Maria Cantwell

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kansas for his remarks and extend my sympathies to the family. I thank the Senator for his rendition of his State's fortitude. My State is working with fortitude right now too in the Oso-Darrington mudslides, and perseverance is a good word. So I thank him.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 714, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726, 727, and 728, and all nominations placed on the Secretary's desk in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy; that the nominations be confirmed, en bloc; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be made in order to any of these nominations; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 406, submitted earlier today.

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of PN1058; that the Senate proceed to vote on the nomination; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that any related statements be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, April 1, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; and that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 3979, the vehicle for the unemployment insurance extension; further, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucuses.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 407, as a further mark of respect in memory of the late Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 405, submitted earlier today.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 407, submitted earlier today.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the Owens nomination confirmed today, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I yield back all time.

Ms. CANTWELL. Thank you Madam President. I want to thank my Senate colleagues and Senator Risch for helping us get the next Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration to the floor. First, I want to recognize everybody's thoughts and prayers here for Oso and Darrington, WA, and for the people who have been hit by an unbelievable tragedy. Our hearts go out to this community and I want to say that this has been a tremendous effort by first responders. There are hundreds of volunteers, thousands of dollars of contributions. And Darrington High School students made 1,300 sandwiches to try to support the research and recovery effort. I thank them for all of their hard work. One of the reasons I want to get a Small Business Administrator is because this agency is going to play a role in this recovery. I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, for her help and support. The Small Business Administration plays an important role for communities in disasters and the woman we have before us is a well- qualified woman who can help us with this crisis and continued small business lending. The SBA has been without an Administrator for 8 months, and it is critical that we get this position filled today. We cannot forget that small businesses create two out of three new jobs in our country--and the SBA provide $28 million small business assistance that helps them create more jobs. So every single day we need to think about small businesses in our community and how much we need to help and support them. Businesses, from Chobani Yogurt to Ben & Jerry's ice cream to Federal Express, have benefited from the SBA program. To have somebody like Maria Contreras- Sweet to be this person is critical for us. I urge my colleagues to support her in this nomination and to move forward on an SBA agenda. Everything from making sure we approve the 504 program, to the STEP export assistance program, and to make sure that we continue to make ground on exporting small business products-- made in the United States of America--to the growing middle-class around the globe. I thank my colleagues and I urge them to support this nominee.

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I understand that this will be a voice vote.

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask to be recognized for 3 minutes.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank Chairman Harkin and certainly Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr for their leadership on this bipartisan issue but especially Senator Mikulski for her constant leadership in making sure families in America are cared for. This is important bipartisan legislation, and the reauthorization of this legislation--the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014--will help ensure that families have access to quality, affordable childcare. The Child Care and Development Block Grant Program serves more than 1.6 million children per month nationwide. In my State it serves more than 39,000 children per month. With the support of these grants, parents can work, look for work, and participate in job-training programs while their children receive affordable childcare at quality centers or in the child's home. The child care and development block grants are a primary source of Federal support for childcare assistance, and they play a key role in promoting healthy development of children, especially at young ages. Research on the effects of early childhood development has continually shown that the foundation provided by early learning and childcare networks can prevent the achievement gaps at a young age. This bill enables States to invest in the programs that have proven to work for children and families. In Washington more than half of the children served by the child care and development block grants are younger than 4 years old, so in my State these grants are vital for preparing our youngest children with the support and skills they need to stay ahead once they enter into kindergarten. Professor Cathryn Booth-LaForce, at the University of Washington, said: Child care affects so many children that for society at large, even small effects