[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 28 (Thursday, February 16, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1361-S1366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



        Investigation Into Russian Involvement In U.S. Election

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday the President of the United 
States had a long and eventful press conference--77 minutes--talking 
about the issues before us in this country and his administration. He 
referred to his administration as ``a fine tuned machine.'' That was 
his 28th day in office.
  I will observe the following: This so-called fine-tuned machine was 
forced to dismiss the Acting Attorney General of the United States in 
the first 3 weeks. This fine-tuned machine was reprimanded by three 
different Federal courts for an Executive order on immigration and 
refugees which they found to be inconsistent with the law and the 
Constitution of the United States. This so-called fine-tuned machine 
had to accept the resignation in the first 24 days of the National 
Security Advisor to the President of the United States. Mr. Trump is 
making history. No President has been through those experiences. None. 
I wouldn't say it is a fine-tuned machine; I would say it is a history-
making machine. And sadly this fine-tuned machine, as he calls it, has 
had some rough spots. That is not all.
  This issue about the Russian connection in President Trump's campaign 
is not going away. Seventeen different intelligence agencies have 
verified the fact that Vladimir Putin and the Russians expressly tried 
to invade on a cyber basis the United States of America and to 
influence the outcome of an election. And it wasn't an equal 
opportunity effort--they were there to elect Donald Trump and defeat 
Hillary Clinton.
  To make the record perfectly clear, as they say, there is no evidence 
that the Russians had any actual impact on the actual casting or 
counting of votes, but they did everything else they could dream of. 
They tried to invade and hack sources of files and information and to 
disclose and release them in a timely fashion.
  There was that horrible episode involving ``Entertainment Weekly,'' 
or whatever the name of that operation was, where they had a recording 
of then-candidate Donald Trump saying some awful things. It was no 
coincidence that 2 hours after that recording was released, they 
started releasing John Podesta's emails and files--the Russians did--to 
try to resurrect the Trump campaign that hit some pretty

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rocky shoals. So we know that happened.
  We also know there was contact with General Flynn, the National 
Security Advisor to Donald Trump, prior to the President being sworn 
in. The extent of the contact, we don't know. The number of people in 
the Trump campaign who may or may not have had contact with the 
Russians, we don't know, but we do know this: The Federal Bureau of 
Investigation has an investigation underway into this very question 
because it raises some big issues.
  This is the first time we know in the history of the United States 
that a foreign power has tried to invade our electoral process. And it 
isn't just a benign invasion; this is one of our major enemies when it 
comes to national security, and the reason is obvious. Travel to the 
Baltics, travel to Poland, travel to Ukraine, and talk to them about 
Vladimir Putin. He isn't this great hero, as President Trump has 
characterized him, from their point of view; he is a threat to their 
existence. They know what happened when the Soviet Union had the power. 
It controlled the Baltics. It controlled Poland. It controlled Ukraine. 
They don't want to see that day return. They want the United States and 
NATO to stand up and help make sure they have a way to continue their 
democracy and continue making their own sovereign decisions. Meanwhile, 
our President of the United States, Donald Trump, is tossing political 
bouquets and sweet little kisses to Vladimir Putin and his Russian 
regime. Is this worth looking into? You bet it is.
  This week we made a leap of faith right here in the Senate. We have 
decided to give to the Intelligence Committee of the Senate the 
authority to move forward on this investigation. I reluctantly agreed 
to that approach. I am skeptical. I will tell you why I am skeptical. I 
served on the Intelligence Committee. It is a critically important 
committee, but the Intelligence Committee, 95 percent of the time, 
meets behind closed doors in a secret space without a sign on the door, 
and the proceedings of the Intelligence Committee necessarily are 
secret. This is not an issue that should be kept secret. We need to 
make sure the American public understands in an independent and 
transparent way exactly what happened when it came to the Russian 
involvement in America's election, who was involved in the Trump 
campaign, if anyone. We need names, and we need people to be held 
responsible.
  The second thing is, the Intelligence Committee--if and when it 
finally issues a report, that report is going to be classified to some 
extent. We have seen pages, I am sure, of redacted materials, big black 
lines and maybe one or two words emerging from a single page. Who 
decides to take away the black lines and tell the American people 
exactly what they found? The ultimate decision on declassifying 
documents in the Intelligence Committee is made by the White House.
