[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5020-5026]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2011--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1925, 
which the clerk will report by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to S. 1925, a bill to reauthorize the 
     Violence Against Women Act of 1994.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the first 
hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or 
their designees, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and 
the Republicans controlling the second 30 minutes.
  The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.


                        Leadership in Washington

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, to follow up briefly on the subject 
of leadership in Washington, perhaps the Speaker of the House could 
show some leadership on jobs by calling up the bipartisan--75 to 22--
jobs highway bill that passed this Senate, which is widely supported 
and its delay is actually costing us jobs because of the summer 
construction season wasting away as these extensions go on. There would 
be some leadership that would mean something for jobs in America.
  Madam President, I rise today to address the need we have in the 
Senate for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. I ask unanimous 
consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                             Cybersecurity

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, our Nation's inadequate 
cybersecurity poses an ever-growing threat to our safety, our 
prosperity, and our privacy. Attackers go after our intellectual 
property, our national security,

[[Page 5021]]

and our critical infrastructure. The McAfee Night Dragon Report, for 
example, concluded that foreign intruders had access to major oil, 
energy, and petrochemical companies' computer networks for at least 2 
years and likely as many as 4 years. Government reports are equally 
sobering, though usually classified.
  One that is not classified is the Department of Homeland Security 
report recently that attacks on computer systems that control critical 
infrastructure, factories, and databases increased almost eightfold in 
just the last 12 months. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned 
that ``the next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber 
attack.''
  Majority Leader Reid has recognized the severity of this national and 
economic security threat and intends to bring cybersecurity legislation 
to the Senate floor soon. We recognize too the hard work of Chairman 
Lieberman and Ranking Member Collins of the Homeland Security 
Committee, as well as Chairman Feinstein of the Intelligence Committee, 
and Senator Rockefeller of the Commerce Committee. The Cybersecurity 
Act of 2012, which they introduced--and I am proud to cosponsor--is a 
good start toward addressing the many cybersecurity threats that face 
this Nation.
  The SECURE IT Act, introduced by Senator McCain and seven colleagues, 
seeks to improve the sharing of cybersecurity threat information; the 
Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA, which governs 
cybersecurity at Federal agencies; and our cyber research and 
development. There is considerable overlap between these bills, which 
signals that the Senate could legislate on cybersecurity in a 
bipartisan and serious manner.
  Support for cybersecurity legislation is also bicameral. The 
Cybersecurity Task Force constituted by House Republicans produced 
recommendations that share key points with our Cybersecurity Act of 
2012. Numerous bills are working their way through the House on a 
bipartisan basis. Central to that work in the House are the 
contributions of Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin. His leadership 
is a major reason the House has come to recognize the dangerous 
vulnerabilities within our critical infrastructure and that we now 
stand on the verge of a breakthrough in improving the security of those 
networks.
  When a test at the Idaho National Labs showed hackers could blow up a 
power generator from thousands of miles away, Congressman Langevin 
brought the owners and operators of our electric grid before Congress 
and investigated their promise the issue was being addressed. When he 
found out that wasn't true, he called them out. His subsequent work as 
a cochair of the Center for Strategic and International Study 
Commission on Cybersecurity, along with other experts from within and 
outside of government, resulted in many of the recommendations 
reflected in our legislation. Then, in 2010, Congressman Langevin 
passed a landmark cybersecurity amendment in the House that provided a 
legislative template for setting standards for critical infrastructure. 
I thank Jim Langevin, my colleague from Rhode Island, for his 
relentless commitment to keeping America safe in cyberspace.
  I am here this morning to stress four points I believe we must keep 
in mind as we take up cybersecurity legislation. The first is that 
cybersecurity legislation should improve the public's limited awareness 
of current cybersecurity threats and the harm those threats present to 
our national security economy and privacy. The public, for years, has 
been kept in the dark, and that is wrong.
  The corporate sector systematically underreports cyber attacks for 
fear of scaring customers, for fear of encouraging competitors or for 
fear of triggering regulatory review. I was pleased the Securities and 
Exchange Commission, after prompting by Senator Rockefeller and myself 
and others, issued guidance for when registered companies must disclose 
breach information.
  The government itself systematically underreports cyber attacks 
because it overclassifies information about cyber attacks on government 
systems. Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International 
Studies, for example, recently explained that cybersecurity has a 
unique problem in that some of the most reliable data is classified. It 
was a rare exception when a November 2011 report by the Office of the 
National Counterintelligence Executive identified China and Russia as 
responsible for the systematic theft of American intellectual property 
through cyber espionage. The legislation that we pass must shed light 
on the scale and severity of the cyber threat to the American public.
  In that vein, I am pleased the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 includes 
provisions from the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act, S. 813, which I 
introduced with Senator Kyl. These provisions will at least begin to 
improve the public's awareness of the current cyber threat environment 
we face.
  Second, we must recognize that inadequate awareness and inadequate 
protection against cyber risks is endemic among our largest 
corporations. Part of the problem is a gulf in cybersecurity awareness 
between corporate chief information officers and corporate CEOs. 
Carnegie Mellon's CyLab recently reported:

