[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13475-13500]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       ENERGY SAVINGS AND INDUSTRIAL COMPETITIVENESS ACT OF 2013

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of S. 1392, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1392) to promote energy savings in residential 
     buildings and industry, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Wyden (for Merkley) amendment No. 1858, to provide for a 
     study and report on standby usage power standards implemented 
     by States and other industrialized nations.

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when the Senate began debate on the 
bipartisan energy efficiency bill yesterday, I thought it was important 
to start by putting the discussion in the context of what I know 
Senators heard all summer long. All summer long Senators heard from 
folks at home who said: Look, when the Senate goes back into session in 
September, what you folks have to do is knock off some of this 
bickering, this pettiness, which seems like a kind of glorified food 
fight, and get serious about real issues, get serious about those kinds 
of concerns that are most important to us here at home--energy, 
creating good-paying jobs, the infrastructure, and all of those bread-
and-butter questions that go right to the heart of how middle-class 
people in America improve their standard of living.
  I was struck yesterday--and I especially appreciate the tone brought 
to this discussion by the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator 
from Ohio--by how the Senate reflected and got, in those first few 
hours of the debate, the message from the summer. It seemed this body 
heard the American people saying: Knock off this pettiness and this 
bickering and get serious about real issues, and that means doing it in 
a bipartisan way. In the first couple hours of this discussion, we had 
five amendments that were bipartisan, and all of them stemmed, in 
effect, from Senators on both sides of the aisle who were responding to 
this kind of welling up of the benefits of energy savings and how those 
energy savings help to create good-paying jobs and a cleaner 
environment.
  For the first couple hours, we had Senator after Senator coming in 
these bipartisan kind of pairs to discuss real issues. So I am just 
going to spend a few minutes talking about how that unfolded.
  The first one that came up was the Inhofe-Carper amendment. Those two 
might not agree on every possible cause but certainly they said: Look, 
we ought to include thermal energy in the definition of renewable 
energy as part of the Federal energy purchases that take place. That 
probably is too logical for some--and certainly if you want to spend 
your time on polarizing fights you might not be that interested in the 
Inhofe-Carper amendment--but I said I was going to back that because 
two Senators did a lot of good, constructive work and they came to us 
early on with a good idea.
  Then we heard from Senator Collins and Senator Udall about another 
practical idea to reduce redtape--to reduce bureaucracy and redtape--so 
we could maximize energy efficiency programs in our schools.
  We also heard about a useful amendment from Senators Bennet and 
Ayotte in terms of recognizing the efficiency achievements of 
commercial building tenants. This space constitutes about 41 percent of 
all the energy that is used in our country, and so two Senators said 
here is an opportunity to again promote the efficiency

[[Page 13476]]

and the visibility of the programs that work.
  Then we had a useful amendment offered by Senators Klobuchar and 
Hoeven to assist nongovernmental organizations. These are the churches 
and the senior citizens groups and the programs for kids. These are the 
nonprofits. And what that bipartisan coalition wanted to do was to 
assist nongovernmental organizations in making these energy-efficient 
improvements.
  Then as the fifth part of this discussion we had the Landrieu-Wicker-
Pryor amendment to improve the way in which various governmental 
agencies select the Green Building Program certification systems for 
Federal agency use--again, something designed to reduce some of the 
bureaucratic redtape that is associated with how these programs are 
implemented.
  So there you are. The first five amendments are bipartisan. They are 
in response to this kind of welling up, as I would characterize it, to 
the opportunity that this bill presents.
  We received letters from a number of organizations just today--the 
National Association of Manufacturers, the American Council for an 
Energy-Efficient Economy, the Business Roundtable, the Alliance to Save 
Energy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council--all of which wrote 
to Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell to express their 
support for this legislation. I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record this letter.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                               September 11, 2013.
       Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell: We 
     write representing a broad spectrum of interests to express 
     our support of S. 1392, the Energy Savings and Industrial 
     Competitiveness Act, introduced by Senators Shaheen (D-NH) 
     and Portman (R-OH). This bill reflects a bi-partisan, 
     consensus agreement on a set of energy policies that will 
     benefit the economy, advance energy security, and improve the 
     quality of the environment. All agree that expanding energy 
     efficiency is in the national interest and this legislation 
     would increase energy efficiency opportunities for 
     businesses, consumers, and the federal government.
       S. 1392 is built on a consensus principle and the broad 
     support it has received is the product of that principle. It 
     is our hope that the Senate will proceed with full 
     consideration of this bill in a manner that gives it the best 
     opportunity to move forward in the legislative process.
       Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to 
     continuing to work with you and the Senate to support federal 
     energy efficiency policies that benefit all Americans.
           Sincerely,

     National Association of Manufacturers.

     Natural Resources Defense Council.

     American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

     Alliance to Save Energy.
     Business Roundtable.

  Mr. WYDEN. The reason they wrote this kind of letter is that the 
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has estimated that 
just 10 of the efficiency amendments--most of which were introduced and 
heard by our energy subcommittee on June 25--would increase, by 2030, 
the number of jobs created by 10,000. So 10,000 jobs, and we have just 
10 of those amendments that would make that kind of difference, and the 
amendments would increase energy savings by over 10 percent and 
increase the annual savings by 2030 by $1.5 billion.
  The Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, 
the leading environmental groups--that is not exactly a coalition that 
comes together for every important energy issue, every important 
environmental question all the time. But they are there on this one, 
and they are there to a great extent because they understand that 
modernizing energy policy and having an ``all of the above'' energy 
policy means you have to pass legislation like the Shaheen-Portman bill 
and the useful amendments that are associated with it.
  Senators come to the floor here in the Senate constantly to talk 
about how they are for an ``all of the above'' energy policy. It is 
almost obligatory that you mention it three or four times just to show 
you are serious about energy policy. You can't be serious unless you 
support a robust bipartisan effort, such as the Shaheen-Portman bill. 
This is too important to the overall agenda for energy, productivity, 
job creation, and a cleaner environment.
  I look forward to hearing more from colleagues on their efficiency 
amendments. I very much hope we can keep the amendments that go forward 
relevant to the question of energy policy.
  It just seems to me that when you have a bipartisan foundation, as we 
have with this bill--and it started bipartisan with the Senator from 
New Hampshire and the Senator from Ohio, and it got significantly more 
bipartisan yesterday.
  It would be one thing if Senators came to the floor yesterday and 
said: We are here to talk about energy legislation. I really don't care 
about this topic. What I want to do is talk about these other issues 
that are important to me politically.
  That would be one thing. But Senators didn't do that. They came to 
the floor and they said they want to talk about energy, they want to 
talk about getting something done in a bipartisan way, they like the 
bipartisan bill, and they want to make it even stronger. It seems to me 
that if we now spend an appreciable amount of our time undermining that 
bipartisan foundation and preventing us from working together on a 
subject Senators say they care about, that they recognize is part of an 
``all of the above'' energy policy, that would be particularly 
unfortunate.
  This bill is an opportunity for the Senate to put some points on the 
board for the people who sent us here to pass legislation that is going 
to benefit the country and have a positive impact on folks at home.
  Senator Murkowski and I and Senators Shaheen and Portman talked 
yesterday about the extraordinary breadth of the coalition that 
supports this bill--business and energy efficiency advocates and 
environmental organizations. More than 200 businesses and groups from 
across the political spectrum support this bill.
  I have already asked that their letter be printed in the Record, but 
I would like to read one passage from the letter that I think reflects 
the case for enacting this bill. Those organizations--again, the 
Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the 
Natural Resources Defense Council--agreed that ``this bill reflects a 
bi-partisan, consensus agreement on a set of energy policies that will 
benefit the economy, advance energy security, and improve the quality 
of the environment. All agree that expanding energy efficiency is in 
the national interest and this legislation would increase energy 
efficiency opportunities for businesses, consumers, and the federal 
government.''
  So why the Senate would want to say no to something like that because 
Senators want to advance other unrelated issues important to them 
really doesn't add up. I know in the Senate there is a desire to debate 
a whole host of issues, but the reality is that Senators who have 
talked about energy policy for years and years--and there are a host of 
them for whom energy is particularly important--now say they want to 
have their issues that are unrelated to energy advanced today, even 
though that has the potential to undermine this bill. I don't know how 
that adds up if you give a lot of speeches at home about sensible 
energy policy and then you take steps to undermine a bipartisan effort, 
which got more bipartisan yesterday.
  So I am very hopeful that this legislation, which got out of the 
energy committee on a 19-to-3 vote and got better yesterday, starting 
with Senators Inhofe and Carper and going through all the Senators who 
had bipartisan proposals, I hope it will not be undermined by unrelated 
matters. If we stay focused on efficiency, I believe we will have an 
even stronger vote than we had in the committee, which was a 19-to-3 
vote, because Senators will have made clear that they understand this 
debate is about energy productivity, it is about job creation, it is 
about a cleaner environment, and that they especially understand this 
bill reflects what Senators heard all this summer.

[[Page 13477]]

  All this summer the message was, go back to Washington, deal with 
important issues, particularly those related to the economy. Do it in a 
bipartisan way. That is what I believe an overwhelming majority of 
Senators wants to do, and if we keep this bill related to energy 
efficiency, that will be the result, and that will be good for the 
country.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I respect and appreciate my distinguished 
colleague, the majority floor manager on this bill, and I appreciate 
his remarks. But since they were all directed at my activity, I would 
like to briefly respond.
  I have nothing against his efforts. I have nothing against this bill 
and the provisions of it. I applaud that work, and I want to support 
that work. And I too listened really hard this summer, all through 
August. I do townhall meetings in every parish in Louisiana every 
Congress. This August alone I did 18, and I did hear a lot. Quite 
frankly, I didn't hear about this bill or any provision of this bill, 
but I am not denigrating it. I support the vast majority of the 
provisions of this bill.
  What I did hear over and over is this: Washington shouldn't be 
treated differently and better than we are. What is good for America 
needs to be good for Washington. And if that rule is applied across the 
board, you all will start getting a lot of things right in Congress and 
in Washington.
  I heard that articulated hundreds of times at 18 townhall meetings in 
a lot of different ways. That is what my amendment is all about. And 
the reason I am demanding a vote now is simply because this illegal OPM 
rule is set to happen and go into effect on October 1, so it is time-
sensitive. I didn't ask for that. I didn't invite that. I would like 
that rule to go away. But that is a fact, and that is why this is a 
pressing time-sensitive matter.
  The distinguished Senator also talked about bipartisanship. Well, 
this proposal--the ``no Washington exemption from ObamaCare'' 
proposal--is thoroughly bipartisan in America. It has enormous 
bipartisan support in America. The only place it is not popular, quite 
frankly, on a bipartisan basis is in Washington, DC.
  Again, what I heard over and over in 18 townhall meetings was this: 
The quicker you all apply all laws to yourselves as much as they apply 
to America, the quicker you will start figuring this stuff out and 
doing the right thing in Washington.
  I agree with that. So I am simply asking for a timely vote on my 
proposal--which has to be before October 1 for reasons I have explained 
that are beyond my control--and I have no desire to hold up these other 
amendments or this bill.
  In that spirit, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be 
set aside and the following amendments be made pending: Bennet No. 
1847, Enzi No. 1863, Udall No. 1845, Sessions No. 1879, Inhofe No. 
1851, Klobuchar No. 1856, and Vitter No. 1866; that on Tuesday, 
September 17, at a time to be determined jointly by the majority and 
minority leaders, my amendment No. 1866 and a side-by-side amendment on 
the same subject by the majority leader be made pending and receive 60 
minutes of debate evenly divided and controlled by the majority bill 
manager and me; that no points of order be in order in relation to 
these two amendments; and that upon expiration of the time for debate, 
without any intervening motions or debate, the Senate then proceed to 
votes on these two amendments subject to a 60-vote threshold for 
passage, and subsequent to each amendment vote and motion to 
reconsider, each vote be made and laid upon the table.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The objection is heard.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, reclaiming my time, I am sorry for that. I 
think that establishes a perfectly reasonable path forward in which we 
could present and vote on these energy votes the distinguished floor 
manager is talking about. It would mean a 60-minute debate on this 
important and timely topic I am bringing up next week. So I think that 
is a reasonable path forward.
  But I have an alternative that would take it out of the context of 
this bill, if that would be preferable.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the Vitter 
amendment No. 1866; that on Wednesday, September 25, 2013, at 3 p.m., 
the Senate discharge the relevant committees from consideration of my 
bill, the No Exemption for Washington From ObamaCare Act, and proceed 
to immediate consideration of that bill; that without any intervening 
motions or debate, the Senate proceed to 60 minutes of debate on that 
bill, evenly divided and controlled by the majority leader and me; that 
the bill not be subject to any amendments or motions to commit; that 
after debate has expired, the bill be engrossed for a third reading, 
read a third time, and the Senate immediately vote on final passage; 
and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, again reclaiming the floor, I think that 
is unfortunate because that would be a path forward that takes this 
issue and this vote completely out of the context of this bill--which I 
have no problem with. I have no problem with that. I have no desire to 
obstruct or delay this bill, and I have laid out a path that makes that 
crystal clear. I am open to any reasonable variation of these ideas, 
either an amendment vote next week on this bill or a timely vote on the 
amendment--or a timely vote on my identical bill before October 1. I am 
completely open to any of that. I hope the majority side and the 
majority leader will take that under consideration and agree to a 
version of that. That would immediately solve this impasse, which is 
created by the majority leader, not by me.
  This is an important issue. This is timely. This illegal OPM rule, 
which creates a special exemption, a special deal for Washington, is 
happening October 1. I heard a lot from my constituents this August and 
I heard a lot about that. I heard a lot about how Washington should 
live under the same rules as America. I heard that on a thoroughly 
bipartisan basis. I look forward to furthering that important goal.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, by way of responding to the distinguished 
Senator from Louisiana, I think I am about as bipartisan as anybody 
here. The one thing I have tried to make essentially the focus of my 
time in public service is trying to find a way to get folks together, 
whether it is on tax reform or health care or education with Marco 
Rubio. That is what I want to be all about.
  Particularly on the Energy Committee, Senator Murkowski has 
consistently met our side halfway, trying to find common ground, trying 
to get folks to work together. The two of us laugh often about it. We 
do not agree on every single issue under the sun, but there is an awful 
lot we can agree on. That is why no other committee in the Senate has 
passed as many bills to the floor in a bipartisan way as the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee.
  When it comes to working on important issues in a bipartisan way, the 
Senator says that is what he wants to do. He got me at ``hello'' on 
that. But I ask him to not hold this bipartisan legislation, which was 
a first-rate bill when Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman brought it 
here. It got better yesterday during the first couple hours. Senator 
Murkowski and I heard five amendments from Senators. This is already a 
block of 10 Senators. Each of them was bipartisan, starting with 
Senator Inhofe and Senator Carper. It got better yesterday.
  I ask the Senator from Louisiana, who I know cares a lot about energy 
policy--in his State I imagine they talk about energy quite a bit--to 
not

[[Page 13478]]

hold this bipartisan Energy bill hostage for something else. Let's get 
this passed. It is the first significant Energy bill on the floor of 
the Senate since 2007.
  Hydropower was a very good bill, largely accomplished through the 
leadership of Senator Murkowski and a handful of other Republican and 
Democratic Senators. This is a chance to put points on the board for an 
issue that dominates so much of our country and I know certainly the 
part of the country that the Senator from Louisiana represents.
  I want him to understand--and I think he knows--since my days when I 
was codirector of the Gray Panthers, health care is truly my first 
love. I am willing to work with the Senator from Louisiana on these 
health care issues. But I implore, in the strongest possible way, that 
we not hold up this bipartisan Energy bill, a bill that was bipartisan 
before it arrived and it got better after it did--that we not hold this 
bipartisan Energy bill hostage for something else.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, again, I respect the distinguished 
majority floor leader. I appreciate his comments. He has been very 
bipartisan in his work in the Senate. But I am a little confused 
because it is as if he did not hear my unanimous consent request. I 
think those are clearly two possible paths forward that do not have to 
hold up anything. All I am asking for is a vote on a very important 
issue before this illegal rule goes into effect October 1.
  Again, I re-urge both unanimous consent requests and ask the 
distinguished floor leader, why is that not a path forward and why do 
the American people--forget about me--why do the American people not 
deserve this vote? Because they sure as heck support this on a 
thoroughly bipartisan basis.
  Again, I am open to either path forward, either a vote on my 
amendment on this bill or let's withdraw that and have a separate vote 
before October 1. That is a path forward. There is no hostage-taking 
here. There is no holding up anything. What I am reacting to is this 
illegal OPM rule and this October 1 deadline, which I certainly did not 
ask for. I think that is completely contrary to the law. But now that 
it has been issued I think we need to respond and have a public vote. I 
urge that, either path forward. Let's take that in a bipartisan way. 
Let's listen to our constituents, Republicans, Democrats, and 
Independents. If we listen to them, we will not only have this vote, we 
will pass this amendment, we will pass this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I also wish to respond to my colleague 
from Louisiana because I appreciate his interest in addressing some of 
the concerns on health care that have come up. I would certainly like 
the opportunity to correct a lot of the misinformation that is out 
there. But, again, I think there are other opportunities to do that. We 
should not be doing that on an energy bill that has such bipartisan 
support.
  The Senator is talking about wanting to get a vote on his 
legislation. Senator Portman and I have been waiting for 3 years to get 
a vote on this legislation. For something that has such overwhelming 
support, I hope my friend from Louisiana is going to be flexible and 
think about how he can address the concerns he has and yet let the 
debate on this bill go forward.
  We have, as Senator Wyden said, 16 bipartisan amendments that have 
already been vetted by both sides on the committee, that are ready to 
go, that I think we could probably get a voice vote on, on all of 
those, because we have so much support on both sides.
  This is legislation on which we have had a number of other amendments 
filed that we should debate, around energy, because we have not debated 
energy on the floor of the Senate since 2007. We have more than 260 
groups and businesses that have endorsed this legislation. Everybody 
from Eastern Mountain Sports, which is a great New Hampshire business, 
to large companies such as General Electric and Raytheon, to small 
businesses such as--in New Hampshire we have a company called Warner 
Power, which makes the first innovation in transformers in over 100 
years; they are supporting it.
  One of the other businesses I thought was particularly interesting is 
Eileen Fisher, which makes women's clothes. They support the 
legislation. As everybody knows, anybody who is doing manufacturing in 
this country is using a lot of energy and they are looking for any way 
possible to reduce their energy use because they want to be 
competitive.
  We have a number of manufacturing companies on this list that are 
interested in how they can reduce their energy use. Then we have a 
whole number of organizations, everything from the Christian Coalition 
to the Union for Reform Judaism. We have environmental groups such as 
the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. We have trade 
associations such as the American Chemistry Council. When is the last 
bill we have seen that has both the Sierra Club and the American 
Chemistry Council supporting the same legislation?
  We have a whole list of industry groups that understand that energy 
efficiency is something they can support because it is something that 
is going to allow them to add jobs in their businesses. We have the 
League of Women Voters, the National Restaurant Association, the Oil 
Heat Council of New Hampshire--a small group that is concerned about 
making sure people in New Hampshire can heat their homes at a 
reasonable cost.
  The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the Southern Alliance for 
Clean Energy--this is legislation that has support all over the 
country. The U.S. Council of Mayors as well as the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, they are supporting it because they understand first how 
important energy is for the future of this country. If we are going to 
stay competitive, we have to be able to meet the energy demands that 
businesses have, that people who are trying to heat their homes and pay 
their electric bills have, that we have as a country, as the U.S. 
government, where we are the biggest user of energy in the country and 
part of our legislation deals with government's use of energy and tries 
to reduce that.
  They understand it is in their interest to try to reduce their energy 
use. We are having a debate about how focused we are going to be on 
fossil fuels, whether we are going to put more support in for 
alternative sources of energy. But energy efficiency benefits 
everybody, regardless of whether one supports fossil fuels or new 
sources of energy. That is why this legislation makes so much sense.
  We have heard just in the last couple weeks from the American Council 
for an Energy-Efficient Economy that if we can pass this legislation, 
by 2025 it will support the creation of 136,000 jobs. How many pieces 
of legislation have we seen on the floor of the Senate that for the 
costs we are talking about in this bill--no new authorization--that we 
can support the creation of 136,000 jobs?
  Last year when they looked at the bill, they said it would also be 
the equivalent of taking 5 million cars off the road, saving consumers 
$4 billion. This is a win-win-win. At a time when we know our future 
energy opportunities are limited, to some extent, by what is happening 
in the Middle East, what is happening with foreign oil, this is 
something that makes sense. For us to be held up because there are 
people in the Chamber who want to debate health care or who want to 
debate what the EPA is doing or who want to debate any other myriad of 
issues--I understand. I am willing to have those debates. I am willing 
to take those votes. But right now we should be limiting our debate to 
energy because that is the legislation on the floor before us.
  I urge that we try to address the concerns that people have but we do 
it in a way that will allow us to move forward on this Energy bill. I 
think it is in the best interests of the country. As Senator Wyden said 
so eloquently: People in this country want us to work

