Angus King

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. The dairy producers that I have spoken with are calling on the USDA Secretary to undertake a study of alternatives and to agree to hold prehearings on such alternatives as a basic component of the USDA's fundamental mission to the dairy industry. They believe it is time for Congress to direct the USDA to take the bull by the horns and to ensure that all regions of the United States can sustain viable dairy sectors and meet local, national and international demand for high quality U.S. dairy products.

Mr. KING. I understand that the Dairy Industry Advisory Committee has recommended that the Secretary take such action and review interested party proposals to address class III and class IV pricing formula changes in a participatory and transparent manner.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I am delighted to congratulate PORTopera on its 20th anniversary season. Since its opening performance of ``Carmen'' in the summer of 1995, PORTopera has been a pillar of Maine's artisan community and inspired countless young musicians and performing artists to pursue their passion for the opera. Over the years it has brought some of the world's greatest stars and most highly acclaimed productions to Maine audiences and played an invaluable role in enriching our communities. PORTopera's dedication to excellence has been recognized around the country earning praise in Opera News for its 2012 production of ``Madama Butterfly'' and the Boston Globe for ``Le Nozze di Figaro'' in 2001. Furthermore, PORTopera's educational outreach initiatives such as the young artists programs and the opera-in-school program with the University of Maine have provided future generations of singers a place to hone their skills and learn from some of opera's greatest figures. As Maine's artistic community continues to grow, I am pleased to recognize PORTopera for its leadership and tremendous accomplishments. Congratulations and thank you.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Deanna Wilbur be granted the privilege of the floor for the purpose of being here during these remarks.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, we are going to have a historic vote this afternoon--historic at least in recent history--because for the first time in 3 or 4 years we are going to pass a budget--at least I certainly hope so. It is historic because, while the process was not perfect, it is a budget that was arrived at fundamentally through negotiations, through discussions, and through compromise between the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the chairman of the House Budget Committee. We are finally talking to each other. This agreement is important. This vote is important for three basic reasons. One is that the agreement maintains the momentum of deficit reduction that has been in place here since the summer of 2011 when the Budget Control Act was passed. In fact, rather than breaking the budget numbers, it actually improves them in terms of deficit reduction by some $22 billion. And it maintains, as I said, the momentum. One of the points that has been lost in the discussion about the budget and the budget deficit is that the Federal budget deficit has fallen faster in the last 2\1/2\ to 3 years than at any time in the past 40 or 50 years. It has fallen from almost 10 percent of GDP to under 4 percent of GDP over the past 2\1/2\ years. That is progress. I think one of the problems we have around here is that often we don't know how to declare victory. We don't celebrate our successes. I am not prepared to declare victory in the fight for fiscal responsibility, but I am prepared to declare progress, and I think that is what we have made when we have more than trillion-dollar deficits that have been cut more than in half. So the first reason I think this bill should be supported is that it is not a budget buster by any means; instead, it is a continuation of the momentum toward rational fiscal policies that we have been on, and I think it is something we should continue. No. 2, this budget bill will finally get us out of the business of governing by crisis, of lurching from crisis to crisis and threats of shutdown and continuing resolutions year to year, month to month, quarter to quarter. It will provide some certainty to the Congress, to the government, and to the country about what the budget numbers are going to be. I think it is important that people realize exactly what it is we are voting on today. Essentially, it is one number. It is what is called a top-line number. This is not the budget that embodies all the detailed decisions about where those dollars go. Those decisions will be made by the two Appropriations Committees of the two Houses between now and the middle of January. But by providing a number, those committees now know what their targets are. They know what their limits are. They know what they have to work with. It will enable them to make the kinds of decisions on priorities and spending that we should have been making all along. By governing by continuing resolution, essentially what we are doing is using the priorities of last year and the year before and the year before that. And then, of course, the sequester on top of a continuing resolution is really a double budgetary whammy because the sequester is a cut. That is difficult enough to deal with, but it is a cut that was designed to be stupid, and it succeeded. It was designed to be so unacceptable that Congress would feel they had to find an alternative. Unfortunately, this past March that didn't happen. So the sequester, which was across-the-board cuts by account, went into place. That meant that within the military, within the Pentagon, within the Navy, within the FAA, and within the Department of Transportation, each account had to be cut. Some accounts probably could use some cutting and other accounts desperately needed the funding that was made available. This bill relieves the irrationality of the sequester while maintaining the sequester's downward pressure on spending. Finally, and I think most importantly, what this bill we will be voting on this afternoon will do is demonstrate to the country that we can do our job. I was talking to people in Maine yesterday, and they said: Well, why should you be puffing up your chest and pounding your chest about just doing what you ought to be doing all along? I couldn't really argue with that, except that we haven't been doing our job. And the fact that we are now at least inching toward doing it in the manner we are supposed to is progress--at least it is progress in recent history. I think that is one of the most important parts of this bill. I think that is the signal it sends to the country--that we can, in fact, talk to each other; we can compromise; we can make financial and fiscal arrangements around here that make sense, that are rational, that are prioritized, and we can do our job. When I was in Maine last weekend, the most common question I got was this: Why can't those people down there talk to each other? Why can't they work things out? We do that in our town meetings, we do that in our businesses, and we do that in our families. Why can't they? Well, in this case, they have. It wasn't a perfect process, but at least it involved bipartisan, bicameral negotiations that get us to the point where we have a budget we can vote on today. Do I like it? I don't like every piece of it. I don't like the pension hit the Senator from Texas described. That wouldn't have been in my proposal. In fact, I made a proposal at the budget conference that was quite different from this one. It wasn't accepted. That is how this place works. My favorite philosopher, Mick Jagger, said, ``You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.'' What we need right now is a budget. It is something we can work from that gives us some certainty. I believe we can fix this pension problem. In fact, I have joined with Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire on a bill that would replace the cuts to the military pension, dealing with some offshore tax benefits that I think is a much more sensible way to fill that $6 billion gap. We can do that because the pension proposal doesn't take effect for 2 years--not until December 2015. So we can fix that, but we have to get this budget passed now. To answer the question ``Why can't they talk,'' they have talked, and I think that is important. Now I would like to turn to a slightly different topic, but it is related to the budget. In 1997 the Congress passed something called the sustainable growth rate, which was designed to control reimbursement rates for physicians and providers under Medicare. The problem is that it has turned into a monster that reduces physician fees to the point where they won't serve Medicare patients unless it is fixed. Each year since 2002 we have fixed it year by year, but it is always temporary. It is always a patch. In fact, it has gotten its own name in the lexicon of Washington: the ``doc fix.'' It is something we have to do. Everybody knows we have to do it. But why not fix it for good? The Congressional Budget Office tells us that if we fix it once and for all, it would cost $116 billion over the next 10 years. That sounds like a big number, but it happens that there is a place we can go to get that money that I think fits with it very well. In 1990, under President George H.W. Bush, the Medicaid drug program was created, and because the government was buying drugs under Medicaid in very large quantities, they sought a volume discount from the pharmaceutical companies--perfectly rational; any of us would ask for a volume discount if we were buying in large quantities--and, indeed, Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries had discounts or rebates on their drugs from 1990 to 2006. In 2006, Part D of Medicare was passed. We provided a drug benefit to Medicare recipients. But one of the wackiest parts of that bill said that the government could no longer negotiate for volume discounts. I hear a lot of discussion around here about private enterprise and business and how we should run the government like a business. No rational business would buy any product--cars, gasoline, drugs, or anything else--in enormous quantities and not seek and gain from the sellers some kind of volume