[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1020-1057]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of S. 1, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant bill clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1) to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.

  Pending:

       Murkowski amendment No. 2, in the nature of a substitute.
       Fischer amendment No. 18 (to amendment No. 2), to provide 
     limits on the designation of new federally protected land.
       Sanders amendment No. 24 (to amendment No. 2), to express 
     the sense of Congress regarding climate change.
       Vitter/Cassidy modified amendment No. 80 (to amendment No. 
     2), to provide for the distribution of revenues from certain 
     areas of the Outer Continental Shelf.
       Menendez/Cantwell amendment No. 72 (to amendment No. 2), to 
     ensure private property cannot be seized through condemnation 
     or eminent domain for the private gain of a foreign-owned 
     business entity.
       Wyden amendment No. 27 (to amendment No. 2), to amend the 
     Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to clarify that products 
     derived from tar sands are crude oil for purposes of the 
     Federal excise tax on petroleum.
       Lee amendment No. 71 (to amendment No. 2), to require a 
     procedure for issuing permits to drill.
       Murkowski (for Blunt/Inhofe) amendment No. 78 (to amendment 
     No. 2), to express the sense of the Senate regarding the 
     conditions for the President entering into bilateral or other 
     international agreements regarding greenhouse gas emissions 
     without proper study of any adverse economic effects, 
     including job losses and harm to the industrial sector, and 
     without the approval of the Senate.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we are back to continue debate and 
voting on amendments to this bipartisan Keystone XL bill.
  I will focus on two main subjects today. The first is to speak to 
what I think is the good progress we have made on this bill, moving us 
toward ultimately a final vote and final passage. I believe we probably 
surprised a few people yesterday by adopting an amendment on climate 
change that few thought would be adopted. We have now processed a total 
of nine amendments. Some would say, well, nine is not much, but just to 
put it into context, last year, the Senate held just 15 rollcall votes 
on amendments. That was in all of 2014. Over just a couple of days here 
in this new Congress, we are already at 60 percent of last year's 
total, and it is still January. We have eight amendments that are 
pending at this moment and set to be voted on today. We will work out 
the timing and order of those votes. My hope is that we will exceed 
last year's total today.
  I believe our productivity has been good. I appreciate the 
cooperation of the ranking member on the committee. What we have been 
able to do with this measure is important because I think it stands in 
pretty stark contrast to what we have seen in recent years and, quite 
honestly, to the delays the Keystone XL Pipeline has faced over those 
years.
  The second part of my comments this morning--I wish to provide a 
little bit of perspective about how long this cross-border permit has 
been pending, awaiting a final decision by the President.
  Sometimes when we talk in terms of the raw numbers, some ask: What 
does that really mean? What does it mean to be on the 2,316th day that 
has passed since the company seeking to build this pipeline first filed 
its first permit with the State Department?
  It has been more than 6 years, more than 76 months, and more than 330 
weeks.
  The President noted in his State of the Union Address this week that 
Keystone XL was just a single oil pipeline. And he is right--it is just 
a single oil pipeline. We have multiple pipelines that cross the 
border. We have hundreds of pipelines that cross the country. So it 
begs the question: How and why has it taken so long to get action on 
just one single pipeline? Why has it taken so long?
  There have been a lot of examples we have heard on floor. I mentioned 
yesterday that President Obama was still

[[Page 1021]]

a sitting Senator when the permit application was filed. Others have 
said the iPad was not even out on the market when the first permit was 
filed. We heard that 2,300 days is longer than it took the United 
States to win World War II, longer than Lewis and Clark's expedition to 
explore the West, and longer than Project Mercury, which put the first 
American into space. There have been a lot of comparisons in terms of 
what it really means to be longer than 2,300 days.
  I mentioned on the floor many times that in Alaska we are seeking to 
try to advance our natural gas resource, and in order to do so we need 
a big pipeline to move from the North Slope down to tidewater, and so 
we are working to train welders because we know that when that day 
comes and we have the opportunity to build that line, we are going to 
want Alaskans to have those jobs. They may be temporary in that you 
don't weld a pipeline forever, you do it until the job is complete, but 
those are good jobs for those Alaskans and for people who come up to 
our State.
  The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center in Alaska does a fabulous job. 
In my opinion, it is the best pipeline training facility we have in the 
country. Every year, graduates from the training center are sent out, 
ready to go to work on projects such as Keystone XL. We are probably 
talking about seven sets of welders who have graduated at this point, 
and we need to keep approving projects that can help these young people 
or those who have been retrained as welders to get jobs. That is what 
they are waiting for.
  We can even think about this length of time which has ensued since 
the first permit application has been pending in terms of flying to 
Mars and back. We could probably complete about three roundtrips from 
here to Mars and back, depending, of course, on the distance between 
the planets, but I am just putting it in context.
  If we wanted to stay closer to home, we could describe those 2,300 
days in terms of how many times we could hike the Appalachian Trail--
probably 10 or 12 depending on the weather. One of these days I would 
like to hike the Appalachian Trail. I don't know that I have the time, 
it is one of those issues when you think about how long this has been 
pending before this administration.
  Today I will add one more example to show the comparison. At this 
time in the football season, we are all focused on what is going on 
with Super Bowl XLIX, which is coming up in 10 days now. We will see 
Super Bowl XLIX pit the reigning NFL champions, the Seattle Seahawks--
in Alaska we don't have our own professional football team, so we kind 
of adopted the Seahawks. I will let my colleagues know that I will be 
standing with the ranking member in rooting for the Seahawks on the big 
day next week. A lot of folks are excited about it, and we will be 
watching it. The game will be played next Sunday.
  For the moment, let's look back to September 19, 2008, when the first 
cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline was first submitted to 
the State Department. Let's specifically focus on the Seahawks because 
they provide a pretty good example of how much has changed over the 
past 6 years. Back in September of 2008, the Seahawks were about to 
start a season in which they would have a record of just 4 and 12--
winning 4 games and losing 12. At that point they were still a good 
team and we were still rooting for them, but they were a pretty 
different team. For starters, the Seahawks had a head coach. Their 
current coach, Pete Carroll, was still at the University of Southern 
California coaching the Trojans. Their star running back, Marshawn 
Lynch, was about to start his second year in the NFL as a member of the 
Buffalo Bills. It would be another 2 years before Lynch joined the 
Seahawks and just over 3 years before the Nation discovered his love of 
Skittles during the game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
  The most famous members of the Seahawks secondary--the Legion of 
Boom--are Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. Back in September of 2008, 
both were still in college, respectively playing for Stanford and the 
University of Texas.
  Of course, we cannot forget Russell Wilson. A lot of Alaskans are 
rooting for him to get a second consecutive Super Bowl as the starting 
quarterback for the Seahawks. Back in September of 2008--he played just 
a handful of college games at that time. He was a redshirt freshman at 
North Carolina State.
  My point here is not necessarily about football--although that is 
what a lot of us are talking about--it is to demonstrate that a lot can 
happen over the course of 2,300 days, and it does, whether we are 
talking about what goes on in politics, in world events, or the world 
of sports. My point is that it should probably take the Federal 
Government less time to approve an important infrastructure project--
what the President himself has called just a single oil pipeline--than 
it takes to build an NFL championship team.
  I would like us to get to the point where we are done discussing the 
merits of this important project and be done in the sense that we can 
move forward not only with Keystone XL but move forward as a nation 
when it comes to North American energy independence and providing jobs 
and greater economic benefit to this country.
  I am pleased with the process we have had on the floor over the past 
couple of days. I look forward to the series of amendments on which we 
will have votes this afternoon--likely after lunch--and the opportunity 
to be in further discussion about these issues that I think have been 
pent-up for a period of time.
  With that, I acknowledge my colleague on the energy committee and co-
fan of the Seattle Seahawks.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska. I am 
certainly tired of hearing about deflate-gate. I don't know if our 
bantering on the floor can keep the focus on the real talent of the 
football team and the individuals, but I certainly want to say that she 
has proven she is a true 12, and that is important to us in the 
Northwest. I thank the Senator for her comments.
  We are here today to continue the debate on the Keystone XL Pipeline, 
and I see my colleague from Vermont is here, and he probably wishes to 
give comments about his amendments. Hopefully we will be voting later 
today on the various amendment proposals we discussed yesterday. We 
will be talking to Members about other amendments they would like to 
see on this legislation.
  Before I turn it over to Senator Sanders, I wish to draw focus for a 
few minutes to the fact that this process, debate, and discussion about 
the protection of environmental issues, property rights, and 
environmental laws is incredibly important in the United States of 
America. I say that because I want to submit for the Record two news 
articles that just came out today. One is entitled ``Montana oil spill 
renews worries over safety of old pipelines,'' and the other story is 
headlined ``Cleanup Underway for Nearly 3M-Gallon Saltwater Spill In 
ND.''
  The reason I bring that up is that as we are sitting here today 
discussing whether we are going to override current environmental law 
and give special carve-out exceptions to a foreign company to basically 
build a pipeline through the United States of America, the fundamental 
question in my mind is, What is the hurry in giving them exemptions to 
these various laws as a way to get the pipeline built? These are things 
U.S. businesses don't get. They don't get these exemptions and they 
certainly don't get the U.S. Senate voting to basically override the 
President's authority--I should say to pass a bill that would basically 
prohibit the President from using his authority on what is in the 
national interest.
  To me, the Montana spill in the Yellowstone River is similar to our 
current pipeline debate on Keystone XL and whether we have the right 
safety provisions in place. So, if anything, we should be discussing 
what we can do to further pipeline safety in the United States of 
America and not let a foreign company roll back existing U.S. laws on 
environmental issues that they should be complying with.

[[Page 1022]]

  This is such a beautiful part of our country, and this article talks 
about how oil is floating 28 miles downstream from the Poplar Pipeline 
spill. This is an issue we should be really thinking about.
  I get that there has been an explosion of both tar sands and Bakken 
oil. The question is not are we going to rush to try to help these 
companies override rules; the question is whether they comply with 
rules and whether the United States of America has enough protections 
in place to make sure the safety and security of our citizens as this 
new opportunity and explosion of product is occurring.
  I can say from my perspective in my State, I have worked with 
practically every city council in the State about how they want new 
safety regulations for crude oil transported by rail--something they 
are very concerned about, given the explosions that have happened on 
oil railcars.
  Again, regarding this particular issue, I know my colleague from 
North Dakota thinks that somehow this alleviates the Northwest from 
having trains go through there, but I assure him it doesn't. So we will 
still have concerns about the safety of our citizens as more crude oil 
is being transported by rail.
  But we shouldn't now be trying to exempt a foreign company from 
complying with U.S. laws; we should be saying they should follow the 
rules. In the meantime, we should be asking the NTSB--we should be 
asking our agencies--whether there are enough safety protections in 
place, given the large amount of crude that is now moving and the 
issues we have seen as a result. There is nothing more important to me 
than protecting farmers and landowners to make sure they are actually 
treated fairly, and to make sure that resources such as clean water are 
protected.
  Just because the discussion has been going on for a long time doesn't 
mean we should overrule existing environmental laws and exempt a 
foreign company from complying with it. I would rather them follow the 
rules all the way through the process.
  So, with that, I yield the floor. I see my colleague from Vermont is 
here to discuss his amendment.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Associated Press, Jan. 22, 2015]

      Montana Oil Spill Renews Worry Over Safety of Old Pipelines

                           (By Matthew Brown)

       Billings, MT.--A second large oil spill into Montana's 
     Yellowstone River in less than four years is reviving 
     questions about oversight of the nation's aging pipeline 
     network.
       Investigators and company officials on Wednesday were 
     trying to determine the cause of the 40,000-gallon spill that 
     contaminated downstream water supplies in the city of 
     Glendive.
       Sen. Jon Tester said Saturday's spill from the decades-old 
     Poplar Pipeline was avoidable, but ``we just didn't have the 
     folks on the ground'' to prevent it.
       The Montana Democrat told The Associated Press that more 
     frequent inspections by regulators are needed, and older 
     pipelines should face stricter safety standards.
       ``We need to take a look at some of these pipelines that 
     have been in the ground for half a century and say, `Are they 
     still doing a good job?' '' Tester said.
       The latest spill comes as Republicans and some Democrats, 
     including Tester, want the Obama administration to approve 
     TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf.
       Keystone would cross the Yellowstone roughly 20 miles 
     upstream of the Poplar Pipeline spill.
       In 2011, an ExxonMobil pipeline break spilled 63,000 
     gallons of oil during flooding on the Yellowstone near 
     Billings. The break was blamed on scouring of the river 
     bottom that exposed the company's Silvertip line to 
     floodwaters.
       Officials involved in the Poplar Pipeline spill have said 
     it's too soon to say if that line also was exposed.
       Poplar, owned by Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline, was 
     constructed in the 1950s. The breached section beneath the 
     Yellowstone was replaced at least four decades ago, in the 
     late 1960s or early 1970s, according to the company.
       Based on the number of miles of pipelines in the U.S. that 
     carry oil, gasoline and other hazardous liquids, just over 
     half were installed prior to 1970, according to the U.S. 
     Department of Transportation.
       The agency's Office of Pipeline Safety has roughly 150 
     inspectors overseeing 2.6 million miles of gas, oil and other 
     pipelines.
       That number is slated to increase by another 100 inspectors 
     under a $27 million budget increase approved last year. That 
     would still leave inspectors stretched thin given the mileage 
     of pipelines.
       Dena Hoff, a farmer and rancher whose land borders the site 
     of the Poplar accident, said she's had a good working 
     relationship with Bridger Pipeline, and she commended the 
     company for taking responsibility for the spill.
       But Hoff said the spill should spur second thoughts about 
     Keystone and whether it's a good idea to have pipelines that 
     cross beneath surface waters.
       ``It's the nature of the beast. Pipelines leak and 
     pipelines break. We're never going to get around that,'' she 
     said. ``We have to decide if water is more valuable than 
     oil.''
       Authorities continue work to clean up Glendive's public 
     water supply after cancer-causing benzene was detected in 
     water coming from the city's treatment plant. The plant draws 
     directly from the Yellowstone.
       Bridger Pipeline has committed to providing bottled water 
     for Glendive's roughly 6,000 residents until the water-
     treatment plant is running again.
       Late Wednesday night, Dawson County Disaster and Emergency 
     Services Coordinator Mary Jo Gehnert said in an email that 
     the plant has been decontaminated. If tests conducted 
     Thursday show that the plant's water is safe to use, county 
     workers will give information to the public on how to flush 
     the water in homes and businesses, Gehnert said.
       Workers late Tuesday recovered about 10,000 gallons of oil 
     that was still in the Poplar line after it was shut down 
     because of the breach.
       Bridger Pipeline Co. spokesman Bill Salvin said Wednesday 
     only a ``very small'' amount of oil has been siphoned from 
     the river itself.
       Company officials and government regulators say most of the 
     oil is thought to be within the first 6 miles of the spill 
     site. That includes the stretch of the river through 
     Glendive.
       ``What we're working on is identifying places where we can 
     collect more oil,'' Salvin said. ``The cleanup could extend 
     for a while.''
       Oil sheens have been reported as far away as Williston, 
     North Dakota, below the Yellowstone's confluence with the 
     Missouri River, officials said.
       The farthest downstream that free-floating oil has been 
     seen was at an intake dam about 28 miles from the spill site, 
     officials said.
       Montana Department of Environmental Quality Director Tom 
     Livers said he was concerned that when the ice breaks up in 
     the spring, oil will spread farther downstream.
                                  ____


               [From the Associated Press, Jan. 22, 2015]

      Cleanup Underway for Nearly 3M-Gallon Saltwater Spill in ND

                        (By Regina Garcia Cano)

       Cleanup is underway after nearly 3 million gallons of 
     brine, a salty, toxic byproduct of oil and natural gas 
     production, leaked from a pipeline in western North Dakota, 
     the largest spill of its kind in the state since the current 
     energy boom began.
       The full environmental impact of the spill, which 
     contaminated two creeks, might not be clear for months. Some 
     previous saltwater spills have taken years to clean up. A 
     contractor hired by the pipeline operator will be on site 
     Thursday, assessing the damage.
       Operator Summit Midstream Partners LLC detected the 
     pipeline spill on Jan. 6, about 15 miles north of Williston 
     and informed North Dakota officials then. State health 
     officials on Wednesday said they weren't given a full account 
     of the size until Tuesday.
       Inspectors have been monitoring the area near Williston, in 
     the heart of North Dakota's oil country, but it will be 
     difficult to assess the effects of the spill until the ice 
     melts, said Dave Glatt, chief of the North Dakota Department 
     of Health's environmental health section.
       ``This is not something we want to happen in North 
     Dakota,'' Glatt said.
       The spill presently doesn't threaten public drinking water 
     or human health, Glatt said. He said a handful of farmers 
     have been asked to keep their livestock away from the two 
     creeks, the smaller of which will be drained.
       Brine, also referred to as saltwater, is an unwanted 
     byproduct of drilling that is much saltier than sea water and 
     may also contain petroleum and residue from hydraulic 
     fracturing operations.
       The new spill is almost three times larger than one that 
     fouled a portion of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in 
     July. Another million-gallon saltwater spill in 2006, near 
     Alexander, is still being cleaned up nearly a decade later.
       Summit Midstream said in a statement Wednesday that about 
     65,000 barrels of a mix of freshwater and brine have been 
     pumped out from Blacktail Creek. Brine also reached the 
     bigger Little Muddy Creek and potentially the Missouri River.
       Glatt said the Blacktail Creek will be completely drained 
     as part of the initial cleanup, but the water and soil will 
     have to be continuously tested until after the spring thaw 
     because some of the contaminated water has frozen. The Little 
     Muddy Creek will not be drained because it is bigger than the 
     Blacktail Creek and the saltwater is being diluted.
       ``We will be monitoring to see how quickly it gets back to 
     natural background water

[[Page 1023]]

     quality conditions, and we are already starting to see 
     that,'' Glatt said of the Little Muddy Creek. ``It's getting 
     back pretty quickly.''
       Summit Midstream's chief operating officer, Rene Casadaban, 
     said in a statement that the company's ``full and undivided 
     attention'' is focused on cleaning up the spill and repairing 
     any environmental damage.
       Spokesman Jonathan Morgan did not immediately confirm 
     exactly when the spill began. It also was not clear what 
     caused the pipeline to rupture. Glatt said the company has 
     found the damaged portion of pipeline and it was sent to a 
     laboratory to determine what caused the hole.
       North Dakota has suffered scores of saltwater spills since 
     the state's oil boom began in earnest in 2006.
       A network of saltwater pipelines extends to hundreds of 
     disposal wells in the western part of the state, where the 
     briny water is pumped underground for permanent storage. 
     Legislation to mandate flow meters and cutoff switches on 
     saltwater pipelines was overwhelmingly rejected in the 
     Legislature in 2013.
       Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra 
     Club, called the brine ``a real toxic mix'' and ``an extreme 
     threat to the environment and people's health.''
       ``Technology exists to prevent these spills and nothing is 
     being done,'' said Schafer. ``Better pipelines, flow meters, 
     cutoff switches, more inspectors--something has got to be 
     done.''
       Daryl Peterson, a grain farmer from Mohall who has had 
     spills on his property, said the latest incident underscores 
     the need for tougher regulation and enforcement.
       ``Until we start holding companies fully accountable with 
     penalties, I don't think we're going to change this whole 
     situation we have in North Dakota,'' said Peterson, a board 
     member of the Northwest Landowners Association.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.


                            Amendment No. 24

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska and the 
Senator from Washington for their work on this legislation.
  I rise today to say a few words about my amendment to the proposed 
Keystone Pipeline bill, an amendment that will be coming up for a vote 
in a few minutes. I wish to thank Senators Bennet, Carper, Leahy, 
Menendez, Murphy, Warren, and Whitehouse for cosponsoring this 
amendment.
  This amendment is extremely simple. It is about 1 page and I will 
read it in a moment. It raises a very profound question as to how we 
implement public policy, not just on issues related to climate but on 
issues in general. The question is: As we go forward, tackling the very 
difficult problems facing our country and the world, to whom do we 
listen? Whose advice do we take as we proceed?
  I would argue that historically and appropriately, what we do as a 
nation is we listen to the experts. That is what we do. I think in this 
debate, when we deal with the Keystone Pipeline and when we deal with 
the issue of climate change, it is absolutely appropriate that we 
listen to what the overwhelming percentage of scientists are telling 
us.
  I hear some of my colleagues say, This is complicated and I am not a 
scientist; I don't know. Let me be very frank. I am not a scientist and 
I did not do terribly well in biology and in physics in college, but I 
can read. And I can listen and understand what the scientific community 
is saying on this issue.
  As the Senate moves forward, when we deal with complicated medical 
issues and search for solutions in terms of cancer or heart disease or 
diabetes, to whom do we go? Who do we listen to for advice as to how we 
should proceed and allocate public funding? We listen to the doctors 
and the scientists and the researchers who know a lot more than 
virtually all of us do in terms of cancer or heart disease.
  We spend a lot of money in this country on infrastructure, on roads 
and bridges and wastewater plants and water systems. That is 
complicated stuff. To whom do we look for advice? Who do we have at our 
hearings on these issues? We look to the engineers and the scientists 
who tell us the best way to proceed in terms of how we build roads and 
bridges in a cost-effective way.
  We are dealing right now with the issue of cyber security--a huge 
issue--a threat to the Nation. To whom do we look for advice? We look 
to those experts in technology who can tell us the best way to prevent 
cyber security attacks against the United States. On and on it goes. 
Whether it is education or whatever it is, good public policy is 
dependent upon listening to the scientific community, listening to the 
people who know the best about this issue.
  In terms of the issue of climate change, the fact is that the 
scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate 
change is real. It is caused by human activity. It has already caused 
devastating problems in the United States and around the world. The 
scientific community tells us there is just a brief window of 
opportunity before the United States and the entire planet suffer 
irreparable harm. They tell us it is imperative that the United States 
transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy 
efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.
  That is not the opinion of Bernie Sanders; that is the opinion of the 
scientific community.
  So to those of my colleagues who say, This is complicated stuff, I am 
not a scientist, I don't know, let me tell my colleagues who does know. 
Thirty-seven major American scientific organizations--people who study 
this issue--do know. And what they say is that climate change is real. 
It is caused by human activities. It is already causing devastating 
problems in the United States and around the world, and we need to 
transform our energy system.
  That is what the Sanders amendment says. That is all it says. It is a 
modest amendment. It is a conservative amendment. It simply tells us 
what the scientific community has told us year after year after year.
  For those of us who are not scientists, let me tell my colleagues the 
scientific organizations that hold that point of view. They are, among 
others, the American Anthropological Association, the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical 
Society, the American Geophysical Society, the American Institute of 
Biological Sciences, the American Meteorlogical Society, the American 
Physical Society, the National Academy of Engineering, the National 
Academy of Sciences--37 separate scientific organizations, including 
those I mentioned.
  That is not all. There are 135 international scientific organizations 
that say the same thing.
  I refer my colleagues to the list of 135 international scientific 
organizations, 37 American scientific organizations, and 21 medical 
associations that all agree with the basic premises that are in the 
Sanders amendment that is printed with my remarks in yesterday's 
Record, Wednesday, January 21.
  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the leading 
international scientific body that deals with climate change. Let me 
quote to my colleagues what they said last fall:

       Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now 
     evident from observations of increases in global average air 
     and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, 
     and rising global average sea level.

  More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States 
and across the globe agrees with these findings.
  I am going to conclude my remarks by simply reading my amendment to 
make sure every Member of the Senate understands how simple and 
straightforward and noncontroversial this amendment is. This is what it 
says:

       It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement 
     with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific 
     community that
       (1) climate change is real;
       (2) climate change is caused by human activities;
       (3) climate change has already caused devastating problems 
     in the United States and around the world;
       (4) a brief window of opportunity exists before the United 
     States and the entire planet suffer irreparable harm; and
       (5) it is imperative that the United States transform its 
     energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy 
     efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as possible.

  That is it. That is the entire amendment. And every provision in this 
amendment is supported by virtually the entire scientific community, 
the people who best understand this issue.

[[Page 1024]]

  Clearly we are a nation divided politically and clearly we are a 
Congress divided politically. We have different views on almost every 
issue. But I hope very much the U.S. Senate does not reject science, 
because in doing so, it would not only lead to bad public policy but it 
would be an embarrassment before the entire world, that the U.S. Senate 
is rejecting what the overwhelming majority of scientists are telling 
us about what they consider to be one of the great crises facing our 
planet.
  So I hope very much for strong bipartisan support for this amendment 
in the Senate and will say, as a Senate, that we are going to listen to 
what the scientific community tells us and that we are going to develop 
public policy based on their knowledge and that information.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.


