[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 948-949]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week marks a somewhat dark 
milestone, which is the 5-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's, in 
my view, reprehensible decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election 
Commission. This was some fete of activism by the conservative bloc of 
the Supreme Court. It overturned the laws of Congress, it overturned 
the will of the American people, and it gave wildly outside influence 
over our elections to corporations and big-money interests, creating 
what one newspaper in Kentucky called a ``tsunami of slime.''
  Well, 5 years on and the evidence is in. The evidence is in our 
elections, where this dam burst of outside cash that has wiped out 
previous campaign spending records, and the evidence is in this 
Chamber, where we once had a thriving bipartisan conversation on 
climate change, and instead of that we have now been reduced to this 
Keystone XL Pipeline bill--a show of force from the fossil fuel 
industry and virtual silence from the other side of the aisle on 
climate change.
  I will say that today marked an unusually bright spot in that 
darkness when 98 out of 99 Senators voting voted that climate change 
was real and not a hoax and when we came so close to an amendment that 
stated that climate change was real and caused by human activity that 
the sponsor of the amendment had to vote against his own amendment in 
order to keep the number under 60 because there were enough votes at 
one stage in the vote count for that bill to have passed even the 
filibuster threshold. So that made it an interesting day today. But 
normally we are in blockade.
  The purpose of the effort that we have been on has been to fast-track 
the Keystone XL Pipeline--a tar sands pipeline that may, at the present 
oil price, be an economic zombie, basically a dead pipeline walking.
  Canadian authorities say that the tar sands can't be extracted 
profitably at under $85 a barrel. The report from the State Department 
said that the break price where they could take it out by train as an 
alternative to the pipeline was at $75 per barrel, and the price today 
is around $50 per barrel. So we really don't know whether this pipeline 
has an economic future. What we do know is that if it were to operate, 
it would pass enough tar sands through it to unleash additional carbon 
pollution equal to 6 million added cars on the road each year for 50 
years.
  If we take a look at this conversation here, other than the votes we 
forced today, the effect of Citizens United on our politics is pretty 
plain to see. Citizens United has not expanded debate in the Senate; it 
has crushed debate in the Senate. Why? Because since the Supreme 
Court's decision in Citizens United, the big fossil fuel polluters and 
their network of associated interests have become among the biggest 
spenders--relying heavily, by the way, on undisclosed, untraceable dark 
money.
  According to the Center for American Progress, oil, gas, and coal 
companies and electric utilities alone reported spending more than $84 
million on the 2014 elections. And that is just what they reported. The 
industry's undisclosed spending in that election through groups not 
required to disclose their donors or on so-called issue ads that don't 
need to be disclosed--the total is estimated to be in the hundreds of 
millions of dollars. Well, money talks, and in politics it talks plenty 
loud, and $100 million has a lot to say.
  One example is Americans for Prosperity--a Koch brothers' venture--
disclosed election spending of $6.4 million to the FEC for last year's 
midterm elections, but that group's own officials have boasted that the 
real number is as much as $130 million--$130 million in just one 
election by just one group. It is that kind of extravagant spending 
which has bought the Koch brothers a vast political network, with 
employees in critical States, with voter bases tied into our consumer 
data, with advertising and media-buying specialists. Indeed, that 
sophisticated Koch brothers electioneering capacity has now been 
reported in the general media to rival or exceed that of the Republican 
National Committee. Think about that. A few very wealthy

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individuals in the fossil fuel business--huge polluters--are now such 
big players in our politics that they rival our national parties. It is 
small wonder that it is hard to have an honest conversation about 
carbon pollution in the Senate.
  Most of it is hidden. The Washington Post has reported that at least 
31 percent of all independent spending in the 2014 elections--which 
were, by the way, the most expensive midterm elections in American 
history. At least 31 percent of that was spent by groups not required 
to disclose their donors. The Washington Post also noted that the 31 
percent doesn't even include those issue ads. They are also not 
disclosed. So we don't know fully how bad the influence of the fossil 
fuel polluters is, but we sure know it is bad.
  Interestingly, the same Supreme Court that decided Citizens United as 
a part of that decision decided by a margin of 8 to 1 that disclosure 
of outside spending was necessary and appropriate. The majority said 
this, and I will quote the decision:

       Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders 
     and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations 
     and elected officials accountable . . .