  So here is the White House, President Trump and his people under 
investigation by the Intelligence Committee, and they have the last 
word about what the American people will see. Isn't it interesting--
when it came to the investigation of Benghazi with Hillary Clinton, 
when it came to the investigation of emails with Hillary Clinton, the 
Republicans couldn't wait to have week after week and month after month 
of public hearings. Now they want a secret hearing in the Senate 
Intelligence Committee and no hearing in the House Intelligence 
Committee. It is a big ``shrug your shoulders; boys will be boys'' 
moment for the Republicans in control of the Congress. It shouldn't be 
for the American people. The American people have a right to know what 
the Russians did, and they have a right to know if and when members of 
the Trump campaign or his close associates were engaged and involved in 
what he has dismissed as a ruse. Seventeen intelligence agencies don't 
dismiss it.
  We need an independent, transparent investigation of what happened. 
The American people have a right to know. And we ought to say to this 
President: You may conceal your income tax returns, unlike any other 
Presidential candidate in modern memory, but you cannot conceal from 
the American people the facts as to whether the Russians were 
attempting a cyber attack on the United States during the course of our 
last election. That is too critical a question to ignore.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Madam President, I rise today in one sense as a former 
Governor. In looking at nominations of Cabinet members by the 
Executive, I start with a position of deference to the Executive 
because I think he or she should be able to choose the people who 
surround them and give them advice. I understand that. I did that as a 
Governor, and I understand that principle. Indeed, in the proceedings 
before this body thus far, I think I voted for 7 or 8 or perhaps 10 of 
the nominees for Cabinet members who advise the President.
  But today we are considering a nominee who is hostile to the 
fundamental purpose of the Agency to which he is being appointed. We 
are appointing a person to be the head of an Agency that is called the 
Environmental Protection Agency. All you need to know about the mission 
of that Agency is contained in the name, the Environmental Protection 
Agency, and we are considering a nominee who has no record that I have 
been able to discover of protection of the environment. None. Zero. No 
history of actions on behalf of the environment, on behalf of the 
health and welfare and well-being of the citizens of his State or of 
the United States.
  It is bizarre, to me, to be appointing people to an office where they 
are hostile to the mission of the office to which they are being 
appointed. In fact, not only has he no record of positive environment 
activity, his record is completely to the contrary where he has opposed 
activities of the Environmental Protection Agency.
  As everybody knows, as attorney general of Oklahoma and leading other 
attorneys general around the country, he sued the Environmental 
Protection Agency numerous times; I think something like 20 times. And 
some of those rules--all of those rules were put into place to protect 
the health and well-being of the American people. There are several of 
them that I am particularly sensitive to.
  When I was the Governor of Maine, we had an issue of air quality. We 
still do. The reason we have an air quality issue in Maine is because 
of the air that is coming in on the prevailing westerly winds from the 
rest of the country. At one point, we had a time where we did the 
calculations, and we could have taken every car off our highways, 
closed every one of our factories, and we still would have had air 
quality violations on the coast of Maine. Pollution doesn't respect 
borders. It doesn't respect State borders, and it doesn't respect 
international borders. That is why it has to be a national 
responsibility.
  Of course, each State can also have, as we do in Maine, its own 
department of environmental quality, its own department of 
environmental protection. Each State could and should and will do that 
and has done that, but we also need to have national standards because 
otherwise the States will race to the bottom: How friendly are you to 
business? Come on in; we have no rules. This was realized almost 50 
years ago by a Senator from Maine, a Senator whose seat I occupy, a 
Senator whose desk I have in my office, Edmund Muskie. Edmund Muskie 
was the father of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and he 
came from a State where this was not politically easy. The rivers in 
Maine had been grossly polluted by industrial waste. Yet he took the 
lead on this important issue.
  Here is something extraordinary: The Clean Air Act, one of the most 
important environmental laws of the 20th century and very 
controversial, widespread impact around the country, passed this body 
unanimously. It is unbelievable looking back to that day. We couldn't 
pass the time of day unanimously in this body today, but there was 
bipartisan consensus that protecting the environment for ourselves and 
for the future of our citizens was not a political issue. It was an 
issue of responsibility. It was an ethical issue. And Ed Muskie, a 
giant in this body, created the groundwork and the legislative basis 
for the work we are still doing today.
  In Muskie's time, the pollution was obvious. You could see it, and 
you could breathe it. I live on the Androscoggin River in Brunswick, 
and when I first went there 35 years ago,

[[Page S1363]]

you could smell the river in the spring. You could smell it. You knew 
it was spring; you could smell the foam and waste that was coming down 
the river. That is gone today because of the work of people like Ed 
Muskie.
