[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13293-13299]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     VETERANS JOBS CORPS ACT OF 2012--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 
as in morning business for up to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Wall Street Reform

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I rise to discuss the troubling 
state of our financial system and the unfinished business of Wall 
Street reform. I am here to talk specifically about too-big-to-fail 
banks.
  Decades of deregulation and laissez faire economic policies helped 
the six largest U.S. banks grow from 18 percent of gross domestic 
product only 25 years ago to 68 percent of gross domestic product in 
2009. So it went from 18 percent in the mid-1990s to 68 percent of GDP 
in 2009.
  We know what happened next. During the financial crisis, these six 
megabanks collected $1.2 trillion--just to understand that figure, if 
we can--$1.2 trillion is $1,200 billion and $1 billion is $1,000 
million. The six megabanks collected $1.2 trillion in Federal taxpayer-
funded support from the Treasury, from the FDIC, and from the Federal 
Reserve.
  Two years after we passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act--and 
I supported it because it took many important steps--I am concerned we 
are not seeing reform, nearly sufficient enough reform, in the 
financial sector. As we uncover more and more risky, fraudulent, and 
illegal activities, it seems far too clear that the American people 
absolutely see this and believe Wall Street is back to business as 
usual.
  Since 2010, we have learned about a number of things. I am just going 
to rattle off seven or eight significant, serious problems. Some are 
illegal, some are accusations, some are alleging significant systemic 
problems--all troubling issues that have happened just in the last 
couple years: Investor lawsuits and SEC enforcement actions over 
mortgage-backed securities; municipalities being sold overpriced credit 
derivatives, bankrupting some of those municipalities, and think of the 
hardship that causes these communities; the forging of foreclosure 
documents and mortgage securities legal documents by five of the 
Nation's largest servicers, leading to $25 billion in penalties--$25 
billion in penalties--from these servicers forging foreclosure 
documents and mortgage security legal documents--$25 billion in 
penalties; the Nation's largest bank halting all consumer debt 
collection lawsuits due to concerns about poorly maintained and 
inaccurate paperwork; the Nation's largest bank losing $5.8 billion so 
far--so far--on large, complex derivative trades that regulators either 
missed or didn't understand or ignored; suspicions that 16 global 
banks, including the three largest U.S. banks, manipulated LIBOR--the 
London Interbank Overnight Rate--that is used as a benchmark for 
mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and even for derivatives--
financial instruments that affect almost everybody in our country.
  Continuing with the list of problems since 2010: a criminal bid-
rigging trial exposing illegal practices by many Wall Street banks in 
arranging bids so banks could underpay for municipal bonds; former 
employees of the Nation's largest bank alleging the company urged them 
to steer clients to their own mutual funds because they were more 
profitable to the bank, even though they paid investors lower returns 
than other funds, while their clients presumably were trusting them to 
act in their best interests; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
investigating whether the biggest U.S. bank manipulated prices in the 
energy markets, forcing consumers to pay more; a $175 million 
settlement by the Nation's fourth largest bank for discriminatory 
lending practices in housing markets that include Cleveland and many 
other cities. One can walk through these neighborhoods and see what 
foreclosures have done to them, see what rigging, what other 
dysfunctional servicers' behavior or illegal activities have done to 
these communities and to these families.
  Putting the numbers aside and the political speech aside, imagine for 
a moment that a parent of 12- and 13-year-old daughters has to sit down 
with them and say: Sorry, but dad lost his job a few months ago and now 
we are losing our home.
  Where are we going to move, Mom?
  I don't know.
  What school am I going to go to?
  I don't know yet. We have to figure that out.
  Imagine the personal hurt and hardship caused by a lot of these 
things to a whole lot of families in Cleveland and Mansfield and 
Cincinnati and Dayton.
  More problems since 2010: Regulators are investigating whether the 
rate that establishes municipal bond prices is susceptible to 
manipulation.
  These are just 11 examples, all of them huge separately and in the 
aggregate devastating, potentially--certainly devastating to many 
individuals and potentially devastating in a huge way to our economy as 
a whole. The list goes on and on and on.
  Some experts say we can't--when we talk about potentially forcing 
these banks to divest themselves because of their size, some experts 
say our banks need to compete. They say: No, our banks need to compete 
with the banks in other countries. But then does anyone truly believe--
do any of these bankers on Wall Street or bankers in my State who have 
acted, frankly, more responsibly--the community banks and the credit 
unions and the regional banks--does anybody truly believe we should 
follow the European model where never-ending bank bailouts have become 
the norm?
  We know the world's largest bank, HSBC, at $2.55 trillion, helped 
launder money from Mexican drug traffickers and Middle Eastern 
terrorists. As we know by now--all over the newspapers--the eighth 
largest bank in the world, the $2.4 trillion Barclays--the city where 
the Olympics are being held--was the first bank caught manipulating the 
LIBOR rate, not exactly models we should emulate.
  Financial reform is supposed to reduce industry concentration. It is 
supposed to end too big to fail. But the financial sector is even more 
concentrated now than it was before the financial crisis.
  My colleagues will remember what I said at the outset. In 1995, 18 
percent of GDP was the assets of these banks. The six largest banks had 
18 percent of GDP in 1995. By 2009, it was 68 percent, and it is even 
worse today--the top 10 banks' assets, 6 percent in 2006, now 77 
percent at the end of 2010 and growing, presumably, as a result of 
mergers during the financial crisis. Three of the four largest 
megabanks have grown by an average of more than $500 billion--grown by 
an average of more than $500 billion. They are in the vicinity of $800 
billion and $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in assets.
  The six biggest U.S. banks have combined assets that are twice as 
large as the rest of the top 50 U.S. banks put together. Think about 
that. The six largest U.S. banks, their assets total this; and the next 
largest 50 U.S. banks--big banks, to be sure; hundreds of billions in 
assets--total even less than the six largest.
  According to Robert Wilmers, the CEO of M&T Bank, the six biggest 
banks in the United States account for 35 percent of all U.S. deposits, 
53 percent of U.S. banking assets, 56 percent of all mortgages, and 93 
percent--93 percent--of trading revenues.