                           State of the Union

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I had some concluding thoughts about the 
President's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Much of it we 
have heard before. In fact, what the President laid out was largely 
what his agenda has been for the last 6 years. In other words, we have 
been there and we have done that, and it hasn't worked very well. We 
have had tired big government proposals. In fact, the President seems 
as though he has doubled down in a lot of ways on higher taxes, more 
redistribution, and more regulations that are out of step with what the 
American people, I believe, want and need.
  I think what they want more than anything else, from a strictly 
economic point of view, is to get the economy growing again. Let's 
create jobs. Let the private sector actually create jobs--not 
government. We know government is pretty incompetent when it comes to 
job creation. And we now have this nagging little minor detail called 
the national debt where we keep borrowing money and pushing that down 
the road to the next generation and beyond.
  It is ironic in a lot of ways because the President came to the 
people's House to give his State of the Union speech, which is the 
House of Representatives, but his speech was anything but for the 
people. He claimed that really his focus was on middle-class economics. 
I think he had been listening to the senior Senator from New York who, 
after this last election, gave a speech at the National Press Club and 
said that Democrats had made a terrible mistake leading off with the 
President's new term in 2009 with ObamaCare and other big government 
programs and they had neglected stagnant wages and the middle class. So 
I think the President, in a tipping of his hat to Senator Schumer and 
his comments post election, has essentially acknowledged that his first 
6 years have failed to address the needs of the middle class. That is 
why he kept using the phrase ``middle-class economics'' during his 
speech. But it wasn't really about the middle class. It wasn't about 
hard-working American taxpayers. Time and again, it seemed his most 
urgent priority was himself. His speech was really about him and his 
agenda, his pet projects, his vision for bigger government.
  I would just point out that the President quite candidly admitted it 
was his agenda and his policies that were on the ballot on November 4. 
I think that sent a shudder through every incumbent who was running for 
reelection who happened to have voted for his big government agenda. 
But the point is that it was soundly rejected on November 4. You 
couldn't tell that from the President's tone and his cheerleading last 
Tuesday night. But my point is we have been there, we have done that, 
and it didn't work. So let's try something different.
  We have felt the experience of this experiment in big government for 
the last 6 years. If anything, what the voters said on November 4 is 
enough is enough. I can't remember who originally said it, but someone 
said famously that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing 
over and over and expecting different results. You can't try the same 
old tired policies over and over and actually expect a different 
outcome. At least to my mind, reality wasn't what was driving the 
President's remarks. If it was, he would have focused on the biggest 
concerns Americans have right now. I mentioned jobs, stagnant wages, 
rising costs, and issues such as health care costs.
  Unfortunately, ObamaCare really backfired on a lot of middle-class 
workers, and it actually raised their health care costs rather than 
lowered them. Then there are the stagnant wages I mentioned a moment 
ago. But if he really cared about those issues as he should and as we 
do, he would be working with Congress to address those issues, and he 
would have given some attention to one of the first major pieces of 
legislation that we have taken up in the 114th Congress on a bipartisan 
basis.
  Of course I am referring to the Keystone XL Pipeline that we are 
debating now, where 11 Democrats joined all of the Republicans who are 
present to proceed to this bill. So when I say it is bipartisan, I am 
not just saying it. It actually is.
  Sometimes you can tell a lot from what a person doesn't say. In this 
case, the President spoke more than 6,000 words, and he didn't mention 
the word Keystone in one of them. Instead of using this opportunity 
when millions of Americans and people around the world were listening 
to the President to lay out sound reasons why he continues to oppose 
this jobs and infrastructure project year after year, the President 
merely said we should look beyond a single pipeline to meet America's 
infrastructure needs. We need to start somewhere, and the President 
won't even start by taking the first step of approving this 
infrastructure and job-creating project known as the Keystone XL 
Pipeline.
  I think there is a Chinese proverb that says a trip of a thousand 
miles has to start with the first step. That is true here as well. It 
may be a single pipeline, but it is a single pipeline that his own 
State Department has said has the potential to support more than 40,000 
jobs.
  Here is what I don't get. There are 2.5 million miles of oil and gas 
pipelines in America today--2.5 million. What is this fixation with 
this roughly thousand-mile pipeline that comes from Canada down to 
southeast Texas where it is refined, turned into gasoline, and other 
refined products? Why has this become such a political football?
  It is because the President and, unfortunately, some of his own party 
who are wed to a political base that won't allow them to do the 
rational, realistic, practical thing, which would be to approve this 
pipeline. The President tried to minimize this.
  We have heard people say these are temporary jobs. My job here is 
temporary. The President's job is temporary. It is going to run out in 
a couple of years. Every job is temporary in that sense. To try to 
denigrate these well-paying construction jobs from welders and others--
people who make $125,000, $140,000 a year in my State--and to denigrate 
them, to minimize them, and to say it is just a temporary job and is 
really not all that important is a slap in the face to the people who 
are hungry to find work, people who are working part time who want to 
work full time, people who are working for minimum wage but want to 
improve their standard of living and their ability to provide for their 
family.
  Then there is this. We need to remember the percentage of Americans 
participating in the workforce is at a 30-year low--a 30-year low. What 
that means to me is that some people just simply have given up looking 
for work, and so they have dropped out. They have retired. They have 
gone on to do other things. But it is a symptom of a disease in our 
economy. It is not something we should be proud of. If we are actually 
interested in getting more Americans back in the workforce, the 
President would approve this pipeline.
  Let me tell you about one person with whom I met last Friday in 
Beaumont, TX. We call it the golden triangle. It is a place where 
refineries are seemingly almost everywhere. It is a blue-collar 
community but one that is

[[Page 1025]]

proud and contributes a lot to the Texas economy. I was in Beaumont, as 
I said, and we were there to mark the 1-year anniversary of the 
southern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline's coming online. This is a 
little confusing. But this is the portion of pipeline that is already 
in place, and it doesn't require a transit with Presidential approval 
to cross from Canada into the United States.
  Believe it or not, there are already 4,800 jobs that have been 
created and an average of 400,000 barrels of Canadian crude pumped into 
southeast Texas already. We are not talking about doing something that 
is new. We are talking about adding to what already exists by 
completion of this pipeline.
  My point is this. If the President wants to see what the potential 
economic impact and the impact on jobs and on the standard of living 
would be for the entire Keystone XL Pipeline, all he needs to do is to 
look to southeast Texas--to Beaumont, TX--where the impact has been 
nothing but positive.
  I met with the mayor of Beaumont, the county judge, other local 
businesses, officials, and stakeholders. The mayor and the county judge 
pointed out that it is the taxes they get from the economic activity 
caused by this pipeline--which exists and which would do nothing but be 
enhanced by the Keystone XL Pipeline--that helps pay the taxes that 
pave roads, provide health care to people who don't have access to it--
who can't afford health care. It provides to pay the law enforcement. 
It provides all of the governmental functions, including education. 
This is what adds to the tax base which allows local governments, 
including school districts, to provide for the education of our 
children.
  Then there is this. There is the multiplier effect of the investment 
by the private investment on this pipeline. It is the multiplier effect 
because people who earn these good wages spend the money at 
restaurants, buy homes, rent apartments. They buy things at retail 
outlets. That is the multiplier effect from this pipeline.
  One person in particular I want to close with is a gentleman I met by 
the name of Kenneth Edwards who is a vice president with the United 
Association, the union of plumbers, fitters, welders, and service 
techs. I think Mr. Edwards would agree with me that we wouldn't 
necessarily see eye to eye on everything. But after being married 35 
years, I don't know many married couples that agree on everything. So 
that is not all that unusual. It isn't a surprise that Republicans and 
unions haven't been on the same page on every issue. But there is an 
issue where we agree 100 percent, and that is the need for the 
President to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline after 6 long years.
  Mr. Edwards speaks on behalf of many union workers nationwide who, as 
he put it, earn their living from a series of temporary jobs that 
happen to add up to a lifelong career. He told me last week he wants 
the President to put his famous veto pen away, to take out his approval 
pen, and to sign his approval of this project right away.
  Speaking of temporary jobs, the President is ending his time in 
office. He has 2 more years left. His State of the Union Address leads 
me to believe he is not open to changing course and making much of a 
departure from the partisanship and gridlock that marked his first term 
and a half. But there is still time to change his mind.
  With the Keystone XL Pipeline bill that a bipartisan majority of 
Congress will soon send his way, we are presenting him an opportunity 
to say that he heard the message that voters delivered on November 4. I 
heard the American people say we are tired of the dysfunction in 
Washington, DC. We actually want to see Congress and the White House 
work together to get things done on behalf of the American people.
  It is not too late. I hope he will listen not only to people such as 
Kenneth Edwards and union workers across the country but to the vast 
majority of Americans who support this important project.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer).
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, for the information of all Senators, 
we are working now to set up votes on several pending amendments to the 
bill. These votes should be after lunch today. Right now, we are 
looking at 60-vote thresholds on the Fischer amendment, along with the 
Boxer side-by-side, the Sanders amendment, and the Lee amendment.
  I do understand that the Boxer amendment is now filed at the desk.


                     Amendment No. 18, As Modified

  I ask unanimous consent that the Fischer amendment, No. 18, be 
modified with the changes at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

       At the end of the bill, add the following:

     SEC. __. LIMITATION ON DESIGNATION OF NEW FEDERALLY PROTECTED 
                   LAND.

       (a) Definition of Federally Protected Land.--In this 
     section, the term ``federally protected land'' means any area 
     designated or acquired by the Secretary of the Interior for 
     the purpose of conserving historic, cultural, environmental, 
     scenic, recreational, developmental, or biological resources.
       (b) Considerations.--The Secretary, prior to the 
     designation or acquisition of new federally protected land, 
     shall consider--
       (1) whether the addition of the new federally protected 
     land would have a negative impact on the administration of 
     existing federally protected land; and
       (2) whether sufficient resources are available to 
     effectively implement management plans for existing units of 
     federally protected land.
       (c) This section shall not apply to
       (1) congressionally designated federally protected land, or
       (2) acquisitions of federally protected land authorized by 
     Congress.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, we have a number of Members who have 
asked to come to the floor to speak over the course of these next 
couple of hours. Many will be speaking to their specific amendment on 
the Keystone XL Pipeline. Again, we encourage folks to use this time, 
while we have a little bit of time before we move to the votes this 
afternoon.
  I see that my colleague from North Carolina is here to speak. I would 
welcome his remarks at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, long before I was actually sworn into 
the Senate, I traveled across the State of North Carolina. I promised 
the citizens of North Carolina that I would work toward commonsense 
solutions to provide opportunities for economic growth and opportunity.
  Today I hope to send forth amendment No. 102 with the support of my 
good friend Senator Burr from North Carolina on the approval of the 
Keystone Pipeline, to take a look at things that we can do to do our 
part in North Carolina to contribute to the ultimate goal of energy 
independence in this Nation.
  The amendment, the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf Access and 
Revenue Share Act of 2015, will expand domestic offshore production, 
natural gas exploration and production, which, in turn, will create 
jobs and set our Nation on that track to energy independence.
  Families across the country are too familiar with the impact energy 
prices play in our day-to-day lives, making decisions that are very 
difficult for them in these difficult economic situations.
  When utility bills and gas prices increase, hard-working Americans 
face

[[Page 1026]]

hardship and struggle to make ends meet. We need to make that easier 
and lift the burden on those hard-working taxpayers.
  We also cannot underestimate the great impact energy plays in 
America's foreign policy decisions. We are in many ways dependent on 
oil from the Middle Eastern States that do not share our democratic 
values.
  The predicament does not certainly place America in a position of 
strength. America has more energy potential than any other nation. It 
is time that we start realizing its full potential.
  What the amendment does is fairly straightforward. It instructs the 
Secretary of the Interior to finalize the 5-year program for 2017 to 
2022. That includes annual lease sales in both the Mid-Atlantic Outer 
Continental Shelf and the South Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf 
region. It grants to States in both of these regions a 37.5-percent 
share of all revenues collected from the Outer Continental Shelf 
leasing activities.
  Each State in the region gets a minimum of a 10-percent share of that 
allocation. It directs 12.5 percent of the revenues collected for the 
Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf activities to the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund. The 37.5 percent for the States and the 12.5 percent 
for other regions mirrors the revenue split given to the Gulf Coast 
States--Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama--under current law.
  North Carolina has received approximately $209 million in funding 
over the past 5 decades, protecting places such as the Cape Lookout 
National Seashore, the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, 
Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests. The Department of Interior is 
currently developing a 5-year leasing program for 2017 to 2022. The 
language of the amendment merely instructs the Department to include 
the Mid-Atlantic and the South Atlantic regions as part of that plan.
  Current law requires that the Department of Interior give deference 
to the preferences of States when developing a leasing plan for areas 
within 50 miles of the shore. Keep in mind, the drilling that we are 
talking about in North Carolina, off our coast, is greater than 30 
miles off the coast, far beyond the site horizon of our beautiful 
beaches in North Carolina.
  I want to close by saying why we are moving this amendment now. 
First, it is the fulfillment of a promise I made to the citizens of 
North Carolina. It also does enormous progress for creating jobs and 
helping our economy get back on track in the State and the region.
  It is estimated that more than 55,000 jobs can be created by 2035; 
more than $4 billion annually in economic contributions to the State of 
North Carolina. Almost $4 billion in government revenue for the State 
of North Carolina--$4 billion. As someone who served as Speaker of the 
House of North Carolina, I cannot tell you what an enormous impact that 
will have in terms of reducing the burden on taxpayers and businesses 
in North Carolina, creating more opportunities for economic expansion 
and job growth. There will be up to $577 million annually in revenue 
share payments according to a report published by the Southeast Energy 
Alliance in 2009.
  These numbers increase opportunities in North Carolina unlike 
anything I saw in my 8 years in the State legislature. It is an 
opportunity for North Carolina to do its part to make the Nation energy 
independent and to help me fulfill my promises to the citizens of North 
Carolina, which is to create jobs and provide great opportunities for 
this generation and future generations.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I come to the floor today to discuss an 
amendment that I filed to the pending legislation. It is an amendment 
to modify the Jones Act. The Jones Act is an archaic 1920s-era law that 
hinders free trade, stifles the economy, and hurts consumers, largely 
for the benefit of labor unions.
  Specifically, this amendment would effectively repeal a law that 
prevents U.S. shippers from purchasing or otherwise supportively 
procuring the services of vessels that are built outside the United 
States for use in American waters. From time to time here in Congress, 
we find that legislation still remains on the books many decades after 
it has served its original stated purpose. If ever we had one, I think 
one of the best examples of this is a law called the Jones Act.
  As many of you know, the Jones Act is simply a continuation of laws 
passed through U.S. history addressing cabotage--or port-to-port 
coastal shipping. Those laws have been used to protect U.S. domestic 
shipping dating back to the very first session of Congress.
  The Jones Act may have had some rationale back in the 1920s when it 
was enacted, but today it serves only to raise shipping costs, making 
U.S. farmers and businesses less competitive in the global marketplace 
and increasing costs for American consumers.
  According to the 2002 U.S. International Trade Commission economic 
study--by the way, the U.S. International Trade Commission is not a 
group of special interests, they are an international trade commission 
which is appointed to study issues affecting international trade, 
obviously, as the name implies.
  Their study reached the conclusion that repealing the Jones Act would 
lower shipping costs by about 22 percent. The Commission also found 
that repealing the Jones Act would have an annual positive welfare 
effect of $656 million on the U.S. economy.
  Since these decade-old studies are the most recent statistics 
available, imagine the impact the Jones Act repeal would have today--
far more than a $656 million annual positive impact--likely closer to 
$1 billion, stimulating our economy in the midst of an anemic recovery.
  The requirement that U.S. shippers must purchase vessels in the 
United States comes at a tremendous cost that is passed on to U.S. 
consumers. For example, just recently the U.S. container line Matson 
placed a $418 million order for two 3,600 20-foot equivalent unit 
container ships in a U.S. shipyard. The high price of $209 million per 
vessel reflects that the ships will be carrying goods within the United 
States and therefore governed by the protectionist Jones Act.
  The fact is that Matson's order at $209 million per ship is more than 
five times more expensive than if those same ships were procured 
outside of the United States. Ships of that size built outside the 
United States would cost closer to $40 million each. For comparison, 
even Maersk Line's far larger ships cost millions less at an average of 
$185 million each.
  The U.S. Maritime Administration, MARAD, has found that the cost to 
operate U.S. flag vessels at $22,000 per day is about 2.7 times higher 
than foreign flag vessels--just $6,000 a day.
  There is no doubt that these inflated costs are eventually passed on 
to shipping customers. In the energy sector, for example, the price for 
moving crude oil from the gulf coast to the Northeastern United States 
on Jones Act tankers is $5 to $6 more per barrel, while moving it to 
eastern Canada on foreign flag tankers is about $2.
  That can mean an additional $1 million per tanker in shipping costs 
for oil producers.
  This increased cost is why, according to the Congressional Research 
Service, more than twice as much gulf coast crude oil was shipped by 
water to Canada as shipped to Northeastern U.S. refineries last year--
all in an effort to avoid paying Jones Act shipping rates.
  The implications of this fact touches just about every American who 
buys gasoline. It is American consumers who pay exorbitantly higher 
prices because of a law that protects the shipbuilding industry and 
domestically manufactured ships that transport crude and other refined 
products.
  But it is not only the energy sector that deals with the distorted 
effects of the Jones Act. Cattlemen in Hawaii who want to bring their 
cattle to the U.S. mainland market, for example, have actually resorted 
to flying the cattle on 747 jumbo jets to work around the restrictions 
of the Jones Act. Their

[[Page 1027]]

only alternative is to ship the cattle to Canada because all livestock 
carriers in the world are foreign owned.
  I am deeply concerned about the impact of any barrier to free trade. 
I believe the U.S. trade barriers invite other countries to put up or 
retain their own barriers and that at the end of the day the U.S. 
consumer and the economy at large pays the price.
  Throughout my career I have always been a strong supporter of free 
trade. Opening markets to the free flow of goods and services benefits 
America and benefits our trading partners. Trade liberalization creates 
jobs, expands economic growth, and provides consumers with access to 
lower cost goods and services.
  Yet as clear as the benefits of free trade are, actually taking 
action to remove trade barriers and open markets can be almost 
impossible in Congress. Special interests that have long and richly 
benefited from protectionism flex their muscles and issue doomsday 
warnings about the consequences of moving forward on free trade. 
Judging from the hysterical reaction by some of the special interests 
to my simple filing of this amendment, the debate over the Jones Act 
will be no different.
  The domestic shipbuilding requirement of the Jones Act is outdated 
and should be abolished.
  U.S. consumers are free to buy a foreign-built car. U.S. trucking 
companies are free to buy a foreign-built truck. U.S. railroads are 
free to buy a foreign-built locomotive. U.S. airlines are free to buy a 
foreign-built airplane.
  Why can't U.S. maritime special interests more affordably ship 
foreign goods on foreign-made vessels? Why do U.S. consumers, 
particularly those in Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico, need to pay for 
ships that are five times more expensive?
  If there was a law that long ago outlived its usefulness--if it ever 
had any--it is the Jones Act. On the Jones Act, it is time to change 
course today.
  I have a letter from the American Farm Bureau Federation which 
states:

       Farm Bureau believes that there should be no restrictions 
     as to the quantities or vessels on which a commodity is 
     shipped between U.S. ports. Repealing The Jones Act would 
     allow more competition for the movement of goods between U.S. 
     ports, thus driving down transportation costs.

  Continuing to read from the letter ``TO ALL MEMBERS OF SENATE'' from 
the Farm Bureau:

       Repeal of The Jones Act accomplishes the same purpose: a 
     reduction in energy costs, increased competition to lower 
     costs of U.S. goods and more opportunities to transport 
     agricultural commodities at competitive prices.
       Due to this importance, Farm Bureau policy, developed by 
     our grassroots members consisting of working farmers and 
     ranchers, explicitly supports the repeal of The Jones Act. 
     Farm Bureau urges you to vote in support of Sen. McCain's 
     amendment repealing sections of the Merchant Marine Act of 
     1920.

  Then there is an article: ``McCain under fire.''

       A growing number of politicians are taking aim at a 
     prominent US Senator's crusade against the Jones Act . . . .

  Oh my God. I am deeply concerned. All the special interests on this 
issue are weighing in. By the way, one of them would have effects on 
the U.S. shipbuilding and repair base. We all know the U.S. 
shipbuilding industry, because of the Jones Act, is moribund. In fact, 
I have an article from the Daily Signal which says: ``Shipbuilding 
industry stuck on ground.''

       U.S. shipbuilding exports are tiny compared to exports of 
     semis and trailers. Shipbuilding is subject to the 
     protectionist Jones Act which hinders competition, while the 
     semi industry is not.
       According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 
     ``The coastwise laws [like the Jones Act] are highly 
     protectionist provisions that are intended to create a 
     `coastwise monopoly' in order to protect and develop the 
     American merchant marine, shipbuilding, etc.''
       But protecting U.S. industries from competition may 
     actually have the opposite effect. Consider U.S. production 
     of vessels designed to transport goods via water compared to 
     U.S. production of semi-trailer trucks and trailers designed 
     to transport goods via land. In 2013, U.S. manufacturers 
     exported $4.1 billion in semi-trailer trucks and trailers, 
     but they exported just $0.1 billion in commercial ships.
       Americans in most states would benefit from the freedom to 
     ship goods on the best-built, most affordable vessels, 
     wherever they are made. The Alaska governor is actually 
     required to ``use best efforts and all appropriate means to 
     persuade the United States Congress to repeal those 
     provisions of the Jones Act formally codified at 46 U.S.C. 
     861, et seq.''
       The Jones Act drives up the price of gas, hinders U.S. 
     infrastructure improvements, inflicts high costs on people in 
     Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and makes it difficult to transship 
     goods between U.S. ports.

  The facts are clear. What we have is an old-time 1920s law that may 
have been, I emphasize the word ``may,'' have had some utility in the 
past.
  I am aware that all of the special interests have been mobilized and 
how this can be damaging, frankly, to certain special interests. It 
would not be damaging to the average citizen who would pay less for the 
goods that are transported much more cheaply as a result of the Jones 
Act repeal.
  I say to those critics of this amendment, as has been my habit over 
the years, I will not quit on this issue. There will be other 
opportunities to put the Senate and Congress on record.
  Sooner or later the Farm Bureau will be heard. Sooner or later the 
people of Hawaii and Puerto Rico who are paying exorbitant prices that 
they shouldn't have to pay will be heard. Sooner or later this 
protectionist--an anachronism--ancient protectionist act will be 
repealed and average American consumers will benefit from it and 
unfortunately the special interests will not.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the January 20, 
2015, Farm Bureau letter, the Heritage Foundation piece called the 
Daily Signal, entitled ``Senator McCain's Jones Act Amendment: Good for 
America,'' and another article: ``If You Like Higher Prices, Enriched 
Cronies, And Weak National Security, Then You'll Love The Jones Act.'' 
It is one of my favorite pieces.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                              American Farm Bureau Federation,

                                 Washington, DC, January 20, 2015.
     To All Members of Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear: The Senate will soon begin consideration of 
     amendments to S. 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act. On behalf 
     of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation's largest 
     general farm organization, I am writing to convey our strong 
     support for adoption of an amendment by Sen. John McCain that 
     would repeal provisions of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, 
     known as The Jones Act. The Jones Act mandates that any goods 
     shipped by water between two points in the United States or 
     its territories must be transported by a vessel that is U.S. 
     built, U.S. flagged, and at least 75 percent U.S. crewed.
       Given the ability of ships to move large amounts of cargo, 
     and the bulk nature of most agriculture commodities, shipping 
     via water is a strategic and economic resource that should 
     not be limited by antiquated provisions of U.S. law. Farm 
     Bureau believes that there should be no restrictions as to 
     the quantities or vessels on which a commodity is shipped 
     between U.S. ports. Repealing The Jones Act would allow more 
     competition for the movement of goods between U.S. ports, 
     thus driving down transportation costs.
       Farm Bureau supports the construction of pipelines in 
     general and the Keystone XL pipeline in particular. We 
     support projects of this nature for their ability to decrease 
     energy and input costs, lower prices for consumers and 
     diversify our transportation infrastructure. Repeal of The 
     Jones Act accomplishes the same purpose: a reduction in 
     energy costs, increased competition to lower costs of U.S. 
     goods and more opportunities to transport agricultural 
     commodities at competitive prices.
       Due to this importance, Farm Bureau policy, developed by 
     our grassroots members consisting of working farmers and 
     ranchers, explicitly supports the repeal of The Jones Act. 
     Farm Bureau urges you to vote in support of Sen. McCain's 
     amendment repealing sections of the Merchant Marine Act of 
     1920.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Bob Stallman,
     President.
                                  ____


                 [From the Daily Signal, Jan. 16, 2015]

         Senator McCain's Jones Act Amendment: Good for America

                  (By Bryan Riley and Brian Slattery)

       Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recently introduced an amendment 
     to repeal harmful aspects of the Jones Act, a 1920 law that 
     restricts the use of foreign-built or foreign-owned ships for 
     transporting goods within the United States.
       According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 
     ``The coastwise laws [like the Jones Act] are highly 
     protectionist provisions that are intended to create a 
     `coastwise monopoly' in order to protect and develop the 
     American merchant marine, shipbuilding, etc.''