  By the way, people like Howard Baker, Republicans--and in our State 
of Maine, the environmental movement was led by Republicans in those 
days. Hoddy Hildreth, David Huber, Ken McCloud, Harry Richardson--those 
are all prominent Republican leaders in our State who also led the 
environmental protection movement in our State.
  As I said, it was easy. You could smell it; you could see it. The 
smog in Los Angeles was so bad that it was ridiculous, and it was 
unhealthful, so we took some steps that dealt with that.
  We are facing an environmental threat today that is somewhat less 
visible--although I will argue that it is actually quite visible--but 
it is no less profound. In fact, I believe it is more dangerous, more 
threatening, more important to the future of this planet and our 
country and our people than those obvious threats that were faced back 
in 1970 and beyond.
  Environmental protection, in my view, is a moral and an ethical 
issue; it is an intergenerational ethical issue; and it can all be 
summarized by what I call the main rototiller rule. The main rototiller 
rule goes like this: If you borrow your neighbor's rototiller in the 
spring in order to plow up your garden and get ready to plant, you have 
an obligation to return it to him in as good of shape as you got it and 
with a good tank of gas. That is all you need to know about 
environmental stewardship, because we have the planet on loan. We don't 
own it. We own it temporarily. We own plots of land temporarily, but we 
don't own the planet. We have it on loan from future generations--from 
our children and our grandchildren and seven generations hence. Yet our 
age, our generation, is acting like it is all ours, like everything is 
ours.
  It took millions of years, for example, to create the fossil fuels 
that are underneath the Earth. The word ``fossil'' has a meaning. They 
are there because they are from fossils. It goes back literally 
millions of years for the Earth to distill the plant and animal matter 
into this miraculous substance called oil--millions of years. Yet we 
are using it up. Forget about the pollution for a moment; just think 
about the idea that we are using an asset that the Earth produced over 
millions of years, and in a matter of--I don't know--200 to 300 years, 
we are going to use it all. It is as if on Thanksgiving the turkey 
comes to the table, all of the family is sitting around, and Dad says: 
OK, I am going to eat this whole turkey. You don't get any.
  What do we tell people when they look back on us in 20, 50, 100, 200 
years? What are they going to think of our generation? What is our 
defense going to be?
  We know it is not infinite. There is argument about how much is 
there, but it is not infinite. There is no machine in the center of the 
Earth that is creating these substances; therefore, we have a 
responsibility to future generations, as my friends in Maine would say, 
not to pig out on what we have and just forget about who comes next. Of 
course, as it becomes more rare, it will become more expensive, so we 
are passing those costs off as well. Beyond that is the environmental 
cost.
  I mentioned the obvious environmental problems back in the seventies 
and eighties of when you could see the air, when you could smell the 
rivers, but today the problem is what we are doing to the planet, which 
is climate.
  What bothers me about this nominee is he basically says: Well, it is 
a controversial issue. The sciences differ.
  No. The science is clear.
  Before I get to that, I have one more point about the ethical and 
moral responsibility.
  Last year, we had Pope Francis here. Pope Francis has talked a great 
deal about this issue and the ethical and moral and, indeed, religious 
obligation we have to be good stewards of our environment and of our 
planet. People criticized the Pope. They said: Let the Pope stick to 
religion and stay away from science.
  It turns out that the Pope is a chemist. That is an unfortunate fact.
  When the Pope was here, I did a little act of Jesus in the Good Book 
and found a number of references to the responsibility we have to 
protect the environment and the land. Indeed, in the Old Testament--and 
we all know about the Sabbath, that on the seventh day, He rested. 
There is a provision in the Old Testament whereby every 7 years the 
people were instructed to let the land lie fallow for a year--a Sabbath 
for the land in order to preserve its productivity.
  I believe this is fundamentally an ethical issue. What do we owe our 
children--to just forge ahead in the face of overwhelming science and 
all of the predictions? What is happening in the world around us is 
selfishness. It is unethical. It is wrong. It is unfair.
  As I said, we are talking about a nominee for this body who says the 
debate about climate change is just that--it is a debate.

       There are scientists that agree, and there are scientists 
     that don't agree to the extent of man's contribution and 
     whether it is even harmful at this point.

  Give me a break. The scientific community is virtually unanimous, 
and, indeed, the data is unanimous.