  These intervening 5 years have seen a concerted effort to prevent and 
frustrate disclosure. Dark money spending by so-called independent 
groups with no disclosure requirements has more than doubled since 
2010.
  Ludicrous factfinding by the Court's five conservative activists 
concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections. It 
is laughable on its face, but that laughable conclusion also overlooks 
a very clear fact: limitless, untraceable political money doesn't even 
have to be spent to corrupt our democracy. It can corrupt through the 
threat of spending or through the promise of spending. What Citizens 
United gave corporations and their political instruments the power to 
do, it also gave them the power to threaten or promise to do, and we in 
the public will never see those backroom corporate threats and promises 
or the deals that result. The candidate will know, the special 
interests will know, but the public will be the ones left in the dark.
  Some lobby groups are a little bolder. The Koch-backed Americans for 
Prosperity openly promised to wipe out candidates who support curbs on 
carbon pollution. The group's president said if the Republicans support 
a carbon tax or climate regulations, they would ``be at a severe 
disadvantage in the Republican nomination process. . . . We would 
absolutely make that a crucial issue.''
  The threat is plain. Step out of line and here come the attack ads 
and the primary challengers--all funded by the deep pockets of the 
fossil fuel industry, enabled by Citizens United and largely protected 
from disclosure, so the public cannot see what is going on.
  The effect of Citizens United has been particularly clear in the 
Senate. There once was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on 
climate change. Senator McCain ran for President on an active, robust 
program of addressing climate change. Senator Collins did a bipartisan 
bill on climate change. Senator Kirk voted in the House for the Waxman-
Markey cap-and-trade bill. Senator Flake wrote articles supporting a 
carbon fee as long as the taxes were reduced elsewhere to offset the 
increased revenue from the carbon fee and on and on. My first exposure 
to this was the Warner-Lieberman bill and the Warner was Republican 
Senator John Warner.
  That has been a while. Since 2010, the year Citizens United was 
decided, this honest debate about how we address this problem for the 
benefit of the American people has flat-lined. Since 2010 the climate 
evidence has only become stronger. NASA and NOAA just officially 
declared 2014 the hottest year ever recorded--ever--easily breaking the 
previous records, the agencies say.
  But as the climate alarm bells grow louder, as the Earth sends her 
signals to us through our scientists' measurements about what has 
happened to the oceans, measuring the acidification of the oceans, 
about what is happening in our atmosphere, measuring the carbon 
concentrations in the atmosphere--as all that information has advanced, 
there has been just silence in this building since then. Instead of 
talking about what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and 
oceans, instead, No. 1, the first agenda of the new majority: We are 
talking about letting polluters pump more tar sands crude, one of the 
most toxic fossil fuels on the planet, out onto the global market. 
Citizens United did not enhance speech in our democracy. Instead it 
allowed wealthy special interests to suppress and silence real debate.
  So I have filed an amendment to the Keystone bill to see what 
corporate influence pervades this effort. My amendment would require 
any company that stands to make over $1 billion from the pipeline or 
from the development of the tar sands to disclose its campaign spending 
over $10,000 from the last election cycle and going forward. The public 
needs to be able to connect the dots.
  I am also reintroducing the general disclosure act, called the 
DISCLOSE Act, to require all groups spending on elections to report 
their large expenditures and their high-dollar donors. The Supreme 
Court has said we cannot keep corporate interests from meddling in our 
popular elections. They are people, too, now. So now that the 
corporations are people, too, let's at least show the voters who it is 
who is trying to sway their votes. It is a pretty simple idea. It is 
what the Supreme Court Justices themselves prescribed, and it is an 
idea that Republicans over and over and over have supported in the 
past.
  The fact we must face in the Senate is that polluter money has 
polluted our democracy, just as their carbon pollution has polluted our 
atmosphere and oceans. So it is time to disclose. On climate change 
where we have an overwhelming scientific consensus, where we have the 
American people, majorities of Democrats and Republicans, supporting 
strong congressional action on climate, where we have American 
businesses small and large that see the folly of ignoring the looming 
risk, and where we have the national security community, our Armed 
Forces actively preparing to face the threat climate change poses to 
American safety and international stability--here, by the way, just as 
an example, is the Department of the Army's high-level climate change 
vulnerability assessment. I don't think they are kidding us and I don't 
think they are part of a hoax.
  Mr. President, I thank you for your patience this evening and I will 
conclude with the remark that I ordinarily conclude these speeches 
with: It is time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.

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