[[Page 1028]]

       But protecting U.S. industries from competition may 
     actually have the opposite effect.
       Consider U.S. production of vessels designed to transport 
     goods via water compared to U.S. production of semi-trailer 
     trucks and trailers designed to transport goods via land. In 
     2013, U.S. manufacturers exported $4.1 billion in semi-
     trailer trucks and trailers, but they exported just $0.1 
     billion in commercial ships.
       U.S. commercial shipbuilding accounts for just 21.7 percent 
     of total shipbuilding. Most of the industry produces vessels 
     for the military and will continue to do so with or without 
     the Jones Act. The notion that U.S. defense needs require a 
     ban on the use of foreign-built ships for commercial purposes 
     (but not foreign-built aircraft or foreign-built cars and 
     trucks) seems bizarre. In fact, by artificially inflating 
     prices, protectionist measures such as the Jones Act may have 
     given foreign competitors a competitive edge in international 
     shipping.
       The Persian Gulf conflict in the early 1990s proved that 
     the Jones Act was not a necessary element in supplying and 
     sustaining a military operation. For example, during the 
     Persian Gulf War, Military Sealift Command shipped millions 
     of tons of cargo to the operation. Of the 191 chartered dry 
     cargo ships involved in this operation, 162 (or 85 percent) 
     were foreign-flagged.
       Additionally, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has 
     frequently leased foreign vessels to execute missions that 
     required additional sealift capacity. This further obviates 
     the need for the Jones Act. One could argue that such long-
     term leasing agreements are not cost-effective, but if that 
     is the case then the military should purchase such vessels 
     outright. The Jones Act doesn't solve this issue.
       Americans in most states would benefit from the freedom to 
     ship goods on the best-built, most affordable vessels, 
     wherever they are made. The Alaska governor is actually 
     required to ``use best efforts and all appropriate means to 
     persuade the United States Congress to repeal those 
     provisions of the Jones Act formerly codified at 46 U.S.C. 
     861, et seq.''
       The Jones Act drives up the price of gas, hinders U.S. 
     infrastructure improvements, inflicts high costs on people in 
     Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and makes it difficult to transship 
     goods between U.S. ports. Senator McCain's Jones Act 
     amendment would promote competition, strengthen the economy, 
     and benefit American consumers.
                                  ____


                [From the federalist.com, Jan. 22, 2015]

    If You Like Higher Prices, Enriched Cronies, and Weak National 
                Security, Then You'll Love the Jones Act

                          (By Scott Lincicome)

       Sen. John McCain has found an archaic, protectionist 
     boondoggle whose time for death is long past. It's called the 
     Jones Act.
       Lost in the never-ending debate about the KeystoneXL 
     pipeline is great news for anyone who opposes cronyism and 
     supports free markets and lower prices for essential goods 
     like food and energy. Sen. John McCain has offered an 
     amendment to repeal the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also 
     known as the Jones Act, which requires, among other things, 
     that all goods shipped between U.S. ports be transported by 
     American-built, owned, flagged, and crewed vessels.
       By restricting the supply of qualified interstate ships and 
     crews, this protectionist 94-year-old law has dramatically 
     inflated the cost of shipping goods, particularly essentials 
     like food and energy, between U.S. ports--costs ultimately 
     born by U.S. consumers. Thus, the Jones Act is a subsidy 
     American businesses and families pay to the powerful, well-
     connected U.S. shipping industry and a few related unions. 
     For this reason alone, the law should die, but it turns out 
     that the Jones Act also harms the very industry it's designed 
     to protect and, in the process, U.S. national security.


          The Jones Act Inflates Shipping Costs for Americans

       There is no question that the Jones Act inflates U.S. 
     shipping costs. A 2011 Maritime Administration (MARAD) 
     report, with input from the U.S. maritime industry, compared 
     the costs of U.S.-flagged versus foreign cargo carriers, and 
     found that the former far outweighed the latter due to the 
     Jones Act and other U.S. Carriers noted that the U.S.-flag 
     fleet experiences higher operating costs than foreign-flag 
     vessels due to regulatory requirements on vessel labor, 
     insurance and liability costs, maintenance and repair costs, 
     taxes and costs associated with compliance with environmental 
     law . . . [T]he operating cost differential between U.S.-flag 
     vessels and foreign flag vessels has increased over the past 
     five years, further reducing the capacity of the U.S.-flag 
     fleet to compete with foreign-flag vessels for commercial 
     car-
     go . . .
       Higher costs are precisely what you'd expect from an 
     industry that has a ``coastwise monopoly'' on shipping, due 
     almost entirely to the Jones Act. As a result, U.S. vessel 
     operating costs are 2.7 times more expensive than their 
     foreign counterparts.
       Domestic unions and shipbuilders, with a bipartisan 
     coalition of their congressional benefactors, vehemently deny 
     that these outrageous shipping costs differences have any 
     effect on the ultimate cost of U.S. goods that are 
     transported on Jones Act vessels, but several examples belie 
     such claims (and prove that, once again, basic economics 
     still works).
       First, there is ample evidence that the Jones Act distorts 
     the U.S. energy market and raises domestic gasoline prices. 
     As I noted last year:
       According to Bloomberg, there are only 13 ships that can 
     legally move oil between U.S. ports, and these ships are 
     `booked solid.' As a result, abundant oil supplies in the 
     Gulf Coast region cannot be shipped to other U.S. states with 
     spare refinery capacity. And, even when such vessels are 
     available, the Jones Act makes intrastate crude shipping 
     artificially expensive. According to a 2012 report by the 
     Financial Times, shipping U.S. crude from Texas to 
     Philadelphia cost more than three times as much as shipping 
     the same product on a foreign-flagged vessel to a Canadian 
     refinery, even though the latter route is longer.
       It doesn't take an energy economist to see how the Jones 
     Act's byzantine protectionism leads to higher prices at the 
     pump for American drivers. According to one recent estimate, 
     revoking the Jones Act would reduce U.S. gasoline prices by 
     as much as 15 cents per gallon `by increasing the supply of 
     ships able to shuttle the fuel between U.S. ports.'
       For these and other reasons, the Heritage Foundation just 
     recently called for the complete repeal of the Jones Act as 
     part of its new energy policy agenda.
       Second, the Jones Act has particularly deleterious effects 
     on water-bound U.S. markets like Puerto Rico, Alaska, and 
     Hawaii. A 2012 report by the New York Fed highlighted the 
     issue for Puerto Rico:
       Available data show that shipping is more costly to Puerto 
     Rico than to regional peers and that Puerto Rican ports have 
     lagged other regional ports in activity in recent years. 
     While causality from the Jones Act has not been established, 
     it stands to reason that the act is an important contributor 
     insofar as it reduces competition (shipments between the 
     Island and the U.S. mainland are handled by just four 
     carriers). It costs an estimated $3,063 to ship a twenty-foot 
     container of household and commercial goods from the East 
     Coast of the United States to Puerto Rico; the same shipment 
     costs $1,504 to nearby Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and 
     $1,687 to Kingston (Jamaica)--destinations that are not 
     subject to Jones Act restrictions . . . Furthermore, over the 
     past decade, the port of Kingston in Jamaica has overtaken 
     the port of San Juan in total container volume, despite the 
     fact that Puerto Rico's population is roughly a third larger 
     and its economy more than triple the size of Jamaica's. The 
     trends are stark: between 2000 and 2010, the volume of 
     twenty-foot containers more than doubled in Jamaica, while it 
     fell more than 20 percent in Puerto Rico.
       A 1988 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office 
     found similar harms for Alaska and the U.S. economy. Thus, 
     the idea that the Jones Act doesn't line the pockets of a few 
     U.S. companies and unions at the expense of American families 
     and businesses simply defies reality.


                  Regulating Industries Cuts Them Down

       Supporters of the Jones Act often rebut these economic 
     criticisms by explaining that the law is absolutely essential 
     for U.S. national security, but these claims also fail the 
     smell test. Consider first the enervation of the U.S. 
     shipping industry itself. The above-referenced MARAD report 
     shows a U.S. industry that has declined nearly to the point 
     of extinction under the weight of the Jones Act and other 
     regulations--a shameful outcome when you consider the history 
     and importance of the U.S. Merchant Marine, which is a 
     component not just of the United States economy, but also our 
     national defense. Mariners in World War II faced the highest 
     casualty rate of any other service: 1 in 26 men went to their 
     deaths on the sea. In 1950, ships waving the United States 
     flag comprised 43 percent of the global shipping trade. Yet 
     by 2009 the U.S. fleet had withered to 1 percent of the 
     global fleet--while global demand for international shipping 
     surged.
       As of 2010, the picture was clear: there were 110 U.S.-
     flagged ships engaged in foreign commerce. Sixty in of these 
     ships were part of the Maritime Security Program. Notably, as 
     of 2012 these ships receive a subsidy (naturally) to the tune 
     of $3.1 million per ship, per year, to offset their higher 
     costs. Compare this to the 540 ships owned by American 
     interests which flew a ``flag of convenience''--typically 
     that of the Marshall Islands, Singapore, or Liberia. Why such 
     a dramatic difference?
       While it is certainly not the only factor at play, this 
     precipitous decline in the U.S. fleet's standing is due in no 
     small part to burdensome regulations which make American 
     ships more costly and less competitive. The Jones Act 
     requires ships engaged in the U.S. trade to be built in the 
     country, but building a ship in the United States is 
     exorbitantly expensive--three times the cost of a new ship 
     built in Japan or South Korea. In nearly all cases it is far 
     less burdensome to purchase an existing ship and reflag it 
     rather than build new. And these burdens are before factoring 
     the requirement to crew these ships with U.S. mariners, union 
     men who unsurprisingly average more than five times the 
     expense of a foreign crew. Indeed, the

[[Page 1029]]

     MARAD report identified labor costs as the single largest 
     driver of the difference between U.S. and foreign carrier 
     costs.
       The Jones Act isn't the only harmful regulation, not by a 
     mile. One of the unfortunate realities of operating a massive 
     ocean-going vessel full of complex machinery is that things 
     inevitably require maintenance. These inconveniences often 
     arise overseas and necessitate repairs in foreign countries. 
     Lest you worry the government would be left with beak 
     unwetted in this instance, fear not: 19 USC Sec. 1466 to the 
     rescue (link included if you're having trouble falling 
     asleep). This outgrowth of the Tariff Act of 1930 requires 
     the master, or owner of a vessel, upon the ship's return to a 
     United States port, to declare to U.S. Customs any parts and 
     services received onboard while in foreign waters. The ship 
     owner is then required to pay an ad valorem duty of 50 
     percent on the dutiable vessel repair costs.
       A few exceptions written into the law help mitigate this 
     figure, at the further cost of man hours or maritime attorney 
     fees. Free trade agreements between the United States and 
     nations like Oman, South Korea, Singapore, and others help to 
     alleviate these costs by allowing for almost total remission 
     of duty for work performed in those countries. However, it's 
     hardly practical for U.S.-flagged vessels to perform the 
     entirety of their maintenance in these countries when stays 
     in port can be measured in hours. Vessel repair duties are 
     situated to remain a significant, punitive cost of doing 
     business as a U.S. cargo vessel. Even with this 50 percent 
     duty, in the majority of cases it is still less expensive to 
     make the repairs overseas and pay up rather than to perform 
     the work in the United States. This also holds true for the 
     acquisition of new ships.
       Thus, under the Jones Act, shipping prices (as well as 
     those for the goods shipped) rise and the U.S. fleet 
     degrades. (For more on how the Jones Act imperils U.S. 
     maritime security, see this helpful Heritage Foundation 
     report.) It's quite the double-whammy, and precisely what 
     you'd expect from a protectionist law that thwarts the 
     benefits of foreign competition. In short, the Jones Act has 
     turned the U.S. merchant marine into a fleet of Ford Pintos 
     and Chrysler K-Cars, all in desperate need of the kind of 
     motivation only free market competition can bring.


            To Top It Off, the Jones Act Worsens Emergencies

       Moreover, the Act has proven to be a significant and costly 
     obstacle in times of real emergency. Most recently, the deep 
     freeze of 2014 saw New Jersey exhaust its supply of road 
     salt, imperiling the lives of local travelers. Such salt was 
     available in Maine, but it was delayed for days because of 
     the requirement that only U.S. ships could engage in 
     coastwise trade to carry the shipment--even though an empty 
     foreign ship was available and headed to Newark. The 
     government denied a request to waive the Jones Act and use 
     the foreign ship to supply the much-needed road salt. By the 
     time a Jones Act barge was found to carry the salt, the cost 
     of the operation had grown by $700,000. Sorry about those icy 
     roads, New Jersey, but the shipping industry and unions gotta 
     get paid.
       During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the government 
     similarly refused to issue Jones Act waivers so foreign 
     vessels could aid in the cleanup and containment. Despite 
     several offers for foreign assistance during an ongoing 
     ecological disaster, the government cited the Jones Act to 
     justify turning them away. Many suspect that the Obama 
     administration was reluctant to go against the pro-Jones Act 
     labor unions (tr. every labor union) he needed to cement his 
     re-election. It's not a leap to say that such cronyism may 
     have delayed the eventual resolution of the spill.
       The Jones Act and its related statutes raise the cost of 
     essential goods for American families and businesses; 
     strangle the life from the industries they were designed to 
     protect; jeopardizes U.S. maritime security; and exacerbates 
     the pain of major national emergencies. (They also are major 
     irritant in foreign trade relations.) So why hasn't Congress 
     repealed these laws? Maybe we should ask the politicians and 
     well-connected cronies who benefit from the current 
     arrangement. I'm sure they'd be happy to explain.
       McCain's amendment to repeal the Jones Act is a common-
     sense solution to the problems facing a key American industry 
     and the pain of the U.S. economy. The amendment, as well as 
     any broader proposal to kill off the Act, deserves widespread 
     support from conservatives and liberals alike. Efforts to 
     dispense with this archaic protectionist boondoggle will no 
     doubt meet fierce resistance from entrenched interests, labor 
     unions, and opponents of free trade. However, those same 
     groups stand only to benefit from efforts to make the U.S. 
     fleet more competitive and less costly. American mariners 
     have what it takes to compete on a global scale, and they 
     should be given the chance. More competition translates to 
     more opportunity, and perhaps the expansion and 
     revitalization of a crucial sector of our economy. Where 
     artificial monopolies and ancient restrictions can be 
     removed, American labor, American business, and American 
     consumers will have a chance to thrive.

  Mr. McCAIN. I thank the Senator from Alaska.
  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. REED. 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. REED. Madam President, I would like to talk about an amendment I 
filed along with my colleague Susan Collins of Maine to support the 
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the LIHEAP program.
  As the Senate continues to debate whether to bypass a longstanding 
Presidential permitting process and essentially rubberstamp the 
construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline--which, to be clear, would 
likely benefit major oil companies and could have a harmful consequence 
on our environment--I wish to take the opportunity to highlight a 
Federal program that helps our country's most vulnerable citizens, 
including seniors, meet their home energy needs.
  The bipartisan amendment led by Senator Collins and me, along with 
several of our colleagues, expresses the sense of the Senate that the 
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program--better known as LIHEAP--
should be funded at no less than $4.7 billion annually to ensure that 
more low-income households--those with children, senior citizens, 
individuals with disabilities, and veterans--are able to access this 
critical assistance.
  I must commend Senator Collins. She and I have taken the lead on this 
effort over many sessions of Congress. Her efforts are extraordinarily 
critical for the continued support of this program, and it is no 
surprise that once again we are both together urging our colleagues to 
support this program.
  LIHEAP is the main Federal program that helps low-income families, 
seniors, individuals with disabilities, and a growing number of 
veterans across the country pay their energy bills. It provides vital 
assistance during the cold winter months often seen in the Northeast, 
the Northern Plains, and across the northern part of the country, and 
also during the summer months in areas of the Southeast and Southwest 
where air-conditioning is absolutely critical to the health and welfare 
of seniors. Unfortunately, we often read very disturbing reports of 
individuals, particularly seniors, with serious medical conditions that 
can become fatal because they simply can't afford the cost of air-
conditioning or home heating.
  This is not a program that is regionally specific; this is a program 
that has a national impact and, as such, has to be supported. It is an 
indispensable lifeline that ensures recipients do not have to choose 
between paying their energy bills and affording other necessities such 
as food and medicine.
  The funding also supports many small businesses, such as oil heating 
companies. They see the benefits of LIHEAP as well. It goes to pay 
utility bills, which indirectly affects small businesses and individual 
ratepayers across a broad spectrum. So the benefits of this legislation 
are not just for the specific recipients but also for the overall 
economy of our States and for small businesses, and that has to be 
noted.
  We also recognize that there are many more households eligible than 
receive the benefits simply because the funding levels are 
insufficient.
  Despite bipartisan efforts over many years--again, with Senator 
Collins being right there--funding reductions in 2011 and 2012, along 
with sequester cuts, mean LIHEAP funding has declined more than 30 
percent since fiscal year 2010, from $5.1 billion down to about $3.4 
billion. This raises another bigger issue.
  We have seen our deficit decline significantly, from 9.8 percent of 
gross domestic product now to about 2.8 percent. In fact, that is a 
little bit below the 40-year average of deficits in the United States. 
This hasn't been just because of magic; it is because we have been 
cutting programs. This is an example of one of the programs we have

[[Page 1030]]

cut very significantly, and it is a program that aids so many people in 
our communities--particularly seniors and people with disabilities. 
This deficit reduction has been hard won, and one of the costs has been 
supporting these people. The money has shrunk, so obviously the number 
of people serviced has shrunk. The number of households LIHEAP funds 
has declined by 17 percent, from about 8.1 million households to 6.7 
million households, and they have seen this impact directly. Those 
receiving assistance have also seen their average LIHEAP grant reduced 
by about $100, down to about $400. This is estimated to cover less than 
half of the average home heating costs for a household this winter, 
meaning that many low-income families and seniors will have fewer 
resources available to meet other basic needs.
  I must point out that we are seeing a temporary reprieve from very 
high energy prices--particularly oil prices in the Northeast--because 
of geopolitical developments that have impacted the price of oil. But 
that is not the solution. The bills these people face, even in this 
economic climate as well as meteorological climate, are still 
significant and challenging to people of very limited means. For many 
people, this is an issue of safety, it is an issue of their health, and 
it is an issue of just being able to get by and make ends meet.
  So the need is clear, and I urge my colleagues to join me in support 
of LIHEAP and in support of this amendment.
  In this context, we need to be proactive in terms of recognizing 
something we can do on a bipartisan basis that works.
  I do believe I should also comment at this moment on the underlying 
proposal, the Keystone XL Pipeline.
  We understand this TransCanada pipeline would move crude oil from the 
Canadian tar sands--one of the dirtiest sources of fuel on the planet--
to refineries on our gulf coast. There are many ways to extract 
hydrocarbons, and this is one of the most environmentally challenging 
ways. Constructing this pipeline runs counter to what we should be 
doing on a much broader basis, which is addressing climate change and 
protecting the environment.
  I was struck yesterday at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee--and the Presiding Officer is a distinguished and very 
valuable member of that committee--where we listened to Lt. Gen. Brent 
Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two of the foremost experts on 
national security policy. General Scowcroft was National Security 
Adviser for President George Herbert Walker Bush, and Dr. Brzezinski 
was National Security Adviser for President Carter and was integral in 
negotiating the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. I was 
struck, when asked about the big issues we face, that General Scowcroft 
said: Well, there are two big issues--cyber security and climate 
change. When you have these very authoritative individuals--again on a 
bipartisan basis--essentially saying climate change is a big national 
security issue, that is the context in which we have to view so many 
things, in particular this issue of the Keystone Pipeline.
  The second issue is the obvious need in this country to create jobs. 
In fact--no pun intended--that is job number 1 for us. Now, there are 
jobs associated with the pipeline. Even if they are of short duration, 
they are still pretty good jobs. But the point has to be made that we 
have to do much more--particularly for our construction workers--than 
one single pipeline. I have been told that long-term employment of the 
pipeline, once it is built--will be very small.
  We have to do much more. That is why I think we have to be very 
serious about an infrastructure program that goes way beyond Keystone 
and includes roads, bridges, sewers--all these things we have let 
decline. If we look at the spending levels--once again, a victim of our 
deficit reduction, a victim of the cuts we have made--we are at a level 
now where we are not doing what our fathers, grandfathers, 
grandmothers, and mothers did, which is invest a lot of money in 
building infrastructure for a productive America. We have been missing 
in action for the last several years as far as doing those things we 
used to do routinely--building new highways, building new sewer 
systems, improving our pollution control systems, all of those things. 
We have to do that.
  We also have to do those things in the context of climate change--in 
other words, look at alternative energy and not just replicate what we 
did 20 or 30 years ago because this is a different planet.
  According to the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and 
environmental groups, repairing America's crumbling infrastructure 
could create 2.7 million jobs across the economy, increase GDP by $377 
billion, while reducing carbon pollution and other greenhouse gas 
emissions. So it is not thousands of jobs; it is millions of jobs. It 
is not one project; it is a commitment to improving, advancing, and 
rehabilitating our infrastructure in every part of the country, while 
at the same time dealing with climate change, which is so central.
  So, I would like to see us, as we move past this debate, move 
vigorously into a debate about infrastructure.
  There is another issue too, and that is this debate about where the 
oil is going. Well, given the global market for petroleum products, it 
could go to parts of the United States, but it could easily go 
overseas. A lot of that is a factor of the price and the demand. We 
have seen a lot of oil going into Asia in particular. I think that 
trend will continue for several reasons. One reason is that they have 
done less, relatively speaking, than many other parts of the world in 
terms of lowering their dependence on oil and moving to alternative 
fuels. So the potential is that a significant amount, if not all, of 
this product--even though it reaches the gulf coast--will not be used 
in the United States. That is another factor we have to consider.
  Bypassing the administration's traditional legislative review process 
with respect to Keystone is not the way to proceed. We have to get our 
energy policies right. I think we have to recognize climate change. We 
have to be sensitive to a whole host of issues. We also have to 
recognize that an energy policy is not just producing and getting these 
products into the marketplace, it is also making sure that very 
vulnerable Americans can afford these products, whatever their prices 
may be. That is where LIHEAP comes in.
  I am very pleased, once again, that this is a continuation of a 
bipartisan effort Senator Collins and many others have pursued for the 
benefit of families all across this country. When we are doing that, I 
think we are doing the best possible work we can for our constituents 
and our Nation.
  With that, Madam President, 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.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Ms. Mikulski pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 
No. 35 is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            Amendment No. 71

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand today to encourage my colleagues to 
support my amendment No. 71. This amendment would solve a problem that 
has severely hamstrung oil and gas development on Federal lands, a 
problem that is particularly severe in the Western United States and 
that involves excessive delays in the issuing of permits

[[Page 1031]]

by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
  Federal law requires the BLM to approve or deny these permits within 
30 days. They have 30 days to go one way or the other. But according to 
a report issued last year by the inspector general within the U.S. 
Department of Interior, BLM took an average of 228 days to approve each 
drilling permit in 2012--228 days. That is 7\1/2\ months. That is a lot 
longer than the 30 days under Federal law. In Moab and in Salt Lake 
City, UT, the average processing delay is 220 days. In Price, UT, the 
backlog is around 250 days. It doesn't have to take this long. In fact, 
to explain why, let's look at how States handle it.
  State governments, by comparison, process these same permits in 80 
days or less.
  Approval of these permits is further complicated by endless 
environmental reviews, reviews that sometimes can take years upon 
years. The result of all this redtape is a serious backlog of about 
3,500 permits.
  My amendment would address this problem in a few ways. First, it 
would require BLM to issue a permit within 60 days of receiving an 
application. If the permit is denied, the BLM would be required to 
specify the reasons for its decision to deny the permit and to allow 
the applicant thereafter to address any issues.
  The amendment would also address delays stemming from reviews under 
the Endangered Species Act and under the National Environmental Policy 
Act. Reviews under these statutes are required to be completed within 
180 days. To provide companies with certainty and to hold BLM 
accountable, if either of these deadlines is not met, the applications 
would be deemed approved.
  Significantly, there are currently 113 million acres of Federal land 
open and accessible for oil and gas development. Much of this Federal 
land contains abundant domestic energy resources. In Utah alone we have 
hundreds of acres available for drilling, acres that are currently 
being held up by bureaucratic delays. My amendment would ensure that 
Utah and other States in the West that are dominated by Federal land 
can access the energy, the vast wealth that lies within their borders, 
and provide the United States with a reliable source of domestic energy 
production.
  Look, our security--our energy security and our national security, 
more broadly--depends ultimately on our ability to produce energy. I 
understand that fuel prices right now are down relative to what they 
have been. We cannot get too secure in this. We cannot assume it is 
always going to be the case. Certainly, when the Federal Government 
insists on owning this much land--roughly one-third of the land in the 
United States as a whole, roughly two-thirds of the land in my State of 
Utah--if we are going to own this much land within the Federal 
Government, we should be using the resources within it.
  We need to make sure we are using that land to shore up our energy 
independence. The less energy independent we are in this country, the 
more dependent we become on other countries that are producing their 
energy, that are using their natural resources--countries such as Saudi 
Arabia and Venezuela and other countries where there are a lot of 
people growing wealthy off of our petrodollars and where many of those 
same people are using our own petrodollars to fund acts of terrorism 
against us, countries that are often hostile to our interests.
  We need to do this because it makes sense economically and we need to 
do this because it makes sense from a national security standpoint as 
well. But in order for any of this to work, we have to have procedures 
in place to make sure that those people who choose to go out and want 
to develop land--want to develop Federal land that has already been 
identified as suitable for oil and gas production within Federal 
lands--that they have some modicum of due process, that they have some 
ability to predict what the procedural outcome is going to be, what set 
of procedures they will have to follow and what kind of timeline they 
will be facing as they approach this often lengthy process.
  We do need to be careful. We do need to be sensitive and we need to 
make sure we are developing our natural resources in a way that 
respects our environment and doesn't endanger our health or that of our 
Federal land, but this can be done in a way that doesn't have to result 
in open-ended and completely unforeseeable delays.
  For this reason I strongly encourage my colleagues to support this 
amendment, amendment No. 71, with the understanding that as they do so, 
they will be shoring up America's energy independence, and with it, 
America's national security.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MORAN. I also ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          Veterans Health Care