       Boards and senior management still are not exercising 
     appropriate governance over the privacy and security of their 
     digital assets . . . These findings are consistent with the 
     complaints by CISO/CSOs that they cannot get the attention of 
     their senior management and boards and their budgets are 
     inadequate . . . There is still an apparent disconnect.

  Nor is this an area in which the market can be trusted to work. As 
former Bush Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has 
explained:

       The marketplace is likely to fail in allocating the correct 
     amount of investment to manage risk across the breadth of the 
     networks on which our society relies.

  This is not an area where corporations manage adequately on their 
own. FBI Director Robert Mueller recently explained:

       There are only two types of companies: those that have been 
     hacked and those that will be.

  Even more trenchant, the McAfee report on the ``Shady RAT'' attacks 
similarly stated it is possible to divide ``the entire set of Fortune 
Global 2,000 firms into two categories: those that know they've been 
compromised and those that don't yet know.''
  Kevin Mandia of the leading security firm Mandiant has explained:

       [I]n over 90 percent of the cases we have responded to, 
     government notification was required to alert the company 
     that a security breach was underway. In our last 50 
     incidents, 48 of the victim companies learned they were 
     breached from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the 
     Department of Defense or some other third party.

  The National Cybersecurity Investigation Joint Task Force, led by the 
FBI, told me the same thing: more than 90 percent of the time the 
corporate victim had no idea.
  What we can conclude from this is that improved sharing of 
cybersecurity threat information is necessary but is not sufficient to 
protect our Nation's cybersecurity. Even a perfect information-sharing 
process will not prevent cyber attacks if the information being shared 
is incomplete. The blindness of most corporations to this threat limits 
the effectiveness of corporate-to-corporate information sharing. The 
NSA's Defense Industrial Base pilot--the so-called ``DIB'' pilot--
proved the government can share classified information with trusted 
corporations, but it revealed significant risks and limitations, 
particularly if the government were to share its most sensitive 
intelligence information with a broad set of private companies.
  The third point I want to make this morning, and perhaps the most 
important, is that this legislation on cybersecurity will have failed 
if it does not ensure that our American critical infrastructure has 
adequate cybersecurity. There must be a process for identifying 
critical infrastructure, establishing appropriate security standards, 
and ensuring that critical infrastructure companies meet the standard.
  If an attack comes, we must be sure that America's most capable 
defenses

[[Page 5022]]

and countermeasures are pre-positioned to defend critical American 
infrastructure. We simply cannot wait until an attack is underway on 
basic needs and services on which we depend, such as our electric grid, 
our communications networks, and the servers that process our financial 
transactions. So there are two measures here: One is that we must have 
a way to define critical infrastructure so we know what it is and, just 
as important from a civil liberties perspective, we know what it isn't. 
When we identify critical infrastructure on which our safety and 
economic and national security depend, we are also defining what does 
not qualify and where privacy concerns can be much more important than 
national security concerns. Nobody wants government in our chat rooms, 
e-mails, or social media; everyone gets why government should protect 
the electric grids that bring power to our homes.
  The second is that once we identify our critical infrastructure, we 
need to find a way for our national security assets to protect that 
critical infrastructure. Our government has unique capabilities to 
protect those basics, such as our electric grid.
  As Kevin Mandia has explained:

     [t]he majority of threat intelligence is currently in the 
     hands of the government.

