[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 26, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3572-S3580]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2024--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 4470
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I will shortly ask for unanimous consent
to pass bipartisan legislation to extend the Chemical Facility Anti-
Terrorism Standards Program, also known as CFATS. This critical
counterterrorism program was created in the wake of September 11 and
the Oklahoma City bombing to ensure that common chemicals could not be
stolen or weaponized by terrorists and used in an attack.
Now the program is set to expire on July 27, tomorrow, and we simply
cannot let that happen. There are approximately 3,300 facilities across
the United States that participate in this program. These facilities
support a range of industries, from chemical manufacturing and
distribution to agriculture and food production, paint and coatings
operations, and healthcare and pharmaceuticals. In their everyday work,
these facilities use materials that, in the wrong hands, can be turned
into dangerous weapons. Because these types of industrial or
commercially available materials are common and offer a simple pathway
to weaponization, terrorists are more likely to try to use them.
By participating in the CFATS Program, facilities work with the
Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan to ensure potentially
hazardous material is secure. I introduced bipartisan legislation,
along with Senators Capito, Carper, and Lankford, to extend this
important counterterrorism program for 5 years. The 5-year extension
provides regulatory certainty and the stability for the companies and
groups that participate in the program, ensuring that they can keep
these important safeguards in place for longer.
Companies including Dow, BASF, Lubrizol, and Brenntag North America,
along with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
American Chemistry Council, the National Association of Chemical
Distributors, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the
Agricultural Retailers Association, and the Fertilizer Institute--all
of them support extending this vital national security program for
another 5 years.
However, last night, the House passed a 2-year extension with
overwhelming bipartisan support. More than 400 Members of the U.S.
House voted to extend the program. And while I believe passing a longer
extension to provide more certainty for companies and for the DHS would
be better, the program will expire tomorrow, and if we do not pass
legislation to extend it, our national security could be at risk.
If this body allows this program to expire, the 3,300 facilities will
no longer be required to maintain security measures and any new high-
risk facilities will not be required to invest in additional
security. The Department of Homeland Security will no longer be able to
assess whether facilities are high risk or share information about
specific terrorist threats connected to chemical facilities. The high-
risk chemical facilities would no longer be able to screen individuals
who have access to sensitive areas against the Terrorist Screening
Database, which is a critical way to ensure that we are keeping these
substances from getting into the wrong hands.
Since it was created, CFATS has been extended with bipartisan support
four times. We cannot let this vital program expire. We must take
urgent action to pass this 2-year extension
[[Page S3573]]
that just passed overwhelmingly through the U.S. House and keep the
American people safe from harm.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the
immediate consideration of H.R. 4470, which was received from the
House, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and
that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the
table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today
to object to the quick passage of H.R. 4470, which seeks to extend the
Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program.
How could anybody be against that? I am actually for it. We should
have terrorism standards. But--you know what--we always had these
before 9/11. How did it work before the government got involved?
Well, companies had to insure things. If you had a $100-million
electric plant and it was at risk for sabotage or a fire or a
disruption to the community, you had insurance, and insurance required
that you have a fence. I mean, these things happen. It is not as if
safety for our utilities and public chemical plants didn't exist before
9/11. So there are ways that the marketplace would take care of this.
This measure, though, which would reauthorize this regulatory program
for another 2 years, I think is being rushed through the Senate without
due consideration or, really, any consideration at all. The Homeland
Security Committee has jurisdiction over the program, yet we have not
had any hearings to discuss this program or its effectiveness.
This is part of the problem of government is we tend to reauthorize
things without ever examining whether they work, what works, what
doesn't work. Some programs might need more money; some programs might
need less money. And we might ask ourselves: Do we have any money?
We are $31 trillion, $32 trillion in debt. We borrow about $1
trillion every year. It is easy to be for stuff. Everybody has got
something good. Everybody is for something, but where does the money
come from? We haven't really had any hearing to discuss this program or
its effectiveness since the last time it was authorized, nor has the
committee considered any legislation to reform the program.
This program is a regulatory program. It is hundreds of regulations,
and it was established to prevent the misuse of hazardous chemicals.
But it also fails to understand that every company has a self-incentive
to protect hazardous chemicals that is built into the nature of the way
they do business.
Facilities that store certain quantities of designated chemicals of
interest, though, under this legislation, must undergo a risk
assessment inspection every 2 years.
If it is not reauthorized? It has been going on for 20 years. My
guess is that the vast majority, if not all, of the utilities and
chemical plants in this country have undergone this. My guess is, if
the program didn't exist, they would still all have fences and barbed
wire and protections against terrorism because they want to protect
their investment.
The requirement, though, through government places a burden on
business, impeding their potential growth and creating unsurmountable
barriers to entry for those who find the regulatory compliance too
cumbersome and expensive to even attempt to break into the sector.
This is why, a lot of times, big businesses like regulations.
Regulations become a formidable barrier to new companies coming into
the business. Why not have a ton of regulations, sort of like banks.
All the banking regulations--guess who likes the banking regulations:
the big banks, because they can hire more compliance officers. Your
local bank in your town can't afford to do it. So the local bank gets
gobbled up by the bigger bank because of regulatory burden.
The monetary resources required to implement and maintain these
standards are substantial, and the cost implications impact not just
private companies but also the Department of Homeland Security.
The United States is trillions of dollars in debt. We cannot continue
to just pour money into nonessential government programs. We should
have a discussion of what are the private incentives for people to
protect their chemical plants, to protect their utilities. There is a
long history of this. In fact, it was the history of our country until
fairly recently.
The Department of Homeland Security has a consistent track record of
creating duplicative programs. Over the past 12 years, the Government
Accountability Office--the GAO--has documented over 1,100 cases of
duplicative programs created by Congress.
Everybody has a great idea--we are going to fix this--but they don't
ever take time to look up and find out that somebody had the idea 3
years before, and they already created a program to fix this. So
sometimes we have as many as 80 different programs to fix a problem
that has already been fixed previously 80 times.
It should come as no surprise to any of us that our government has
grown into a $6.5 trillion leviathan, and this body seems more
interested in passing bills than understanding the contents of the
bills, the programs, or whether the programs are working.
We saved, though, over $550 billion by removing just half of GAO's
identified duplicative programs. Five hundred and fifty billion dollars
was saved by taking the time to find out that we already have other
programs doing what the new program proposes to do.