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, thank you very much for recognizing me to 
take the opportunity to address something I hope can readily and easily 
be solved. If common sense prevails--and we know it doesn't often 
enough here in our Nation's Capital--one, the Department of Veterans 
Affairs certainly, in my view, can solve this problem. If common sense 
doesn't prevail there, then surely the Senate, the House of 
Representatives, and the President could agree upon a legislative fix 
that is really nothing more than common sense. I am talking about a 
veterans issue--one that is certainly prevalent in a rural State such 
as mine. My guess is it is a problem that occurs in a State such as the 
Presiding Officer's as well.
  I was very pleased. I came to the Senate floor and talked about the 
importance of passing and approving the CHOICE Act. We remember the 
scandal of last year in which it became clear the Department of 
Veterans Affairs had significant problems across the country. The VA 
hospital in Phoenix was a poster child for bad behavior that resulted 
in potentially the death of veterans. One of the things we did to try 
to help the Department of Veterans Affairs better take care of 
America's veterans was to pass the CHOICE Act. We did that in August of 
last year. It was signed into law, and it is now being implemented by 
the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  There are many issues that are associated with the implementation of 
this bill, but let me raise one. The crux of that legislation is this. 
If you are a veteran and you live more than 40 miles from a VA facility 
or if you can't get the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide the 
services within 30 days or the timeframe in which you need those 
services, then the Department of Veterans Affairs is required by law to 
provide those services, if you choose, at a place of your choice, 
presumably your hometown.
  This is about service to our veterans in their hometowns across 
Kansas and across States around the country. The theory is that the 
Department of Veterans Affairs is incapable of providing those services 
perhaps for a number of reasons, including lack of the necessary 
professionals. Therefore, let's take advantage of the professionals we 
have at home in our hometowns. Let the veterans see his or her hometown 
physician. Let the veteran be admitted to his or her hometown hospital. 
It is a pretty commonsense kind of reaction to the inability of the 
Department of Veterans Affairs to meet the needs of veterans across our 
country--provide another option. If that is the choice of the veteran, 
that veteran wants to have care at home, give them that option.
  As a Senator from a State such as Kansas, this makes sense to me even 
in the circumstance in which the Department of Veterans Affairs can 
provide the service. For 14 years I represented a congressional 
district in Kansas, the

[[Page 1032]]

western three-fourths of our State. The congressional district is 
larger than the State of Illinois and has no VA hospital.
  We pushed for a number of years and were successful in opening 
outpatient clinics so veterans could get that care closer to home than 
the VA hospital, and those outpatient clinics provide--or at least 
intended to provide--routine care.
  Here is the problem today. The law says if you live more than 40 
miles from a VA facility, then the VA must provide the services at home 
if you choose. The Department of Veterans Affairs is defining facility 
as any facility, including the hospital or the outpatient clinic. That 
doesn't seem too troublesome to me until you take it to the next step, 
which is, even if the VA hospital or the outpatient clinic doesn't 
provide the service that the veteran needs, they still consider it a 
facility within 40 miles.
  In my hometown, where I grew up, we have had an ongoing dialogue with 
one of our honored veterans. He needs a colonoscopy. My hometown is 
nearly 300 miles--250 miles from the VA hospital in Wichita. There is 
an outpatient clinic, a CBOC, in Hays, 25 miles away. But guess what. 
The outpatient clinic in Hays doesn't provide the service of 
colonoscopies.
  One would think the veteran in my hometown could go to the local 
physician or the local hospital and have the colonoscopy performed and 
the Department of Veterans Affairs provide and pay for the services. 
But no, because there is an outpatient clinic within 40 miles, even 
though it doesn't provide the colonoscopy, our veteran is directed to 
drive to Wichita. Incidentally, we have calculated the mileage expense 
of the veteran doing it. It does not make sense economically, either. 
But regardless of that, it certainly doesn't make sense for that 
veteran.
  I have said this many times over the years as we have tried to bring 
services closer to home to veterans. If you are a 92-year-old World War 
II veteran and you live in Atwood, KS, up on the Nebraska border, how 
do you get to the VA hospital in Wichita or in Denver?
  Our initial attempt was to put an outpatient clinic closer. The 
problem with that--we now have an outpatient clinic in Burlington, CO, 
and an outpatient clinic in Hays, KS. But that is still 2\1/2\ hours 
from Atwood, KS. If you are a 92-year-old World War II veteran in 
Atwood, KS, how do you get to Hays or Burlington, CO? The answer is you 
probably don't.
  Our veterans are not being served. We attempted to address this 
issue. Let me say it differently. We addressed this issue in the CHOICE 
Act and said that if you are 40 miles from a facility, then the VA 
provides the services at home. The VA is interpreting that facility--
the word facility--just to mean any facility there regardless of what 
service it provides.
  In many instances--take Liberal, KS, where there is a CBOC. They 
haven't had a permanent physician in their CBOC in almost 4 years. But 
yet Liberal--the CBOC in Liberal--counts as a facility even though 
there is no physician who is regularly in attendance at the clinic. 
These issues ought to be resolved in favor of whom? The veteran. Whom, 
of all people, would we expect to provide the best service to? In any 
capable way we can, whom would we expect to get the best health care in 
our Nation? I would put at the top of the list those who served our 
country.
  The committee that passed this legislation, the CHOICE Act--it says 
in the language--the conferees recognized the issues I just described 
and added report language that allows veterans to secure health care 
services that are either unavailable or not cost-effective to provide 
at a VA facility, which was intentionally included to give the VA 
flexibility to provide veterans access to non-VA care when a VA 
facility, no matter what size or location, cannot provide the care the 
veteran is seeking.
  Yesterday I introduced S. 207. I would ask my colleagues to join me. 
Again, I guess my first request is, Could the Department of Veterans 
Affairs fix this problem on their own? If not, I would ask that my 
colleagues join me in fixing this legislatively with one more directive 
to the Department of Veterans Affairs saying, if they cannot provide 
the service at the CBOC, then it does not count as a facility within 
the 40 miles.
  This is a problem across our States. I had my staff at a meeting in 
the VISN in which they were describing how they were going to implement 
the CHOICE Act. They put up a chart in which they show how they are 
going to have a mobile van work its way through the area of our State 
and Missouri and talked about how that will then satisfy the 40-mile 
requirement.
  Why is the VA bending over backward to avoid--let me say it 
differently. Why is the VA not bending over backward to take care of 
the veteran, instead of bending over backward to make sure it is the 
most difficult circumstance for a veteran to get the health care they 
need at home?
  We ought to always err on the side of what is best for veterans, not 
what is best for the Department of Veterans Affairs--if you could ever 
make the case that providing services someplace far away from the 
veteran is good for the VA.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak to this 
issue. It is an important one. I have mentioned it to a number of my 
colleagues. They have described similar circumstances in their State. I 
have met with the Department of Veterans Affairs personnel. I serve on 
the veterans' committee, have since I came to Congress. We will work in 
every way with the veterans' committee, Republicans and Democrats, to 
make certain there is a fix to this issue.
  But I want to highlight the manner in which the Department is 
implementing the CHOICE Act is not the way Congress intended, and it is 
not the way that benefits the veteran. Finally, let me say that even if 
there was some circumstance in which the Department does not have the 
authority to do what we are asking them to do in the CHOICE Act, they 
have the ability today to provide non-VA care whenever they deem it 
necessary.
  There is also the opportunity for them to use a pilot program that 
many of us have in our States. I see the Senator from Maine is on the 
floor. They have a pilot program, the ARCH Program, in which we are 
trying to provide services to veterans at home. There are a variety of 
ways the Department can solve this problem. I ask them to do that.
  In the absence of their solution, I ask my colleagues to join me in 
sponsoring, in debating, in potentially amending but most importantly 
in passing and sending this bill to the President so we can resolve 
once and for all that the Department of Veterans Affairs is created for 
the benefit of the veteran, not the Department.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Mr. President, first, as an original cosponsor of the good 
Senator's bill, I compliment him for taking the leadership position he 
has on this issue, for bringing it forward and so eloquently expressing 
his support for it.
  This is an important bill. I think it is one we all can agree on, on 
a bipartisan basis. Let's get it through and to the President.


                             Cyber Security

  Mr. President, I start with a question, a basic question: Why are we 
here? Why do we have those jobs? What is it we are supposed to do? The 
clearest expression of the answer to that question comes from the 
preamble to the Constitution, which lays out exactly what our 
responsibilities are.

       We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more 
     perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic 
     Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
     general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to 
     ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this 
     Constitution for the United States of America.

  This is the purpose of the Constitution. It is the purpose of the 
government. The most solemn responsibility of any government, I would 
submit--any government, anywhere, any time--is to provide for the 
security of its citizens, to provide for the common defense. That is 
our most solemn and fundamental responsibility.

[[Page 1033]]

  We are not doing that right now. We are avoiding, missing, 
obfuscating, and not dealing with one of the most serious threats 
facing our country. I refer to the threat of cyber attack. Every 
intelligence official I have talked to in the last 2 years, every 
military official, everybody with any knowledge of the defense and the 
security, the national security of this country, has emphasized that 
the most serious threat we face right now is cyber.
  What does that mean? Cyber attacks. The disabling of critical 
infrastructure, attacks on our businesses, financial systems. This is a 
direct threat that is heading at us like a freight train on a track. 
The problem is we see it coming, but we are not doing what we should to 
deal with it.
  To say it is coming is kind of an understatement. This is an unusual 
chart, but it goes in time from 2004 until today. It is basically the 
frequency and size of cyber attacks in our country. The bigger bubbles 
are bigger attacks. The smaller bubbles are smaller attacks. From 2004 
to 2006, a few but not many. It is bubbling up and it is about to boil 
over. Each year we have seen more attacks, larger attacks, more serious 
attacks. The evidence is overwhelming that this is a threat we are 
facing. Sony was a wake-up call if ever there was one. What if the Sony 
attack had been the New York Stock Exchange or the railroad system, 
where cars bearing toxic materials are derailed, or the natural gas 
pipeline system or any other of the critical infrastructure of this 
country, financial or physical, would have disabled us?
  I was at a hearing yesterday in the Armed Services Committee. We had 
the testimony of two of the wisest men in America--Brent Scowcroft, 
Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was the National Security Adviser to 
President Ford and President George H.W. Bush, and Dr. Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, who was the National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter--
talking about threats.
  Brent Scowcroft said he believes the cyber threat was analogous to 
the nuclear threat: People would not be killed, but our country could 
be destroyed. He saw this as one of the two fundamental threats we 
face. Yet what are we doing in Congress? Not much. It is as if we got a 
telegram from Admiral Yamamoto in 1941 saying, I am steaming toward 
Pearl Harbor and we are going to wipe you out, and we did nothing, or a 
telegram or a text message from Osama bin Ladin saying, We are heading 
for the World Trade Center, what are you going to do, and we did 
nothing.
  We have the notice. It is right in front of us. Yet we are not 
acting. What are the risks? The biggest risk is in the nature of our 
society. The good news is we are the most technologically advanced 
society on Earth. The bad news is we are the most technologically 
advanced society on Earth--because it makes us vulnerable.
  It is what they call an asymmetric vulnerability. We are the most 
vulnerable because we are the most wired. We are in the most danger 
because of our technical advancement. What can they do to us? This 
gives you an idea of how this risk is accelerating and how it fits. 
This is the number of devices in the world connected to the Internet. 
Back in 2003 it was very few. By 2010 we were up to 10 billion devices 
connected to the Internet. The projection is, by the end of this year, 
we will be at 25 billion devices connected to the Internet. By 2020, 
not that long from now, 50 billion devices will be connected to the 
Internet and therefore vulnerable to cyber attacks.
  Critical infrastructure, I have mentioned. The financial system, what 
would it do to the country if all of a sudden everybody's bank account 
disappeared? Most of us, many workers in America, have their--we do not 
see cash money or a paycheck. It goes electronically into our bank 
account. What if all of that just disappeared? Chaos would ensue.
  The same thing with transactions on the New York Stock Exchange or 
the great transactions of our banks. It would be chaos that would 
tumble through the economy and then into people's daily lives. 
Transportation could be paralyzed. The simply act of messing around 
with how red and green lights work in a major city could paralyze a 
major city for hours, if not days.
  The transportation of toxic or volatile compounds could be 
compromised. Of course, the energy system, the electrical grid, we do 
not realize how dependent we are on these modern facilities until they 
go down. Periodically in Maine, when I was Governor, we had an ice 
storm where three-quarters of our people lost electricity for sometimes 
2 weeks at a time. We learned what a disaster that was. One of the 
things we learned was that home furnaces, heating oil furnaces, need 
electricity to fire. People got cold. It was not just: Gee. I cannot 
watch TV tonight. It became life threatening.
  The second area of vulnerability is financial. Data breaches, that is 
something that is happening all of the time. Then, finally, property 
ideas, theft of ideas. Where are these threats coming from? All over 
the place. North Korea, Russia, China, Iran. Terrorist organizations 
are now looking into the cyber field--hackers for hire, somebody in 
some country or somebody's basement somewhere in the world who hires 
out to take advantage of the vulnerability, particularly of the Western 
countries and particularly the United States.
  We are already incurring huge costs, the cost of these data breaches, 
the cost of protection against these data breaches. Our financial 
system is spending a huge amount of money to protect itself from these 
breaches. We have to act. We have to act. It is beyond time to act.
  My favorite quote from Mark Twain--and there are many. But my 
favorite is: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually 
rhymes.
  History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.
  Nothing new ever happens. This would not be the first time in history 
a great nation ignored threats to its existence. In August of 1939, 
Winston Churchill, in talking about the House of Commons, but he could 
have been talking about the U.S. Congress:

       At this moment in its long history, it would be disastrous, 
     it would be pathetic, it would be shameful for the House of 
     Commons to write itself off as an effective and potent factor 
     in the situation, or reduce whatever strength it can offer to 
     the firm front which the nation will make against aggression.

  Earlier in the thirties he said--and this is a perfect analogy of 
where we are today:

       When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now 
     that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the 
     remedies which then might have effected a cure.

  We are at the line between manageable and too late. I would argue it 
is almost over that line. Now is the time that we have to act, but we 
aren't acting because of a variety of reasons: the complexity of our 
process--four committees have to consider cyber legislation; the 
differences with the House; the differences with the White House. There 
are all kinds of complications in our system which seem to be 
preventing us from acting.
  Again, Churchill is appropriate:

       There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the 
     Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of 
     the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed 
     unteachability of mankind.

  Boy, that is a dark judgment. Continuing:

       Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would 
     be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of 
     counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation 
     strikes its jarring gong--these are the features which 
     constitute the endless repetition of history.

  Let's act before the crisis starts. Let's act while we still have 
time.
  There are at least three bills that I know of that are available. One 
is a bipartisan bill that was heavily negotiated in the Intelligence 
Committee, came out of the committee I think 12 to 3 last summer. That 
is available. It is a new Congress, but the ink is barely dry. There is 
a bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee. A bill that came out 
of the homeland security committee in December of 2012--and lost in 
this body by a couple of votes--from my friends Senator Collins and 
Senator Lieberman also dealt with this problem. In other words, we 
don't have to start from zero. We don't have to invent these solutions; 
we just have to

[[Page 1034]]

have the will to put them in place. Yet we don't act.
  People say: Well, we have national security, Senator. What are you 
talking about? We are spending almost $600 billion a year on the 
defense of this Nation.
  And the answer is yes, but in some ways it reminds me of the famous 
Maginot Line of France in the thirties. The Maginot Line has come to 
symbolize a faulty defense premise, which really isn't true. The 
Maginot Line worked. The problem was that the Maginot Line stopped. It 
went from Switzerland to the Belgian border. It stopped at the Belgian 
border, and the Germans came around it and behind it and overwhelmed 
France in 6 days. So the problem wasn't that the Maginot Line was not 
an effective defense--and our defense budget certainly is not 
ineffective; it is absolutely essential. But we are not defending the 
whole frontier. There is a piece of it, like Belgium, that is 
undefended, and that is our failure.
  So what are we going to say when the crisis strikes? What are we 
going to say when we go home to our citizens in our home States when 
the financial system goes down and people can't get their money? There 
are threats of violence and violence across our country when toxic 
waste is spilled in our waterways. What are we going to say? ``Well, we 
would have done something about it, but that was in four committees, 
and that was really hard'' or ``You know, we just got in this argument 
with the White House and couldn't work it out'' or ``Gee, we would have 
solved it and your paycheck wouldn't have disappeared except the 
House--you know how they are.'' Can you imagine trying to defend 
yourself with that kind of argument? You would be laughed out of the 
place.
  Come on. Let's do this. I don't know exactly how to proceed, except 
maybe those four committees should get together, talk to each other, 
and say: Let's bring a bill to the floor.
  I would like to see this body decide that we are going to pass cyber 
protection legislation between now and May 1. There is no reason we 
can't do it. The bills are drafted. We just have to pull ourselves 
together and take collective responsibility for defending our country.
  If we don't do this--a friend and colleague on this floor yesterday--
we were talking about it, and he said: It is political malpractice if 
we don't get this done.
  This is a threat we know about. It is important. It is serious. We 
know at least some of the important things we have to do to coordinate 
better between the government and the private sector. We know how we 
can help to solve this; we just have to summon the political will to do 
it. And it isn't even that controversial. There are differences here 
and there, but this isn't one of the big fights in the Senate where we 
have great ideological differences, this is one where we should be able 
to come together. It is a lack of coordination and a lack of political 
will.
  I don't know how I can say this more strongly. I think this is one of 
our most fundamental responsibilities. I go back to the preamble to the 
Constitution--the primary reason that governments are established and 
that our government was established, one of the basic reasons is to 
provide for the common defense. If we don't do that in the face of this 
threat, shame on us. This is one of the most solemn responsibilities we 
have as Senators, as Members of the Congress, and as members of the 
Federal Government of the United States.
  I deeply hope that the next several weeks and months will be a time 
of productive discussions and a commitment to at least an attempted 
solution, the beginning of a solution to this grave threat facing the 
United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hoeven). The Senator from Wyoming.


                               The Budget

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss several issues that 
I hope Congress will consider in this Congress.
  First, I intend to work this year to address our Nation's spending 
problems because I sit up nights worrying about our Nation's debt and 
how it will affect our children and grandchildren. As chairman of the 
Budget Committee, I will have a hand in handling that, so I have more 
responsibility.
  We have a spending problem in this country, and we cannot spend our 
way to prosperity; rather, we have to stop spending more than we take 
in and find a way to start paying down $18 trillion. The debt is 
growing. In fact, last fiscal year we spent $469 billion more than we 
took in. This fiscal year we are projected to spend $550 billion more 
than we will take in.
  The money on which we actually get to make decisions is about $1,000 
billion. I could say $1 trillion, but $1,000 billion seems to me like a 
lot more. When we talk about one, we don't pay much attention, whether 
it is a penny or a dollar or a million or a billion or a trillion, but 
if we put it out in real terms, we are talking about $1,000 billion 
that we could actually make decisions on, and we go ahead and spend 
half more than that, half more than we take in. How long do you think 
we can do that?
  Well, it is affected by interest. We have to pay interest on the 
money we spend that is in addition to the money we take in. Right now 
we are able to borrow that money at only 1.9 percent. Only? That 
amounts to $251 billion that we are paying in interest. It doesn't do a 
single program, just pays interest.
  How many people think the interest rate is going to stay at 1.9 
percent? Well, nobody does. In fact, the projections for this year for 
that interest rate, as we sell our bonds, is for 2.1 percent and going 
up. The average would be 5 percent. Let's see--$250 billion. If that 
doubled, that would be $500 billion. That could happen in 1 year. That 
would be an extra $250 billion that we couldn't spend out of that 
$1,000 billion that we now get to make decisions on, which is only two-
thirds of what we actually spend. We have a spending problem, and it is 
catastrophic in the long run.
  People would like us to balance the budget, and I have noticed that 
24 States have already passed a constitutional convention balanced 
budget amendment. There is a provision--article V of the Constitution 
says you can have a constitutional convention, and there are ways of 
having it happen, and that is by two-thirds of the States saying they 
want to have one. The way all those are being phrased is as though it 
would be limited to a constitutional convention on the balanced budget 
amendment only, but there is no provision to keep it at that. The only 
real provision in article V is one that says that no matter what you do 
in a constitutional convention, the thing that cannot be violated is 
that all States have equal representation in the U.S. Senate. Since we 
are the least populated State, that is one of my favorite parts of that 
article, and that is my favorite article. But everything else could be 
tapped. There are 10 more States that are considering that resolution. 
If all 34 of them pass it, we will have a constitutional convention.
  If we had to balance that budget in 1 year, that would mean we would 
have to cut $550 billion out of $1,000 billion. In other words, we 
would have to make a 50-percent cut to balance the budget.
  The real tragedy of this--I am not even talking about paying down the 
national debt; I am just talking about what we would be able to spend 
after we pay interest because we overspend.
  So we are trying to get it on a track where we can at least see the 
end of the tunnel and hope that is not the light of a train coming our 
way. So far it is. That is one of the things that keep me up. Several 
Members of the Senate have ideas on how we can do that, and I intend to 
work with them in an effort to find real solutions, eliminate some of 
the budget gimmicks we have had in the past, and I have some ideas I 
hope my colleagues will consider. One of them is my penny plan. That 
cuts the overall spending by 1 percent for 3 years to balance the 
budget. It is a little pain for virtually everybody. Everybody gives up 
one penny out every dollar they get from the Federal Government. The 
plan doesn't mandate any specific cuts. Congress would have the 
authority to make targeted cuts and

[[Page 1035]]

focus on the worst first. That is what we ought to do--focus on the 
worst first, and there is plenty of worst-first out there. If we focus 
on identifying and eliminating all of the wasteful spending that occurs 
in Washington, we might not have to cut important programs and 
services. Let's not make the cuts hurt. Let's be smart about the 
spending cuts and prioritize how we spend taxpayers' money.
  My biennial appropriations bill would allow for each of the 
appropriations bills to be taken up for a 2-year period. That means 
agencies would know what they are doing for 2 years. What happens right 
now is we don't meet the spending deadline--which is October 1--until 
sometime into the next year. So they not only don't know what they are 
going to do for 2 years, they don't even know what they are going to do 
for the year they are in. We need to solve that problem.
  My biennial budgeting bill actually breaks up the spending into two 
pieces. We do 12 of the bills, so we do the six tough ones right after 
the election and then we do the six easy ones before an election to 
make that a little easier to get done. But each of them would allow the 
agencies to know what they are going to do for a 2-year period, and it 
would allow the appropriators to scrutinize the details of those 
budgets. When you are looking at $1,000 billion, how much detail do you 
think you can look at when you have to do that each and every year? So 
I am suggesting that we only have to do it once every 2 years for half 
of the budget, and I think that would get us into a position where we 
would be cutting that worst first.
  Of course, the Defense appropriations bill would be taken up each 
year, just as we take up the authorization bill. Some people have 
mentioned that we are funding some things that aren't authorized right 
now. They were authorized before, but the authorization date has 
passed, so technically they are not authorized to happen. I was curious 
as to how many of those there were. I found out there were over 250 
authorizations. So how many of those are current? Well, 150 of them are 
out of date. We are still spending the money, but we haven't looked at 
the program to see if that is what we intended for them to do and if 
that is how they are using the money and if it is getting done. It is 
about time we did that.
  Eliminating duplication and waste as well as improper payments could 
be a real part of the solution this year because those are avoidable 
wastes of taxpayer dollars. The Government Accountability Office has 
reported that 31 areas of the Federal Government are in need of reform 
to eliminate duplicative and unnecessary programs. Consolidating 
programs and agency functions that overlap could save $95 billion.
  Additionally, in fiscal year 2012 there were nearly $100 billion in 
improper payments. That is the last time we have an accurate record--or 
inaccurate record of inaccuracies. These are payments that shouldn't be 
going out the door to people who are no longer eligible for benefits or 
overpayments of benefits or, in the worst cases, payments to people who 
are deceased. Ending waste and duplication could not only help out our 
fiscal house and get it back in order, but it could restore some 
confidence in the ability of government to operate effectively.
  Additionally, I believe that now is the time to deal with the 
problems we have seen each day since ObamaCare was implemented. 
Premiums are skyrocketing for many people this year, while small 
businesses continue to hold off on hiring new workers or are keeping 
people on a part-time schedule so they do not have to go out of 
business.
  We should repeal this law because it is bad for consumers and bad for 
businesses. We need real health care reform that gets health care costs 
under control and ensures that rural health care providers can afford 
to continue to provide vital services. We can redo that so we provide 
what the President promised but hasn't provided.
  I am also hopeful this Congress can take up tax reform legislation. 
This will be a challenge since the President said he wants $1 trillion 
more in revenue from the Tax Code. I disagree with that premise because 
I don't think Washington needs to spend more. Tax reform shouldn't 
raise any more money for the Federal Government than the current system 
does, but if done correctly tax reform may generate additional revenue 
through economic growth. That revenue can be used to reduce the 
deficits and pay down the debt. I hope we can work on a bipartisan 
basis to take our Tax Code off of autopilot and make it more simple and 
more fair for everyone--families, small businesses, corporations, and 
particularly individuals. As the only accountant on the Finance 
Committee, I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work on tax 
reform.
  I also hope Congress will work to improve our economy and make energy 
more affordable by approving the Keystone Pipeline that we are debating 
now and fighting against the President's war on coal--the only 
stockpileable energy source we have. The Keystone Pipeline application 
has been pending for more than 5 years, and the State Department has 
had five reviews of the project and wants more. Every one of those 
reviews has determined the pipeline would cause no significant 
environmental impacts and that the pipeline would create thousands of 
jobs. Let's get it built.
  Similarly, we need to encourage coal production and prevent the 
administration from restricting this low-cost, reliable, stockpileable 
energy source. The coal industry provided--directly and indirectly--
over 700,000 good-paying jobs in 2010, but since being sworn into 
office, President Obama's rulemaking machine has released rule after 
rule designed to make it difficult and more expensive to use coal. 
Instead of running from coal, America should run on coal, and I hope 
this Congress will embrace its abundance and its power and its 
potential. With the ingenuity of the American people, there isn't any 
problem I have seen where we couldn't solve it. So let's just go to 
work on having cleaner energy and putting some of that incentive into 
using coal.
  We need to challenge the President's other regulatory overreach as 
well. President Obama has issued more Executive orders, more 
regulations and other Executive actions than either Presidents Bush, 
Clinton or Reagan. In fact, last month USA Today reported this 
President is on track to take more high-level Executive actions than 
any President since Truman, with 195 Executive orders and 198 
Presidential memoranda under his belt. This year we need to fight the 
abuse of Executive power, whether it is used to grant illegal Executive 
amnesty to illegal immigrants or to regulate all bodies of water on 
public and private land or to make unconstitutional political 
appointments. I will be reintroducing my constitutional amendment to 
allow States to repeal Federal regulations and hope to work with my 
colleagues on other efforts to fight regulatory overreach.
  I am confident we can make real progress for America this year on 
these and other issues because I believe the Republican leader has 
established regular order. I expect we will use the committee process 
so Senators can offer constructive amendments and debate bills in that 
forum, where they are intensely interested in that legislation. I am 
hopeful we will also have an amendment process on the Senate floor so 
all 100 Members of the Senate have an opportunity to improve the bills 
we consider. Each of us has a different background and each of us looks 
at every proposal from a different point of view. Working together we 
can make things better for the American people, and I hope we will do 
it this year.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I wish to take a couple of minutes to 
talk about the pending business--the TransCanada tar sands pipeline. I 
think it is helpful to start out by recognizing that we actually 
haven't had a global energy bill in the Senate going back to 2005. So 
it has been about 10 years since we have truly looked at our entire 
energy policy in this country and set a new course for what we should 
be doing in the future.
  Despite the fact I think bumper stickers are a little dangerous, I

