[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 7 (Monday, January 13, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S157-S159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Peter Gaynor, of Rhode Island, to be Administrator of the 
     Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland 
     Security.
         Mitch McConnell, John Thune, Ron Johnson, Mike Rounds, 
           Richard Burr, Kevin Cramer, Pat Roberts, Roger F. 
           Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Tim 
           Scott, Mike Crapo, Steve Daines, John Boozman, Shelley 
           Moore Capito, James E. Risch.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Peter Gaynor, of Rhode Island, to be Administrator of the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security, 
shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. 
Cramer), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from 
Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy), the 
Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. 
Scott), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
  Mr. SCHUMER. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), 
the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Illinois 
(Mr. Durbin), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. 
Sanders), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from 
Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 76, nays 8, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 11 Ex.]

                                YEAS--76

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Duckworth
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     King
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Loeffler
     Manchin
     McConnell
     McSally
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Scott (FL)
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Sinema
     Smith
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--8

     Brown
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Menendez
     Schumer
     Stabenow
     Udall
     Van Hollen

                             NOT VOTING--16

     Bennet
     Booker
     Cassidy
     Cramer
     Durbin
     Graham
     Inhofe
     Kennedy
     Klobuchar
     Markey
     Risch
     Sanders
     Scott (SC)
     Toomey
     Warner
     Warren
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 76, the nays are 8.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a 
colloquy with my colleagues from Rhode Island and New Jersey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Save Our Seas 2.0

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am sure all of my colleagues are going 
to want to listen to this speech. I am on the floor with my colleagues 
Senator Whitehouse and Senator Menendez to talk about some very 
important legislation for our country, legislation that passed the 
Senate last week. It is the Save Our Seas 2.0 legislation.
  I begin by thanking Senator Whitehouse and Senator Menendez for their 
leadership on this bill.
  We are going to talk a little bit about the importance of it, why it 
matters to Alaska, to New Jersey, to Rhode Island, and to the whole 
country. This is a significant piece of legislation. It is, really, the 
most comprehensive piece of legislation to pass the Congress--to pass 
the Senate--that has dealt with ocean debris and ocean pollution--ever. 
That sounds like a pretty hyperbolic phrase, but it is true. We checked 
with the CRS. There has been nothing more comprehensive than this piece 
of legislation that tackles an issue we all care about--clean oceans.
  As a matter of fact, on Thursday night, 100 Senators passed this 
after there having been a lot of work on the Committee on Commerce, 
Science, and Transportation, on the Committee on Environment and Public 
Works, and on the Committee on Foreign Relations. After about a year of 
work on this, we finally got it passed. A number of Senators--Democrats 
and Republicans--were cosponsors. I really want to thank the two 
Senators who are on the floor right now. In particular, Senator 
Whitehouse has been a real leader on these issues that deal with 
oceans. This is an environmental issue that we can solve. Republicans 
and Democrats in the Congress, the Trump administration in the White 
House, and environmental and industry groups are all pulling on the 
same oar, and we had a good start last Thursday on what this does.
  I want to turn it over to my colleague from Rhode Island because, in 
many ways, he has been the real leader, the driver, and is the founder 
of the Oceans Caucus. Bit by bit, legislation by legislation, he and I 
cosponsored the first Save Our Seas Act in the last Congress. To much 
fanfare in the Oval Office, the President signed it, and now you are 
starting to see people work on this. There is a whole section in the 
USMCA on cleaning up our oceans. We have gone from Save Our Seas 1.0, 
which has already passed into law, to Save Our Seas 2.0. I think it is 
exciting, and I think the American people don't always hear about the 
bipartisan work that is actually getting done on big issues that matter 
to our Nation. There is a lot.
  Cleaning up our oceans is one that matters to everybody and, 
certainly, to my State, with its having more coastline than the rest of 
the lower 48 combined. You don't even have to live in a coastal State 
to care about this issue. Some of our cosponsors on this bill--on both 
sides of the aisle--are from States that don't even have any coastline. 
That is how important it is.
  I want to turn it over to Senator Whitehouse. I thank him for his and 
Senator Menendez' leadership. We will talk a little bit about what is 
in it and what we are going to do next. This is a good day for the 
environment in America. It is a good day for the oceans not just in our 
country, not just in Alaska, not just in Rhode Island but in the world. 
As a nation, if we are leading on this, which this legislation does, 
then we are going to be able to help clean up our oceans all over the 
world. We had a