I have already expressed a number of concerns about this program, but
what should alarm us the most about this reauthorization is that GAO
already found much of this program to be duplicative of other Agencies
in a report from 2021. That is why I will be introducing and attaching
to this bill and letting the bill go, frankly, if we can agree today to
attach a small bill, but I think it could have profound implications
over government.
This is called the Duplication Scoring Act. What would happen is,
every time someone gets a genius idea how they are going to fix your
life or fix your business with another law, there would have to be a
duplication score, and government would come forward and say ``Well, we
have 32 programs that already do the same thing'' or ``We have 32
programs that aren't working that do the same thing.'' It would be what
a government should normally do before creating a new program--find out
if we already have existing programs.
So I will be asking consent to pass this bill. I will let the program
continue, even though I think it has many problems, if we will add a
duplication scoring system to all programs in government so we can
review whether they already exist and are working. This program would
be produced for each bill.
I think all of us can agree that there is no point in passing a bill
that already exists in another fashion or already has Agencies that do
the same job. Before we unknowingly pass a thousand more of these
duplicative, fragmented programs, I urge my colleagues to support my
amendment, which would continue the program, allow it to be
reauthorized, but at the same time begin having a duplication score on
every new proposal.
So I would ask the Senate to modify the current request; that my
amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the
bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that
the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the Senator's request?
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I fully appreciate Senator Paul's
commitment to making government more efficient. I was pleased that my
committee advanced his bill earlier this year, but, as I noted at the
time of our passing it out of committee, the bill requires additional
work before it is ready to be passed by the full Senate.
We have heard from several committees that have concerns about the
potential impacts of the legislation. I hope that we can continue
working over the summer to try to address those concerns and find a
path forward for this legislation.
However, the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards Program is
[[Page S3574]]
set to expire tomorrow. We urgently need to pass this bipartisan 2-year
extension now. If we do not, chemical facilities that are at risk of
being exploited by terrorists will no longer be able to implement
critical security measures, including ensuring that individuals in the
terrorist screening database do not have access to restricted areas in
these facilities, and the Department of Homeland Security will no
longer be able to assess or share information about terrorist threats
related to these facilities.
Our national security is on the line, and we cannot let this program
expire over a completely unrelated bill about the inside workings of
Congress.
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the modification.
Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. PAUL. I object, Mr. President. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Ohio.
Tribute to Sharon Cohen
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Sharon Cohen, who
retires this week from the Senate Dining Room. Over her almost three
decades here, Ms. Cohen has left a lasting impression on a number of my
colleagues and guests who have visited the dining room, including my
children and grandchildren and the whole Senate dining team.
Ms. Cohen has seen Senators come and go from this building. She has
been here longer than most of my colleagues. She has been here longer
than I have. I always look forward to seeing Ms. Cohen. She is always
welcoming. She is always gracious. She makes an effort to get to know
not just every Senator but every guest who comes through the doors
regardless of whom they walked in with, regardless of their political
affiliation.
In a place where at times relationships can be tested and debate can
be intense, Ms. Cohen always made Senate dining a welcoming place. It
is clear to anyone who has met Ms. Cohen that she cares deeply for the
people in her life--her family, her colleagues, her guests. She seems
to always be thinking about what is best for others.
Among her colleagues, Ms. Cohen is known for being steady and
reliable and, most importantly, for her generous spirit. She is always
helping whomever she can, however she can. She never asks for anything
in return. Her colleagues shared that they don't think they have ever
met anyone who works harder than she, and when she finishes her work,
she helps everyone who needs it. She is a team player. She is a hard
worker.
Maybe most important, she has made a difference for so many people.
Maybe all of us, my colleagues and I, can learn from that.
The workers in these jobs often don't get a lot of recognition. They
are too often ignored. Yet they are every bit as important to the
Senate as the people on the Senate floor.
She brings a dignity to this job--the same kind of dignity as a
carpenter who is proud of her work or a sheet metal worker who is proud
of his work or someone who works in manufacturing, someone who works in
a veterans hospital, someone who provides home care--because all work
has dignity, as she understands.
Ms. Cohen is a treasured member of staff and of this institution. As
her colleagues shared, they are sad to see her leave. While they know
things will not be the same without her, they share Ms. Cohen's
excitement for her next chapter. In retirement, she plans to spend time
with her daughter and help care for her granddaughter.
I know she will be missed by the Senate dining team. I know we will
all miss seeing her. And I appreciate not just her work but the work of
all people who serve in this body in all kinds of capacities.
Ms. Cohen, thank you. I wish you a long, joyous retirement spent with
your granddaughter. Congratulations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
S. 2226
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, as we move forward with the National
Defense Authorization Act, I want to say a little bit about why it is
so important that we get this done.
Over the last several months, the administration and all of us in the
Senate--with particular thanks to Chair Reed and Ranking Member
Wicker--have worked hard to deliver a bill that will keep our country
safe.
There is a lot in this bill, and we all know about some of the big
stuff. This year's NDAA will better position us to deter conflict in
the Indo-Pacific, strengthen our cyber security capabilities, help us
acquire next-gen microelectronics to keep our military competitive,
extend our security assistance to Ukraine, and authorize other programs
that support our national defense.
These are all reasons that I support this legislation, but I want to
highlight a couple of provisions that are just as important and are
focused on taking care of the people who serve our country--civilian
and military--and underscore the need for accountability. People are
the glue that holds everything together, and they are why we have a
strong national defense. Some of these provisions are included in this
bill, but others we are still working on to include in the final
package.
One provision we worked to secure in this bill deals directly with
the State of Hawaii. When the Department of the Navy's Red Hill bulk
fuel storage facility leaked jet fuel into the water system on the
island of Oahu, many were exposed to contaminated water. Although we
are on a path to defuel and permanently close the facility, we still do
not have an accurate accounting of those affected.
This year's Defense authorization includes my bill establishing a
registry to track and collect health data from those who were exposed
to the fuel leak. This is a meaningful step to continue to deliver
resources to community members, servicemembers, and military families
and monitor long-term health concerns. This leak should have never
happened, but now we need to do everything we can to help those who
have been impacted.