  I carry a little card around with me. This is a blowup of it. I am a 
visual person--I like to see things, and I understand them better. To 
me, this is what you need to know about what is going on.
  By the way, what this is, is CO2 in the atmosphere, parts 
per million, for 800,000 years. People say: Well, it has varied over 
time. It goes up and down. It is just a natural cycle.
  It does vary over time. Here is 850,000 years, and you can see that 
it varies from a low of about 180 parts per million up close to 300 
parts per million, and that is the variation. Absolutely true. That is 
the variation until you get to about 1860, and that is when it starts 
to go up. Now we are at 400 parts per million, which is 25 percent 
higher than it has been in 5 million years. Was it a coincidence that 
it started to happen when we started to burn fossil fuels in such vast 
quantities? Of course not. Was there a big outburst of volcanos in the 
mid-1800s? Of course not.
  This is not debatable. These are measurements. These are scientific 
measurements. Debating this is like debating that water boils at 212 
degrees: Oh, no. I think it boils at 214 degrees.
  No. It is 210.
  It is 212.
  Light travels at 186,000 miles a second. That is not debatable. 
Neither is this.
  We are in a very dangerous place. Scott Pruitt calls it an argument 
and doesn't want to do anything about it. Not only does he not want to 
do anything about it, he wants to undo the things that have been done 
to try to protect us.
  You can look at this chart and say CO2 is going up. It is 
invisible gas. You cannot taste it. You cannot smell it. It does not 
poison us. It is in the atmosphere anyway. Who cares? What difference 
does it make?
  Here is what difference it makes. This is the other side of my little 
card. This is the correlation of over 800,000 years between temperature 
and CO2. Of what you can see, the blue is the 
CO2, and the temperature is red, and what you see is an 
almost exact correlation. It is beyond coincidence. When CO2 
goes up, the temperature goes up. When CO2 goes down, the 
temperature goes down. You can see it over the time. Do you know where 
we are now in CO2? Here. The correlation is unmistakable, it 
is powerful, and it is dangerous.
  The nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency denies this. He 
says it is a debate. Just for a moment, let's take him at his word. 
Let's say it is a debate. Let's say it is not entirely settled. If the 
risk is so catastrophic, wouldn't it be prudent to try to take some 
measures to prevent it even if you are not sure? By the time we are 
sure--by the way, we are sure now. By the time Scott Pruitt is sure, it 
will be too late. It may already be too late. We may be beyond the 
tipping point, and all we can do is mitigate the danger, not stop it 
altogether, because we have been heedless of the consequences of the 
results that will impact the next generation of Americans and of people 
around the world.
  What are the consequences going to be? What if it gets a little bit 
warmer? We will be able to play golf longer in Maine--hey, not bad--but 
the consequences in many cases are going to

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be catastrophic. There are many already affecting Maine in terms of 
where our lobster population is moving.
  I had a sea farmer in my office 2 days ago, a fellow who has a great 
business. He has grown it for years. It is really a serious business of 
growing oysters, and he has always grown them in the Damariscotta 
River. In fact, if you go to a fancy restaurant and ask for 
Damariscotta River oysters there, they are the top-level oysters in the 
world. He has always grown them in the river. He puts in the little 
seed. They start in little, tiny shells, and then they grow out. He can 
no longer grow them initially in the river because the water is so 
acidic from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is absorbed by the 
ocean, that the shells don't grow. He had to move the incubation part 
of his business onshore and treat the water to lower the acidity so 
that the shells will grow, and then when they get a certain size, he 
puts them back in the river.
  This is a real, direct, obvious, observable effect of global climate 
change and of too much CO2 in the atmosphere. It is not 
theoretical. It is not debatable. It is not that scientists differ. 
This guy is trying to make a living, and he can only do it by treating 
the water because the acid that has been created by the ocean in its 
absorbing the CO2 is making it impossible for the oysters to 
develop. That is a direct impact. Probably the most direct impact we 
are going to be able to see and identify and not avoid is sea level 
rise.
  Last summer--as a matter of fact, in August--I went to Greenland. Let 
me just put that in context. It is the continent of Greenland. The ice 
on Greenland, if and when it melts--and I think it is when, not if--
will add 61 feet to the ocean depth. The ice in Antarctica has 212 feet 
of sea level rise contained in it. Just think about that for a minute. 
Greenland is melting at a rate no one has seen before. I saw it with my 
own eyes. I saw these big things in the ice. We helicoptered out over 
the ice sheet, and you could see these big holes in the ice called 
moulins. Into those moulins are flowing, rushing rivers of meltwater. 