[[Page 1036]]

thought it would be helpful to at least try to encapsulate the general 
direction we should be going--the short and sweet of what lens we 
should be viewing our national energy policy through. I think if I had 
to boil that down to a simple and concise statement, what I would say 
is simply fewer imports and cleaner fuels. So as we look at different 
proposals over the course of this upcoming Congress, I think it will be 
very helpful, particularly on the energy committee and on the floor, to 
view these projects through that lens.
  Oddly enough, we are not dealing with a major energy policy as the 
very first thing the Senate considers as its pending business. We are 
dealing with one single project put forward by TransCanada, an 
international corporation, that has spent millions and millions of 
dollars over the last few years lobbying Washington for this particular 
project.
  A lot has been said about the tar sands and about oil sands, but one 
of the things I think would be helpful to talk about is the fundamental 
difference between the oil that is produced around the United States 
and tar sands production. At the end of the line we are talking about 
the energy that is produced, but at the front end there is an enormous 
difference between oil that is drilled in Southeast New Mexico, 
Northwest New Mexico, in West Texas, in North Dakota or Colorado and in 
the tar sands. If we look through that same lens of fewer imports and 
cleaner fuels, tar sands development fails on both of those fronts.
  We talk about more dependency in the United States on importing 
energy, and here we are talking about a substantially dirtier fuel 
source. In fact, we aren't allowed props on the floor, but when having 
this conversation in caucus, I brought some tar sands with me so I 
could show people the difference between oil and tar sands and how just 
toxic and sticky it is and how it represents a step backward in our 
overall energy policy in this country.
  When thinking of oil production, most people think of putting a well 
in place, you case the well, and there is a well pad. It has an impact, 
certainly, but it is substantially limited compared to what we are 
seeing going on in the boreal forest in northern Alberta right now.
  This is a picture of northern Canada. For those of us in arid 
Southwestern States, I can't tell you how envious we are of the kind of 
water one finds in this part of Canada. Also, the fish and wildlife and 
the forest resources are substantial. If we look at this picture, some 
people would say: That is the kind of place one might want to see as a 
national wildlife refuge or a national park. This is what the boreal 
forest looks like before tar sands production.
  The thing to remember is that tar sands are not drilled for. They are 
not produced the way oil and natural gas is produced. Tar sands are 
mined, and they are strip mined. Let us see a picture that exemplifies 
the boreal forest and then the tar sands production area in the back. 
This in the front is how it started out and the back is what you have 
once you are producing the tar sands.
  We heard from our colleague from Wyoming in his statement recently on 
the floor that there is no significant environmental impact from this 
project. But when we look at tar sands production, I don't know how we 
can look at a photo such as this and say there is no significant 
environmental impact.
  Let's look at the next picture, and we can take an even closer look 
at what the tar sands look like when it is in production. We are 
talking about an enormous area across northern Canada impacted in this 
way. As we can see, the tar sands is not oil, it is sand and bitumen 
together.
  To be able to process tar sands, to send it through this tar sands 
pipeline--the Keystone or any other pipeline--to be able to produce it 
and refine it is a very complicated process. You start by removing the 
forest cover, then you scrape off the topsoil, and after that you dig 
up the remaining tar sands and then you have to heat those up and 
process it to get the energy-bearing oil portion out. Just to be able 
to move it through a pipeline you have to heat it up, you have to 
pressurize it and you have to add caustic solvents.
  One of the reasons it has been so incredibly difficult to clean up 
the existing tar sands spills in places such as Michigan and Arkansas 
is because--unlike oil, where we have a fair amount of experience, 
though it is not easy to clean up--there are additional solvents and 
because the very sticky nature of this substance makes it almost 
impossible to clean up. We have had very little luck cleaning up tar 
sands spills to date.
  We see in the front of this picture the boreal forest--or what is 
left of it--and then we see acres and acres and acres, thousands upon 
thousands of acres of tar sands production. So I think the first thing 
that is important for people to know is that this simply is not 
traditional oil and gas development. It is not clear a well pad, drill 
a hole, and produce oil. It is the kind of impact that if it were 
proposed for New Mexico or New York or California or even Texas we 
would have enormous outcry. We don't have the kind of open-pit mining 
and strip mining we once had in this country, but that is what it is 
most analogous to.
  That said, another one of the claims that has been made repeatedly 
about this particular project is that the emissions it would create are 
inconsequential. So it is helpful to look at the emissions to 
understand that, because tar sands are fundamentally not only harder to 
handle but fundamentally dirtier from a pollution point of view than 
traditional oil resources. It is instructive to look at the difference 
between if we created the same amount of energy from domestic New 
Mexico, Texas, Colorado or North Dakota crude oil versus if we produced 
that energy from tar sands.
  Once again, we get an idea of the emissions just at the source of the 
tar sands development here, but if we were to build this tar sands 
pipeline and we burned all of that produced tar sands that will move 
through it, the incremental pollution impact of that, the incremental 
carbon pollution--not the base pollution of whether we created the same 
amount of energy from oil sources or from some other sources of energy, 
if we used oil from the United States to create this energy--not 
looking at that but just the increment of burning tar sands oil instead 
of conventional crude oil, it is the equivalent of putting 285 million 
cars on the road for 1 year.
  So the addition of carbon pollution to the atmosphere is anything but 
inconsequential if we look at it from the point of view that it is the 
equivalent of doubling Pennsylvania's cars--putting another 
Pennsylvania's worth of auto traffic on the road every year for 50 
years.
  What that doesn't take into account is the additional carbon released 
simply because we are cutting down all the forests, eliminating the 
peat bogs, and fundamentally industrializing an enormous portion of 
Alberta and Canada. That increment is another 6 million cars' worth of 
carbon pollution on the road for 1 year.
  So that brings me to: What difference does this make?
  We may have seen in the news a few days ago how 2014 was the hottest 
year on record. I wish I could say that was an anomaly. Unfortunately, 
it is not. Fourteen of the last 15 years have been record-setting 
years. And if there is something we know from our geologic records--
from ice cores, from the science that has been done at NASA and NOAA 
and analyzed by our national labs and our university scientists--it is 
that over time the amount of carbon pollution in the atmosphere--the 
parts per million of carbon dioxide at any given time--tends to 
correlate with temperature. It doesn't matter if it comes from a 
volcano, it doesn't matter if it comes from the exhaust of a car. But 
because we have added such an enormous increment in recent years, since 
1880 and the Industrial Revolution, we can see that as the parts per 
million of particles go up over time--this is the CO2 
concentration over that time period from the Industrial Revolution to 
today. It is actually not quite up to date because, unfortunately, we 
are now up

[[Page 1037]]

here above 400 parts per million. Over that same time period, the 
average temperature has gone up year in and year out, with 
fluctuations, but the trendline continues to go up to a very dangerous 
level.
  Adding an additional increment of carbon pollution is simply not 
something we can afford at a time when we need to be showing real 
leadership in terms of cleaning up our energy sources, moving forward 
to a clean energy future, and putting Americans to work here, 
domestically, with that approach.
  The temporary jobs this tar sands pipeline will create are not 
inconsequential. But since this has been sold as a jobs program, it is 
worth stepping back and talking about how much of a permanent impact 
this is going to make. I would make the argument that if we were truly 
serious here in the U.S. Senate about the type of temporary 
construction jobs this pipeline would create, we would get serious 
about passing a transportation bill--and not only passing a 
transportation bill, but financing transportation in this country, 
financing infrastructure in this country the way we have historically.
  We have a deficit of trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure at 
this point in this country because we won't pay to maintain it. In 
fact, our parents' generation built an infrastructure that is the envy 
of the world. With the current approach in the Congress, we haven't 
even had the decency to maintain the infrastructure they built and pass 
it on to our children unimpaired, much less create additional 
infrastructure of the type we saw from previous generations.
  So if we look at the permanent jobs, as articulated in the 
environmental impact statement, we are talking about 30 to 50 permanent 
jobs from Keystone. That is slightly less than a single McDonald's, 
although I would argue that construction jobs are usually higher paying 
than McDonald's. But it gives us a sense of the kind of scale we are 
talking about in terms of permanent jobs. If we compare that to just 
regional projects in individual States--a transmission line in the 
Southwest, three times as many jobs as that; an electric vehicle plant 
in the West in Nevada, substantially many, many increments of permanent 
jobs more, which once again brings us to the fact that in this 
recovery, just in the third quarter of 2014, we saw 18,000 in clean 
energy jobs created in this country.
  We need jobs in this country. We need energy in this country. And I 
would argue that the sooner we commit ourselves to a clean energy job-
intensive future, the sooner we will address the real challenges that 
are in front of us.
  I continue to urge the President to exercise his discretion and his 
veto of this. I suspect it will pass the U.S. Senate. But the sooner we 
get through this process, my hope is that we can return to a real 
debate about how we address the science that all the scientists have 
said is out there. We did make a big step forward yesterday in that the 
Senate for the first time--and the Republicans in the Senate in 
particular for the first time--accepted the reality of climate change. 
Unfortunately, right now the policy prescription is to make that 
climate change worse.
  It is time we had an Apollo project for clean energy in this country. 
That will take transition. That means we are going to continue to 
produce fossil fuels as a part of that transition. But the sooner we 
get serious about investing in research and development, the sooner we 
get serious in terms of scaling the very real and economically 
competitive technologies we already have, the sooner we get serious 
about building infrastructure, such as transmission lines to carry 
renewable energy from parts of the country where it can be produced 
today to parts of the country where it will be consumed, the sooner we 
will lead the world and put this country back on track to be the world 
leader in not only energy but in clean energy.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                              Roe v. Wade

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today is the anniversary of a tragedy. 
Forty-two years ago today, the Supreme Court announced its creation of 
a right to abortions for virtually any reason at all virtually at any 
time. The result of that decision is a tragedy for our society, for our 
culture, and for our precious life lost.
  Since even before America's founding, the law was on a steady march 
toward protecting human beings before birth. In the 19th century, 
medical professionals and civil rights activists led a movement that 
succeeded in prohibiting abortion in every State except to save the 
mother's life. America had reached a consensus on the importance of 
protecting the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court swept 
all of that aside, imposing upon the country a permissive abortion 
regime that the American people to this day have never chosen or 
accepted.
  The debate over the morality and legality or policy of abortion 
begins with one inescapable fact--every abortion kills a living human 
being. Many have tried mightily to avoid, obscure, distract from, or 
ignore that fact, but it will not go away. Every abortion kills a 
living human being. That fact informed President Ronald Reagan when he 
wrote a moving essay titled ``Abortion and the Conscience of the 
Nation'' in 1983.
  He wrote, ``We cannot diminish the value of one category of human 
life--the unborn--without diminishing the value of all human life.'' 
The real question, President Reagan said, is not about when human life 
begins, but about the value of human life. I believe that remains the 
real question today.
  Today the United States is one of only seven nations in the world to 
allow abortion into the sixth month of pregnancy and beyond. That list 
of nations includes such champions of human rights as China and North 
Korea. Yet, in 1948, the United States voted in favor of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes in its preamble the 
inherent dignity and inalienable rights of ``all members of the human 
family.''
  Article 3 of the declaration states that ``everyone has a right to 
life.'' Words such as ``universal'' and ``inherent'' and ``all'' are 
unambiguous and clear.
  Our embrace of the inherent dignity and worth of all human beings in 
1948 stands in jarring contrast to the Supreme Court's decision in Roe 
just 25 years later, that the life of any human being may be ended 
before birth.
  The Supreme Court might have thought in 1973 that it was settling the 
abortion issue. By 1992, however, the Court conceded that the rules it 
created in Roe simply did not work and issued revised regulations in a 
case titled Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Court said then that the 
contending sides in the abortion controversy should ``end their 
national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the 
Constitution.''
  National division on any issue, let alone one so profound as the 
taking and the value of human life, will not end simply because the 
Court says so. The division over abortion not only continues, but has 
remained largely unchanged even after dozens of Supreme Court decisions 
and four decades of insisting that abortion is a constitutional right.
  The Supreme Court can render opinions on constitutionality, but it is 
limited in its ability to forge lasting consensus. That is the 
provenance of our great deliberative bodies where the people are truly 
represented.
  More than 70 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal 
in most or all circumstances. That figure has not changed in 40 years. 
What has changed is that more Americans today identify themselves as 
pro-life than pro-choice. Large majorities favor a range of limitations 
on abortion and last November elected scores of new

[[Page 1038]]

pro-life Senators at both the State and Federal level.
  We must not avoid the fundamental question of the value of human 
life, for no question is more important. Do we still, as we once did, 
believe that every human being has inherent dignity and worth?
  Two nights ago, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama 
spoke about the values that are at stake in the public policy choices 
we must make. Is there any value more important than life itself? He 
spoke about expanding opportunities for individuals, but the first 
opportunity that must be secured is the opportunity for life itself.
  For many, the right to abortion is a symbol of progress. However, the 
idea that an act resulting in killing a living human being should be 
held up as a step forward, as a light to guide our way, strikes me as 
deeply misguided. We should instead be deepening the conviction that 
all human beings have inherent dignity and worth. That has been and 
should remain the foundation of our culture, society, and even our 
politics.
  In his 1983 essay, President Reagan wrote that ``we cannot survive as 
a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and 
should be abandoned to abortion.''
  Today's tragic anniversary is a reminder of how our Nation's survival 
depends on respecting the essential dignity and worth of every human 
individual. Resting in the balance is how we ultimately define who we 
are as a people and what we strive to be as a nation.
  This is an important issue. It is not one that should be slighted 
over. It is an issue that should strike at the heart of every person in 
this body. It is an issue that we all should stand up to strengthen and 
fight against in the case of this issue of abortion.
  I am so grateful that so many people feel the same way, and that more 
and more people in this country are starting to realize every human 
life is important and that this society has sometimes gotten off track 
and not respected the rights of human beings. I think Roe v. Wade led 
us there, and we should be let out of Roe v. Wade by those who know 
there is a better way to have the sensitivity that society deserves to 
have, should have, and I believe will have in the future.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Presiding Officer. I heard the words of my 
friend, and he was eloquent in his remarks, but I don't think he would 
be surprised to know that I see this issue very differently.
  Before Roe v. Wade was decided in the 1970s, women died because they 
could not end a pregnancy even if they were raped. There are bodies 
buried in America, and we don't know the cause of death because if a 
woman tried to end an unwanted pregnancy--sometimes as a result of rape 
or even incest--she would be considered a criminal. And that is what 
you hear from my colleagues on the other side. They say, let's go back 
to the last century--let's undo Roe v. Wade.
  It is hard for me to believe that here I stand in this century 
arguing that women should be respected, that families should be 
respected, and that everyone's religion should be respected. I support 
a woman's right to choose, and that means if your religion says you 
will never end an unwanted pregnancy, I support you.
  I believe this decision should be between a woman, her doctor, her 
family, and her God. I don't think any Senator should get in the middle 
of a woman's private life. It is dangerous to do so, it is wrong to do 
so, and to do so in the name of doing something that is going to help 
the family--it doesn't make sense to me.
  The Republican Party used to be the party of individual freedom and 
individual rights. When I was on the board of Planned Parenthood so 
many years ago, before Roe v. Wade, do you know who was very active and 
on their board? George Herbert Walker Bush. This was an issue that was 
embraced by Republicans and Democrats--individual respect and rights 
for women and caring about a woman's health. It was not a partisan 
issue.
  I don't see how interfering with a woman's health, or her right to 
choose, in any way is helpful to her in a time of need. It should be 
her decision within the law. We don't want to go back to the last 
century.
  I was glad to see that the Republicans in the House pulled a bill off 
the floor because it was so nasty to women. It didn't even allow women 
the right to terminate a pregnancy at a certain date if the woman was a 
victim of rape. They pulled it, but then they replaced it with another 
terrible bill that also limits a woman's right to choose.
  My Republican friends would make doctors criminals and put them in 
jail for years and years. They would make women criminals. They have 
even had a bill that said that a grandmother should be put in jail if 
she helps her granddaughter. As a grandmother, that was too much for 
me. How dare some Senator come down here and tell a grandma what to do 
for her granddaughter? This is the party of individual freedom that 
always decries too much government? Come on. This is putting the 
government right in the middle of our most personal decisions. It never 
used to be that way, but that is the way it is now.
  Everyone deserves respect for their views. They should not be taunted 
for their views, and that is why the right to choose makes so much 
sense. You don't tell someone that the government says you must do A, 
B, or C. You tell the person within the law--within Roe, which was a 
modest decision at the time--you make a decision, we respect that 
decision, and we don't need to know about it.
  Putting Senators in the middle of our private lives is not why I came 
to the Senate. We have a lot of work to do. We have to work on good 
jobs. We have to pass a highway bill. We have to make sure this planet 
is habitable for people. Talk about kindness. Think about future 
generations who have to live on a planet that is increasingly 
inhospitable. Scientists tell us if we don't do anything about climate, 
at the end of the day it may be an uninhabitable planet.
  We have a lot of work to do. We all do. It seems to me we should 
start off by doing what government should do, not putting ourselves in 
the middle of private lives.
  Again, I greatly respect my colleagues whose views are different than 
mine. All I ask them to think about is this: If we embrace the right to 
choose, then we are saying to women all over America that this is a 
tough decision and we understand that. Make it with your God. Make it 
with your loved ones. But we are not going to be right there in the 
middle of people's living rooms telling them what we think is right, 
because that is not why we were elected.
  I am glad I happened to be on the floor to follow the remarks of 
Senator Hatch. I feel very strongly about this. As many of my 
colleagues know, the Democratic women of the Senate and several of our 
Republican women colleagues will continue to fight against saying to a 
woman that she has no right to make a most private, most personal 
decision without satisfying U.S. Senators, most of whom are men, by the 
way. It is just not right.
  Speaking of polls, because I think Senator Hatch mentioned one, 
people want us to have a moderate approach on this. They don't want 
abortion on demand and neither does any pro-choice Senator. Roe v. Wade 
spelled it out. In the early stages we know a woman has that right; 
later, only if her health or her life is threatened. It is pretty 
modest. It makes sense. Leave it alone. That decision was made in 1973. 
Don't turn the clock back in this century.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page 1039]]


  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 3:50 
p.m. today, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the following 
amendments in the order listed: Boxer No. 113, which is a side-by-side 
to Senator Fischer's amendment; then Fischer No. 18, as modified; 
Manchin No. 99; Sanders No. 24; Lee No. 71; Murkowski No. 123, which is 
a side-by-side to Senator Wyden's amendment; Wyden No. 27; Blunt No. 
78, as modified; Cornyn No. 126, as modified; and Menendez No. 72, as 
modified; further, that all amendments on this list be subject to a 60-
vote affirmative threshold for adoption except for Cornyn No. 126 and 
Menendez No. 72, which are germane, and that no second-degrees be in 
order to the amendments. I ask consent that there be 2 minutes of 
debate equally divided between each vote, and that all votes after the 
first in the series be 10-minute votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.


                  Amendment No. 123 to Amendment No. 2

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my 
amendment No. 123.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Ms. Murkowski] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 123 to amendment No. 2.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate that all forms of 
 unrefined and unprocessed petroleum should be subject to the nominal 
  per-barrel excise tax associated with the Oil Spill Liability Trust 
                                 Fund)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. SENSE OF SENATE REGARDING THE OIL SPILL LIABILITY 
                   TRUST FUND.

       It is the sense of the Senate that--
       (1) Congress should approve a bill to ensure that all forms 
     of bitumen or synthetic crude oil derived from bitumen are 
     subject to the per-barrel excise tax associated with the Oil 
     Spill Liability Trust Fund established by section 9509 of the 
     Internal Revenue Code of 1986;
       (2) it is necessary for Congress to approve a bill 
     described in paragraph (1) because the Internal Revenue 
     Service determined in 2011 that certain forms of petroleum 
     are not subject to the per-barrel excise tax;
       (3) under article I, section 7, clause 1 of the 
     Constitution, the Senate may not originate a bill to raise 
     new revenue, and thus may not originate a bill to close the 
     legitimate and unintended loophole described in paragraph 
     (2);
       (4) if the Senate attempts to originate a bill described in 
     paragraph (1), it would provide a substantive basis for a 
     ``blue slip'' from the House of Representatives, which would 
     prevent advancement of the bill; and
       (5) the House of Representatives, consistent with article 
     I, section 7, clause 1 of the Constitution, should consider 
     and refer to the Senate a bill to ensure that all forms of 
     bitumen or synthetic crude oil derived from bitumen are 
     subject to the per-barrel excise tax associated with the Oil 
     Spill Liability Trust Fund established by section 9509 of the 
     Internal Revenue Code of 1986.


                     Amendment No. 78, as Modified

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the 
Blunt amendment, No. 78, with the changes at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is so modified.
  The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING BILATERAL OR OTHER 
                   INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS REGARDING GREENHOUSE 
                   GAS EMISSIONS.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate makes the following findings:
       (1) On November 11, 2014, President Barack Obama and 
     President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China 
     announced the ``U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate 
     Change and Clean Energy Cooperation'' (in this section 
     referred to as the ``Agreement'') reflecting ``the principle 
     of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective 
     capabilities, in light of different national circumstances''.
       (2) The Agreement stated the United States intention to 
     reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by one-quarter by 2025 
     while allowing the People's Republic of China to double its 
     greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2030.
       (3) Analyses have shown that policies limiting greenhouse 
     gas emissions lead to a material increase in electricity 
     prices.
       (4) The people of China will not see similar electricity 
     price increases as they continue to emit without limit for 
     the foreseeable future, at least until 2030.
       (5) Increases in the price of electricity can cause job 
     losses in the United States industrial sector, which includes 
     manufacturing, agriculture, and construction.
       (6) The price of electricity is a top consideration for job 
     creators when locating manufacturing facilities, especially 
     in energy-intensive manufacturing such as steel and aluminum 
     production.
       (7) Requiring mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in 
     the United States while allowing nations such as China and 
     India to increase their greenhouse gas emissions results in 
     jobs moving from the United States to other countries, 
     especially to China and India, and is economically unfair.
       (8) Imposing disparate greenhouse gas emissions commitments 
     for the United States and countries such as China and India 
     is environmentally irresponsible because it results in 
     greater emissions as businesses move to countries with less 
     stringent standards.
       (9) Union members, families, consumers, communities, and 
     local institutions like schools, hospitals, and churches are 
     hurt by the resulting job losses.
       (10) The poor, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes are 
     hurt the most by increased electricity rates.
       (b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate 
     that--
       (1) the Agreement negotiated between the President and the 
     President of the People's Republic of China has no force and 
     effect in the United States;
       (2) the Agreement between the President and the President 
     of the People's Republic of China is a bad deal for United 
     States consumers, workers, families, and communities, and is 
     economically unfair and environmentally irresponsible;
       (3) the Agreement, as well as any other bilateral or 
     international agreement regarding greenhouse gas emissions 
     such as the United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate 
     Change in Paris in December 2015, requires the advice and 
     consent of the Senate and must be accompanied by a detailed 
     explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may 
     be required to implement the Agreement and an analysis of the 
     detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of 
     the United States which would be incurred by the 
     implementation of the Agreement;
       (4) the United States should not agree to any bilateral or 
     other international agreement on greenhouse gases that 
     imposes disproportionate and economically harmful commitments 
     on the United States.


           Amendment No. 126, as Modified, to Amendment No. 2

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up the 
Cornyn amendment, No. 126, as modified with the changes at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Ms. Murkowski], for Mr. Cornyn, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 126, as modified, to amendment 
     No. 2.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

(Purpose: To ensure private property is protected as guaranteed by the 
                      United States Constitution)

       At the end add the following:
       (e) Private Property Protection.--Land or an interest in 
     land for the pipeline and cross-border facilities described 
     in subsection (a) may only be acquired consistently with the 
     Constitution.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.