are important. This bill would provide an additional 22,000 children across our Nation with childcare. That is a major effect. Expanding access to quality care can help thousands more children across the Nation get a running start on school. By preventing achievement gaps for our youngest children, we are creating successful students and building a skilled workforce for the future. This bill allows Washington to make the important investments in our youngest learners and in our future economy. So I am so proud to be here in support of this bipartisan effort, and again I thank Senator Mikulski, Senator Burr, and others for working together at a time when people didn't think this level of compromise would result in such an important piece of legislation moving forward. Once again I particularly wish to thank the dean of the women Senators, Senator Mikulski, for this effort and encourage my colleagues to support this bill, S. 1086, and make sure we get it passed before the end of this week. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Maryland. I thank him for all his work on the Chesapeake and so many important issues as it relates to this issue and for being here up all night with my colleagues on this important climate issue. I thank Senators Boxer and Whitehouse and Schatz for organizing this endeavor and for everybody participating. Obviously we are here to talk about climate change, but like my colleagues we know climate change is actually impacting jobs now because it is impacting our climate now. So while we are here to talk about what might happen in the future, I am here right now to specifically talk about what is happening to our economy and why we need to take action because ocean acidification is an economic issue and it affects so many different people in our economy in the Pacific Northwest. It affects our shellfish growers, which is a major industry. We have three and four generations of shellfish growers who are threatened now by the impact of carbon in our oceans and the warming of our oceans. So when you talk about climate and you talk about acidification of our oceans, you are talking about an industry that is key to the Northwest that is being affected today. Also, our crab fishermen are being affected today, which is an important part of our fishing industry all the way to the Bering Sea. A lot of people do not realize that the Alaska crab fishermen are based in Alaska and in Washington State. They very much depend on making sure we deal with this issue in the future if we want to protect these jobs and the important industry that is there. Sea levels are rising and forcing communities to deal with this issue. We want to help ticket these jobs, even jobs for the salmon fisherman. A lot of people watch ``Deadliest Catch'' and understand the seafood industry, but they may not understand that even salmon depend on a food source that is affected by ocean acidification, that it is not just killing oysters and shellfish, but it is also killing these pteropod that the salmon industry depends on too. You can see I am here to talk in relation to jobs because commercial fishing in Washington State is a $30 billion coastal economy with 42,000 jobs and contributes about $1.7 billion to our gross economic product. So for us this is the impact of climate that is being felt today, not in the future. It is being felt today. It threatens a key industry. Not only is that industry important to Washington State, it is also important to the Nation. It contributes $70 billion to the U.S. economy and supports over 1 million fishing jobs. So our inaction in Congress, deciding not to do something, basically threatens those 1 million jobs because the climate is impacting our oceans and our oceans are impacting the food supply these fishermen harvest. If we do not do something about this, we are going to have severe problems in the future. Why is this? The key point--if we could have just one chart today played over and over, I would have this chart--is our oceans absorb 25 percent of the CO2 emissions. That is right. All of the CO2 emissions, 25 percent of them basically sink into the ocean. So that means carbon emissions from fossil fuels are being absorbed into the ocean. That basically creates a very corrosive environment in our waters. So the notion that people think we can continue doing what we are doing and not make the change, I guarantee you the problems we are causing for our oceans is a serious threat. This graph shows you the kind of acidification that is happening in our sea water. That ocean acidification has increased 30 percent over the last 200 years. Oceans are on track to be 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century. The current rate of acidification is 10 times faster than anything Earth has experienced in the last 50 million years. As you can see, this increase of carbon and an increase of the acidity level in water, an increase in acidification, is what is causing this problem for us. Again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who think this is just something that we do not have to deal with are ignoring the real science and the state of our oceans. What does that acidification cause? I guess if there was another chart here I would make this chart also the star of the show, because this is not a science experiment, this is the current state of oyster larvae. Last night I was at a restaurant here in town and they offered Washington oysters, shellfish on the menu. That is great to see. But this is a picture of actual larvae, the beginning stages of these shellfish that are being impacted. You can see here that this is what acidification is doing to that larvae. It is not able to form. We saw in 2005 when shellfish production plummeted on the West Coast, it seemed like a freak accident, but then it happened again in 2006 and in 2007. Then in 2008, more than 80 percent