order of Business

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I wish to lay out the schedule for 
everyone. I know they are interested in knowing the way forward. I have 
discussed with the Democratic leader where we go from here.
  The Senate is going to debate the pending joint resolution tonight 
for as long as there is interest in debate. Tomorrow the Senate will 
convene at 6:30 a.m. and immediately proceed to two rollcall votes: 
passage of the joint resolution of disapproval and cloture on the 
nomination of Betsy DeVos.
  Restating that, debate tonight as long as our friends on the other 
side would like to debate, and tomorrow we will convene at 6:30 a.m. 
and immediately turn to two rollcall votes: passage of the joint 
resolution of disapproval and cloture on the nomination of Betsy DeVos.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, has the distinguished majority leader 
finished?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Yes.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Republicans in both Chambers have 
introduced a resolution to permit oil, gas, and mining companies to 
continue making secret payments--involving billions of dollars--to 
corrupt foreign governments in exchange for access to their countries' 
natural resources.
  This resolution would overturn legislation on which I worked closely 
with former Republican Senator Richard Lugar and Senator Cardin and was 
included as section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and 
Consumer Protection Act to provide greater transparency when such 
payments are made and help better inform investors and combat massive 
corruption in the process.
  One would think that everyone here would support a commonsense rule 
that will protect investors and make it a lot harder to get away with 
the theft of billions of dollars in public funds in some of the poorest 
countries of the world. But apparently, that is not a concern, at least 
not to the sponsors of this resolution or those who intend to support 
its passage.
  Some Republicans and their friends in the oil and gas industry say 
this rule creates unacceptable burdens. That is utterly without merit, 
as I will explain in a moment.
  But even assuming there were a grain of truth to that, rather than 
proposing to amend the underlying legislation, which would require 
bipartisan support, this resolution is being advanced under the 
Congressional Review Act, to enable a simple majority vote to 
completely dismantle the rule with minimum debate.
  Keep in mind that the rule is simply the product of the U.S. 
Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, implementing bipartisan 
congressional intent and would not take effect until the end of 2018. 
Despite what some have claimed, the SEC has not twisted the statute in 
any way when they developed this rule. But if this rule is overturned, 
the SEC will be prevented from issuing any substantially similar rule, 
potentially in our lifetimes.
  In other words, what we are doing here is, for all practical 
purposes, the death knell for global efforts--involving most of our 
closest allies--to combat massive corruption resulting from the 
extraction of natural resources and help investors assess risk in the 
often murky and unstable oil, gas, and mining sectors. This is an issue 
on which the United States, until now, has been a global leader.
  I mention this because the sponsors of this resolution have said that 
they support the goals of this rule, and all they want to do after 
overturning it is make some minor adjustments to it. That is the 
epitome of disingenuous. The rule does not take effect until the end of 
2018. If that was what they really wanted to do, they would propose an 
amendment, and we could discuss it. Their real purpose, even if they 
are reluctant to say so, is to prevent disclosure.
  This rule has two primary purposes. First, it is to protect 
investors. Investors whose combined net worth exceeds $10 trillion, 
support this rule and its equivalency with the rules adopted by some 30 
other governments. And second, to protect the public.
  The practical effect of overturning this rule is that U.S. and 
foreign companies will be able to continue to make secret payments to 
corrupt foreign autocrats like Vladimir Putin and kleptocracies in 
Africa like the governments of Angola and Equatorial Guinea. By doing 
so, these companies will be aiding and abetting those kleptocrats when 
they pocket the proceeds for their personal use. We have seen this for 
years. The people of those countries barely survive on $1 or $2 per 
day, while their leaders drive Mercedes, fly private jets to vacation 
homes on the French Riviera or in Santa Monica, and pay off the armed 
forces to keep themselves in power.
  And where does the money come from that pays for that grotesque 
flaunting of wealth? From the royalties paid by U.S. and other foreign 
companies.
  Do we really want to be complicit in that kind of thievery and 
immorality by shielding it from public scrutiny? Do we really think 
that the American people want to be tarred with it indirectly through 
the shady activities of American companies? Do we really want to hide 
important information from investors who are trying to assess risk in 
the companies they invest in? Of course not.
  Anyone who reads this rule and pays the slightest attention to the 
estimated $1 trillion lost to crime, corruption, and tax evasion in 
these countries and the millions of deaths attributed to corrupt 
practices where these extractive companies operate will recognize the 
fallacy of the baseless attacks by those who oppose it.

  The sponsors of this resolution claim that this rule puts American 
businesses at a competitive disadvantage. What are they talking about? 
The rule applies to both U.S. and foreign companies and complements 
existing laws elsewhere in the world. In fact, Chinese state-owned 
companies, like PetroChina and Sinopect, are covered by the U.S. law. 
Great Britain, the EU, Canada, and Norway are just four examples of 
governments that have adopted similar rules, with Russian state-owned 
companies like Rosneft and Gazprom covered in the U.K.
  I challenge the sponsors of this legislation to provide any objective 
facts to support the argument that U.S. companies are disadvantaged by 
this rule. That is a pernicious myth.
  The sponsors have also repeated the self-serving claims of the 
petroleum industry that complying with this rule would unacceptably 
increase their cost of doing business. While that has become the 
predictable complaint of the business community whenever such a rule is 
promulgated, in this instance, they base it on an outdated and 
discredited analysis. The irony is that, even if one were to agree with 
their most farfetched, worst-case scenario, it pales compared to their 
immense profits.
  If we overturn our rule, what prevents others from doing the same? 
And then we are right back where we started. Once again, we will have 
paved the way for secret payments and billions of dollars stolen from 
the public treasuries and squirreled away in Swiss bank accounts by the 
Robert Mugabes of the world.
  There is another aspect to this that no one has talked about, and 
that is the connection between corruption and terrorism, particularly 
in Africa. Terrorist groups flourish where government corruption 
contributes to incompetent, corrupt military forces. Terrorists benefit 
when revenues from these

[[Page S639]]

activities are kept in the dark, enabling them to radicalize and 
recruit an impoverished and resentful population. By overturning this 
rule, Senators should know that violent extremists, terrorists, and 
other criminal enterprises will be among the beneficiaries.
  Corruption is among the most corrosive forces that breed instability 
and violence, and then countries like ours end up trying to feed and 
shelter the innocent people who bear the brunt of it.
  It not only wreaks havoc on the people of those countries; it hurts 
American companies trying to do business there, and it hurts Americans 
who invest in these risky companies. If the norm is nondisclosure, then 
bribery becomes an unavoidable and accepted way of doing business.
  That is what companies from countries like Russia and China that 
compete with American companies would prefer because corruption is what 
they are best at. But this rule requires those foreign companies and 
others to similarly disclose their profits. Are the sponsors of this 
resolution even aware of this? This rule will enhance U.S. 
competitiveness. This rule protects investors and the public.
  When it was first passed, section 1504 put the United States at the 
forefront of transparency and government accountability efforts. And as 
I have already said, that leadership paid off. Other countries have 
followed our example. This resolution will jettison a decade of work 
here and abroad. There is no excuse for it. There is no need for it. If 
there are legitimate concerns about section 1504, then let's talk about 
ways to amend it and improve it.
  But let's not, by overturning this rule, tell the world that we don't 
believe in transparency and good governance, that we will turn our 
backs on the theft and misuse of payments made by U.S. companies, that 
we do not care about the people of those countries who suffer the 
consequences, and that we do not care about American investors who 
deserve this critical information so they can have confidence in the 
companies they invest their hard-earned money in. This resolution is an 
affront to the values and to the citizens of our great and good Nation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Leahy for his 
comments. Ten years ago, I was privileged to be elected by the people 
of Maryland to represent them in the U.S. Senate. I came to the Senate 
with Senator Brown at that time. It was our first year. Senator Brown 
had the opportunity to serve on the Banking Committee. I had the 
opportunity to serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Today I 
hold the position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that 
Senator Lugar held when I first went on the committee; that is, the 
ranking member of the committee.
  I remember one of the very first hearings we had in the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee on resource, curse or blessing. It was a 
matter of concern to every single member of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee, Democrats and Republicans. We saw the faces of 
people from nations in Africa who had a resource wealth, but they had 
the resource curse. The people were living in horrible poverty. Yet the 
country had mineral wealth--gas and oil--that was being exploited but 
not for the benefit of the people. It was being used to obtain income 
for their leaders to funnel corrupt practices. Senator Lugar, in 
October of 2008, authored a committee report of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee entitled ``The Petroleum And Poverty Paradox: 
Assessing U.S. And International Community Efforts To Fight The 
Resource Curse.''
  We went through the regular legislative process as to how we could 
deal with the circumstance that we knew the United States must exercise 
leadership. As Senator Brown has pointed out the whole history and the 
importance of it--and all of the details--I just want to fill in some 
of the details as to how this came about because we were looking for a 
way in which we could turn the wealth of a nation to its people and cut 
off the corruption that it funded. The corruption was not just the 
obscenity of wealth being used by their leaders--as Senator Brown 
pointed out in Equatorial Guinea--it was also the fact that this wealth 
that was coming to these leaders was also being used for criminal 
activities, to finance illegal drug activities and to finance 
terrorism.
  I take issue with my friend from Oklahoma and his comments. There has 
never been an effort in this legislation to affect the supply of any 
source of energy here or anywhere around the world. That is being done. 
The question is, Where does the money go that is being used to exploit 
these resources? Do they go to the people of the country where the 
resource is located or do they go for corruption? That is what we 
attempted to do--Senator Lugar and I and others. I thank Senators Leahy 
and Durbin, who was on the floor earlier and was one of our early 
leaders, Senators Menendez and Wicker. We did this not only in the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time I was chairman of the 
Senate U.S. Helsinki Commission--the Helsinki Commission, and Senator 
Wicker was helping, we worked in that organization to see how we could 
deal with transparency and how the American leadership could help the 
international effort to end the resource curse. As a result, 
legislation was authored and introduced in order to try to deal with 
this issue. Senator Lugar and I authored a bill, a bill that said we 
want to know where the money is going so we can track the money. We 
wanted to be able, for the people of that nation, to say: We know money 
is coming in now. Our leaders show us where the money is going.
  That legislation was introduced. It was debated. It became part of 
the Dodd-Frank law. Quite frankly, it was supported in a rather 
bipartisan way, and it became law. Ever since its enactment, it has 
been fought by the American Petroleum Institute. I am not sure why 
because today other countries have adopted similar standards. This 
information is readily available as far as the way it is compiled by 
companies. Many oil and mineral companies today are supplying this 
information with no complaints, no problems, but it was fought.
  Tonight we are debating the use of the Congressional Review Act. It 
was pointed out earlier tonight that before today, it only had been 
used once since its 1996 enactment. The reason is because it is a 
sledgehammer approach to dealing with issues that should be dealt with 
by a scalpel, but here is the real abuse. We are using the 
Congressional Review Act--which is supposed to be used when an agency 
goes rogue, when they start to do things that were never intended by 
Congress, were never authorized by Congress. Section 1504 was passed by 
Congress, and it has taken the SEC almost a decade to get the rules 
out. And we are saying they abused their power? Maybe they abused their 
power by delay, but they certainly haven't abused their power with what 
they have come forward with. They are carrying out congressional 
mandate as they should. It was never the intent of the CRA to be used 
for this type of a process. So I just urge my colleagues to recognize 
that this is not the right way we should be proceeding.

  In September 2009, with Senator Lugar's help, I introduced 
legislation. It was bipartisan. Senators Merkley, Wicker, Schumer, 
Leahy, Durbin, Feinstein, Menendez, and others joined in that effort. 
The SEC was directed to develop rules on oil, gas, and mining companies 
as to how the disclosures could be made on the U.S. stock exchange so 
they could disclose their rights and payments made to foreign 
governments. That is what we mandated. Why do we want to know that? 
Because these royalties and payments were basically bribes to 
government leaders because it never went to the people. It was in the 
U.S. interest, not only because of how those funds were used against 
our principles and not only did it finance illegal activities, but it 
could have been a source for stable governments, which was important 
for U.S. interests that we have stable governments. It helps us in our 
foreign policy and national security. It also gives us a stable source 
of oil, gas, and minerals. Investors have the right to know. They have 
the right to know in what countries their companies are investing their 
stockholder investments.
  It was a reasonable request by Congress. One of my colleagues 
indicated that it was held to be inappropriate by our courts. That was 
on a process issue. It was not on a substantive issue. That