                     Amendment No. 72, as Modified

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Menendez amendment, No. 72, be modified with the changes that are at 
the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is so modified.
  The amendment, as modified, is as follows:

       In section 2 of the amendment, strike subsection (e) and 
     insert the following:
       (e) Private Property Protection.--Land or an interest in 
     land for the pipeline and cross-border facilities described 
     in subsection (a) may only be acquired from willing sellers 
     and consistently with the Constitution.

[[Page 1040]]




                  Amendment No. 99 to Amendment No. 2

  Ms. CANTWELL. On behalf of Senator Manchin, I call up his amendment, 
No. 99.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Washington [Ms. Cantwell], for Mr. 
     Manchin, proposes an amendment numbered 99 to amendment No. 
     2.

  Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

  (Purpose: To express the sense of Congress regarding climate change)

       After section 2, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING CLIMATE CHANGE.

       It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement 
     with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific 
     community and a growing number of top national security 
     experts, economists, and others that--
       (1) climate change is real;
       (2) climate change is caused by human activities;
       (3) climate change has already caused devastating problems 
     in the United States and around the world;
       (4) the Energy Information Administration projects that 
     fossil fuels will continue to produce 68 percent of the 
     electricity in the United States through 2040; and
       (5) it is imperative that the United States invest in 
     research and development for clean fossil fuel technology.

  Ms. CANTWELL. I yield to Senator Boxer so she can call up her 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.


                  Amendment No. 113 to Amendment No. 2

  Mrs. BOXER. I call up amendment No. 113.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 113 to amendment No. 2.

  Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To express the sense of Congress regarding federally 
                            protected land)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING FEDERALLY PROTECTED 
                   LAND.

       (a) Findings.--Congress finds that--
       (1) Presidents of both parties have designated public land 
     to preserve the land for current and future generations and 
     to honor the national heritage of the United States, and that 
     designated public land includes--
       (A) the Statue of Liberty;
       (B) the Grand Canyon;
       (C) Acadia National Park;
       (D) African Burial Ground National Monument;
       (E) the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park;
       (F) Muir Woods National Monument;
       (G) Arches National Park; and
       (H) Devils Tower National Monument;
       (2) outdoor recreation, including recreation within Federal 
     land, adds over $600,000,000,000 into the economy of the 
     United States and supports more than 6,000,000 jobs;
       (3) Federal land, such as National Parks, National 
     Monuments, or other federally designated land, conserves 
     historic, cultural, environmental, scenic, recreational, and 
     biological resources, and positive impacts include--
       (A) economic opportunities and small business creation;
       (B) local tourism in gateway communities;
       (C) new direct and indirect employment opportunities;
       (D) recreational opportunities; and
       (E) environmental, historic, and educational opportunities; 
     and
       (4) regions surrounding National Monuments have seen 
     continued growth or improvement in employment and person 
     income.
       (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
       (1) Congress should acknowledge the benefit that public 
     land designations provide to local and regional communities 
     and economies; and
       (2) designations of federally protected land should 
     continue where appropriate and with consultation by local 
     communities, bipartisan elected leaders, and interested 
     stakeholders.

  Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes just 
before the vote starts to explain this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want 
to make sure we understand the vote was scheduled to begin 3 minutes 
ago. As part of the unanimous consent agreement, there was not a time 
allowed for Senator Boxer to speak. I don't have a problem in giving--
--
  Mrs. BOXER. Excuse me for interrupting. I assume we have at least a 
minute to talk about our amendment.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I am happy to make sure that is allowed. It wasn't 
included in the consent, but I am certainly happy to allow for the 
minute as Senator Boxer has asked.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you. I have a minute. I actually asked for three, 
but as I understand, I have a minute. Is that where we are?
  I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you so much. I know what a hard job it is to get 
this bill moving, and I am trying to be very helpful. I am offering an 
amendment I didn't expect to offer because basically my amendment says 
that we should acknowledge the benefit that parks provide to our local 
and regional communities and their economies for small business and 
enhanced local tourism and how much they contribute to employment and 
provide opportunities to our families. Can my colleagues imagine 
America without Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, the Statue of 
Liberty, Natural Bridges in Utah, Scottsbluff in Nebraska, Muir Woods 
in California, Glacier Bay in Alaska?
  These were all protected by Republican and Democratic Presidents, and 
in many cases, by Congress. Why do I offer this? It seems to me we 
shouldn't have to argue about this. It is because my friend, the 
Senator from Nebraska, Mrs. Fischer, has an amendment that I think is 
very dangerous. I know she modified it, and I appreciate that, but at 
the end of the day, it is so vague that I think it is going to lead us 
right to the courthouse door.
  For example, if a President now or in the future, Democratic or 
Republican, decided in California--because the community really wanted 
it--to declare a national monument as we just had recently, in many 
cases, I would tell you this: Under this Fischer amendment, what would 
happen is there would have to be under consideration what does this do 
to other monuments, to other parks, to the budget deficit.
  If someone who did not like this said, I am taking this to court 
because the President didn't consider this, you would not have any more 
national monuments, and you would not have all the beautiful iconic 
things we have such as the Grand Canyon and Scottsbluff. I think it is 
a bad amendment. I know my friend is trying to make a point, but I 
think we should defeat it and pass the Boxer amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to a vote in relation to amendment No. 113, offered by the 
Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer.
  Mrs. BOXER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 55, nays 44, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 13 Leg.]

                                YEAS--55

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cruz
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand

[[Page 1041]]


     Graham
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--44

     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Perdue
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Reid
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BARRASSO. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                     Amendment No. 18, as Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 18, as modified, 
offered by the Senator from Nebraska, Mrs. Fischer.
  The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, our national parks are facing $13 
billion in maintenance needs. The entire Federal land of States is 
looking at $22 billion in needs. We want to keep these resources and 
parks open for our children and grandchildren to marvel at and enjoy.
  All of us have unique and special areas within our States, but we in 
Congress have the responsibility to care for the natural resources of 
our country.
  This amendment has been softened so that the limitations are now just 
considerations. Let's vote yes on this amendment to take care of the 
resources we have so that future generations can enjoy them.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. I rise in opposition to this amendment. This amendment 
would open the courthouse door over disputes of whether to place worthy 
lands under protection because of challenges that there are not enough 
resources or certain issues were not considered ahead of time.
  Let me give one concrete example. A little over 1 year ago the 
President designated the Harriet Tubman Park as a national historic 
monument. It was a prerequisite to becoming a national park. That could 
have been challenged in the courts and it could have prevented the 
protection of that land. That could have been done.
  What this amendment does--and it was not intended to do that--is add 
additional bureaucracy to the protection of worthy lands. I urge my 
colleagues to reject this amendment. I think it will do harm to the 
protection of necessary lands in our country.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the amendment, as modified.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 54, nays 45, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 14 Leg.]

                                YEAS--54

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--45

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Reid
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                            Amendment No. 99

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 99, offered by the 
Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, for the Senator from West 
Virginia, Mr. Manchin.
  The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, we can all agree climate change is real 
and that 7 billion people have had an impact on the climate. We have a 
responsibility. We can all agree we need to act to address the 
potentially devastating impact of climate change. The Energy 
Information Administration predicts the United States will continue to 
rely on fossil fuels for almost 68 percent of our energy through 2040. 
That is right, the Department of Energy.
  My amendment basically says that right now the only baseload fuels we 
have are coal and nuclear and that is going to expand to natural gas.
  What we are asking for is we need a Federal commitment from the 
President to Congress to invest in the research and development of 
fossil energy so we can use the cleanest and most environmentally 
responsible way possible and find that technology to do it so we are 
responsible.
  My amendment does recognize these facts. I ask for a ``yea'' vote and 
appreciate your support.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the Manchin amendment is a side-by-side 
to my amendment, which will follow.
  The first three provisions are exactly the same: Climate change is 
real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing 
devastating problems.
  We agree on that. But what my amendment says, importantly, is that 
according to the scientific community, it is imperative the United 
States transform its energy system away from fossil fuel to energy 
efficiency and sustainable energy as quickly as possible.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we had a robust discussion yesterday on 
two amendments that dealt with the issue of climate change. I think we 
had a very clear and resounding vote on the one that had a perfectly 
reasonable statement that climate change is real; climate change is not 
a hoax.
  I also supported the amendment of my colleague from North Dakota on 
this same topic. I think it was important that we had that debate.
  What I am hoping we can do now is get beyond the discussion as to 
whether climate change is real and talk about: What do we do? How do we 
move forward to those technologies? How do we make a difference with 
reasonable steps such as greater efficiency, a no-

[[Page 1042]]

regrets energy policy that makes our energy supply even cleaner.
  I want to move on to that. But I think at this point in time, with 
what we have had in front of us, we could have a whole series of 
amendments that basically restate the same thing.
  I would like to move us beyond that conversation, and I look forward 
to that. But at this time I move to table, and ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 minute to 
reply.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it is my understanding that a motion to 
table is not debatable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is not debatable. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. MANCHIN. I am asking for unanimous consent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia is asking for 
unanimous consent.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, the original agreement said that, 
further, that all these amendments be limited to 60-vote affirmative 
threshold adoption, except for Cornyn and Menendez, and that no second-
degrees be in order. So the original agreement we entered into allowed 
for this vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The unanimous consent agreement was for a vote 
in relation to each amendment, and the motion to table is in order.


                              Quorum Call

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll, and the following Senators 
entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

                          [Quorum No. 2 Leg.]

                                PRESENT

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Nelson
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Vitter
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is present.


                        vote on amendment no. 99

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The yeas and nays have been previously ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 46, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 15 Leg.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--46

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Reid
       
  The motion was agreed to.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                            Amendment No. 24

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 24, offered by the 
Senator from Vermont, Mr. Sanders.
  Who yields time?
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, we are walking down a very dangerous road 
as a nation when we reject the findings of the vast majority of 
scientists on one of the most important issues facing humanity, which 
is climate change.
  A vote to table this amendment is a vote to reject science, and that 
is a very bad idea for the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, for the same reasons that I just 
expressed in the previous amendment that was before us, I would suggest 
that we move to table this amendment.
  I will make that motion now to table the Sanders amendment, and I 
would ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is still 30 seconds remaining for the 
Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. This is a vote that our kids and grandchildren who will 
have to live with the consequences of climate change will remember.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is yielded back.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment and ask 
for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 56, nays 42, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 16 Leg.]

                                YEAS--56

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Warner
     Wicker

                                NAYS--42

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar

[[Page 1043]]


     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Graham
     Reid
       
  The motion was agreed to.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. CORNYN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                            Amendment No. 71

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is now 2 minutes of debate prior to a 
vote in relation to amendment No. 71, offered by the Senator from Utah, 
Mr. Lee.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I stand to urge my colleagues to support this 
amendment. The purpose of this amendment is to expedite the process by 
which the Bureau of Land Management processes applications for a permit 
for drilling on Federal land. We all know that drilling and the 
production of oil and natural gas in our country on Federal lands is an 
essential activity for our energy security and therefore for our 
national security.
  The fact is that although these applications are supposed to be 
handled in an expedited manner, they are not. The average right now for 
them to be processed is about 7\1/2\ months. That is too long. We need 
a simple up-or-down ruling by the Bureau of Land Management, especially 
given the fact that these lands, once they get to this stage, have 
already been deemed by the Bureau of Land Management as suitable for 
oil and gas leasing. I therefore urge each of my colleagues to support 
this amendment and thereby secure our energy security.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, speaking against the Lee amendment, I 
strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this because it is an amendment 
relating to oil and gas permits on Federal land. I guess if colleagues 
want to keep trying to loosen environmental regulations, then maybe 
they should support this amendment.
  This amendment would impose new limitations on the Secretary of the 
Interior and their ability to process permits for drilling and provides 
a waiver for the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered 
Species Act if necessary reviews have not been completed by an 
arbitrary deadline, and it waives judicial review of these actions.
  So I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I wish to remind Members that we are 
trying to keep a schedule here. We have six more amendments to go in 
this stack, and we are supposedly at 10 minutes per amendment. We have 
not been following that. I urge Members to stick close so we can move 
more expeditiously.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 47, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 17 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--47

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Graham
     Reid
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  Mr. LEE. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 123

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 123, offered by 
the Senator from Alaska, Ms. Murkowski.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have the sense of the Senate that 
would express that all forms of bitumen or synthetic crude should be 
subject to the 8-cent-per-barrel excise tax associated with the 
oilspill liability trust fund. This is important because right now we 
have a legitimate but unintended loophole on the books, and it is also 
a matter of fairness because conventional oil pays into the trust fund. 
We need to address this, and I commend my colleague Senator Wyden for 
the effort he has done. But the problem that we have is that as we work 
to enact legislation to update our laws, we have to make sure it is 
consistent with the Constitution, which requires revenue-raising 
measures to originate in the House.
  If we agree that we want to close this loophole, which we should do, 
we need to allow for the House to address this. Otherwise, we face a 
blue slip issue, and quite honestly, it would act as a poison pill to 
the Keystone XL bill. The sense of the Senate expresses to do it 
legitimately through the Constitution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am glad Senator Murkowski has now agreed 
that the outlandish tar sands loophole, which rips off taxpayers and 
communities, must be closed. The difference between our amendments is 
that Senator Murkowski's amendment is a nonbinding resolution to close 
the loophole sometime down the road. My amendment, in contrast, closes 
the loophole now.
  The argument Senator Murkowski makes against my amendment is that it 
is a revenue measure that should start in the House. The fact is that 
there is a House revenue measure at the Senate desk right now that I 
would be happy to call up and amend as a substitute to my amendment to 
close the loophole that ends the tar sands double standard harming our 
communities and taxpayers. That way we will be acting in a 
constitutional fashion and the Senate makes clear we want to close the 
loophole today.
  I will close by saying that until I can propound the unanimous 
consent request to do just that, I intend to go along with the 
Murkowski amendment. After its consideration, I hope my colleagues will 
vote for my amendment because closing this flagrant tax loophole is too 
important to wait.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.

[[Page 1044]]

  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 75, nays 23, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 18 Leg.]

                                YEAS--75

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Franken
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Johnson
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Rounds
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Udall
     Vitter
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--23

     Boozman
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Lankford
     Lee
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Perdue
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shelby
     Toomey

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Graham
     Reid
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is agreed to.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would like to remind everybody these 
are supposed to be 10-minute rollcall votes. To the extent that you do 
not make it in the 10 minutes, you inconvenience everybody else. I 
would hope people would be respectful of their colleagues and stay 
close to the floor and vote during the 10 minutes.
  We have actually reached a milestone here that I think is noteworthy 
for the Senate. We just cast our 15th rollcall vote on an amendment on 
this bill, which is more votes--more rollcall votes on amendments than 
the entire Senate in all of 2014.
  I particularly want to commend Chairman Murkowski and Senator 
Cantwell for their fair and open process that has been engaged in. This 
is the way the Senate ought to work.
  Now the question I know on everyone's mind is: What do we do next? 
Right? It is Thursday night. We have a current tranche of amendments. 
We are having a little difficulty getting our friends on the other side 
of the aisle to offer their amendments so they can be considered.
  In order to consider amendments, they need to be offered. So here is 
where we are for the evening: We are going to finish this tranche. 
Chairman Murkowski is interested in setting up an additional tranche of 
amendments tonight. Once she has been able to set up an additional 
tranche of amendments for tonight, we will be able to announce the way 
forward for later.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, first, I want to thank the majority leader 
for the compliment which he has placed to the constructive minority in 
the Senate. We know that under the rules of the Senate, this procedure 
could have been stopped at any moment by any Senator. Yet we have 
worked in good faith with the good leadership of Senator Murkowski, 
Senator Cantwell, and Senator Boxer. We want to continue to.
  We have had a number of amendments considered here. Many of them had 
Republican responses which we have accommodated. Many of your 
amendments had Democratic responses which you have accommodated. I 
think we have done that in good faith. We have not threatened any 
filibusters. We have not tried to stop the process, and we do not want 
to. We think we have constructive amendments. We want to bring them 
forward. We would like to have a vote.
  I agree with the Senator completely, this is a constructive use of 
the Senate floor and the Senate procedure on a critical issue relative 
to our environment and energy policy in this country.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I thank my friend from Illinois. He is entirely 
correct. We are open for business. When we finish this tranche, I hope 
Senators on both sides who have additional amendments to be considered 
will come and offer them.
  After we get an additional tranche of amendments that are pending, 
then I think we will be in a better position to announce the way 
forward.
  I yield the floor.


                            Amendment No. 27

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 27, offered by the 
Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden.
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, it is very significant that more than 70 
Senators just voted for a nonbinding resolution to close an outlandish 
tax loophole that favors Canadian tar sand producers over American oil 
and American taxpayers. That vote was for a nonbinding resolution. The 
next amendment that I offer allows the Senate to actually eliminate the 
flagrant loophole now.
  As for the blue-slip question, this amendment is an amendment that we 
ought to pass now and then add to an appropriate House revenue measure. 
This amendment, colleagues, ends the double standard today. To say to 
your communities, to your taxpayers, and to your producers that Canada 
should essentially get a free ride is not right. Let's actually do the 
job now.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, again, let me remind my colleagues that 
while we may agree we need to address this legal--but there is a 
loophole in the law. As many of us have just voted, 75 I believe, we 
say we need to address this oilspill liability trust fund issue.
  Doing so in the manner that the Senator from Oregon has suggested 
does create a blue-slip problem. It would cause this bill to fail. It 
is not constructive to do so. The sense of this Senate that we just 
passed, I think, sends clearly the message that we want to address it, 
but we need to do it in a constitutional way. I would ask Members to 
vote no.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, there is a constitutional point of order 
that lies against the pending amendment.
  It was filed and offered by my friend, the ranking member of the 
Senate Finance Committee, the senior Senator from Oregon.
  A constitutional point of order lies against the amendment, numbered 
27 because it violates article 1, section 7, clause 1 of the 
Constitution, commonly referred to as the origination clause. The 
origination clause states that ``All Bills for raising Revenue shall 
originate in the House of Representatives. . . . ''
  In addition, the pending amendment is not germane to the bill we are 
debating, and is not expected to pass. I reserve the right to raise 
this constitutional point of order against amendment No. 27 in the 
unlikely event that it passes. I will hold off for now on raising this 
point of order to spare the Senate an unnecessary vote.
  However, I want to put everybody in the Senate on notice that, in the 
future, I reserve the right to raise this constitutional point of order 
regarding any proposal that violates the origination clause. In the 
Senate, revenue proposals should first be processed in the committee of 
jurisdiction in the Senate, which is the Senate Finance Committee.

[[Page 1045]]

  I will vote ``no'' on the pending amendment and urge my colleagues to 
do the same.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 47, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 19 Leg.]

                                YEAS--50

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--47

     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lankford
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                     Amendment No. 78, as Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate in 
relation to amendment No. 78 offered by the Senator from Alaska, Ms. 
Murkowski, for the Senator from Missouri, Mr. Blunt.
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise to support this amendment, 
cosponsored by Senator Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and 
Public Works Committee; by Senator Capito, the new chair of the 
Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety.
  This amendment simply says the United States should not be bound by 
commitments where we are the only party that has a commitment made in 
the agreement with China. We agree to reduce emissions by 27 percent 
between now and a point in the future; the Chinese agree to increase 
emissions between now and 2030.
  The amendment also says the President should have these kinds of 
agreements approved by the Senate. It also says the United States 
should not enter any international agreements that are 
disproportionately a disadvantage to us.
  I urge support of the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I will speak for the Senator from New 
Jersey, although this is a foreign policy question in general.
  Let me say this: In the next 10 years, 50 percent of the new 
buildings that are going to be built in the world are going to be built 
in China. They are the most energy-inefficient buildings on the planet. 
So when we reached an agreement through the President of the United 
States to work together as a way to reduce energy consumption and 
greenhouse gases, guess what is going to win. American business, 
American product, and we are selling it to them because we have an 
agreement to work together to be more energy efficient.
  So I don't want to slow down this President or any President in 
cutting deals to get U.S. products into markets because they agree we 
need to deal with this issue. Please don't slow down the ability to get 
U.S. product into foreign markets. Oppose the Blunt amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the Blunt 
amendment, as modified.
  Mr. VITTER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 20 Leg.]

                                YEAS--51

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--46

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes 
for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is rejected.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                     Amendment No. 126, as Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes equally divided 
prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 126, offered by the 
Senator from Alaska, Ms. Murkowski, for the Senator from Texas, Mr. 
Cornyn.
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the next amendment following the Cornyn 
amendment seeks to prohibit the use of eminent domain in the building 
of the Keystone XL Pipeline, but eminent domain is actually irrelevant 
to this bill. This is actually designed to confuse things and 
ultimately end up being a poison pill. I think it is accurate to say 
that the distinguished Senator from New Jersey is no fan of the 
Keystone XL Pipeline, so he wants to add this provision to the bill to 
make it impossible, basically, to implement.
  The bill doesn't authorize or mandate the use of eminent domain to 
take any property; it simply approves a cross-border permit. The 
decision on how the property should be taken should be and will be made 
by the individual States in a process overseen by State courts and 
subject to the U.S. Constitution. My amendment simply reiterates that 
the standard in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies.

[[Page 1046]]

  I ask all Senators to vote for the Cornyn amendment and to vote 
against the Menendez amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, what I am not a fan of is a foreign 
company coming to the United States and taking the property of U.S. 
citizens. This amendment seems innocuous, but it embraces the seizure 
of private property for private gain to the full extent of the 
Constitution.
  Ten years ago my dear friend from Texas decried the Kelo decision and 
advocated for severely restricting the use of eminent domain for 
private gain. Now, with this amendment, he endorses it.
  The Founders of our country and its Constitution never envisioned 
having a company from another country come to the United States and use 
eminent domain to take the property of U.S. citizens for private 
purposes. That is what we are trying to avoid with the Menendez 
amendment.
  If you vote for the amendment by the Senator from Texas, you in 
essence will continue to allow the opportunity for any foreign company 
to come into the United States and take private property of U.S. 
citizens for private purposes. That is not what we want to see.
  Vote no on the Cornyn amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment, 
as modified.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays are ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 64, nays 33, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 21 Leg.]

                                YEAS--64

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Manchin
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Warner
     Wicker

                                NAYS--33

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hirono
     King
     Leahy
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The amendment (No. 126), as modified, was agreed to.


                     Amendment No. 72, as Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 72, as modified, 
offered by the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez.
  The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. This amendment protects private property from unjust 
seizure by foreign corporations using eminent domain proceedings 
against the will of those who are not willing sellers.
  Let me read a letter from the Nebraska landowners to the majority 
leader.

       Dear Senator McConnell, our farms and ranches are 
     definitely at risk of tar sands and benzene spills. We ask, 
     even knowing that you support the Keystone Pipeline, that you 
     vote for Senator Menendez's amendment that makes it clear 
     TransCanada cannot take land from unwilling sellers. We ask 
     you to stand up for our property rights and not permit 
     eminent domain be used for private gain.

  I wish to yield the remainder of my time to Senator Tester.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I support the pipeline. I think it has a 
lot of good benefits, but make no mistake about it, if you do not 
support the Menendez amendment--and there are a lot of Aggies on the 
other side of the aisle. If you do not support this amendment, you will 
allow a foreign corporation--a foreign corporation--to come in and use 
eminent domain to take the property. We don't want to go down this 
line.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time has expired.
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Senate has spoken on the preceding 
amendment and overwhelmingly affirmed the Constitution as the only 
standard that should apply under these circumstances.
  The standard being proposed by the Senator from New Jersey is an 
anti-States rights amendment, and it is designed to be a poison pill on 
this Keystone XL Pipeline, which he obviously does not support and 
wants to use every means to kill.
  I would ask for a ``no'' vote on this amendment.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the amendment, as modified.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 43, nays 54, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 22 Leg.]

                                YEAS--43

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Casey
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--54

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Carper
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The amendment (No. 72), as modified, was rejected.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. MORAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have just gone through a 
considerable period processing some votes. I appreciate the patience of 
colleagues as we

[[Page 1047]]

have gone through it. As the majority leader mentioned, we want to 
figure out what the next tranche--the next grouping of amendments--will 
be, and then we will be able to figure out the path forward.
  It is the hope of myself and the ranking member of the committee that 
we be able to get through a few more votes this evening, at a minimum, 
but also to set up a more clearly defined path for the coming days 
ahead, for tomorrow and Monday.
  So I ask for the indulgence of Members as we call up a few amendments 
now to get them pending, and then we will work together to figure out 
what those votes will actually look like--which votes we will actually 
take up this evening.
  Again, I think the opportunity to get amendments pending on both 
sides is good. It gives everybody an idea of the lay of the land and 
gives them a chance to look at the amendments we will bring up.
  So at this point in time I wish to call up an amendment. When I have 
concluded, I will turn it over to the ranking member and an amendment 
will be called up on the Democratic side, and then we will come back to 
this side. We will alternate back and forth to get these amendments 
pending so Members can know what it is we have in this universe out 
there.


                  Amendment No. 67 to Amendment No. 2

  With that, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment 
and call up Sullivan amendment No. 67.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Ms. Murkowski], for Mr. Sullivan, 
     proposes an amendment numbered 67 to amendment No. 2.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

  (Purpose: To restrict the authority of the Environmental Protection 
                    Agency to arm agency personnel)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. POWERS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY.