[[Page S158]]

good start here on Thursday night in the U.S. Senate when we passed 
this bill legislatively unanimously.
  Again, to my colleague from Rhode Island, the floor is his.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor with a bunch of 
thank-yous after Thursday evening's happy news that Save Our Seas 2.0 
passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent.
  I thank all of the Senate Members of our bipartisan Oceans Caucus. 
The Oceans Caucus has been a really good forum for getting these bills 
moving to a point at which they can pass by unanimous consent. I and 
Senator Murkowski, who is Senator Sullivan's colleague from Alaska, set 
it up years ago. It now has over 40 Members. It is very bipartisan, and 
it has had a really important role in moving bipartisan oceans 
legislation.
  So, Oceans Caucus, thank you.
  This bill, Save Our Seas 2.0, had to go through three committees. It 
had to go through Commerce, Foreign Relations, and Environment and 
Public Works. Let me start in reverse order because Senator Barrasso, 
the chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, is here 
on the Senate floor. I express my appreciation to him and my 
appreciation to our ranking member, Senator Carper, for having 
shepherded this through the committee with unanimous committee support, 
and that gave it a lot of momentum to go on to Foreign Relations and to 
Commerce.
  So, my friend Senator Barrasso, thank you, sir. I do appreciate it 
very much. I think this is a score, a good win. A good deed was done 
here.
  Foreign Relations was also very important, and Senator Menendez, our 
ranking member, is about to speak, so I will not steal his thunder. He 
has been an incredibly valuable part of this triumvirate, and I am 
extremely grateful to Senator Menendez.
  Also, on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 
Senators Wicker and Cantwell were very helpful about making sure this 
got through Commerce and were helpful once it was on the floor.
  Most of all, though, my thanks go to Senator Sullivan, of Alaska. We 
started down this road quite some time ago. We tentatively got into the 
space of ocean plastic waste with a simple hearing in the Committee on 
Environment and Public Works. He had an essential role in making that 
happen because there was a turf conflict between our subcommittee and 
the EPW and the Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and Weather 
within the Commerce Committee.
  Now, if you are not from the Senate, you think that this is all crazy 
talk, but if you are in the Senate, it is a really serious problem to 
have to resolve. We had the very good fortune of having the chairman of 
the Fisheries Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee and the chairman 
of our subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee being 
the same individual, none other than Senator Dan Sullivan. So he went 
out and had a nice debate with himself and was able to negotiate a 
happy resolution of that turf dispute, and the hearing went forward. 
Without that, it never would have happened. So that was the opening 
bid.
  Then we got to 1.0, which, admittedly, was not a very big bill, but 
it was going to test the proposition: Was the Senate willing to 
legislate on marine plastic waste? Yes. We got a big, booming, 100-vote 
support for that in the Senate. Senator Sullivan was so happy with that 
outcome that we immediately went to work on crafting 2.0, which, as 
Senator Sullivan has pointed out, is not just a beachhead but is 
significant marine plastic waste legislation. It will push the 
administration to do a lot more, for more than half of the waste in the 
oceans comes from 5 Asian countries, and more than 80 percent of the 
waste in the oceans comes from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa. This is a 
solvable problem if we direct attention and resources and solutions to 
that problem, and I am really looking forward to following up on that.
  I am really looking forward to getting right to work on Save Our Seas 
3.0 because we are not done here. There is a lot of plastic mess out 
there to clean up, and there is a lot of energy around getting even 