[[Page 13479]]

together. They want us to work together to address the issues we are 
facing in America. Senator Portman and I have tried to do that. We have 
spent 3 years trying to do that. We want to move forward. We want to 
work together to address this issue. I certainly want to have the 
debate with my colleague from Louisiana about health care. But I don't 
want to have it right now because we cannot move forward on this 
legislation as long as that, his amendment, is holding this up.
  I hope we can work out some way to do that in a way that we can both 
find agreeable and that allows us a path forward to address energy 
because, clearly, we have to come up with a comprehensive energy 
strategy for this country. I think energy efficiency is the first step, 
and that is what this legislation would do.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I appreciate not only the words but the 
work of my colleague from New Hampshire, and I specifically suggest, 
re-urge, and again call attention to my second suggestion, in the form 
of a UC which was to withdraw my amendment from this bill as long as a 
fair vote were assured before October 1.
  The reason this is so time sensitive, and the only reason I am camped 
out here on the floor in this way, is because this illegal OPM rule 
happens October 1. This is happening right now. It was announced a 
little over a month ago. We were not here during the intervening time. 
We were in the August recess. This is happening, so I don't 
particularly want to debate this next year. We need a vote next week 
because of that timetable, which is not of my making.
  I appreciate the sentiment of the Senator from New Hampshire. I look 
forward to working with the Senator in that way.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, would my colleague yield for a question?
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I will yield for a question.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I appreciate the consent agreements are 
usually worked out by the leadership of both the majority and the 
minority. I know Senator Vitter understands that too. Would the Senator 
from Louisiana be willing to withdraw his objection to moving forward 
to amendments on the bill if he and I went--in good faith--to the 
majority and minority leaders to see if we can get some agreement on 
when we can address Senator Vitter's issue?
  Mr. VITTER. I would not agree to that because that discussion--in 
good faith--has been going on for a long time, and it is not yielding 
anything. I hope it does. But simply put, I cannot take the pressure 
off that discussion to yield something because that discussion has been 
going on for a long time. I am happy to continue that discussion, but 
moving forward with the bill, quite frankly, lets all the pressure out 
and assures defeat and lack of progress.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Would the Senator from Louisiana not agree there are 
other bills that will be coming to the Senate in the next couple of 
weeks, and so if we cannot come to an agreement, there will be another 
opportunity before the deadline when the Senator could also have this 
debate he is looking for?
  Mr. VITTER. Well, again, answering the question through the Chair, I 
would observe the time between now and October 1 is pretty darn short, 
and what may be coming to the floor is pretty limited. It may be a CR, 
and the amendment opportunities on that are very uncertain. I know 
there are nominations that are moving forward with obviously no 
amendment opportunities.
  No. 1, I don't know what other bills there may be to even try to get 
an amendment on; but, No. 2, even if I knew of those targets, I would 
not be assured of a vote. I would just be put off some more.
  Again, I am open to any solution that guarantees a vote, not for me 
but for the American people, on this important issue before October 1. 
Again, that timeline was not of my making. It was due to the issuance 
of what I think is a clearly illegal rule to benefit Washington, 
contrary to the statutory language of ObamaCare.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I have been watching with admiration 
the work done by my colleagues from New Hampshire and Ohio, Senators 
Shaheen and Portman, and I would suggest in all respect to colleagues 
who may have extraneous amendments that this measure is so important 
and vital to the future of our country. It is important not only in the 
policies it achieves but also the trust it will inspire. If we are able 
to come together and work on a bipartisan basis and get this job done, 
it can set a template for changing the mindset within this building and 
across the country as to how Congress can function.
  We have an opportunity here. Let's seize it. Let's avoid the kind of 
quagmire, gridlock, and paralysis that has been so damaging to the 
trust and confidence in our public institutions.
  Senators Shaheen and Portman deserve a tremendous amount of credit 
for getting this bill to where it is right now. They never gave up, and 
I am proud they have come this far. Let us enable this Congress to go 
the rest of the way.
  This legislation is more than the sum of its parts. It is about 
saving money--clearly saving $13.7 billion per year--and it is about 
saving energy and creating jobs. It will create 164,000 jobs by 2030, 
so it is also a great return on investment. It is also about creating 
trust and confidence in our ability to protect our national security 
from excess use of energy that makes us more dependent on nations that 
have no particular affection for us, and indeed, wish us more harm than 
good.
  This legislation authorizes $10 million in grants for institutions of 
higher learning, trade schools, and community colleges to provide 
workforce training and skill creation to engineers and builders who 
need to develop and install the latest, most cutting-edge technologies. 
It provides limited but very helpful rebates of up to $20 million over 
the next 2 years for manufacturers who upgrade their electric motors 
and transformers.
  It directs the Department of Energy to focus its ongoing research and 
development offices on alternative energy sources for our heating and 
power. These measures, along with energy efficiency required in our 
Federal buildings and facilities, are meaningful and real. They may not 
be the biggest steps but they are important steps that take us in the 
right direction toward saving energy, money, and ultimately saving our 
planet. We know climate change--more properly known as climate and 
planet disruption--are facing us if we fail to act as this measure 
would have us do.
  I have an amendment to the bill that will provide for very 
straightforward, noncontroversial steps in this same direction. It is 
amendment No. 1878, and it would require the U.S. Department of Energy 
to study the nonmonetary benefits to our communities of energy-saving 
products and complying with energy codes for buildings.
  For example, buildings account for almost 40 percent of the world's 
greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Business Council for 
Sustainable Development. We all see the difference energy efficiency 
makes in our pocketbooks and wallets. This amendment will help quantify 
these same improvements so far as a cleaner environment, and energy 
saving contributes in nonmonetary ways to our quality of life. It makes 
us more efficient in the workplace because the quality of life in the 
workplace is improved and better conditions make people more 
productive.
  There are other amendments, such as the fine work done by my 
colleague Senator Bennet of Colorado to get a better understanding of 
the financial--that is the monetary savings that commercial energy-
efficient buildings generate for both owners and tenants. My amendment 
looks to the nonmonetary benefits and seeks to quantify them and build 
a case for energy efficiency there and throughout our society insofar 
as we work better and enjoy life more from savings this bill may 
achieve in money and energy.

[[Page 13480]]

  As chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight of Federal 
and Agency Actions, I have seen how Federal agencies are able, through 
the rulemaking process, to take into account the nonmonetary factors 
during their cost-benefit analysis. Consumers and manufacturers should 
also have a better understanding of the nonmonetary factors that are 
addressed through energy efficiency, such as improved building codes 
that benefit occupants and the general population as well as greater 
office productivity.
  There are three areas of manufacturing in Connecticut that are 
thriving because of energy efficiency. United Technologies makes 
building systems, elevators, and heating and air conditioning units and 
systems that are focused on the most innovative and sustainable 
technology. We all use their energy-efficient Otis elevators every day 
to come to the Senate floor, to bring constituents to the Capitol 
Visitor Center.
  At Legrand in West Hartford, CT, visitors can see firsthand the jobs 
this legislation supports. Legrand employs about 500 people. They make 
the electrical and digital insides of buildings across commercial, 
industrial, and residential markets. They have a demonstration visitors 
can walk through and see how energy-efficient products work and how 
they save energy, money, and also improve quality of life.
  This past May, Legrand was recognized by the U.S. Department of 
Energy for its continuing efforts in making energy efficiency a top 
priority through that company's involvement in the Better Buildings, 
Better Plants Challenge.
  Connecticut is also leading the world in making energy-efficient fuel 
cells and hydrogen energy systems, which is a third area of great 
importance in energy savings. Fuel cells are of great importance to 
everything from our neighborhood schools to military bases to many 
other areas where inexpensive energy storage and power, as well as 
increased reliability, result from grid independence. These lessons are 
tangible, real, and dramatic. They are lessons in energy efficiency.
  In fact, after Superstorm Sandy, we know something about the need for 
reliable backup power in Connecticut. Fuel cells are our future, and we 
should be recognizing that energy efficiency is our future as well. It 
is an investment that helps everyone in all communities.
  I have long supported making energy efficiency more supportable, 
affordable, and reliable by improving the existing and new 
technologies. Since arriving in the Senate, I have fought for continued 
adequate funding for weatherization assistance programs.
  A comprehensive energy strategy is what the Nation needs. This 
measure is a step in that direction. We cannot live successfully and we 
cannot thrive as a Nation in the 21st century without an energy policy 
and without moving forward on measures such as this one that enable us 
to be more energy efficient.
  This legislation is an important approach and part of a comprehensive 
policy our Nation needs to address climate disruption, national 
security threats, fiscal austerity, and all of the challenges of 
quality of life that are so imminent and direct to our Nation.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I appreciate the work of my colleague from 
Connecticut. I will add his amendment numbered 1878 to my proposed UC. 
I absolutely support it being fully debated and having a vote. I have 
absolutely no problem with that.
  Alternatively, I have no problem withdrawing my amendment from this 
bill and getting a vote subsequent to this bill before October 1, and 
certainly the Blumenthal amendment numbered 1878 should get a vote. I 
fully support that.
  Finally, I absolutely agree with the need to build the confidence of 
the American people. Let me suggest that I don't think the way to build 
the confidence of the American people is by passing some energy 
efficiency act, which I expect to support but they have never heard of, 
and sweeping under the rug and thereby protecting this special deal and 
special Washington exemption from ObamaCare.
  I think step one of rebuilding the confidence of the American people 
is to say and to live by the motto that everything we pass and apply to 
America has to apply in the same way to us. That is exactly what this 
illegal OPM rule goes against and disrupts.
  There is a statutory provision in ObamaCare that specifically says 
all Members of Congress and all congressional staff have to go to the 
exchange. This OPM rule completely and effectively reverses that. It 
takes all the sting out of that. It is contrary to the law and, 
therefore, illegal. I think letting that stand, ignoring it, or 
sweeping it under the rug is no way to build the confidence of the 
American people.
  I want to do both things. I want to address that and I want to debate 
and vote on this bill and all of these amendments, certainly including 
the Blumenthal amendment No. 1878 which I will certainly add to my 
proposed UC.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague and 
friend from Louisiana for his support of my amendment and say that I 
respect and appreciate the passion and zeal he has brought to this 
debate on behalf of his beliefs. We can disagree on the policies and 
the merits of those beliefs, and I would respectfully add my voice to 
the voices of other colleagues who have suggested there may be other 
ways to raise this issue and to indeed have a vote. As my colleague 
from New Hampshire articulated so well, I would in no way shirk from 
votes on the issues the Senator from Louisiana has raised. I am ready 
to debate and confront those issues and deal with the merits. I would 
simply suggest there may be better ways to raise this issue than, in 
effect, to block consideration of a bill that is so important to the 
American people, so widely supported among so many different groups, 
and has amassed and mobilized such a strong bipartisan coalition.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I will respond through the Chair that I 
appreciate those remarks and the genuine sentiment behind those 
remarks. I welcome and will accept any reasonable path forward that 
assures a vote before October 1, which is the deadline established by 
OPM's illegal rule. I will agree to any path forward that assures a 
vote before October 1, absolutely. I look forward to that.
  Finally, I am not blocking anything. I am proposing votes. I am 
proposing making amendments and, alternatively, I am proposing 
withdrawing my amendment from this bill as long as we can vote before 
October 1.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Louisiana 
for his comments.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about energy 
efficiency and my amendment to Senators Jeanne Shaheen's and Rob 
Portman's Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act. I am very 
pleased we are acting on this legislation today, and I am very 
appreciative of the work the Energy and Natural Resources Committee 
Chairman Ron Wyden and Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski have done to get 
us to this point.
  This a very important piece of legislation. In the United States, our 
energy consumption is about one-fifth of the world's total energy 
consumption. Yet when you consider we have less than one-twentieth of 
the world's population, that says we have a role to play

[[Page 13481]]

here and especially when a tremendous amount of that energy is simply 
lost through inefficient buildings, appliances, industrial processes, 
and automobiles. Those losses have been estimated to cost U.S. 
businesses and households $130 billion a year.
  By making investments in energy efficiency, we can help consumers 
lower energy costs, and we can reduce pollution, boost the 
manufacturing sector, and create jobs. That is a win-win-win-win.
  That is what this legislation is all about. I am proud that the first 
hearing I held as chairman of the Energy Subcommittee on the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee was on amendments to Senator Shaheen's and 
Senator Portman's bill. We considered a number of amendments that would 
bolster the bill's efforts to make our economy more energy efficient. 
Now we have the opportunity to consider some of those amendments we 
addressed in my subcommittee on the floor of the Senate. I would like 
to call up and briefly talk about an amendment I filed to this bill.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending 
amendment and call up amendment No. 1855.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would 
like to propose an alternative unanimous consent request that would 
certainly allow that amendment to be made pending.
  I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and 
the following amendments be made pending: Franken No. 1855, Blumenthal 
No. 1878, Bennet No. 1847, Enzi No. 1863, Udall No. 1845, Sessions No. 
1879, Inhofe No. 1851, Klobuchar No. 1856, and Vitter No. 1866; and 
that on Tuesday, September 17, at a time to be determined jointly by 
the majority and minority leaders, my amendment Vitter No. 1866 and a 
side-by-side amendment on the same subject by the majority leader be 
made pending and receive 60 minutes of debate, evenly divided and 
controlled by the majority bill manager and myself; that no points of 
order be in order in relation to these two amendments; that upon 
expiration of the time for debate, without any intervening motions or 
debate, the Senate then proceed to votes on these two amendments 
subject to a 60-vote threshold for adoption, and that subsequent to 
each amendment vote, a motion to reconsider each vote be made and laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request from the 
Senator from Louisiana?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the request from the Senator from Minnesota?
  Mr. VITTER. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Minnesota has the floor.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Madam President, I am disappointed my colleague is 
objecting to us moving forward with this energy bill for reasons I 
believe are entirely unrelated to this bipartisan piece of legislation, 
for an amendment that is not germane, and I hope we can work this out. 
But in the meantime, I would like to explain what my amendment does on 
energy efficiency, which is what this bipartisan bill is about.
  My amendment is simply designed to help get information on the energy 
use in buildings. That way building owners and private sector companies 
can identify energy savings. Unless we know how well buildings are 
performing, we cannot be sure what types of energy efficiency 
technologies will be the most effective. And that is exactly what my 
amendment addresses.
  The main thing my amendment does is to require that building spaces 
that are leased by the Federal Government measure and report their 
energy use. The Federal Government is the Nation's largest consumer of 
energy. Taxpayers are paying for all of that energy. We owe it to them, 
to our taxpayers, to make sure our buildings save as much energy as 
possible.
  The Energy Savings and Independence Act of 2007 created energy 
efficiency requirements for Federal buildings and for federally leased 
spaces. However, over half of those leased spaces are exempt from these 
energy efficiency requirements. My amendment makes the Federal 
Government's energy usage accountable to taxpayers by requiring 
disclosure of energy use in all federally leased spaces, where such 
disclosures would be practical and appropriate.
  This amendment will also have a small grant program so that utilities 
and their partners that want to measure and disclose energy use in 
their buildings are able to do so. The grant program is voluntary and 
is fully offset.
  My amendment would be a significant step in making our commercial 
buildings more energy efficient. I had a call with a member of the Real 
Estate Roundtable. Benchmarking is what this is called. On that call, 
he was saying: Well, not only will this save the Federal Government 
money, save taxpayers money, but it will, through the whole commercial 
building sector, create more energy efficiency and save dollars. Again, 
it will make the Federal Government more accountable to taxpayers.
  By accessing information on the energy use of buildings, private 
sector investors and energy service contract companies can identify and 
deploy more effective energy efficiency retrofit improvements. 
Retrofits are a win-win-win, and it is low-hanging fruit. When you do a 
retrofit, you are putting people to work doing the retrofit, you are 
improving the value of the property, you are using products that are 
made by manufacturers in the United States, so you are creating jobs 
there, you are also reducing the amount of energy use, so saving money. 
Retrofits pay for themselves. It lowers our carbon footprint and, 
again, it saves money. So it is a win-win-win. Let's do that.
  I again commend Senators Shaheen and Portman on their legislation. I 
look forward to the adoption of this commonsense amendment, and I yield 
the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I strongly support the Franken amendment. 
This concept known as benchmarking--and that is what the Senator's 
amendment is all about--is something of a term of art in the energy 
field. But I think it is important for people to know that benchmarking 
is essentially about information. It is about making markets work 
better. Benchmarking is a process that allows building owners to assess 
and disclose the energy use of their buildings so they can compare it 
to similar buildings.
  The information provides an incentive for owners to improve building 
efficiency. And, obviously, better information on energy use is itself 
an incentive to improve efficiency.
  All this amendment does is expand benchmarking. In effect, it 
approaches the issue of building efficiency and says: One of the most 
practical commonsense steps we can take is to expand access to good 
information.
  So I am very appreciative that the Senator from Minnesota has offered 
this amendment. It is very much consistent with what is known as the 
ENERGY STAR Program, which also encourages building owners to share 
this kind of information.
  So I hope Senators will support it. I am sure that not every Senator 
has heard the word ``benchmarking'' before because that is something of 
a term of art in the energy policy field, but to put it in something 
resembling English, this is about sharing information, it is about 
making markets work better. There are no mandates or requirements here 
in terms of the private sector.
  I am very hopeful that, again, as part of the effort to keep this 
bill focused on energy efficiency, we can get the Franken amendment 
before the entire Senate. I support it and I support it strongly.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota

[[Page 13482]]

for coming down to the floor and talking about his amendment, even 
though he cannot officially offer it, because I think it is an 
important amendment. I think it improves the legislation. I appreciate 
the fact that he took time to figure out how to offset it because some 
of the original drafts of the amendment had some authorization without 
offsets. So this is a deficit-neutral amendment, as I understand it. I 
have looked at the offsets, and they look as if they are offsets that 
are consistent with the underlying bill to make sure we are not adding 
any burden to the deficit here.
  But it does make sense. This benchmarking is important. It enables 
people to see what others are doing, comparing performance to similar 
buildings. It is invaluable when evaluating the need for upgrades, and 
particularly in the Federal sector, where we do not have necessarily 
that same profit motive to be able to be incentivized to look at those 
comparable energy efficiency performances.
  So I like this amendment because it has a sensible approach on 
benchmarking. It has no mandates on the private sector. It does expand 
benchmarking from federally owned facilities to federally leased 
facilities, which is important because we have a number of those around 
the country. And it also does something I think positive in terms of 
requiring DOE to study the whole methodology behind benchmarking, which 
will help not only the Federal sector but the private sector. It 
requires that these methodologies be studied so that cities and States 
can implement better practices and best practices.
  So I think this amendment is an example of the four other amendments 
I see here we have already had good discussion on in the last day which 
deal with aspects of energy efficiency that improve the legislation. 
Again, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for bringing it forward, as 
have others--Senator Inhofe, Senator Carper, Senator Hoeven, Senator 
Bennet, Senator Ayotte, Senator Collins, and others, over the last 24 
hours.
  I look forward to getting the amendment actually called up so we can 
move forward. I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
find a unanimous consent agreement so we can move forward. It seems to 
me we are pretty close to that. Having followed the proceedings this 
morning, it seems as though every time we get close, there is another 
concern that gets raised. I think we need to figure out how to resolve 
the health care issue in a way that does permit this Chamber to have 
its voice heard but then get back to this underlying legislation and to 
these amendments.
  This is something we have worked on now for 2\1/2\ years. It is 
something that I think is the result of the kind of bipartisan effort 
we ought to be doing around here, helping to find common ground to 
actually move the country forward on things that actually help create 
jobs, help our economy, and make us more competitive as a country but 
also have an environmental and energy benefit.
  I yield the floor and again thank the Members who are willing to come 
down to the floor and talk about some of these amendments, even though 
we cannot officially offer them at this point.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I also wish to thank my colleague from 
Minnesota for his work and for this amendment. I wish to underscore I 
am not blocking his amendment. In fact, I presented a unanimous consent 
that makes his amendment pending, assures a debate, and would assure a 
vote. I am completely open to that with regard to that Senator's 
amendment and all the other amendments we are talking about.
  Alternatively, if it is preferable, earlier--I know the Senator from 
Minnesota was not on the floor, so I do not expect him to know this, 
but I wanted to underscore, earlier I presented an alternative 
unanimous consent request to withdraw my amendment from this bill and 
be assured of a vote outside of this bill on the Senate floor before 
October 1.
  Of course, that October 1 deadline is real and is important, not 
created by me, created by this illegal proposed OPM rule. So that is an 
alternative path forward that would take my amendment and my proposal 
completely outside of this bill. I also offered that unanimous consent 
agreement. I would re-urge it. I too hope we are making progress toward 
that sort of fair resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I would like to speak to an amendment 
that has been filed by my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Hoeven. 
I expect he will be here momentarily to speak specifically to his 
amendment, but it has to do with the Keystone Pipeline. This is an 
appropriate opportunity to talk about the energy needs our country has 
and the way in which those are being addressed.
  We believe there is a great opportunity for our country to benefit in 
so many ways from the building of the Keystone Pipeline. Obviously, 
Senator Hoeven's state is benefiting enormously from the oil and gas 
find they have in North Dakota. There are lots of abundant energy 
resources. As typically is the case, you have to have a way to get 
those to the ultimate marketplace.
  The most efficient way to do that is through a pipeline. The Keystone 
Pipeline, which has been proposed now for several years, is a way in 
which we can move about 830,000 barrels of oil every single day 
according to the Department of Energy. Not only would this pipeline 
transport Canadian crude to U.S. markets, but it would also benefit oil 
production from the Bakken formation in the Upper Great Plains.
  Just to put that figure into perspective, 830,000 barrels represent 
about half the amount that the United States imports from the Middle 
East each and every day. According to the Department of Energy, much of 
the needed oil of the United States shipped through this pipeline will 
be refined at the Gulf Coast refineries and would likely offset heavy 
crude imports from Venezuela.
  Keystone XL Pipeline is a $5.3 billion investment. According to the 
Obama State Department, the pipeline would support 42,000 jobs across 
the country; that is, over a 1- to 2-year construction period, 
approximately 3,900 would be directly employed in construction 
activities. These jobs would translate into approximately $2 billion in 
wages and earnings.
  Keystone XL would also generate much needed tax revenue in several 
States, including an estimated $5 billion in additional property taxes 
throughout the operational life of the pipeline. The Keystone XL 
Pipeline has been under review now for 1,819 days. September 19 will 
mark the 5-year anniversary of the initial application for the 
pipeline's Presidential permit. Four environmental reviews have already 
concluded that the pipeline would not have a significant impact on the 
environment.
  As President Obama continues to delay, Canada's oil supply is growing 
by the day and is expected to double by the year 2025. Canadian oil 
producers are quickly building pipelines to Canada's east and west 
coast to ship their oil to foreign markets. Meanwhile, reports indicate 
we may not get a decision out of the administration until the year 
2014. By delaying approval of the pipeline, President Obama is 
providing China and other nations with an opportunity to outcompete the 
United States and gain access to Canada's growing oil supply.
  Senator Hoeven's resolution declares that the construction of the 
Keystone XL Pipeline is in our national interest. That is what the 
State Department will have to conclude at the end of this current 
environmental impact statement process, which is supposed to be wrapped 
up in the coming weeks. At that point, Secretary Kerry, the Secretary 
of State, has 90 days to determine if the pipeline is in our national 
interest.
  I would state again: this pipeline is going to create jobs, it is 
going to boost investment, it is going to reduce our dependence on 
Venezuelan oil, and it will strengthen our relationship with

[[Page 13483]]

our largest trading partner. Keystone XL Pipeline is clearly in our 
national interest. I would hope the Senate would go on record to that 
effect. If we think about the impact it can have on our economy, on 
jobs, the impact it can have on reducing that dangerous dependence we 
have on foreign sources of energy, this makes all the sense in the 
world.
  I would reiterate what I said earlier; that is, this has been 
studied, this has been scrutinized, this has been reviewed now for 5 
years. 1,819 days have elapsed since this permit was first applied for; 
five years have lapsed and four environmental reviews have been done. 
There is now currently yet another environmental impact study under 
way, which is supposed to be concluded soon, at the conclusion of which 
there will be a 90-day period in which the Secretary of State has to 
make a determination about whether the Keystone Pipeline is in our 
national interest.
  What this amendment, offered by my colleague from North Dakota, 
Senator Hoeven, would do is simply put the Senate on the record as 
saying the Keystone Pipeline is, in fact, in our national interest. I 
believe that is a statement the Senate ought to make. We ought to weigh 
in on this subject. It is clear from all of the economic impact, clear 
from the environmental impact, clear from the need that we have to get 
away from the dependence we have on foreign sources of energy that this 
is a win-win for Americans, win-win for American consumers, win-win for 
American workers who need those jobs, and a win-win for the American 
economy in not having to get so much of our oil and our energy supply 
from outside the United States.
  I would hope my colleagues and I get the chance, as we continue the 
debate on this bill, to discuss this amendment but also to ultimately 
vote on it and to declare once and for all, through the Senate, that 
this is, in fact, in the national interest. I see my colleague from 
North Dakota who is the author of this amendment is here. I credit him 
for bringing this amendment to the floor and giving us an opportunity 
to discuss what I think is a very important issue, not only to his 
State and my State and to many others that would be impacted directly 
by this, but to the entire economy and our country.
  I would yield to the Senator from North Dakota who is the author of 
the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I wish to thank the esteemed Senator 
from South Dakota for being here and for his comments on this very 
important issue and also for being a cosponsor of this amendment, both 
now and in previous amendments that I have submitted in support of the 
Keystone XL Pipeline project.
  I believe some of the other sponsors of this amendment will be 
joining us. I will ask that they are able to say a few words as well as 
they appear. I wish to thank the Senator from South Dakota for his 
leadership on this issue. The pipeline will actually go through part of 
South Dakota, I should mention.
  It was not too long ago I was back home in North Dakota, and down in 
the southwest corner of our State there are hundreds of miles of 
pipeline stacked, just waiting to be used, to be put in the ground.
  A lot of that pipeline will go through the State of South Dakota, 
through the western part of your State. Of course, this is all about 
building vital infrastructure for our Nation. What it is truly about is 
getting our Nation to energy independence, working with Canada to have 
North American energy independence, so we no longer depend on oil from 
the Middle East. That is something all Americans very much want.
  As the Senator from South Dakota said, this is a joint resolution, a 
concurrent resolution of the Senate, and then of course it would go to 
the House. So it would be putting both the Senate and the House on 
record together stating specifically and clearly that the Keystone XL 
Pipeline is in the national interest. It is in the national interest.
  Why is that important? Because, quite simply, that is the decision 
our President needs to make. He has been reviewing this project for 5 
years. TransCanada submitted an application to build this pipeline in 
September of 2008. Now it is September of 2013. For 5 years this has 
been under review and under study.
  So what is the decision for the President of the United States? The 
decision for the President of the United States is he needs to 
determine is this pipeline in the national interest? Why is that 
important? Because it crosses an international boundary. The pipeline 
starts in Hardisty, which is in Alberta, Canada, and it travels down to 
the Canadian border and then across our country to our refineries, to a 
variety of refineries across the country.
  It will provide 830,000 barrels of oil a day. But that is not just 
Canadian oil, that is also oil from the great State of North Dakota and 
Montana, more than 100,000 barrels a day of the lightest, sweetest 
crude oil produced anywhere in the country, really in the world. It 
takes it to our refineries so our consumers can use that refined fuel 
from Canada and from the United States rather than what? Rather than 
oil from the Middle East.
  How fitting is it that we are here today where we are talking about 
the Middle East and Syria and today now talking about an energy 
efficiency bill. I will submit to you, it is a lot more efficient to 
move oil in a pipeline than it is by trains and trucks. So it is 
certainly appropriate that this amendment be part of the energy 
efficiency bill.
  Americans do not want to get their oil from the Middle East anymore. 
That is a no-brainer. They do not want to get oil from the Middle East. 
They want it produced here. They want to work with our closest friend 
and neighbor, Canada. That is what this project is all about. So we 
figure if Congress can go on the record together, the Senate and the 
House together, just go on the record stating clearly, simply, and 
straightforwardly, after more than 5 years of study, exhaustive 
environmental impact statements, we are stating this pipeline is in the 
national interest.
  It is in the national interest because we want the jobs. It is in the 
national interest because we want the energy. It is in the national 
interest because it will create tremendous economic activity, tax 
revenue without raising taxes for our country, for the States. It is in 
the national interest because of our national security.
  We do not want to have to go to Venezuela or to the Middle East for 
our oil. We can produce it here and we can work with Canada to produce 
that oil. So by clearly stating in a joint resolution, in a concurrent 
resolution from the Senate and the House, this is in the national 
interest, we believe we can get the President to say, after 5 years of 
study, after environmental impact statement after environmental impact 
statement that shows no significant environmental impact, that he will 
make a decision.
  The decision is to approve the project.
  Mr. THUNE. Will the Senator from North Dakota yield for a question?
  Mr. HOEVEN. I yield to my distinguished colleague from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. I would ask the Senator from North Dakota, who has been a 
great leader on all of these energy issues as we debate energy policy 
in the Senate, to confirm this but my understanding is that, according 
to President Obama's State Department, the pipeline will support 42,000 
jobs across the country.
  There have been some discussions and debate but the President, not 
too long ago, made a comment in front of an editorial board in one of 
the country's major newspapers that this is only going to create a 
couple of thousand jobs and that this was a very minimalist thing.
  We have an unemployment rate that continues to hover in the 7.5-
percent range and we have the lowest labor participation rate in our 
country today that we have had literally in 35 years, going back to the 
Carter administration. The real unemployment rate in other words those 
who are not only unemployed but those who would like to

[[Page 13484]]

be working full time or those being forced to work part time or those 
who have quit looking, is actually much higher. About 14 percent--22 
million Americans--fall into that category. We should be interested in 
anything that would create shovel-ready jobs.
  We have heard from this administration, particularly when we were 
debating the stimulus, that we need shovel-ready jobs. We need jobs 
that can get people back to work immediately. This perfectly fits that 
description.
  I would ask the Senator from North Dakota if it is his understanding, 
as well, that it is actually thousands of jobs that would be created as 
a result of building a pipeline. Wouldn't that be something we would 
add to the argument? There are many arguments, but this certainly is 
one, when we are talking about a sluggish economy where growth 
continues to hover in that 1- to 2-percent range, to get the economy 
growing and expanding again.
  This is not only to get the immediate construction jobs but, when we 
are producing energy in this country and lowering the cost of energy 
because we are actually having more of it produced here as opposed to 
importing it from somewhere else around the world, it gives us a 
competitive advantage. It is good for economic growth and good for job 
creation.
  Would the Senator from North Dakota speak to the issue of jobs and 
what his understanding is in terms of jobs that would be created if, in 
fact, we did move forward with the pipeline?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Absolutely. This is a project, a $7.9 billion 
construction project. The administration's State Department has been 
working with a variety of agencies and has developed a number of 
environmental impact statements. In their own analysis, they indicate 
more than 40,000 jobs. We are talking of a project that costs billions 
to build and will create more than 40,000 jobs by their own admission. 
In the construction process alone, it will generate hundreds of 
millions in tax revenue at the local, State, and Federal level. It has 
a huge economic impact at a time when we need to get people working and 
when we need to get our economy growing.
  At this time, I wish to acknowledge this is very much a bipartisan 
approach. Look, to get anything done, we have to be bipartisan. When we 
show a concurrent resolution from the Senate and the House, both Houses 
of Congress together, with Republicans and Democrats coming together 
and saying this is in the national interest, that is a powerful 
statement. It is one I certainly hope the President will acknowledge 
and make the same decision that this project truly is in the national 
interest.
  On that note, I see Senator Mary Landrieu, my esteemed colleague from 
Louisiana, who is also a prime sponsor of this resolution. Also, I see 
Senator Begich from the great State of Alaska and Senator Heitkamp from 
my State of North Dakota. They are here as well. I wish to acknowledge 
them and acknowledge their cosponsorship of this legislation.
  I will read the sponsors we have onboard already. There will be more. 
Then I will turn to the esteemed Senator from Louisiana, who was so 
instrumental in crafting this resolution.
  I wish to mention all of our sponsors in addition to the Senator from 
Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, Senator Thune of South Dakota, Senator 
McConnell of Kentucky, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, Senator Begich 
of Alaska, Senator Cornyn of Texas, Senator Blunt of Missouri, Senator 
Risch of Idaho, Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and there will be 
others.
  I mention these Senators both to thank them and to make the point 
this is very much a bipartisan effort because we are serious about 
getting something done. This is not about making a statement. This is 
about getting something done in a bipartisan way from the people's 
representatives across this great Nation.
  I yield to Senator Landrieu, the coauthor of this resolution, and 
thank her for all of her great work on this project.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I am proud to join a fairly large group of colleagues, 
both Republicans and Democrats, to talk about the importance of energy 
for our country, domestic energy and all facets of it, particularly the 
Keystone Pipeline. It will transport oil primarily--potentially gas as 
well but oil right now--from an important part of the country to the 
refineries that can refine it so our people can use it here and, as 
appropriate, export it as appropriate around the world.
  Canada is a very strong ally of ours. We have reduced our imports of 
oil because of the fallout of demand and the increased production 
domestically, but we can do more.
  Before I get into my brief remarks, I see Senator Shaheen and Senator 
Portman on the floor. I wish to commend them for bringing an energy 
bill to the floor, a conservation energy bill to the floor, that will 
not only make America more secure, but it has the potential to create 
literally millions of jobs in our country, the kinds of jobs we want 
that rely on cutting-edge science, technology, and manufacturing here 
at home. It is hard to get a bill out of any committee with bipartisan 
support.
  The chairman, Senator Wyden, has done a fabulous job, in my view, 
navigating between many very tough currents to get this bill to the 
floor. It is disheartening that some people would come to the floor 
this morning to talk about health care or to talk about nonrelated 
issues to energy, when this government needs to be focused on creating 
jobs, supporting the middle class, and growing the middle class.
  I am proud to be here talking about what most Americans want us to 
talk about, which is creating jobs at home, ending this recession, 
expanding our economy, and investing in good old American know-how 
about how to get things done.
  I am pleased to spend my time talking about things that are positive; 
that is, the Keystone Pipeline. I am proud to be the lead cosponsor on 
the Democratic side with Senator Hoeven, and we are about to be joined 
by the Senator from Alaska and Senator Heitkamp.
  I again urge support of our resolution, which we believe will have 
more than 60 votes. It will urge the President and push us to a place 
where we can approve the Keystone Pipeline as an important 
infrastructure component to our efforts to greatly expand production.
  There is horizontal drilling that is going on, and there is fracking 
that can be done very safely with a minimum environmental blueprint. 
There are some opportunities, as the chairman knows, to export gas. We 
are a big gas producer and consumer. I understand the balance that is 
necessary.
  We most certainly don't want to export 100 percent of our production, 
but we do need to export enough to send a signal to the marketplace 
that if you risk your money to find it, you will have a market for it. 
These are the fundamentals of any kind of market. Whether it is the 
cotton market, the gas market or the oil market, they all operate the 
same.
  We are excited about what is happening in America. From our view in 
Louisiana, this is one of the most exciting times we have had in 
decades because there is so much interest in more domestic production. 
So many more jobs are being created.
  In Senator Heitkamp's State, I think they have run out of workers. I 
am not even sure we can build their roads fast enough to help us get 
this production underway.
  It is revitalizing the manufacturing base of America. All of my 
industries are excited. I am going to finally say this because there 
are others who wish to talk.
  Just between Lafayette, LA, and Lake Charles, two medium-sized cities 
in south Louisiana, just the southern part of our State, there is 
currently $60 billion of investments being made today because of this 
extraordinary new domestic production.
  The Keystone is part of this. I know there are some environmental 
concerns. I think they are unfounded. I think they have been disputed 
by any