  Some of this information can be disclosed, but some cannot be, in 
order to protect sensitive sources and methods. This requires us to 
find other ways for our most sophisticated government capabilities to 
protect our critical infrastructure. For example, we should think 
seriously about the concept of secure domains and how they can be 
deployed effectively while protecting civil liberties. I am glad 
section 804 of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 takes on that task by 
requiring expert study of the advantages and disadvantages of 
establishing secure domains for critical infrastructure.
  If the business community can identify a workable alternative 
approach, such as a voluntary or opt-in regulatory system, I am willing 
to get to work, but we must not balk at taking on the hard question of 
how to secure our critical American infrastructure.
  The last point I want to make today is that Congress, in this bill, 
should consider the appropriate structure and resources for the 
cybersecurity and cyber crime mission of the Department of Justice, the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and law enforcement components of the 
Department of Homeland Security. We do not do enough to investigate, 
prosecute, and take other appropriate legal action against cyber crime, 
cyber espionage and other cyber threats. Last year's takedown by the 
Department of Justice of the Coreflood botnet should be a regular 
occurrence, not a special occurrence. But it will not be--it cannot 
be--with our current cyber crime resources. The technical, 
international, and legal aspects of these investigations are too 
complex.
  I spent 4 years as a United States attorney, I spent 4 years as our 
State's attorney general. These are astonishingly complicated and 
difficult cases. They are massively resource intensive. So it is time 
for a fundamental rethinking of cyber law enforcement resources: both 
the level of resources and the manner in which they are structured. We 
should be discussing whether cyber crime should have a dedicated 
investigatory agency akin to the DEA or ATF or whether existing task 
force models should be used. These are important questions the 
legislation has not addressed. Accordingly, I plan to offer a floor 
amendment that will require an expert study of our current cyber law 
enforcement resources that can recommend a proper level of funding and 
structure of forces going forward.
  Once again, I thank my colleagues for their hard work to date on 
cybersecurity issues. I urge that all of us join together to pass 
cybersecurity legislation into law as soon as possible. Two years ago, 
I said that because of cyber we in the United States are on the losing 
end of the largest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the 
history of the world. GEN Keith Alexander, who leads the National 
Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has reached the same conclusion 
when saying recently that cyber theft is ``the greatest transfer of 
wealth in history.'' McAfee likewise has recently evaluated the theft 
of national secrets, source code, designs, and other documents, and 
concluded that what ``we have witnessed over the past 5 to 6 years has 
been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of 
wealth.''
  We are the losers in that transfer of wealth. We cannot afford to 
wait to address this enormous and ever-growing threat.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.


                         Postal Service Reform

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, shortly we will be turning to the 
legislation to reform the Postal Service, and I wanted to take a few 
minutes to talk about a particularly important part of that discussion.
  In recent years there has been a revolution in how our citizens 
exercise their right to vote. Instead of every American showing up in 
person, more and more Americans are choosing to vote by mail, using 
absentee ballots, no-excuse absentee voting or, in the case of my home 
State of Oregon, the entire election is conducted by mail. This 
amendment I will be offering and that I am discussing this morning--and 
in which I join Senator Feinstein and other colleagues--is designed to 
protect the millions of Americans who choose to use the post office to 
exercise their right to vote. This amendment protects those millions of 
Americans from any kind of postal delay that could disrupt their 
ability to ensure their vote is counted.
  My home State of Oregon has a system in which all ballots are cast by 
mail.
  In Oregon, if the ballots are not delivered by mail to the county 
election offices by the deadline on election night, they are not 
counted. So it is essential to the conduct of fair elections in my home 
State that delivery of ballots cast by mail not be delayed.
  To prevent the potential threat to our elections from delayed mail 
delivery, the Wyden-Feinstein amendment would place a moratorium on the 
closure of postal facilities until November 13, 2012, in States that 
vote by mail or allow any voter to vote no-excuse absentee. It would 
also require the Postal Service to notify election officials of 
closings and consolidations and require the Postal Service to study the 
effect of closing or consolidating a mail processing facility on the 
ability of the affected community to vote by mail.
  My home State consistently has high voter turnout. Vote by mail has 
been successful and it is popular. In my State, more than 85 percent of 
registered voters participated in the 2008 elections, but this kind of 
approach to voting is popular not just in my home State of Oregon. In 
the 2008 election, 89 percent of ballots in Washington State were cast 
by mail, as well as 64 percent of those in Colorado, over 50 percent in 
Arizona, and it was nearly that high a percentage in California.
  In my home State, the Postal Service is a place where people send and 
receive packages and mail order prescriptions, and it is also a place 
that community residents come together. It seems to me that if we are 
going to close and consolidate postal facilities, not only will it harm 
the delivery of ballots and campaign-related mail to voters and return 
of the ballots to election officials, but it also will zap much of what 
is vital to rural America; that is, the opportunity to come and gather 
in one place.
  Jordan Valley, located in beautiful eastern Oregon on the Nevada 
border, is 457 miles from Portland. With the proposed consolidations, 
the nearest regional processing center would literally be almost 500 
miles away. If the U.S. Postal Service goes ahead with their proposed 
closures and consolidations, then a ballot cast in Jordan Valley could 
travel approximately 1,000 miles before it reaches the hands of 
election officials. This is unacceptable for constituents who vote in 
the far corners--the rural corners--of my State.
  Cuts to the Postal Service mean that ballots mailed in the final days 
before an election may not get to election officials in time to be 
counted. Ballots