[[Page 13294]]

  This is just six banks that wield such immense power in our economy. 
The message to the markets is clear: These trillion-dollar megabanks 
are too big to manage, they are too big to regulate, and they continue 
to be too big to fail. We still have work to do.
  For all of its benefits--including a new consumer protection agency 
and oversight of derivatives--the Dodd-Frank legislation relies upon 
regulators to get it right this time.
  But given their track record--sometimes being too close to the people 
they regulate, so-called regulatory capture; sometimes there just are 
not enough of them; other times they may not have the expertise to be 
able to chase around some of the smartest, best educated, most 
experienced banking executives who know how to game the system. Also, 
as I said, as to these regulators, we simply do not have enough of 
them.
  That is why I am skeptical. That is why we need to go beyond the 
central provisions of Dodd-Frank that increase capital, that establish 
living wills, that establish a process for orderly liquidations. Those 
are all good things. But, clearly--I just mentioned these 10 or 11 or 
12 problems; those are just the biggest ones--clearly, those are not 
enough.
  Members of Congress in both political parties agree that banks need 
to have much more capital to cover their losses--much more of a 
financial capital cushion. We agree institutions should issue more 
stock, should restrict dividends, should retain their earnings to build 
bigger buffers. But while countries such as Switzerland are considering 
19 percent capital requirements--a ratio of about 5 to 1--U.S. 
regulators are staying within the Basel III international capital 
standards, which FDIC Director Tom Hoenig has said simply will not 
prevent another financial crisis.
  There is also a living will process that is intended to make it 
easier to resolve large, complex institutions. We talked a lot about 
that in Dodd-Frank.
  Institutions are supposed to tell regulators how they can be 
dismantled to protect the financial system as a whole and to protect 
Middle America when they get into financial trouble. But the proof will 
be in the results.
  So far regulators have yet to begin a process of simplifying the six 
largest banks that have a combined 14,420 subsidiaries. Six banks have 
14,420 subsidiaries.
  I mention that number because, Madam President, as you think about 
every look at these six banks, every quantifying number I try to give, 
every observation of these six banks, every delineation of what these 
six banks do and what they are, this speaks of these huge, these 
behemoth banks that are too big to fail--these six banks. They are too 
big to regulate, and they are too big to manage.
  There is title II Orderly Liquidation Authority. I have heard my 
colleagues, including the ranking member on my subcommittee, Senator 
Corker from Tennessee, who coauthored title II, note that the FDIC and 
Treasury could keep failing banks on life support rather than liquidate 
them. Is that what we want when we think of too big to fail, too big to 
manage, too big to regulate?
  I have talked to regulators who have privately told me and told 
Graham Steele of my staff that they believe our banks are still too big 
to be allowed to fail because the collapse of banks that size could 
potentially crush the economy.
  We remember the fear in the voices of some of the top people in the 
Bush administration when they talked to us in the fall of 2008 about 
what was happening to our financial system. I do not think we have 
answered those fears nearly well enough.
  This is not capitalism the way it should be. It is not right. Some of 
my colleagues think the answer to too big to fail requires repeal of 
Dodd-Frank--this is about as silly as it gets--and a return to the same 
unfettered free market approach that Alan Greenspan championed for 
decades and that led us into this mess--except Alan Greenspan does not 
even think we should have that again, even though he was the No. 1 
cheerleader, he and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, for an 
unfettered, unregulated Wall Street. He is, to his credit--and I do not 
give him credit for much in most of the last 10 years--but, to his 
credit, he has acknowledged that, yes, indeed, he was wrong; that this 
unfettered, unregulated Wall Street capitalism simply did not work for 
our country. He acknowledges doing that again would be a recipe for 
financial crises and bailouts as far as the eye could see.
  Instead, we must face the reality that too big to fail is simply too 
big, and we must enact the SAFE Banking Act because too big to fail and 
too big to manage and too big to regulate has become the norm, 
especially among these large six behemoth institutions.
  The SAFE Banking Act, my legislation, would place reasonable limits 
on the share of deposits and the volatile nondeposit liabilities that 
any one institution could take on. It would require the largest 
financial companies to fund themselves with more of their own 
shareholders' equity and less leverage. It would put an end to the 
government's implicit and explicit support for megabanks--specifically, 
the six largest Wall Street institutions that, as I spelled out 
earlier, are in a class by themselves.
  Remember those numbers. The six largest banks: 35 percent of all 
deposits, 53 percent of all U.S. banking assets, 56 percent of all 
mortgages, 93 percent of trading revenues. Those six institutions have 
that kind of power in the economic marketplace in large part because of 
actions here.
  Regulators and banking leaders are increasingly voicing support for 
this bill.
  Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker recently said the 
J.P.Morgan episode might be an illustration that these banks are too 
big to manage.
  Former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair says shareholders and regulators 
could force banks to break up, but this legislation would be the most 
direct way to do it.
  Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 
and James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 
agree that more needs to be done to address the problem of too-big-to-
fail banks.
  Last week, the architect of the too-big-to-fail banking model, former 
Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill, said the biggest banks should be broken up.
  Increasingly, this is not a partisan issue. The ranking member of the 
Banking Committee, Republican Senator Shelby from Alabama, supported 
the SAFE Banking Act when it was a floor amendment, when it was the 
Brown-Kaufman floor amendment.
  I have heard from more and more of my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle that they might have voted against it a couple years ago as a 
floor amendment, but things have gotten worse. The idea is sounding 
better and better to them.
  This legislation would protect taxpayers by putting megabank 
shareholders on the hook for losses and ending bailouts for good.
  At a time of increasing fiscal restraint, our Nation can ill-afford 
to waste precious taxpayer dollars bailing out our largest banks in 
their recklessness.
  My legislation would benefit the community banks that are at an 
unfair competitive disadvantage because megabanks have access to 
cheaper funding based upon the perception that the government stands 
behind them.
  Studies estimate this support gives megabanks a 70 to 80 basis point 
funding advantage. Madam President, 70 to 80 basis points means three-
fourths, four-fifths of a percent on interest advantage, if you will--a 
subsidy encouraged, provided, for that matter, by the expectation of 
taxpayer support of up to $60 billion per year.
  So if you are one of the six big banks, you can borrow money in 
capital markets at a lower cost than if you are a community bank in 
Carey, OH, or a community bank in Sandusky or a mid-sized bank in 
Columbus or Akron, OH, because the market knows we will not let those 
six biggest banks fail. So their lending is a little less expensive 
because there is a lot less risk.
  My legislation will benefit investors, as many experts agree that the 
sum of