A key provision we are still working to include in the final package
will help us to better protect the most vulnerable among us--kids. In
2018, the Department of Defense's internet network was ranked 19th out
of almost 3,000 nationwide networks in the amount of peer-to-peer child
pornography shared--19th out of 3,000. The ranking remains shocking and
unacceptable, but it was not entirely unexpected. A 2006 investigation
by Federal law enforcement officials found that 5,000 individuals--
5,000 individuals, including hundreds affiliated with the Department of
Defense--subscribed to websites that contained child sexual abuse
images and videos.
Out of those 5,000 people, 80 percent of them were not investigated--
80 percent of them were not investigated. That is because the military
lacked the capacity and the resources needed to follow up on leads,
coordinate with local and Federal law enforcement, and prosecute the
criminals.
So Senator Murkowski and I went to work and authored a bill that
would give the DOD the tools that they needed to address this problem.
The END Network Abuse Act received bipartisan support and was included
in the 2020 Defense bill, clearing the way for DOD to act. But it is
almost 4 years later, and the DOD has been maddeningly slow to
implement this law.
This cannot wait any further. My amendment would simply compel the
Department of Defense to implement this law immediately. We cannot
afford to let another day, another month, another 4 years go by without
addressing this matter. The stakes are too high, and we already have a
Federal law.
While these provisions aren't the most attractive to cable news--they
are not leading the headlines or national papers--they directly impact
our greatest national security asset: our people. Talking about our
national defense priorities means nothing if we neglect to support the
people who make it possible. We have to continue to honor our
commitment to care for them, whether it is through quality healthcare,
protecting the most vulnerable, or keeping ourselves accountable to
those who serve. Our job in Congress is to deliver for them, and that
means passing a final bill.
Executive Calendar
Mr. President, on a different but related topic, later today, some of
my colleagues, including Chair Reed and Senator Kelly, will speak on
the critical topic of our military promotions
[[Page S3575]]
and the crisis currently caused by their delay here in the Senate by
the obstruction of a few Republican Senators.
For example, for the first time in over 100 years, we have an Acting
Commandant of the Marine Corps. The service that is reorganizing to
better compete in the Indo-Pacific--the region that we all say we need
to prioritize--has no confirmed head. General Smith, the nominee and
Acting Commandant, is a decorated servicemember, and there is no reason
to delay his confirmation.
More than 250 career military promotions are being held up--250
career military promotions are being held up. This is hitting the
morale of the forces, and it is causing a backlog in the chain of
command. If Senator Tuberville wants to have a debate, let us debate on
the floor. But to penalize the Armed Forces of the United States of
America in this way is an abuse of the power of advice and consent.
Let's just be really clear. We don't vote on flag and general officer
promotions. That is done in what they call a wrapup script, right? At
the end of some evening, the leader or his designee reads a script and
says, ``I ask that nominations numbered,'' and then he lists them or
she lists them. And then all of those one stars become two stars and
three stars become four stars and you have a new Commandant of the
Marine Corps and the pack fleet commander moves from one star to two
stars, whatever it is.
It is perfunctory because we are not in the position of making
individual judgments. We don't have the time or the expertise to make
individual judgments about 250 flag and general officers, the people
who oversee every service branch.
So the idea that we should sit here and burn up postcloture time and
turn the Senate into the personnel committee for the Department of
Defense is antithetical to the idea of advice and consent. And, yes,
every Senator has enormous power. I could probably block the Defense
bill this week if I wanted to. But I won't. You know why? Because I am
not a maniac; because I understand that when you vest someone through
your voters with this kind of power, you have to be very careful how
you exercise it.
In my 11-odd years, I blocked one or two things. And when I block
something, people know I am serious. I have never--and I know no one of
the current 100 Senators besides Senator Tuberville and no one else
before him--I have never seen this in my life.
This is a breaking of the Department of Defense, and this is a
breaking of the basic understanding that, hey, we are going to vest
each other with the kind of authority that is pretty enormous, right?
But in exchange, you have to use that power wisely. In exchange, you
have to use that power wisely.
Senator Tuberville is mad about an abortion issue, and so he is
preventing all of these general and flag officers from getting their
promotions. It is bad for morale; it is bad for the chain of command;
and it is also bad for these individual families.
You have people who have to make basic choices: real estate
decisions. Am I renting a condo or not? Where am I living? I am not
even sure. Where should I enroll my kids in school? I don't know. My
whole life depends on when Senator Tuberville decides that this
craziness is over.
It has to end. It is bad for the country; it is bad for the Senate;
and it is bad for the U.S. Armed Forces.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Federal Reserve
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, earlier this year, the public confidence in
the banking system was shaken by a series of significant bank failures.
To put it simply, these banks failed to account for interest rate
increases while leaning on a deposit base that was almost entirely
uninsured. That is a textbook case of mismanagement.
It is critical that faith be restored in our Nation's banks and their
regulators. But before policymakers clamor to write stricter banking
regulations, an independent review board should be appointed to
thoroughly probe the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the response of
the Federal Reserve Bank.
Many questions still remain unanswered. Silicon Valley Bank was
quickly deemed systemically important because of its size, but the
ensuing failure of a larger bank was not. The sale was dragged out for
weeks out of fear that certain banks would grow too large, only for the
largest bank in the country to turn around and purchase the next bank
failure.
In my opinion, all parties involved had a role in this failure: bank
executives, examiners, and regulators. The bank failed to both
accurately leverage their position and react to rising interest rates.
Examiners failed to require changes in either the bank's policy or
subsequent actions. Regulators failed by arbitrarily guaranteeing all
funds against loss, creating an unlimited market insecurity by forcing
taxpayers and customers to now question the safety of their deposits.
The administration failed by furthering a culture of government
intervention that props up certain too-big-to-fail institutions.
Meaningful oversight requires objectivity and must hold all parties
accountable without having a predetermined regulatory agenda in mind.
To restore public confidence, the next step, in my view, would be to
hire an outside investigative group to conduct a review of the Federal
Reserve Bank's response. Conflicts of interest inherently arise when a
singular member of the Board prepares a self-investigation.
This comprehensive review must be done by a party uninvolved in the
failure of Silicon Valley Bank and/or uninvolved in the Federal
response. This would better ensure that the outcome of this
investigation would be impartial, helping put to bed doubts that the
Fed's review only served as a stamp of approval on the Fed's policies.