[[Page 5023]]

sent the weekend before a Tuesday vote may not get into the hands of 
election officials by the present-day deadline of election day. Closing 
and consolidating postal facilities disproportionately harms the 
ability of rural residents to have their votes counted.
  These issues raise important questions: Is closing postal facilities 
in States that primarily vote by mail a responsible approach? For me 
and many of my constituents and the millions of Americans who have 
chosen to vote in this fashion, the resounding answer is, no, this is 
not a responsible approach. Closing processing facilities and 
potentially impacting the delivery of ballots in a general election is 
a risk not worth it. Closing postal facilities will have unintended and 
unforeseen consequences on the impact of elections.
  That is why this amendment would place a moratorium until November 
13, 2012, in States that conduct all their elections by mail or permit 
no-excuse absentee voting to ensure that elections are fair. No-excuse 
voting, of course, allows any voter to vote absentee without having to 
offer additional reasons for their making that choice. Twenty-seven 
States allow no-excuse absentee voting. So not only will the 
constituents that I and Senator Merkley and Senator Feinstein and 
Senator Boxer represent in Oregon and California be affected by this 
amendment, but States such as Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, 
Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, 
Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are part of the many states in 
this country that this amendment would protect.
  In September of 2011, election officials in California were doing 
their jobs and preparing and mailing sample ballots for a September 
election in an isolated community in northern California. Unaware that 
the small post office that serves the area was closing on October 1, 
the sample ballots were not immediately returned so they had no reason 
to believe the voters had not received them. But as ballots slowly 
trickled in, election officials grew a bit suspicious, and they learned 
many voters had just received their sample ballot more than 3 weeks 
after it was mailed, and many had not received their official ballot 
yet. Election officials received no more than two or three a day 
literally for the first week.
  Voters explained to officials there was so much confusion over the 
closure of the post office that they were much more concerned about 
receiving their other first-class mail--bills and prescriptions--than 
their ballots and hadn't been looking for them. They were told the 
contents of their post office box were being directed to the Arcata 
Post Office. But when they went to Arcata to retrieve it, there was no 
mail for them in Arcata. For 18 days, they didn't receive any mail at 
all.
  Only 15 days before the election, the staff attempted several times 
to contact the Arcata Post Office but could only leave a message for 
the postmaster who was not returning their calls. Folks then contacted 
friends at a local central processing center in yet another town, 
Eureka, CA, who were able to give a direct line to the Arcata 
postmaster.
  At first, the postmaster indicated nothing was wrong, but the 
residents, in his terms, were ``confused about the closure of their 
post office.'' After checking the number of ballots that had been 
returned from the precincts, election officials decided to resend all 
those ballots. The postmaster finally provided election officials with 
the change of address list for all residents, and they were able to 
correct the database, cancel the ballots that had not yet been 
received, and remail ballots to all voters who had not yet returned 
their ballots.
  Obviously, the bottom line is clear. The closure of small post 
offices requires more preparation and sharing of information with the 
residents of an impacted area as well as agencies and businesses that 
rely on the post office to communicate with their customers. Had 
election officials not had a contact in that area, they may not have 
become aware of the problem until it was too late to resend the 
ballots.
  Under the amendment I will be offering later with Senator Feinstein, 
the Postal Service would be required to notify election officials of 
closings and consolidations to prevent the kind of calamitous repeat of 
what I have described happened in a recent local election in 
California. Additionally, the amendment would require the Postal 
Service to study the effect of closing or consolidating a mail 
processing facility on the ability of the affected community to vote by 
mail and the ability of the Postal Service to deliver ballots on time 
in accordance with applicable State law.
  Disenfranchising voters or discouraging the millions of Americans who 
now have chosen this new approach to voting is not a wise or prudent 
step for the Senate to take at this time. Placing a moratorium until 
after the elections will ensure that what is done in the Senate does 
not negatively impact voting in Oregon, California or the scores of 
other States that make extensive use of mail ballots in their 
elections.
  I hope it will be possible for us to win bipartisan support for the 
proposition that ensuring the highest level of voting participation in 
our country is fundamental to our democracy. I hope my colleagues will 
support the amendment I intend to offer later with my colleague and 
friend from California, Senator Feinstein, to protect the millions of 
Americans who choose to vote by mail.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.