[[Page 13485]]

number of groups. What I am here to say is this is about American jobs. 
This is about building our infrastructure in America for more domestic 
production.
  Let's get over this hump and let's get together, focus on that which 
matters to the American people and not undermine this bill. I am going 
to end with this--not undermine this bill. This is an important 
component to do what we can to get this Keystone Pipeline moving in a 
cooperative spirit, which is not often found on the floor.
  I wish to ask the Senator from Alaska what he heard in Alaska, 
because I have heard nothing but green light for the Keystone when I 
was home in Louisiana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. BEGICH. I thank the Chair.
  We find ourselves always on the floor on oil and gas issues, but our 
group has grown. We have Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota. We 
appreciate that she is here on these issues. It is always interesting 
on Keystone and hearing my colleagues on the other side.
  It is one of the issues where Democrats and Republicans are focused 
on what is right for America, creating jobs and opportunities, not just 
having partisan fights. We are focused on what is important.
  When you think about energy at all, this is what I hear a lot back 
home.
  First, get us off of energy from countries that don't like us. That 
is the first priority. We do a lot of business with countries that do 
not like us because we don't have our own production or have the 
capacity to tap into production.
  Second, of course, Alaska is a huge producer of oil. I know my 
friends from North Dakota will tell me they outrank us today.
  I will remind them when the OCS opens, the Outer Continental Shelf, 
we will have a few 26-plus billion barrels of oil which we have already 
started moving into production in the sense of exploration. We hope 
next year they get back into the OCS. We feel very confident about 
that.
  Alaska, similar to Louisiana, North Dakota, Montana, and others, is 
abundant with this resource which will get us off foreign oil. This is 
what I hear over and over. What a better deal than to work with our 
Canadian partners from whom we import enormous amounts of oil.
  Why not work on a pipeline with a country that is unbelievably always 
there for us. We know a little bit about pipelines in Alaska. We built 
a pretty large one going through some tough terrain and very 
environmentally sensitive areas. It has been operating successfully for 
decades, and that was under the old rules of construction.
  Today, with the new engineering technology, there is an unbelievable 
potential to bring that resource to our refineries. The choice isn't 
they are not going to do it. I think this is a false argument you hear 
out there. People say: If we just stop this pipeline, they will not 
produce it.
  No. Canada is a sovereign country. They have a resource they intend 
to utilize. They will ship this resource to us to refine or China. I 
don't know about you, but there is a clear difference in environmental 
standards between China and the United States. By the way, those jobs 
aren't our jobs in China. These jobs were produced by a project, the 
pipeline alone. I know there are people who discount it--well, it is 
only a temporary project, it only has so many jobs.
  First off, they have a labor agreement. It is unbelievable when you 
think about it, laborers, Teamsters, IBEW, plumbers, pipefitters who 
will be trained and employed. For North Dakota and Montana, a resource 
of oil being developed there, this creates access. This is access for 
their product, U.S. oil, to be able to be moved through the pipeline, 
refined down south and in incredibly strict environmental standards. 
And yes, some might be exported, some might stay in the United States. 
But at the end of the day, it is about creating American jobs.
  From Alaska's perspective, people say: Well, why are you for this, if 
you want to do your own projects in Alaska? Because it is good for all 
of us. I want to see Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in Alaska built, and 
they are on their way. The National Petroleum Reserve will see the 
first production. I was up there 2 weeks ago with the Secretary of the 
Interior and saw CD-5, which is a platform being developed, and over 
the next 2 years that well alone will produce 14,000 to 15,000 barrels 
a day--just one well. They have plans for two or three more. This is an 
incredible component, but Keystone is the safest way to move this.
  And oh, by the way, we already have oil coming from that tar sand 
through the Chicago region--about half a million barrels already. Now 
unless I have missed something, I didn't hear a lot of complaints on 
that. So this will up the capacity to 1.1, the southern section that is 
being built. It is about American jobs, an American resource, and it is 
the right decision.
  I am somewhat perplexed by the administration's delay after delay 
after delay and arguments why somehow something else can't happen. In 
reality, this project is a good project, a good jobs project, and it 
has a lot of opportunity not only for us here in the United States, in 
the sense of the lower 48--where I am standing today in this Chamber--
but for Alaskans too. Because the oil industry moves around. We have 
people working in the North Dakota region from Alaska; we have people 
down in Louisiana and vice versa. It is a unified system of employment. 
It is good jobs, good jobs, good jobs. Did I mention that?
  This is the United States and Canada, which have been partners for 
years. Why would we not purchase this oil or work through this and 
build this pipeline to make sure this oil from this great partner is 
refined in the United States, rather than focusing on oil from 
countries that do not like us? It makes no sense to me.
  So I thank my friend from Louisiana for asking. I hear it all the 
time. I know we have been joined by the Senator from North Dakota, and 
probably the Senator from Louisiana is very excited to have another 
person here on the floor with us talking about oil and gas issues 
because sometimes we feel a little lonely, but on this bill, this 
amendment, there are a lot of us.
  I know my friend from North Dakota has a lot to say because I heard 
it during her campaign. So I will turn to my colleague from North 
Dakota, if it is okay with the Senator from Louisiana, and ask my 
friend from North Dakota if she has some additional comments or what 
she is also hearing.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I would ask at this time to be able to 
propound a unanimous consent request with respect to Keystone.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, there has been a bit of confusion with 
respect to the handling of Keystone because I was under the impression 
we would be completed at this time with the discussion of Keystone. So 
I ask unanimous consent that at this time we allow Senator Heitkamp to 
speak with respect to her position on Keystone, then Senator Portman 
would go next. Both of them have indicated they will be brief. I would 
then ask, for purposes of this part of the discussion, that Senator 
Boxer and Senator Whitehouse be recognized for their views with respect 
to Keystone.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. I thank the Senator from Oregon for clarification and 
for this opportunity to very briefly speak on the significance of the 
Keystone Pipeline.
  We have been waiting 5 years. We fought a world war and defeated the 
Nazis in less time than we have been waiting to have a determination on 
the Keystone Pipeline. I know there is a lot of discussion here and a 
lot of concern and, obviously, this has gotten to be a national issue 
of some magnitude. But when we look at it, overwhelmingly the building 
of the Keystone

[[Page 13486]]

Pipeline is supported by the American people.
  Why is that? Because it is good for our national security, and I 
think we heard how good it is for employment and job opportunities, but 
I want to spend a moment in recognizing that in this time we are in 
right now, given the events of last week and early this week, the 
American public is looking for a way to allow us to express our 
national security interests without worrying about where our oil comes 
from.
  I was fortunate enough during the August recess to go up to the oil 
sands in Alberta and spend some time with the Premier, spending some 
time with their environmental community, spending some time with their 
labor community, and talked about the developments there and talked 
about the enormous opportunities. When we take a look at Alberta and 
North Dakota, these are two of the fastest growing economies in the 
world because of this development. We should not walk away from this 
delivery system, which is very remote and very much needs this pipeline 
in order to participate in this great North American energy 
independence opportunity we have.
  As a final note, I want to talk about the relationship we have with 
Canada and the responsibility we have to our largest trading partner, 
the responsibility we have to one of our best and longest allies. In 
North Dakota, we celebrate that border with a peace garden that is on 
both sides of the border, recognizing this is unheard of in the history 
of the world. This is not some rogue country that doesn't have 
environmental standards. They are adopting standards and doing 
everything they can to deal with what they believe is their 
responsibility for global climate change, and they shake their head and 
wonder why it is we are waiting 5 years down here to provide them with 
an opportunity to work with us to create a North America that is energy 
independent. So I can't say enough about how frustrating this issue has 
been, but I think how important it is that we have again a sense of the 
Senate because we represent the people. We represent the majority 
opinion in this country which says build the pipeline.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my 
colleague from North Dakota and my other colleague from North Dakota, 
who has been leading this effort over the past couple of years to get 
to a point where we can have, as Senator Heitkamp said, the views of 
the American people here on the floor.
  Although this discussion is on the energy efficiency bill, and this 
is more of a production issue, I do think it is consistent with the 
legislation. As we have talked about from the start, we need an ``all 
of the above'' energy strategy, and it has to include, in my view, 
efficiency as one of those key elements, but also producing more. We 
have talked about the importance of producing more oil and gas in this 
country to make us less energy dependent on other countries, where we 
are currently, and unfortunately, dependent on volatile and dangerous 
parts of the world for our energy, which affects the price at the pump 
by virtue of the spike in gasoline prices we have seen. It also affects 
our economy. So I think this goes hand in hand.
  As the Senator from North Dakota knows--because I am a cosponsor of 
the legislation he has proposed before, and I also supported his 
amendment on the budget resolution--I would also make an argument here 
on efficiency. One of the things that has been frustrating to me on 
this Keystone debate is the discussion seems to be that somehow there 
would be more emissions and less efficiency if we were to allow the 
pipeline. I think the opposite is true. This is oil which would come, 
as we know, from the oil sands in Canada, but it also comes from the 
Bakken in North Dakota and other places. Right now most of that is 
being trucked or trained, and that is certainly not an efficient way to 
move oil and gas. In fact, it is a more dangerous way to do it.
  It is difficult for me to see how there are efficiency gains by 
continuing the current policy rather than allowing this pipeline to be 
built, which will create tens of thousands of jobs, which is why the 
AFL-CIO Building Trades Council supports it, but also it has efficiency 
improvements.
  Second, if we don't build the pipeline and cannot access the oil from 
Canada, which helps us to become North American energy independent from 
an area of the world which is not volatile and dangerous, then that oil 
will be sold. As the Senator from Alaska said, it is a sovereign 
country, they will figure out where the market is, and that market, 
apparently, is China. Our environmental standards in this country are, 
of course, at a higher level than in China. So in terms of an emissions 
issue and an environmental issue it would be an advantage to send it to 
our high-tech refineries on the gulf coast.
  Second, how would that oil get there? Not by pipeline, but by rail 
and by truck and, ultimately, by tanker. Certainly that is not a more 
efficient way to deliver that product, regardless of whether there were 
environmental standards at the end of that process. Of course they 
would not be at the level as they would be in the United States.
  So I do think this is an important amendment, and I do think it ties 
into this overall strategy of having an ``all of the above'' energy 
strategy. I do think the way the Senator from North Dakota has phrased 
this amendment it gives us the opportunity to have our views be 
expressed, but also the House to have its views be expressed, and 
hopefully would result in the President making an important decision 
that is in the interest of economic growth, in the interest of good 
energy policy, as I said earlier, and in the interest, ultimately, of 
efficiency and fewer emissions, not more emissions.
  With that, with the understanding we have a time agreement here, I 
appreciate the opportunity to talk a little about it. I appreciate the 
fact the Senator from North Dakota is also on the energy committee with 
me and also supports our energy efficiency bill, which is the 
underlying bill, and also offered an amendment yesterday that we talked 
about and that is a very important improvement in terms of the energy 
efficiency issue he offered with the Senator from Minnesota, Senator 
Klobuchar. He has another amendment, I understand, that deals directly 
with efficiency. So we appreciate working with him on that.
  Again, hopefully we can resolve these unrelated issues and move 
forward with this energy efficiency legislation and have votes on some 
of these energy issues.
  With that, I yield to my colleague from North Dakota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I want to express some thanks as we 
close out our colloquy, and I want to begin with the Senator from 
Oregon, who is the chairman of the energy committee, as well as our 
ranking member, the Senator from Alaska--Senator Wyden from Oregon and 
Senator Murkowski from Alaska. I thank them for working to get energy 
legislation to the floor and for the way they are working to be 
inclusive and bipartisan in this effort.
  I also thank Senator Shaheen from the great State of New Hampshire 
and Senator Portman from the great State of Ohio for their 
bipartisanship in this energy efficiency bill, which truly creates 
efficiencies and is a natural piece of legislation for us to add this 
amendment to, as Senator Portman described.
  Again, recognizing the time constraints, I want to finish by thanking 
the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, for her coauthorship of this 
legislation, and for all of the Senators who have joined with us in 
this bipartisan interest on the Keystone XL Pipeline, which we truly 
believe is in the national interest.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I rise to talk about why approval of the 
Keystone XL Pipeline is not in the national interest and why it places 
our Nation's families at risk.

[[Page 13487]]

  There is a reason why it is taking a long time to get this approved. 
It is because it is very controversial and there are some irrefutable 
facts that I think need to be laid on the table about this pipeline.
  I also want to say how discouraging it is to me to see a Senator come 
here and offer an unrelated amendment that has to be seen, in my mind, 
as an attack on working people who happen to work for their country and 
try and derail this bill. It is wrong. And let's be clear: If a Senator 
doesn't want to have health care here, they should take themselves out 
of it. If they don't think their staff deserves to have a health care 
benefit as an employer, tell them they do not have to take it. Tell 
them to opt out. Tell them it would please you if they didn't have that 
benefit.
  To see a good bill such as this, shepherded by a great chairman, Ron 
Wyden, and two terrific Senators here on this particular piece of 
legislation, Senators Shaheen and Portman, get derailed because someone 
wants to attack working people is unfortunate--absolutely unfortunate.
  Let me say that one of my colleagues said: Oh, this is all the people 
in America want the XL pipeline. I don't know. Maybe in her State that 
is true. It is not true in my State. And it is not true in many States. 
As a matter of fact, that is why there have been 1.2 million comments 
to the State Department from various public agencies and private 
parties, from Native American tribes and others.
  I think when the President said on June 25 that our national 
interests will be served only if this project does not significantly 
exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution, he was speaking the truth. 
You would have to be asleep for 10 or 15 years to not believe that 
carbon pollution is dangerous to the planet. I know Senator Whitehouse 
will follow with his comments on this. But when I listened to the 
debate, I didn't hear one person say carbon pollution is a problem.
  The Keystone XL would ship one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet 
through America's heartland and through critical water supplies. It 
will significantly increase carbon pollution, and the oil will be 
exported to other countries. So to stand here and not even address the 
issue of pollution and not even admit that most of this oil will be 
exported, I do not think is a fair argument.
  To put it into context, if the full range of products produced from 
tar sands crude oil, such as petroleum coke, is taken into account, EPA 
estimates that tar sands would create 30 percent more carbon pollution 
than domestic oil. We would see carbon pollution of over 18 million 
more metric tons per year, according to the State Department.
  You would have to be asleep not to notice Superstorm Sandy and what 
it cost us not only in lives and in damage but in dollars. You would 
have to be asleep if you haven't noticed that Yosemite National Park is 
close to burning. Thank the Lord God we had firefighters who were 
protecting it. The fire is still burning. You would have to be asleep 
if you didn't notice what is happening to our oceans and to our 
economy.
  We had just the other day a meeting of folks out there, from farmers 
to recreational industry people, who were saying their world is 
changing because of climate change. But you don't hear our colleagues 
talking about that. They say: Oh, there is no problem. How about the 
fact that a Nebraska study found that Keystone XL is likely to have 91 
major spills over its 50-year lifetime? And tar sands oil will be very 
difficult to capture if the pipelines rupture.
  For all the talk about jobs, when we look at the permanent jobs, we 
are looking at 50 jobs. What are the chances that there are going to be 
spills?
  Just look at what happened in 2010, when over a million gallons of 
tar sands oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Over three 
years later, the clean-up of the river--which has cost almost $1 
billion--still continues, and the local communities are still 
struggling.
  Another reminder of the terrible price that Americans pay when tar 
sands pipelines rupture occurred in March 2013 in Mayflower, Arkansas. 
In that case, 22 residents were evacuated when tar sands oil ran 
through the neighborhood streets, and contaminated a local lake.
  The risks are real, and we cannot forget the damage that tar sands 
oil spills have already caused in our communities.
  What are the chances that we are going to hurt this planet? And what 
are the chances that if we were smart and we did what this underlying 
bill is doing--which is make sure we have incentives for alternatives 
that are clean, that are made in America, that work for us--there will 
be many more jobs? That is the kind of alternative I want to see.
  They may pass their amendment if we ever get to it, if they can stop 
this attack on our working people that is evident in an amendment that 
has been offered, but I know there is a better way, and I would like to 
see us make sure that when we say XL is great, we consider all of the 
reasons there is so much controversy surrounding it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very pleased to come to the floor 
today after my chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, 
Senator Boxer, and offer an alternative view to that expressed by my 
distinguished colleagues who are supporting the Keystone XL Pipeline. 
In my view, that pipeline takes us in the wrong direction, from an 
energy point of view, and it supports the wrong kind of energy.
  If we look at the growth of green and renewable energy, there are 
actually more jobs in clean, green, and renewable energy than there are 
in the oil industry. I had that question reviewed by Politifact, and I 
got a ``true'' on it. The energy jobs of the future are going to be in 
clean, green, renewable, sustainable energy, and this takes us in 
exactly the wrong direction.
  Moreover, they are temporary jobs. I think the State Department put 
the number of final jobs produced by the Keystone Pipeline at between 
35 and 50--not thousands, not tens of thousands, but between 35 and 50. 
What we might as well do is actually go out there and build a pyramid 
and put tens of thousands of people to work stacking up a pyramid, and 
we would actually do better because that pyramid wouldn't pollute. 
Those are the kinds of jobs we are talking about.
  We would be far better off investing in clean, green, renewable, 
sustainable energy technologies and developing those markets which are 
going to be the competitive markets in the future rather than chasing 
the tail of fossil fuel technology.
  I didn't hear everybody speak the whole time. I had to come over from 
my office, and I missed that point, and I had to take a call, and I 
missed that point. I believe I heard seven Senators speak for 45 
minutes, and I believe the words ``climate change'' and the words 
``carbon pollution'' were never mentioned.
  We are going to pipe out the tar sands from Canada, and we are going 
to add 18.7 million metric tons of additional carbon pollution. That is 
just from refining the tar sands. We are going to add another 3.5 
million metric tons from the electricity required to heat and pump the 
stuff through the pipeline. The refining cost is the equivalent of 5 
million cars out on the road that otherwise wouldn't be there. The 
electricity cost is another 600,000 cars on the road that wouldn't be 
there.
  We just hit 400 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 
For as long as the human species has existed on this planet, we have 
been in a window of 175 to 300 parts per million. It has been a long 
and successful run for homo sapiens in that comfortable window of 
environmental protection. We are out of it. We are out of it for the 
first time in probably millions of years--at a minimum, 800,000 years, 
more likely 3 million or more. We are not out of it a little bit--not 
301, not 315--but 400 and climbing. This adds to that problem.