The Fed's own internal review found significant negligence by both
management and regulators. The public needs insight into the reasoning
and conversations of regulators, the White House, and bank management
involved in the response.
Silicon Valley Bank and the banks that subsequently failed were
specialized to do business with a unique financial sector. Any reform
regulators push now must be narrowly tailored to those circumstances to
avoid collateral damage to small and midsized banks that consistently
operate responsibly. Stricter capital requirements will push lending
out of the regulated banking sector and into the nonbanks and money
market funds, none of which are subject to the regulations of the Fed
for banks, as the Fed regulates banks.
The banking turmoil was a result of a rapidly changing interest rate
environment, the speed at which money can move, and the limitations of
banks to adjust as quickly as the market can. Understanding the context
and reason behind the response is absolutely necessary for ensuring
future bank failures have a smooth and fair resolution with a minimal
impact upon American taxpayers.
An independent review of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse is
necessary to get a nonpartisan, less biased assessment that gives
Americans confidence in our banking system and policymakers better
ability to ensure our financial system remains the strongest in the
world.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Biden Administration
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as we know, President Biden has been
talking the last 30 to 60 days about Bidenomics. I think it would be
fair to say that because so many Americans are struggling to support
their families, President Biden is struggling to explain what he means
by ``Bidenomics.''
I think most fairminded Americans, based on the, what, year and a
half and a few months that President Biden has been President,
understand what Bidenomics is because they understand, at this
juncture, what President Biden believes in, not only what he believes
in, what he has done.
Bidenomics, to most fairminded Americans, is bigger government.
Bidenomics is higher taxes. Bidenomics is more regulation.
[[Page S3576]]
Bidenomics is more spending. Bidenomics is more debt. Bidenomics is
also inflation.
Let me say that again. First and foremost, Bidenomics is inflation.
President Biden's inflation--history, I believe, will demonstrate
this--is a cancer on the American dream. It is a cancer on the American
dream.
Since President Biden has been President, electricity is up 24
percent. There is your Bidenomics. Gas, gasoline--I will quote you from
Louisiana--is up 65 percent. Eggs are up 39 percent. Potato chips are
up 25 percent. Bread is up 26 percent. Coffee costs 30 percent more,
thanks to President Biden's inflation and Bidenomics. Rice is up 29
percent. Flour is up 25 percent. Milk is up 18 percent; ice cream, 18
percent; chicken, 23 percent. I could keep going.
Let me give you a few statistics to put those numbers in context. The
median household income in my State of Louisiana is $53,571. The median
household income of an American family, nationwide, is $70,784. So in
Louisiana, the median household income--not individual income,
household income--is about $54,000. The median income throughout
America is about $71,000.
In my State, Bidenomics and President Biden's inflation is costing my
people--the average family in Louisiana--an additional $757 a month--
not a year, a month. That is $9,084 a year.
So imagine, in Louisiana, if you are at the median household income
of $54,000 a year--that is you, a spouse, and children--and, all of a
sudden, in the past year-and-a-half, under Bidenomics, you have got to
come out of pocket an extra $9,000 a year. You are making $54,000 a
year to support the family, and now, all of a sudden, you have got to
come out--you have to find--an extra $9,000 just to tread water. Where
are you going to get that money?
Maybe you saved up a little money from the stimulus checks, but that
is probably gone. Maybe you have a savings account that you set aside,
but that is probably gone now too. Maybe you have got a couple of
credit cards, but you have maxed those out. Maybe you have a dream of
sending your children to college and you have a college fund, but you
have already had to dip into that. And there is no end in sight.
Now, that is the experience of the people in my State, from
Bidenomics, and I think that is the experience across America. That is
why I say that inflation--President Biden's inflation--has been a
cancer on the American dream. And I can tell you that in Louisiana my
people are getting really good at barely getting by, and there is no
end in sight.
Now, I am pleased to be able to say that the rate of inflation has
been coming down, and I hope it keeps coming down. Our last inflation
numbers showed that. You will see them reported in the media. Inflation
is now at 3 percent. That is sort of accurate. It is at 3 percent, but
the reason it is at 3 percent is primarily because of the fall in the
price of gasoline. Gasoline is still high, but the price of oil has
come down because our economy and the world economy are so weak. So
there is less demand for it.
But more important than overall inflation is what we call core
inflation. That is what most economists look at. It would be core
inflation because core--C-O-R-E--inflation looks at inflation without
looking at energy or food, because energy and food can both be very
volatile. Core inflation is at 4.8 percent, and it has been very
sticky, still way over the Federal Reserve's targeted 2 percent.
But it has been coming down, and that is good news. But what does
that mean? All it means is that the rate of increase in inflation has
been slowing.
When you have inflation, let's say at 8 percent, and you get it down
to 6 percent, that means that you have reduced the rate of increase of
the prices. The economists call that disinflation. That doesn't mean
that prices are going down. It just means that prices aren't rising as
rapidly.
And if we can get core inflation down to 2 percent, that does not
mean these high prices that I just quoted are going to go down. That
would be deflation.
I regret to tell you, Mr. President--and I think you know what I am
saying is accurate--these high prices are permanent. We are going to be
stuck with a 24-percent increase in electricity. Even if we can get
inflation down to zero percent, these high prices that have been caused
by Bidenomics are permanent.
We are going to be stuck with coffee up 30 percent. I am not going to
reread the list. That is why I say that inflation, the major product of
Bidenomics, has been a cancer on the American dream.
Now, my people in Louisiana need every dollar they can get right now.
The average family making $54,000 a year is now having to find an
additional $9,000 a year, and that is not going to change. Their only
hope is that it doesn't get worse.
So I want to call the attention of my people to tax refunds. A lot of
my people get tax refunds. They get money back. They have money
withheld from their paycheck, and, oftentimes, it is too much. And the
State of Louisiana and the Federal Government owe them money in the
form of a tax refund.
And sometimes my people in Louisiana are busy earning a living. They
get up every day. They go to work. They obey the law. They pay their
taxes. They try to teach their children morals. They try to do the
right thing for their children. They get busy, and, sometimes, people
forget to claim their tax refunds.
So I am here today, No. 1, to try to explain Bidenomics and tell the
people of Louisiana and the people of America that I am sorry they are
having to go through this. But, No. 2, I understand that every dollar
counts. And please, please, please, check and see if you are due a tax
refund.