[[Page 13295]]

the parts of the largest megabanks is more valuable than the banks as a 
whole. So under our legislation, when they begin--these six megabanks, 
with assets from $800 billion to $2.2 trillion--when they begin to 
divest themselves, there is a reasonably good chance they will be worth 
more in the aggregate than they were in the whole.
  It will benefit Main Street families and businesses because increased 
competition will result in better prices, and fraudsters will be 
punished with the full force of the law. Just about the only people who 
will not benefit from my plan are a few Wall Street executives who, 
frankly, have done just fine in the last 10 years.
  We simply cannot wait any longer for regulators to act. Wall Street 
has been allowed to run wild for years. Their watchdogs are either not 
up to the job or, in some cases, complicit in their activities.
  How many more scandals will it take before we acknowledge that we 
cannot rely on regulators to prevent subprime lending, dangerous 
derivatives, risky proprietary trading, and even fraud and 
manipulation?
  Even if the regulators wanted to do the job--and I think they do--it 
would require 70,000 examiners to examine a trillion-dollar bank with 
the same level of scrutiny as a community bank.
  The regulation of the community banks is plenty, but when its comes 
to the six largest banks, we are not even close. Again, they are too 
big to fail, they are too big to manage--look at what has happened, 
those examples I gave--and they are too big to regulate.
  We cannot rely on the market to fix itself. The six largest Wall 
Street megabanks are essentially an oligopoly and a cartel, making true 
competition impossible.
  Megabanks' shareholders and creditors have no incentive to end too 
big to fail because they get paid out when banks are bailed out. They 
get paid out when banks are bailed out. And banking laws prevent 
meaningful management shakeups because any hostile takeover effort 
would require Federal Reserve approval.
  That is why it is time for Congress to act in the interests of the 
American public. It is time to restore the public's confidence in our 
financial markets. It is not there now, to be sure. It is time to put 
an end to Wall Street welfare and government subsidies. We have seen 
far too much of that. It is time to enact the SAFE Banking Act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I see the Senator from North Dakota 
on the Senate floor, and I wonder if he seeks recognition. He is my 
chairman on the Budget Committee. I am inclined to give him precedence.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, through the Chair, I would say to my 
colleague, I do have a matter that is a parliamentary inquiry that is a 
matter that is important for us to resolve. I do not want to intrude on 
the Senator's time.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, may I suggest that the Senator 
proceed, and it would be helpful to me if he could give me an 
indication, first, of how long he might be and, second, that we enter 
into a unanimous consent agreement that I be recognized following his 
remarks.
  Mr. CONRAD. No more than 4 minutes.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Perfect.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.