discount. Senator Rockefeller has introduced S. 740, which essentially says: Let's return Medicaid beneficiaries--not all Medicare beneficiaries but Medicaid recipients--to the status of prior to 2006, where they will get applied to their drug purchases--or the government actually gets-- the same kind of rebates they got for the 16 years from 1990 to 2006. This will produce $140 billion over the next 10 years. It will not cut expenses to recipients; it will only save the government money. It seems to me this is a sensible way to fix the doc fix once and for all and to do something that makes sense for the taxpayers, which is to acquire for them volume discounts, volume rebates that are available today for other Medicaid recipients who aren't under Medicare and for the VA, and it puts them on the same status, these so-called dual- eligibles, people who are eligible for Medicaid and Medicare. Just this change would save $140 billion, and it would enable us to fix the doc fix permanently. It would also contribute about $30 billion to deficit reduction over the next 10 years. I think we have a historic opportunity this afternoon to pass a budget--the first budget, by the way, produced by a divided Congress, where the two Houses were in different political hands, since 1986. And I think that is an achievement. It is something that a month ago I wouldn't have bet too much on, but I am very appreciative and admiring of Chairman Murray and Chairman Ryan for coming together and putting their ideological issues aside and coming up with an arrangement, an agreement which allows us to have some certainty and which can signal to the country that we are, in fact, capable of doing the most fundamental responsibility we have, which is to pass a budget. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for 15 minutes.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr President, I wish to associate myself with the comments of the senior Senator from Washington. I am pleased to know that it is her intent that the work of not-for-profit servicers advances and that they will continue to be allowed to compete for additional accounts in the future. In Maine, two not-for-profit servicers, the Finance Authority of Maine and Maine Education Services, provide essential services to Maine students through financial literacy education and the servicing of Federal student loans. Indeed, not-for-profit servicers do meaningful work across the country, and I am glad to know it is the Senate Budget Committee Chairman's intent to continue to allow these State agencies and nonprofits to play a role in servicing federal student loans.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I rise to address one of the most difficult issues we have faced in this bill, an issue on which the Armed Services Committee spent a great deal of time, in fact more time than on any other issue this year. It is the issue of sexual assault in the military. At our very first hearing where we were discussing this with a group of people, I made the observation that the only sure, long-term way to confront and defeat this tragic problem is through a change in the culture. It has to become unacceptable in the culture of our armed services that sexual assault is in any way tolerated or ignored. We have to solve this. It is a problem that has been festering for years. I understand the impatience of those who say we have been waiting for too long, we have to take strong steps. I think it is very important to realize that in the bill that is already before us are strong steps, the most comprehensive package of sexual assault provisions that has ever been in any Defense bill, to my knowledge, in the history of this institution. It has been taken seriously. It has been dealt with in a comprehensive way, some of the strongest changes ever. I think one of the most important I want to highlight is the criminalization of retaliation. A great deal of the discussion has been about reporting and the reluctance of victims to report, in part because of retaliation. One of the provisions in this bill is to make it a crime to retaliate against a victim for reporting one of these horrendous crimes. The debate today is about one particular provision, one particular provision dealing with sexual assault that is not in the bill, and the question boils down to who makes the decision to refer a sexual assault case to prosecution. I have heard the debate. I should have said at the outset, I so admire Senator Gillibrand for her intellect, for her passion, for her dedication, for her perseverance on this issue. Everybody involved in this debate has exactly the same goal, which is to get rid of this problem, to diminish it, to reduce it to zero, to not tolerate it. That is the goal of everyone involved. The question is whether removing the decision to refer to court-martial from the commander will further that goal or in fact will undermine it. After listening to the arguments, discussing it at length with Senator Gillibrand and others, I have concluded that to take this decision out of the chain of command would in fact do harm to the cause of victims' rights. The reason is simple. I want the commander to be fully responsible for this problem. I don't want a commander saying: It is not my problem anymore; the Congress of the United States has said I don't have to worry about this; I will check that box. I believe, going back to my original point, that the way you change the culture is in a multifaceted approach, but certainly one of the ways you do it is through the decisions that come from the commander. That is what sets the tone in the unit. Leadership always infects an entire unit in good or bad ways, and I believe it would be a mistake on the side of the victims if we change the system and allow the commanders to say this is not my problem, this is not my responsibility. As Senator Reed mentioned on the floor earlier today, the Senator from Rhode Island, one of the most important changes is a change the Pentagon has itself made which is to hold commanders responsible for the sexual assault record in their unit as part of their evaluation for promotion. That is part of the way you change the culture. This is a very difficult decision, but I think it is important to realize that the decision on this amendment is not: Are you in favor of victims' rights or are you in favor of the brass? I reject that dichotomy because already within the bill are these very strong provisions which are directed at this serious problem. What we are talking about is a fairly narrow discussion of who makes that decision. As a former practicing attorney who has had experience in criminal cases, prosecutors I think may be more conservative and less likely, in some cases, to bring cases to trial than the commanding officer who wants to ensure that justice is done for that victim. What we want is no victims. We want this problem to end. We want this era to change because the culture changes within the military, and that which was acceptable at one time is no longer acceptable. The best example I can cite for that in my life is drunken driving-- OUI. When I was a young man, there was an epidemic of drunken driving in this country, and it was considered as kind of a joke. It was considered as a sort of a rite of passage. Suddenly, through law changes and societal changes over a generation, it is no longer acceptable or funny, and it is no longer tolerated, and as a result we have seen a decline because the culture has changed. That is what has to happen in the military, and I think it begins with the commanding officer. In my opinion, to take this responsibility away from the commanding officer is not siding with the brass, it is siding with the victims, because I want those commanding officers fully engaged in this decision. I want them fully responsible for their decision. I want them to be what, in fact, they are, leaders--leaders who can make change, and leaders who can make change in this critical area. If it doesn't work, as my father used to say, Congress is always in session. We can come back and correct it. I believe we are at a moment where the military is being given a last chance to deal with this within the chain of command. I think we have given them the tools to do so in this bill, and I urge my colleagues to support Senator McCaskill's amendment and to move forward with this bill which we can be very proud of in terms of its recognition of this horrendous issue, but also in terms of the solutions and tools it provides to our military to solve this problem once and for all. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I rise this morning in high hopes but with deep concern. The high hopes are that a budget conference at long last is taking place, that representatives of the Senate and the House are meeting together--met last week and I know have been meeting informally this week--in order to try to achieve, finally, a budget for this fiscal year. My concern is that it has been so hard to get here, it has been so difficult, and that we are now in a process where we do not seem to be able to function. I am worried about the country. I am worried about whether we are going to be able to address our problems. This is not a speech about subject matter. It is not about global climate change or employment or the minimum wage or health care, but it is about whether this institution can function in order to confront any of those problems. When I was a young man, there was a famous book. It was kind of a cult favorite called ``Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.'' Sometimes I feel as though that is where we are here. This institution has been so compromised in its ability to function that it has become the norm and people have low expectations, even people who are here. I remember being on the floor a few months ago when one of the Senators stood up and said: This amendment should be subject to the normal 60-vote requirement, and my head snapped back because there is no such thing as a normal 60-vote requirement. For 200 years, we did not function with a normal 60-vote requirement. That has become a rather new innovation. I am not going to talk about the filibuster or the 60-vote requirement, but the idea that this Senator asserted it was normal indicates a change in attitude about the way this place functions. Another example is