For example, now, start with the State. The State of Louisiana is
holding almost $12 million--$11,574,249--that is owed in tax refunds to
the people of Louisiana. So 15,461 people are owed tax refunds, and
they haven't claimed it. The average refund is about $750. You need to
claim it, I say to my people. You need to claim it by August 28. If you
don't claim it by August 28, you won't lose it. The money will be
transferred to the Treasury Department and become part of what is
called the Unclaimed Property Program, and then you just have to fill
out more paperwork to get your money.
So if you think you have a tax refund due from the State of
Louisiana, go get it by August 28. It is worth checking. All you have
got to do is go to the department of revenue website:
revenue.louisiana.gov--revenue.louisiana.gov.
Now, also, my department of revenue--thank you for doing this--just
sent out letters to every one of these 15,461 people to whom the State
owes a tax refund. Our department of revenue sent them a letter. Please
open that letter and don't throw it away. This includes individuals and
women and businessmen. All you have to do is open that letter. There is
a voucher in there. You fill it out and send it back into the
department of revenue, and you will get your money. So please do that.
You earned it.
Now, at the Federal level, it is a little more complicated, to no
one's surprise--at the Federal level. I tried to get the information
from the IRS about how much is owed to my people in terms of Federal
income tax refunds. You won't faint with surprise when I say it is hard
to get them on the phone. And when we did get them on the phone, they
said: We can't give you that information. If we told you, we would have
to kill you.
So I went back and did some research. The most recent numbers I have
are from 2019. In 2019, tax refunds in the amount of $22 million were
owed to the people in Louisiana. These are Federal income tax refunds.
This is 2019 now. I don't know what the current number is because the
IRS won't tell me. But based on 2019 numbers, it is anywhere from $22
to $25 million, and based on 2019 numbers, about 22,000 Louisianians
are owed Federal income tax refunds on top of the State income tax
refunds.
And I want to encourage them to check to see if they have a Federal
income tax refund. Here is what you need to do. You can call them if
you like, but lots of luck. Go to www.irs.gov/refunds_www.irs.gov/
refunds_and you can check to see if the IRS owes you a tax refund.
You are going to need your Social Security number, of course, or your
taxpayer ID number. You are going to need your filing status. They want
you
[[Page S3577]]
to tell them the exact amount of your refund. They have all that
information, but they want you to tell it to them. Just don't argue
with them. Just go ahead and do it, based off your tax return.
And you can make a claim there, online, and give them a reasonable
amount of time, and you can get a check from the Federal Government as
well.
I used to be the tax collector in Louisiana, and I can tell you that,
for a variety of reasons, a lot of people--not just Louisianians but
all across America--forget to claim their State income tax refund and/
or their Federal income tax refund. So I hope they will take advantage
of this.
I am sorry. I just want to say to them that I am sorry that the
Federal Government has let them down. I am embarrassed about
Bidenomics. I am sorry about this inflation. It is a cancer on the
American dream. I am afraid it is going to be with us awhile. I hope I
am wrong. But if we succeed in getting that rate of inflation down to 2
percent, that doesn't mean prices are going to go down. I wish I could
sit here and tell you that. These higher prices are coming. What we are
trying to do is just stop the increase and stop the crisis from going
up so fast. So I hope you will take advantage of this information, not
just in Louisiana but all across America, and go claim your tax refunds
if you are owed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cortez Masto). The Senator from Vermont.
S. 2226
Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, the Senate is now debating an $886
billion Defense authorization bill, and unless there are major changes
to that bill, I intend to vote against it. Let me take a few minutes to
explain why.
I think everybody in our country knows that we face enormous crises.
As a result of climate change, our planet is experiencing
unprecedented and rising temperatures. Along with the rest of the
world, we need to make major investments to transform our energy system
away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable
energy. If we do not do that--not only America but China and countries
all over the world--the planet we are leaving our kids and future
generations will become increasingly unhealthy and precarious. In fact,
there are some who wonder whether the planet will continue to exist in
years to come unless we move aggressively on this existential threat.
But it is not only climate change. Our healthcare system is broken,
and it is dysfunctional--not a secret. Most Americans know that. While
the insurance companies and the drug companies make hundreds of
billions of dollars in profits, 85 million Americans are uninsured or
underinsured. Unbelievably, our life expectancy, which is already lower
than most major countries, is declining. Today, we have a massive
shortage of doctors, nurses, mental health practitioners, and
dentists--something that the committee I chair, the HELP Committee, is
trying to address. But it is a reality today that our healthcare system
is broken and dysfunctional.
Our educational system is teetering.
While we have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost
any major country, millions of parents in Vermont, Nevada, and all over
this country are unable to find affordable and quality childcare. It is
a major, major crisis which is only going to become worse as a result
of the cliff that the childcare folks are going to be experiencing in a
few months.
But it is not just childcare. When we talk about education, we should
appreciate that the number of our young people who graduate from
college today is falling further and further behind other countries. In
other words, we need to have the best educated country on Earth in
order to compete internationally. Yet other countries are seeing a
greater percentage of their young people graduating college. One of the
reasons is the high cost of college. Many young people do not want to
go $50,000 or $100,000 in debt to get a college or graduate school
degree. Today, we have 45 million Americans who are struggling under
the weight of student debt--something that President Biden, I, and
others have been trying to deal with.
But it is not only climate. It is not only healthcare. It is not only
education. Today, all over this country, we are seeing a massive crisis
in terms of low-income and affordable housing. While gentrification is
causing rents to soar in many parts of our country, some 600,000
Americans are homeless. A few blocks away from right here in the
Nation's Capital, there are people sleeping out in the streets. And we
have some 18 million people who are spending more than half of their
limited incomes on housing.
So that is what the country faces. We have a planetary crisis in
terms of climate change. Our healthcare system is broken and
dysfunctional. Our educational system is teetering. Our housing stock
is totally inadequate. These are just some of the crises facing our
country.
What is very clear, I think, to the American people and many people
here in the Senate and those in the House is that we are not addressing
those crises. We don't have any pretense--we are not addressing those
crises. When is the last time the Presiding Officer has heard a serious
debate here about how we address climate change, how we build up
affordable housing, how we reform the healthcare system? It is not
taking place. We are not addressing this. So that is one political
reality that exists here in the Nation's Capital.