       Parliamentary Inquiry--Fiscal Year 2013 BCA Sequestration

  Mr. CONRAD. Madam President, I come to the floor today to clear up 
some confusion with respect to the Budget Control Act of 2011. Some 
have suggested that the Budget Control Act indirectly authorized the 
Senate to use a fast-track process to modify the across-the-board cuts 
scheduled to go into effect next year due to failure of the Joint 
Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
  Madam President, if that claim were true, it would result in a 
fundamental change in Senate procedures and prerogatives. However, it 
is clear in looking at both the statutory language and Congress's 
intent in passing the Budget Control Act that this claim is completely 
without merit.
  First, let's look at what the law actually says. The key provision at 
issue is section 258A of the Deficit Control Act of 1985. Section 258A 
would allow the majority leader to introduce a joint resolution to 
modify or provide an alternative to a sequestration order--and I 
quote--``issued under Section 254.'' That joint resolution could not be 
filibustered and would pass the Senate with a simple majority vote. The 
sequestration orders under section 254 were put in place two decades 
ago to enforce deficit targets and discretionary spending limits that 
have long since expired.
  A sequestration order under the Budget Control Act is not an order 
issued under section 254. The Budget Control Act created a new 
sequestration process under a completely different section of the law: 
section 251A. Section 251A explicitly authorized a new set of 
Presidential sequestration orders in fiscal year 2013 for both 
discretionary and direct spending, and did so without any reference at 
all to the old section 258A procedures. The statutory language is 
clear, therefore, that these old procedures do not apply to 
sequestration under the Budget Control Act.
  It is also clear that Congress never intended for section 258A 
procedures to apply. There was no discussion of this issue on the floor 
of either House. There was no discussion of this in the Budget Control 
Act negotiations between congressional Republicans and the White House, 
and there was no discussion of this among Democratic Senators. 
Moreover, the Budget Control Act and the Deficit Control Act of 1985 
are completely separate budget enforcement mechanisms enacted 26 years 
apart and under entirely different circumstances.
  Simply put, there is zero evidence of any congressional attempt to 
apply the 258A procedures to the Budget Control Act sequestration. In 
order to confirm this for the Record, I would like to pose a 
parliamentary inquiry to the Presiding Officer.
  Madam President, is it correct that section 258A of the Deficit 
Control Act of 1985 does not apply to the fiscal year 2013 
sequestration?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair. I think it is an important decision to 
get affirmed publicly so that we might proceed and not be engaged in 
distractions.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                              NIH Funding

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, last spring Cathy Hutchison picked 
up a cup of coffee and took a sip. Now, why have I come to the floor of 
the Senate to talk about Cathy Hutchison picking up a cup of coffee 
last spring and taking a sip? Because 15 years earlier, Cathy Hutchison 
was working in her garden when she suffered a stroke that left her 
paralyzed.
  Cathy did not just lose the ability to use her arms and legs, she 
also lost the ability to speak. I am sorry to say this condition is not 
unique to Cathy. It happens regularly enough that there is a medical 
term for it, locked-in syndrome. That is how Cathy lived for nearly 15 
years: alert and mentally sharp but unable to move or speak, a prisoner 
in her own body.
  All of this changed last spring when, for the first time in nearly 15 
years, Cathy picked up that cup of coffee and took a sip. Cathy 
Hutchison is a patient enrolled in a clinical trial at Brown University 
in Providence, RI. They are testing a neural interface device known as 
BrainGate.
  BrainGate works by placing a small sensor on the brain. The sensor is 
connected to a computer that interprets the brain's signals to control 
a specially designed robotic arm. The university researchers asked 
Cathy to imagine that she was moving her arm

[[Page 13296]]