that, to my knowledge, the conference committees that are going on now on the budget and on the farm bill, I believe, are the first two conference committees convened in this entire year. I worked here as a staff member 40 years ago and remember going to conference committees rather frequently--walking through the Capitol with my boss and going to the meetings and seeing the Senators and the Congressmen sit down and argue and disagree and agree and compromise and reach settlements on legislation on a fairly regular basis. It is cause for celebration. It took a government shutdown, in effect, to produce a simple conference committee. Statistically, I am told this is the least productive Congress in American history thus far--no budget in 4 years. A budget is the basic function of any government. I understand there has been 1 appropriations bill out of 48 in the last several years. The result has been a complete and total loss of confidence from the public. That has significance. That is important because in our economy confidence is the mainspring. This is not an academic concern. I am not giving a lecture about civics. The lack of functionality of this institution is damaging the country. For example, we know from studies that just the shutdown cost our economy $24 billion, for no purpose that I could discern. But there is an untold broader cost. The reality is that two-thirds of the American economy is driven by consumer spending. Consumer spending is driven by confidence, by the millions of individual decisions that people make in their daily lives, based on how they feel about their future, how they feel about their country, how they feel about their personal situation. Part of that is whether they feel they have representatives in Washington who are representing their interests and, in fact, are capable of serving the needs of the country. Ironically, this lack of confidence that is generated by events such as the shutdown harms the economy and therefore makes the deficit worse. The very best way to solve the deficit problem is not necessarily taxes or cuts, it is growth in the economy. If the economy grows, the deficit shrinks. That was part of what happened in the late nineties, the last time we had a budget surplus, because the economy was roaring along. It is also about national security. I was provoked to come to the floor by reading a speech made recently by Robert Gates, one of our most distinguished public servants, the former Secretary of Defense. He talked about the defense posture of the country and the national security situation. Here is what he said toward the end of his speech: Let me close with a word about what I now regard to be the biggest threat to national security-- The biggest threat to U.S. national security. the political dysfunction within the two square miles of Washington, D.C. encompassing the White House and Capitol Hill. Those are strong words. He is not talking about Al Qaeda. He is not talking about a resurgent China. He is not talking about a world threat of terrorism. He is talking about us as the greatest threat to U.S. national security. He went on to say: American politics has always been shrill and ugly business going back to the Founding Fathers. But as a result of several polarizing trends we now have lost the ability to execute even the basic functions of government, much less solve the most difficult and divisive problems facing this country. Basic functions of government: passing a budget, operating the government itself, paying our bills--the basic functions of government. Secretary Gates said: Looking ahead, it is unrealistic to expect partisanship to disappear or even dissipate. But when push comes to shove, when the future of our country is at stake, ideological zeal and short-term political calculation on the part of both Republicans and Democrats must yield to patriotism and the long-term national interest. This lack of functionality, this chaos, if you will, also affects us internationally. Tom Friedman, this weekend, had a column. I thought the title was rather provocative. It was, ``Calling America: Hello? Hello? Hello?'' ``Few Americans,'' Friedman says, ``are aware of how much America has lost in this recent episode of bringing the American economy to the edge of a cliff. . . . '' People always looked up to America. He quotes a citizen of Singapore. People always looked up to America as the best-run country, the most reasonable, the most sensible. And now people are asking: ``Can America manage itself and what are the implications. . . . '' [for the rest of the world]? Our Constitution has always been based upon two somewhat competing principles in tension with each other. One is the fundamental purpose of the Constitution, which is to create an effective government. The Constitution was not what ran this country immediately after the American Revolution. We experimented with something called the Articles of Confederation. It did not work. The chaos and the economic problems of that period is what led the Framers to draft the Constitution in that blessed summer of 1787. But the one principle in the Constitution is right in the preamble: To form a more perfect Union, to establish justice, to provide for the common defense, to ensure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare. That is government. At the same time, the Framers were concerned about the ancient question of who will guard the guardians; how do we control the government we just created in order to protect ourselves from its own abuse? They built this elaborate system of checks and balances. They had never heard of Rube Goldberg in 1787. But if they had, that is what they did. They created an elaborate, cumbersome, slow system. They wanted it to be that way in order to curb the excesses of the government they had created. They wanted it to be slow and cumbersome. They succeeded beyond their wildest imagination. Those two principles, governing and checks and balances, as I say, are in tension in the Constitution. The problem is, we seem to have reached a moment in time where the governing part has been taken away and all we have left are checks and balances. We have a system that is ridiculously easy to monkey wrench if you do not have the basic commitment to governing. That is the problem we face today. So what do we do? We have to do something. That brings me back to where I began at the budget conference. This budget conference is very important. This is not one of many conferences that are going on. This is a--I do not want to say a last chance, but it is one of our last chances to show the American people we can govern. It is almost less important what is in the deal than that there be a deal, that the parties show they can come together, that they can solve a problem. Just the fact of the headline, ``Congress passes a budget which the President signs'' would electrify the country. It would be the most positive thing we could possibly do for the economy. By the same token, a headline that says, ``Congress once more fails to act'' will be one more weight on the future of the country, one more stone in the pile of evidence that we can no longer function; that this system which has served us so well for so long can no longer serve us as it must. What do we do to get there? As I say, we do something. I hope and pray and urge and support the chair of the Budget Committee, the House chair of the Budget Committee, the members of that conference to try to find solutions that will not make everybody happy, by definition, but at least will show we are able to do the most basic function of government. How do we get there? We listen. We have a company in Maine that has a sign on the wall that I think we ought to put in this room. It says: All of us are always smarter than any of us. The wisdom of the group-- there is tremendous experience and wisdom in this institution if we can bring that to bear, but it does not work if people are not listening. If people say: I know the answer, I have all the results, I do not need to listen, I do not have anything to learn, we will never get there if that is the idea. When people say to you: I am not going to compromise, what they are saying is: I have all the answers. I am entirely right. I have never known anyone that was entirely right. So we need to listen. Yes, we need to compromise. We need to remind ourselves of the pretty simple oath we take. The oath that we take when we come into this place is to the Constitution of the United States. It is not to a political party. It is not to an ideology. It is not to a particular issue, no matter how precious to us or our constituents, it is an oath to the Constitution of the United States. I hope and pray that if we can hold to that and remind ourselves why we are here and the heavy weight of responsibility that we bear, we can find solutions, we can solve problems, we can begin to rebuild the trust the American people want to have in their government, if we can only prove ourselves worthy of it. It is a heavy responsibility. It is one, I believe, we can meet and do so with honor and good faith to that oath we all took. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I wish to discuss the nomination of Patricia Millett to be a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pattie, as she is known, is clearly well qualified. She has received support from Attorneys General appointed by Republican Presidents, and from conservative Solicitors General such as Ken Starr, Theodore Olson, and Paul Clement. Her resume is stellar, her qualifications unquestioned, and her support broad. Although Senator Dick Durbin claims she is an ``Illinois native'' in a letter of support to President Obama--and Senator Tim Kaine, in his own letter of support to the President claims her as living in Virginia--she is actually a daughter of the State of Maine. Her mother grew up in the small town of Dexter, where Pattie went to school through high school. She also attended school in Bangor, and for a time, even worked at Eastern Maine General Hospital as it was then known. She truly comes from good Maine stock. Millett also juggles an extremely full life while excelling at most everything she tries. The wife of a veteran, Pattie herself holds a black belt in taekwondo--a pastime that she took up in order to spend more time with her kids. She is also very engaged with her community and volunteers at local homeless shelters. And when her husband was deployed to Iraq, she singlehandedly took care of their kids and managed to continue with her incredible career. She does all of these things while preparing for and arguing cases before the United States Supreme Court. In fact, she has argued more cases than any other woman--over 30 cases to date. I am pleased to fully support the confirmation of Patricia Millett, a true daughter of Maine, to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing only after they have tried everything else. I think the last 2 weeks demonstrates the wisdom of that observation. I join my colleagues in congratulating, first, the leaders for putting aside their substantial differences and partisan divide to meet together over the last 2 or 3 days and hammer out an agreement that is not going to be acceptable or exciting to anyone but will put America back together in terms of our government functioning, avoiding the threat of default, and allowing us to move forward with the Nation's problems. My first congratulation is to Senator Harry Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell for coming together as they have in the last 24 hours. I also have to acknowledge the leadership of my senior colleague from Maine, Susan Collins. I happened to be presiding when she made her speech last Saturday, and it was really her initiative to stand, take a risk, and say: Let's try to work something out. She outlined the beginning of a framework which was then fleshed out over the last 10 days in discussions among the group we have been talking about. I was interviewed recently on the radio and somebody asked: Don't you think Senator Collins may be subject to some criticism from some corner or another about her role in all of this? I paused for a minute, and I said: That is what leadership is. It is the willingness to bear criticism and stick your neck out. As my dad used to say, it is like the turtle crossing the road--the only way the turtle can cross the road is to stick his neck out. And that is what we are trying to do on behalf of the American people. Senator Patty Murray is not on the floor right now, but I am so glad we are entering into a process where she and her colleagues on the Budget Committee will be able to work with Congressman Ryan and try to really solve some of these issues that have been plaguing us so severely. We are doing it, as we should, in the proper process. I am delighted that Senator Murray is now going to step into this role, which is one of the most important we have had in recent years, and we will be able to work toward a resolution. This is an important and perhaps historic compromise where Congress was really looking into the abyss. Congress was really proving that it could not function and that our system could not function in the divided politics of America today. It now appears that our leaders have pulled us back from that abyss and given us an opportunity--not a guarantee but an opportunity to continue the discussions that started with this terrible shutdown. It will give us the opportunity to try to bring our country together and resolve the problems we face. It is a shame we have spent so much time doing what I think is the obvious--run the government and pay our bills. Now that we seem to have passed through this moment, we can move forward into the long-term challenges of our budget, the challenges facing our people, and our ability to solve problems so we can prove once again that this wonderful Constitution that has been bequeathed to us can still function, produce results, and govern this country. Abraham Lincoln said we can't escape history. This morning the Chaplain's prayer talked about being accountable to history, and that, indeed, is what we are doing in this body. I hope that history will judge today as a moment--and the beginning--of a new era of cooperation and civility and problem-solving. This is not about the loss of our differences or the papering over of legitimate arguments of principle but the ability to try to work together, to talk to each other, respect one another, and listen to one another. Those are the essential qualities of leadership that I believe we are seeing demonstrated here today, and I hope it is a beginning. I congratulate and thank all of my colleagues but especially the two leaders for getting us to this moment. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, my intention coming here was to help solve problems, to find common ground, to work together with colleagues from both sides of the aisle. That is my history, and, in fact, that was my primary motivation for running, for stepping into the shoes of my illustrious predecessor, Olympia Snowe of Maine. In fact, that is what we did this summer on student loans when a small bipartisan group of Senators worked together to find a compromise, work it through both sides of this body, both parties, then through the House and then get the signature of the President. We got 81 votes in the Senate and 392 in the House. That is what I want to try to do. That was a validation of what I am here for. This situation we are in now cries out for resolution. It cries out for finding common ground, for compromising, getting everybody back to work, getting the government shutdown over. So why are we not doing it? Why aren't we out cutting a deal? Why are we not out compromising? I talk to my colleagues here in the Senate on both sides of the aisle, talk to House Members, both Republicans and Democrats, and there are lots of options. In fact, the House has sent us a series of options. The first one was essentially to defund--effectively repeal the Affordable Care Act, then it was to delay the Affordable Care Act, then it was to delay a part of the Affordable Care Act. But the important thing about these options and this discussion is that it is all taking place in the context of a government shutdown. That is not where negotiations should be made. That is not where negotiation and discussion should be had, when essentially the government has been shut down and one side is saying: We won't allow the government to operate unless you give us what we want on a substantive piece of legislation. This is the problem. This is why I think in this one case negotiation really is not the right course. It is a process problem, it is a practical problem, and I believe it is a constitutional problem. It is perfectly appropriate to negotiate budgets. As a Governor, I did it four times for biennial budgets and innumerable supplemental budgets, and it is perfectly appropriate to negotiate up to the deadline--lots of late nights. That is when this work, for some reason, seems to get done. But in the context of budgets, of negotiating the most fundamental governmental document, you negotiate about numbers, about details, about allocations. You don't negotiate about entirely separate substantive pieces of law. In fact, that happened 1 month ago right here when Leader Reid and Speaker Boehner negotiated a continuing resolution on what the numbers should be, and it was a hot and heavy negotiation. The leader compromised. He said: Let's go forward because we can do this cleanly with a continuing resolution at a lower level than the Senate Democrats felt was appropriate than what was in that budget that was passed earlier this year. But that is not what is going on here. We are not negotiating about the dollar amounts of the budget or the details or the allocations, such as how much will be allocated to defense or how much will be allocated to Head Start. This is an attempt to rewrite a major piece of substantive law through holding the government hostage, which is a result that cannot be achieved through the normal democratic and constitutional processes. That is the core of this current situation, and that is what is bothering me about it. I don't mind negotiating budgets. I do think we shouldn't use the threat of a government shutdown--or now the reality of a government shutdown--to obtain legislative and policy benefits that we can't otherwise obtain through the normal constitutional process. In a very real sense, this is a frontal assault on the Constitution itself. Ironically, it is being led by many of those who wrap themselves daily in the Constitution. I don't have one of those books, but we all know those books, such as, ``How a Bill Becomes a Law.'' I can guarantee you can read those books until, as my father used to say, the spots come off, but I guarantee there is nothing in there that says if all else fails, hold the government hostage and then you can make a law. That is not what it says. My wife Mary got me a book when I was first elected called ``Congress for Dummies.'' Even in ``Congress for Dummies,'' it doesn't say you can make laws, change laws, rewrite laws in the context of holding the country hostage. It is an attempt to create an alternative process, a new shortcut way of achieving political ends without having to deal with those pesky elections. Here is the electoral history of this bill: In 2010, the Affordable Care Act was passed in the early summer. There were elections in 2010, and, indeed, the Republicans gained substantial seats in the House probably because of concern about the Affordable Care Act. I will concede that. But the Senate didn't turn over. By the way, that is the way the Framers planned it, and that is why there are 6-year terms, so public passions in one electoral cycle don't entirely change the government. Then there was another election in 2012. In that election, in which the Affordable Care Act was a major factor, Democrats gained seats in the House, gained seats in the Senate, and the President, whose name is attached to the bill, won by 5 million votes. In my election in Maine in every debate--and goodness knows there were probably over 20 of them--my Republican opponents started the debate by saying: I want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That was the whole mission. I defended it--not in every detail because I think it needs to be fixed--and I won that election and here I am. Mr. Romney said: I will repeal ObamaCare on day one, but he lost. Here we are, in effect, trying to effectuate that agenda--that policy position--through an alternative process that skips around those annoying elections. The passionate opponents of this act are acting as