But there is another reality, and that is the reality of the Pentagon
and military spending, and that is a whole other story. Every year,
with seemingly little regard for the strategic picture facing our
country, this body, the House and the Senate, votes to increase the
military budget. It just happens. We don't worry about people sleeping
on the street. We don't worry about people who don't have any
healthcare. We don't worry about people who can't afford prescription
drugs. Every year, the military budget--hey, more money.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over. Tens of thousands of
American troops have returned home. Yet the Pentagon's budget continues
to go up. Every year, despite sometimes very contentious
partisan fights on all manner of things--you name it, big fights going
on--Congress somehow comes together very quietly, with little debate,
to vote for the one thing they agree on, and that is more and more
money for the Pentagon.
Right now, despite all of the enormous needs facing working families
in this country, over half of the Federal discretionary budget goes to
the military. Got it? Over half of the Federal discretionary budget
goes to the military.
I support a strong military. People don't have to convince me why we
need a strong military. But I will oppose this legislation, this
Defense authorization bill, for four major reasons.
First, more military spending right now is unnecessary. The United
States remains the world's dominant military power and is in no danger
of losing that position. Alone, we account for roughly 40 percent of
global military spending. This comes despite the end of the war in
Afghanistan and despite the fact that the United States now spends more
on the military than the next 10 countries combined, most of which are
our allies. We spend more than the next 10 countries combined, most of
which are our allies. Last year, we spent more than 3 times what China
is spending on the military, and more than 10 times what Russia spent.
While this year's National Defense Authorization Act would merely
match the Pentagon's recordbreaking request, in most recent years,
Congress has seen fit to give the Department of Defense more money than
it even asks for. Imagine that. The 85 million people who are
uninsured--we don't help them. People can't afford the high cost of
prescription drugs--hardly doing anything on that. People sleeping out
on the streets--can't do that. Kids can't afford to go to college--
can't do that. But we have, year after year, given the Pentagon more
money than they have even requested, requiring them to submit ``wish
lists'' of items to Congress; in other words, tell us what more you
need.
The Pentagon is routinely given so much taxpayer money that it
literally doesn't know what to do with all the money Congress has
thrown at them. According to the Government Accountability Office, the
GAO, over an 11-year
[[Page S3578]]
period, the Pentagon returned an astonishing $128 billion in excess
funds to the Treasury. In other words, we gave them so much money that
they couldn't even spend it, and they had to return some of it.
So that is reason No. 1 why I oppose this legislation.
No. 2, the Pentagon cannot keep track of the dollars it already has,
leading to massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the sprawling military-
industrial complex. The Pentagon accounts for about two-thirds of all
Federal contracting activity, obligating more money every year than all
civilian Federal Agencies combined. Yet the Department of Defense
remains the only major Federal Agency that cannot pass an independent
audit more than 30 years after Congress required them to do so.
So we are throwing hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into
the Pentagon. Thirty years ago, Congress said: We want an audit; we
want to know what is going on--a reasonable request. It has only been
30 years, and we still have not gotten an independent audit.
Last year, the Department of Defense was unable to account for over
half of its assets, which are in excess of $3 trillion, or roughly 78
percent of what the entire Federal Government owns. The Government
Accountability Office, the GAO, reports that the Department of Defense
still cannot accurately track its finances or capture and post
transactions to the current accounts.
Each year, auditors find billions of dollars in the Pentagon's
proverbial couch cushions--just money lying around, you know, that pops
up here and there. In fiscal 2022, Navy auditors found $4.4 billion in
untracked inventory--couldn't find it, but there was $4.4 billion--
while Air Force auditors identified $5.2 billion worth of variances in
its general ledger.
These problems are why Senator Grassley and I have again introduced
our Audit the Pentagon Act, with a number of cosponsors, which would
force the Pentagon to get serious about their shortcomings by reducing
by 1 percent the budget of any DOD component that cannot pass an audit.
I don't think that is an unreasonable request.
A meaningful effort to address this waste should be undertaken before
Congress throws more money at the Pentagon. Yet this absolutely
necessary oversight is again missing from this bill. So it doesn't
matter. Next year, we will learn that tens and tens of billions of
dollars can't be accounted for. So what is the problem?
In June, the GAO found that in the preceding year, 1 single year,
DOD's largest acquisition programs had seen cost estimates rise by $37
billion. It goes on and on and on. They come up with an estimate for a
weapons system, and then they say: Oh, sorry, it turns out it is going
to cost a lot more than we told you. This comes after decades in which
we spent more than $2 trillion on ill-considered wars, in my view, in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Somehow, despite this incredible record of waste and fraud, the
military-industrial complex escapes meaningful scrutiny.
The third point I want to make in opposition is that much of this
additional military spending will go to line the pockets of hugely
profitable defense contractors. It is corporate welfare by a different
name. Almost half of the Pentagon budget goes to private contractors,
some of whom are exploiting their monopoly positions and the trust
granted them by the United States to line their pockets. Repeated
investigations by the DOD inspector general, the GAO, and CBS News have
uncovered numerous instances of contractors massively overcharging the
Department of Defense, helping boost these companies' profit margins to
nearly 40 percent and sometimes as high as over 4,000 percent, while
costing U.S. taxpayers hundreds and hundreds of millions of
dollars. TransDigm, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon are among the
offenders, dramatically overcharging taxpayers, while reaping enormous
profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive
executive compensation packages.
Just one example, Lockheed Martin received $46 billion in
unclassified Federal contracts last year, returned $11 billion to
shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks, and paid its CEO $25
million. These companies are fully reliant on the U.S. taxpayer, yet
their CEOs make over 100 times more than the Secretary of Defense and
500 percent more than the average newly enlisted servicemember.
TransDigm, the company behind the over 4,000-percent markup on spare
parts, touted $3.1 billion in profits on $5.4 billion of net sales,
almost boasting to investors about just how fully it was fleecing the
taxpayers.
Indeed, over the past two decades, major defense contractors have
paid billions of dollars in fines or related settlements for fraud or
misconduct. Almost every major defense contractor has had to pay fines
for fraud or misconduct. Just the other day--people may have seen it in
the papers--the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton was fined $377
million for overcharging the Defense Department. Yet these contracts
never dry up.