in different directions. Then they monitored which neurons fired for 
those corresponding movements, all in her imagination.
  Using this brain wave information, researchers attached a robotic arm 
to the computer. The computer translated the electrical impulses 
detected by the sensor in Cathy's brain back into commands to tell the 
arm what to do.
  Cathy communicates through a device that allows her to type using the 
movement of her eyes, and she typed that she was ``ecstatic'' about the 
new technology and hopes it can be expanded to one day allow her to 
walk again.
  The BrainGate team is also working to determine if this technology 
can ultimately be used to help individuals paralyzed by stroke or 
injury to regain greater independence. BrainGate is an example of what 
is possible when the best minds in science and engineering come 
together for the common good.
  Researchers from Brown University, the Department of Veterans 
Affairs, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the German Aerospace 
Center collaborated on this project. Their efforts were supported by a 
grant from the National Institutes of Health, as well as funding from 
the Veterans' Administration, and several private foundations. 
BrainGate is just one of the most recent in a long list of medical 
breakthroughs that are made possible by our National Institutes of 
Health. The NIH is the cornerstone of our commitment to medical 
research for the benefit of humanity.
  Research supported by the NIH has led to medical advances that have 
saved and improved countless lives while making America the world 
leader in discovery and innovation. More than 80 Nobel prizes have been 
awarded for research supported by the National Institutes of Health.
  In Rhode Island, Brown University has received NIH grants to support 
cutting-edge research on a multitude of diseases, including cancer, 
dementia, and muscular dystrophy. In fact, the scope of projects at 
Brown that receive NIH support is so diverse that the university 
describes its NIH-backed research as covering everything from autism to 
Alzheimer's. Yet there are those in Congress who have suggested cutting 
the NIH's budget.
  Let's be clear about what cutting the NIH's budget means. It means 
cutting off funding for research that has provided Cathy Hutchison her 
first taste of physical independence in 15 years. It means telling the 
millions of Americans suffering from cancer that they have to wait 
longer for lifesaving research. It means suffocating a vibrant area of 
innovation and job creation.
  Cutting the NIH budget has ripple effects far beyond just one Federal 
agency. Quite simply, it will hurt job growth. Medical research is one 
of the fastest growing fields nationwide. In Rhode Island and across 
the country, cities are undergoing a renaissance sparked by the growth 
of high-paying careers in medical research.
  I have heard friends on the other side of the aisle talk at length 
about how we need to do more to create jobs. Well, I could not agree 
more. Now is no time to put jobs at risk by cutting back on the 
research funding that makes them possible. I know the Appropriations 
Committee recently reported a bill to the floor that would increase the 
NIH budget by $100 million for the coming fiscal year. I applaud my 
colleagues on the Appropriations Committee for their commitment to this 
vital agency, and I hope we will soon be able to vote on their measure. 
But there is something looming on the horizon that will render this 
$100 million increase all but meaningless. I am talking, of course, 
about sequestration, under which it is estimated that NIH will face not 
a $100 million increase but a $2.4 billion cut.
  I know a lot of my colleagues have discussed the effect that the 
sequester will have on defense spending, but it is important to 
remember that 50 cents out of every dollar of cuts that will occur 
under sequester will come out of nondefense spending, including 
specifically the NIH.
  ``Devastating'' is the word that keeps being used when people are 
asked how sequester would affect our National Institutes of Health. 
That is how NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins described the effect of a 
nearly 8-percent cut to the agency's budget. Those who are familiar 
with science know how important it is in ongoing experiments that there 
be a consistent data set through the period of the research.
  When we interrupt research for financial reasons, we can damage the 
value of research conducted in other years. I agree with my colleagues 
that we must reduce our long-term deficit, but when we cut funding that 
creates jobs and leads to lifesaving medical breakthroughs we are 
pursuing policies that are the epitome of penny-wise but pound-foolish.
  I hope we in the Senate can work together to find sensible solutions 
that reduce the deficit while maintaining our longstanding commitment 
to medical research and innovation. We owe that much to Cathy and to 
the millions of Americans whose futures will be brighter thanks to the 
research and jobs made possible by our American National Institutes of 
Health. When Cathy Hutchison interacts with the BrainGate program, it 
is hard not to get the sense that we are looking into the future, a 
future where people like Cathy will know that disease or injury will 
not transform their bodies into a prison.
  It was Arthur C. Clarke who said ``any sufficiently advanced 
technology is indistinguishable from magic.'' For Cathy, for the 
BrainGate research team, and indeed for anyone who may one day benefit 
from this remarkable technology, that sip of coffee last spring taken 
by Cathy Hutchison was a moment of magic. Let's commit ourselves to 
providing Cathy, the BrainGate team, and all of those who are relying 
on us in this body to provide the support they need to keep making 
magical moments like this possible.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.


                         Production Tax Credit

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, I am here again on the Senate 
floor, as I have been on 14 previous occasions, to urge all of us, to 
urge my colleagues in the Senate and, of course, our colleagues down 
through the Rotunda in the House to extend the production tax credit 
for wind. It is also known by its shorthand as the PTC.
  The reason I am here on the floor, as I have said many times before, 
this is about jobs. If we do not extend the production tax credit as 
soon as possible, we will lose good-paying American jobs. It is that 
simple. It is that straightforward.
  I am going to keep speaking on the floor of the Senate until my 
colleagues decide to act, until Congress decides to take the necessary 
action to extend the production tax credit and protect American jobs. I 
want to underline that. We are going to protect American jobs and help 
secure our energy future in the 21st century where clean energy will be 
a dominant part of the mix.
  It has been a treat to come to the floor to do this on one hand 
because I am touring the country. I focus on a State when I come to the 
floor. Today I want to focus on the great State of Oregon, where the 
wind industry is a major part of their economy, and where the PTC's 
positive ripple effects have been felt statewide.
  In short, Oregon is a national leader in wind power. I want to share 
some of the statistics to make the case. According to the American Wind 
Energy Association, Oregon ranks sixth in power derived from wind. The 
wind energy industry supports roughly 3,000 jobs in Oregon. That number 
is poised to grow but only if we extend the production tax credit.
  As we look at the map of Oregon, we can see that Oregon has installed 
extensive wind power projects along the Colombia River Valley in the 
northern part of the State. The Colombia basically delineates the State 
of Oregon from the State of Washington on the right here along its 
northern boundary. There are enough projects there producing enough 
power so that 700,000 homes would have electricity from those wind-
power projects.
  The Biglow Canyon Wind Farm is the ninth largest wind farm in the 
Nation.