[[Page 13488]]

  It is irresponsible to discuss energy and refuse to discuss climate 
change, refuse to discuss carbon pollution. But for our friends on the 
other side and for our friends from the coal- and oil-producing States, 
carbon pollution and climate change are the Lord Voldemorts of the 
discussion: It is he who must not be named. They are just going to 
ignore it, pretend it isn't there at all. That is wildly irresponsible 
in the environment we are in right now, as we see the effects of 
climate change occurring on our coasts, in our oceans, in 
acidification, to our fisheries, to our farms, and to our forests. You 
really don't have to go very far in this country to find something that 
is being affected by the changes in our climate from our carbon 
pollution, and all of that for 50 long-term jobs. I don't think this is 
the good deal our colleagues suggest.
  I will close by saying two things. First, on energy independence, 
this pipeline connects to Port Arthur, TX, a foreign-trade tax-free 
zone. That is where it is going to go, and then it is going to be 
shipped overseas to other countries. This isn't going to protect 
American energy independence; this is going to protect energy 
corporation profits. That is what is behind all of this.
  We have a supplemental environmental impact statement coming from the 
State Department. You can believe the people who for some reason can't 
seem to get the phrase ``climate change'' or ``carbon pollution'' to 
come out of their mouths or you can believe me. You can believe 
whomever you want. But from a point of view of being fair to the 
process, we should probably wait until the State Department has 
concluded the supplemental environmental impact statement they are now 
working on before we make too many rash decisions about polluting tar 
sands oil, investing in that dirty addition to our energy mix, and 
continuing to suck funding and support away from the energy sources of 
the future, which are the clean ones and the sustainable ones and the 
ones that aren't going to keep shoving the carbon dioxide concentration 
in our atmosphere over and beyond where it is right now, which is 400, 
where it hasn't been in millions of years, where it hasn't been in the 
history of the human species.
  I yield the floor, and 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.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent that we be in a period of debate 
only until 2 p.m.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am going to be very brief. I think 
Senator Boxer and Senator Whitehouse have made a number of very 
important points with respect to this climate debate and particularly 
the scientific finding that we are now at 400 parts per million. That 
ought to be a wake-up call to everyone with respect to the challenge of 
climate and carbon.
  I was in North Dakota last week at the request of our colleague and 
friend Senator Hoeven. Certainly, there is a lot of common ground that 
can be found on this natural gas issue. Of course, natural gas is 50 
percent cleaner than the other fossil fuels. It has been a real 
catalyst for the American manufacturing sector, with a lot of companies 
that for economic reasons felt they had to do business overseas coming 
back to do business here in the United States. Of course, it has a 
direct connection to the expansion of green power--solar and wind and 
others--because it can be a key factor in making those energy sources 
part of an embedded power system.
  So there are a lot of opportunities for common ground. For example, 
when I was with Senator Hoeven last week, we talked about--the way I 
would characterize it--a wide berth for the States with respect to 
regulating natural gas because the geology differs for various States.
  So when we look at these kinds of approaches, there is an opportunity 
for common ground. Clearly, this is a good set of challenges to have. 
We have the natural gas, the world wants it, and the pricing advantage 
is ours. This is a good set of challenges to have.
  I do think it is important to recognize that the debate about the 
pipeline has changed very significantly since it was originally 
proposed. I am particularly struck by the fact that we now have the CEO 
of the largest producer in the Bakken essentially saying that the 
pipeline isn't needed, and we have the CEO of the largest oil company 
in Canada saying that Keystone isn't needed. I will be very specific 
and use their words.
  Last month Harold Hamm, the CEO of the largest oil producer in the 
Bakken shale, Continental, said the Keystone Pipeline was not 
``critical.'' For anybody who is interested in the politics, Mr. Hamm 
isn't some flaming liberal. He was Mitt Romney's chief energy adviser.
  Just a few days ago we had the CEO of Suncor--by some estimates, 
Canada's largest oil company--saying that the lack of a pipeline, in 
his words, has ``certainly not constrained [his company's] growth'' and 
that his best estimate would be that it has not ``significantly 
constrained the rest of the market, either.''
  So we recently had the CEO of the largest producer in the Bakken 
saying the pipeline is not needed. We have the CEO of the largest oil 
company in Canada saying essentially the same thing. That basically 
leaves only the refiners. It turns out they have been pretty much 
saying the same thing.
  A few days ago the Wall Street Journal had a story with the headline 
``U.S. Refiners Don't Care if Keystone Gets Built.''
  Valero, one of the largest refiners in the country, said Keystone 
was, in their words, not ``critical'' to their business. This is a 
refiner that signed up early to get oil from Keystone, spent billions 
upgrading their refiners in the gulf to process it, and they now say it 
is not critical.
  We are going to have further discussion about this. I want it 
understood that I think Senator Boxer and Senator Whitehouse have made 
some important points. I am particularly struck by how, as you get into 
this issue, there are significant questions about how this 
fundamentally benefits the American people. My hope--and I have talked 
about this with Senators on both sides of the aisle--is that we can 
work out the various procedural questions with respect to how Keystone 
comes up here on the floor of the Senate. In fact, I am going to go 
spend about 45 minutes trying to be part of an effort to see if we can 
find some common ground so we can get the issues that Senators want 
addressed done, done promptly, done once, and then we can go to the 
energy efficiency legislation and have a vote, up or down, on the 
merits of that bill.
  Senator Portman is here. He and Senator Shaheen have done an 
excellent job. Frankly, they had done a good job of keeping this issue 
bipartisan in the interests of energy security, in the interests of 
creating more jobs and a cleaner environment. They had done that before 
the bill arrived on floor, and the bill has been improved since it came 
to the floor with bipartisan amendments that colleagues have offered.
  I appreciate that we are now in a period of debate only until 2 
o'clock.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I ask to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from 
Mississippi for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, Senator Wicker and I come to the floor 
to talk about a very important matter. We appreciate the opportunity to 
talk

[[Page 13489]]

about our amendment that will update the current EISA statute to 
reflect the evolution of green building rating systems and create a 
more strategic approach for the Federal Government so that we have the 
highest performing, most efficient, and most cost-effective buildings. 
I would like to ask Senator Wicker to go into a little bit more detail, 
and then I will come back to some more information about our amendment 
that has been filed.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Louisiana and 
agree that this is a very important amendment because it addresses a 
number of issues that are important to American industries. In 
particular, the amendment specifies that the Department of Energy and 
the General Services Administration must allow the use of multiple 
green building rating systems for both commercial and residential 
buildings. We should avoid the situation where the Federal Government 
endorses one green building standard over others.
  DOE and GSA ought to support competition and allow the free market to 
produce the best energy-efficient buildings at the lowest cost. They 
also ought to support the use of domestically produced materials, such 
as sustainable wood and green technologies.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from 
Mississippi. He and I have worked very closely together on the 
amendment we are talking about today, and hopefully we will get a vote 
on it sometime in the near future. But I am also concerned that many 
rating systems arbitrarily discriminate against domestically produced 
products based on arbitrary hazards, without consideration for risk of 
exposure and supporting scientific data.
  Our amendment--and we have worked very carefully on this--will 
address this issue by requiring an ongoing review of private sector 
green building certification systems and allowing for the exclusion of 
portions of green building certification systems that are found to be 
discriminatory. This will not preclude efforts to exclude or reduce 
exposure to known environmental risks, such as radon, formaldehyde, or 
volatile organic compounds; however, it will ensure that the risk of 
exposure is not ignored.
  This process will support competition among green building 
certification systems and encourage existing systems to revise portions 
of their systems that are determined to be discriminatory to domestic 
products.
  Let me add that since many of these products that are in question 
come from Mississippi and Louisiana as well as other States, that is 
what has engaged and piqued our interest.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, the Senator from Louisiana is exactly 
correct. Basically, what we are saying is there is more than one way to 
get where we need to go when it comes to green buildings. This 
amendment is a step forward to ensure GSA's and DOE's green building 
policies are fair and effective.
  I also wish to point out that this amendment requires the 
consideration of environmental impacts across the entire life cycle of 
a building material or product by incorporating a life-cycle 
assessment. This will ensure that the Federal Government is utilizing 
green building certification systems that are the most efficient.
  I thank the Senator from Louisiana, and I wholeheartedly endorse our 
amendment and call on our colleagues to vote on it.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, let me finally say that we believe our 
amendment strengthens--not weakens but strengthens--the Energy Savings 
and Industrial Competitiveness Act as introduced by Senators Shaheen 
and Portman by encouraging improvements to green building rating 
systems and policies. I look forward to seeing this bipartisan 
legislation move forward. It is in that spirit that our colloquy and 
our amendment is being offered.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I wish to discuss amendments 
I am offering to the Shaheen-Portman bill. However, I have been 
watching what has been happening on the floor, and I don't understand 
this because I have some amendments I am working on which are 
bipartisan. I know there have been major endorsements of this bill from 
the Business Roundtable, from the Chamber, and many others. What we are 
seeing here is a very targeted attack from the other side to prevent 
all of these bipartisan amendments from coming forward. All the debate 
this week has been good on this bill, but we aren't able to offer 
amendments. We are not having the ability to debate amendments. That is 
very important. So I am one of the Members who is going to be talking 
about amendments. I have been reaching out. I think they are very 
bipartisan amendments. But we are being blocked, and that is very 
unfortunate.
  I rise today to discuss several amendments to the Energy Savings and 
Industrial Competitiveness Act. First, I wish to thank Senators Shaheen 
and Portman for working on this important legislation, for working on 
it so long, and for being so diligent about it. Energy efficiency is 
critical for our future, and this bill takes us in the right direction.
  There are a few areas where I think we need to take additional steps. 
My first amendment connects energy and water efficiency. Many people do 
not realize that water efficiency is energy efficiency. Three to four 
percent of our national electricity consumption is for water and 
wastewater services each year. That is about 5 to 6 billion kilowatts 
and $4 billion a year in costs. That is a lot of energy and it is a lot 
of money.
  When we talk to the water management professionals in our States, 
they tell us these costs add up quickly. The energy-water nexus is one 
that cannot be ignored.
  The energy committee has been engaged in the water-energy nexus for 
some time, both under Senator Bingaman and continuing under the 
leadership of Senator Wyden. I know the Presiding Officer is on the 
committee with Senator Wyden, and I know he is very interested. The 
Senator from Oregon has done a very good job in terms of trying to pull 
all of this together.
  Water and wastewater utilities are typically the largest consumers of 
energy in towns and cities, often accounting for 30 to 40 percent of 
total energy consumed. As ratepayers, we all pay those bills. And 
inefficient systems don't just cost money; they waste huge amounts of 
water. As much as 6 billion gallons per year is lost. Let me repeat 
that: Six billion gallons of water a year is wasted. That is enough 
water to serve 10 of the largest cities in this country or the entire 
State of California.
  To continue this practice while the Southwest and other regions are 
facing extreme drought is ridiculous, and in some of our communities it 
is downright dangerous. We can do better, and we have to do better. 
Efficiency of U.S. water and wastewater pumping facilities is about 55 
percent. But for a new, well-designed pumping facility, it is 80 
percent. Consider this: If water and wastewater utilities could reduce 
energy use by just 10 percent, it would save about $400 million 
annually.
  My amendment calls for $15 million to support smart water system 
pilot projects, supporting innovation and the kinds of investments 
today that will pay off tomorrow. Our amendment is fully offset. This 
is not about adding cost; it is about reducing the cost to ratepayers.
  I believe this amendment is worthy of bipartisan support. We have 
support from almost every major water utility association and from the 
technology industry. It should be included on any amendment list, 
especially on a bipartisan amendment list. I am talking about the 
blocking that is going on

[[Page 13490]]

from the other side of the aisle to prevent good, bipartisan amendments 
from coming forward.
  Putting innovation to work in three to five cities is a first step. 
The program will be jointly managed by the Department of Energy and the 
EPA to create incentives for public-private partnerships, lowering the 
cost of innovation, applying best practices to the public and private 
sectors, and to eventually benefit communities across the entire 
country.
  I also plan to introduce a second more ambitious amendment to improve 
the water efficiency of our homes, to save water, and to lower costs 
for American families. The average family of 4 in our country uses 400 
gallons of water every day. My amendment will provide funds to States, 
local government, and utilities to implement incentives and rebates for 
customers to purchase water-efficient products and landscaping.
  In addition, the amendment will authorize the EPA WaterSense Program, 
similar to the ENERGY STAR Program, to enable WaterSense to improve and 
expand its labeling system for water-efficient appliances, plumbing 
fixtures, landscaping, and new homes.
  My amendment also establishes a grant program called Blue Bank, 
providing water and sewer utilities with grants for important 
investments in climate change adaptation, including advanced water 
supply management, modification of infrastructure, improved planning, 
and water efficiency and reuse.
  Finally, I will offer an amendment for a renewable electricity 
standard, to get to 25 percent renewable electricity by 2025. The first 
legislation I introduced as a Senator was to create a national RES. The 
time is right to put this idea back on the table. Renewables are a 
crucial part of our energy mix. A national RES will create thousands of 
jobs that cannot be outsourced and will help revitalize rural America. 
It has worked in over half of the States in the country by guaranteeing 
a market for wind and sun and other clean energy sources.
  Renewable energy is a key partner of energy efficiency in a modern 
energy system. They are often installed side by side, increasing the 
payback in energy savings and reducing emissions and fighting climate 
change.
  Our Nation needs a ``do it all, do it right'' energy policy to 
address global climate change and to reduce our dependence on foreign 
oil--those are the big threats--but also a big opportunity. We can 
create a clean energy economy that leads the world in producing the 
jobs of the future.
  Again, I wish to thank my colleagues Senator Shaheen and Senator 
Portman for their work and I look forward to continued bipartisan 
efforts as we address the energy needs of our country.
  I would say to Senator Shaheen and to Senator Wyden, I find it very 
unfortunate that we are in a position now where so many Members have 
come to the floor to offer bipartisan amendments and my colleagues have 
been stopped in their tracks from moving this bill forward, dealing 
with and voting on those amendments. We should let the Senate work its 
will. I know my colleagues are trying to cut through that, but I wish 
the other side of the aisle would let us proceed to the bipartisan 
amendments and move forward.
  I see Senator Wyden is here on the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. I thank Senator Udall for steering the Senate toward a 
very sensible, important area.
  Last year, it is my understanding we had the worst drought in our 
country's history since the Dust Bowl. So we are looking at some 
serious drought issues in the days ahead. The Senator from New Mexico 
is suggesting we start very modestly. The Senator has some voluntary 
efforts. These are not mandatory, not run from Washington, one size 
fits all--leviathans that would inflict pain and trauma on local 
communities. They are voluntary. They are about saving water, which is 
about saving energy.
  In our part of the world, the West, this is especially important. But 
I think what we saw last year, with these extraordinary drought 
conditions, is this is something that is not going to go away.
  So Senator Murkowski and I have already begun to look at these 
issues. I will just say for myself, I am looking forward to very 
closely working with the Senator on these issues, and I am very hopeful 
we can get the Senator's amendment up and we can work out some way to 
advance this idea because water is, frankly, an issue that has gotten 
short shrift. It has gotten short shrift in the West. It has gotten 
short shrift in terms of our policy debate. I think the Senator is 
clearly starting us in the right direction. I look forward to working 
closely with the Senator.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, before the Senator from New Mexico 
leaves, I just want to also commend him for his work. I have not seen 
the amendment he would like to offer. Like him, I am so disappointed he 
is not able to offer it right now, that it is being held up on an 
unrelated issue. But as the Senator pointed out, there is a clear nexus 
between water and energy use.
  I remember visiting the wastewater treatment plant in North Conway, 
NH, and being told that 4 percent of our energy use in the country is 
with wastewater treatment. I have seen that at the Portsmouth Naval 
Shipyard, where they do such great work on Los Angeles class and 
Virginia class submarines. As they have cut back their energy use, they 
have also been able to cut back their use of water in a way that has 
provided for tens of thousands of gallons in savings in water, as well 
as tremendous savings in energy use. So this is a connection we all 
ought to be making as we look at our energy use in the future.
  I truly appreciate the Senator working on this amendment, his 
interest in offering it, and I certainly hope we are going to get to 
the point where we can actually debate the amendments people are 
bringing to the floor because we have so much bipartisan support for 
not only the bill but for so many amendments.
  I appreciate my colleague from Ohio, Senator Portman, his partnership 
in working on this legislation. This is a win-win-win, and we need to 
move this forward.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Shaheen 
and Senator Wyden, and I see Senator Portman is on the floor too. I 
just want to say to Senator Portman that the partnership he and Senator 
Shaheen have developed has been incredibly impressive. I know how hard 
they have worked on this bill, and our intent is that many of us want 
to try to improve it. We want to try to bring forward bipartisan 
amendments.
  So I hope we can all work together to make sure whatever roadblocks 
and objections are out there, that we can deal with this bill in a way 
where bipartisan amendments can be voted on, we can move the bill 
along, and let the Senate work its will because this is the kind of 
bill I believe can pass in the House of Representatives because these 
two Senators have worked so hard over the last couple years.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I understand where we are. I would make 
the following comments to my colleagues who have not been here quite as 
long as I have. Regular order, before they got here, was you could 
offer any amendment on any bill anytime you wanted. Since we have had 
the leadership that we have, we have changed that, and now we consider 
it abnormal that somebody wants to address a critical issue in our 
country on a bill, and we find that distasteful.
  I will remind you that 92 percent of the people in this country think 
everybody involved in the FEHBP who is working for the Federal 
Government ought to be in the exchanges. To not allow a vote on an 
amendment is cowardly because it says: I do not want to vote on that 
issue.