[[Page S640]]

was corrected. A new rule has come out, and now we are using a CRA in 
order to block it. The rule, as it is currently worded, provides for a 
reasonable period for enforcement. So it is not even going into effect 
immediately because we are allowing the companies to have ample time in 
order to comply with the rule.
  I just want to make this point. It creates a level playing field. It 
does not put American companies at a disadvantage. This is a level 
playing field. Thirty countries already require this. The EU requires 
this. Canada requires this. Do you want to know why they did it? 
Because the United States led. We passed the law. I met with the 
Europeans. I met with the Canadians. They said: This is a good bill. 
You are our leaders. You are doing it. We are going to do it also so 
they did it. It is in effect in these countries. Oil companies and 
mineral companies have complied with it. They are fine. Guess what. It 
wasn't difficult. Shell, BP, France's Total, Russian's Rosneft, Lukoil, 
Gazprom--their huge giant--all have reported. It has not caused any 
competitive problems. They are not losing any proprietary rights, as 
has been suggested. There has been no harm done.
  When I listen to the cost-benefit analysis and listen to our 
distinguished chairman talk about the data is not really available, the 
reason the data is not available is because we don't have disclosure. 
If we get the information, then we will be able to tell exactly how we 
can deal with the problems in Ghana or Nigeria or in Equatorial Guinea 
or problems in so many countries where the people are hurting with some 
of the worst poverty rates in the world. We will be able to find that 
information out, but if we don't know what is being paid by U.S. 
companies, how do you do a cost-benefit analysis? I don't know how you 
could possibly do it.
  I heard the numbers, the cost of compliance, and I would challenge 
that. I would challenge the cost of compliance numbers because this 
information is already available. Companies know where their money is 
going. It is a normal business issue. I heard it is going to cost 
hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts. I don't want to minimize 
the cost, but as a percentage of the business they are doing, it is 
minor. The benefit we get if the money can go to the people and deal 
with these horrible conditions that we see in these resource-wealthy 
countries, then it is certainly worth the effort. That is part of our 
effort in dealing with other countries, to try to lift up the standard 
of living in so many of these countries.
  So when we look at, again, what is at stake--what is at stake? And 
that is to allow the wealth of a country to go to its people for its 
stability. I have heard my colleagues say: Well, we are not against 
this. The law is still there. All we are talking about is this 
regulation. Once we pass this CRA, we are going to go back to work with 
the SEC and bring in a new rule. Do you really believe that? Do you 
really believe that if we pass this CRA, that we are going to see a new 
rule come out of the SEC? It has taken us 9 years to get to where we 
are right now. Do you really believe that with the law saying that the 
SEC cannot bring out a rule that is substantially the same in form, 
unless authorized by a subsequent law of Congress--do you really 
believe that will not be challenged in the courts with lengthy 
litigation before we will ever see another rule take effect?
  Let us be clear about this. I am going to continue to do everything I 
can to make sure that the people of these nations get the wealth of 
their country. I am going to do everything I can. I am going to work 
with all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I really do believe 
in the sincerity of my colleagues, that they believe in this 
transparency. It is going to be tested. I am going to come back and see 
where we can make sure that 1504 is enforced because if I heard my 
chairman--and I respect him greatly, we work on a lot of issues 
together--when the chairman says that he is going to make sure the SEC 
complies with all congressional mandates--this is a congressional 
mandate--and it is our responsibility to make sure the SEC complies 
with Section 1504. If our colleagues pass this CRA--and I hope you 
don't--it is our responsibility to make sure the SEC complies with 
1504. I am going to be here urging in every way I can to make sure that 
happens.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the statement from 
Publish What You Pay, which talks about a lot of the different aspects 
and myths that have been said, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   Publish What You Pay United States


    Myth Busting: The Truth About the Cardin-Lugar Anti-Corruption 
                               Provision

       The Cardin-Lugar Provision requires US-listed oil, gas and 
     mining companies to publicly disclose the project-level 
     payments they made to the U.S. and foreign governments for 
     the extraction of oil, gas and minerals.
       The Cardin-Lugar provision is a landmark piece of 
     bipartisan legislation. The final anticorruption rule 
     implementing the Cardin-Lugar provision passed by the SEC in 
     June 2016 significantly advances international efforts to 
     curb corruption and has been applauded by investors, 
     companies and governments around the world. However, a great 
     deal of misinformation has been spread about the rule. Below 
     you will find evidence correcting the most glaring 
     inaccuracies put forward.
       But before getting into the myths, here are some hard 
     facts.
       Research concludes that increased transparency resulting 
     from the disclosures required by the Cardin-Lugar Rule could 
     lower the cost of capital for covered companies by $6.3 
     billion to $12.6 billion.
       The international norm of resource sector payment 
     transparency, built on strong American leadership, is 
     estimated to have increased predicted global GDP by $1.1 
     trillion.
       Investors representing nearly $10 trillion in assets under 
     management support of the Cardin-Lugar Rule.
       Between 2011-2014 conflict linked to corruption in Libya 
     led to five U.S.-listed companies missing out on an estimated 
     $17.4 billion due to production disruptions.
       Myth 1: Compliance costs for disclosure could reach as high 
     as $591 million per year.
       Facts: The only comprehensive cost analysis submitted to 
     the SEC concluded that the total aggregate compliance cost to 
     industry in the first year would amount to $181M and would 
     not exceed $74 million per annum in subsequent years.
       The $591 million number comes from an outdated SEC estimate 
     from the 2012 version of the final rule. The reason the 
     number is so high is because API claimed that there were 
     countries that prohibited disclosure and if companies were 
     forced to disclose they would have to hold a `fire-sale' of 
     all of their assets in that country--this number comes from 
     the assumption that every company would lose their assets in 
     these countries where disclosure was supposedly prohibited. 
     It is (1) disingenuous to quote this cost estimate from the 
     2012 regulation, instead of quoting form the 2016 regulation, 
     and (2) irrelevant because the SEC now allows for companies 
     to apply for an exemption if they believe disclosure is 
     prohibited in a country, therefore the above estimate is 
     wildly inaccurate.
       Myth 2: U.S. companies are at a competitive disadvantage 
     because non-U.S. companies do not have to make the same 
     disclosures, and the rule applies only to public companies.
       Facts: The U.S. law covers all oil, gas and mining 
     companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges not simply companies 
     based in the United States. Thus, the rule covers all 
     companies filing an annual report with the SEC both foreign 
     and domestic. This includes foreign oil majors BP, Shell, and 
     Total as well as leading state-owned oil companies from China 
     and Brazil, such as PetroChina and Petrobras. But a 
     significant number of foreign companies are already required 
     to make the same type of disclosures under the rules in other 
     jurisdictions.
       Since the passage of Cardin-Lugar in 2010, important U.S. 
     allies have followed our leadership in payment transparency 
     and now 30 countries have adopted their own mandatory 
     disclosure rules for companies listed on their stock 
     exchanges. And while in many ways, the Canadian and EU 
     requirements are more stringent (and also cover private 
     companies), the laws in all jurisdictions have been deemed 
     equivalent by the SEC. Companies are allowed to submit the 
     same reports in all jurisdictions. These laws already cover 
     the vast majority of companies that compete with American 
     firms including Russia's state-owned companies, Gazprom and 
     Rosneft which are required to report in the UK.
       Myth 3: The SEC rule is burdensome.
       Facts: The Cardin-Lugar Provision is a reporting 
     requirement, which is not onerous and does not limit the 
     operations of oil, gas, and mining companies; the rule simply 
     requires companies to publicly report payments that companies 
     would track in the normal course of doing business The rule 
     is a straightforward requirement to make that data 
     transparent and usable by investors and citizens. Leading 
     global oil and mining majors such as Shell, BP and Total, 
     along with Russian state-owned companies, are entering their 
     second year of reporting under EU rules without any negative 
     impact or reported issue. In fact, many major companies have 
     publicly endorsed this type of reporting

[[Page S641]]

     and have called on the U.S. to ensure our rules are 
     harmonized with those other markets.
       Myth 4: The rule requires companies to disclose proprietary 
     information that could help foreign competitors.
       Facts: The SEC rule requires companies to disclose payment 
     information; it does not mandate the disclosure of 
     proprietary, confidential or commercially sensitive 
     information by companies. Numerous companies are already 
     reporting under the similar rules in other markets, such as 
     Shell and BP, and none have reported any competitive harm 
     from payment transparency. However, the SEC's rule 
     nonetheless contains safeguards. To the extent a company 
     legitimately believes that disclosure will risk exposing 
     proprietary information, they can apply to the SEC for 
     exemptive relief on a case-by-case basis.
       Furthermore, a competitor cannot use payment data to 
     ``reverse engineer'' a company's return on investment or the 
     contract terms of a specific project. Complex factors such as 
     access to technology and finance determine a company's 
     success in winning bids with host governments--not 
     transparency of payments. Extractive companies that are 
     covered by payment disclosure requirements in other 
     jurisdictions have continued to win bids.
       Myth 5: This rule was not properly vetted by Congress.
       Facts: The Cardin-Lugar Amendment enjoyed bipartisan 
     support and was subject to extensive review in both the House 
     and Senate, and it was unanimously supported in conference. 
     It is based on underlying legislation with a long 
     Congressional history that was the subject of multiple 
     hearings in both the House and Senate. In fact, the first 
     precursor was a Republican House resolution on oil and mining 
     transparency from 2006. For this reason, propositions to 
     repeal the rule signify an inappropriate use of the CRA. The 
     intent of the CRA is to address midnight rules, not rules 
     like 1504 that have undergone years of extensive regulatory 
     development.
       Myth 6: The SEC rule will cause companies to lose out on 
     foreign contracts.
       Facts: Opponents of the Cardin-Lugar anti-corruption 
     provision have claimed that companies could be placing 
     themselves at odds with legal or contractual prohibitions on 
     reporting in countries like Angola, China, Qatar, and 
     Cameroon and may subsequently lose out on business in those 
     countries due to the transparency rule. In the six years 
     since this law was passed, no company has produced evidence 
     that any country prohibits this type of disclosure, and 
     numerous submissions to the SEC have demonstrated no such 
     prohibitions exist. The experience of companies already 
     reporting under the parallel disclosure rules in other 
     countries likewise confirms the absence of any prohibition on 
     reporting; companies like BP and Shell have disclosed 
     project-level payments made in Angola, China, and Qatar with 
     no repercussions. Nor have these companies lost out on bids 
     because of payment disclosure requirements. Nonetheless, the 
     Cardin-Lugar provision contains safeguards to ensure that 
     companies that face a legitimate problem can apply for an 
     exemption from disclosure on a case by case basis.
       Myth 7: The Cardin-Lugar provision has nothing to do with 
     the SEC or investors.
       Facts: It is important to note that the SEC extractives 
     transparency rule is not a case of agency overreach. Congress 
     specifically mandated the SEC issue this rule in Section 1504 
     of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, and by issuing the 2016 rule the 
     SEC complied with the will of Congress. Both Senator Cardin 
     and Senator Lugar, the original sponsors of the bill, along 
     with Senators Leahy, Durbin, Brown, Warren, Baldwin, Markey, 
     Coons, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Menendez and Merkley, expressed 
     explicit support for the SEC's interpretation of Section 1504 
     during the rulemaking process.
       The rule has significant benefits for investors. Throughout 
     the rulemaking process, investors worth nearly $10 trillion 
     of assets under management repeatedly emphasized their 
     support for payment disclosures under the rule. The rule 
     provides investors with critical information for assessing 
     risk in the often murky and unstable oil, gas and mining 
     sectors, with positive follow-on impacts for firms that 
     benefit from increased investor confidence and certainty. The 
     increased transparency resulting from this provision has been 
     estimated to lower the cost of capital for covered U.S.-
     listed firms by $6.3 billion to $12.6 billion.
       Myth 8: We don't need Cardin-Lugar because we have the 
     Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
       Facts: While the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) 
     remains an important statutory tool critical to fighting 
     global corruption, its scope is confined to bribery. Bribery 
     is only one tool used to facilitate corruption. All too 
     often, it is the legal payments made to governments that are 
     misused, or siphoned off to the bank accounts of a country's 
     corrupt elites. However, the fact that companies are already 
     subject to the FCPA does mean the burden of reporting 
     payments to comply with the Cardin-Lugar rule is minimal; 
     companies are already required to collect and track payment 
     information as part of the books and records provision of the 
     FCPA. In this way, the two laws work very well together in 
     creating a strong regulatory foundation to prevent 
     corruption.
       Myth 9: This rule is the same as the one sent back to be 
     revised by the courts in 2013 and did not incorporate the 
     Court's or industry concerns.
       Facts: The American Petroleum Institute filed suit to 
     challenge the original rule issued by the SEC in 2012, 
     despite its largest member companies claiming to support 
     transparency. The earlier version of the rule was vacated by 
     the court and sent back to the SEC in 2013 on narrow 
     procedural grounds, not on the substance of the rule. Since 
     then, the SEC has had another two years of public 
     consultations and internal analysis, resulting in an even 
     more robust record with substantial evidence supporting each 
     aspect of the 2016 rule. That evidence also includes the 
     experience of companies already reporting on their payments 
     under similar rules in other jurisdictions. The SEC's final 
     rule strikes an appropriate balance by requiring the level of 
     transparency Congress intended, while also accommodating 
     industry concerns by providing companies with the opportunity 
     to apply for case-by-case exemptions when they face reporting 
     challenges and a generous phase-in period. Reporting will 
     only begin at the end of 2018.
       Myth 10: Sections 1504 (extractives transparency) and 1502 
     (conflict minerals) are the same thing/substantially similar.
       Facts: Section 1504 requires U.S.-listed oil and mining 
     companies to annually disclose the company's major payments 
     made to the U.S. and foreign governments. It is simply a 
     financial disclosure of payments companies already track.
       Section 1502 mandates that a certain set of companies using 
     tin, tungsten, tantalum or gold in their products undertake 
     supply chain due diligence and report annually to the SEC 
     regarding the source of the minerals used in their products 
     and whether the minerals are sourced in conflict areas in the 
     Democratic Republic of Congo.
       Myth 11: The Cardin-Lugar rule poses a security risk for 
     American companies and their employees working abroad.
       Facts: There is no evidence justifying the claims that the 
     Cardin-Lugar rule would have any negative impacts on 
     security. In fact, all available evidence points to the 
     contrary. The United Steelworkers explicitly argue that the 
     Cardin Lugar anti-corruption rule will enhance employee 
     safety. Generally, 1504 helps protect U.S. national security 
     interests by preventing the corruption, secrecy, and 
     government abuse that has catalyzed conflict, instability, 
     and violent extremist movements in Africa, the Middle East 
     and beyond. As ISIS demonstrated, non-state actors can 
     benefit from trading natural resources in order to finance 
     their operations; project level reporting will make hiding 
     imports from non-state actors more difficult, thereby 
     limiting their ability finance themselves with natural 
     resource revenues.
       Myth 12: This law increases prices at the pump and takes 
     capital away from other business opportunities.
       Facts: All of the data suggests that transparency actually 
     helps company balance sheets by lowering the cost of capital 
     and increasing investor confidence. On the other hand, 
     corruption costs oil and mining companies millions of dollars 
     every year from instability and fragility in resource-rich 
     countries, which contributes to increased operating risks, 
     waste, inefficiency, and delays. For instance, between 2011 
     and 2014, the conflict in Libya fueled in part by citizens' 
     frustration with corruption and poor governance caused five 
     U.S.-listed oil companies to miss out on more than $17 
     billion in revenues due to production disruptions in the 
     country.