[[Page 13297]]

And Oregon's Second Congressional District, which is a very big 
district, much like the Western Slope district, Colorado's Third 
District, ranks fourth in the United States for installed wind 
capacity. Over the last decade, one county alone, a relatively small 
county, Sherman County, has seen over $18 million in revenues coming 
into that county due to the simple presence of the wind energy 
industry.
  That money has helped Sherman County do impressive things. They have 
created jobs and improved their infrastructure, including building a 
new public school and library, supporting the Sherman County History 
Museum, and installing solar panels on county property. A hybrid system 
is in use using renewable energy with those solar panels. Those are 
impressive achievements.
  Oregon's wind energy potential is tremendous. Currently there are 
plans to more than triple the amount of power that Oregon gets from 
wind.
  That would mean a total of 9,000 megawatts of electricity. That would 
power over 2 million homes. Moreover, such a move, such an investment, 
would create thousands of jobs.
  I want to go back to my main point. The wind production tax credit 
has been a major driver of this growth in the last decade, encouraging 
some wind energy producers to invest in Oregon and the rest of our 
country. The PTC has encouraged American innovation, and innovation is 
how we will grow our economy. It has supported American companies in 
the wind energy sector. I know the Presiding Officer knows this--and I 
look forward to the opportunity to talk about her State of North 
Carolina in the future. The PTC has enticed foreign companies to bring 
their operations--jobs--to the United States. Because of the PTC, these 
companies are building factories and offices in the United States.
  I want to talk about Vestas, a Danish company that has a significant 
manufacturing presence in Colorado--four different plants. Last 
Saturday, I was at a Vestas plant in Pueblo. They support many jobs in 
Colorado. Vestas also has a strong presence in Oregon. In fact, their 
U.S. headquarters is located in one of the most livable cities in the 
world, that being Portland. Vestas has made a real statement about the 
potential here in the United States.
  Again, the point I am making is it is clear to me and a large, 
growing, and bipartisan group of colleagues in both Houses of Congress, 
including both of my colleagues from Oregon, Senators Merkley and 
Wyden, that extending the production tax credit is the right thing to 
do. It is the right thing to do for our future, for our economy, and 
for our environment. Without the PTC--if you look at the other side of 
this success story--the sustained growth of the wind industry in recent 
years will slow--it already has--and possibly halt, and we actually may 
see good-paying American jobs being lost to China and other countries. 
Why would we want that to happen? We cannot let that happen. The 
continued uncertainty is not right and not fair when it comes to our 
U.S. wind industry and the people who work in that sector.
  Last Saturday, I heard from the workers at the Vestas plant in Pueblo 
that they didn't know whether they were going to have jobs in a few 
months. The looks on their faces alone should motivate all of us to get 
the wind production tax credit extended. This is also an opportunity 
for us in Congress to show the American public that we are not as 
dysfunctional as a Congress as the public believes. This is a chance to 
support economic growth and American manufacturing right here in our 
country. The American people expect us to produce results, and we can 
only do so by working together.
  I fear that the wind production tax credit has become a political 
football. We have a chance to show the American public, who are sick of 
campaign year rhetoric and politics, business as usual and 
partisanship, that we can rise above that. I reiterate that this is a 
perfect opportunity for us because this is not a partisan issue. It has 
widespread support from both parties across our country. I have been 
highlighting that fact over the last few weeks.
  What can we do? We ought to understand that the production tax credit 
equals jobs. We ought to pass it as soon as possible. As I wind down, I 
note that the Senate Finance Committee is meeting right now to consider 
a tax extenders package. I know many colleagues on the Senate Finance 
Committee, including Oregon's senior Senator Ron Wyden, are working to 
include the PTC in the package. I add my voice to those who are already 
in place, urging the Finance Committee to pass an extension of the PTC 
today as a part of the tax extenders package, and then let's move the 
full Senate to the point where we can pass the PTC as soon as possible. 
Why? Because we are protecting American jobs and we are preparing the 
ground for additional job creation that is crucial, growing, and 
exciting in the 21st century to the wind energy industry.
  I thank the Chair for what her State is doing for wind power. I look 
forward to talking about North Carolina.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am delighted to follow the 
distinguished Senator from Colorado and commend him for his persistence 
and his passion on preserving the wind production tax credit. We have, 
as he will recall from our previous discussions together on the floor, 
facilities that we hope to have going up offshore of Rhode Island very 
soon that will provide a local source of energy for us, reduce our 
reliance on imported oil, and create significant and well-paying jobs 
at home. So I am glad to be his wingman in this pursuit and thank him 
for his leadership.


                             Climate Change

  Madam President, yesterday marked the end of what is expected to be 
one of the top five warmest months on record. The USDA recently 
declared nearly 1,400 counties in 31 States, including, I am sure, many 
in Colorado, disaster areas as a result of the ongoing drought. NASA 
and NOAA declared the last decade the warmest on record. In 2011, we 
faced 14 weather-related disasters that totaled more than $1 billion in 
damage each. We already have several more that have occurred in 2012.
  I have come to the floor today to discuss the science of climate 
change. Virtually all respected scientific and academic institutions 
have agreed that climate change is happening, and that human activities 
are the driving cause of this change. A letter to Congress from a great 
number of those institutions in October 2009 stated that:

       Observations throughout the world make it clear that 
     climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research 
     demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human 
     activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are 
     based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary 
     assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of 
     the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