if those elections didn't happen. Let's be clear about what this is: This is one faction of one party in one House of one branch trying to run the entire U.S. Government. That is not the way our Constitution is supposed to work. I am confident of that statement because from talking to my friends in the House, I believe it is highly likely that if a clean continuing resolution--that means one without any strings, without any political baggage, without any repeal of the Affordable Care Act--went before the House today, tomorrow or Monday, it would pass. With most of the Democrats and enough Republicans to achieve the majority, the bill would pass and all of this would be over. Yesterday, Speaker Boehner said two things that I think were important. One I agree with and one I don't. The one I agree with was when he said this isn't a game. It is not a game. It is it deadly serious. It is deadly serious because of the impact this shutdown is having on our country. It is having a serious impact on people throughout the country and in Maine. Let's talk about this from a national standpoint. Approximately half of the civilians in the Department of Defense and 70 percent of our intelligence agencies' personnel have been furloughed. Air squadrons have been grounded, there are people who are not being trained, and our defense industrial base is already suffering. In Maine we have 1,500 people on furlough at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and more coming at Bath Iron Works. Almost half of our National Guard people are on furlough. This is not a game. But all of this is being done in the name of effectively repealing or crippling the Affordable Care Act. Even if they don't think it is a good law, this is not the way to go about dismantling it. It is not the way our Constitution is designed. Why won't we even negotiate? Why aren't the Democrats negotiating on this and maybe nick the Affordable Care Act? It reminds me of a story of a city guy who came up to a farmer in Maine. He said: I like the looks of your land. I would like to buy your farm. The farmer said: It is not for sale. The city guy said: How about the 50 percent on the river, I would like to buy that. The farmer said: It is not for sale. The city guy said: How about just the quarter acre where your house is on the road? The farmer said: It is not for sale. Then the city guy says: Why won't you negotiate? Because it is not for sale. This is not the place or time to negotiate. Listen, I think there are problems with the Affordable Care Act. I would love to sit down in good faith with people and try to fix them--starting with making the Web sites work better. But I think the way to do that is not in the context of the government being held hostage. Here is the real problem: If we do it now, this will become the normal way we legislate around here. This is a 6-week continuing resolution. So we nick the Affordable Care Act in this one, then next time it is going to be, OK, we will take another nick.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have 4 more minutes.

Mr. KING. I am afraid this will become the normal way we do things around here. Police, intelligence people, and military officers tell us they don't negotiate with hostage-takers, and the reason they don't is because they would empower, enable, and ensure it will happen again, and that is what worries me. Our constitutional system has two principles in tension; one is governing and the other is checks and balances. Governing is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare; and, of course, checks and balances is the rest of the Constitution so we are not abused by our government. If we take away the governing part, which is what the budget is, nothing is left but checks and balances. The Framers thought of this. Madison in the 58th Federalist addressed it directly. He said: It might be a good thing to have minorities have additional power above a quorum. He then said: But these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale. In all cases where justice or the general good requires new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed-- By minority rule. It would no longer be the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Lincoln put it much more succinctly: If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. That is what is at stake--governing. I understand the opposition, although I frankly don't fully understand not wanting people to have health insurance. I understand the passion, and I understand the attempt. I think the Speaker is a good man, and he wants to do the right thing. I understand the need to get something and win something in this weird atmosphere where everybody has to win or lose. They gave it their best shot. It didn't work. Let's move on. Let's have a clean vote in the House so the American people and the world know we still know how to govern. I want to talk, I want to negotiate, and I want to solve problems but not at the expense of this institution, not at the expense of the Constitution, and not at the expense of the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Mr. President, I want to begin with a story about two young men, both 29, both married with a couple of kids, and both contracted cancer the same day--malignant melanoma, the kind of cancer that comes from a mole. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon in our society. One of those young men had insurance. In fact, he had an insurance policy that provided preventive care, and under that policy they provided a free checkup. Indeed, his insurance covered his ability to go and have his checkup in the evening so he didn't even have to take a day off from work. He went in, had a checkup, and the doctor found a mole on his back and said: This doesn't look so good. I think I should take it off. A week later when he went back to have the stitches out, the doctor said: I think you should sit down. You have a pretty serious form of cancer. The young man went to the hospital and had an operation which removed a hunk of his back. He had stitches under his arm. The lymph nodes were taken out, and fortunately they found that the cancer had not yet spread. He didn't have to have chemotherapy or radiation. He was OK. The other young man didn't have insurance, so he didn't go to the doctor and have a checkup. He had the mole on his neck, but he didn't really notice it or pay much attention to it. Six or 8 months later he noticed a lump in his neck. He still didn't pay any attention to it. He didn't have insurance and didn't really want to spend the money to go to the emergency room or go to the doctor, so he didn't pay much attention to it and he let it go. Six months later the lump was so large that he finally went to the doctor, and they biopsied it and found that it was metastasized malignant melanoma. He had chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, but a year later he died. That story means a lot to me because I am the first guy. Forty years ago, when I was a staff member in this institution, I went and had that checkup because I had insurance. They found the mole, they did the surgery, and here I am today. I have often thought about that and wondered, why me? Just luck--but also because I had insurance. I can say with certainty that if I had not had that insurance, I would not have gone to that checkup. If I had not had the checkup when I did within months or perhaps a year and a half, I would have been gone. I have a similar story about a daughter of a friend of mine, Dick Gould up in Maine. Dick had a daughter named Cindy who was diagnosed with severe asthma at the age of 3. All her life she battled it. She lived in a very rural part of Maine. She didn't have a lot of money and could never afford insurance, but she fought the asthma as best she could. She did the best she could, but she couldn't afford the expensive treatments. Finally, not long ago, at the age of 53, Cindy Gould died, leaving a husband, children, and grandchildren, one of whom she hadn't ever met. Why did she die? Because she didn't have insurance. She couldn't afford to go in and have the care she needed. Why are we having this discussion here in the Senate this week about health care? The answer is pretty clear. There are 50 million people in this country who have no health insurance. The estimates are that between 20,000 and 30,000 of those people die each year--like Cindy Gould--because of the lack of health insurance. Why doesn't that bother us? Why aren't we spending days and nights here talking about how to solve this problem instead of how to dismantle the most significant health care program that has come to this country in years? Why? I have a theory about that. It is because those deaths are invisible. They happen one at a time in Greenville, ME; in Portland, ME; in San Diego, CA; and El Paso, TX, so nobody knows. It is not listed in the obituary: Died because of no health insurance. I would submit that if those 25,000 people--which is a conservative estimate--in this country all died at the same time and in the same place, we would be turning the world upside down to solve the problem. Just imagine that kind of loss in a small town in the Presiding Officer's State each year--25,000 people a year. On September 11, 2001, we had a tragedy in this country, and 3,000 people died. It was a terrible day. What have we done as a result of that day? We turned our society upside down, we protect ourselves at airports, and we spent money for screening and protection. We spend $70 billion a year just on intelligence in order to protect ourselves from another September 11. Yet, quietly and insidiously, every year over 20,000 people die because they don't have insurance. Another 700,000 families lose everything because of medical bills. We are the only country in the world where that happens. We are the only country in the industrialized world where people are prone to lose everything because they are swamped with medical bills. That is ridiculous. Would we watch someone die in our front yard? Of course not. We would call 911. We would call the doctor. We could do CPR. We would do whatever we could to keep them alive. But we are quietly as a society watching over 20,000 people a year die, and we are arguing about the details of how to solve this problem. To me, it is a moral question. There is a lot of economics