  Mr. CARDIN. Let me conclude, for years, Congress has been fighting to 
shine a light on the billions of dollars paid by extracted companies to 
foreign governments. By taking away one of the only tools we have to 
shine a light on extracted payments' associated corruption, we are 
sending a message to corrupt leaders around the world that the United 
States does not care about corruption; that we won't hold them 
accountable, and that they should continue with business as usual: 
Exploiting their own people, and perhaps even funding terrorist 
organizations with some of their secret proceeds. It is not in our 
national interest to stop an anticorruption rule that bolsters 
America's national security, advances our humanitarian and 
anticorruption goals, and demonstrates U.S. moral leadership.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against this resolution of 
disapproval.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.


                       Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to take a few minutes to comment 
on some of the initial reactions that I have heard from my Democratic 
colleagues on the President's nomination of Judge Gorsuch to be an 
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
  First of all, even before we had the nominee, there were many of the 
Democratic Members vowing to filibuster the nominee, site unseen. That, 
of course, is very unfortunate, as well as being ridiculous--in other 
words, saying you are going to filibuster somebody before you even know 
who the nominee is. But of course, given

[[Page S642]]

how the minority has treated the President's Cabinet nominees so far, 
it is not exactly surprising that they would say this before the 
President even nominated somebody for the Court.
  Then, of course, this week the President announced his nominee. Judge 
Gorsuch, of course, was confirmed by the Senate in 2006 without a 
single ``no'' vote and is universally respected as one of the finest 
and most fairminded judges in the country. In fact--get this--one of 
President Obama's Solicitors General called him ``one of the most 
thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our Nation over the last 
century.''
  Now, if an Obama Solicitor General says that and that is not 
mainstream enough, I don't know what is. After the President's 
announcement, something very interesting happened. Right out of the 
gate, there were a number of Senate Democrats calling for ``a hearing 
and a vote.'' Well, that certainly sounds very encouraging. The press 
picked up on these comments, and one newspaper even reported that after 
learning who the nominee was, there were already seven Senate Democrats 
opposed to filibustering this nominee.
  At first glance, it appears those Democrats were trying to be 
consistent with their stance from last year that a nominee deserves a 
hearing and an up-or-down vote. But of course, now they conveniently 
seem to have dropped the up-or-down portion of that stand.
  Now, isn't that a nice trick, a new trick. Take, for example, one of 
my colleagues, who last year said: ``The Constitution says the Senate 
shall advise and consent, and that means having an up-or-down vote.'' 
But oddly, just yesterday, that same colleague said: ``I support a 60-
vote margin for all Supreme Court nominees.''
  That is a very nice sleight of hand. But most of the Senators are not 
that gullible. The Washington Post Fact Checker certainly took notice 
of their wordsmithing. That has earned them two Pinocchios. When you 
look at the facts, a 60-vote threshold has never been a standard, as 
the minority leader said yesterday. Otherwise, we would not have two of 
the current justices sitting on the Supreme Court.
  Of course, my colleagues tried unsuccessfully to filibuster Justice 
Alito. The Senate voted 72 to 25 to invoke cloture. He was then 
confirmed 58 to 42 on an up-or-down vote.
  Justice Thomas, now on the Supreme Court for 25 years, was confirmed 
52 to 48. There was no cloture vote on Justice Thomas's nomination. In 
fact, the Senate did not set any sort of a requirement that there be 60 
votes for 7 of the 8 justices serving on the Court. So, if there has 
been any sort of requirement or practice in the Senate on Supreme Court 
nominees, it has, in fact, been that the nominee does not need 60 
votes, although many of them received that kind of support.
  We already know some Members have pledged to filibuster the nominee. 
This minority leader stated that part of the ``fair process'' is a 60-
vote threshold. I suppose that if you are already committed to 
attempting a filibuster on a Supreme Court nominee before you even know 
who that person might be, then you might consider that part of a fair 
process.
  Of course, we all know--all Republicans and Democrats know--that 
launching a filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee is not part of a 
fair process. It never has been. But I suppose we should cut our 
colleagues just a little bit of slack. They are having a hard time 
figuring out how to make good on their promise to attack the nominee no 
matter who it is, when they have now been presented with a nominee with 
impeccable credentials as well as broad bipartisan support.
  This brings me to the second brief point that I want to make. Judge 
Gorsuch had barely finished speaking at the White House, and there were 
already attacks on the nominee by some on the left. Some of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle had already taken to the 
Senate floor to attack and mischaracterize Judge Gorsuch's record. 
Though we expected it, these scurrilous attacks are untoward and 
obviously misplaced. After all, those on the left trot out the same 
tired arguments against every Republican nominee.
  Now, you know, going back a few years--maybe, too far for some of you 
younger Members--they attacked Justice Stevens because he ``revealed an 
extraordinary lack of sensitivity to problems that women face.''
  They called Justice Kennedy a sexist who ``would be a disaster for 
women.'' They said there was ``ample reason to fear'' Justice Souter. 
Of course, you know what turned out. Justices Stevens and Souter turned 
out to be favorites of the left, and too often Justice Kennedy has 
ruled the liberal way.
  This morning, the Washington Post editorial board noted that, while 
we argued last year--meaning the paper argued last year--that the 
President should not fill a Supreme Court vacancy that occurs during a 
Presidential election year, Senate Republicans--quoting the Post--
``refrained from tarring Mr. Garland personally.''
  Now, in contrast, the paper noted that this dissent is unwarranted 
this early by writing this: ``Trashing Mr. Gorsuch as an outlandish 
radical, despite his impeccable credentials, the wide respect he 
commands in his field, his long service as an appeals court judge and 
the unanimous voice vote he received the last time the Senate 
considered him for the Federal bench is, at the very least, 
premature.''
  Our friends on the other side of the aisle would do well to take note 
of the Washington Post's observation. So I would like to make this 
point. If the process we have witnessed for the President's Cabinet 
nominees is any guide, I am quite confident that we will hear all 
manner of reasons and arguments about why we should delay a hearing on 
Judge Gorsuch.
  But as my friend and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
Senator Leahy, often noted, Supreme Court nominees don't have the 
opportunity to respond to personal attacks outside of their 
confirmation hearing. So I am going to consult with the ranking member 
on timing for the hearing. But I can tell you what we are not going to 
do. We are not going to delay this hearing, especially in the face of 
all of these attacks on his record and character, which, both for the 
record and for his character, are unjustified.
  So I will conclude with this. I had the good fortune of meeting one-
on-one with Judge Gorsuch yesterday. He is as impressive a person in 
person as he is on paper. I expect that as my friends on the other side 
of the aisle meet Judge Gorsuch and actually review his record, they 
will find him to be an imminently qualified and universally respected 
judge, whose decisions faithfully applying the text of the law place 
him well within the judicial mainstream.
  Now, maybe people that say they want a mainstream judge wanted an 
activist judge who will read the text the way the judge wants it read 
for their own personal views, as opposed to the intent by Congress. But 
Judge Gorsuch is doing what any judge should do reading the law. He 
said: If any judge likes every decision he makes, then he is not a very 
good judge.
  Now, this is what we are going to do. We are going to do our due 
diligence, and we are going to send a questionnaire to Judge Gorsuch in 
the next day or so. I will expect he will answer that questionnaire 
promptly, and then we will do what I said before the election, before 
we knew who was going to be the next President.
  In fact, we thought it was going to be Secretary Clinton. When I say 
we, the country as a whole had that in their mind. There was no doubt 
about it. So I said before the election, as the one responsible for not 
having a hearing on the previous nominee, that, whoever was elected 
President, this process was going to move forward.
  So we will have that hearing where Members can ask this nominee any 
questions they deem appropriate. We will vote on him in committee, and 
the full Senate will vote on his nomination. But given his exemplary 
record and the facts as we know them, I expect this nominee to be 
confirmed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am going to try to be very brief.
  I am rising to return to the topic of the effort of the CRA to roll 
back transparency in the oil and gas industry, and I will speak 
briefly. I know my colleague from Arizona is here and wants to speak 
too.

[[Page S643]]

  The issue has been described. It is an SEC rule requiring energy 
companies to disclose the payments they make to foreign governments for 
natural resources. The reason is that many countries with abundant 
natural resources are run by dictators, and there has been a long 
history of payments by oil companies--American and others--to those 
dictators that don't get to the people and actually further the 
corruption of the country.
  Just one example: An IMF report stated that in just 1 year, 1998, the 
Government of Equatorial Guinea received $130 million in oil revenue, 
and $96 million of that went directly into the personal bank account of 
the dictator, Teodoro Obiang. Meanwhile, hunger in that country is 
rampant, and that is what led to this.
  I am on the Foreign Relations Committee. In preparation for our 
hearing on the nomination of Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of 
ExxonMobil, for Secretary of State, I read a wonderful report that was 
done by Senator Lugar when he was the ranking member of the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee.
  October 2008: Report to members of the Foreign Relations Committee 
from the ranking member. The title was ``The Petroleum And Poverty 
Paradox: Assessing U.S. And International Community Efforts to Fight 
The Resource Curse.'' I read this. I read the book ``Private Empire,'' 
a recent history of ExxonMobil written by journalist Steve Coll, to 
prepare for my examination of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.
  This particular report was the basis for the 2010 law that was 
described by Senator Cardin, and it was sponsored in a bipartisan way. 
It didn't prohibit any company from doing anything. It only required 
companies that pay foreign governments to disclose those payments.
  I voted yesterday against Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State 
because I believe a public official's duty--especially Secretary of 
State--has to be to the country. I was worried, based on three areas of 
his testimony, that Rex Tillerson could not set aside his loyalty to 
ExxonMobil.
  He refused to answer questions that I asked him about ExxonMobil's 
knowledge of climate science, yet their efforts to convince the public 
that the science was not settled. He told me he wouldn't answer my 
questions.
  He did not demonstrate to the committee's satisfaction, in my view, 
that he could be independent in Russia. For example, he said that 
ExxonMobil had not lobbied against sanctions against Russia, when we 
actually have the lobbying forms to suggest they had.
  In both of those areas, I found his responses wanting, and I voted 
against him.
  I will be honest. I asked him about the resource curse question, and 
today I kind of feel like I got snookered.
  I said: There is a lot of concern about these countries that let 
resource wealth go to dictators and further corruption. What are you 
going to do about it, as the Secretary of State, working on 
development, for example, of some of these poor nations? And he talked 
about high-minded values and virtues of the things the United States 
could do that would battle corruption and increase transparency.
  He didn't tell me that he had been personally involved in an effort 
to defeat the legislation that passed Congress in 2010. Now there is 
press out suggesting that is the case, and he didn't tell me that 
apparently there was an effort underway to undermine the transparency 
statute that was so important.
  I have to put it on the record. Within 1 day--within 1 day of the 
Senate approving Mr. Tillerson for Secretary of State, the Trump 
administration has relaxed sanctions on Russia. That happened today. 
And now, apparently, we are going to vote to eliminate a law that 
requires transparency among companies like ExxonMobil.
  I kind of feel like I got snookered at the hearing. What public 
interest is at stake in rolling this back? I don't think there is any.
  Some say: Well, look, it is about leveling the playing field. The 
United States shouldn't be at a competitive disadvantage, but U.S. 
companies are at a disadvantage. Companies listed on the U.S. stock 
exchange--wherever they are from--are required to do this transparency, 
these disclosures, and many are already doing it. Because we have led, 
the European Union and Canada have said this is a great idea, and they 
are doing it too.
  It would be a horrible thing if the United States pulled away from 
its leadership.
  In conclusion, I am concerned that in the opening 2 weeks of the 
Trump administration--despite a lot of promises about what they would 
do in the economy--what has the administration done about the economy?

  On day one, they entered an Executive order retracting an FHA 
mortgage reduction, thereby requiring homeowners with FHA loans to have 
to pay more for their monthly mortgages. They have done a Federal 
hiring ban that falls disproportionately on veterans because the 
Federal workforce is a veteran-heavy workforce. They have done the 
immigration rules that we have discussed which not only affect 
immigrants but have a dramatic negative effect on America's technology 
industry.
  And then in the first two uses of the CRA procedure since the 1990s, 
they have eliminated a rule to allow more pollution of streams in poor 
areas where coal is produced, and now this--allowing companies to 
escape transparency and make the very kinds of payments that lead to 
corruption in foreign governments, corruption so severe that a former 
Republican Member of this body was compelled to write a superb report 
in 2008 and have bipartisan legislation passed.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the CRA repeal of this rule.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, during my time in the Congress, I have had 
the privilege of visiting many other nations, often fragile or new 
democracies struggling to meet the needs of growing numbers of youth 
and emerging middle classes.
  For example, many of the fastest growing economies are in the 
developing nations of Africa and Asia. In fact, a few years ago, the 
World Bank said Africa was on ``the brink of an economic take-off.''
  Such economic gains should be welcome news for lifting millions out 
of poverty, providing better basic services such as education and 
health care, and improving the lives of women.
  They are also opportunities to create more markets for our goods and 
services, to add to our global allies, and to reverse the conditions 
that lead to violent extremism.
  But for those of us who have visited many such nations, we are also 
aware of a major impediment to realizing these improvements--namely 
effective and clean government.
  You see, too often, endemic corruption--frequently around lucrative 
extractive oil and minerals--robs untold sums from generation after 
generation in many of these nations.
  Just look at such oil rich nations as Angola, Venezuela, Nigeria, or 
Equatorial Guinea, where government after government squandered and 
stole the oil wealth from its own people, far too many of whom still 
live in terrible squalor.
  Some of you may remember the devastating column Nicholas Kristof 
wrote in 2015, ``Deadliest Country for Kids.'' Here is how he describe 
Angola: ``This is a country laden with oil, diamonds, Porsche-driving 
millionaires and toddlers starving to death. . . . this well off but 
corrupt African nation is ranked No. 1 in the world in the rate at 
which children die before the age of five. . . . Under the corrupt and 
autocratic president, Jose Educardo dos Santos, who has ruled for 35 
years, billons of dollars flow to a small elite--as kids starve.''
  He continues: ``There are many ways for a leader to kill his people, 
and although dos Santos isn't committing genocide he is presiding over 
the systematic looting of his state and neglect of his people . . . Let 
's hold dos Santos accountable and recognize that extreme corruption 
and negligence can be something close to a mass atrocity.''
  In 2008, Republican Foreign Relations Committee staff, under then-
Senator Richard Lugar, released a report on this scourge, ``The 
Petroleum and Poverty Paradox.''
  The report from Lugar discussed the ``resource curse'' which is a 
``phenomenon whereby large reserves of oil or other resources often 
negatively affect a country's economic growth, corruption level and 
stability.''
  Why is this important? Let me quote from the report: ``This `resource 
curse'