       Section 3063(a) of title 18, United States Code, is 
     amended--
       (1) by striking paragraph (1); and
       (2) by redesignating paragraphs (2) and (3) as paragraphs 
     (1) and (2), respectively.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I turn to my colleague, Senator Cantwell.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I know our colleagues have been working throughout the 
day on these amendments, and I applaud them for their cooperation. As 
the Senator from Alaska said, oftentimes these needed side-by-sides--
people need to see these. We have various committees that have been 
involved in these amendments, so I appreciate the patience of our 
colleagues.
  I think going back and forth tonight on getting another set of 
amendments pending is a good idea because we have many Members on our 
side who have amendments they are very interested in having votes on. I 
appreciate them being here tonight. So I call on Senator Cardin to 
offer his amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.


                  Amendment No. 75 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 75.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Maryland [Mr. Cardin] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 75 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

  (Purpose: To provide communities that rely on drinking water from a 
 source that may be affected by a tar sands spill from the Keystone XL 
 pipeline an analysis of the potential risks to public health and the 
          environment from a leak or rupture of the pipeline)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. COMMUNITY RIGHT TO PROTECT LOCAL WATER SUPPLIES.

       (a) Findings.--Congress finds that--
       (1) there are 2,537 wells within 1 mile of the proposed 
     Keystone XL pipeline, including 39 public water supply wells 
     and 20 private wells within 100 feet of the pipeline right of 
     way;
       (2) 254 miles of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would 
     traverse over the shallow Ogallala Aquifer, the largest 
     underground fresh water source in the United States, 
     underlying 8 States and 2,000,000 people, including 10.5 
     miles where the groundwater lies at depths between 5 and 10 
     feet and another 12.4 miles where the water table is at a 
     depth of 10 to 15 feet;
       (3) on July 26, 2010, a pipeline ruptured near Marshall, 
     Michigan, releasing 843,000 gallons of tar sands diluted 
     bitumen into Talmadge Creek, flowing into the Kalamazoo 
     River;
       (4) the Talmadge Creek tar sands spill is the costliest 
     inland oil spill cleanup in United States history, and the 
     Kalamazoo River continues to be contaminated from the spill;
       (5) on March 29, 2013, the first pipeline of the United 
     States to transport Canadian tar sands to the Gulf Coast, the 
     ExxonMobil Pegasus Pipeline, ruptured, spilling 210,000 
     gallons of tar sands diluted bitumen in Mayflower, Arkansas; 
     and
       (6) following the Pegasus Pipeline tar sands spill, 
     individuals in the Mayflower community experienced severe 
     headaches, nausea, and respiratory infections.
       (b) Petition To Protect Local Water Supplies.--
       (1) In general.--Not later than 60 days after the date of 
     enactment of this Act and prior to construction of the 
     pipeline described in section 2(a), the President, or the 
     designee of the President, shall provide to each municipality 
     or county that relies on drinking water from a source that 
     may be affected by a tar sands spill from the pipeline an 
     analysis of the potential risks to public health and the 
     environment from a leak or rupture of that pipeline.
       (2) Notification to governors.--The President shall provide 
     a copy of the analysis described in paragraph (1) to the 
     Governor of each State in which an affected municipality or 
     county is located.
       (3) Effect on construction.--Construction of the pipeline 
     described in section 2(a) may not begin if the Governor of a 
     State with an affected municipality or county submits, not 
     later than 30 days after receiving an analysis under 
     paragraph (2), a petition to the President requesting that 
     the pipeline not be located in the affected municipality or 
     county.
       (4) Withdrawal.--A Governor may withdraw a petition 
     submitted under paragraph (3) at any time.
       (5) Right of action.--A property owner with a private water 
     well drilled into any portion of an aquifer that is below the 
     proposed pipeline described in section 2(a) may sue the owner 
     of the pipeline for damages if--
       (A) the well water of the property owner becomes 
     contaminated as a result of--
       (i) construction activities associated with the pipeline; 
     or
       (ii) a rupture in the pipeline; and
       (B) the property owner demonstrates that the well water was 
     safe prior to construction and operation of the pipeline.

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I will be very brief.
  This is an important amendment, as it deals with the rights of 
property owners to clean water. The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest 
aquifer in the western part of the United States, and the Keystone 
Pipeline would bisect that. At some point the aquifer is only 5 feet 
from the surface. Private owners drill wells to get their drinking 
water, and there is no protection in the event there is a spill. A 
spill is a real possibility. We have seen in prior cases in Michigan 
and Arkansas the impact of spills from this tar sands oil and the 
damage it can cause.
  My amendment is pretty straightforward. It allows our Governors to be 
able to challenge the safety of their drinking water. It is a States 
rights issue. It gives the property owners whose wells could be 
contaminated by this the right of action. I ask my colleagues to 
favorably consider this amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.


                  Amendment No. 98 to Amendment No. 2

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending 
amendment to call up Murkowski amendment No. 98.

[[Page 1048]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Alaska [Ms. Murkowski] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 98 to amendment No. 2.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

   (Purpose: To express the sense of Congress relating to adaptation 
   projects in the United States Arctic region and rural communities)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

       It is the sense of Congress that--
       (1) President Obama has committed $3,000,000,000 from the 
     United States to the Green Climate Fund of the United Nations 
     Framework Convention on Climate Change;
       (2) any payments the United States ultimately makes to the 
     Green Climate Fund will be redistributed to finance 
     adaptation and mitigation efforts in developing countries 
     that are parties to the Convention;
       (3) none of the eligible developing country parties to the 
     Convention is an Arctic nation;
       (4) the residents of the Arctic, many of whom represent 
     vibrant indigenous and traditional cultures, too often face 
     social and economic challenges that rival those in developing 
     countries;
       (5) despite the fact that the United States is an Arctic 
     nation, President Obama has made no similar effort to provide 
     financial assistance to the residents of the United States 
     Arctic region, even though many of those communities have 
     opportunities for adaptation projects;
       (6) similar opportunities for adaptation projects exist 
     across rural communities in the United States;
       (7) the United States should prioritize adaptation projects 
     in the United States Arctic region and rural communities 
     before allocating any taxpayer dollars to the Green Climate 
     Fund; and
       (8) to the extent that Congress appropriates any taxpayer 
     dollars for adaptation, those funds should first be applied 
     to known and anticipated adaptation needs of communities 
     within the United States.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I wish to recognize the Senator from Rhode Island to 
call up his amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                  Amendment No. 74 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment 
to call up my amendment No. 74.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Reed] for himself, Ms. 
     Collins, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Casey, Mr. Coons, 
     and Mr. Schumer, proposes an amendment numbered 74 to 
     amendment No. 2.

  Mr. REED. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate that the Low-Income Home 
      Energy Assistance Program should be funded at not less than 
                        $4,700,000,000 annually)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. FINDINGS AND SENSE OF THE SENATE.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate finds the following:
       (1) The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (referred 
     to in this section as ``LIHEAP'') is the main Federal program 
     that helps low-income households and senior citizens with 
     their energy bills, providing vital assistance during both 
     the cold winter and hot summer months.
       (2) Recipients of LIHEAP assistance are among the most 
     vulnerable individuals in the country, with more than 90 
     percent of LIHEAP households having at least one member who 
     is a child, a senior citizen, or disabled, and 20 percent of 
     LIHEAP households including at least one veteran.
       (3) The number of households eligible for LIHEAP assistance 
     continues to exceed available funding, with current funding 
     reaching just 20 percent of the eligible population.
       (4) The average LIHEAP grant covers just a fraction of home 
     energy costs, leaving many low-income families and senior 
     citizens struggling to pay their energy bills and with fewer 
     resources available to meet other essential needs.
       (5) Access to affordable home energy is a matter of health 
     and safety for many low-income households, children, senior 
     citizens, and veterans.
       (b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate 
     that LIHEAP should be funded at not less than $4,700,000,000 
     annually, to ensure that more low-income households and 
     children, senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, and 
     veterans can meet basic home energy needs.

  Mr. REED. Mr. President, this is a bipartisan amendment, which I am 
proud to sponsor with Senator Collins of Maine. It would express the 
sense of the Senate that we should fund LIHEAP, the Low Income Heating 
Assistance Program, at $4.7 billion. We have seen a significant 
diminution of the LIHEAP funding over the years.
  This amendment helps every aspect of the country. It helps low-income 
households, particularly seniors. It would help immensely families 
throughout this country. In the winter it is about heating oil in New 
England and Alaska and all through the north and central plains. In the 
summer it is about cooling in the southwest and the southeast. If 
families and households can't get access to these resources, they have 
to make a hard choice between literally paying for their energy or 
sometimes their rent or sometimes their food. This program has been 
long supported on a bipartisan basis. We should aim for this figure.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I turn to my colleague from Arizona at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


                  Amendment No. 103 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. FLAKE. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment 
and call up my amendment No. 103.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. Flake] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 103 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. FLAKE. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To require the evaluation and consolidation of duplicative 
                        green building programs)

       On page 3, between lines 19 and 20, insert the following:

     SEC. 4__. EVALUATION AND CONSOLIDATION OF DUPLICATIVE GREEN 
                   BUILDING PROGRAMS.

       (a) Definitions.--In this section:
       (1) Administrative expenses.--The term ``administrative 
     expenses'' has the meaning given the term by the Director of 
     the Office of Management and Budget under section 504(b)(2) 
     of the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies 
     Appropriations Act, 2010 (31 U.S.C. 1105 note; Public Law 
     111-85), except that the term shall include, for purposes of 
     that section and this section, with respect to an agency--
       (A) costs incurred by the agency and costs incurred by 
     grantees, subgrantees, and other recipients of funds from a 
     grant program or other program administered by the agency; 
     and
       (B) expenses related to personnel salaries and benefits, 
     property management, travel, program management, promotion, 
     reviews and audits, case management, and communication about, 
     promotion of, and outreach for programs and program 
     activities administered by the agency.
       (2) Applicable programs.--The term ``applicable programs'' 
     means the programs listed in Table 9 (pages 348-350) of the 
     report of the Government Accountability Office entitled 
     ``2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, 
     Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and Enhance 
     Revenue''.
       (3) Appropriate secretaries.--The term ``appropriate 
     Secretaries'' means--
       (A) the Secretary;
       (B) the Secretary of Agriculture;
       (C) the Secretary of Defense;
       (D) the Secretary of Education;
       (E) the Secretary of Health and Human Services;
       (F) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;
       (G) the Secretary of Transportation;
       (H) the Secretary of the Treasury;
       (I) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
     Agency;
       (J) the Director of the National Institute of Standards and 
     Technology; and

[[Page 1049]]

       (K) the Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
       (4) Services.--
       (A) In general.--Subject to subparagraph (B), the term 
     ``services'' has the meaning given the term by the Director 
     of the Office of Management and Budget.
       (B) Requirements.--The term ``services'' shall be limited 
     to activities, assistance, and aid that provide a direct 
     benefit to a recipient, such as--
       (i) the provision of medical care;
       (ii) assistance for housing or tuition; or
       (iii) financial support (including grants and loans).
       (b) Report.--
       (1) In general.--Not later than October 1, 2015, the 
     appropriate Secretaries shall submit to Congress and post on 
     the public Internet websites of the agencies of the 
     appropriate Secretaries a report on the outcomes of the 
     applicable programs.
       (2) Requirements.--In reporting on the outcomes of each 
     applicable program, the appropriate Secretaries shall--
       (A) determine the total administrative expenses of the 
     applicable program;
       (B) determine the expenditures for services for the 
     applicable program;
       (C) estimate the number of clients served by the applicable 
     program and beneficiaries who received assistance under the 
     applicable program (if applicable);
       (D) estimate--
       (i) the number of full-time employees who administer the 
     applicable program; and
       (ii) the number of full-time equivalents (whose salary is 
     paid in part or full by the Federal Government through a 
     grant or contract, a subaward of a grant or contract, a 
     cooperative agreement, or another form of financial award or 
     assistance) who assist in administering the applicable 
     program;
       (E) describe the type of assistance the applicable program 
     provides, such as grants, technical assistance, loans, tax 
     credits, or tax deductions;
       (F) describe the type of recipient who benefits from the 
     assistance provided, such as individual property owners or 
     renters, local governments, businesses, nonprofit 
     organizations, or State governments; and
       (G) identify and report on whether written program goals 
     are available for the applicable program.
       (c) Program Recommendations.--Not later than January 1, 
     2016, the appropriate Secretaries shall jointly submit to 
     Congress a report that includes--
       (1) an analysis of whether any of the applicable programs 
     should be eliminated or consolidated, including any 
     legislative changes that would be necessary to eliminate or 
     consolidate the applicable programs; and
       (2) ways to improve the applicable programs by establishing 
     program goals or increasing collaboration so as to reduce the 
     overlap and duplication identified in--
       (A) the 2011 report of the Government Accountability Office 
     entitled ``Federal Initiatives for the NonFederal Sector 
     Could Benefit from More Interagency Collaboration''; and
       (B) the report of the Government Accountability Office 
     entitled ``2012 Annual Report: Opportunities to Reduce 
     Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and 
     Enhance Revenue''.
       (d) Program Eliminations.--Not later than January 1, 2016, 
     the appropriate Secretaries shall--
       (1) identify--
       (A) which applicable programs are specifically required by 
     law; and
       (B) which applicable programs are carried out under the 
     discretionary authority of the appropriate Secretaries;
       (2) eliminate those applicable programs that are not 
     required by law; and
       (3) transfer any remaining applicable projects and 
     nonduplicative functions into another green building program 
     within the same agency.

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, in its 2012 annual report on opportunities 
to reduce duplication and achieve savings, the GAO noted that in 2011 
there were 94 Federal initiatives to foster green buildings in the non-
Federal sector. This report highlighted many initiatives that provided 
similar types of assistance, grants, technical assistance, tax credits, 
and so forth. This obviously doesn't sound like a recipe for proper 
oversight if this is still going on 5 years later.
  This amendment would help tackle the problem simply by requiring 
agencies to evaluate and eliminate duplicative green building programs 
consistent with GAO's recommendations.
  We ask GAO to study these things, and we often don't follow through 
and make sure the agencies follow up on the recommendations. This is 
simply ensuring that happens.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I call on the Senator from Vermont to 
offer his amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.


                  Amendment No. 30 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendment to call up amendment No. 30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 30 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

      (Purpose: To strike a provision relating to judicial review)

       Beginning on page 2, strike line 24 and all that follows 
     through page 3, line 10, and insert the following:
       (d) Private Property Savings Clause.--Nothing

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this will be set aside in a moment. First, 
I wish to note that my amendment is simply to make sure that if people 
have appeals on actions under this law, they be able to appeal in the 
courts within their jurisdictions and not have to trundle their way to 
Washington, DC. Too many people think Washington has the answers to 
everything.
  My amendment simply says it is a States rights issue. It says the 
appeals will be in courts within their districts. That is a simple 
explanation. I spoke earlier on the floor, and I will speak more when 
the amendment comes up.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, at this time I turn to my colleague 
from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                  Amendment No. 15 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. CRUZ. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment 
and call up my amendment No. 15.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Texas [Mr. Cruz] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 15 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. CRUZ. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

  (Purpose: To promote economic growth and job creation by increasing 
                                exports)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. EXPEDITED APPROVAL OF EXPORTATION OF NATURAL GAS TO 
                   WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION MEMBER COUNTRIES.

       (a) In General.--Section 3(c) of the Natural Gas Act (15 
     U.S.C. 717b(c)) is amended--
       (1) by striking ``(c) For purposes'' and inserting the 
     following:
       ``(c) Expedited Application and Approval Process.--
       ``(1) Definition of world trade organization member 
     country.--In this subsection, the term `World Trade 
     Organization member country' has the meaning given the term 
     `WTO member country' in section 2 of the Uruguay Round 
     Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3501).
       ``(2) Expedited application and approval process.--For 
     purposes''; and
       (2) in paragraph (2) (as so designated), by inserting ``or 
     to a World Trade Organization member country'' after ``trade 
     in natural gas''.
       (b) Effective Date.--The amendments made by subsection (a) 
     shall apply to applications for the authorization to export 
     natural gas under section 3 of the Natural Gas Act (15 U.S.C. 
     717b) that are pending on, or filed on or after, the date of 
     enactment of this Act.

  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, this is an amendment to allow expedited 
export of liquid natural gas to WTO member countries. It would have 
benefits to our country in terms of jobs and economic growth as well as 
substantial geopolitical benefits to our allies. I expect to debate 
this further in the coming days.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I call on the Senator from Rhode Island 
to offer his amendment.

[[Page 1050]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                  Amendment No. 28 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending 
amendment to call up my amendment No. 28.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Whitehouse] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 28 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

 (Purpose: To require campaign finance disclosures for certain persons 
                benefitting from tar sands development)

       At the end, add the following:

     SEC. __. CAMPAIGN FINANCE DISCLOSURES BY THOSE PROFITING FROM 
                   TAR SANDS DEVELOPMENT.

       (a) In General.--Section 304 of the Federal Election 
     Campaign Act of 1974 (52 U.S.C. 30104) is amended by adding 
     at the end the following new subsection:
       ``(j) Disclosure by Tar Sands Beneficiaries.--
       ``(1) In general.--
       ``(A) Initial disclosure.--Every covered entity which has 
     made covered disbursements and received covered transfers in 
     an aggregate amount in excess of $10,000 during the period 
     beginning on January 1, 2013, and ending on the date that is 
     165 days after the date of the enactment of this subsection 
     shall file with the Commission a statement containing the 
     information described in paragraph (2) not later than the 
     date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this 
     subsection.
       ``(B) Subsequent disclosures.--Every covered entity which 
     makes covered disbursements (other than covered disbursement 
     reported under subparagraph (A)) and received covered 
     transfers (other than a covered transfer reported under 
     subparagraph (A)) in an aggregate amount in excess of $10,000 
     during any calendar year shall, within 48 hours of each 
     disclosure date, file with the Commission a statement 
     containing the information described in paragraph (2).
       ``(2) Contents of statement.--Each statement required to be 
     filed under this subsection shall be made under penalty of 
     perjury and shall contain the following information:
       ``(A) The identification of the person making the 
     disbursement or receiving the transfer, of any person sharing 
     or exercising direction or control over the activities of 
     such person, and of the custodian of the books and accounts 
     of the person making the disbursement or receiving the 
     transfer.
       ``(B) The principal place of business of the person making 
     the disbursement or receiving the transfer, if not an 
     individual.
       ``(C) The amount of each disbursement or transfer of more 
     than $200 during the period covered by the statement and the 
     identification of the person to whom the disbursement was 
     made or from whom the transfer was received.
       ``(D) The elections to which the disbursements or transfers 
     pertain and the names (if known) of the candidates involved.
       ``(E) If the disbursements were paid out of a segregated 
     bank account which consists of funds contributed solely by 
     individuals who are United States citizens or nationals or 
     lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in 
     section 101(a)(20) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 
     U.S.C. 1101(a)(20))) directly to this account for 
     electioneering communications, the names and addresses of all 
     contributors who contributed an aggregate amount of $1,000 or 
     more to that account during--
       ``(i) in the case of a statement under paragraph (1)(A), 
     during the period described in such paragraph, and
       ``(ii) in the case of a statement under paragraph (1)(B), 
     the period beginning on the first day of the preceding 
     calendar year and ending on the disclosure date.

     Nothing in this subparagraph is to be construed as a 
     prohibition on the use of funds in such a segregated account 
     for a purpose other than covered disbursements.
       ``(F) If the disbursements were paid out of funds not 
     described in subparagraph (E), the names and addresses of all 
     contributors who contributed an aggregate amount of $1,000 or 
     more to the person making the disbursement during--
       ``(i) in the case of a statement under paragraph (1)(A), 
     during the period described in such paragraph, and
       ``(ii) in the case of a statement under paragraph (1)(B), 
     the period beginning on the first day of the preceding 
     calendar year and ending on the disclosure date.
       ``(3) Covered entity.--For purposes of this subsection--
       ``(A) In general.--The term `covered entity' means--
       ``(i) any person who is described in subparagraph (B), and
       ``(ii) any person who owns 5 percent or more of any person 
     described in subparagraph (B).
       ``(B) Person described.--A person is described in this 
     subparagraph if such person--
       ``(i) holds one or more tar sands leases, or
       ``(ii) has received revenues or stands to receive revenues 
     of $1,000,000 or greater from tar sands production, including 
     revenues received in connection with--

       ``(I) exploration of tar sands;
       ``(II) extraction of tar sands;
       ``(III) processing of tar sands;
       ``(IV) building, maintaining, and upgrading the Keystone XL 
     pipeline and other related pipelines used in connection with 
     tar sands;
       ``(V) expanding refinery capacity or building, expanding, 
     and retrofitting import and export terminals in connection 
     with tar sands;
       ``(VI) transportation by pipeline, rail, and barge of tar 
     sands;
       ``(VII) refinement of tar sands;
       ``(VIII) importing crude, refined oil, or byproducts 
     derived from tar sands crude;
       ``(IX) exporting crude, byproducts, or refined oil derived 
     from tar sands crude; and
       ``(X) use of production byproducts from tar sands, such as 
     petroleum coke for energy generation.

       ``(C) Tar sands.--For purposes of this paragraph, the term 
     `tar sands' means bitumen from the West Canadian Sedimentary 
     Basin.
       ``(4) Covered disbursement.--For purposes of this 
     subsection, the term `covered disbursement' means a 
     disbursement for any of the following:
       ``(A) An independent expenditure.
       ``(B) A broadcast, cable, or satellite communication (other 
     than a communication described in subsection (f)(3)(B)) 
     which--
       ``(i) refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal 
     office;
       ``(ii) is made--

       ``(I) in the case of a communication which refers to a 
     candidate for an office other than President or Vice 
     President, during the period beginning on January 1 of the 
     calendar year in which a general or runoff election is held 
     and ending on the date of the general or runoff election (or 
     in the case of a special election, during the period 
     beginning on the date on which the announcement with respect 
     to such election is made and ending on the date of the 
     special election); or
       ``(II) in the case of a communication which refers to a 
     candidate for the office of President or Vice President, is 
     made in any State during the period beginning 120 days before 
     the first primary election, caucus, or preference election 
     held for the selection of delegates to a national nominating 
     convention of a political party is held in any State (or, if 
     no such election or caucus is held in any State, the first 
     convention or caucus of a political party which has the 
     authority to nominate a candidate for the office of President 
     or Vice President) and ending on the date of the general 
     election; and

       ``(iii) in the case of a communication which refers to a 
     candidate for an office other than President or Vice 
     President, is targeted to the relevant electorate (within the 
     meaning of subsection (f)(3)(C)).
       ``(C) A transfer to another person for the purposes of 
     making a disbursement described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
       ``(5) Covered transfer.--For purposes of this subsection, 
     the term `covered transfer' means any amount received by a 
     covered entity for the purposes of making a covered 
     disbursement.
       ``(6) Disclosure date.--For purposes of this subsection, 
     the term `disclosure date' means--
       ``(A) the first date during any calendar year by which a 
     person has made covered disbursements and received covered 
     transfers aggregating in excess of $10,000; and
       ``(B) any other date during such calendar year by which a 
     person has made covered disbursements and received covered 
     transfers aggregating in excess of $10,000 since the most 
     recent disclosure date for such calendar year.
       ``(7) Contracts to disburse; coordination with other 
     requirements; etc,.--Rules similar to the rules of paragraphs 
     (5), (6), and (7) of subsection (f) shall apply for purposes 
     of this subsection.''.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is a measure that will allow a 
needed beam of daylight to be shown on the politics behind this bill we 
are on. As everybody knows, it is a little bit unusual to some that the 
opening measure of the new Republican majority would be a project that 
advantages a foreign oil company.
  This measure would require the disclosure of political donations made 
by companies that stand to earn more than $1 million from this project. 
This is the kind of information the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly said 
citizens are entitled to know in order to make appropriate decisions, 
and in our democracy we should put our citizens first.

[[Page 1051]]

  I will speak further about this amendment on a later occasion, and I 
yield the floor at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I turn to my very patient colleague 
from Kansas, Mr. Moran.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.


                  Amendment No. 73 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. MORAN. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set 
aside to call up amendment No. 73.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Moran], for himself and Mr. 
     Cruz, proposes an amendment numbered 73 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. MORAN. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To delist the lesser prairie-chicken as a threatened species 
               under the Endangered Species Act of 1973)

       At the end of the amendment, add the following:

     SEC. ___. DELISTING OF LESSER PRAIRIE-CHICKEN AS THREATENED 
                   SPECIES.

       Notwithstanding the final rule of the United States Fish 
     and Wildlife Service entitled ``Endangered and Threatened 
     Wildlife and Plants; Determination of Threatened Status for 
     the Lesser Prairie-Chicken'' (79 Fed. Reg. 19974 (April 10, 
     2014)), the lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus 
     pallidicinctus) shall not be listed as a threatened species 
     under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et 
     seq.).

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, this is an amendment that sets aside the 
endangered threatened species listing of the lesser prairie chicken. It 
is an important issue to the citizens of Kansas but also to Texas, 
Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado.
  I look forward to having this conversation and debate on the Senate 
floor at the appropriate time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I call on the Senator from Delaware to offer his 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                  Amendment No. 121 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendment to call up my amendment to the Murkowski substitute, 
amendment No. 121.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Carper] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 121 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. CARPER. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

  (Purpose: To impose a fee of 8 cents per barrel on oil transported 
                         through the pipeline)

       At the end of section 2, add the following:
       (f) Fee.--
       (1) In general.--A fee of 8 cents shall be imposed on each 
     barrel of oil transported through the pipeline referred to in 
     subsection (a).
       (2) Use of fee revenue.--Revenue from the fee imposed under 
     paragraph (1) shall be deposited in the land and water 
     conservation fund established under section 200302 of title 
     54, United States Code.