involved. There are a lot of questions about costs and we will talk about that. But, fundamentally, it is a moral question. The moral question is, Are we going to stand by and watch people suffer and die because of ideology and politics? No other country in the world has answered yes to that question, and that is the question that is before us. So what is this thing called ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act? What is it? The first thing to say is what it is not. What it is not is a tremendous impact on American business. Ninety-six percent of the businesses in America have less than 50 employees. They are not affected by ObamaCare at all. In fact, they are probably benefited by it because whether or not they choose to buy health insurance, their employees can get health insurance through the new health exchanges, and that is probably a benefit to those businesses. But 96 percent of the businesses the law doesn't apply to. Ninety-eight percent of the larger companies--200 employees and more--already provide health insurance to their employees. So the law doesn't apply to them. Ninety- four percent of the smaller firms, from 50 to 199, already provide health insurance to their employees. So this idea that somehow ObamaCare is taking over the health care industry in this country is nonsense. Eighty percent of the people are largely unaffected by it. They are either the 50 percent who are covered by their employers now or the 22 or 23 percent who are under Medicare now and 7 or 8 percent under Medicaid. But that leaves 15 percent uncovered, uninsured, unprotected, and that is between 45 million and 50 million people. This is not a government takeover. There is no place in America one can go and sign up for ObamaCare. If one goes onto an exchange, they get insurance from Anthem or Blue Cross or Health First or Aetna. One doesn't get ObamaCare, one gets insurance coverage from private insurance companies, just as we have done in this country for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is not a government takeover. Here is what it is: It is a mechanism to make it easier and cheaper for those people who are uninsured to find a way to get insurance: to go online to a health exchange, which is nothing but I suppose one could call it the Amazon or e-Bay of health insurance where people can see what their options are, make their choices. They get support from the rest of us if they are within certain income levels, and it makes health insurance affordable. It is based upon the free market principle of competition, and that group rates are better than individual rates, and the essence of the system is a marketplace where people can buy private health insurance. It is also insurance reform. It repairs and improves and mandates some improvements in the way health insurance works, to avoid some of the real glaring problems that most people have identified with and many people have run up against. One is a limitation that health insurance companies have to spend 80 percent of the money they take in on health care. In other words, there is a limit on profit and overhead. I think all of us feel that is reasonable. That is already happening, and, in fact, some people are getting refund checks from their insurance companies because they were spending too much on overhead and profit. Under the insurance reforms of the bill, women are treated equally for the first time. There is an emphasis on preventive care. I go back to my own story. Preventive care saved my life. It was a heck of a lot cheaper than the care that was provided to the fellow who didn't have insurance because he didn't catch it in time. He ended up in the emergency room. He ended up having surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and ultimately futilely, but that treatment cost a lot more than my treatment did because I was insured and had preventive care. It also allows kids to stay on their parents' policies until they are 26. This is a big deal, because it allows kids to take jobs and do things and travel and work but not have to focus on whether they have health care. They can stay on their parents' policies until they are 26. That is happening right now all across America. There are no lifetime caps. As I mentioned earlier, we are the only country in the world where people get wiped out by health care costs. Nowhere else is that even remotely an issue the way it is here. Finally, a person can't be denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions. That is crucial, because there are millions of people across this country, through no fault of their own but because of the vagaries of health, who have problems they were born with or that came on in their youth and under the old rules, they can't get insurance. Now they can't be denied insurance. That is going to make a lot of difference to people in this country. Because of that--and I watched Senator Cruz last night, and he talked about this. If you are going to require insurance be issued to people even if they have preexisting conditions or some kind of illness, then you also have to mandate that everybody buys it; otherwise, nobody would buy it until they are in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. If a person didn't have to buy fire insurance before the fire, everybody would buy it when they saw the flames coming up from their house. I think Senator Cruz, the Senator from Texas, used that image last night. To me, that makes common sense. It also makes common sense because it is a matter of personal responsibility. I always thought that was a conservative principle. I remember in the 1970s and 1980s it was a conservative principle that people should take responsibility for themselves. Right now in our society, if a person is sick, and if a person has no insurance, they are treated. The hospital cannot turn you away. What that means is we all pay. That person is in effect a free rider. They have insurance; it is all the rest of us. I think it is a basic principle that they should take care of their own responsibility. People act as though this is some kind of radical notion. We have had--I don't know about the State of the Presiding Officer and other States, but in our State we have had mandatory automobile insurance for as long as I can remember and nobody questions it, because it is a responsibility. You need to be responsible for yourself. As I say, this was always a conservative principle until lately, and all of a sudden it isn't. It reminds me of the old line of Mort Sahl, the comedian back in the 1950s, who said, ``If you maintain a consistent political opinion in this country long enough, you will eventually be tried for treason.'' And here we are; what was once a conservative principle is now anathema. But I think it is all about personal responsibility and providing for yourself. I understand,--I have seen press releases that there are people going around the country telling young people not to sign up for coverage. I think that is outrageous. It is unbelievable. And they are sentencing some of those people to death or to severe injury because they are not going to have health insurance when they are going to need it. All young people are immortal. I was when I went in for that checkup when I was 29 years old. They think they are. But to tell people not to get insurance when it is available, particularly when it is available at low cost, I think is something that should weigh on the conscience of whoever is funding and developing that campaign around the country. So what is the Affordable Care Act? It is a mechanism to buy insurance. No. 2, it is reform to the insurance industry in terms of what the requirements are; and No. 3, buried in it are pilot programs that may turn out, in my view, to be the most important part of the project, the most important part of the bill, because they encourage changes in the way we deliver health care. As I will mention in a minute, the real problem with health care is cost, and these pilot programs that are being used around the country, including in Maine, are already having some spectacular results. I talked to two people from our two major Maine hospitals this morning. They are seeing a 60-percent reduction in emergency room use and a 70- percent reduction in rehospitalization because of what is called the Accountable Care Organization Structure that they have put in place for Medicare patients in Maine. They are seeing better care at substantially lower costs, and this is the kind of pilot and innovative program that is also in the Affordable Care Act that nobody ever hears about or talks about that I think, as I mentioned, may turn out to be the most important part of the bill. That is it: limits on insurance provisions, greater access to insurance. I think we need to calm down around here about what this bill does. It is not perfect. It is complicated. It does have some implementation issues that I am worried about. I am worried about too much regulation. I am worried that they will overdo the regulations somewhere in the government as they implement this, and I think that is something we need to pay close attention to. There are problems such as the 30-hour workweek versus 40 hours. Those are the kinds of things I think we need to pay attention to and we need to fix. There has never been a perfect piece of legislation, perhaps, other than those Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, but we need to try to fix things and not just say, Oh, well, we are going to tear the whole thing apart and start over. I am a little skeptical on the starting over part because I haven't seen any inclination to do so. As I mentioned, the larger health care problem is cost. We are now spending 18 percent of our gross domestic product on health care--by far the highest number in the world. Japan is at about 11, and everyone else is at 8 or 9 percent. We are spending twice as much per capita as anyone else in the industrialized world and our results aren't that good, by all kinds of international standards, including infant mortality, longevity, customer satisfaction. We are in the 15, 17, 20, 25th in the world, and we are paying twice as much. There is also this cost problem is what is killing our budget. All of the debt and deficit problem we are projecting in the Federal budget is based upon health care costs: Medicare, Medicaid, and public