[[Page S644]]

affects us as well as producing countries. It exacerbates global 
poverty which can be a seedbed for terrorism, it dulls the effect of 
our foreign assistance, it empowers autocrats and dictators, and it can 
crimp world petroleum supplies by breeding instability. . . . This 
report argues that transparency in revenues, expenditure and wealth 
management from extractive industries is crucial to defeating the 
resource curse.''
  Wise words from a wise man.
  And so, this report became the basis for a very thoughtful, 
bipartisan law that I was proud to support which tried to tackle this 
issue in a very commonsense manner.
  It simply required that the SEC issue a rule requiring all oil, gas, 
and mineral companies listed on the U.S. Stock Exchange to disclose 
royalties, bonuses, fees, taxes, and other payments made to foreign 
governments as a transparency tool for fighting corruption.
  The U.S. law became the catalyst for others: all 28 European Union 
member states have enacted similar legislation, followed by Norway and 
then Canada, who are key players in extractive industries--further 
establishing an international norm.
  Moreover, a study conducted by business professors at George 
Washington University and Catholic University found that increased 
transparency resulting from disclosures required under the rule lowers 
the cost of capital for covered U.S. listed firms by up to $12.6 
billion.
  So claims that this is burdensome and will result in competitive harm 
to American firms are unfounded and simply untrue.
  So here we are, 4 months since our intelligence services disclosed 
that a former KGB official led a cyber act of war on our Nation and 
democracy--and what is the priority of the Republican majority?
  Establishing an independent commission to look into the Russian 
attack?
  No.
  Taking up bipartisan legislation to tighten sanctions on Russia for 
its attack on our Nation?
  No.
  In fact, not a single Republican has even come to the Senate floor to 
discuss these grave matters of national security.
  Ronald Reagan, who understood the Russian mentality so well, must be 
turning in his grave to see this abdication by his party.
  Instead, what is the majority party's priority?
  Well, repealing health care from millions without an alternative--
and, now, trying to strip this good governance anticorruption law--one 
led by a member of their own party and subject to years of debate and 
input--aimed at addressing corruption that robs so much from the 
world's poor--not exactly draining the swamp.
  This isn't an onerous rule. It is simply a matter of disclosure, 
transparency, and good governance. It is hard to understand opposition 
to greater transparency.
  As such, I will vote against his measure and I urge my colleagues, 
especially my Republican colleagues who have made helping the world's 
poor one of their endeavors to do the same, don't vote to put more 
money in the pockets of the world's worst autocrats at the expense of 
the world's most vulnerable.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, President Trump made bold claims about his 
intention to ``drain the swamp.'' But here we are, debating a measure 
that would do the exact opposite. The Senate is actually voting to kill 
an anticorruption regulation.
  This regulation was the result of bipartisan effort led by Senator 
Dick Lugar. Senator Lugar was my mentor when I first joined the Senate. 
He helped me better understand the role and traditions of this body; 
and he showed me what it meant to be a statesmen.
  Senator Lugar was one of the most thoughtful foreign policy experts 
to serve in the Senate. He chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, and 
he was deeply respected on both sides of the aisle.
  He understood the ``resource curse.'' How developing countries with 
billions of dollars in oil, gas, or other valuable minerals often had 
the worst poverty, how the governments of these countries made deals 
with huge corporations to sell their resources, but the citizens of 
those countries never saw the benefits. Instead, corrupt leaders would 
enrich themselves, rather than use the funds to pay for healthcare, 
education, infrastructure, or housing.
  Senator Lugar, with Senator Cardin, developed legislation to address 
the resource curse, to bring transparency to an opaque system. The 
result was section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act. It directed the SEC to 
issue a rule requiring all oil, gas, and mineral companies listed on 
U.S. stock exchanges to disclose the payments they make to foreign 
governments.
  This allows the citizens of those countries to hold their leaders 
accountable. It shines a light on corruption. And when citizens can 
demand that this money is used for their benefit, it reduces their need 
for foreign aid.
  Opponents of this rule claimed it would put American companies at a 
disadvantage. In fact, it made the U.S. a leader. Other countries 
followed suit and passed similar requirements.
  The Cardin-Lugar rule became the global standard for transparency. 
Today, 80 percent of the world's largest publicly listed oil, gas and 
mining companies--including state-owned companies from Russia, China, 
and Brazil--are subject to disclosure rules.
  This resolution of disapproval is just one of many misguided efforts 
by Republicans to use the Congressional Review Act to kill regulations 
that protect the most vulnerable.
  The CRA was enacted in 1996 as part of the radical deregulatory and 
anticonsumer actions by shepherded by Newt Gingrich. Before now, the 
CRA has successfully been used to overturn only one rule.
  There is a reason it has only been successfully used once. The CRA is 
a blunt weapon. It is a poorly written law that comes with unintended 
consequences. The CRA allows Congress to strike down a rule in its 
entirety with only an hour of floor debate in the House and without the 
ability to filibuster it in the Senate.
  This flawed process can undo years of careful work by stakeholders 
and Federal agencies. Work done through an open, thoughtful rulemaking 
process. The Cardin-Lugar rule took years to finalize. Republicans want 
to kill it in a day.
  And let's be clear--it does kill the regulation. Earlier today, 
Leader McConnell mischaracterized this effort. He said, ``Let's send 
the SEC back to the drawing board to promote transparency.''
  But that is not what the CRA does. It doesn't send the agency ``back 
to the drawing board.'' What it does do is prohibit the agency from 
issuing another regulation that is ``substantially the same,'' unless 
Congress specifically authorizes the agency to do so through subsequent 
legislation.
  The courts have not yet determined how different a new regulation 
must be so that is not ``substantially the same.'' This discourages an 
agency from issuing a new similar regulation once a rule has been 
blocked.
  This is not going back to the drawing board. This is going back to 
corruption.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, with this resolution, the Senate 
majority is continuing its rush to overturn Obama administration 
consumer and investor protections, this time by targeting a bipartisan 
anticorruption measure.
  In 2008, under the direction of Senator Richard Lugar, Republican 
staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee produced a report, 
``The Petroleum and Poverty Paradox: Assessing U.S. and International 
Community Efforts to Fight the Resource Curse.'' They traveled to some 
of the most resource-rich countries in the world and explored how 
government corruption, fraud, and instability prevented those nations' 
people from benefitting from their oil, gas, and mineral reserves. 
Rather than spurring national economic development, benefits were 
concentrated among government and military elites and organized crime. 
According to the nonprofit research organization Global Financial 
Integrity, in 2012, developing countries ``lose roughly $1 trillion per 
year to crime, corruption, and tax evasion.''
  The 2008 Foreign Relation Committee report led to the bipartisan 
Cardin-Lugar amendment to direct the Securities and Exchange Commission 
to require that all oil, gas, and mineral

[[Page S645]]

companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges disclose their payments to 
foreign governments, including royalties, fees, taxes, and bonuses. 
Congress enacted the Cardin-Lugar amendment as section 1504 of the 
Dodd-Frank Act.
  These transparency provisions are critical to combatting corruption 
in resource-rich nations. And these provisions are critical to 
protecting investors by ensuring that they have a clear picture of 
companies' interactions with foreign nations.
  As the Foreign Relations Committee report noted: ``transparency in 
extractive industries abroad is in our interests because mineral wealth 
breeds corruption, which dulls the effects of U.S. foreign assistance; 
inequitable distribution of mineral revenues creates civil unrest, 
threatening political and energy instability and adding a price premium 
to commodities such as oil and gas; and energy rich countries can 
become emboldened militarily.''
  The Cardin-Lugar amendment continued American leadership in 
anticorruption efforts, and has established a new global standard. 
Similar rules ale now in effect in Europe, Norway, and Canada and apply 
to 80 percent of the world's largest publicly listed oil, gas, and 
mining companies, including state-owned oil companies in Russia, China, 
and Brazil.
  While many of the world's largest extractive businesses have 
expressed support for transparency, including BP, Shell, and Newmont 
Mining, the SEC rule has been strongly opposed by a narrow group, 
including ExxonMobil. I am concerned to see the Senate acting to repeal 
this rule and prohibit the SEC from ever establishing a similar 
anticorruption and investor-protection measure in the same week that it 
voted to confirm Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, to be 
Secretary of State.
  There is no logical reason to go against international norms and 
repeal a rule supported by much of the regulated industry, investors, 
and advocates for transparency and government reform in favor of a 
narrow opposition led by ExxonMobil. I urge my colleagues to reject 
this special-interest favor to ExxonMobil and maintain this important 
tool to fight corruption and protect investors.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Flake pertaining to the introduction of S. 276 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')


                       Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I want to speak for a couple of minutes 
about the Supreme Court.
  A year ago, we lost one of the greatest legal minds to ever serve on 
the Nation's highest Court. For nearly three decades, Justice Antonin 
Scalia fought for individual liberty and defended the integrity of the 
Constitution.
  No Justice in recent memory has so fundamentally influenced the 
trajectory of the Supreme Court. From his landmark decision that 
protected our Second Amendment right to bear arms to his staunch 
defense of limited government and enumerated powers, Justice Scalia 
stood as a bulwark against any erosion of our constitutional rights by 
an activist judiciary. He did this with his unshakable commitment to an 
originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Through this lens, he 
did not read words that were not there or infer intent that did not 
exist. Instead, Justice Scalia simply understood the Constitution, as 
the Founders understood it.
  Judge Scalia's passing marked a watershed moment for the future of 
our country. Suddenly, in the midst of the last Presidential campaign, 
voters were empowered to determine the philosophical balance of the 
Supreme Court at the polls. By entrusting Republicans with the 
stewardship of our Federal Government, voters signaled their desire for 
change and for the values that our party embraces. From strong 
separation of powers to a commitment to federalism, to religious 
freedom, people in Arizona and around the country wanted to restore 
these foundational principles. Now, President Trump's nomination of 
Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court will help usher in that change 
and solidify those values on the Court for a generation to come.
  Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend the ceremony at 
the White House and listen to Judge Gorsuch accept his nomination. I 
was impressed by his humble respect for the law and for his commitment 
to service. I was particularly struck by his recognition that ``it is 
for Congress, not the courts, to write new laws'' and that a Justice 
should make decisions based on what the law demands, not the outcome 
that he or she desires.
  I also appreciate his experience as an appellate court judge. This 
experience has given him a firm understanding of a properly functioning 
Federal circuit. As someone who has tried to reform an oversized and 
overworked Ninth Circuit, I really appreciate that insight.
  Judge Gorsuch is an accomplished, mainstream jurist with a judicial 
philosophy worthy of Judge Scalia's seat. We can be confident that he 
will read the law as written and not attempt to legislate from the 
bench, but if we allow rigid partisan and ideological calculus to seep 
into our confirmation process, I fear that no President will ever be 
able to get a Cabinet or Supreme Court pick confirmed.
  A favorite line of our former President is that ``elections have 
consequences.'' Indeed, they do. Like it or not, the winning party 
governs. That is democracy, and we have a responsibility now to govern.
  My hope is a return to the longstanding traditions of bipartisan 
cooperation on this Supreme Court nomination. Judge Gorsuch is 
experienced. He is qualified, and he deserves a fair hearing. He 
deserves an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. I am confident that 
when he receives that up-or-down vote, he will fill the vacancy on the 
Supreme Court.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, back on the topic of the evening: the 
Congressional Review Act action to overturn the SEC's rule.
  I am just kind of at a loss for words. There are people back home 
asking how politics is going, and they have a certain set of 
assumptions about the way Congress works. They watch ``House of 
Cards.'' They watch movies about politics. They have watched other TV 
shows on Hulu and Netflix, whatever it may be. I submit to you that 
what we are doing right now is so corrupt, so grotesque, so obvious, so 
trite that it wouldn't even make the cut as a plot for a TV show about 
politics because who would believe that the Republican Congress, as one 
of their first acts, would pass a law prohibiting the implementation of 
a rule that requires oil companies to disclose what kind of foreign 
payments they are making for the privilege of extracting resources.
  So what does that mean? You have oil companies that in order to 
extract resources in places like Africa and elsewhere--mostly poor 
countries around the globe--they have to cut a deal with whoever is in 
charge of the government in order to have access to that 
resource. Whether it is in Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Africa, 
Myanmar, or elsewhere, they cut a deal with the governing despot, 
usually. That money very often makes it directly into the pockets of 
the family of the people who run the country. This is what Senator 
Cardin was elucidating, as was Senator Leahy and the ranking member, 
Senator Brown.