You can see them. They are blue, and they run across the ice and down 
into the hole, and they go all the way down to the bottom, 2 miles 
thick, where they lubricate the space between the ice and the land and 
accelerate the ice in its moving toward the ocean. ``Accelerate.'' That 
is an important term. That is a term I heard at the University of Maine 
from their climate scientists. That is a term I have heard from 
scientists in other parts of the country. ``Accelerate.'' ``Abrupt.''

  We all think of things changing very slowly; as a matter of fact, the 
very term glacial means ``moving slowly.'' Not anymore. We went to the 
Jakobshavn Glacier, the largest glacier that is draining the ice sheet 
of Greenland, and it has retreated as much in the past 10 years as in 
the prior 100 years. It has retreated as much in the past 10 years as 
in the prior 100 years. Do the math, and that is 10 times the rate that 
the ice is flowing off the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean and 
raising sea levels.
  One of the problems with what is going on now is the process of 
acceleration. For example, everybody knows that the ice in the Arctic 
Ocean is disappearing at an unprecedented rate. A cruise ship went 
through the Arctic Ocean last summer. The Arctic Ocean has been closed 
throughout human history. It has been unavailable for commerce. You 
couldn't get through. It was always covered with ice. In the summer it 
would clear a little bit. Now we are talking about international trade 
through the Arctic Ocean.
  What happens, though, scientifically, when the sun's rays hit the ice 
and the snow, 85 percent of the energy of the sun is bounced back. That 
is science. When the ice is gone and the dark ocean is available, 85 
percent of the sun's energy is absorbed into the ocean. That is called 
a feedback loop. That accelerates. The more it melts, the more it gets 
melted, and that is the kind of thing that is happening in Greenland, 
in Antarctica, and, indeed, all over the world.
  Here is something I learned on my trip to Greenland that I really 
hadn't absorbed. If there is anything we think of as a constant, it is 
the ocean. You walk down to the beach in Maine or on to the dock in 
Portland, you look out, and you see it. There it is. It is the way it 
has always been. It turns out it has always been that way for only 
8,000 years. It happens to have always been that way when people have 
been around and keeping records and taking pictures, but it hasn't 
always been that way.
  Here is an amazing bit of science that, frankly, I wasn't aware of. 
This is the ocean depth 24,000 years ago. This is the ocean depth 
today. So 24,000 years ago, it was 390 feet shallower than it is today. 
It was 390 feet shallower 24,000 years ago. Why 24,000 years ago? 
Because all the water was locked up in the glaciers. In one sense, 
Greenland and Antarctica are the last remnants of the glaciers, and 
they are now melting.
  This period, 24,000 years up to today, is how the oceans have risen. 
You can see coincidentally, it has been pretty fixed for 8,000 years, 
and that is why we think it is going to always be that way. I used to 
teach about the recency effect. All human beings tend to think that 
what happened last week is going to happen next week. But this tells us 
that the ocean level is variable.
  Here is the amazing spot, right here. It is called the meltwater 
pulse 1A; all geologists know about this. And if you do the calculation 
on this period, the ocean gained about a foot a decade. It got deeper. 
The sea level rose about a foot a decade during this period, and this 
is what we are facing right now.
  The best estimates I have been able to obtain are that we are facing 
about a foot to a foot and a half of sea level rise in the next 15 
years, and a foot a decade thereafter for the rest of the century. If 
you do the math, that is an additional 6 to 8 feet.
  In fact, there was an estimate just released last week that says it 
is more like 9 feet, 3 meters. Nine feet? Miami is gone; New Orleans, 
gone; New York, under deep threat; Bangladesh--we are talking about 
national security here because the people who are going to be pressed 
into migration because of this are going to create a national security 
and a migration crisis, the likes of which this country and the world 
has never seen. We are talking about 1 million or 2 million people out 
of Syria, and it has caused great uproar here and in Europe. The 
estimates are for the migration from climate change in the reasonably 
foreseeable future to be 200 million to 500 million people. Think of 
the national security implications of that.
  And here we are debating a nominee for the Environmental Protection 
Agency who says: Well, it is debatable; maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
  It is not debatable. This is happening. And for us to ignore it and 
to approve this nominee who is hostile, who has sued the Agency, and 
who has never done a thing in his life to protect the environment, is 
just outrageous. It is a dereliction of our responsibility, and we are 
going to look back on this moment and say: What were we thinking?