[[Page 13491]]

  So there is a very big difference from what we have heard said and 
what the reality has been--until 2006, the end of 2006 and the starting 
of the Congress in 2007. I think it is important.
  I have several amendments to this bill, several that I think will 
make it much more compliant with what the Constitution says, and I will 
not offer them today until this logjam of lack of minority rights is 
relieved. But I do have some comments.
  The intention of this bill is good. I appreciate what Senator Shaheen 
and Senator Portman have done. But I have some real differences of 
opinion about the effectiveness and the command and controls centered 
in Washington that come about through this bill.
  If you actually read this little book called the U.S. Constitution, 
we are going down the same path again that says Washington knows best, 
because in this bill the Secretary is going to determine final plans, 
final efficiency standards--not the standards groups that are out there 
because the Secretary will have to do it.
  So my hope is that we can get back to offering amendments on this 
bill--all the amendments that need to be offered, whether it is germane 
to the bill or not, as the Senate functioned for over 200 years. There 
should not be an issue that we cannot debate an amendment in the Senate 
at any time. That is the history of the Senate. That is what makes it a 
great body. That is what allows our Republic, our constitutional 
Republic, to function.
  I would say I am disappointed that the majority leader does not want 
to have a vote on something that 92 percent of the people in this 
country agree with and that he is not allowing Senator Vitter to have 
his amendment to address an issue people are burned up over--creating 
something better for us than what the average American can get. It is a 
tin ear. We do not pay attention to the American public at our own 
risk.
  I will not spend any more time. I have several amendments. I will try 
to offer them in the first part of next week.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first, I wish to thank my colleague from 
Oklahoma. He does have some amendments, and we are looking forward to 
them. We have talked about this bill and some of his amendments. I 
think you are going to find it is a good debate and some of the 
amendments will be helpful to the legislation.
  We have tried, as you know, on this legislation to focus on exactly 
what my friend from Oklahoma talked about, which is to make sure we are 
not putting new mandates on the private sector. There are none in this 
legislation--none.
  We do have some mandates on the Federal Government. It basically asks 
the Federal Government to practice what it preaches. Being the biggest 
user of energy, not just in the country but in the world, we believe 
the Federal Government can do a lot better. So things such as requiring 
the Federal Government to use some efficiency standards and some of the 
best practices saves all of us, as taxpayers, money. It is the right 
thing to do for taxpayers. It is also the right thing to do for energy 
efficiency and for our environment.
  We are not focused on mandates. In fact, we are explicitly focused on 
only incentives, only best practices. There are lots of amendments that 
will be offered on the floor that will try to add some mandates, and as 
a group we do not think that is the way to go, just to be clear on 
that.
  Also, in terms of the development of building efficiency standards, 
it is not the Secretary who will establish them. The Secretary provides 
the technical assistance, but the authority is preserved actually in 
the private standard-making bodies. I think that is appropriate.
  So we have gone out of our way to make this a voluntary bill, not a 
mandate bill. We have gone out of our way to ensure that this is 
responsive to what we are hearing out there among the business 
community: They are looking for better research, technology, looking 
for some deployable technologies to be able to improve their 
efficiency, to make them more competitive with their global 
competitors, because around the world other companies are competing 
with our companies in Ohio or in the other States represented in this 
great body. What we find is we are not going to want to compete on 
labor rates with developing countries. We do not want to lower our 
standards. Where we can compete is on the energy input into our 
manufacturing process. We are spending more than we have to because we 
are not as efficient as other countries, even some emerging economies, 
much less developed economies.
  So that is part of the reason the National Association of 
Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio manufacturers are 
supporting this legislation strongly. Over 200 businesses are 
supporting it because they believe this will help them to compete and 
win in the global marketplace.
  By the way, the Chamber of Commerce agreed today that they are going 
to key vote this legislation. They are strongly in support of it. I 
appreciate that. I think that will help to make the point this is not 
about Washington knows best; this is about ensuring that people have 
the information, the transparency, the technology, the research to be 
able to have a true ``all of the above'' energy strategy--yes, 
including producing more energy, which I am strongly for. We talked 
about that earlier. We need to produce more in this country. But also 
we could use the energy we have more efficiently. That combination is a 
recipe for success because it will help create jobs, it will help 
ensure we have a cleaner environment, and it will certainly help to 
make us less dependent on foreign oil and other forms of energy, which 
is in our national security interests, as we have seen so poignantly 
over the last couple weeks in the Middle East and other dangerous, 
volatile parts of the world we are relying on for our energy.
  I thank my colleague from Oklahoma. I look forward to working with 
him on his amendments when he is able to offer them. Again, I would 
strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to look 
carefully at the actual legislation because there is some information 
out there that may or may not be accurate in terms of the subsidies or 
mandates in this legislation. There are no mandates in the private 
sector, period, and we have deliberately crafted it in that manner.
  With that, I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, very briefly, Leader Reid has indicated 
to me that we continue to look for a way to move forward on the energy 
efficiency issue and there may be votes still today. The leader will 
have more to say, certainly, as he has a chance to explore these issues 
in the afternoon.
  Thank you.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VITTER. 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. VITTER. I know there are still discussions ongoing, including 
with the majority leader, about moving forward with this bill and with 
the important ``no Washington exemption'' issue. I want to encourage 
that discussion toward a positive resolution and state again that I am 
open to multiple ways in which all of that can be accomplished. Let me 
specifically address one issue.
  There is some concern that somehow I am going to demand multiple 
votes on this between now and October. What I am looking for is one 
vote straight up on this issue between now and October 1. It can be on 
this bill, it can be on the CR. But I am looking for that one vote. If 
we do have, for instance, an amendment vote on this bill, and the issue 
is added perhaps to the CR from the House and comes over, then I am 
sure we would have to deal with it again. But that would not be of my 
making or of my demanding.

[[Page 13492]]

  What I am looking for here in the Senate is simply to lock down and 
be assured of one fair up-or-down vote on this crucial issue between 
now and October. Of course, if this issue persists, I am sure I will 
talk about it and bring it up again, including after October 1. There 
are plenty of different ways to get there, all of which would be 
consistent with moving forward on the energy amendments and moving 
forward on this bill.
  I think there are a lot of reasonable ways to solve this. I am open 
to any and all of them.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANDERS. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be 
set aside so that I may call up my own amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. VITTER. Reserving the right to object, I propose an alternative 
unanimous consent. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment 
be set aside and the following amendments be made pending: the Sanders 
amendment, Bennet amendment No. 1847, Udall amendment No. 1845, 
Klobuchar amendment No. 1856, Franken amendment No. 1855, Blumenthal 
amendment No. 1878, and Vitter amendment No. 1866; that on Tuesday, 
September 17, at a time to be determined jointly by the majority and 
the minority leaders, my amendment No. 1866 and the side-by-side 
amendment on the same subject by the majority leader be made pending 
and receive 60 minutes of debate evenly divided and controlled by the 
majority bill manager and me; that no points of order be in order in 
relation to these two amendments; that upon expiration of the time for 
debate, without any intervening motions or debate, the Senate then 
proceed to votes on these two amendments subject to a 60-vote threshold 
for passage; and that subsequent to each vote, a motion to reconsider 
each vote be made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modified request?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the modified request.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, again reserving my right to object, I 
wish to outline another alternative which I think is a very reasonable 
path forward on this amendment and on the bill.
  I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the Vitter amendment No. 1866 and 
then on Wednesday, September 25, 2013, at 3 p.m., the Senate discharge 
the relevant committees from consideration of my bill, the No Exemption 
for Washington from ObamaCare Act, and then proceed immediately to 
consideration of that bill; that without any intervening motions or 
debate, the Senate proceed with 60 minutes of debate on that bill 
evenly divided and controlled by the majority leader and me; that the 
bill not be subject to any amendments or motions to commit; that after 
debate has expired, the bill be engrossed for a third reading, read a 
third time, and the Senate immediately vote on final passage subject to 
a 60-vote threshold; and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modified request?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I do object, sadly, that we can't choose 
such a path forward.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. It is clear there are differences of opinion in this 
body and in this country on how we proceed on energy matters. But I 
think--at least I hope--that there is pretty unanimous agreement that 
energy efficiency makes a whole lot of sense.
  At a time when the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tells us 
that over half of the total energy produced in the United States is 
wasted due to inefficiency, I would hope that regardless of one's 
political perspective, we could all move forward together to create a 
more energy-efficient society which will, A, lower the cost of fuel for 
millions of Americans; B, cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and help 
us deal with the planetary crisis of global warming; and C, as we make 
our Nation more energy efficient, we can create tens and tens of 
thousands of jobs. If there is a win-win-win situation out there, I 
think this is it, and I would hope we could move forward. This is why, 
because of the win-win-win aspect of this bill, I think we should be 
supporting the Shaheen-Portman bill, which has earned support from a 
wide array of Senators and organizations from across the political 
spectrum.
  I think Senator Shaheen would agree this is a fairly modest bill. It 
is not transforming the world, but this is a small step forward in 
doing what certainly needs to be done and that there should be very 
little disagreement about.
  As part of this effort, Chairman Wyden and I are proposing what I 
think is a significant amendment that complements the overall thrust of 
the bill. Our amendment is called the Residential Energy Savings Act, 
which, in fact, is a strong complement to the Shaheen-Portman bill. Our 
legislation focuses on residential energy efficiency--residential. We 
do that because we understand that in Vermont, in Louisiana, in Oregon, 
all over this country, there are tens of millions of people who 
understand they are wasting energy. When it gets cold, the heat is 
going through their roofs, through their windows, and through their 
walls. They are wasting money every single day, but they don't have the 
modest investment they need to make their homes more energy efficient. 
This is the problem Senator Wyden and I are trying to address. We are 
focusing attention on homeowners all over this country.
  The Residential Energy Savings Act will save money for homeowners and 
tenants and cut energy use by lowering the cost of energy efficiency 
upgrades. It will also create jobs for installers and for the companies 
that manufacture windows, insulation, and other energy efficiency 
materials.
  How does this amendment work? It is pretty simple. This bill makes 
loans available to States through the State Energy Program of the U.S. 
Department of Energy to create or expand existing financing programs. 
This provides homeowners and tenants with access to low-cost, consumer-
friendly capital for energy efficiency projects. Homeowners and tenants 
use the funding to invest in energy efficiency. Here is the exciting 
part of this concept: They pay back the loans through their energy 
savings and the U.S. Treasury gets the money back. In other words, we 
lend somebody $15,000 to make their home more energy efficient. They 
save $1,000 a year. They pay back the loan by those savings in their 
fuel bill. At the end of the day--for 15 years in that example--they 
are not paying any more for fuel, but in the 16th year they are going 
to see significant savings in their bill, and throughout the process we 
see significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, we 
have created jobs in a number of areas--the installers and those people 
who manufacture energy-efficient products.
  These are the key features of the amendment introduced by Senator 
Wyden and me:
  It is technology neutral. People will make their own choices about 
how they want to go forward.
  This amendment provides States with a high level of flexibility to 
support existing State and local programs or to design new financing 
programs that best fit their own circumstances and need.
  This amendment supports effective existing State and local programs 
and

[[Page 13493]]

supports innovations designed to improve energy efficiency financing. 
There are no mandates. Participation is entirely voluntary. The 
Department of Energy must consider regional diversity in issuing loans. 
This amendment encourages public-private partnerships and other 
strategies for leveraging public dollars.
  The bill incorporates annual reporting requirements to ensure 
accountability and provides valuable data to consumers, State and local 
governments, lenders, utilities, and the real estate industry about 
financing industry upgrades. The residential energy savings amendment 
is complementary to energy efficiency proposals by other Senators. 
Supporters of this amendment include the Alliance to Save Energy, the 
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the American 
Institute of Architects, Efficiency First, and the National Association 
of State Energy Officials.
  Residential energy efficiency--helping homeowners save energy and 
money while creating jobs at the same time--is an approach that is 
enjoyed by people all over the country.
  Let me reiterate the bottom line. This is a very simple concept. The 
Federal Government lends money to the States to be repaid back in full. 
This is not an expense for the Federal Government. There will be an 
administrative cost.
  We think at the end of the day there will be $1 billion of effort in 
making residential homes more energy efficient. In Vermont, you don't 
have to be a genius or an economist to know that it is pretty stupid to 
be heating your home in the wintertime and seeing that heat go out the 
window or the roof or the walls. In Vermont, and I am sure all over 
this country, we have a lot of older homes. They are wasting a lot of 
energy. People are spending much more money than they should.
  I will never forget doing an event with two sisters from Barre, VT, 
who were in their eighties. The State put forth a weatherization 
program. They reduced the cost of their fuel bill by something like 50 
percent. Their home was much more comfortable. This is what we should 
be doing all over this country, but working families and middle-class 
families in many ways can't come up with that $10-, $15-, $20,000 they 
need in order to make this happen. This bill gives money to the States, 
and they give it to the homeowners. The homeowners repay it based on 
reductions in fuel bills. The Federal Government gets its money back. 
We create jobs, we cut greenhouse gas emissions, and we save consumers 
huge sums of money. If this is not a win-win-win situation, I am not 
sure what is.
  I thank Senator Wyden for his hard work on this amendment. We look 
forward to working with my colleagues to see that it gets passed.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I am going to be very brief.
  I thank Senator Cornyn for his courtesy. To respond, I am very 
pleased to be supportive of this amendment. I just want my colleagues 
to get one number with respect to this proposal. Our assessment is that 
for every dollar made available under this particular amendment, it 
would leverage $10 worth of loans for homeowners to weatherize across 
the country. So when people talk about getting bang for the buck, that 
is the relevant number. Make $1 available through the States--this is 
not run by the Federal Government--under this program, and that results 
in $10 worth of loans being made for weatherization across the country. 
I think that is getting bang for the buck.
  I thank Senator Cornyn for his courtesy. I hope colleagues, when we 
get a chance to vote, will vote positively on the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, our friends on the other side of the 
aisle keep promising that once the President's health care law is fully 
implemented it will deliver fabulous results. Unfortunately, they have 
a massive credibility problem. Indeed, despite all the promises made to 
the American people during the debate and passage of the Affordable 
Care Act in 2009 and 2010, every week brings more evidence the 
President's health care law is, No. 1, already discouraging full-time 
job creation; No. 2, destroying many existing full-time jobs; No. 3, 
hampering medical innovation; and No. 4, encouraging further executive 
branch overreach.
  And of course the worst is yet to come because, amazingly enough, 
once this law was passed in 2010, it wasn't implemented before the 2010 
mid-term elections, nor was it implemented fully between then and the 
2012 Presidential election. So the American people have yet to feel the 
full force of the implementation of ObamaCare, even though what we see 
already is discouraging, to say the least.
  Once ObamaCare is fully implemented, it will drive up individual 
insurance premiums. We have already seen some indication of that around 
the country in the rates that have been announced for the individual 
exchanges that have been created. That is because of phenomena such as 
the guaranteed issue and age banding, which basically have engineered 
the insurance industry so that it no longer is insurance but prepaid 
health care.
  Secondly, it will cause millions of Americans to lose their current 
coverage. Remember when the President said: If you like what you have, 
you can keep it? That is proving not to be true.
  Thirdly, it will weaken Medicare and Medicaid.
  My colleagues may recall that during the 4th of July recess the 
administration announced it would not be confirming taxpayer 
eligibility for the ObamaCare premium subsidies until 2015, even though 
the subsidies will begin flowing--taxpayer dollars will be flowing--1 
year earlier in 2014. In other words, for 1 year, under the 
administration's current plan, people will be able to get taxpayer 
dollars without any independent verification of what they are 
representing in terms of their eligibility for those tax dollars. That 
is correct, without any independent verification--no safeguards for 
overpayments or fraud.
  Earlier today the House of Representatives passed legislation that 
would delay the ObamaCare premium subsidies until the administration 
establishes a system for verifying eligibility, to make sure those tax 
dollars are not stolen or obtained under false pretenses.
  It is one of those measures that should be a no-brainer. After all, 
whatever one thinks about health care reform, everyone should want to 
prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet our colleagues on the other side 
of the Capitol, House Democrats, were almost unanimously opposed to the 
No Subsidies Without Verification Act, and the majority leader in this 
body refuses to allow a vote in the Senate on similar legislation.
  Again, this is what one outside of Washington and the beltway would 
think is a no-brainer, but here we have an alternate universe, 
apparently. Apparently, our Democratic friends are okay with that, but 
I certainly am not, and neither are the 26 million people in Texas I 
have the privilege of representing.
  At a time when the Federal Government is almost $17 trillion in debt, 
shouldn't we be doing everything humanly possible to try and crack down 
on wasteful spending and fraud? Well, I would think so. But here is yet 
another question: Wasn't ObamaCare itself sold on the basis it would 
reduce health care fraud? Wasn't it supposed to improve oversight? That 
is what we were told during 2009 and 2010. Apparently those promises 
have now been forgotten.
  If the President and his allies are wondering why they have such an 
enormous credibility gap on ObamaCare, the answer is actually quite 
simple: So many of the promises that were made in selling ObamaCare 
have simply not been kept. It is simply not performing as advertised.
  Think about what we have learned in the last few months alone. In 
July, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study 
showing ObamaCare may cause substantial declines in aggregate 
employment. In other words,

[[Page 13494]]

unemployment will go up and the number of people getting work will go 
down. That same month, the Wall Street Journal reported that between 
2009 and 2012 the number of doctors opting out of Medicare nearly 
tripled.
  In my State, if you are covered by Medicare you might find a doctor 
who will take a new Medicare patient and you might not. Only about two-
thirds of Texas physicians will take a new Medicare patient because the 
reimbursements have been slashed to the point where many doctors simply 
can't economically take a new Medicare patient. This is like the old 
shell game where people are told they have coverage but they can't find 
a doctor willing to see them based on that coverage.
  The problem for Medicaid is even worse. In mid-August the University 
of Virginia announced that ObamaCare is projected to add $7.3 million 
to the cost of the university's health plan in 2014 alone. That is just 
at the University of Virginia. About a week later, National Journal 
reported that for the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will 
be higher in the individual exchanges than they are paying currently 
for employer-sponsored benefits.
  I have two daughters in their early thirties. They are the ones, 
under ObamaCare, who are going to have to bear the financial burden for 
subsidizing the health care costs for older Americans, and it is 
unfair. This is the very same cohort of the population that is finding 
it harder to find jobs and finding the burdens of our broken 
entitlement programs are going to be visited upon them, not to mention 
their share of the Federal debt, which boils down to about $53,000 
each. If I were a 30-year-old or 30-something, I would be pretty 
irritated at my elders for not being responsible and pushing that debt 
and those responsibilities on me--if I were them.
  Last week Investor's Business Daily reported that ``more than 250 
employers had cut work hours, jobs, or taken other steps to avoid 
ObamaCare costs.'' We heard a lot about this, including from some of 
the largest labor unions in the country, saying many employers, in 
order to avoid the employer mandate and other mandates associated with 
ObamaCare, were simply taking full-time jobs and turning them into 
part-time work, obviously resulting in people taking a cut in their 
income.
  A few days ago, a local media outlet in Michigan reported ObamaCare 
will cost the medical device company Stryker ``fully 20 percent of its 
total research and development investments.'' This has to do with the 
medical device tax which is part of the way ObamaCare was paid for and 
which punishes medical device companies. These companies create jobs 
here in the United States. They create new and innovative medical 
equipment that helps improve outcomes and makes our lives better. Yet 
they are being targeted under ObamaCare with this medical device tax 
and it is chasing jobs overseas and stifling innovative medical 
research.
  In addition, the Huffington Post has reported the Trader Joe's 
grocery chain will be dropping health insurance coverage for all 
employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week.
  As I said, we have seen some of our organized labor unions, 
particularly the one representing IRS employees that announced it does 
not want its members to receive health insurance through ObamaCare 
exchanges, even though, under ObamaCare, the IRS will be implementing 
the exchanges for everyone else, as well as the individual mandate. In 
other words, the very people responsible for administering ObamaCare 
want no part of joining the exchanges, and that should speak volumes to 
all of us.
  The truth is it wasn't supposed to be this way. Whether you were one 
of the most ardent advocates for the Affordable Care Act or whether you 
were a skeptic, such as I, who didn't believe it could work, I think 
the facts are undeniable. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to help 
the middle class, not cut their work hours and threaten their benefits. 
It was supposed to help young people, not drive up their insurance 
premiums. It was supposed to help medical innovation, not lead to 
factory closures and cancellations. And it was supposed to help make 
Medicaid stronger, not overload a broken system. It was sold on the 
basis it would strengthen Medicare, not trigger an exodus of doctors 
from seeing Medicare patients.
  My point is: Whether you were one of the most ardent advocates or 
whether you were a skeptic, ObamaCare is not living up to the hopes and 
the promises made by its biggest fans, and we should work together to 
try and find a way to deal with that in a responsible way.
  One final point. The President has apparently decided ObamaCare says 
whatever he wants it to say. For example, he has unilaterally delayed 
both the employer mandate and the eligibility verification I spoke 
about a moment ago simply because it has proven to be politically 
inconvenient. Many of my constituents are outraged at this and wonder 
how a law that applies to everyone in America can be enforced on a 
piecemeal or cherry-picked basis. My only explanation to them is the 
President controls the executive branch of government, including the 
Department of Justice. Congress has no authority to enforce these laws, 
only to pass the laws, expecting the executive branch will administer 
the laws and enforce the laws as written. But that hasn't happened. 
Meanwhile, the IRS has announced it will violate the text of the law 
and issue health subsidies through Federal exchanges, even though the 
law clearly states those subsidies can only be issued through the State 
exchanges.
  Here again is another example in this case of the IRS rewriting the 
law where it proves to be convenient to achieve a particular outcome. 
This should be and is an outrage. Indeed, on issues ranging from the 
tax subsidies to the employer mandate, ObamaCare has effectively become 
government by waiver.
  There is no way to sugarcoat it. The law is damaging our economy, 
damaging our health care system, and weakening our constitutional 
checks and balances and our legacy of being a Nation of laws, not of 
men. That is why the best course of action, I believe, is to delay 
ObamaCare, dismantle ObamaCare, and replace ObamaCare.
  I have cosponsored legislation numerous times that would delay both 
the employer and individual mandates, for example. It was introduced 
last night, the latest version, as an amendment to the current energy 
efficiency bill. My ultimate goal is to replace ObamaCare with patient-
centered reforms that do several important things we could all, 
hopefully, agree are important principles for whatever our health care 
system is.
  First of all, a replacement would make sure a health care system is 
in place where price and quality information is fully transparent and 
readily available. That is so people can compare and shop and use the 
market system to make sure people who provide those goods and services 
do so at as low a price and at as high a quality as they can get.
  A replacement system would include a Tax Code that treats 
individually purchased health insurance the same way as employer-
provided health insurance.
  A replacement system would make sure every American is protected 
against catastrophic expenses.
  This is one of the phony ways I have heard people talk against this 
idea. They say: Well, if you replace ObamaCare, you will eliminate the 
system against dealing with people with preexisting conditions. That is 
false. That is not true. You don't need this behemoth legislation that 
costs $2.7 trillion--or whatever the final figure is--in order to deal 
with people with preexisting conditions. What we can do is simply help 
fund the State-based insurance exchanges that provide coverage to 
people with preexisting conditions at a far cheaper price and still 
accomplish the same goal.
  So anyone who tells you we have to have ObamaCare to deal with 
preexisting conditions is trying to sell you a bill of goods.
  We should have a system replacing ObamaCare that gives all Americans 
an opportunity to save money in tax-free health savings accounts so 
they can