of the oysters at Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery died before they could be planted into the shellfish farm. In total, billions of shellfish died because of that acidification. These images from Oregon State University show ocean acidification, what it does to the larvae because that acidification erodes and becomes corrosive and actually kills the oysters. As I said, these are third- and fourth-generation jobs in my State. It is very important that we protect them. They have been a big driving part of our economy. But when corrosive sea water increases and then you have a 60-percent decrease in production, you are talking about hundreds of jobs in Washington State that are being impacted. We need to do something right now to act. It does not just affect the larvae of oysters, acidification destroys other shellfish. This again is another example of a pteropod, which just happens to be the food source for salmon. Some of these shellfish are what salmon feed off of for a protein source. Yet these same shells are not being able to form. Over 30 percent of the marine life in Puget Sound is a calcifier. So these calcifiers basically are species that are a calcium carbonate shell, just like the oysters and the shellfish, that needs to form. That is 30 percent of our marine life, of our food source. So if we do not do something about ocean acidification, these shells are not forming, and we are going to have an even more serious impact to our salmon industry in Washington State. My constituents know these are big issues. In fact, the Seattle Times ran a groundbreaking series called ``Sea Change,'' the highlighting of the impact of carbon to the oceans because it could--as this article details--cause a collapse of that huge Alaska crab fishing industry--a collapse. I know my colleagues from the Northeast are here. They understand what a collapse to a fishing industry means. They understand it means a lot of people without jobs, it means a lot of people who depend on the fishing industry as ancillary or related jobs end up without jobs. They understand that a collapse of the fishing industry means a collapse to the economy overall in their region. So if we do not do something to address acidification, we are talking about climate change impacting a key jobs sector and causing huge job losses. That is what this chart shows. Basically it shows how the crab harvest industry is being impacted by ocean acidification and that it could cause a very precipitous decline. We cannot afford that. I will show you why we cannot afford that. We just recently--people might have caught it on the west coast. You might think what I just showed you is about oysters and about the pteropod for a salmon source, but scallops, we just had I think 1 week ago a massive die-off, another canary in the coal mine. Basically it shows that 10 million scallops died off the coast of British Colombia. Acidification was to blame. So acidic water was blamed for west coast scallop die-off. It shut down a processing plant and one-third of its workforce. You can see these things basically are killing jobs. So ocean acidification kills jobs. Us doing nothing about ocean acidification or about CO2 in the atmosphere is going to cause us economic problems. I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to make sure we support measures that will allow us to mitigate now the impact of this and plan for the future because we cannot have what is happening now. We have a buoy system that we have deployed all across the United States. That buoy system helps us identify acidification levels and helps the fishermen come up with alternative strategies about when to do their planting. Let's just say it this way: They figure out when is a perfect moment to actually have the seeding. If you have too much CO2 and a warming of the oceans, then figuring out that very moment where it might not be so acidic or challenging and then actually doing the planting is giving us some problems. But these are high-risk tactics. We actually have to reduce the level of CO2. We are here this morning to talk about how this issue impacts the industry in my State. But this last chart shows a picture that is irrefutable. This is ocean acidification's effects on coral. Here is healthy coral. You can see it is vibrant, colorful. If you have ever been off our coast or walking on the beaches, you can see the shell life that exists in a healthy coral reef. This is the same coral reef years later with an unhealthy effect. We are here this morning to talk about jobs, to talk about climate and its impact on our economy today. It is important that we address this issue. I have sponsored bipartisan legislation with my colleague on the other side of the aisle called the CLEAR Act. It is just one idea, but the premise of that is that we have to not only reduce greenhouse gases now, we have to mitigate the impact and plan for a more diverse energy source in the future. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about trying to save jobs in the United States of America by doing a better job of planning on this important issue. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, climate change is not a problem of the future. Climate change is drastically impacting our oceans today. Acidification is increasing at astonishing rates, and our oceans take up 25 percent of our carbon emissions. Carbon and ocean acidification kill our oysters, crabs, and other shellfish, and impact the shellfish that other sea life depends on, such as our salmon, so the impact to an industry in our State that is worth $30 billion and supports 148,000 jobs is serious. Just last week there was a huge die-off of scallops in British Columbia, resulting in 30 percent of employees in that region being laid off. So climate change is not only killing oysters and scallops, but it is killing our fishing jobs. That is why we are here tonight, because we know we need to act to save jobs and help our economy. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL. Thank you, Mr. President. I am pleased to join my colleagues tonight in talking about the economic and environmental imperative of addressing climate change. I thank all of the members of the climate task force, all my colleagues who are here, and particularly Senator Schatz from Hawaii, for organizing tonight. The fact is, as we have heard, climate change is real and it is happening. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 3,000 scientists from over 130 countries who have studied climate change for over 20 years, global emissions must be stabilized by midcentury in order to avoid the most catastrophic and irreversible consequences of climate change. Studies from the National Research Council and the U.S. Global Climate Research Program reinforce that global temperatures are steadily rising and contributing to more extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Scientists from the University of New Hampshire have found that humans are responsible for releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are causing rapid climate change. I only need to look at New Hampshire to see the real economic and health implications. In New Hampshire, climate change is contributing to sea level rise, which imperils businesses, homes, and coastal communities such as Portsmouth.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I too come to the floor to say goodbye to our colleague from Montana and wish him well in his new endeavor as Ambassador to China--something the Pacific Northwest cares dearly about. So I know we will be working with him in his new capacity, but it really is a very historic moment for all of us and certainly for those of us in the Pacific Northwest. I will never forget Max and I riding back to our offices on the subway once and talking about the Inland Empire. I think people thought we were making something up, but that is how we refer to our part of the country and the interior, which is this huge economy that is built on agriculture, built on trade, built on natural resources that we hold so dear and for which we fight. To come to the Senate and to sit in the seat Scoop Jackson once held and think about how you will have the wherewithal and ability to remember all of what Scoop and Maggie and everybody fought for and to know the incarnation of that is right there in Max Baucus, the person who worked with them, who saw them, and who then carried that torch on these important policy issues, to me, is so important to recognize today because he really is a legislator in the mold of Magnuson and Jackson. I thank Max for one thing in particular; that is, doing deals. Around here people sometimes criticize doing deals. But you know what. The art of compromise and moving our country forward requires that, and Max became a model dealmaker in the context of these important policies on which we have worked, whether the modernization of the trade legislation for dislocated workers and expanding that program and making it more robust because it needed to be modernized or whether some of the changes we have made to CHIP, because I can tell you he certainly helped us in Washington State in making sure we had our fair share as regards the Children's Health Insurance Program. Just speaking about CHIP in general, I can't say enough about CHIP as a program. When you get discouraged around here about what we are actually getting done or what problems we are solving, if you think of nothing else but CHIP--just the Children's Health Insurance Program-- and literally giving health insurance to millions of children across America who wouldn't automatically get health insurance, this job is worth it right here and now. So I thank Max for that. Certainly on the Affordable Care Act I have often said that Max applied his marathon skills to the patience of Job in actually crafting that legislation. I think we probably worked every day for 2 years in committee to make that legislation a reality, and it took a lot of patience. Many times late at night I would have lost my patience with the process and our colleagues, but Max didn't, and the end result is that this country is moving forward on a major health care policy that I know 30 or 40 years from now will be in the same category as our other key programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as a foundation and as a base of what we are doing to make sure people have affordable health care in this country. Max, I thank you for the staff you hired as well because in the Finance Committee, while we didn't always agree on every single policy, they also came to the table ready to make things happen, and I certainly appreciate that. To my colleagues, I feel as though we really are losing a piece of our institution today and somebody who really understood the issues that I care about in the Pacific Northwest and somebody who really knew how to make things happen. I know our path forward is a new course on the Finance Committee, but I hope we will continue in the way that Max brought forth issues because in the end it is about improving the lives of the people we represent, and that means we are not always going to agree, but we are going to have to put ideas on the table and we are going to have to get them passed into law. So, Max, as you go across the big Pacific, I know you will remember us, but we will be looking to you too because there is a lot we have to get done. I know that as you are running around Beijing, you will have that little app they now have that shows the level of pollution in Beijing that comes right off the U.S. Embassy, and you will be talking to the Chinese about how we have to work together on a clean energy strategy, and we will applaud you for that. But don't forget all of us here because there is a lot of work to be done. We are very proud to call you a former colleague and a key leader in the history of the Inland Empire. Thank you very much, Max. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in asking for the passage of the farm bill that we are going to have a vote on shortly. I thank my colleague from Michigan, the Chair of the Agriculture Committee, for her unbelievable work on this very important policy for America. I know she understands these issues well because, while everybody thinks of Michigan as a manufacturing State, it also is a very big agricultural State. We share a lot of the same crops, being kind of on a northern plateau: apples and wine and a variety of others. I certainly thank her for her help and support in getting an important new program in our school lunches for very nutritious peas and lentils, called pulse crops, and to thank her for her input. I rise today to talk about the importance of the farm bill, because it is a jobs bill for our Nation. Two years ago I joined my colleague Senator Johanns from Nebraska and sent a bipartisan letter with 44 Senators saying it was time to act on the farm bill because we thought it was so important for our economy as we were still struggling coming out of a recession. Today it is finally here, that opportunity to put all of that hard work into a bill that goes to the President's desk. Agriculture employs 16 million Americans, and it produces exports worth $115 billion of agricultural products to markets around the world. I do not think we always focus on that. A lot of times we come out here and we talk about the individual crops in our State or the individual focus. But what we really need to understand is it is a very big product for the United States. We live in a very competitive global economy. One of the biggest advantages we have in this global economy is that we in the United States of America know how to grow things. So the emerging middle class around the world can now afford to eat higher quality products. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue put it best in a speech he gave about the global marketplace last year. He said: You play to your strength. You leverage your advantages and then you find ways to improve them. And one of the greatest strengths in America is agriculture. Mr. Donohue said those remarks as an example of what innovation is driving in American agriculture. He is absolutely right, because not only do we know how to grow things but we also know how to innovate. There is a lot of innovation going on in the ag economy. In fact, there are some people in the Pacific Northwest who say now there is as much investment going into new innovations in agriculture as there was recently in high tech or even green energy. So people get it. It is a great investment. I have seen in Washington State cutting-edge research done at our lab in Prosser for new wheat rotation crops in the Palouse, to savvy entrepreneurs making connections like getting Washington cherries into the new Korean market. So simply put, this is a growing, growing opportunity for the U.S. economy. American farmers and businesses are seeing demands for their products rise on two fronts: First, American consumers want to buy their products directly from the farms in their communities, so that means the farms are creating products for exactly what their end customer wants. Because they are doing that, they can make more money on delivering to the end customer exactly the kind of product they want. Secondly, a rising middle class in places such as Asia to South America wants to use their new-found spending power on purchasing our products as well. So this farm bill helps on both of those fronts. Again, thanks to the chairwoman from Michigan. It helps get more goods to the market, whether that is a farmer's market around the corner from your local supermarket, or whether that is a new market in South Korea. In 2030, China's middle class will have 1 billion people. That is up from 150 million today. India's middle class will grow by more than 800 percent. Maybe because we sit on the Pacific, just like the Presiding Officer, he knows how important it is to get products to those marketplaces. In 2012, the United Nations reported that the world will need 70 percent more food by the middle of the century. This is a tremendous opportunity but only if Congress acts today and passes the farm bill. We need to maintain our investment in research and exports so American farmers can thrive and win in the expanding global marketplace. I am confident if we do that, our farmers and our businesses--and we make sure that they have a level playing--will win. But other countries are playing for keeps too. Every farmer around the world wants access to that rising middle class. The European Union spent $700 million on export promotion for food products in 2011. That is nearly three times as much as America spent. China is planning to boost its agricultural investment over the next decade. It is a sentiment that I heard in October when I visited one of our wholesalers when he was talking to an overseas client. He was talking about export and agricultural leaders in Washington State and how other countries were starting to use particularly the apple market to try to open new opportunities. That is why we need to increase opportunities within the farm bill and to move forward on trade deals that help open the door to new agricultural markets. That will help unleash an entrepreneurial spirit we need to be aggressive about. Many people have heard of Walla Walla-- or maybe you have not or maybe you thought that was a term. But Walla Walla is a great community in the southeast corner of our State with 30,000 people. It is deeply tied to the global economy. It has wine and wheat and peas and lentils. The farmers there, I know, are very appreciative