  But this issue was new to me, and I came to the floor not as a member 
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but as a citizen. I can't 
believe we are doing this. This is one of the stinkiest pieces of 
legislation that I have seen in my now 5 years in the Senate and my 8 
years in the Hawaii State Legislature, in my life in politics. I can't 
believe that we would have the gall to put a bill on the floor to 
prevent us from disclosing what kinds of foreign payments--that is a 
euphemism--are being made to despots and autocrats around the planet. 
These are American companies traded on the stock exchange, American 
companies making foreign payments, euphemistically, for the privilege 
of extracting primarily oil. Our ability as a country to be the world's 
lone superpower--as Madeleine Albright called us, ``the indispensable 
nation,''--to be the superior country when it comes to money, morals, 
and might is now in question. Everywhere you look, it seems like 
America is ceding global leadership.
  China is set to outshine the United States on climate change policy--

[[Page S646]]

China. Germany's Prime Minister is explaining international conventions 
on refugees to the President of the United States. We have insulted 
some of our closest allies in the fight against ISIS with a Muslim ban.
  Now we are alienating ourselves from Australia, a country that has 
stood with the United States in every major conflict since the 
beginning of the 20th century. It is hard work to offend Australia. You 
have to go out of your way in a phone call between the United States 
and Australia to have it go sideways.
  So the world is asking if the United States will still lead in the 
fight against ISIS. The world is asking if the United States will still 
keep its word, and they are asking if the United States is still the 
moral leader for the world.
  I think everyone in the Congress would agree that the answers to 
these questions should be a resounding yes, but somehow one of the 
first orders of business in this Republican Congress is not a bill that 
demonstrates American leadership but one that concedes it, because that 
is exactly what we would do if we overturn the Cardin-Lugar amendment.
  If we diminish our moral compass, the rest of the world stops looking 
at the United States as the leader among nations. The law we are voting 
to repeal set a new international standard in the fight against 
corruption. It requires oil and mining companies that are listed on the 
U.S. Stock Exchange to report any payments they may make to foreign 
governments. The idea is that the companies won't bribe dictators in 
mineral rich countries because they know they will have to disclose the 
payments.
  After the United States passed this law in 2010, some 30 countries 
followed our lead, but we never got to implementing it. So today, more 
than one-third of the world's oil and gas companies have strong legal 
incentives to do business the right way. If Republicans get rid of this 
disclosure requirement, it will be bad for American consumers.
  In 2004, a Senate subcommittee uncovered that oil companies, 
including ExxonMobil, have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the 
President of Equatorial Guinea, which is an oil-rich country in Africa. 
That money didn't go to the businesses and citizens. It went directly 
into the pockets of the President who has been called Africa's nastiest 
dictator. Instead of buying food or roads for people--by the way, most 
people who live there live on less than $1 a day--the President and his 
family bought real estate in Paris, luxury cars and life-sized 
statues--plural--of Michael Jackson.
  Getting rid of this amendment will also be bad for national security. 
Senator Lugar is one of the Republican Party's most distinguished 
foreign policy voices and the former chairman of the Foreign Relations 
Committee. He understood the risk. He understood how corruption fuels 
insecurity, poverty, and oppression in other countries and how that can 
contribute to the condition that breeds violent extremism. That is why 
he fought for the level of transparency required by this rule and to 
make it harder for dictators to steal from their own citizens. That 
means that getting rid of the Cardin-Lugar amendment is also bad for 
investors. If a company is operating in a risky, corrupt, unstable 
country, investors have the right to know. If a company is perhaps even 
adding to the region's insecurity, investors have a right to know that 
too. But that right is now in jeopardy.
  The way Republicans are going about this, we won't be able to revisit 
this once it is all said and done. This is an important point. I said 
it last night on the stream protection rule, and I think it bears 
repeating. If you do a CRA action--we are now on the third in American 
history, and the second was yesterday. The first was sometime in the 
eighties, about ergonomics. The reason this never gets done is because, 
when you overturn a regulation using the Congressional Review Act, it 
is an incredibly blunt instrument. What happens under law is that the 
rule can't be promulgated again. You can't tweak this thing.
  As to the concerns that were expressed by some of the Members on the 
Republican side about the modifications they would like, if we want to 
legislate, let's legislate. But what they are going to do is overturn 
this rule and the Securities and Exchange Commission from doing 
anything ``substantially similar'' ever again. Everybody who 
understands the CRA under the law understands that, basically, we can't 
touch this topic again. So this isn't about fixing a reg or being a 
check on runaway bureaucrats. These so-called bureaucrats, these civil 
servants in the Securities and Exchange Commission, had a statute. They 
were told to do something. Now, they took forever to do it, but that is 
not running away and going rogue. That is going a little slow, I will 
grant you, but they did the right thing pursuant to the law.
  Now--I don't know why, but I have my suspicions; I don't know why, 
but I have my suspicions--we are overturning both a rule and a law that 
requires the disclosure of payments to foreign governments made 
primarily by oil companies. It is one of the most awful things I have 
seen done in the Congress--not just when I have been here but as I have 
observed it over the last 20 years.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Hawaii, 
both on the substance of the issue and on the Congressional Review Act 
and how it is an unsuitable tool in a situation like this because of 
how it bars the door for a simple way to replace or modify a 
regulation.
  I am coming to the floor tonight to share my concerns about a basic 
challenge we have in the world. This basic challenge is that when you 
get a ruler of a country who is corrupt, they forge contractual 
relationships, particularly if they are rich in minerals or oil, and 
they pocket the money and they spread the corruption. It makes it 
virtually impossible for the interests of the people of that country to 
be represented by their government because whatever governing body they 
have keeps making decisions based on those corrupt payments.
  Now, we are a nation that values government by the people--of, by, 
and for the people. That is the vision of our Nation, but that vision 
would not be fulfilled if the Members of this body were being paid by 
foreign companies to serve the interests of the foreign companies 
instead of the interests of the people. We can understand from our own 
perspective our own desire to have a government that serves our 
citizens and that other nations want to have a government that serves 
their citizens. That is what this particular bill and the regulation 
that flows from it were all about. It was section 504 of Dodd-Frank, 
the resource extraction rule, that was passed now 7 years ago.
  It took quite a while to get the regulation into place. The first 
version came out in 2012, after a tremendous amount of consultation was 
struck down in court because it was challenged by one of the companies 
that did not want to have transparency in international payments. Then 
folks went to work again and produced a rule that went into effect this 
last year. Unfortunately, we are about to strike that down.
  I was thinking about how one of the champions for this was Senator 
Dick Lugar of Indiana. I was so impressed by his thoughtfulness when I 
came to the Senate. He had been here quite a while, and he worked to 
really understand issues, and he worked to solve problems. He didn't 
work to obstruct an administration because it was of a different party. 
He didn't work to sabotage the work of this body because one party or 
the other was in the majority. He worked to solve problems. He had 
really a deep understanding of the challenges in the world.
  He could see this from his considerable experience. He was on foreign 
relations for a very long time, and he served as its chair. He knew 
from his own work in that committee, from his own studies, from his own 
travels, and his own conversations--overseas conversations with foreign 
governments and conversations with our State Department and our Defense 
Department--that we had a significant issue in which contracts with 
large companies are used to defeat government of, by, and for the 
people in nations around the world. He wanted to do something about it. 
He had partnerships, and Members of our own body who are still serving 
here today were deeply involved in this.

[[Page S647]]

  It was a tremendous provision, but the American Petroleum Institute 
wasn't happy about it because it has worked really well for oil 
companies to not disclose and to make deals with ruling dictators and 
ruling families or ruling governing groups, whether they be in a so-
called elected form or unelected form.
  Well, finally, last year the rule was completed in June. They crafted 
a rule that, for the most part, made various stakeholders happy and it 
won broad international support. Dozens of other countries--including 
Canada, Norway, and countries of the European Union--followed American 
leadership. They adopted similar laws. So our particular law made it 
clear that if a company was listed on our stock exchange--on any of our 
exchanges--and it made a significant payment--$100,000 or more--it had 
to disclose that payment. That wasn't just U.S. companies. It wouldn't 
just have been U.S. companies. It was any company listed on our 
exchange, no matter where it was based. Other companies followed suit. 
So companies based in other countries were affected. So, basically, it 
was a vision that in short order took over the entire world, with 
developed countries coming together and saying that we are going to 
stop this process that destroys governments for the people in so much 
of the world.
  It isn't just kind of a theoretical question of some liberal vision 
of how governments work. We are talking about the difference between 
the decisions of dictators to stash billions of dollars overseas or 
build health care clinics. We are talking about the difference between 
dictators buying hundreds of the world's most expensive sports cars or 
developing an education system in their countries. We are talking about 
the fundamental quality of life for millions and millions of people 
around the world. This provision, this resource extraction rule, went 
in an enormous direction in terms of making the world a better place. 
Shouldn't that be what we are about?
  This challenge of foreign contracts with money diverted into the 
pockets of the dictators and the ruling class--the money that should go 
to the development of the country--is particularly a problem in 
resource rich countries with weak institutions. They have weak courts. 
They have weak investigative branches to find corruption. They have 
courts that essentially exorcise the ability to try people for which 
there is evidence, who should be charged and should be convicted. So 
the same corruption that affects the decisions that are made protects 
those who make those decisions. This means that if you have someone who 
grows up in this country and says: We have hundreds of billions of 
dollars of resources and nothing to show for it; so let's change that 
system; let's change that system and enable the people of this country 
to benefit from schools and health care and transportation; let's 
develop our nation, they are stymied by this complex web of undisclosed 
corruption. So that is what this bill is all about, and that is what 
this rule stemming from the section of the bill is all about.

  Let's take, for example, a poster child for this resource curse. In 
many countries, it is known as the oil curse. Oil is a particularly 
prominent case. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo has not just 
some oil but a lot of minerals. It is a significant producer of the 
world's cobalt, diamonds, tin, gold, and other minerals. This problem 
of a corrupt dictator goes way back to decades ago. His name was well 
known around the world: Mobutu Sese Seko. He ruled from 1965 to 1997, 
so 32 years, three decades. It is estimated that he diverted from the 
country $4 billion to $15 billion. That is a lot of roads being built 
in a poor country. That is a lot of food for people who are near 
starvation. That is a lot of public school education. That is a lot of 
health care clinics. So one very rich man was stashing money in Swiss 
bank accounts rather than that money going to the government to do 
fundamental responsibilities for the people. The country has an 
estimated $24 trillion in mineral deposits. When we think about that, 
the $4 billion to $15 billion doesn't sound like very much.
  Often, the way it works is these corrupt payments enable companies to 
get contracts far below cost, which is not a good thing, obviously, for 
these impoverished nations, to be essentially giving away their money 
because they are being bribed to do so.
  So that is extremely disturbing to me, this particular issue being 
done here late in the evening, with very few of my colleagues here--
mostly colleagues who are trying to fight this rule. Those who are 
supporting the multilateral corporations, the multinational 
corporations that don't like to have disclosure, they are not here to 
talk about how this is damaging the lives of millions of people in the 
poorest countries around the world. Maybe we need to have a rule in the 
Senate that if you are going to damage the lives of millions of people, 
you have to actually be here to hear the debate.
  This debate is limited to just 10 hours, 5 hours on either side. If 
one side gives back their time, it is just 5 hours. There are not a 
whole lot of conversations. Maybe we could limit the conversation to 20 
minutes a person or 10 minutes a person so we get a lot of voices in.
  Before we go about the process of destroying the lives of millions of 
people all around the world, maybe, instead of just listening to the 
lobbyists for a multinational bank in your office, you should be here 
on the floor to have a conversation about the damage you are 
contemplating doing. Maybe then we would have an actual debate here in 
the U.S. Senate--a place that used to be a place where people did come 
and listen to each other debate issues. Perhaps there are good 
arguments to the contrary that I haven't heard because my colleagues 
aren't here presenting them. And maybe out of that mutual exchange, we 
would find a path to do something other than using this crude and 
destructive tool to strike down this very important provision.
  There are three groups who benefit from this disclosure rule. The 
first group who benefits is the investors in a company who want to 
invest in companies that have responsible practices. The disclosure 
gives them the ability to have that information.
  The second group who benefits is consumers who want to buy products 
from companies that engage in responsible practices, and disclosure 
enables them to do that.
  The third group, though, really is the most important group, and that 
is a group of citizens in the country who are being corrupted by these 
payments because when they hear that a company has a contract and has 
paid X amount of billion dollars for that contract, then the newspapers 
of that country and the citizens of that country can try to get 
additional information: Did you take the percentage of that that was 
supposed to go to the regional government and actually get it disbursed 
to the regional government? Did you take the percentage of that that 
was supposed to go to the local city or province and did it get there? 
They can start to see that there is this lump of money that is supposed 
to be serving the citizens, and they can ask questions about how it 
serves the citizens. What bank account did it go into--so they can 
follow the money and track the money. But they have no ability to do 
that if these payments are hidden. That is what this is about.
  So it is about investors who want to do the right thing, consumers 
who want to use their marketing and purchasing power to do the right 
thing, but it is really about the citizens of that country not having 
their resources diverted when they desperately need the fundamental 
things, such as transportation and education and health care.
  Well, Senator Lugar said recently that if we allow this rule to be 
repealed, it would be ``a real tragedy for democracy and human 
rights.''
  I agreed with Senator Lugar when he said, ``It is hard to believe 
that this would be such a high priority right now.'' We have a lot of 
issues in the world that we are challenged by, including security 
issues. We have a lot of nominations to address and debate. Why is it 
such a high priority at this moment to tear down a provision that 
improves the quality of life for millions of people in some of the 
poorest countries in the world? Why is it so important at this moment 
to tear down a law that reduces corruption in governments around the 
world? Why is it so important right now to destroy this provision that 
helps create an opportunity for ``we the people,'' a government that we 
profess to believe in?

[[Page S648]]

  It is well known that the CEO of ExxonMobil traveled to Washington to 
personally lobby Senator Lugar on this section. He wanted this 
provision scrapped, and that individual is now our Secretary of State. 
That certainly disturbs me, that the day after he became Secretary of 
State, the provision he lobbied for as an oil executive is being 
accomplished here on the floor.