  I understand that the President won. Elections have results. He can 
move in the direction he wants to on policy, but this is beyond policy. 
This is just fundamentally irresponsible to our children, to their 
children, and the future of this country.
  So I hope, after this debate and after this discussion, the people of 
this body will come together--just as they did with the Secretary of 
Labor nominee, who really wasn't appropriate--and say the same thing.
  Plus, finally--I will just note this as a parenthetical--there is the 
issue of the emails in and out of this fellow's office when he was 
attorney general that they have been hiding for 2\1/2\ years or 3 years 
that may well become available in a week. If I were someone 
contemplating voting for this fellow, I sure as heck would want to wait 
until I saw these emails because there may be things there that are 
going to be profoundly embarrassing, if not worse.
  So there is no reason to move this nomination today, and there is no 
reason, in my view, to move this nomination at all.
  I understand that the EPA can overreach--any agency can overreach--
and there should be control on regulations. I have worked on regulatory 
reform since I have been here, but there is a difference between 
regulatory reform and a wrecking ball to the fundamental protections 
that have made so much difference to the people of this country.
  So I hope we will consider the future in our vote today--not just 
ourselves,

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not just the regulations, not just a few people who may be profiting by 
the exploitation of these resources, but think about our kids, our 
grandchildren, and our ultimate responsibility to this country.
  Thank you, Madam President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I wish to start where the Senator 
from Maine left off, and that is with respect to the approximately 
3,000 emails that Scott Pruitt, the nominee to lead the Environmental 
Protection Agency, has been hiding from public view. I hope all 
Senators know now that last night, a judge, Judge Timmons, ordered that 
those emails be released so the American public can see exactly what is 
going on.
  Here is what the judge said: ``There was an abject failure to provide 
prompt and reasonable access to the documents that had been 
requested.''
  Willful ignorance is always a bad policy, and I really hope that the 
Senate will not engage in willful ignorance when it comes to the 
nomination of Scott Pruitt. Why not wait a few days to see what is in 
the emails that were so deliberately hidden from public view? That 
should worry every Senator, Republican and Democrat alike.
  In addition to all of the concerns that have been raised by my 
colleagues on this floor with respect to having Scott Pruitt at the 
helm of EPA, Marylanders have a special concern. In fact, those who are 
part of the Chesapeake Bay States have a very, very special concern.
  The Chesapeake Bay is a natural treasure, and it is a national 
treasure. It is the Nation's largest estuary. It is beloved by 
Marylanders and beloved by all who benefit from its great bounty.
  Marylanders get up in the morning and go crabbing on the bay. It has 
also been a source of income for our State and the other bay States.
  The reality is that our tourism industry depends on a healthy bay. 
Our watermen depend on a healthy bay. Our boating industry depends on a 
healthy bay. So it is not only an environmental imperative, it is an 
economic imperative in the State of Maryland. And the Chesapeake Bay is 
threatened more than almost any other water body in the United States 
by pollution. That is because its tidal tributaries have a shoreline 
more than the whole west coast of the United States. In other words, if 
you look at the water surface of the bay and you look at the surface 
area of the rivers and streams feeding into the bay and you look at all 
the shoreline there, it is greater than the west coast.
  The surface water area, including the 150 major rivers and streams 
and more than 100,000 smaller tributaries, is 4,500 square miles. But 
the watershed--the landmass that drains into that area--is 64,000 
square miles, from six States and the District of Columbia, everywhere 
from Virginia to parts of New York State. And because the bay is 
threatened by pollution coming from throughout that great area--those 
six States and the District of Columbia--back in the 1960s, people 
recognized we had to do something about it because we had combined 
sewer water overflows, we had fertilizer runoff, we had stormwater 
runoff from six States and the District of Columbia bordering the 
Chesapeake Bay and threatening its livelihood and threatening the 
economy of the State of Maryland.
  That is when a number of States got together and said: We have to do 
something about it. Senator Mathias, who was a Republican Senator from 
the State of Maryland, brought people together and said: We need to do 
a national study funded by the Federal Government because, in a 
situation where you have so many States contributing to the pollution 
of the bay, obviously, it is not within the power of only one State to 
do something about it.
  And over nearly three decades from those early days back in the 1960s 
and beyond, we entered into a number of bay agreements with the three 
States immediately around the bay: Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, 
and the District of Columbia, and then it got expanded over time. But 
despite all of the efforts in those States, it was as if we were on a 
treadmill.