of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. They thanked me many times for making sure that got passed. I can tell you that many of those farmers went to Bogota to try to sell wheat to the growing Colombian middle class. That is what entrepreneurship in America is all about. So Congress mist not dampen our entrepreneurial spirit. Farmers need to start this season and make sure they can put long-term plans in place. Then the seeds that will be planted, the fields that will be harvested, the crops that will be shipped, the smart, targeted investment toward those new international markets will be done. That is what this farm bill is about. The bill, I can tell you, is a compromise. Again, I thank the chairwoman for her hard work, because I know how hard she worked on forging those compromises. I can tell you that it cuts SNAP far more than I would have cut it. I was one of 26 Senators who voted for the amendment by my colleague from New York offered to restore those cuts. But it is time we move forward. I want to take a second to talk about three reasons why people should be for this farm bill. First, as I talked about, it continues to expand the export programs that are so important for America's new markets. While I might have been for a more robust program, some of my colleagues obviously have not quite understood why this is such a great benefit to market U.S. products around the globe. I think some people think of big global corporations and things; why do we need that? Well, I can tell you, when I am talking about apples or cherries or pears, these are not big corporations. They are a collection of hundreds or thousands of farmers working together. When MAP helps target getting people in the Asian market to consume those products, it is a win-win situation for America. Secondly, this bill funds research, making our crops stronger and healthier and more competitive. Third, it starts initiatives on products such as a pulse crop that I think can be so beneficial to us over the long run with new, as I said, school lunches, but just healthier products. Our new farm bill will do the research on specialty crops that are so important for us in the Pacific Northwest. This is the first time in this farm bill that the reauthorization makes long-term investments in specialty crop block grant programs and specialty crop research initiatives. Again, I thank the Senator from Michigan for her help on that, understanding how important these specialty crops are. I think everybody in America and around the world knows the brand of Washington apples. I can tell you, I have been in the Chinese marketplace and seen how people took off the Washington label, particularly on Fuji apples, and tried to stick it on other apples, because they knew if that sticker was on that apple, everybody in China would consume those apples even though they were not really Washington Fuji. So what this specialty research initiative does is say we are not going to let apples and pears and cherries basically constantly fall off the radar as it relates to research, but they will be a permanent part of a program for research and have a block grant program so they can basically continue to do the research that is needed. Again, if any of my colleagues have ever had a chance to visit the research facilities within their State, they will know what I am talking about. If they haven't, they should go and do it. But when we are fighting against or upon a competitive field with Israel, China, or anybody else when it comes to apples, we constantly have to answer questions about phytosanitary issues, and we have to constantly talk about ways we can make sure we gain access to those marketplaces. Science and research are the only ways we can fight some of these trade barriers that exist when our products can't get into those countries. So we need to make sure we continue to fight that. Lastly, I am very pleased about pulse crops--peas, lentils, things like chickpeas. I am sure a lot of people ate a lot of hummus over the weekend while they were watching the Super Bowl and the Seattle Seahawks victory. Hummus is a crop that has exploded 500 percent in the last 15 years. It is definitely a product people have been consuming all over the world for a long time, but we in the United States are starting to consume more of it. The fact that product has had such a huge increase has given our farmers in Washington State great opportunity. But this product is also a very healthy product and one that we fought hard to make sure would be included in a new school lunch program, something where students could get access to a high- protein, high-fiber product that certainly is more affordable for our schools. With the research that is going to go on on pulse crop derivatives and the fact that school lunches are now going to have the opportunity to serve pulse crops more aggressively, we are very excited about this farm bill. I thank my colleagues in the Senate, Senators Crapo and Risch. I also thank my colleagues from South Dakota and North Dakota for helping because both States are very big on these pulse crops. They certainly helped to make sure this stayed in the conference report. To all of my colleagues, please vote for a bill that will really help our economy, will help us tackle the growing middle class around the world and keep America putting great products on those market shelves and help create more jobs in the United States. I yield the floor.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Wednesday, February 12, 2014, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct an oversight hearing to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Indian Law and Order Commission Report: A Roadmap for Making Native America Safer.'' Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at (202) 224-2251.

Ms. CANTWELL

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.