  If I were to translate that last phrase into layman's terms, it would 
basically mean if you are saying anything different, we should be 
looking for your motives.
  This letter was signed by the heads of the following organizations: 
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American 
Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of 
Biological Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Society 
of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Biologists, American Statistical 
Association, Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, Botanical 
Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, and a great many 
others.
  These are highly esteemed scientific organizations, and they don't 
think the jury is still out on climate change. They recognize that, in 
reality, the verdict is in, and it is time to act.
  Over the weekend, Dr. Richard Muller, professor of physics at the 
University of California-Berkeley, and also director of the Berkeley 
Earth Surface Temperature Project, and a former MacArthur Foundation 
Fellow--a so-called genius grant award winner--revealed in a New York 
Times op-ed how he has become a converted climate skeptic. He cites 
findings from his research, which ironically was partially funded by 
the Koch brothers, that the

[[Page 13298]]

Earth's land temperature has increased by 2\1/2\ degrees Fahrenheit in 
the past 250 years and 1\1/2\ degrees over the past 50 years. He 
states:

       Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this 
     increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

  Unfortunately, human emission of greenhouse gases is on the rise. In 
2011, the famed Mauna Loa Observatory documented the biggest annual 
jump yet in carbon dioxide. A monitoring station in the Arctic this 
year measured carbon dioxide at 400 parts per million for the first 
time, which is 50 parts per million higher than the maximum 
concentration at which scientists predict a stable climate. Of course, 
400 parts per million is way outside the 170 to 300 parts per million 
bandwidth that has existed on this planet for the past 8,000 centuries. 
For 800,000 years, we have been between 170 and 300 parts per million, 
and now in the bellwether leading-edge Arctic area, we cracked 400 in 
our climate.
  A 2012 report by the IPCC concludes that climate change increases the 
risk of heavy precipitation. Rhode Islanders are no stranger to heavy 
precipitation. In 2010, we saw flooding that exceeded anything we have 
seen since the 1870s, when Rhode Island first started keeping records. 
At the height of the rains, streets in many Rhode Island cities and 
towns looked more like rivers than roads. Local emergency workers 
sailed down Providence Street, a main road in West Warwick, by boat and 
jet skis--down a main road on boats and jet skis--in order to assist 
residents trapped by the floodwaters. Of course, we cannot link that 
exact storm to climate change, but we know that climate change is 
increasing the risk of extreme weather events like this one. It is 
loading the dice for more and worse storms.
  As a New Englander, I was concerned by a report released this week by 
Environment America, titled ``When It Rains, It Pours.'' The report 
found that in New England ``intense rainstorms and snowstorms [are] 
happening 85 percent more often than in 1948. The frequency of intense 
rain or snowstorms nearly doubled in Vermont and Rhode Island, and more 
than doubled in New Hampshire.'' Not only are these inundations 
happening more often, but the largest events are actually dumping more 
precipitation--around 10 percent more on average--across the country. 
For States such as mine, these storms are dangerous, expensive, and 
cause lasting damage.
  We are moving down a troublesome and unknown path. The best we can do 
now is to prepare for dramatic environmental shifts. We must look to 
science and scientists and use the best available data to protect and 
prepare both our natural and built environments, which sustain us and 
our economy. Ensuring the integrity of our infrastructure in the face 
of a rapidly changing climate is essential. I want to focus for a 
minute on that infrastructure. Coastal States face a particularly 
unique set of challenges, so the infrastructure challenge for Rhode 
Island is worse than many places. We face what I call a triple whammy, 
as we must adapt not only to extreme temperatures and unusual weather 
but also to sea level rise.
  As average global temperatures rise, less water will be stored in 
snowpack and on the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. We also 
know that at higher temperatures water expands to greater volume, so 
that leads to a sea level rise, which is predicted to range from 20 to 
39 inches by 2100, with recent studies showing that the numbers could 
be even higher due to greater than expected melting of glaciers and ice 
sheets. This is not a theory. We are into the realm of measurement.
  Long-term data from tide gauges in the historic sailing capital of 
Newport, RI, show an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 inches 
since 1930. At these same tide gauges, measurements show that the rate 
of sea level rise has increased in the past two decades compared to the 
rate over the last century. This is consistent with reports that since 
1990 sea level has been rising faster than the rate predicted by models 
used to generate IPCC estimates.
  Sea level rise is one thing, and the increase in storm surges that 
will accompany it is even worse and promises to bring devastation to 
our doorsteps. Critical infrastructure in at-risk coastal areas--roads, 
powerplants, wastewater treatment plants--will need to be reinforced or 
relocated. Additionally, our estuaries, marshes, and the barrier 
islands that act as natural filtration systems and buffers against 
storms will be inundated, with little time or space to retreat and move 
inland as they have in the past. The oncoming weather is coming on too 
fast.
  One consequence of rising sea levels is that local erosion rates in 
Rhode Island have doubled from 1990 to 2006, and some freshwater 
wetlands near the coast are transitioning to salt marsh. Increased sea 
level and erosion puts critical public infrastructure at risk. In one 
example, we have a small but vibrant coastal community, Matunuck, where 
beaches have eroded 20 feet over the past 12 years. The town has to 
face difficult decisions as the only road connecting about 1600 
residents and several restaurants and businesses is protected now by 
less than a dozen feet of sand from the ocean. This road, which 
provides access for emergency vehicles and lies on top of a water main, 
must be protected. But what are the costs of protecting this piece of 
road for areas nearby or farther down the shore? Often when you protect 
one area of beach from erosion by hardening or altering the shoreline, 
you do so to the sacrifice of other areas. It takes science and data to 
sort out how to do that right.
  These are not easy decisions for communities. To best protect 
infrastructure and the communities and families who live in these at-
risk areas, we have to, as a nation, plan ahead. We have to use the 
best and most reliable science, and we have to be able to prioritize 
adaptation efforts.
  In North Carolina, the State legislature considered a measure that 
would have severely restricted the ability of their Coastal Resources 
Commission to employ scientific estimates of future sea level rise. 
That is the ultimate case of the ostrich burying its head in the sand--
in this case, the beach sand. This type of thinking will cost money and 
lives in the future.
  In Rhode Island, we are taking a different approach.
  We have to if we want to protect public health and safety. Rhode 
Island has 19 ``high hazard'' dams that have been deemed ``unsafe'' by 
our Department of Environmental Management. We have 6,000 onsite waste 
water treatment systems located near the coast, several landfills that 
may be susceptible to coastal erosion and evacuation routes that could 
be underwater as sea levels rise.
  In 2008, our Coastal Resources Management Council adopted a climate 
change and sea level rise policy to protect public and private 
property, infrastructure, and economically valuable coastal ecosystems. 
The policy states the following:

       The Council will integrate climate change and sea-level 
     rise scenarios into its operations to prepare Rhode Island 
     for these new, evolving conditions and make our coastal areas 
     more resilient.
       It is the Council's policy to accommodate a base rate of 
     expected 3-5 foot rise in sea level by the year 2100 in the 
     siting, design, and implementation of public and private 
     coastal activities and to insure proactive stewardship of 
     coastal ecosystems under these changing conditions. It should 
     be noted that the 3-5 foot rate of sea-level rise assumption 
     embedded in this policy is relatively narrow and low. The 
     Council recognizes that the lower the sea level rise estimate 
     used, the greater the risk that policies and efforts to adapt 
     sea-level rise and climate change will prove to be 
     inadequate.

  This policy is already helping the State make smart decisions. For 
example, when a new pump station was needed at a sewage treatment 
plant, CRMC looked at sea-level rise models before determining where it 
should go, avoiding future relocation costs or malfunction in the face 
of flash flooding and sea level rise.
  In 2010, our general assembly created the Rhode Island Climate Change 
Commission to study the projected impacts of climate change on the 
State, develop strategies to adapt to those impacts, and determine 
mechanisms to incorporate climate adaptation into existing state and 
municipal programs. A draft progress report from the Commission

[[Page 13299]]

lists many ways the state is planning to adapt to climate change, 
including: Creating a ``Structural Concept and Contingency Plan to 
Inundation of the Ferry Terminals and Island Roadway Systems''; 
creating the ``Central Landfill Disaster Preparedness Plan''; national 
grid, our electricity and natural gas utility, undertaking a 
``Statewide Substation Flooding Assessment''; the Army Corps of 
Engineers, FEMA, and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency 
conducting a ``Hurricane and Flooding Evacuation Study''; and the list 
goes on and on.
  In the town of North Kingston, RI, they have taken the best elevation 
data available, and modeled 1, 3, and 5 feet of sea-level rise, as well 
as 1 foot of sea-level rise plus 3 feet of storm surge. By overlaying 
these inundation models on top of maps identifying critical 
infrastructure such as roads, emergency routes, railroads, water 
treatment plans, and estuaries, the town will be able to prioritize 
transportation, conservation, and relocation projects. They are also 
able to quantify the costs of sea-level rise. In one small area of the 
town, 1 foot of sea-level rise would put two buildings, valued at $1.3 
million, underwater. Five feet of sea-level rise, however, jeopardizes 
116 buildings valued at $91 million.
  Similarly, by modeling how sea-level rise will impact estuaries, 
towns can preserve areas that will stay wetlands or undeveloped areas 
that will become wetlands in the future, as opposed to areas that will 
be lost. Estuaries act as nurseries for our hugely valuable fisheries, 
and protect our homes, buildings and communities from storm surge. 
There is already limited funding to protect these important ecosystems 
and this kind of planning promotes efficiency in spending.
  Let me close by saying that it is now well past time for us as a 
country to start making policy that helps us adapt to the emerging 
scientific reality that our actions indeed do affect our environment. 
For those of us who are ocean States, the state of our oceans and 
coastlines is particularly significant, and I urge my colleagues to 
support our National Endowment for the Oceans, which got all the way 
into the conference committee on the highway bill before it was taken 
out in an unfortunate, unwise, and, frankly, unfair maneuver.
  We are at a place now where nature could not be giving us clearer 
warnings. Whatever higher power there is--and we each have our own 
beliefs on that--that higher power that gave us our advanced human 
capacity for perception, for calculation, for analysis, for deduction, 
and for foresight has laid out before us more than enough information 
for us to make the right decisions. Only a wild and reckless greed or a 
fatal hubris could blind us to the distress signals coming from our 
oceans, our atmosphere, and our world. Fortunately, these human 
capacities still provide us everything we need to act responsibly but 
only if we will.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

                          ____________________