employees. That is where the deficit is. It is not in the national parks, it is not in Head Start, it is not even in the Department of Defense. It is health care costs, and we need to talk about that and work on it and do something about it. I think these pilot programs within the Affordable Care Act are showing amazing promise just in the last couple of years that they have been in place. A note on process, and then I will yield the floor. I have never known of a time when the repeal of a particular piece of legislation has been used, has been held hostage, in order to keep the government running. We have had arguments about budgetary matters at the ends of budget periods, and there was a shutdown in the 1990s about spending and budgets, but I have never heard of a time when a group tried to use a bill and say we are going to repeal this bill or we are going to shut down the government. In the 1950s and 1960s, the southerners were dead set against civil rights legislation. They filibustered and tried to stop it, but it ultimately was passed in the 1960s, and was a proud moment for this body and this institution. They never said: But we are going to shut down the government if you fund it or enforce it. They had too much respect for the institution. They had too much respect for the importance of the continuity of government over and above any issue, no matter how passionately they felt about it. I hope this weekend we can let go of this idea that a minority of the government can hold it hostage because of one particular piece of legislation that they don't like. This is an economic but it is also a moral issue. It is about trying to help people deal with the shadow of health care hanging over them. It is not perfect, but it corrects some of the most glaring defects in the private insurance system, and it provides an opportunity to millions of Americans to escape the day-to-day shadow of a health care catastrophe. To those who want to fix it, I stand ready to help. To those who have ideas and suggestions, I stand ready to listen. To those who want to destroy it, however, I stand in your way. And to those for whom the shadow has finally been lifted, I stand at your side. I thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, in the 1930s there was a looming threat from Germany to the peace of Europe and to the existence of England. That threat was real, and there were multiple signs. There was data. But there were very few people who wanted to do anything about it because it would have caused disruption--economic and personal disruption. There was one politician in England who understood this threat, understood its dangers, and understood that if gone unmet it would engulf his country into a destructive and potentially catastrophic war. Of course, that politician was Winston Churchill. He saw the danger based upon data--the size of the German air force, the building of munitions, the invasion of other smaller countries, the expansion of Germany and their armed forces. He was ignored and ridiculed by his own party and by the leadership of his own party, but he kept talking. He kept raising this issue. He kept trying to raise and awaken the people of England. It was a very difficult task. In fact, our own great President John F. Kennedy wrote his thesis as a student about this period in English history, and the title was very provocative and forward-thinking: ``Why England Slept.'' Churchill tried to wake them up. Had he been heeded, World War II could have been avoided. There were multiple times when Hitler could have been stopped by the slightest bit of resistance on the part of the European powers. Instead, the war came, and 5 years later 55 million people had died. Not heeding warnings has consequences, and we can always find reasons for nonaction. Churchill acknowledged this. The British had been through the trauma of World War I less than 20 years before. They couldn't face the possibility of another devastating war. That is totally understandable, and that is human nature. To capture the flavor of Churchill's warning, which I think is very relevant to us here today, here is what he said in a speech to the Parliament on November 12, 1936: The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now. He understood the resistance of the people in England. He said: We recognize no emergency which should induce us to impinge on the normal course of trade. If we go on like this, and I do not see what power can prevent us from going on like this, some day there may be a terrible reckoning-- That reckoning was World War II-- and those who take the responsibility so entirely upon themselves are either of a hearty disposition or they are incapable of foreseeing the possibilities which may arise. He then went on to talk about the responsibility of a parliamentary body. And I will conclude my comments on Churchill with this quote: Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years. . . . Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even the Government's own confessions of error would have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion. . . . I say that unless the House resolves to find out the truth for itself, it will have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel in its long history. Climate Change Madam President, I rise today because we are entering a period of consequences. It is 1936. It is August 2001, when we had warnings that Al Qaeda determined to strike in the United States. I actually carry this chart around in my iPhone, but I blew it up for today's purposes. It is a chart of the last million years of CO2 in the atmosphere. I believe this chart answers two of the three basic questions about global climate change. The first is, Is something happening? And occasionally we hear people say: Well, climate change happens in cycles, and CO2 goes up and down, and we are just in a cycle and it is no big deal. This is 1 million years, and for the past 999,000-plus we did have cycles. The cycles were between about 180 parts per million in the atmosphere up to about 250--I think 280 was the highest--back 400,000 years ago. But this has been the cycle since before human beings started to actively impinge upon the environment. Then comes the year 1000. We go along here at a fairly high level, and then around 1860 it starts to go up. What happened in 1860? That was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That was when we started to burn fossil fuels in large quantities, whether it was coal, later oil, gas. But that was when it happened. So this answers the second question, which is, Do people have anything to do with it? Of course they do. It would be the greatest coincidence in the history of the world if this change just happened to begin at the same time as the Industrial Revolution. Then you see where it has gone since 1960. This chart is actually a couple of years out of date. This point is just below 400 parts per million. We passed 400 parts per million this summer. We are now here. I don't see how anyone can look at this chart and conclude anything else. A, something is happening to CO2 in the atmosphere, and B, people are involved in causing it. I just don't see how you can escape that. I believe this is the other piece about this 400. The last time we had 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere we know from ice cores was 3 million years ago, during the pliocene period. I knew someday my sixth grade geology would come to the fore. And when we had 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere 3 million years ago, sea levels were 60 to 80 feet higher than they are today. As the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island said, this isn't argument. This isn't theory. This is data. This is fact. Remember I said there are three questions about global climate change. One is, Is CO2 really going up? The answer is yes. Two is, Do people have anything to do with it? The answer is yes. The third question is, So what? So what if CO2 is going up? Here is an interesting chart of the past 400,000 or 500,000 years. You have a red line and a black line. The black line is temperature and the red line is CO2. As you can see, it is an almost exact correlation. I don't think anybody could argue, looking at this, that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has nothing to do with the temperature on the Earth. Is it causal? Is there a correlation? There are a lot of things going on here about feedback loops, and it is very complicated. Climate science is one of the most complicated sciences there is. But I don't think you can look at this chart and say there isn't some relationship between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature. This is what has been happening as CO2 and temperature move essentially in lockstep. I should mention that often when we are talking about these things-- and the Senator from Rhode Island knows what I am saying--people tend to think that we are talking in long periods of time, we are talking about geologic time, thousands of years. No. Climate change often happens abruptly. That is a word that ought to strike fear into our hearts. Abruptly. Almost overnight. This is temperature and size of the ice field in Greenland. You can see it going back 5,000 to 10,000 years. Here it is going along, temperature goes along, starts to drop, and then it drops in a decade. It is as if someone throws a switch. So this isn't something where we can just say: Oh well. We will do a few little things now and maybe it will be OK, and then 100 years or 500 years from now somebody else will worry about it. There could be a catastrophic event within years, certainly within decades. The University of Maine has a center that talks about climate change. When I went up to see them last spring, they said: Senator, you have to understand, we are talking about the possibility of abrupt climate change, not just climate change. I think that is a very important point to realize. So what difference does temperature make? If it gets a little warmer, Maine will have a longer tourist season. That will be OK if it is warmer. I don't think anybody will complain if it is warmer in Maine in February--maybe the ski industry. But what difference does it make? It makes a lot of difference. It makes a lot of difference to species, but it also makes a lot of difference to people. Here