[[Page 13495]]

use that money to pay for their health bills. If they don't need the 
money for that purpose, they can save it like an IRA or some other 
savings account tax free.
  We should have a replacement system where the States will have much 
greater flexibility in improving Medicaid. We would be happy in Texas 
for the Federal Government to write us a check for its share of 
Medicaid and let us administer it in a much more cost-effective and a 
much higher quality sort of way.
  We need a system to replace ObamaCare that protects Medicare for 
future generations and a system that preserves the right for the most 
important decisions about medical care to be left to patients and their 
physicians.
  I remain confident that someday we can make this kind of health care 
system a reality. First, we need to delay if we can't replace it now. 
Certainly, as ObamaCare starts crumbling in on itself, we need to 
protect the American people from this catastrophic and epic failure and 
provide an alternative that has the sort of qualities I have described 
a moment ago--which will make sure that people have access to quality 
health care at an affordable price in a way that doesn't let Washington 
interfere with doctor-patient relationships or decisions we ought to 
reserve to ourselves and our families when it comes to our health care.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, often it is a little hard to divine what 
is actually going on here on the floor of the Senate.
  I want to make sure folks understand that the pending business before 
the Senate is a bipartisan bill offered by the Senator from New 
Hampshire and the Senator from Ohio on energy efficiency. That is the 
pending business before the Senate. One of the measures of this bill is 
the extraordinary support. We have business groups such as the Chamber 
of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and the Roundtable 
joining with the Natural Resources Defense Council. That is not exactly 
a coalition that comes up every single day, but you have it because of 
the good work Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman have done. They had 
all that in place as we came to the Senate.
  Since that time--and it has been 1\1/2\ days now that we have been on 
this bill--Senator after Senator has come to the floor of the Senate in 
a bipartisan fashion, starting with Senator Inhofe and Senator Carper--
and the list goes on and on--have come to the floor to say this is a 
good energy efficiency bill and we have some ideas on how we can make 
it even better. So they have offered their bipartisan amendments, and 
they have not been able to get a vote on those bipartisan amendments to 
a bipartisan bill. I think it would be fair to say that if they could 
get votes on those bipartisan amendments, they would pass 
overwhelmingly. We have others certainly in the wings as well.
  Who are the losers because we haven't been able to get those 
amendments up and we haven't been able to move ahead on this bill? I 
would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the people 
who are the losers are the consumers. They are the job creators. If you 
look at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a 
business-oriented group, this is legislation that will create thousands 
of jobs. And taxpayers are the losers, because a bipartisan bill which 
would be improved by the bipartisan amendments colleagues want to offer 
cannot go forward because it is stuck in this procedural morass.
  So you have consumers losing out on billions of dollars of savings, 
thousands of jobs, and our country missing out on dramatic energy 
savings.
  That seems foolish even by the sometimes stilted standards of the 
beltway, to pass up that kind of opportunity. The reason the breadth 
and support of this bill is so extensive is because this bill isn't run 
from a Washington Federal leviathan. This doesn't involve any mandates. 
The focus is on States and the private sector.
  Senator Sanders talked about an idea in terms of weatherization that 
I find very appealing. It is voluntary, like virtually this entire bill 
is.
  I was very pleased when Leader Reid indicated he was continuing to 
look for a way to move forward. I and others have been talking to 
various Senators in the leadership about how to do that. I hope that 
will be possible and we will see tangible progress made here shortly.
  I think it is so important to respond to what people said all summer 
to Senators, in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, and across the 
country; that is, people at home are tired of this food fight in 
Washington, tired of the bickering and the pettiness. They would like 
to see us show up, work together in a bipartisan way on issues that are 
fundamental to their well-being, and, in particular, grow an economy 
with more opportunities for high-skilled, high-wage jobs in the middle 
class. That is certainly what happens when we promote some of the top 
technologies associated with energy efficiency.
  The public said Senators ought to go back to Washington and do 
exactly what Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman have been talking 
about, an effort which has been supplemented by similar kinds of 
bipartisan proposals from various Senators.
  That is where we are 1\1/2\ days after the bill, Senator after 
Senator coming to the floor wanting to offer relevant bipartisan 
amendments to a bill that will be good for the productivity of the 
country, good for our environment, and good for our job creation.
  I am going to stay at my post here and hope we can find a path to go 
forward. I know there are discussions taking place. I am very grateful 
because Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman have been here at their 
posts trying to advance the bipartisan focus of this legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I thank Chairman Wyden for making the 
clarification that we are here on the floor not to talk about health 
care or other unrelated issues, but we are here to talk about energy.
  As the Senator pointed out yesterday, as Senator Murkowski, Senator 
Portman, and I have pointed out, this is the first energy bill to come 
to the floor since 2007. On an issue that is so critical to the future 
of our country, it is nice to finally be having a debate. It is nice to 
finally be able to listen to people on both sides of the aisle talking 
about why energy is so important, and talking about their amendments 
and the difference those amendments will make for people across this 
country.
  We were interrupted by health care after Senator Wyden and Senator 
Sanders talked about the amendment on residential energy efficiency, 
but I wanted to applaud both for that effort. Senator Sanders talked 
about the challenges faced by people in his home State of Vermont. My 
neighboring State of New Hampshire, the Presiding Officer's State of 
Massachusetts, the State of Oregon are all States that are cold weather 
States. In New Hampshire we have an inordinate number of people who 
heat with home heating oil which is very expensive, and we have a lot 
of old buildings. Because New Hampshire is one of the first States in 
the original Thirteen Colonies, we have a lot of buildings in the State 
that are old that need to be upgraded to be more energy efficient so 
people can afford their heating bills. This amendment that Senators 
would like to introduce--if we can ever get on the bill and get to some 
of these bipartisan amendments--would help address the challenges that 
people in the Northeast, the upper West, and the upper Midwest all face 
with the high costs of heating their homes in the wintertime.
  I would also point out that it is not just important to us in the 
North to have more energy-efficient homes, even though in the northeast 
we have more older homes. In the South it is equally important because 
air conditioning is very expensive as well. So people who can have 
their homes be more efficient

[[Page 13496]]

when they are trying to cool them in the summer also benefit.
  This is an amendment that is a win-win. As Senator Wyden pointed out 
for the last 1\1/2\ days, this legislation is a win-win for everybody. 
It is a win on job creation, it is a win on helping to prevent 
pollution in our environment, it is a win on reducing the threat from 
dependence on foreign oil. So the connection to national security is 
there. And it is a win in terms of saving consumers the cost of energy.
  In New Hampshire we have the sixth highest energy costs in the 
country, so we need to be able to save on energy costs because it is 
good for our businesses, it is good for our residents to not have to 
pay those high costs. I hope we can find some way to move forward on 
this bill and move forward on these bipartisan amendments, because this 
is a place where we can come to some agreement, we can work together, 
and we can get this done. The people of this country are expecting us 
to do that.
  I thank Senator Wyden for his leadership, and Senator Murkowski. 
Hopefully we are going to stay here, we will hopefully keep having 
people come to the floor to talk about their amendments and what we can 
do, once we can get on this bill, to make a difference.
  The bottom line here is that in addition to all the other good things 
it would do with the amendments that are being offered with the 
underlying bill, this will help create jobs, and it will do it in a way 
that doesn't cost a lot of money in terms of subsidizing those jobs. It 
is the private sector working in conjunction with public policy in a 
way that will encourage that job creation.
  I continue to be hopeful we can come to some agreement and move this 
legislation in a way that I know the people of this country are 
expecting.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, we are going to stay and continue to work 
with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to try to find a path 
forward on the bill.
  I want to announce from Senator Reid, as a courtesy to all Senators--
because we know their schedules are busy--there will be no recorded 
votes today, so that Senators can have that information.
  For all of us who are working on a path to move forward on this 
bipartisan energy efficiency bill, we will continue those efforts 
through the afternoon.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and 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. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Access to Justice

  Mr. COONS. Madam President, I am confident the Presiding Officer is 
familiar with the phrase, ``Justice too long delayed is justice 
denied.'' Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote that from his jail cell in 
Birmingham. ``Justice too long delayed is justice denied.''
  I rise to talk about justice and the budgetary choices Congress is 
making that impact the ability of the American people to access the 
justice promised them by our Constitution.
  Our Federal courts translate laws into justice and effective courts 
require fair judges, well-trained lawyers, and efficient clerks. As the 
Presiding Officer well knows, the fewer judges and clerks we have and 
the reduced resources in time-saving technology, the fewer cases can be 
handled at a time, and the longer cases will take to process. ``Justice 
too long delayed is justice denied.''
  Of course, staffing the courts costs money, but when we compare it to 
the rest of the Federal Government, this whole branch is a relative 
bargain. For every $100 spent by our Federal Government, just 19 cents 
goes to the entire Federal court system. We actually spend more every 
month on the ongoing conduct of operations in Afghanistan than we do an 
entire year on the whole Federal court system. It is, relatively 
speaking, a bargain.
  With caseloads growing and budgets shrinking, though, the Federal 
courts have been cutting back where they could for years now, 
methodically looking for ways to cut costs, reduce overhead, lower 
personnel, and generally be more efficient. They are both 
metaphorically and literally looking under every cushion for coins, 
looking for ways to cut costs, reduce overhead, lower their personnel 
costs, whatever they can do to keep up.
  Then came the sequester. Of course, when it was first conceived, the 
sequester was designed to be so reckless, so dangerous that it would 
drive Congress back to the negotiating table--House and Senate, 
Republicans and Democrats--to confront our Nation's annual deficits and 
craft a bipartisan agreement. But, sadly, it failed. Congress as a 
whole failed, and the across-the-board spending cuts engineered in the 
sequester went into effect.
  It has been almost 7 months since they came into effect and, in that 
time, I have heard from hundreds of Delawareans, as I am sure all the 
Members have heard from their constituents, directly impacted by the 
sequester. I have spoken with dumbfounded employees at Dover Air Force 
Base--more than 1,000 hard-working Delawareans, many of them veterans 
who can't believe that they individually are paying the price because 
Congress, House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, can't craft a 
responsible deal.
  Kevin from Magnolia asked me: Why are my family and I being punished 
with a 20-percent pay cut this quarter? Bryan from Houston--both towns 
in Delaware--said he was tired of being the one to suffer the 
consequences because, in his view, Congress can't get the budgetary job 
done.
  My heart goes out to Kevin and Bryan and every Delawarean who has 
called my office, written to me, and talked to me about the sequester. 
I agree with them. It needs to be replaced responsibly and urgently. As 
a member of the Budget Committee, I have worked with my colleagues to 
craft a budget that would replace sequester in a way that is in keeping 
with our core values and the priority of investing in America's future.
  Not many people, though, are talking about how the sequester is 
impacting our courts. We hear about how sequester is affecting defense. 
We hear about how it is affecting research, and infrastructure, but our 
courts have often gone without consideration. There is no natural 
constituency, bluntly, that feels slighted; the number of furloughed 
employees is relatively small and there is no real lobby in Washington 
for the health of our courts.
  But the sequester's impact on the Federal courts affects all of us--
every single American. The sequester is slowing the pace, increasing 
the cost, and eroding the quality of the delivery of justice in this 
country.
  At the end of our last session, I chaired a hearing of the Senate 
Judiciary Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts that looked at how 
the sequester is impacting the public defender service in our Nation's 
courts. These courts have been forced to cut past the fat and well into 
muscle and soon into bone.
  The Judiciary has looked at a variety of measures to address this new 
budgetary reality and very few of them come without significant pain to 
the businesses, individuals, and communities that rely on our courts. 
One proposal--to simply not schedule civil jury trials in September--
would effectively impose a 30-day uncertainty tax on everyone. A judge 
in Nebraska has threatened to dismiss low-priority immigration status 
crimes because of a lack of adequate capacity. In New York, deep 
furlough cuts to the public defender's office caused the delay of the 
criminal trial for Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and former Al Qaeda 
spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith.
  In my home State of Delaware, sequester has meant lengthy employee 
furloughs at the clerk's office of the bankruptcy court, reduced 
investments in IT, and postponed essential upgrades. Simply put, the 
financial state

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of our Federal courts erodes our fundamental constitutional rights. 
Individuals depend on the courts to be there when they need them, to 
seek relief from discrimination, to resolve commercial disputes, to 
allow parties to stop fighting and get to work growing the economy or 
to guarantee fairness and efficiency in criminal proceedings.
  The reality is our Federal courts were already stretched thin before 
this sequester.
  Chief Justice Roberts leads the Judiciary Conference of the United 
States. The Judicial Conference was created by Congress to administer 
the Federal court system and work with Congress to ensure 
appropriations keep up with the needs of our courts. The Judicial 
Conference is and always has been nonpartisan.
  Earlier this year, the Judiciary Conference sent Chairman Leahy and 
me a letter recommending that in order for the courts to fulfill their 
missions, we must add Federal judges to the bench. In the last two 
decades, since the last comprehensive judgeship bill--23 years, to be 
precise--article III district courts have seen their caseloads grow 
nearly 40 percent. Yet the number of judges has grown by four. Today, 
judges in the Eastern District of California, long recognized as one of 
the most overburdened in the Nation, face over 1,000 waiting case 
filings per judge. In the District of Columbia, case filings were over 
1,500 per judge. The Judicial Conference generally believes that 
additional judgeships are needed when there are more than 500 per 
judge. So even before the sequester, our courts weren't keeping up with 
their caseloads.
  Heeding the recommendations we received last month, Chairman Leahy 
and I introduced the Federal Judgeship Act of 2013, which will create 
91 new Federal judgeships, 2 Federal circuits, and 32 judicial 
districts across 21 States. This bill would provide much needed relief 
to our overburdened courts, ensuring they are better prepared to 
administer justice quickly and efficiently.
  Again, this proposal, this bill, is in direct response to the 
analytical work of the nonpartisan Judicial Conference. This change is 
long overdue. Congress has not comprehensively addressed judicial 
staffing levels since 1990--23 years ago--and the trial court weighted 
filings per judgeship have risen from 386 back then to 520 today. Those 
national figures actually mask even more dramatic circumstances faced 
by the most burdened districts in Texas, Delaware, and California.
  Yesterday, I chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee 
Subcommittee on Bankruptcy and the Courts to consider this act and, 
during this hearing, District Court Judge Sue Robinson of Delaware 
testified on the need for more judgeships. She explained that ``despite 
all the additional technologies we have, and an excellent staff, there 
is nothing more I can do at this point with respect to getting my cases 
resolved timely.'' At that hearing, I appreciated and was encouraged by 
the statement of my colleague from Alabama that, in fact, the District 
of Delaware deserves another judge due to its incredible caseload. I 
would argue, though, and the evidence suggests, that the need is not 
confined to my State but to districts all across the country. We need 
to take on the whole problem, not just a small piece of it. Nobody 
wants to be in a courtroom, but when you need to be in court it is 
because something significant has happened in your life and you don't 
want a judge rushing to move on to the next thing because of a crushing 
caseload. You don't want clerks so awash in paperwork that yours gets 
lost.
  In conclusion, we need to help our judges deliver justice by 
replacing the sequester with a responsible, balanced approach that 
restores the funding taken from our courts and allows us to add the 
judgeships we need to keep pace with demand.
  Dr. King was right: Justice too long delayed is indeed justice 
denied. By delaying the delivery of justice, the sequester is denying 
justice to too many Americans. We don't need more delays; we need more 
judges, and we need to act together to get it done now.
  Thank you, and with that I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set 
aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 1860 to the 
Energy Savings and Industrial Competitive Act of 2013.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I 
certainly support a vote on this amendment and many other amendments--
all amendments, my amendment--and, therefore, I propose an alternative 
unanimous consent request.
  I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and 
the following amendments be made pending: Gillibrand No. 1860, Franken 
No. 1855, Inhofe No. 1851, Bennet No. 1847, Udall No. 1845, Klobuchar 
No. 1856, Sessions No. 1879, Enzi No. 1863, and Vitter No. 1866; and 
that on Tuesday, September 17, at a time to be determined jointly by 
the majority and minority leaders, my amendment No. 1866 and a side-by-
side amendment on the same subject by the majority leader be made 
pending and receive 60 minutes of debate evenly divided and controlled 
by the majority bill manager and myself; that no points of order be in 
order in relation to these two amendments; that upon expiration of the 
time for debate, without any intervening motions or debate, the Senate 
then proceed to vote on these two amendments, subject to a 60-vote 
threshold for passage; and that subsequent to each amendment vote, a 
motion to reconsider each vote be made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modified request?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there an objection to the original request?
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, let me 
offer another alternative because, again, I want this amendment to be 
voted on, I want all the amendments I mentioned to be voted on. I want 
my amendment or issue to be voted on.
  So in that spirit, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to 
withdraw my Vitter amendment No. 1866; that on Wednesday, September 25, 
2013, at 3 p.m., the Senate discharge the relevant committees from 
consideration of my related bill, the No Exemption for Washington from 
ObamaCare Act, proceed immediately to consideration of my bill; that 
without any intervening motions or debate, the Senate proceed with 60 
minutes of debate on the bill, evenly divided and controlled by the 
majority leader and myself; that the bill not be subject to any 
amendments or motions to commit; then, after debate has expired, the 
bill be engrossed for a third reading, read a third time, and the 
Senate immediately vote on final passage, subject to a 60-vote 
threshold; and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the 
table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modified request?
  Mr. WYDEN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there an objection to the original request?
  Mr. VITTER. Madam President, in that case, I must object, and I 
regret that we cannot choose these paths forward which would ensure a 
vote on these amendments that we are discussing.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from New York.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I have an amendment that will help 
anyone in America who has had to rebuild after a natural disaster and I 
truly hope we can break this impasse and it can soon be considered.
  My amendment would remove burdens and streamline the process that 
recipients of disaster aid face when upgrading to more energy-efficient 
technology.
  In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, we saw all too well that old 
technology