That is why I introduced an amendment to this year's NDAA to require
the Secretary of Defense to produce an updated report on defense
contractor fraud. That amendment was not included in what we will be
voting on.
Here is maybe the major point that I want to make: If the pandemic,
the COVID pandemic, has taught us anything--and let us not forget for
one minute that that pandemic cost us over 1 million lives--it is that
national security relies on much more than just a strong military.
It is funny, as chairman of the HELP Committee, a couple of months
ago, we had those people who are responsible for protecting this
country against future pandemics before us. And the question that
everybody asked them, Democrat and Republican, is: Hey, are we prepared
for the next pandemic that is likely to come? Without exception, the
leaders of the government Agencies whose job is to protect us for the
next pandemic said: No, we are not prepared.
By the way, there are some right now who want to take money away from
the Centers for Disease Control in this particular bill.
The point is that when you lose over 1 million people to a pandemic
and when the scientists tell us there is a good chance that another one
may come, that is a national security issue.
True security--if we are really looking at what true security is
about--it means everything that we can do to improve the lives of
ordinary Americans.
True security is that we address the crisis of a declining life
expectancy. The gap between the lifespan of the wealthy and the working
class is over 10 years. If you are working class in this country, you
are going to die 10 years shorter than the wealthy. Is that not an
issue of national security? Do we not want to make sure that all of our
people, whether they are rich or poor or middle class, have the right
to live full and productive and healthy lives? I think so. That is
called national security.
National security has to do with the issue of education for our kids.
How are we secure if our young people, from childcare to graduate
school, are not getting the quality of education?
There are millions of children who today, in America, as we speak,
are food insecure. There are days that go by when they are hungry. How
do we talk about national security and not talk about the crisis of
childhood hunger, not to mention childhood poverty in general?
How do we talk about national security when people are sleeping out
on the street?
How do we, in any sense of the word, talk about national security
without understanding the weather in Texas, in the southwest, is now
hitting recordbreaking levels? People are dying from the heat. Oceans
are getting hotter. We are looking at drought. We are looking at
extreme weather disturbances. My own State, just several weeks ago,
experienced the worst natural disaster, torrential rainfalls that we
haven't seen since 1927. That is national security. Whether people get
forced out of their homes because of flooding, die from heat stroke--
that is called national security.
This body--the Senate--could decide to have one or two fewer
ballistic missile submarines, saving almost $15 billion over the next
decade. And we could put that money--and it would go a long way--toward
housing the homeless or feeding the 5 million children in this
[[Page S3579]]
country who are food insecure. Instead, day after day, here in
Washington, many of my colleagues tell the American people that we just
don't have the money. We can't do what every other major country on
Earth does--guarantee healthcare to all people; we can't provide
affordable housing; we can't provide affordable childcare; we can't
provide nutrition to kids in America who are hungry. We just can't
afford to do any of those things. But come to the military budget and
all the lobbyists around here from the defense contractors, my God, we
can't stop throwing money at them.
So what I would say is that the time is long overdue for our country
to get our national priorities right, and one small step forward would
be to say no to this very bloated and wasteful military budget and
start reordering our priorities so that we pay attention to the needs
of the middle class and working class and low-income people rather than
just defense contractors.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Rhode Island.
Climate Change
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is the 289th time that I have
come to the Senate floor with my increasingly battered ``Time to Wake
Up'' chart, to stir this Chamber to act on climate change.
Since 2016, I have been talking about the zettajoule. The zettajoule
is the measure of how much fossil fuel emissions are heating up our
oceans. In this season of extreme, record-smashing heat touching all 50
States, it is wild that elected representatives in Washington still
choose to insulate themselves from reality, a reality measured in
zettajoules.
A zettajoule is a number almost beyond comprehension in its size. One
joule--J-O-U-L-E--is our standard unit of energy, and it applies to
heat energy. A zettajoule is 1 joule with 21 zeros behind it. It is a
truly massive number.
In a 2019 ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, I reported that more than nine
zettajoules of heat energy was being added to the ocean annually. Since
then, I have come to the floor with an updated number. Our oceans are
absorbing around 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year.
Let's put that in context. The total energy consumption of all
humankind amounts to about one-half of a zettajoule of energy per year.
That means that for the fossil fuel component of that one-half of a
zettajoule of energy, we pay the price of 14 added zettajoules of heat
into the ocean every year.
Said another way, we load into our Earth's oceans every year nearly
30 times the entire energy use of the entire species on the entire
planet. That is a big magnification.
If this is the zettajoules of excess heat absorbed into the oceans
every year, that dot is the average annual energy consumption of the
human species on the planet. For the price of the fossil fuel component
of that, mankind's entire energy consumption in zettajoules, we suffer
that load of heat energy going into the oceans.
That is a bit hard to comprehend, so consider one other unit of
measure: the energy released by the detonation of the nuclear bomb
America dropped on Hiroshima. In Hiroshima bomb terms, last year the
ocean absorbed the equivalent of seven Hiroshima bombs detonating every
second in the ocean. Every second of every day for the entire year,
seven nuclear detonations' worth of heat into our oceans--per second.
This unfathomable amount of heat has been somewhat offset by La Nina,
the cool phase of a recurring climate pattern called the El Nino
Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. That is the acronym for the El Nino
Southern Oscillation. The ENSO cycle consists of variations in sea
surface temperature, rainfall, surface air pressure, and atmosphere
circulation located over the Pacific Ocean near the Equator. And in
that oscillation, La Nina is the name for the cooling period.
Well, in June, we left La Nina and moved into an El Nino period. El
Nino is the warmer side of the ENSO cycle. We saw it raise temperatures
in previous cycles in 1998 and 2016. All those zettajoules of excess
heat being dumped into the Earth's oceans, and now we are headed into
the warming part of the cycle. Watch for more heat records to fall.
One major consequence for us of hotter oceans is stronger hurricane
activity. Hurricanes are powered up more by hotter water as they move
over the Atlantic. This June, sea surface temperatures in the North
Atlantic Ocean are the hottest in 170 years--the hottest in 170 years--
9 whole degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
This is what is considered by science an ``extreme'' oceanic heat
wave. And certain parts of the ocean are reaching the rare designation
called ``beyond extreme.'' That is actually happening. On a scale from
1 to 5, the North Atlantic's heat is either category 4 or category 5,
depending on where you are.