                          Ten Years Ago Today

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I am here to point out that 10 years 
ago this very day, this Senate decided not to drill for more oil in the 
United States, where we know oil exists. At that time, the argument 
that was used was why drill because it was going to take many years to 
get it online. The Senate bought the argument we shouldn't drill 
because it was going to take too long.
  Today, we think about more opportunities to drill for oil in the 
United States.
  I wish to point out that the very same arguments that were used 10 
years ago are being used today: If we drill today, we might not get 
some of that oil online for several years down the road. We want to be 
thinking about the future, as we should have thought about the future 
in 2002, 10 years ago, when we decided not to drill.
  Around the country, American consumers are paying near-record prices 
for gasoline at the pump. The current average price for gasoline is 
near $3.90. Since January 2009, the average price of a gallon of 
regular gasoline has more than doubled. In 2011, consumers spent a 
greater percentage of their household income on gasoline than any year 
since 1981, when we thought 90 cents for a gallon of gas was a lot of 
money.
  Affordable energy is a major economic issue. Paying nearly $4 for gas 
acts as a hidden tax and results in people having less money to spend 
on other things. Rising energy prices also increase the cost of doing 
business for job creators, taking away dollars that otherwise could go 
to hiring workers. We should be doing everything possible to prevent 
these high energy prices today or tomorrow.
  The Senate had an opportunity 10 years ago today to take action to 
increase our domestic oil supply. Unfortunately, the Senate missed that 
opportunity. It missed an opportunity for lower prices today and 
importing something less than the $830 million we spend every day to 
import oil. We need to keep that money in this country.
  Ten years ago today, the Senate considered an amendment offered by 
then-Senator Frank Murkowski--father to present Senator Lisa 
Murkowski--to open a tiny portion of the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge to oil and gas development. A vote on the cloture motion was 
rejected by the Democratic majority in the Senate on April 18, 2002.
  During that debate, opponents argued that opening ANWR to development 
would never supply more than 2

[[Page 5024]]

 percent of our Nation's oil demands. They opposed it based on the 
belief that opening ANWR wouldn't address the real problems; namely, 
our dependence upon fossil fuels. They said we needed to work toward a 
comprehensive approach.
  Opening ANWR was also portrayed as a distraction from the real 
solutions, such as conservation, alternative and renewable energy, and 
less environmentally sensitive fossil energy development. Some even 
argued that fully inflated or low friction tires should be a larger 
part of our national energy policy.
  I recognize the need for a comprehensive, balanced national energy 
policy. I truly believe in an all-of-the-above approach that includes 
conservation, alternative and renewable energy, nuclear power, and oil 
and gas development.
  But the fact remains we were talking about these policies as 
solutions to our energy problems in 2002. Yet gas prices are still near 
$4 a gallon.
  I listened to dozens of speakers in the Senate that day who argued 
against opening ANWR because it wouldn't address our near-term energy 
needs. They said it would take nearly 10 years to get that oil to the 
consumers. Ten years ago we were told to forget about opening ANWR 
because development was too far down the road to impact our energy 
supply and energy security.
  Here are a few quotes from my Democratic colleagues during the debate 
in April 2002. I am not going to use their names. But this Democratic 
Senator said:

       I oppose the proposal to drill in the Arctic National 
     Wildlife Refuge. Drilling in ANWR will not increase energy 
     independence, even if we started drilling tomorrow, the first 
     barrel of crude oil would not make it to our market for at 
     least ten years. So it would not affect our current energy 
     needs.