is a chart that shows what would happen to many of our coastal communities with a sea level rise that is reasonably modest. The dark red out here is a 1-meter rise. It goes up to 6 meters. That is about 20 feet. But remember the last time we were at 400 parts per million, it was 60 to 80 feet. So this is conservative. This is a smaller example of what can happen if we let this happen to us. Boston essentially is gone. A good deal of downtown Boston, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, the Outer Banks--gone. Southern Florida, Miami, the eastern coast of Florida all the way up into Tampa--gone. By the way, there is no more fresh water in Florida during this period either because of the intrusion of seawater into the water table. New Orleans is all gone. This is at 20 meters. In fact, it is not even that. This is about a 3-meter rise. Going up, Savannah and Charleston, New York City, Long Island, the New Jersey shore--all gone. This isn't academic. This impacts billions of dollars of expenditures to try to fight this off and to hold it at bay. What about species? In Maine we talk about lobster. The lobster is an iconic product of Maine. It is a huge part of our society, it is part of our culture, it is also a big part of our economy. Well over $1 billion a year in Maine is attributable, in one way or another, to the lobster. The lobster population in Maine was pretty steady for an awful long time. When I was Governor--and that was 10 or 12 years ago--we harvested roughly 50 million pounds of lobster per year. That was the way it had been, between 40 and 50 million. In 2008 it went to 69 million pounds; in 2009 it went to 81 million; 2010, 96 million--last year, 123 million pounds, more than twice as much as what was harvested 10 or 12 years ago. I am sure you are saying to yourself: What is the problem, Senator? The lobsters are doing great. They were doing great in Rhode Island and Connecticut until the temperature started to kill them off. It makes a boom and then there is a danger--we certainly hope it will not happen--but there is a danger of a collapse. That is what happened. The lobster fishery in southern New England has essentially collapsed. The lobster makes up about 70 to 80 percent of our fisheries' value. What is happening in Maine is as the water gets warmer the lobsters go north. Is the water getting warmer? Here is Maine--Boothbay Harbor, ME, a great town. If anybody wants to visit, it is a wonderful place to visit. I have to get in that little bit of promotion. Here is the water temperature in Boothbay Harbor over the last 10 years. It is going up. It is getting warmer. There is no indication--in fact, if you follow the curve here, it appears it is headed into an accelerating mode, the famous hockey stick. Anything above 68 degrees of water temperature is very stressful to lobsters. The University of Maine says: While warmer waters off the coast in recent years have probably aided the boom in lobster numbers, putting us right in the temperature sweet spot . . . we're getting closer and closer to that point where the temperature is too stressful for them, their immune system is compromised and it's all over. ``And it's all over,'' that is a frightening phrase, it is all over. In the 1980s lobster fishing was concentrated in southern Maine, along our coast, in what is called Casco Bay, which is down around Portland. Then it moved up into what is called the midcoast, Lincoln County near where I live. The bulk of the lobster fishing moved up into Penobscot Bay and now the bulk of the lobster fishing is in what we call Hancock County, the village of Stoning, ME. At least that is where it was last year. In other words, the lobsters are moving north because the temperatures are getting warmer. That is what is happening. I have a young man on my staff whose father is a lobster buyer in the midcoast of Maine. His father has been buying lobster since 1975. This past summer he bought 200 crates a night of lobsters; 10 years ago he was buying 100. So it has doubled. But what we are worried about is that when the lobster line passes, this industry is gone. We saw it collapse in southern New England, Rhode Island. In 1999 lobstering in Long Island Sound collapsed totally without warning, in part because of an infection that was brought about by the warmer water temperatures. I use lobster as just an indication. You can substitute your own issue, local issue. Whether it is lobsters in Maine or flooding in Colorado, the impacts are real. So what do we do? I hate raising problems and not talking about what to do. By the way, I have to say I am puzzled about why this has become a partisan issue. I do not understand it. Maybe it is because Al Gore invented it? I don't know. But I don't understand why this became a partisan issue because it is a scientific issue, it is a data issue. The data is overwhelming. So what do we do? By the way, I should mention when I was a young man working in and around the legislature in Maine, the leaders of the environmental movement in Maine who passed the major legislation to protect our environment were all Republicans--not all, but most of them were Republicans and they were great names in Maine history. OK, what do we do? The first thing we have to do is admit there is a problem. If you do not admit there is a problem, by definition you cannot address it. That is No. 1. I think the data is becoming overwhelming. The second thing you have to do is gather all the facts and information you can. Gather all the information. It has been my experience in working on public policy most of my adult life, if you have shared information, if the people working on the problem have the same facts, generally the conclusion, the policy, is fairly clear. It may be controversial, it may be difficult, but usually it becomes pretty self-evident if everybody shares the same sets of information. Once we can agree on the facts, the solutions become clear. What are some things we can do in the near term? We have to talk about mitigating the impacts. We have to talk about the fact that fisheries are made up of both fishermen and fish. As climate change alters these coastal economies, we have to work to preserve both. We have to work with groups such as a nonprofit in Maine called the Island Institute that is working to preserve Maine's working waterfronts, and we also have to make sure our Federal fisheries management laws take cognizance of what is going on here and manage ecosystems, not just single species. We have to take cognizance of the fact that the fish are in fact moving. In the long term, it seems to me, it is pretty simple. The big picture answer is we have to stop burning so much stuff. That is what is putting carbon in the atmosphere. Whether it is in our automobiles, our homes, our factories, our powerplants--it is burning fossil fuel that is putting CO2 into the atmosphere. That is why the efficiency bill we are on this week is an important bill, because it cuts back on the use of energy altogether and saves us in terms of putting CO2 into the atmosphere. The President has proposed a carbon agenda that I think is an important first step. But this is hard. Dealing with this is a hard issue, just as dealing with the prospect of World War II was a hard issue in England in 1936. It is hard because it is going to require changes that are going to be, perhaps, expensive, and significant modifications--because our whole society is based on burning stuff. That is what makes our cars and trucks go, that is what makes our transportation system work, that is what keeps us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and creates the electricity for all the products we use. It is hard because of the internal impacts. It is also hard because it is an international problem. The Senator from Rhode Island talked about this being national. You know, Maine and Rhode Island can't fix it. He says the Federal Government has to step in. I would take it one step further. This has to be an international solution. We cannot take steps which would compromise our economy at the same time China and India are becoming major polluters. Air doesn't respect international boundaries. CO2 is the same whether it is coming up from China, India, Europe, or the United States. I believe this is a case where we absolutely have to have international cooperation. We have to do something. We have to do something. The generation that nobly woke up to World War II and fought it and preserved this country and Western civilization for us has often been referred to as the ``greatest generation.'' The reason they were the ``greatest generation'' is they were willing to face a problem and make enormous sacrifices in order to deal with it, to protect us and our children and grandchildren and our ability to function in this new world. They were the ``greatest generation.'' I have to say, if somebody were going to characterize us, we would be characterized as the oblivious generation, the generation that saw the data, saw the facts, saw the freight train headed for us and said: That is OK, it is business as usual, don't bother me, I don't want to be inconvenienced. To go back to Churchill: The era of procrastination, half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. . . . We cannot avoid this period; we are in it now.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, 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.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 335; that the nomination be confirmed, 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; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 336 and 337; 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 in order to any of the nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I understand that there are four bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.

Mr. KING. Madam President, I now ask for a second reading en bloc, and I object to my own request en bloc.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, September 18, 2013; that following the prayer and the 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 Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; that following morning business the Senate resume consideration of S. 1392, the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act.

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.