[[Page 13498]]

can fail all too easily. Yet because of administrative burdens, 
recipients of much needed emergency funds will replace appliances and 
infrastructure with the same antiquated counterparts that were damaged. 
In many cases this means replacing a 10-year-old hot water heater with 
another 10-year-old unit or replacing a 20-year-old electric 
transformer with similarly antiquated systems without any regard for 
modern safety and efficiency standards.
  At a minimum we should provide the option of allowing these 
homeowners, businesses, and utilities the ability to use emergency 
disaster funding to upgrade to more energy-efficient appliances, 
machinery or electrical infrastructure.
  Not only will the use of energy-efficient technology save money, it 
will reduce pollution, it will create jobs, and it will help ensure 
that our infrastructure is more resilient to the increase in extreme 
weather events we have seen facing this country.
  My amendment allows emergency funding recipients to voluntarily 
upgrade damaged equipment and structures with energy-efficient 
technology.
  It is a budget-neutral alternative to current law. It does not direct 
FEMA to spend at higher levels. Remember, every $1 spent in upgrading 
to more energy-efficient technology provides upward of $5 in savings.
  We should be streamlining the process and removing the roadblocks 
individuals and businesses face when choosing to replace items 
destroyed in natural disasters with more energy-efficient technology.
  Thank you. I do hope we can consider this amendment soon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, just to respond to the distinguished 
Senator from New York, I want her to know I am very hopeful we will get 
her amendment formally in front of the Senate. I want the Senator from 
New York to know and colleagues to know that I think Senator Gillibrand 
has brought a first-rate idea to this already bipartisan bill.
  Here is what Senator Gillibrand is talking about, because I know 
energy is sometimes a little bit of a complicated area. What Senator 
Gillibrand is essentially saying is that she wants to give folks who 
have been clobbered by a disaster more choice in how they rebuild after 
a disaster.
  In effect, what the Senator from New York is saying is let's give 
those folks who have been hard hit by disasters a chance to trade up 
for those energy-efficient products that are going to save them energy 
and save them money.
  This is the kind of idea, colleagues, that sometimes seems too 
logical for Washington, DC. But it sure makes a lot of sense to me.
  I commend the Senator from New York for offering this particular 
idea. As she has indicated, no mandates. This is not the Federal 
leviathan sweeping in and forcing people to do X, Y, and Z after a 
disaster. This is about choice. It is being done without any extra 
money provided by the government. I think it is just a first-rate idea. 
Frankly, this is what Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman and I thought 
would be part of this debate. It has been so long since anybody got 
serious about this issue on the floor we were convinced people would 
start bringing good ideas to the floor--the fact that they have been 
welling up all this time, when we have not had energy efficiency on the 
floor.
  So we have been here for a day and a half. I sure wish we were voting 
on my colleague's amendment and other amendments relating to energy 
efficiency. I think it is an excellent idea. I hope colleagues will 
support it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, let me just echo, I hope Senator 
Gillibrand gets a vote. I hope all these amendments mentioned get a 
vote. Of course, I hope my proposal gets a vote. The distinguished 
majority leader several days ago announced that the floor was open for 
amendments--no limitations, except one, which we all agreed to put the 
Syria debate on hold, as the President asked, and everyone agreed to 
that. The majority leader said this would be an open amendment process; 
the floor was open for any and all amendments.
  Great. Let's have it. Let's have votes on all of these amendments, 
certainly including those by Senators Gillibrand, Franken, Blumenthal, 
Inhofe, Bennet, Udall, Klobuchar, Sessions, Enzi, and my amendment. 
Again, the vote I am asking for--quite frankly, demanding--does not 
have to be in the context of this bill. As I have made clear with my 
second UC request, I will put it aside and withdraw it from this bill, 
but it is time sensitive. It does have to occur in a fair up-or-down 
way before October 1 because the illegal OPM rule--that is a bailout, 
an exemption for Washington--takes effect then. It is very time 
sensitive. I did not create that rule certainly and I did not create 
that timeline and, therefore, I did not create that urgency. But it is 
there because of that, in my opinion, illegal OPM action.
  I will also happily accept that vote outside the context of this 
bill, and I have suggested multiple paths forward where we can vote. 
Let's vote. But everybody needs to get reasonable votes, not just those 
who are approved by the majority leader. I look forward to that 
resolution. I have put multiple paths forward and look forward to that 
being resolved in the near future.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would like to speak to a couple 
amendments I have filed to the bill that is under consideration by the 
Senate today. I wish to talk about amendment No. 1876. Just to kind of 
give you the background context, most of us know that when we were 
debating the health care bill a few years ago, the labor unions were 
enthusiastic supporters of ObamaCare. It perhaps should come as no 
surprise that they are having some buyer's remorse. I think they are 
realizing they were sold a bill of goods, and similar to a lot of 
people around this country whom I talk to, they would like to have a 
do-over.
  In fact, if we look at what has happened since the legislation has 
become law and what has happened to premiums--they continue going up. 
In fact, there was a Kaiser study just this last month that had family 
premiums going up $3,000, on average, since President Obama took 
office. Of course, that was after the promise that health care premiums 
were going to go down by $2,500.
  We have seen employers either cut jobs or slash hours. In fact, 250 
employers have cut jobs, and there is hardly a day that goes by where 
there is not a headline in a major newspaper about some employer who is 
having to reduce their workforce or not hire people they otherwise 
would hire simply because of the additional cost, the requirements, the 
mandates, all the uncertainty created by ObamaCare.
  Of course, what that means is the people who are getting hired are 
getting hired for part-time jobs. If we look at the number of jobs 
created this year, about 77 percent of those are part-time jobs. What 
is happening? A lot of employers--those that are under 50 employees--if 
they go over 50, obviously, they are covered by the mandate that says 
they have to provide government-approved health care. So they are 
keeping the number under 50 employees. Then the other requirement is to 
qualify as a full-time employee, you have to work 30 hours a week. So 
employers are also reducing the hours of their employees. So we have, I 
think, more now 29-hour-a-week jobs in this country than we have ever 
had before. The numbers since the beginning of the year with regard to 
jobs created--part-time time jobs--do bear that out. More and more 
employers are finding their way to reduce the hours of employees and 
hire people for jobs that are part-time jobs as opposed to full-time 
jobs.
  What does that mean? That means the take-home pay of middle-class 
Americans is going down, and in order to make ends meet, they are now 
having to get that second job. It is creating all kinds of distortions 
in the labor force. So it is no surprise, I would think, that the labor 
unions would like to have this issue revisited.
  I wish to share with you a couple statements that have been made. The

[[Page 13499]]

International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the UFCW, and UNITE-HERE sent a 
letter to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader 
Harry Reid in July stating:

       On behalf of the millions of working men and women we 
     represent and the families they support, we can no longer 
     stand silent in the face of elements of the [health care law] 
     that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our 
     members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.

  The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers--this 
from a letter several months ago in April--

       I am therefore calling for repeal or complete reform of the 
     Affordable Care Act to protect our employers, our industry, 
     and our most important asset: our members and their families.

  If we look at the letter that was sent on July 11 by the three unions 
I mentioned earlier, it goes on to say it will create nightmare 
scenarios, it will shatter benefits, and, actually, that it will 
destroy the backbone of the middle class, which is the 40-hour 
workweek--so very strong language by some of those who were the most 
enthusiastic and strongest advocates and supporters of ObamaCare when 
it was being discussed and debated in the Senate.
  Last night, at their annual convention, the AFL-CIO passed a 
resolution calling for major changes to ObamaCare.
  The unions are trying to get a special deal, and they want to work 
with the administration in a way that completely ignores the text of 
ObamaCare.
  The law says anyone who has an offer from their employer of 
government-approved health care coverage is not eligible--not 
eligible--to go into the exchanges and receive refundable health care 
premium tax credits.
  The law also states that union-provided insurance, known as Taft-
Hartley multiemployer health plans, is--is--government-approved health 
care coverage.
  Consequently, union employees enrolled in these Taft-Hartley plans 
are not eligible for the exchanges and the refundable premium tax 
credits that are available in the exchange.
  Obviously, the unions are not happy about that. In fact, on August 
27, 2013, the trade publication Inside Health Policy reported:

       The Office of Management and Budget previously showed on 
     its regulatory review website that on Aug. 24 it received a 
     Department of Labor Proposed rule on ``Health Insurance 
     Premium Assistance Trust Supporting the Purchase of Certain 
     Individual Health Insurance Policies.'' The rule, which OMB 
     said is Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-related 
     (PPACA), also appears to deal with the exclusion from a 
     definition of an employee welfare benefit plan, but this week 
     the description disappeared.

  The unions are clearly seeking a way around the law and want a 
special fix that would apply to them and to them only.
  If they have their way, what essentially happens is that union 
members will receive government subsidies for their insurance plans 
from three different sources, in three different ways--a benefit 
position that no other organization or individual is in.
  First, they get the tax deduction that an employer receives for 
contributing to a union health plan.
  Second, they will get the nontaxable income that the employee 
receives when his or her employer purchases a union health plan. Third, 
finally, a new premium assistance tax credit for union members who 
purchase the union health plan.
  A recent analysis from the American Action Forum shows that if the 
administration gives labor unions what they want, it would cost 
taxpayers $187 billion over the next 10 years. The new health care law 
is clear that taxpayer-funded premium assistance credits are intended 
for low- to middle-income Americans without access to affordable 
insurance through an employer or who purchase health insurance on the 
exchanges.
  The fact is that Taft-Hartley union health plans are not exchange-
based plans, they are employer-sponsored health plans. Providing union 
members with a premium assistance tax credit on top of the favorable 
tax treatment already afforded to them for their employer-sponsored 
coverage amounts to double-dipping for union workers and is grossly 
unfair for every nonunion worker in America who would receive no such 
special benefit.
  The law states that union employees should not receive both Taft-
Hartley coverage and premium tax credits, but the administration has 
made it abundantly clear that they are willing to ignore this law in 
other areas. That is why I have introduced as a bill and an amendment 
to the pending legislation the Union Bailout Prevention Act that would 
seek to close off any possible loophole the administration might create 
or could use to give unions a special fix.
  I do not blame at all the unions or other Americans around this 
country for not liking what they got. I think a lot of people had 
higher hopes, and those, obviously, who supported this and 
enthusiastically supported the health care law are now realizing this 
is not what they were promised. As a consequence, a lot of them would 
like to see a do-over. They want to see changes. They want to see 
reforms. Some want to see repeal. That obviously would be my preference 
in all of this. But it is not fair to carve out groups of people at the 
exclusion or detriment of other Americans who would be unfairly 
impacted by that carve-out.
  That is essentially what they are requesting here. They are trying to 
get special treatment that would allow them to claim not one, not two, 
but three special tax provisions or tax treatments as a result of the 
new Affordable Care Act when, in fact, under Taft-Hartley plans they 
already receive favorable tax treatment and they are in government-
approved plans. That is a government-approved plan and therefore not 
eligible for the exchanges, as are many other Americans who do not have 
access to some sort of employer-provided health care plan.
  So if this carve-out were something the administration would approve, 
it would create a special treatment, a special provision that would 
cost taxpayers billions of dollars and be completely unfair to 
countless Americans who would love to see the provisions of this law 
either repealed or delayed for them as well.
  The better solution, I would argue, is let's delay this for 
everybody. I would like to see it repealed. I think we could have done 
a much better job. We did not need a 2,700-page bill and 20,000 pages 
of regulations to deal with some of the challenges and problems we have 
in our health care system today, but that is what we have. We have a 
government takeover of our health care system. We have 20,000 pages of 
regulations--which, by the way, is significantly taller than I am. It 
is about 7 feet tall when you stack those regulations. Somebody has to 
interpret all of that. Somebody has to make sense out of it. Obviously, 
as people start to interpret and make sense out of it, they are not 
liking what they are finding. That should not come as any surprise 
because when you get a massive expansion of the government, which is 
essentially what this was, a takeover of literally one-sixth of the 
American economy, you are going to have a lot of associated unintended 
consequences.
  I think it would make a lot of sense--there are so many better ways 
of going about this--if we were to repeal this and start over, but at a 
minimum, if one group is going to get special treatment, then all 
Americans ought to get that same treatment. I would argue that the best 
way to do that is to delay this for everybody across this country, not 
to create special carve-outs, special treatment that would apply to 
just a small number of Americans when there are literally millions of 
Americans who are impacted by this new law.
  I would also like to address briefly, if I might--this is another 
amendment I filed to this bill. It is amendment No. 1887. It has to do 
with the Department of Energy loan program that has already cost 
taxpayers millions in bad investments. It is the Advanced Technology 
Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program. It was intended to provide loans 
for manufacturing facilities that produce fuel-efficient vehicles. 
However, after making only five loans over the past several years, this 
program was mothballed in 2011.

[[Page 13500]]

  Remarkably, Secretary Moniz is considering reviving this program and 
is reportedly seeking new applications for the ATVM Program. I have 
introduced this amendment because the Obama administration has not 
proven itself to be a very good venture capitalist. If you look at the 
record of the five recipients of ATVM loans, one is bankrupt and 
another has suspended their payments on a $192 million loan. The 
Government Accountability Office has also questioned whether the 
Department of Energy has the expertise to properly assess loan 
applications. The GAO has also concluded that the Department of Energy 
lacks the engineering expertise needed for effective technical 
oversight.
  Not only is this program poorly managed, it is no longer needed. 
Credit markets in the auto industry have largely recovered from the 
recession, and industry participants have shown little interest in the 
ATVM Program in recent years. Additionally, stricter fuel economy 
standards, which automakers supported, promote vehicle technologies 
that are subsidized by the loan program.
  The ATVM Program has $16.6 billion in outstanding lending authority. 
According to GAO, that is a credit subsidy risk of over $4 billion. I 
have offered this amendment to prohibit any new loans from being made 
under the ATVM Program and to protect taxpayers from this outstanding 
exposure. Given the Energy Department's poor track record and the fact 
that these subsidies are no longer necessary, I would urge my 
colleagues to support my amendment to stop the administration from 
making additional risky loans and losing even more taxpayer dollars.
  I hope we will get a chance to vote on these amendments. I know the 
manager of the bill, the Senator from Oregon, is working with others to 
try to come up with a path forward in terms of processing amendments. 
But this is certainly one that would save the government and the 
taxpayers some money. If you look at the record, I think most Americans 
would agree this is not the way they want to see their money used.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Energy 
Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, S. 1392. I am pleased to be 
a cosponsor of this legislation, which would build on previous energy 
efficiency legislation and proposes cost-effective mechanisms to 
support the adoption of off-the-shelf efficiency technologies for 
buildings, manufacturers, and the federal government.
  As honorary Vice-Chair of the Alliance to Save Energy, I have been a 
long-time proponent of efforts to improve energy efficiency. 
Encouraging the adoption of energy efficiency measures is one of the 
easiest yet most effective mechanisms for reducing energy consumption, 
lessening pollution, and ultimately saving families, businesses, and 
the federal government money.
  Legislation to improve our Nation's energy policy is long-overdue. I 
would like to congratulate the bill sponsors, Senators Shaheen and 
Portman, for crafting this bipartisan, commonsense bill and for their 
efforts in working with the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee, Chairman Wyden and Ranking Member Murkowski, to 
bring this bill to the Senate floor. The provisions in S. 1392 will 
kick-start the use of energy efficiency technologies that are 
commercially available now and can be deployed by residential, 
commercial, and industrial energy users. It will also improve the 
energy efficiency of the federal government, which is the largest user 
of energy in the country. Given the challenging fiscal environment, it 
is notable that all authorizations included in S. 1392 are fully 
offset.
  Specifically, S. 1392 would strengthen voluntary building codes for 
new homes and commercial buildings, train workers in energy-efficient 
commercial building design and operation, help streamline manufacturing 
energy efficiency, create a pilot program for highly efficient supply 
chains, and require the federal government to adopt energy saving 
practices for computers.
  I am also pleased to be the lead cosponsor of two amendments that 
complement the goals of S. 1392. First, I have joined my colleague, the 
Senator from Colorado, Mr. Udall, in sponsoring an amendment which 
would provide a streamlined, coordinating structure for schools to help 
them better navigate available federal energy efficiency programs and 
financing options. This would be particularly helpful for rural schools 
in states such as Maine and would help these institutions save money on 
their rising energy costs. Decisions about how best to meet the energy 
needs of their schools, however, would still appropriately be made by 
the states, school boards, and local officials.
  The second amendment I am pleased to be cosponsoring along with my 
colleagues from Delaware, Senator Coons, and Rhode Island, Senator 
Reed, would reauthorize and extend the core Weatherization Assistance 
Program and State Energy Program activities at the Department of Energy 
through 2018, develop a competitive grant program for non-profits to 
carry out weatherization projects, and require minimum professional 
standards for weatherization contractors and workers. I am a long-time 
supporter of weatherization, which plays an important role in 
permanently reducing home energy costs for low-income families and 
seniors in all states, lessening our dependence on foreign oil, and 
training a skilled workforce. Weatherizing homes and reducing energy 
costs is particularly important for a State such as Maine, which has 
the oldest housing stock in the Nation and a high dependence on home 
heating oil.
  Earlier this week, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient 
Economy, ACEEE, released new analysis demonstrating that S. 1392 would 
save consumers and businesses over $65 billion on their energy bills by 
2030 and would help support thousands of new jobs by cutting government 
and industrial energy waste and assisting homeowners in financing 
energy efficiency improvements.
  S. 1392 has the support of a broad coalition of stakeholders, 
including energy efficiency, business, and environmental organizations, 
small and large businesses, utilities, and public interest groups. I am 
pleased to be a cosponsor of S. 1392 and urge its swift passage.

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