Bring it home to Florida. Water temperatures in Florida have hit
records reaching as high as 101 degrees. That is not the air
temperature, that is the ocean temperature. That is actually the
recommended temperature for a hot tub. Indeed, that is the midpoint of
the Jacuzzi Company's recommended range for its hot tub temperatures
for healthy adults.
Now, doctors recommend that children under the age of 5 avoid hot
tubs over 95 degrees, and pregnant women are advised to stay out of
water once it gets much above 100 degrees. So the ocean off Florida is
almost too hot for many humans.
``Almost too hot for humans'' means definitely too hot for many ocean
creatures, particularly ocean corals. Coral reefs matter because they
support a quarter of all known marine species.
Florida has the largest coral reef ecosystem in the continental
United States, the third largest living barrier coral reef in the
world. If you don't care about creatures and only care about money,
well, Florida's protected waters contribute billions of tourism dollars
to the Florida economy.
All of that is in jeopardy in this heat. According to NOAA, when
temperatures reach 1 degree Celsius or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit
warmer than normal, corals cross what is called their bleaching
threshold. That is where they turn white as they evulse the living
creatures that keep them alive, and that is a step on the way to death.
That is bad news, considering the temperatures around Florida have
been running 5 degrees above normal. And the longer this goes on, the
more trouble corals will have recovering.
We hear sometimes about 100-year or even 500-year storms. These are
storms that are so extreme they are expected to occur only once every
100 or 500 years. Well, scientists have put this Florida heat wave off
the charts. Ben Kirtman is the director of the Cooperative Institute
for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami. He said:
If you just wrote a statistical model and said what are the
chances of this level of warming, it would be 1 in 250,000
years.
Not 1 in 100 years, not 1 in 500 years, 1 in 250,000 years. If that
is not a warning that it is time to wake up, I do not know what is.
Ultrarare weather events are not so rare anymore in this climate-
changed world. This is not just happening in the United States, it is
worldwide. This summer, most of the oceans on planet Earth have at
least a 70-percent chance of experiencing what are called marine heat
wave conditions.
The effects of marine heat waves read like Biblical plagues:
decreased oxygen, dead zones, fish die-offs. And then come the weather
effects: droughts in some places and increasingly deadly and dangerous
storms in others because our oceans drive our weather on this planet.
Over the course of a weekend last month, thousands of dead fish
washed up along the Texas gulf coast.
They died of lack of oxygen. Warm water holds much less oxygen than
cold water. The ocean, through heat, becomes anoxic, and this slaughter
results.
Again, if you don't care about creatures and only care about money,
in the United States last year alone, there were 18 separate billion-
dollar weather and climate disasters, exceeding $175 billion in total
cost and, by the way, costing nearly 500 Americans their lives.
Aside from those sudden disasters, comes the slow and insidious
changes ocean warming brings, like the accelerating creep of sea level
rise across
[[Page S3580]]
your coast and mine. As ocean temperatures increase, two things happen:
1, ice in the Arctic and Antarctic melts, adding water to the ocean;
and, 2, seawater expands--remember those zettajoules. Combined, the
effects of melting ice sheets and expanding seawater volume increases
sea levels along our coasts. That slow creep of sea level rise is not
as slow as it used to be. The ocean rose more than twice as fast this
decade as it did the previous decade. Last year, it set a new record
high.
The news gets worse. There is a centuries-long time lag in the
natural systems causing sea level rise, meaning we are only seeing the
leading edge of what we have caused. Even if we stopped emitting
greenhouse gases today, ocean levels would continue to rise for
decades.
NOAA has predicted that the acceleration will continue; that sea
level rise along the U.S. coastline will rise 10 to 12 inches just over
the next 30 years, as much as the entire rise measured over the last
century.
One way to help deal with this is through the National Coastal
Resilience Fund, a grant program that restores, increases, and
strengthens natural infrastructure to protect coastal communities and
to protect habitats for fish and wildlife. The fund invests in
conservation projects that restore or expand our natural protections:
coastal marshes and wetlands, dunes and beach systems, oyster and coral
reefs, coastal forests, rivers and flood plains, and barrier islands
that minimize the impacts of storms and sea level rise, as well as
other dangerous events like lost fisheries from ocean warming.
This program is so direly needed that it is vastly oversubscribed. In
2022, over $600 million of projects went unfunded because there simply
wasn't enough money in the program. Nearly half a billion dollars in
unfunded protections for vulnerable coastal communities requesting
Federal assistance.
I will give you one example of where this program is important. In
2019, the fund awarded $1 million to the Alaskan Native village of
Shaktoolik to restore coastal dune habitat and to construct a natural
storm surge berm. Well, last year, along came Typhoon Merbok and
devastated parts of the Alaskan coastline. Shaktoolik was at the
epicenter of the typhoon. The berm successfully protected the community
from devastating coastal flooding. As one resident noted, ``The berm
saved our lives.'' That is the value of resiliency, planning, and
investment.
But more than just brace ourselves for the baked-in effects of fossil
fuel emissions poisoning our planet, we need to head off climate change
at the oil spigot. That means taking on the fossil fuel industry's
increasingly desperate lies and its well-funded political juggernaut
that does such evil in this building. We know how to solve this
problem; we just don't do it, because fossil fuel fingers creep through
so many corners of the Capitol.
In the time it took me to deliver this speech, around 6,000 Hiroshima
bombs of excess heat energy were put into our oceans. Every day, it is
getting worse. We completely underestimate how bad things are going to
get--completely. Even people who care about climate change and believe
that it is real and aren't in tow to the fossil fuel industry and its
dark money, they still completely underestimate how bad this is going
to get. And the tragedy is, it has always been preventable simply by
moving to a productive, economically valuable, clean energy future and
stopping our indulgence of fossil fuel pollution and obstruction. If
what is going on with climate change heat going into our oceans is not
enough to wake us up, I do not know what will. It is certainly--
certainly--time to wake up.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to go through some of the
materials that would ordinarily be in the evening wrap-up, but nobody
watching should think we are in evening wrap-up. We are still expecting
a great number of votes this evening when everything gets worked out.
____________________