more done.
  So, Senator Sullivan, you have my great appreciation.
  I will close, if I may, with one unlikely thank-you. As Senator 
Sullivan mentioned, this reminded me that there are Senators who 
supported this who don't even have coasts. They are from those square 
end States in the middle of the country that don't have coasts. One of 
them who has been very important to this has been Senator Inhofe, of 
Oklahoma.
  Now, on climate change, Senator Inhofe and I are at each other's 
throats pretty much all of the time. We are always having fights about 
climate change. I call him a climate denier, and he calls me a climate 
alarmist. We go back and forth, fighting about climate change. Yet, on 
this, he has been an essential ally, and having his support has sent, I 
think, a terrific signal to the Senate that, hey, if Senator Whitehouse 
and Senator Inhofe can agree on this, there is room for me in there 
somewhere.
  And so a final thank you to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, but the 
biggest thank you, of course, is to Senator Sullivan, who really made 
this happen.
  With that, I yield to my colleague and friend Senator Menendez, who 
has been so important to this, so he can add his thoughts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, it is a pleasure to join Senators 
Whitehouse and Sullivan on the floor today to thank our colleagues for 
passing the legislation that we have all coauthored to combat the 
environmental crisis of plastic waste in our oceans.
  Our partnership represents both the geographic and political urgency 
behind this growing crisis. Save Our Seas 2.0 is a multifaceted effort 
that will help the United States to better prevent plastic pollution, 
respond to marine debris emergencies, and leverage U.S. foreign policy 
and international engagement to prevent and clean up foreign sources of 
plastic pollution.
  We have a responsibility to protect the health of the world's oceans, 
which regulate our climate, produce half of the Earth's oxygen supply, 
and provide food to 2.6 billion people worldwide.
  The environmental health of our world depends on healthy oceans, and 
plastic pollution and marine debris are like cholesterol clogging 
global ecosystems in countless ways. The reality is that plastic waste 
in our ocean knows no borders. What may be a plastic wrapper floating 
down a river in China today could be microplastic in your tuna salad 
tomorrow.
  Let me thank Senator Whitehouse, who has been so much engaged in our 
oceans since his coming to the Senate--well, even before that, but, 
certainly, as a leader in the Senate--and Senator Sullivan for their 
longstanding bipartisan leadership on this issue and cooperation on the 
bill.
  I was happy to have supported the original Save Our Seas Act in the 
115th Congress. Last year, when several international news stories 
exposed the tragic environmental impact of plastic on our marine 
environment, I began working on legislation to enhance U.S. 
international engagement on this truly global crisis, which served as 
the basis for title II of our bill. At the time, I was not immediately 
aware that Senators Sullivan and Whitehouse were planning a second act, 
so to speak, and I dearly appreciate being a part of the Save Our Seas 
team.
  I also want to thank Chairman Risch for supporting and advancing the 
international components of this bill through the Foreign Relations 
Committee, as well as all of the chairs and rankings who have already 
been mentioned.
  I think that advancing three component parts of the bill through all 
of these respective committees, which is no small feat, and the 20 
bipartisan cosponsors shows the Senate's broad support for action on 
plastic waste.
  New Jerseyans know all too well the threat of plastic pollution. Our 
pristine beaches attract millions of people to the Jersey Shore each 
year, and our coastal waters support everything from fishing and 
recreation to the flow of trade, to our ports and harbors. No one wants 
to swim in plastic or eat fish that fed on microplastic. That is why 25 
New Jersey townships have passed local ordinances banning or phasing 
down disposable plastic products, and