  The good news is the actions taken by the States, with the help of 
the EPA, meant that we were not going backward. It was a little bit as 
if we were trying to run up a down escalator. If we hadn't been taking 
any action, we would be going down fast. The bay would get more and 
more polluted, become less and less healthy. But even with all the 
measures we were taking, it was as if we were running in place on that 
escalator that was going down.
  So in 2009, the bay States decided that they needed to put more teeth 
in the enforcement mechanisms to make sure that everybody was being 
held accountable for their share of cleaning up this precious natural 
resource and natural treasure.
  That is when we entered into an agreement with the Environmental 
Protection Agency, giving the EPA the authority to help enforce the 
provisions of that agreement if any State strayed. And the results have 
been very important and very encouraging. Just this January, the 
Chesapeake Bay Foundation, in its biannual ``State of the Bay Report,'' 
gave the Chesapeake Bay its highest, its healthiest score since the 
report began in 1987.
  I want to be clear. We are still a long way from a healthy Chesapeake 
Bay, but we have gone from running in place to actually making a few 
steps forward, and that is largely as a result of the efforts of the 
bay agreement and the new leverage that the Environmental Protection 
Agency has to enforce compliance with that agreement.
  Here is where the story of the President's nominee to be the head of 
EPA intersects with the Chesapeake Bay. As attorney general of the 
landlocked State of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt decided to join in a court 
case to try to blow up this Chesapeake Bay agreement. He decided from 
Oklahoma that he wanted to get in the business--the bipartisan business 
that had been supported by Republican and Democratic Governors alike, 
Republican and Democratic Senators alike, over a long period of time. 
He sued, along with others, the EPA to try to prevent the EPA from 
playing this important role that helped give us a boost.
  Now, the good news is Scott Pruitt and the others failed. The judge 
said: Sorry, you are wrong; this does not exceed the EPA's authority. 
The good news is that we are going to continue to proceed. But what are 
we going to do when Scott Pruitt, who brought that lawsuit against the 
Chesapeake Bay agreement, is the Administrator of the EPA?
  Senator Cardin, my friend and colleague from the State of Maryland, 
asked him about this at the hearing. At the hearing, Scott Pruitt made 
some positive statements about this agreement. Then Senator Cardin 
wanted to follow up and make sure he heard it straight, and so he 
followed up with some questions in writing. What came back were a 
series of statements that showed that Scott Pruitt was backtracking on 
the commitment he had made--backtracking on his promise to lead a 
strong EPA and have an important EPA role in enforcing this Chesapeake 
Bay agreement.
  In addition to the fact that he has shown willful ignorance about the 
dangers of climate change, which are all so very real to the State of 
Maryland--just go down to the Naval Academy and ask the superintendent 
there, and he will tell you they have many more storm surges right 
there in Annapolis as a result of climate change--and so many other 
areas where Scott Pruitt has sided with big money, special interests, 
polluting special interests, he clearly is somebody whom we worry about 
in the State of Maryland with respect to protecting the Chesapeake Bay.
  So I ask all my colleagues to join with us in at least demanding now 
that we have an opportunity to see the 3,000 emails, which a judge has 
required be provided to the public next week.
  I hope all Senators don't want to be embarrassed by voting for 
somebody today, only to find very compromising emails next week. I 
really believe we have an obligation to the American people to ensure 
that we have an opportunity to view those emails. I certainly know the 
people of Maryland, when it comes to protecting our beautiful 
Chesapeake Bay--both because of its natural beauty but also because it 
is essential to our economy--join me in encouraging my colleagues to 
ask for a delay and, at the very least, vote no on the nomination of 
Scott Pruitt.
  I yield the floor.

[[Page S1366]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, as everyone in this Chamber knows, we 
are currently debating and preparing to vote on the nomination of Scott 
Pruitt to be the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
Agency.
  The truth is that we don't have all the information we need to make 
this important decision. We don't have all the facts we ought to have. 
That is because the nominee, in his role as attorney general of 
Oklahoma, worked very hard to keep the information contained, 
controlled, and unavailable to the Senators in this Chamber and 
unavailable to the citizens of the United States of America.
  For 2 years now, his office has stonewalled attempts to make public 
the records of over 3,000 email communications with members of the 
fossil fuel industry. Two years ago, the Center for Media and Democracy 
requested these emails through the Oklahoma Open Records Act. Who is 
the person who decides whether to release those records? The attorney 
general of Oklahoma. Who is the nominee before us? The attorney general 
of Oklahoma.