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President and colleagues, you will recall from our 
debate earlier this evening concerns raised about the equity of--most 
oil that is consumed and transported through this country or into this 
country pays a fee. It is an 8-cent-per-barrel fee that goes into the 
oilspill liability fund. One source of oil that does not pay that 8-
cent-per-barrel fee is derived from the oil sands. There has been some 
discussion of whether--I think there is a fair amount of agreement that 
that does not seem right, it doesn't seem equitable, and it is not fair 
to assess an 8-cent-per-barrel fee on all these other sources of oil 
but not apply that to oil derived from tar sands.
  What I seek to suggest with my amendment is that an 8-cent-per-barrel 
fee be assessed on the oil derived from tar sands and the revenues 
derived therefrom would be deposited not in the oilspill liability fund 
but rather in the land and water conservation fund which has been in 
existence for many years.
  I believe the balance in the oilspill liability fund is measured in 
the billions of dollars. The balance in the land and water conservation 
fund is not. The moneys are much smaller, much more modest, and that 
money provides funding in all 50 States. Many of us know the need far 
outweighs the money appropriated every year for this program.
  The land and water conservation fund is also established not just to 
provide the revenues for national parks--and we are always looking for 
moneys for national parks. We just expanded our national parks system. 
How are we going to pay for that? The amendment I hope to offer would 
help to address that.
  The land and water conservation fund was also established to help 
protect rivers, lakes, and critical habitat for wildlife, areas that 
may be impacted by the construction of this pipeline or a possible 
spill from this pipeline or from another spill.
  Again, that is what I am asking. I will be concise. No fee is now 
paid on tar sands oil. I believe it should be the same as that which is 
assessed against other sources of oil.
  What I would suggest is rather than put the moneys derived from that 
8 cents on the tar sands oil--rather than that money going into the 
oilspill liability fund, which is quite robust, to instead deposit that 
in the land and water conservation fund where we could use it in all 50 
States for a variety of good purposes. That is the nature of my 
amendment. I hope I have the opportunity to offer that amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I would like to turn to my colleague 
from Montana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.


                  Amendment No. 132 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending 
amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 132.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Montana [Mr. Daines] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 132 to amendment No. 2.

  Mr. DAINES. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To express the sense of Congress regarding the designation of 
                          National Monuments)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. __. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON THE DESIGNATION OF NATIONAL 
                   MONUMENTS.

       It is the sense of Congress that the designation of 
     National Monuments should be subject to--
       (1) consultation with each unit of local government within 
     the boundaries of which the proposed National Monument is to 
     be located; and
       (2) the approval by the Governor and legislature of each 
     State within the boundaries of which the proposed National 
     Monument is to be located.

  Mr. DAINES. In Montana we understand our resource use must be done 
responsibly. We also know that Montanans who live and use the land 
every day understand how to best protect these resources.
  Unfortunately, the current administration, as well as past 
administrations, both Republican and Democratic--their efforts to 
stretch the intent of the Antiquities Act threatens Montanans' ability 
to manage our State's resources. It is a trend we are seeing in other 
States as well.
  Too often these unilateral designations ignore the needs of the local 
communities, of sportsmen, of farmers and ranchers, small business 
owners who are directly impacted by these new designations.

[[Page 1052]]

  The amendment I am offering simply expresses the sense of Congress 
that all future national monument designations should be subject to 
consultation with local governance and the approval of the Governor of 
that State and the legislature of that State in which the designation 
would occur.
  This amendment ensures the people affected most by these designations 
have a seat at the table and their voices are heard.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. I would like to call on the Senator from Massachusetts 
to offer an amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.


                  Amendment No. 25 to Amendment No. 2

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendment to call up my amendment No. 25.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey], for himself 
     and Mr. Wyden, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Merkley, Mr. 
     Booker, and Ms. Baldwin, proposes an amendment numbered 25 to 
     amendment No. 2.

  Mr. MARKEY. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be 
dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To ensure that products derived from tar sands are treated as 
     crude oil for purposes of the Federal excise tax on petroleum)

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. INCLUSION OF OIL DERIVED FROM TAR SANDS AS CRUDE 
                   OIL.

       This Act shall not take effect prior to the date that 
     diluted bitumen and other bituminous mixtures derived from 
     tar sands or oil sands are treated as crude oil for purposes 
     of section 4612(a)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, 
     which may be established either by an Act of Congress or any 
     regulations, rules, or guidance issued by the Commissioner of 
     the Internal Revenue Service or the Secretary of the Treasury 
     (or the Secretary's delegate).

  Mr. MARKEY. I ask that the amendment be put in order for debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we now have in front of us six 
amendments that are pending on the Republican side, six amendments that 
are pending on the other side of the aisle. We indicated we wanted to 
try to get these up, alternating back and forth. I think we have a 
pretty good range in front of us. Recognizing that it is important 
Members have an opportunity to take a look at the now 12 amendments 
that are pending, I think it is our hope that we would be able to, as 
the chairman and the ranking member, sit down and figure out how many 
of these we might be able to move to a vote this evening and dispense 
with some of them.
  I think it is pretty clear we will have a difficult time perhaps 
advancing such a plan with everything tonight. So if we could have a 
little bit of time to work through an agreement to present to Members--
I think right now people are taking a little bit of a break from the 
floor activity, and that is appreciated, but I want to give them notice 
as to where we are.
  It is my hope we will be able to come to an agreement relatively 
shortly in terms of how many amendments we might be able to take up and 
vote on this evening, thus giving Members a better chance as to whether 
we are staying in for the long haul tonight or perhaps just for a 
shorter period, but we need a little bit of time to take a look at 
that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, we did go back and forth on these 
amendments, but I heard Senator McConnell say he wanted Members to 
offer amendments. We have several Members who want to offer amendments. 
I hope there will be a time that those Members will be allowed to get 
their amendments pending before this body.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from 
Washington stating that. This is by no means saying this is it for the 
night. I am just saying give the floor managers an opportunity now, 
with a dozen amendments that we have in front of us, to figure out what 
it is that we have. This would probably be a great time for people to 
speak on either their amendments or other amendments that they might 
wish to bring pending, but I am not suggesting this is our finite list 
of amendments. This is what we have for this moment in time, having 
gone back and forth. That is all I am suggesting.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I have a pending amendment. Does the 
Senator object to my bringing that up? I would like to bring that up; 
can I do that?
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I think it was the intention of the 
ranking member and myself that we go back and forth. We have done that, 
six each time now. I don't have other Members on our side who are 
either present, which we have asked them to be, or have asked me to 
offer on their behalf. I am certainly not suggesting to the Senator 
from Vermont that he should not be allowed to get his amendment 
pending. I am just trying to keep with the agreement we have that we go 
back and forth.
  Mr. SANDERS. Would it be OK if I brought mine up and the Senator 
could catch up to it later? I am sure there will be another one.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Through the Chair, I am sure we will have other 
amendments. Again, I want to defer to the Senator's ranking member on 
that as far as whether we bring it pending at this moment in time. It 
might be possible after we reach our agreement that we have another set 
of back-and-forths to get these pending agreements put forward.
  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. MORAN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            Amendment No. 73

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, earlier this evening an amendment of mine 
was made pending to the legislation that we now have before us, 
amendment No. 73.
  I thank my colleagues for allowing that amendment to become pending, 
and I look forward to the opportunity now, while we are determining the 
remainder of the evening's schedule, to describe the nature of 
amendment No. 73.
  I have a copy of the amendment in front of me. It is a short 
paragraph, but it is one that has significant consequences to the 
people of Kansas. But in addition to the people of Kansas, it has 
significant consequence to the people of Colorado, New Mexico, 
Oklahoma, and Texas.
  The story we are talking about is the lesser prairie-chicken. In 
March of 2014, the lesser prairie-chicken was listed not as an 
endangered species but a threatened species under the Endangered 
Species Act.
  It is true the numbers of birds declined in 2012 and 2013. The U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service had their explanation for why there was the 
decline in the population of those birds, both those who live on the 
land but as well a number of wildlife experts--people who are very 
interested in conservation practices in our State--believe and agree 
that the primary reason behind the bird's decline in population was the 
historic and prolonged drought that our area of the country has 
experienced in the past several years.
  There is less habitat for birds generally in our State and across 
this region of the country, but the reality is that it is because we 
have had so little rainfall. We have been in a drought in

[[Page 1053]]

a significant part of the Nation, in our part of the country, for a 
number of years, and as a result there is less habitat and a decline in 
the bird population. What many believe is that with the return of 
rainfall, with the return of snow this winter and the moisture it will 
provide, we will have increasing wildlife habitat for the lesser 
prairie-chicken and a large number of birds and other wildlife in our 
State and in the surrounding States where this is a significant issue.
  There are some exceptions that have been written into the 
designation, but the reality is that there are huge,
ongoing, significant economic consequences to the listing as a 
threatened species of the lesser prairie-chicken in Kansas, Colorado, 
Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. Front and center of that, of course, 
are the consequences to agriculture. It is how we earn a significant 
portion of our living in our State. Land values, for example, have 
dropped as a result of this issue. Oil and gas exploration has been 
disrupted. Wind energy projects that have been an important component 
of our State economy and particularly a benefit to the economy of rural 
Kansas have been harmed as a result of this listing. These disruptions 
have driven down county tax revenues that are used for essential 
services in some of the most challenging and difficult parts 
economically of our State, from damage to Main Street, and certainly 
harmed a portion of Kansas that always struggles to be economically 
viable.
  The listing, in my view, was based on an artificially low population 
estimate due to the drought I described. I guess I failed to mention 
that 1 year ago this was a bird which could be hunted in Kansas. So, 
again, it was prevalent enough to be able to be pursued by those who 
hunt, but because of the drought the population declined. In fact, 
every Kansas county that is included in the habitat area was 
experiencing a D3-Extreme or a D4-Exceptional drought, according to the 
U.S. Drought Monitor, again highlighting that what we need here is 
rainfall and moisture that comes from snow and rain and that listing 
this as a threatened species doesn't create the moisture necessary to 
create the habitat for the return of the population of the bird.
  What we really have asked for is an opportunity which has been 
offered and suggested by conservation groups in Kansas, by the Kansas 
Department of Wildlife and Parks, and by the Kansas Farm Bureau and 
others to work together to find a solution short of this listing to 
increase bird population in Kansas. And I assume that is true in the 
other States as well. We are looking for a cooperative effort to 
improve habitat, and the fact is that the listing as a threatened 
species has been so disruptive that we have been unable to get what we 
would say is a more commonsense, less broad-brush approach to solving 
this problem in place as compared to the heavy hand of this listing. We 
stand ready, willing, and able to provide that kind of local effort to 
improve habitat and bird population.
  This amendment would not mean the lesser prairie-chicken would never 
be listed again, but it gives Kansans and others the opportunity to go 
back and make certain that efforts at the local level are given a 
chance to work before the very dramatic and devastating implementation 
of this decision to list the bird as threatened.
  So this is a relatively straightforward and simple amendment that 
will take the lesser prairie-chicken off the list as a threatened 
species, give Kansans and others the opportunity to improve the 
habitat, reduce the economic damage that is being done in our State and 
the States that surround us as a result of this listing, and then give 
us the opportunity to again work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
Service to find a better solution and one that, I might add, may be 
more easily found once the rainfalls return to the State of Kansas.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to describe this 
amendment, and it is certainly my request and I look forward to it 
being an amendment that would be considered tonight, later this 
evening.
  Mr. President, 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. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                        Remembering Wendell Ford

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I was saddened to learn today of the death 
of Senator Wendell Ford of Kentucky. Wendell Ford was a skilled 
political mind and as warm a human being as any U.S. Senator has ever 
been.
  During my first 2 years in the U.S. Senate, Senator Ford was the 
assistant Democratic leader, the same job I have today. I was 
fortunate, able to learn by example from one of the best. And how 
fortunate the people of Kentucky and all Americans were to have had the 
benefit of Wendell Ford's public service.
  Senator Ford served in the Senate for nearly a quarter of a century. 
Before that, he served the Bluegrass State as a State senator, 
Governor, and lieutenant governor. He defended America in uniform 
during World War II.
  Maybe because he had already accomplished so much before he came to 
the Senate, he never worried about headlines. Instead, he was content 
to work quietly, diligently, effectively--often with colleagues from 
across the aisle--to solve problems.
  The last desk Senator Ford occupied in the Senate was once occupied 
by another great Kentucky Senator, ``the great compromiser'' Henry 
Clay. Like Henry Clay, Wendell Ford believed that compromise was 
honorable and necessary in a democracy. But Wendell Ford also 
understood that compromise is, in Henry Clay's words, ``negotiated 
hurt.'' So Wendell Ford tried, whenever possible, to work out 
disagreements between the scenes, away from the cameras, where Senators 
could bend and still keep their dignity.
  In 1991 Wendell's quiet bipartisan style convinced a Senator from 
across the aisle, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, to join him in sponsoring 
the motor voter bill. Working together, this Democrat and this 
Republican Senator convinced the entire Senate it was time to pass this 
landmark bill. To this day the motor voter bill remains the most 
ambitious effort Congress has made since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 
to open up the voting booth to more Americans.
  Wendell Ford distinguished himself in the Senate as a determined foe 
of government waste and duplication and a champion of campaign finance 
reform.
  His raspy voice was unmistakable. His good humor and wise counsel 
were indispensable in some of the most important debates. He will be 
missed.
  I know our entire Senate sends their condolences to Senator Ford's 
wife Jean and to all of Senator Ford's family and friends.
  I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Vermont.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to thank the senior Senator from 
Illinois for what he said about my dear friend Senator Wendell Ford.
  I was fortunate to come here to the Senate the same year that Senator 
Ford did. We were different in age, and I must say, different in 
experience. He had a lot more experience than I did, and I relied on 
his experience and his help. We traveled together, and we talked 
together so often. He had the unfailing characteristic of the best of 
the Senators--both Republicans and Democrats. He always kept his word. 
He was always very honest and direct with you. If he made a commitment, 
you could go to the bank with it.
  I remember the night we had a dinner for his retirement. There was a 
dozen of us that came in that year. There were only four left and three 
were retiring that night--Wendell Ford, John Glen, and Dale Bumpers. It 
was wonderful to listen to the three of them reminisce about the 
Senate.

[[Page 1054]]

  I said to Wendell Ford at that time: Save me a seat on that lifeboat 
as you are leaving. I thought how lonely it would be without him. 
Fortunately, I have a good friend like the senior Senator from Illinois 
to fill the void.
  But Wendell Ford had probably more knowledge and sense of politics--
not just knowledge but sense--of how to work things out, how to get 
liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats together, than 
most people ever have.
  He had a raspy voice, but he was good natured, with a sense of humor. 
And when I go back through the people I have met, the 300 or more 
Senators I have had the opportunity to serve with, I think of Wendell 
Ford as one who epitomizes what a Senator should be.
  I had talked to him just a few months ago. I will speak more about 
him later on, but I think the Senator from Illinois has given probably 
as good a description of this wonderful man as any of the rest of us 
might, and I thank him for that.
  I yield the floor.


                              Quorum Call

  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. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The legislative clerk continued with the call of the roll, and the 
following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

                          [Quorum No. 3 Leg.]

     Boozman
     Cantwell
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Durbin
     Hirono
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Perdue
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Schumer
     Tillis
     Vitter
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is not present.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to instruct the Sergeant at Arms 
to request the attendance of absent Senators, and I ask for the yeas 
and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion of the Senator from 
Kentucky.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken), 
the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez), the Senator from Nevada 
(Mr. Reid), and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 89, nays 5, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 23 Leg.]

                                YEAS--89

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kaine
     King
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Vitter
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--5

     Blunt
     Grassley
     Heller
     McCain
     Wicker

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Franken
     Graham
     Lee
     Manchin
     Menendez
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. With the addition of Senators who did not 
answer the quorum call, a quorum is now present.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Can we have order in the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The Senate is not yet in order, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order.
  Mr. McCONNELL. My colleagues, here is the situation. Earlier today we 
cast our 15th rollcall vote on this bill. That is more votes than we 
had on all amendments on the floor--rollcall votes--throughout all of 
2014. We have now voted on 19 rollcall amendments, and here is the 
situation in which we find ourselves at 10 o'clock on Thursday night. 
There are 12 amendments pending--6 Democratic amendments and 6 
Republican amendments--but our good friends on the other side will not 
agree to vote on their own amendments.
  So we find ourselves in a unique situation. We have opened up the 
Senate for amendments for both sides. Our colleagues, both Republicans 
and Democrats, have had more rollcall votes on amendments than all of 
last year combined. Yet our Democratic friends don't even want to agree 
to vote on the amendments they have pending.
  We are left with only one way to avoid having to invoke cloture on 
each amendment, which would tie up the Senate for weeks, in order to 
provide our colleagues on the other side an opportunity to vote on the 
amendments they said they wanted to vote on. So there is really only 
one way to go forward, and so what I am going to do is ask unanimous 
consent that starting at 10 o'clock the Senate proceed to vote in 
relation to the following amendments in the order listed: Sullivan No. 
67, Cardin No. 75, Murkowski No. 98, Reed No. 74, Flake No. 103, Leahy 
No. 30; Cruz No. 15, Whitehouse No. 28, Moran No. 73, Carper No. 121, 
Daines No. 132, and Markey No. 25; further, that all amendments on this 
list be subject to a 60-vote affirmative threshold for adoption and 
that no second-degrees be in order to the amendments. I ask consent 
that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between each vote and 
that all votes after the first in the series be 10-minute votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the 
majority leader came to the floor this evening and commended the Senate 
for the work we have done. He pointed out the constructive, bipartisan, 
good-faith efforts that have been made on both sides. Earlier today we 
disposed of 10 separate amendments, 5 on each side. Those amendments 
were given to us yesterday. During the last 24 hours there has been 
active negotiation back and forth on side-by-side amendments. In fact, 
the Republican Senator from Missouri and the Republican Senator from 
Nebraska asked to modify their amendments while they were still 
pending. There was a good-faith effort to make these amendments ready 
for floor consideration, and they were. They were brought before the 
Senate, and they were voted on in an orderly way. We all know that in 
the rules of the Senate you can stop the train. No one did on this side 
of the aisle. We moved forward in an orderly way.
  Now at 8 o'clock this evening, 12 more amendments have come forward, 
6 on each side. The majority leader is correct. What we are trying to 
do, as we did with the previous 10 amendments, is to work through these 
in an orderly fashion, and we propose that we start considering them 
tomorrow morning.
  Those who are interested in--the staff who are interested, the 
Members who are interested can work to put these 12 amendments in 
order. We will start working on them as early as the majority leader 
wants to work tomorrow morning and start working through the amendments 
and those

[[Page 1055]]

others that may be offered. But I would say, if we are going to 
continue in the spirit of good faith, bipartisan cooperation, then let 
us work together as we have leading up to today to come to the point 
where we can have a vote on those amendments.
  There are others that may be offered on both sides. But for these 
pending amendments, we are ready to commit to you that we will be here 
first thing in the morning, and let's start considering them.
  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, let me just say one more time, I think 
everybody understands. What we have here are at least six Democratic 
amendments that presumably they understand because they offered them. I 
assume they know what is in them because they wrote them and offered 
them. Yet they do not want to vote on them.
  We have been on this bill for a while. We have already had more 
rollcall votes on this bill than the entire Senate had on every bill 
through the whole year of 2014. I think it is time that we start moving 
forward.
  So since there is an objection to setting votes on the pending 
amendments, there is really only one way to ensure a vote on these 
amendments absent a cloture motion, which I was explaining earlier. If 
we had to file cloture on each of these amendments, we would be on them 
for weeks trying to help our friends on the other side get votes on 
amendments they offered.
  So given the fact that they are reluctant to vote on their own 
amendments, which presumably they understand, the only way to go 
forward is to table their amendments. So I, therefore, intend to begin 
tabling the pending amendments, ensuring a vote on the proposals they 
have offered, which presumably they understand, but moving the process 
along tonight.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the majority leader yield for a question?
  Mr. McCONNELL. For a question only, without losing the floor.
  Mr. DURBIN. Did the majority leader not notify the entire Senate that 
we would be working on Fridays?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I am not suggesting we are not working on Friday. I am 
suggesting we are working tonight.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the majority leader, we are prepared to 
start working in an orderly fashion on Friday, as we did earlier today.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Well, I have not said anything about Friday. Did 
anybody hear me say anything about Friday? We are talking about right 
now.


                            Amendment No. 25

  Mr. President, what is the pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Amendment No. 25, offered by the Senator from 
Massachusetts, Mr. Markey.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to table the pending amendment 
and ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
1 minute to speak on my amendment before it is voted upon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.


                              Quorum Call

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Durbin, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll, and the following 
Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:

                          [Quorum No. 4 Leg.]

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     King
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Perdue
     Peters
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is present.


                        vote on amendment no. 25

  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The yeas and nays have been previously ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Hatch), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken) 
and the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Reid) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 42, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 24 Leg.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--42

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Franken
     Graham
     Hatch
     Lee
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                       Vote on Amendment No. 121

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I call for the regular order with 
respect to Carper amendment No. 121.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the Carper amendment and ask for the 
yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized for 1 minute, 
please.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), 
the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken), and the Senator from Nevada 
(Mr. Reid) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 57, nays 38, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 25 Leg.]

                                YEAS--57

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst

[[Page 1056]]


     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     McCain
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--38

     Baldwin
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Coons
     Franken
     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                        Vote on Amendment No. 28

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I call for regular order with respect 
to the Whitehouse amendment No. 28.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute to defend 
my amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request?
  Mr. McCONNELL. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), 
the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken), and the Senator from Nevada 
(Mr. Reid) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 43, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 26 Leg.]

                                YEAS--52

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--43

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Coons
     Franken
     Graham
     Lee
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                        Vote on Amendment No. 30

  Mr. McCONNELL. I call for regular order with respect to Leahy 
amendment No. 30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 
minute to explain the States rights amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection to the request from the 
Senator from Vermont?
  Mr. PERDUE. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Illinois 
(Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), 
the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken), and the Senator from Nevada 
(Mr. Reid) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 41, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 27 Leg.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lankford
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--41

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Coons
     Franken
     Graham
     Kirk
     Lee
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                        Vote on Amendment No. 74

  Mr. McCONNELL. I call for regular order with respect to Reed 
amendment No. 74.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and 
nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays are ordered.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 1 
minute on the Reed-Collins amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CORNYN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham), the Senator from Utah (Mr. 
Lee), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), 
the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Franken), and the Senator from Nevada 
(Mr. Reid) are necessarily absent.

[[Page 1057]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 45, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 28 Leg.]

                                YEAS--49

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Lankford
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--45

     Ayotte
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Coons
     Franken
     Graham
     Kirk
     Lee
     Reid
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion on the pending 
substitute to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the Murkowski 
     amendment No. 2: the Keystone XL pipeline approval act.
         Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Richard Burr, Jerry 
           Moran, John Thune, Marco Rubio, Johnny Isakson, Kelly 
           Ayotte, Ben Sasse, Deb Fischer, John Boozman, David 
           Vitter, Tim Scott, Roger F. Wicker, Richard C. Shelby, 
           Michael B. Enzi, Roy Blunt.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. McCONNELL. I send a cloture motion on the underlying bill to the 
desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on S. 1, a bill to 
     approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
         Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Richard Burr, Jerry 
           Moran, John Thune, Marco Rubio, Johnny Isakson, Kelly 
           Ayotte, Ben Sasse, Deb Fischer, John Boozman, David 
           Vitter, Tim Scott, Roger F. Wicker, Richard C. Shelby, 
           Michael B. Enzi, Roy Blunt.


                       Unanimous Consent Request

  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that at 9:30 a.m. Friday, the 
Senate proceed to vote in relation to the following amendments in the 
order listed: Sullivan No. 67, Cardin No. 75, Murkowski No. 98, Flake 
No. 103, Cruz No. 15, Moran No. 73, and Daines No. 132; further, that 
all amendments on the list be subject to a 60-vote affirmative 
threshold for adoption and no second degrees be in order to the 
amendments. I ask consent that there be 2 minutes of debate equally 
divided between each vote and that all votes after the first in the 
series be 10-minute votes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, now that we have purged the calendar of 
five of the six Democratic amendments, the majority leader tells us it 
is time to vote.
  It doesn't strike me that this is in the best interest of what we are 
trying to achieve. We are going back and forth in a bipartisan, 
constructive fashion. I would like to ask the majority leader is he 
prepared to be in session tomorrow and to consider Democratic and 
Republican amendments and work through the list, including the ones he 
just tabled?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Does the Senator from Illinois intend to object to my 
consent?
  Mr. DURBIN. What I am asking is to try to amend this so it does have 
some balance. The majority leader mentioned one Democratic amendment 
and at least five or six Republican amendments to be considered 
tomorrow.
  Mr. McCONNELL. We just had votes on Democratic amendments that the 
Senator's Members offered and he didn't want to agree to have a vote.
  Mr. DURBIN. The Record will reflect the spirited debate on those 
amendments when the majority leader wouldn't even give the authors 60 
seconds to describe what was in the amendment.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Am I correct the Senator from Illinois is going to 
object?
  Mr. DURBIN. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, 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. McCONNELL. 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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, 
the next vote will be Monday, at 5:30 p.m. The assistant Democratic 
leader and I have agreed to announce no more votes tonight.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________