[[Page S159]]

another 26 may soon join them. There is also legislation pending in the 
New Jersey State Legislature to limit the proliferation of disposal 
plastics in New Jersey's economy.
  With 40 percent of Americans living in coastal communities, my 
constituents back home are far from the only ones grappling with the 
hazards of plastic pollution in our oceans.
  There is no question we still have work to do. As our bill heads to 
the House, I look forward to continuing these efforts with Senators 
Whitehouse and Sullivan and our cosponsors as we engage House leaders 
to act on the bill this year.
  Again, thank you to my colleagues. It is good. I know it doesn't 
always get the headlines. The essence of a good story seems to be 
conflict not cooperation, but I am thrilled to be a part of cooperation 
that could make a difference in the lives not just of our oceans but of 
our families.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Menendez and 
Senator Whitehouse again for their leadership on this.
  We have all seen the pictures and the news stories. The issue, 
though, is a severe one. The World Economic Forum has estimated that if 
we don't do anything about this big crisis of ocean debris, but 
particularly the issue of plastics in the ocean, there are estimates 
that by 2050 there will be more plastics by weight in the world's ocean 
than there are fish. We can't let that happen.
  So what we have done is we have put together this bill. As already 
mentioned, there were three different committees. There is an element 
on the domestic innovation side that creates a Marine Debris 
Foundation. That is a congressionally chartered private organization.
  Think of groups that matter to Americans. There are dozens of these 
kinds of foundations, but they are important. They send a signal that 
the Congress of the United States cares about these things. Think about 
the Red Cross, the American Legion, and the National Parks Foundation. 
These are all congressionally chartered organizations. The new Marine 
Debris Foundation will be one of them.
  The American Government is focused on this. It is an opportunity for 
the private sector, and we have seen some industries step up. There is 
a group called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste that has pledged $1.5 
billion to start addressing this problem. That is not small change. It 
is going to need that kind of money. Perhaps some of that can go into 
this foundation.
  There is an innovation prize. A lot of focus in our bill is on 
innovation so that we can solve some of the big challenges in 
chemistry--a plastic bottle that could fully biodegrade. We don't have 
that yet, but these are some of the things that the bill looks at 
doing.
  Of course, Senator Menendez talked about the very substantial foreign 
relations component because so much of the plastic waste in the oceans 
comes from countries in Asia and Africa and 10 rivers, estimating 
almost 80 to 90 percent of all of the plastic waste in all of the 
oceans. So, again, it is solvable because it is definable.
  Then, the third component is improving domestic infrastructure to 
prevent marine debris through new grants and foreign studies for waste 
management mitigation. So this covers a lot of different areas--
innovation, our domestic side, the international side.
  We have momentum. We had a great group of bipartisan Senators--
Democrats and Republicans from all over the country and from all 
political persuasions--showing that momentum. We have the Trump 
administration fully behind this. In many ways, some of their Federal 
agencies weighed in significantly to help us design this legislation, 
and now we need to get it over to the House and move it in the House 
soon and get it to the President's desk.
  So this is a good day for the oceans and a good day for bipartisan 
success in the U.S. Senate on an issue that people care about. People 
really care about making sure that we have clean oceans and we are 
making progress.
  So I just want to leave it at that, and I will ask my colleague from 
Rhode Island, who has been the real leader on this issue, to wrap it 
up.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to close this out. 
Again, I thank Senator Sullivan. I think there is reason to hope for a 
really good appropriations subcommittee hearing on this subject in the 
coming year. I think there is reason to hope for another Environmental 
and Public Works Committee full committee hearing on marine plastics. I 
expect those things will happen, and that will help us with our 
progress.
  One of the things I have come to admire about Senator Sullivan is 
that, as a colonel in the U.S. Marines, he sets himself a mission and 
then he goes about it with real vigor. One of the missions that he set 
himself was to make sure that the Trump administration followed up on 
what Save Our Seas 1.0 did.
  There were a lot of doors that were knocked on that had their hinges 
rattled by Senator Sullivan. There are a lot of administration 
officials who probably had to hold the phone an inch or so away from 
their ears because Senator Sullivan was trying to get their attention 
on this subject.
  Having seen him in action on Save Our Seas 1.0, I very much look 
forward to watching him in action on Save Our Seas 2.0 and to make sure 
that its legislative promise is fully realized in executive 
implementation.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I look forward to another White House 
signing of this with all of our colleagues. I am sure that the 
administration is interested in it. You and I had a very eventful one 
over at the White House a couple years ago.
  So, again, the momentum is there. We are just going to keep building 
on it.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on to Save Our Seas 3.0.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

                          ____________________