  When Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee 
requested these records from Mr. Pruitt during the confirmation 
process, the answer we got back was this: ``I would direct you to make 
a request of the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office under the Oklahoma 
Open Records Act.'' Now, when he encouraged us to make that request, he 
knew--and we shortly knew--that he had no intention of actually 
granting access. He was telling us to get in line behind more than 50 
other requests for that information, and that request has not yet been 
answered. In fact, Senator Whitehouse did put in a request directly to 
the Oklahoma attorney general's office using the Oklahoma Open Records 
Act. Imagine what the result was. Did the attorney general of Oklahoma 
immediately release these records? He did not. Have we those records 
today? We do not.
  But yesterday, Oklahoma County District Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons 
ruled on whether or not the public deserves access to these emails and 
deserves access to these records, and she ordered the attorney general 
to do his job--to release the records so that we here in the Chamber 
will have that information, so that the American public will have that 
information. Judge Timmons said there was ``an abject failure to 
provide prompt and reasonable access to documents requested.''
  On Tuesday, the first batch of emails is going to be released to the 
public. That is just a few days from now. But if we vote today, we 
won't have that information before us. It will be too late for us to 
have all the facts and information we need to make a qualified decision 
on whether Mr. Pruitt is a fit character or unfit character to be a 
member of the President's Cabinet. That is exactly what the Founders of 
our Nation charged us with doing in the advice and consent 
responsibility--to determine whether a nominee is a fit character or 
unfit character.
  So we here in the Senate are not doing our job. Under our 
responsibility under the Constitution, if we vote today, not having yet 
reviewed the information in those emails that the judge has just said 
must be released, we are being asked--or, more pointedly, forced--by 
the majority leader to rush through the confirmation of Mr. Pruitt 
without having this vital information.
  This is a question of transparency. This is a question of exercising 
our authority in a responsible fashion. This is about the right of the 
Members of the Senate to have the information needed to fulfill their 
responsibility under the Constitution. This is about the right of the 
citizens of the United States to know Members here are doing their job 
and to weigh in--to weigh in with us on what they consider to be fit 
character and unfit character. We should not deny Americans the right 
to know.
  That is why I will ask unanimous consent of this Chamber in a moment 
to postpone the vote until 10 a.m. on March 3, because that would give 
us the full ability to get both sets of emails and have 3 days to 
review them, which I think is most reasonable.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the confirmation vote 
on Calendar No. 15, the nomination of Scott Pruitt for Administrator of 
the Environmental Protection Agency, be postponed until 10 a.m. on 
March 3.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I am disappointed with the majority 
leader's objection. I know all of us who serve in this Chamber want to 
do our job in a fashion in which we thoroughly and responsibly execute 
the responsibilities of our office. We can't do that without these 
emails. These emails have been stonewalled for 2 years. I know that if 
the shoe were on the other foot, there is a very good chance the 
advocacy for transparency would be coming from multiple Members across 
the aisle.
  So I am disappointed the decision has been made to object to holding 
the vote after the time that both sets of emails have been released. 
But I do understand the majority leader has responsibility for the 
schedule for the Senate. So I am going to tailor back my request and 
ask that the vote be held after the first batch of emails is released. 
They are going to be held next Tuesday and we are going to be out next 
week. So under this request, no time is lost in the Chamber in 
considering the nomination. It does not delay any other work of this 
Chamber. It does not stand in the way of anything else we might do. It 
just means that we hold the vote when we get back, instead of holding 
it this afternoon before we leave.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the confirmation vote 
on Calendar No. 15, the nomination of Scott Pruitt for Administrator of 
the Environmental Protection Agency, be postponed until 9 p.m. on 
February 27.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, both of my unanimous consent requests 
have been rejected, as is the right of any Member. But still, there is 
a principle here--a principle of executing our responsibilities and a 
principle of transparency, a principle of understanding whether or not 
the individual before us is a fit character to serve in the office.
  So I am going to make a formal motion, which is allowed under the 
rules, to extend this debate. The rules call for 30 hours of debate but 
provide a clause that, by a vote, we can extend that debate. I propose 
we extend that debate for an additional 248 hours. That 248 hours would 
take us until Monday evening, on the evening we return. So again, no 
time is lost with the agenda before this body, but we would all have 
the chance to review those 3,000--or at least the first batch of those 
emails--to determine if there is information that is related to whether 
the nominee is fit or unfit to hold this office.