  Because of his testimony in committee, there was some hope that he 
would stand up and fight for the fundamental visions of our country, 
the fundamental values and principles of our country, and if so, he 
would be sending out information right now saying: Stop what you are 
doing because I know how this works around the world and how it 
destroys ``we the people'' governments, and we shouldn't be doing it; 
that is, we should keep the provision we have right now.
  Nigeria is another nation that has had a resource curse or oil curse. 
Last year, a deal was struck between ExxonMobil and the Nigerian 
Government--or it came under investigation last year by that country's 
anti-corruption and law enforcement agency, the Economic and Financial 
Crimes Commission. The investigation surrounds a 2009 agreement where 
an Exxon subsidiary and the Nigerian Government agreed to renew a 40-
percent share in three new oil licenses. Exxon reached a deal to pay 
$600 million for those licenses, and it built a powerplant at a cost of 
$900 million, so it made a $1.5 billion investment. So a $1.5 billion 
investment--that sounds like a pretty high sum for a contract.
  However, an outside group who was investigating corruption found that 
the Nigerian Government had valued those contracts at $2.15 billion--in 
other words, $1 billion more than what Exxon was paying. Furthermore, 
they found that wasn't just in theory because another bidder offered 
$3.75 billion, and that is more than twice what Exxon paid. But the 
Exxon deal was chosen.
  Isn't there some sense that something is wrong when a government 
rejects a payment that is $2.25 billion more than the offer that was 
accepted? That is what happens with corrupt payments between powerful 
companies and dictators. That is what destroys government of, by, and 
for the people around the world.
  It is estimated that over time--that is, since 1960, so after the 
last 57 years--$400 billion of Nigerian oil revenues have disappeared 
due to corruption--$400 billion disappeared. What would $400 billion do 
to improve the lives of Nigerians?
  That is why transparency in these payments is so important. It 
affects impoverished people all over the world. We can have all of our 
aid programs, we can have our Food for Peace Program, we can have our 
Millennium Corporation, but this type of deal does so much more damage 
than all the good we do through our programs that we budget for and put 
money into.
  If we enable, if we promote corruption around the world, we do 
enormous damage. That is why a bipartisan group of Senators, including 
Dick Lugar leading it, took this on.
  How about Equatorial Guinea. It is one of Sub-Saharan Africa's 
largest oil producers, and it, like many other oil countries, has the 
oil curse. President Obiang has been in power since he ousted his uncle 
in a military coup in 1979 and declared himself President for life. 
Let's just say what he is: He is a dictator. His government has been 
known to detain arbitrarily and torture critics, to disregard 
elections. It has been prosecuted for using oil profits for financial 
gain of the President's family. The result is, although this country is 
one of the wealthiest African nations per capita, the majority of the 
Nation's citizens survive on less than $2 a day. Let me clarify that. 
It is one of the richest African nations per capita, but a large 
percent of the citizens survive on less than $2 a day because President 
Obiang and his extended network--his extended corrupt network--are 
stealing the resources of the country, and they are doing it often 
through contracts with oil companies like Exxon, which happens to be a 
major partner in exploiting the resources of Equatorial Guinea.
  Less than half of Equatorial Guinea has access to clean drinking 
water, a fundamental need and a fundamental factor in health. Twenty 
percent--that is one out of every five children--die before reaching 
the age of 5. This is because of the corruption that is facilitated by 
undisclosed sums, reinforcing a dictator--a dictator whose family owns 
fleets of fancy sports cars, luxury yachts, private jets, massive 
properties in Europe, massive properties in Brazil, and properties 
right here in the United States. But one-fifth of the children die 
before age 5. That is why this is so important.
  Let me conclude by saying that what we are doing here tonight in 
putting this forward with no real debate because my colleagues are not 
here--a few colleagues are here to give speeches like I am giving to 
say ``Stop, this is wrong,'' but our colleagues are not here to hear 
us. What is happening tonight is an enormous travesty. It is an 
enormous blight on the United States, which led the world in taking on 
this problem and now is abandoning not just that leadership but is 
abandoning the principle. The world is worse off for it.
  I hope that my colleagues will somehow come to an inspiration or a 
revelation, that those who are not here listening to this will come to 
an understanding that something is wrong with this and will oppose this 
effort to repeal this very important provision. But I know that the 
heavy hand of corporate lobbying is behind the fact that this is on the 
floor tonight, and I am not optimistic. That saddens me a great deal.
  Let us strive to have a process that honors the importance of the 
issues before us. This short debate, with virtually no one present, 
does not honor it and does enormous damage, and it is just wrong.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, for the first time in more than a decade, 
the Republican Party controls the House, the Senate, and the White 
House. This week they are starting to roll out their legislative 
agenda.
  So now that they have complete control of the agenda, what do the 
Republicans have in store? Something to bump up wages for working 
families or something to create more jobs? Something to tackle the 
student debt crisis? Maybe something to deal with all the jobs that get 
shipped overseas? No, one of the Republican Party's first orders of 
business is a giveaway to ExxonMobil that will help corrupt and 
repressive foreign regimes and make it easier to funnel money to 
terrorists around the world.
  Here is the problem. Big corporations like Exxon--or other oil, gas, 
and mining companies--often pay millions of dollars to foreign 
governments to access natural resources located in these countries. 
Many of these foreign regimes are corrupt, and Exxon's massive payouts 
regularly end up in the pockets of government officials rather than in 
the hands of the people. These corrupt officials get filthy rich while 
their citizens face punishing poverty and dangerous working conditions. 
Worse still, some of these undisclosed payments can end up financing 
terrorists.
  Just over 6 years ago, Congress passed a bipartisan provision to help 
tackle this problem. With the strong support of Senator Dick Lugar, the 
leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Congress 
required oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose any payments they 
make to governments to extract natural resources. Republicans and 
Democrats agreed that shining a light on these payments would help 
combat corruption and terrorism around the globe and help citizens in 
some of the very poorest nations in the world hold their own 
governments accountable.
  Disclosing these foreign payments also helps investors right here in 
the United States so they can make more informed investment decisions. 
Some investors may want to stay away from companies that could face 
expensive lawsuits for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or 
other anti-corruption laws. Other investors, quite frankly, may just 
prefer not to invest in companies that could be helping prop up corrupt 
foreign governments or indirectly financing terrorism.
  Congress directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to write the 
rule, and the SEC spent years soliciting input from investors, from 
human rights advocates, from anti-corruption experts, and from oil, 
gas, and mining companies. The agency ultimately issued a ruling last 
year, and it

[[Page S649]]

worked. The rule gained the support of faith groups, human rights 
groups, development organizations, and anti-corruption advocates all 
around the world. The rule also earned the support of investors who 
collectively controlled more than $10 trillion in assets, and--we 
should really be proud--it set an international standard, with the 
European Union, Canada, and other countries adopting similar standards 
for companies in their own countries.
  But it didn't go down well with everyone. A handful of powerful oil 
and gas companies have been after this requirement from the start, and 
Exxon has been leading the pack on this. In fact, Rex Tillerson, the 
CEO of Exxon at the time, personally lobbied against the requirement 
back in 2010. His reason? What was his objection? The foreign payments 
rule would undermine Exxon's ability to do business in Russia. Listen 
to that again. If Exxon has to tell the world about the millions of 
dollars it hands over to the Russian Government, Exxon wouldn't be able 
to do as much business in Russia. So now the Republican Congress wants 
to rush in to help out poor Exxon so they can keep the secret money 
flowing to these Russian officials.
  This Exxon giveaway shows just how bankrupt the Republican agenda is. 
They don't have any ideas for helping working families. It is just one 
corporate giveaway after another--making their big business donors 
happy and keeping the campaign contributions flowing for the next 
election. But the economic lives of our working families, our moral 
leadership in the world, the safety of our financial system, and the 
water we drink and the air we breathe--all of those--are just 
afterthoughts to the corporate wish list.
  If you are a corrupt foreign dictator, Republicans rolling back the 
rules is great for you. If you are an oil company executive, 
Republicans rolling back the rules is great for you. But if you are 
anyone else, you should be outraged that the Republican Congress is so 
willing to throw you under the bus to please these groups.
  I urge all of my colleagues to vote against this resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


              Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise tonight to talk about a problem 
that is affecting every single one of the States represented in this 
Chamber and every one of our communities. It is one that folks back 
home are, unfortunately, experiencing and, frankly, we don't talk 
enough about this in Washington. It is this epidemic of heroin and 
prescription drug abuse.
  How bad is it? We just learned very recently that for the first time 
in 23 years, life expectancy in the United States has gone down, and 
there is no question that the surge in heroin and prescription drug 
addiction is one of the reasons. In fact, the demographic that saw the 
biggest drop in life expectancy was among middle-aged White women--the 
very group that has been hardest hit by the heroin and prescription 
drug epidemic in overdoses and overdose deaths. Unbelievably, this 
epidemic is actually driving down life expectancy in our great country.
  It has been pretty dramatic. The number of heroin users in the United 
States has tripled since 2007, and the number of heroin overdoses has 
tripled just since 2012. It has gotten to the point where we are now 
losing one American life about every 12 minutes to this epidemic. So 
during this talk today, which will be about 12 minutes, we expect 
another American to die of a heroin overdose.
  Congress has begun to act, and I applaud the House and the Senate for 
that. We have acted over the last year to do a couple things. One is 
that, in the appropriations bill that passed at the end of last year, 
we put more money aside for treatment. So States are now receiving 
grants--$500 million this year, $500 million next year. These grants 
are needed. It is going to the hardest hit States. It is going to 
States based on their need, which I think is very important, because 
some States are hit harder than others. My colleague from Ohio is here 
on the floor, and he has been very involved in this issue as well. My 
State has been one of those States hardest hit. Some think that Ohio 
now has the highest number of overdoses when we add prescription drugs, 
heroin, and synthetic heroin, like fentanyl.
  Second, last summer Congress took what I think is the biggest step we 
have taken in decades in terms of fighting this issue when we passed 
the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. The President signed it 
into law. It is already helping with regard to providing more 
prevention efforts, treatment, and long-term recovery. It is also 
helping our law enforcement and other first responders to be able to 
handle this growing crisis.
  We fully funded this Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--also 
called CARA--this year, and now we need to ensure that the new 
administration that has just come in continues to effectively implement 
this program as quickly as possible.
  Just in the last few weeks, three of CARA's grant programs got up and 
running. One is funding for drug courts. Those who are involved with 
drug courts back home already know this, but it is a very effective way 
to take those who are in the criminal justice system because of a drug 
issue--prescription drug and heroin issues in particular--and get them 
into a diversion program where they can get treatment, with the risk of 
going back to incarceration if they do not stay clean. This is really 
working well in some of our communities in Ohio. They are also using 
interesting new techniques, including a medication called VIVITROL, to 
keep people off of their addiction.
  Second, we have just put in place for the first time ever programs 
for recovery support services. Again, in this legislation, CARA, we 
funded long-term recovery. So it is not just a detox center, not just a 
treatment center that might be short term, which they usually are, but 
longer term recovery, including getting people into sober housing, 
providing them with people who will support them and encourage them. 
That, we have found out, keeps people from relapsing and is incredibly 
powerful.
  Third, there has been a grant to empower States and local governments 
to help fight this epidemic.
  This is all-important. It is real progress. But our work is far from 
done. In fact, there are five more CARA grant programs yet to be 
implemented.
  Again, I call on the new administration to do so urgently. I know 
they are focused on this issue. We just need to get these programs up 
and going to help our communities right now.
  Near my hometown of Cincinnati, OH, the Winemiller family of Wayne 
Township had a pretty tough Christmas. They were missing a son and a 
daughter because of heroin. Over Easter weekend last year, Roger 
Winemiller found his daughter Heather dead of a heroin overdose in 
their bathroom. She left behind an 8-year-old son. Then, just 5 days 
before Christmas, Heather's brother Gene--a father of three children 
under 18--died of a heroin overdose. Gene started abusing painkillers 
when he was in his early twenties. He became addicted, and when the 
pills were too expensive, he switched to heroin, which is cheaper and, 
really, more accessible.

  Unfortunately, this is a fairly common story in my home State and 
around the country. We are told this is how four out of five heroin 
addicts in the United States started on heroin--prescription drugs.
  Heather and Gene both got clean several times. Heather was clean for 
3 years before she relapsed and died. These were vibrant people; they 
loved life. Heather loved gardening, and she was a huge Ohio State 
Buckeyes fan. Gene loved rock music, hunting, and fishing. But they 
both made the tragic mistake of trying these drugs, and it changed 
their lives forever.
  Gene Winemiller's funeral took place at Blanchester Church of Christ 
in Blanchester, OH. I know Blanchester, OH, pretty well. It is a small 
community of about 4,000 people. The very next day, there was another 
funeral in that same church in this small town of 4,000 people for a 
heroin overdose. As Gene's dad Roger puts it, ``I can't emphasize 
enough: No one--no one--is immune from this epidemic.''
  Unfortunately, he is right. It knows no zip code. It is in the rural 
areas. It is in the suburban areas. It is certainly in our inner 
cities. It is everywhere.

[[Page S650]]

  Take Cleveland, in Northeast Ohio, for example. Cleveland medical 
examiner Thomas Gilson said that ``2016 was an unprecedented year.'' 
The number of overdoses in Cleveland doubled in 2016 compared to 2015--
doubled. Overdoses are happening all over the Cleveland area. More than 
150 heroin overdose deaths happened in the city and another 150 
happened in the suburbs, kind of evenly split. It is everybody, every 
group, every age group--African American, White, Hispanic.
  Take Dayton, OH, in Southwest Ohio, as another example. In Dayton 
last year, there were more than 2,500 overdoses, about 7 a day. About 
half of the victims were men, and about half were women--some in the 
cities and some in the suburbs, with 60 percent in their thirties and 
forties and 40 percent who were either younger or older than that. So 
this is happening all over our State and all over our country--in 
cities, suburbs, inner cities, and rural areas and to rich and poor, 
old and young alike.
  In 2015, Ohio statewide experienced a record 3,050 drug overdose 
deaths, which is a 20-percent increase from 2014, and more than 
quadruple the number of overdose deaths in 2000. In 2015, we lost an 
Ohioan every 3 hours to this epidemic. Sadly, the toll was even higher 
in 2016. We don't have the final numbers yet.
  One of Ohio's economic assets, of course, is our location. We are 
centrally located. It is great for transportation. They say half of 
America's consumers are within 1 day's drive from Cincinnati, 
Cleveland, and Columbus. Unfortunately, that central location also 
makes us very vulnerable to drug traffickers.
  Last year, Ohio State troopers confiscated nearly 160 pounds of 
heroin. Depending on the potency, that could be equivalent to more than 
$50 million--or more than 180,000 injections--of heroin. That is nearly 
triple the amount of heroin seized the year before. The Ohio State 
Highway Patrol also confiscated a record-level number of illegal 
painkillers and methamphetamines last year.
  We have to thank our law enforcement officers because they are saving 
lives every day by keeping this poison out of our communities, 
certainly, but also helping to reverse the overdoses with this miracle 
drug called naloxone or Narcan. In 2015, the last year we have numbers 
for, Narcan was administered 16,000 times. Think about that: 16,000 
people were saved who could have died of an overdose, thanks to our 
first responders and their professionalism. We don't have numbers yet 
for 2016, but, again, it is going to be, unfortunately, far higher than 
that.
  The Washington Post recently published a report on the heroin 
epidemic in Chillicothe, OH, where there were more than 300 overdoses 
last year, and where a single police officer, Officer Ben Rhodes, says 
that he used naloxone to reverse an overdose more than 50 times. One 
church in Chillicothe, Zion Baptist Church, recently had funerals for 
three overdose victims in 1 week. I know Chillicothe. It is a small 
town of about 21,000 people.
  Heroin and prescription drug painkillers are flooding our communities 
to meet a rise in demand. CARA, this legislation I talked about, will 
reduce that demand by increasing access to treatment for those who need 
it and preventing new addictions from starting in the first place 
through better prevention and education efforts.
  After CARA became law, I introduced bipartisan legislation to take 
another step. This is called the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose 
Prevention Act, or the STOP Act. Again, it builds on CARA because it 
helps reduce the supply of drugs coming into our communities.
  Some of the deadliest drugs coming into Ohio are synthetics--drugs 
such as fentanyl, carfentanil, or U4, essentially synthetic heroin that 
is made in a laboratory somewhere. Guess where these drugs are coming 
from: overseas. Boy, they are incredibly powerful. Fentanyl can be more 
than 50 or even 100 times as powerful as heroin. According to the Drug 
Enforcement Agency, it takes about 2 milligrams to kill you. 
Carfentanil is even more powerful than that--up to 10,000 times as 
powerful as morphine. It is so powerful that it is used primarily as a 
tranquilizer for large animals like elephants.
  Heroin bought on the street today in Ohio and elsewhere is often 
laced with these drugs to make it more potent. Roger Winemiller, the 
Dad I talked about a few moments ago who lost his two kids, compares 
buying heroin to playing Russian roulette because you never know the 
potency of the drug that you are buying. Many of these spates of 
overdoses in our urban areas in Ohio are because of the mix with 
fentanyl and carfentanil.
  These fentanyl deaths in Ohio have increased nearly fivefold in the 
last 3 years. Three years ago we had about 1 in every 20 overdoses in 
Ohio because of fentanyl. Now it is one in five. We expect it soon to 
be one in three. You can see where this is going.
  I talked a minute ago about the trafficking of drugs on our 
interstate highways. That is a serious problem, but so is the problem 
of traffickers shipping these drugs through our mail system to our 
communities to meet this growing demand.
  Just yesterday the U.S.-China Commission released a report about the 
trafficking of Chinese fentanyl into this country. The report says:

       The majority of fentanyl products found in the United 
     States originate in China. . . . Chinese law enforcement 
     officials have struggled to adequately regulate the thousands 
     of chemical and pharmaceutical facilities [laboratories] 
     operating legally and illegally in the country, leading to 
     increased production and export of illicit chemicals and 
     drugs. Chinese chemical exporters . . . covertly ship drugs 
     to the Western hemisphere.

  That is from a report just yesterday. Right now these drugs are 
difficult to detect before it is too late. Part of the reason is that, 
unlike private carriers such as UPS or FedEx, the Postal Service does 
not require information about packages. If you are a private carrier, 
you have to have electric customs data for packages coming into the 
country, saying where it is from, what is in it, where it is going. 
This means the U.S. Postal Service is a more attractive way for 
traffickers to get these dangerous drugs like fentanyl or carfentanil 
into our country. It shouldn't be this way. It doesn't have to be this 
way.
  The STOP Act would close that loophole and make the Postal Service 
require advanced electronic data. Where is it coming from? What is in 
it? Where is it going? That information on these packages before they 
cross our borders would be incredibly helpful. It is common sense. It 
would help stop these dangerous synthetic drugs from being trafficked 
into the United States, and it would save lives. That is what our law 
enforcement officials are telling us.
  I know the scope of this epidemic is daunting. It is in your State of 
Indiana. It is in my State of Ohio. Its consequences are hard to even 
think about because it is about the overdose deaths, but it is far more 
than that. It is about people not being able to live out their dream. 
It is about higher costs for law enforcement. It is about crime. It is 
about our workforce and people not being able to go to work and not 
being able to find workers who are drug free. It is about so much that 
affects our communities.
  Yet there is hope. We have to work here in Congress to continue to 
promote legislation and policies that will help us to achieve the dream 
of turning this tide around. The STOP Act that I talked about is going 
to help keep some of that poison out of our communities and increase 
the cost of heroin. That is good.
  These synthetic heroin increases are really concerning. Treatment is 
incredibly important, and it can work. I have met so many people across 
Ohio who have beaten their addiction--people who are now back on their 
feet, back with their kids, back with their families. It is hard, but 
with treatment and a supportive environment, particularly this longer 
term recovery, it can be done.
  Last year I met with Aaron Marks in Columbus, OH, at a conference 
held by the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities. 
Aaron is from Cleveland, a suburb called Beachwood. He began using 
prescription painkillers as a freshman at Beachwood High School. He was 
just 13 years old.
  Again, it is a story that is all too common. Often because of an 
accident or injury, people start using these pain pills.
  He was smart, had good grades. He got into the University of 
Cincinnati, a great school. One day at UC he ran out

[[Page S651]]

of pills. A fellow student who was living in the same dorm room offered 
him something else. He said: It is cheaper; it is called heroin.
  He tried it. Soon, he had sold virtually everything he owned to buy 
more. Finally, with the help of Glenbeigh treatment center in 
Cleveland, OH, Aaron got clean and has stayed that way for more than a 
decade. Aaron is now a successful manager of business development at 
American Express.
  We can have a lot more success stories like Aaron's if we all 
engage--all of us. Washington, DC, is not going to solve this problem. 
It will be solved in our communities. It is going to be solved in our 
families. It is going to be solved in our hearts.
  Washington, DC, can play a more constructive role. In passing this 
legislation, it makes sense to give people the tools they need to be 
able to fight this scourge. The role is put the right policies in 
place, like the STOP Act, like fully funding treatment, like fully 
funding CARA in the coming months. We can then bring down the demand 
for these dangerous drugs, and we can keep these poisons from coming 
into our communities and build on the progress that Congress has made 
over the past year. Let's not let up until we finally turn the tide of 
this epidemic and begin to save lives.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to begin by complimenting my 
colleague, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Portman. He has been the leader 
in the U.S. Senate on addressing this issue that literally is impacting 
every single one of our States--whether it is Ohio or Alaska or Indiana 
where the Presiding Officer is from--and it is a killer.
  The opioid epidemic that is happening is something we all have to 
work together on, but we have hope, as Senator Portman said. I believe 
we have hope because of communities, because of brave Americans like 
those he is talking about.
  We also have hope because of guys like Rob Portman, and we would be a 
lot less further along in this country in turning around this epidemic 
and highlighting it for Americans if it weren't for him. I really want 
to commend my colleague from Ohio. He has done such a great job and is 
so passionate about this issue.


                        Tribute to Andrew Kurka

  Mr. President, in the last few weeks I have come to the floor to 
recognize an exceptional Alaskan--someone who spends time giving back 
to our community by sharing their time and talents up north. There are 
thousands of these people, of course, in my great State, and I would 
love to recognize every single one of them. They do so much for all of 
us.
  We Senators are not humble about our States. I certainly believe my 
State is the most beautiful place in America. It is probably the most 
beautiful place in the world. I ask anyone who is watching to come 
visit us, you will love it--guaranteed.
  It is the people that make my State so special--kind, generous 
people, full of rugged determination, full of patriotism, full of 
compassion. Many of them are willing to go the extra mile, literally, 
in some of the most difficult terrain and extreme conditions of the 
world to help friends and neighbors and use their strength and skills 
to inspire us all.
  I wish to tell you a little bit about Andrew Kurka, an extraordinary 
Alaskan from Palmer, which is a beautiful community about 45 miles 
outside of Anchorage. In his younger years, Andrew was a wrestler. He 
put his heart into it. For his efforts, he was very successful. He was 
a six-time Alaska State champion in freestyle and Greco-Roman 
wrestling.
  When he was 13, he suffered a spinal cord injury in a four-wheeler 
accident. His physical therapist urged him to keep going, to keep 
trying, to stay active, and actually paid for his first skiing lesson 
with a group called Challenge Alaska, a nonprofit Paralympic sports 
club.
  According to an article in the Alaska Dispatch News, Andrew is 
``willing to give just about anything a try--bodybuilding, water-
skiing, ultra-marathon, handcycling.'' He even raced in the Arctic Man 
ski and snow machine race in Alaska--a race that is not for the faint 
of heart. It is one tough race.
  It is in sit skiing where he truly excels. He has been a longtime 
member of the U.S. Paralympic team and has won numerous medals. Just 
last month, he won three medals, including the Gold for the men's 
downhill race at the World Para Alpine Championships in Italy--the Gold 
for the whole world.
  His accomplishments are amazing enough, but his willingness to serve 
and be a role model for others is what makes him a true Alaska 
treasure. He is involved in numerous organizations for great causes, 
and he travels all across Alaska and the country, visiting with 
children with medical problems and urging them to dream big the way he 
has.
  ``I have spent my life hoping to be an example to others,'' Andrew 
said. ``Having the chance and being put in a position where I can make 
a difference means the world to me.'' That is Andrew.
  For his determination against all odds, for his accomplishments, for 
his compassion, and for making the United States and Alaska proud last 
month in Italy at the World Para Alpine Championships, Andrew Kurka is 
this week's Alaskan of the Week.
  Congratulations, Andrew, from all of your supporters. You are a great 
inspiration to all of us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                            Opioid Addiction

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my friend from 
Alaska--also from Cleveland--and those of my friend from Cincinnati, 
Senator Portman, about opioids. I appreciate his leadership in my 
State, the work he has done, and the work we have done together on 
opioid addiction. It is a tragedy, and I don't go much of anywhere in 
the State without finding someone who is affected, someone who is 
addicted in a family, or a close friend who has died.
  As Senator Portman said, Ohio has more opioid deaths than any State 
in the country. We are the seventh largest State, but the State with 
the most deaths. It is troubling, and clearly we are not dealing with 
it as well as we should.
  Mr. President, I rise to close the debate on this motion today on the 
Congressional Review Act to wipe out the SEC rule. I rise in opposition 
to the bill, as a number of colleagues on my side of the aisle have 
very strong feelings on it. With the exception of my friend from Idaho, 
the chairman of the Banking Committee, there weren't many Republicans 
who wanted to come to the floor for this, in part because I think it is 
just the supporters they have on their side don't make you want to rush 
to the floor and support them. Some called this the Kleptocrat Relief 
Act. I will give you a real quick history before I wrap up.

  There is a provision in Dodd-Frank to deal with giving the President 
and others the best anticorruption tools we could have around the 
world, where countries that have lots of natural resources have been 
countries with all the wealth from natural resources. They are some of 
the most corrupt governments with some of the worst poverty anywhere on 
Earth.
  This legislation in Dodd-Frank, and the rule that came out of it from 
the SEC, was going a long way to preventing corruption. What we saw was 
the support. Thirty countries in the world followed suit from our 
country. The companies that were affected, with a few very notable 
exceptions, were beginning to do what they knew they needed to do and 
should have done and that the rule called for. As a result, we were 
going in the right direction until this new administration, this new 
Congress.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record relevant 
letters from investors.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  August 14, 2013.
     Mary Jo White,
     Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman White: As investors representing more than 
     US$5.6 trillion in assets under management, we commend the 
     U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its 
     leadership in producing final rules for the implementation of 
     Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and 
     Consumer Protection Act (Section 1504). The

[[Page S652]]

     rules were carefully considered and reflected investors' 
     substantial interest in oil, gas and mining industry payment 
     transparency. The SEC's leadership encouraged the development 
     of a public global disclosure standard that includes the 
     European Union Transparency Directive and regulation under 
     development in Canada.
       On July 2, the U.S. District Court for the District of 
     Columbia made a ruling in American Petroleum Institute et al. 
     vs. Securities and Exchange Commission vacating the rules for 
     the implementation of Section 1504 and requiring the 
     Commission to review them. We encourage the SEC to continue 
     its vigorous defense of the Section 1504 rules as it responds 
     to the'U.S. District Court's decision.
       It is in the interest of investors and companies subject to 
     both the U.S. and EU requirements that the reporting 
     obligations in these jurisdictions are as uniform as 
     possible. Consistent and predictable regulations may lower 
     compliance costs and enhance the salience of disclosures. 
     Therefore, we hope that the SEC will take all necessary steps 
     to ensure that the rules go into effect as early as possible 
     and that they maintain continuity with regulations in other 
     jurisdictions. In doing so, the SEC should have due regard to 
     the lengthy deliberations it conducted before the 
     promulgation of the rules, and the inputs from diverse 
     constituencies including many investors.
       Payment disclosure regulations, such as Section 1504 and 
     the European Union Transparency Directive, play a critical 
     role in encouraging greater stability in resource-rich 
     countries, which benefits both the citizens of those 
     countries and investors. The Extractive Industries 
     Transparency Initiative (EITI) Board Chair Clare Short has 
     stated that mandatory payment disclosure regulations would 
     ``strengthen the local accountability EITI provides.'' In 
     fact, the latest revision of the EITI standard explicitly 
     made project level payment disclosure contingent on alignment 
     with SEC and EU regulation. We encourage the SEC to keep the 
     complementary nature of regulations such as Section 1504 and 
     EITI in mind as it considers its response to the U.S. 
     District Court.
       Investors depend on the SEC's leadership and deliberate 
     consideration of disclosure requirements that protect 
     investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and 
     facilitate capital formation. We commend the Commission on 
     issuing rules for the implementation of Section 1504 that 
     reflect thorough contemplation of these factors and are 
     confident the SEC will continue to act in the interest of 
     investors as it responds to the U.S. District Court's July 2 
     ruling in API vs. SEC.
                                  ____

                                                   April 28, 2014.
     Mary Jo White,
     Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, 
         DC.