  Another Democratic Senator said--and these Senators are still here 
today:

       The oil exploration in ANWR will not actually start 
     producing oil for as many as 10 years. Exploring and drilling 
     for oil is not forward thinking.

  Another Democratic Senator said this:

       That oil would not be available for 10 years. This means 
     drilling in ANWR would not provide any immediate energy 
     relief for American families.

  Another Democratic Senator said:

       Developing ANWR is simply not a necessary component of a 
     progressive energy policy for this country. For a period 
     starting about 2012--

  That is this year, understand; he was looking ahead 10 years--

       For a period starting at about 2012, we would see an 
     increase of domestic production under ANWR, if ANWR was open 
     to development. So development would not address the near-
     term prices or shortages with which people are faced.

  Ten years down the road, here we are, but if we drilled back then we 
would have this oil on line and we would not be spending $830 million 
every day to import oil.
  Another Senator said this:

       When my colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and 
     suggest to us that the crisis in the Middle East is a reason 
     to drill in ANWR, that is a misleading argument because no 
     oil will flow from ANWR until from 7 to 10 years from now.
       That means if you open the refuge today, you are not going 
     to see oil until about 2012, maybe a couple of years earlier.

  You see, a decision made in 2002--people were looking ahead 10 years 
and saying it was not going to make much difference, but 2012 is here 
and we could have been using that oil.
  Another Senator said:

       Oil extracted from the wildlife refuge would not reach 
     refineries for 7 to 10 years.

  That is the end of my quotes of several Democratic Senators who are 
now serving. If they are using the same argument now, are they going to 
be smart enough to look ahead to 2022 when maybe we could start using 
the oil we would start drilling for today? The defeat of the Murkowski 
amendment back in 2002 was then enormously shortsighted. If we had 
voted to open ANWR 10 years ago, that oil would be driving down the 
price at the pump for consumers today. You know the rule of economics; 
if you increase supply, you reduce price. And we would at least be 
keeping the money in the United States instead of spending $830 million 
every day to import oil. Time after time, opponents of domestic oil 
production have argued that because it will not lower prices at the 
pump today it is not worth doing. You know from the debate of 2002 that 
is a bunch of hogwash. Does anybody wonder if the American people wish 
that the Senate had opened ANWR 10 years ago?
  It is past time to take action to ramp up domestic production of 
traditional energy, energy we can harvest in this country instead of 
importing it and paying $830 million to import it. Greater domestic 
energy production would increase supply and help to lower prices. It 
would create American jobs.
  President Obama continues to push policies that contribute to higher 
gas prices, including restricting access to Federal lands and 
permitting delays, regulatory threats to refiners, and his decision to 
deny Keystone XL. He says he is for ``all of the above,'' but when you 
look at that list, he is for ``none of the above.'' By limiting 
domestic energy production we have less supply and higher prices.
  The Obama administration has made things worse by restricting access 
to domestic energy sources. The President's record contradicts his 
remarks that he is for an ``all of the above'' strategy. His policies 
have prevented more oil production in the United States and resulted in 
higher prices, lost opportunities for jobs creation, less energy 
security, and shipping out of the country 830 million of our dollars 
that could be used in this country and kept in this country, money we 
are spending to import oil.
  President Obama's denying of the Keystone XL Pipeline inhibits 
energy-related development that could create 20,000 jobs. Greater 
domestic energy production would increase supply and help to lower 
prices, and it would create American jobs.
  It is time to take action. Denying ANWR development 10 years ago was 
a mistake, a mistake I hope we learn a lesson from. The Senate missed 
an opportunity 10 years ago that would have brought gas price relief 
and more supply, keeping more money in this country, creating jobs in 
this country right now. We should not make the same mistake again. You 
cannot repeat that statement too often. We should not make the same 
mistake again. We should be looking ahead 10 years, as they were doing 
in 2002, but they were using it as an excuse to do nothing. So don't 
ever tell me don't drill today because it will not come on line until 
10 years from now. That is not a very wise thing to say to me, after 
you said that 10 years ago. We should have learned the lesson.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.