  Re: Section 1504 of the Dodd--Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
                             Protection Act

       Dear Chair White: We write on behalf of the 34 undersigned 
     institutional investors to convey our strong support for the 
     leadership the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 
     has shown in producing final rules for the implementation of 
     Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and 
     Consumer Protection Act [Section 13(q) of the Securities 
     Exchange Act of 1934]. This letter follows up on a prior 
     submission made to the SEC on August 14th 2013 on this 
     subject and signed by many of the institutions below.
       By way of introduction, the signatories of this submission 
     manage assets that collectively total more than US$ 6.40 
     trillion, and our mandate is to deliver sustainable long-term 
     returns to our pensions, insurance and savings clients. It is 
     in this spirit that we wish to contribute our views on the 
     value to investors of improving transparency and governance 
     in the extractives sector through regulations such as Section 
     1504. We also welcome the parallel submission by Calvert 
     Investment Management et al, and note the common objectives 
     our respective groups of signatories share in promoting high 
     standards of transparency in the extractives sector.
       We would like to highlight that we have only belatedly 
     become aware of the detailed submission made on April 15, 
     2014 by the American Petroleum Institute (API) on this 
     subject. Inasmuch as we had produced this statement, and 
     secured approvals from the undersigned institutions, well 
     before having had an opportunity to review the API 
     submission, we wish to draw your attention to a brief 
     supplementary comment that several of our signatories will 
     shortly be submitting by way of parallel submission in order 
     to address any additional points that are relevant to the 
     API's arguments.
       The undersigned signatories strongly support the Extractive 
     Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). As such, we not 
     only welcome the US's involvement as an EITI Supporting 
     Country since the Initiative's inception in 2003, but are 
     particularly pleased to note its recent admission as an EITI 
     Candidate Country. We regard the United States' decision as 
     instrumental in establishing the de facto global standard for 
     transparency in the extractives sector, and see the steady 
     progress being made as a critical factor in helping to reduce 
     volatility in the oil and other vital hard commodity markets, 
     with beneficial impacts on global financial markets and the 
     real economy.
       In line with our support for the EITI, we also highlight 
     that we regard the mandatory project-level reporting 
     provision contained in Section 1504 as entirely consistent 
     with, and complementary to, the goals of the EFL As such, we 
     wish to underscore the important revisions made in 2013 to 
     the EITI Standard that aim specifically to ensure convergence 
     with the disclosure standard pioneered by Section 1504. These 
     are now echoed in similar legislation already passed by the 
     European Union (Transparency and Accounting Directives) and 
     in progress in Canada (Canadian Mandatory Reporting in the 
     Extractive Sector).
       In short, Section 1504 started a process that has now been 
     embraced by the world's other key jurisdictions: where 
     initially it could have placed US listed companies at a 
     commercial disadvantage, this risk has been reduced. As 
     institutions based in numerous international jurisdictions, 
     with both customers and assets spread around the globe, we 
     welcome this virtuous development, and consider that 
     regulations favouring not only high, but just as importantly, 
     globally consistent standards of transparency, are essential 
     to safeguarding the effective functioning of the financial 
     markets.
       Finally, we highlight that our portfolios have substantial 
     exposure to the global extractives sector, through both 
     equity and fixed income instruments, and that many of the 
     undersigned also invest actively in the sovereign debt of 
     resource-dependent emerging nations whose fiscal governance 
     has a direct bearing on the quality of the credits they hold. 
     It is therefore specifically with a view to safeguarding and 
     enhancing our clients' portfolio returns that we contribute 
     the following comments.
       Chair White, your fellow SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar 
     has recently been reported to have voiced the concern that 
     Section 1504 may have involved a degree of legislative 
     overreach, by allowing ``special interests, from all parts of 
     the political spectrum that are trying to co-opt the SEC's 
     corporate disclosure regime to achieve their own 
     objectives.'' Commissioner Piwowar raises a valid point that 
     merits discussion: as investors whose interests are 
     inextricably bound with the commercial interests of the oil 
     and mining companies in which we invest, we wish to clarify 
     that we fully agree that the remit of the SEC is, and should 
     remain, that of safeguarding the efficient functioning of 
     financial markets. We also agree that legislative and 
     regulatory tools aimed at achieving purely social aims 
     properly belong within instruments other than SEC 
     regulation.
       However, it is our contention that Section 1504, in line 
     with the broader purpose of the Dodd Frank Act, i.e. 
     mitigating systemic financial market risk, plays an essential 
     role in containing behaviours related to extractive sector 
     activity that contribute to damaging levels of financial and 
     economic instability.
       As you know, Section 1504 calls for the provision of 
     detailed publicly-available information regarding payments to 
     government. The purpose of such disclosure is to: a) defuse 
     suspicions by civil society; b) curb the incidence of 
     corruption and fiscal mismanagement; c) and thereby reduce 
     the social and political risk factors that drive high levels 
     of operating risk in resource-dependent emerging nations. The 
     latter notably exacerbates the volatility and risk in the 
     commodities markets. It is precisely because of its role in 
     helping to counteract these damaging pressures that we regard 
     Section 1504 as very much in the interests of investors, and 
     consistent with the basic mission of the SEC.
       Nevertheless, as investors, we are sympathetic to the 
     concerns of industry regarding the practical impacts of any 
     new legislation in terms of potential administrative 
     complexity and cost burden, particularly in respect of 
     companies that operate in multiple jurisdictions. As such, it 
     is imperative that the disclosure regulations introduced by 
     Section 1504 reflect alignment between the US, EU and 
     Canada--all key jurisdictions for extractive industry 
     issuers. Firstly, this would simplify compliance for 
     extractive companies, particularly for those that already 
     have dual listings. Secondly, it would lift overall 
     transparency standards while deterring less scrupulous 
     issuers from actively seeking out more opaque regulatory 
     regimes. Such `forum-shopping' would not only harm well-
     governed companies through unfair competition, but expose 
     investors to higher risk, and the general public to greater 
     systemic risk.
       Our strong interest as investors is therefore to achieve 
     both consistency across competing jurisdictions and high 
     standards, rather than regarding them as necessarily mutually 
     exclusive. In this regard, the moves by the EU and Canada to 
     follow in Dodd Frank 1504's footsteps signal a clear trend 
     that is now very difficult to reverse: transparency has 
     firmly taken hold, and it would be a mistake to roll 
     backwards.
       As a large group of diverse investment institutions, we 
     acknowledge that different investors may make greater or 
     lesser use of the granular data produced through such 
     disclosure for individual stock decision purposes, depending 
     on the nature of their portfolios and investment processes. 
     However, while individual investment strategies may differ, 
     we are strongly of the view that disclosure of the type 
     called for by Section 1504 affords the following benefits to 
     investors:
       Putting such information in the public domain is of major 
     indirect benefit to investors, thanks to its impact on the 
     overall quality of the business climate: better transparency 
     helps to build trust with the citizenry, deter corruption 
     through better scrutiny of revenues and spending, and reduce

[[Page S653]]

     the likelihood of contract rescissions. An anonymous 
     compilation of the submissions required by Section 1504 would 
     likely not provide the information necessary to serve this 
     purpose.
       The value of such a standard lies in its consistent 
     application across all global markets: this means that 
     country exemptions should not be granted in cases where 
     foreign jurisdictions wish to impose secrecy--otherwise, such 
     exemptions, often referred to as the ``tyrant's veto'', will 
     merely serve to encourage such governments to introduce anti-
     transparency standards, thereby undermining the very object 
     of this regulation.
       The impact of such disclosure on competitiveness has been 
     overstated, as demonstrated by the strong support afforded to 
     Section 1504's Canadian equivalent by the leading trade 
     associations in the Canadian mining sector (Mining 
     Association of Canada and Prospectors and Developers 
     Association of Canada), and the more nuanced position of the 
     Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers relative to the 
     American Petroleum Institute. We also note that this 
     information can be easily obtained by purchasing specialist 
     research--which merely ensures that it is available to 
     competitors who can afford to pay, but not to citizens who 
     cannot. More importantly, as investors, we stand to benefit 
     more from efficient, competitive markets that enable ethical 
     behaviour than we do from isolated instances of companies 
     gaining a temporary negotiating advantage through secrecy.
       The impact on companies' compliance costs should be given 
     due consideration, and we would therefore urge that with 
     regard to the definition of `project', the disclosure 
     framework in Section 1504 be consistent with best practice 
     for disclosing disaggregated production information that 
     references the legal relationship between individual projects 
     and host governments. Such an approach may be modeled on the 
     project-level disclosures that have been developed under the 
     EU Directives and also made by Statoil, the large Norwegian-
     based international oil company, as well as Tullow Oil, the 
     FTSE100 UK oil company. These base their definition, either 
     implicitly or explicitly, on economic rather than geological 
     entities (so-called `payment liability'), which we regard as 
     a cost-efficient way of mirroring internal corporate 
     reporting. We recommend a single consistent standard in 
     preference to allowing companies to self-define project 
     boundaries for two reasons: 1) a multiplicity of reporting 
     standards would cause confusion and drive up compliance 
     costs; 2) flexibility for companies would also risk 
     undermining the aim of the regulation. Such a standard should 
     also require a consistent and reasonable degree of 
     disaggregation, as this would meet the aims of the 
     regulation, namely improving fiscal governance at both 
     national and subnational level.
       In conclusion, we are pleased to signal our strong support 
     for the SEC's leadership in establishing a mandatory 
     reporting standard in the extractives sector that is 
     complementary to the EITI, aligned with equivalent standards 
     in the EU and Canada, and designed pragmatically to deliver 
     the very real benefits that we see coming from enhancing 
     fiscal transparency and accountability in resource-dependent 
     emerging nations. The SEC has demonstrated great diligence in 
     appreciating the changing needs of investors through the 
     implementation of Section 1504. We remain confident that the 
     Commission will see the process through to a conclusion that 
     fulfills its mission and advances the interests of all its 
     stakeholders.
       We thank you for your attention to this submission, and 
     remain at your disposal for any further information or 
     clarification.
                                  ____

                                                   April 28, 2014.
     Mary Jo White,
     Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Chair White: As investors representing more than $2.85 
     trillion in assets under management, we applaud the U.S. 
     Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its leadership 
     in producing final rules for the implementation of Section 
     1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
     Protection Act [Section 13(q) of the Securities Exchange Act 
     of 1934]. The rules the SEC adopted for the implementation of 
     Section 13(q) on August 22, 2012 would protect investors and 
     promote efficient capital markets by providing investors with 
     valuable factual information on risk profiles and company 
     performance. Delay in implementation of these rules or their 
     significant revision would continue to deny investors this 
     valuable information.
       The opportunities and challenges of both operating and 
     investing in the oil, gas and mining industries have changed 
     significantly in recent decades as companies have been 
     increasingly compelled to explore and produce in countries 
     with challenging governance and business environments, 
     including some with pervasive corruption. We believe that 
     Section 13(q) creates a chance for disclosure requirements to 
     evolve in a manner that reflects the changing dynamics of 
     these industries.
       Investors' decisions regarding the oil, gas and mining 
     industries and the efficient functioning of markets in 
     general rely on the public disclosure of relevant information 
     from issuers that is comprehensive and consistent. Therefore, 
     we agree with the Commission's August 2012 rules for Section 
     13(q) that require issuer-by-issuer, government-level, and 
     project-level public disclosures and believe that these are 
     beneficial to investors.
       Issuers' annual public Exchange Act reporting is an 
     indispensable factor for investment decision-making. It must 
     be done on a basis that allows investors to make decisions 
     about the securities of individual issuers. An anonymous 
     compilation of the submissions required by Section 13(q) 
     would likely not provide the information necessary to serve 
     this purpose. It is in the interest of both investors and 
     issuers that the data disclosed pursuant to Section 13(q) 
     maintains consistency across each issuer's operations. 
     Following the enactment of Section 13(q), other jurisdictions 
     have responded with complementary regulatory efforts, most 
     notably the European Union Accounting and Transparency 
     Directives and Canada's commitment to establish mandatory 
     payment transparency reporting standards. Consistency with 
     these reporting mandates requires payment information for all 
     countries in which issuers operate, without exception.
       Section 13(q) and its complementing regulations also 
     require project-level disclosure. It would be most beneficial 
     to investors if this disclosure were consistent with best 
     practice for disclosing disaggregated production information 
     that references the legal relationship between individual 
     projects and host governments. Such an approach may be 
     modeled on the project-level disclosures made by Statoil, the 
     large Norwegian-based international oil company, as well as 
     Tullow Oil.
       The SEC has demonstrated great diligence in appreciating 
     the changing needs of investors through the implementation of 
     Section 13(q). We also welcome the parallel comment submitted 
     by Allianz Global Investors et al., and note the common 
     objectives our respective groups of signatories share in 
     promoting high standards of transparency in the extractives 
     sector. We remain confident that the Commission will see the 
     process through to a conclusion that fulfills its obligations 
     and advances the interests of all parties.

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, on one side of this argument, one side of 
this rule, we see in the end--and this kind of sums it up. We have 
these 30 countries that followed us and passed the rules and the laws 
the same as we did. We have on our side, the American Catholic Bishops, 
the Conference of Bishops, the Presbyterian Church, groups like the One 
Campaign and Oxfam--public interest groups that made their mission 
trying to end corruption and deal with the economic and social distress 
and devastation brought on by some of these companies and some of these 
kleptomaniacal--for want of a better term--governments. That is on the 
one side.
  On the other side, we have my Republican friends in the Senate and 
House. We have Rex Tillerson, the new Secretary of State, who lobbied 
vigorously and unceasingly against this rule as president of Exxon. We 
have Exxon on the other side. We have the Chamber of Commerce and the 
American Petroleum Institute. And on that side for this bill--against 
the rule--we have autocrats in places like Russia, Iran, Venezuela. You 
can bet on this vote tomorrow morning, if 7 a.m. comes out the way it 
looks like it will, you can bet there will be celebrations in Russia, 
in Iran, and Venezuela, in all these countries where these kleptocrats, 
where these leaders who are so corrupt, where they benefited so much.
  I think that really sums it up, how important it is that we defeat 
this bill, how important it is that this President, who came to town 
and has been in office less than about 2 weeks, his second week in 
office--his campaign was all about drain the swamp, and one of the 
first things he did, with his Republican House and Senate Members 
following along like sheep, they have done this. It is just incredible 
how they moved so quickly to side with the autocrats, to side with the 
Russians, to side with Big Oil, to side with ExxonMobil and these 
autocrats in places like Iran and Russia. It is not a good commentary 
on this body. I am sorry to see it.
  I ask my colleagues to vote no.
  I yield back my time.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I yield back the remaining Republican time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, the majority 
time is yielded back.

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