                             Gulf Oilspill

  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I come to the floor to recognize a 
solemn occasion. In two days, on Friday, April 20, it will be the 2-
year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. I want to pause at 
this moment of anniversary, 2 years, and offer a few thoughts about 
what was clearly a very significant episode and challenge for our whole 
country, but particularly for my State of Louisiana and for the gulf 
coast.
  First of all, I want to start where I think we should always start in 
discussing and considering this event, and that is the loss of 11 
lives. Eleven men were killed in that explosion. Again, we need to 
pause, reflect, pray, and offer prayerful support to them and their 
families. Those 11 victims were Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Aaron 
Dale Burkeen, Adam Wiese, Roy Kemp, Jason Anderson, Gordon Jones, Blair 
Manuel, Dewey Revette, Karl Dale Kleppinger, Jr., and Shane Roshto.
  I ask unanimous consent that here on the Senate floor we pause for a 
few seconds in silent, prayerful thought and consideration of those 11 
men and their families.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (Moment of silence.)
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Thank you, Madam President. The tragedy, of course,

[[Page 5025]]

started there with those 11 lives lost and we must never forget that, 
including as we redouble our efforts to ensure safety in those sorts of 
drilling environments in the future.
  Of course, the second big impact was on the environment, particularly 
the gulf environment where I live, in Louisiana--4.9 million barrels of 
oil were discharged during the spill. That was about 50,000 barrels a 
day, every day for 3 months; 320 miles of Louisiana coastline were 
oiled. That was a little over half of the total coastline on the gulf 
that was oiled--600 miles. Over 86,000 square miles of waters were 
closed to fishing; about 36 percent of Federal waters in the gulf were 
closed.
  We did that on a very aggressive, proactive basis to make sure we 
avoided any contaminated seafood ever reaching a store shelf, ever 
reaching a restaurant. The good news is we accomplished that. Through 
that proactive closing, not a single piece of contaminated seafood ever 
reached a store shelf or ever reached a restaurant customer. That was 
quite an accomplishment.
  Lots of dead animals were collected--6,800; 6,100 birds and also 
other sea turtles and dolphins. It was the biggest ever in American 
history, a huge environmental disaster.
  Two years later, as we pause and look at the environmental effect of 
that, frankly, there is good news and bad news--or at least good news 
and continuing challenges. The good news is I don't think anyone would 
have predicted that the gulf would rebound to where it is today. Mother 
Nature has proved again to be amazingly resilient. That is good news. 
At the time there were all sorts of pretty dire predictions of huge 
dead zones covering half the gulf. That has certainly not materialized. 
So Mother Nature has proved amazingly resilient. But I don't want to 
trivialize continuing challenges, continuing work. There is continuing 
environmental work, I understand core projects that are ongoing that 
are very important. First is the NRDA process, under Federal law, the 
Natural Resource Damage Assessment. That is the process under Federal 
law by which all stakeholders help assess the damage to the environment 
so that the folks guilty of this horrendous incident pay for those 
damages, pay the State, pay the Federal Government, pay others who will 
work to restore the environment.
  That NRDA process is ongoing. It is a multiyear process. But there is 
some positive result from that process already. Step one of the process 
was a settlement with BP for an upfront payment of about $1 billion.
  Just today, two specific projects in Louisiana were announced as a 
direct result of that first--not last but first--upfront payment of $1 
billion. There is the Lake Hermitage Marsh Creation Project in 
Plaquemines Parish. That will create approximately 104 acres of 
brackish marsh from beneficial use of dredge material. That is being 
announced today. And the Louisiana Oyster Culture Project--that is the 
placement of oyster cultch onto about 850 acres of public oyster seed 
grounds throughout coastal Louisiana. So those projects are the start 
of that NRDA project coming to fruition.
  Then the second important work that is ongoing that involves all of 
us here in the Senate directly is the need to pass the RESTORE Act 
through the highway reauthorization bill, the transportation 
reauthorization bill.
  The RESTORE Act language would dedicate 80 percent of the Clean Water 
Act fines related to this disaster to gulf coast restoration. I thank 
all of my colleagues again for an enormously positive, overwhelmingly 
positive, bipartisan vote to attach that RESTORE Act language to the 
Senate highway bill. I urge my House colleagues, including House 
conservatives, to pass a House version of the highway bill today. That 
is important for our country, for highway infrastructure, and it is 
important because it is a vehicle for this RESTORE Act.
  A third and final category I want to touch on that is not as 
positive, frankly, as the environmental rebound is the impact of all of 
this and the related moratorium on drilling to our economy on the gulf 
coast and energy production. Immediately after the disaster, very soon 
thereafter, President Obama announced a complete moratorium on activity 
in the gulf on new drilling. That moratorium lasted several months. I 
think that was a bad mistake, an overreaction to the disaster. I think 
that has been borne out in several ways, including the panel of experts 
that the President got together. Their report, we now know, was 
actually doctored and edited at the White House to make it seem like 
those true experts supported a full moratorium, when we know directly 
from them that they did not.
  This moratorium went in place anyway and it created a lot of 
additional economic harm and hurt to a lot of gulf coast residents and 
workers that was unnecessary. Of course we needed to pause and get new 
procedures and some new safety regulations in place, of course we 
needed to learn the lessons of the disaster and incorporate those into 
practices, but we did not need an all-out moratorium for months. And we 
do not need a continuing slowdown that continues to this day. An 
analogy I have often used is when we have a horrible disaster such as 
an airplane crash, we do not ground every plane for months after such 
an incident. We allow the industry and that important travel and 
commercial activity to continue as we immediately learn the lessons of 
the disaster and incorporate it into safety proceedings.
  Well, unfortunately, my point of view did not hold sway at the White 
House. We had this complete, formal moratorium which lasted into 
October 2010. But when that formal, complete moratorium was lifted, it 
didn't just end there. For months and months after that, we had a de 
facto moratorium, permits which were not happening. There was only a 
trickle of permits. Now, even though permitting has increased somewhat, 
we have a dramatic permit slowdown and a slowdown of activity in the 
gulf. Now more than ever, our country and our citizens cannot afford 
that. The price at the gas pump is about $4 a gallon. It has more than 
doubled during President Obama's tenure. We cannot afford this 
avoidable slowdown and decrease in important domestic energy activity.
  Again, a lot of folks around the country don't realize it, but 
permitting in the gulf is still way below pre-BP levels. It is 40 
percent below pre-BP levels. Now, again, we need to learn and we have 
learned the lessons of the BP disaster. We need to incorporate those 
into our regulatory policy, and we have. But we cannot afford a permit 
slowdown of more than 40 percent since before the BP disaster. Because 
of that and because of other factors, energy production is down on 
Federal property and all oil production was down about 14 percent in 
the last year. Federal offshore production is down about 17 percent. So 
that is some of the most lasting negative economic impact from the 
disaster. The Obama administration's wrongheaded reaction to it and the 
lingering policy on energy production is something we cannot afford as 
the gulf region, we cannot afford as a country, and we can afford less 
than ever now with the price at the pump.
  Again, I hope we do learn the lessons of this disaster. I hope we 
continue to ensure that those safety and other lessons are built into 
our regulatory framework and best practices in the industry. I think 
that has largely been done, and that work continues. I also hope we 
honor the lifework of those 11 men who lost their lives, who worked 
hard every day in that industry producing good American energy by not 
only allowing that work to happen safely but allowing that work to 
happen and allowing American citizens to benefit from that work.
  The United States is the single most energy-rich country in the 
world, bar none. For instance, we are far richer than any Middle 
Eastern country, such as Saudi Arabia. The problem is that we are the 
only country in the world that puts well over 90 percent of those 
domestic resources off limits and says: No, no, no. No you can't do 
this, and no you can't touch that.
  We need to build a commonsense American energy policy that says: Yes. 
Yes, we can. Yes, we can do it safely,

[[Page 5026]]

and, yes, we can provide American energy for American families and the 
American economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada.

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