Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I rise today to speak in favor of the confirmation of David Barron to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. As a Harvard Law professor, he has broad bipartisan support from those who know him best--his colleagues. Larry Tribe and Charles Fried--two professors at Harvard who could not be further apart politically--both agree--and this is the joint quote--``Barron is a brilliant lawyer who will make an excellent judge. What is clear to us is that Barron will decide cases based solely on the relevant sources of legal authority, including binding precedent, and that his political views would in no way distort his legal judgment.'' This is the kind of unequivocal support we want for a judicial nominee, and David Barron is just the kind of judge we should confirm. I stand alongside those of my colleagues who believe transparency is paramount and that we need a public debate on drone policy. Indeed, I support a robust debate on our entire drone policy, not simply the use of a drone to kill an American citizen who was plotting the annihilation of his fellow Americans. Importantly, the White House just announced that it will release to the general public the key memo Professor Barron wrote, so all Americans will be able to take part in this debate. But let us be clear: David Barron is not responsible for the administration's delay in releasing the memos he and others in the Office of Legal Counsel were directed to produce. He is certainly not responsible for the administration's drone policy or the decision to authorize an attack. He is a lawyer who was asked to do legal analysis for his client, the President of the United States. Entangling David Barron's nomination with the policy of drone deployment is unfair to him and unfair to the people of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico who need the vacancy on the First Circuit filled by someone as qualified as David Barron. I believe David Barron will be an excellent judge, and that is why he has my support.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I commend the Senate on taking final action on the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, known as WRRDA. Today's bill includes the $310 million Boston Harbor dredging project which will deepen Boston Harbor's main navigation channels. Boston Harbor is an economic anchor for the entire New England region, and this investment will help ensure its future as a port of world class distinction. Improving the harbor to accommodate more and larger ships will bring more jobs, more investments, and more economic activity to the harbor, extending Boston's position as a shining city upon a hill as well as on the shore. Dredging the harbor will double the number of containers on ships coming into Boston. The project will also allow the port to accommodate ships being built to serve the expanded Panama Canal, which is planned to open next year. The Army Corps projects that for every dollar spent on construction, there will be $9 returned in increased economic activity, resulting in a $2.7 billion economic benefit for the entire New England region. I thank Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Vitter for their hard work getting this bill over the finish line. I also thank Senator Warren and Congressman Capuano, Congressman Lynch, and the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation for their leadership and commitment in securing this vital funding. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Objection.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the issue of net neutrality. Right now there are people who are watching the floor of the Senate streaming live on C-SPAN.org. They might be engaged political junkies or maybe they need something to help them take a nap. Let's face it; the action in this most deliberative body can sometimes feel a little slow. Now imagine just a few companies deciding that C-SPAN.org will be put into a slow lane; that the public interest content streamed out to the world will be sent out at an even more deliberative pace, while kitten videos will get priority. When people talk about net neutrality, that is what we are talking about. Instead of open and free Internet where the billions of clicks and links made by customers and entrepreneurs in their living rooms and garages determine who wins and loses, it will be just a few companies in a few corporate boardrooms deciding who gets into the express lane and who falls behind in a traffic jam. We need a truly open Internet because an open Internet has become the world's greatest platform for innovation, job creation, and economic growth. An open Internet enables freedom of expression and the sharing of ideas across town or around the world. An open Internet is driving economic growth in Massachusetts and throughout the United States. Openness is the Internet's heart, nondiscrimination is its soul, and any infringements on either of these features undermine the intent of net neutrality. The vitality of this free platform is at stake today because right now our Internet regulators at the FCC are determining how they will use its authority to keep the Internet open for business. When the FCC first unveiled its new Open Internet proposal a few weeks ago, the Commission contemplated whether to allow paid prioritization. Under these proposed Internet rules of the road, fast lanes could open to those who can pay, leaving others stuck in traffic. The result: Consumers could be stuck in an online provider pileup when a broadband provider decides to slow down a streaming of Netflix's House of Cards or bring a high-speed Yahoo search to a crawl or block a free online call to a friend abroad. But the worry goes far beyond simply slowing down the videos we watch on YouTube. Without a truly open Internet, startups and small businesses would suffer, slowing our economy and job growth throughout Massachusetts and around the country. No one should have to ask permission to innovate. But with fast and slow lanes, that is precisely what an entrepreneur will need to do. Right now the essence of the Internet is to innovate and test new ideas first. If an idea then takes off, the creator can attract capital and expand. The Internet today is a level playing field where the competition for the best in technology and ideas thrives. Creating Internet fast and slow lanes would flip this process on its head. Instead, an entrepreneur would first need to raise capital in order to start innovating, because she would need to pay for fast-lane access to have a chance for her product to be seen and to succeed. Only those with access to deep pockets would develop anything new. Imagine the stifling of creativity if startups need massive amounts of money even to innovate. So consider an app developer or creator of a new product in Boston or throughout the country. How will she reach potential customers and viewers if her Web site is stuck on a gravel path while those with access to capital whiz by on the interstate as they flash their Internet E-ZPass? She won't reach her customers; only those with money will. If you don't believe me, consider the more than 100 tech companies-- including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter--that characterize broadband providers imposing tolls on Internet companies as a ``grave threat to the Internet.'' Consider the 50 venture capitalists who wrote to Chairman Wheeler last week and said that with paid prioritization, ``an individual in a dorm room or design studio will not be able to experiment out loud on the Internet. The result will be greater conformity, fewer surprises, and less innovation.'' Less disruption--less creation of the next big idea. That would be the end of the Internet as we know it today. Unfortunately, I have seen this fight before. In 2006, when the open Internet was under attack, I introduced the first net neutrality bill in the House of Representatives. Today our battle to preserve an open and free Internet wages on. That is why last week I joined with 10 of my Senate colleagues to urge Chairman Wheeler to rethink paid prioritization and to insist that he explore all options, including reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service. We need to put on the books the strongest open Internet rules as possible, and if title II reclassification is the most effective way to accomplish this goal, that is what the FCC should do because then it would be treated as a common carrier service. That is how we treat traditional phone service. That, in fact, is what the Internet has become in the 21st century. You cannot live without it. We have to treat it as such. To be connected in the 21st century, you need Internet access. That is why, if needed--and it just might be--title II will have to be the way to go. As one of the primary authors of the 1996 Telecommunications Act--a bill that unleashed competition and created hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment--I know the FCC has both the power and the responsibility to oversee the operation of broadband networks and intervene in its efforts to preserve competition and safeguard consumers. It is time for the FCC to use that power to protect the tremendous potential of the Internet. The Internet is a vital tool that helps businesses compete and expand, pumping life into our economy. Again, after the 1996 act, $1 trillion of private sector investment went into developing new companies online, into expanding the Internet. Why? The government acted to make sure there was a level playing field in the 1996 act and then got out of the way and watched the competition flourish in this chaotic new world of broadband. There was no YouTube. There was no Google or Amazon. There was no Twitter. There was no Facebook. It didn't exist. It could have existed before then but not if we didn't have a flourishing Internet that was wide open for competition and investment from the private sector. That is why this decision by the Federal Communications Commission is so important. It is understanding the very nature of this new communications job-creating revolution that we have here. We must fight to protect it. I thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me this time, and I yield back.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair recognize the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. MARKEY. I seek recognition to speak for 5 minutes.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, two things happened yesterday: First, the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill collapsed--at least for now. It would have created 190,000 new jobs. It would have cut carbon pollution by 22 million automobiles on the roads of the United States in equivalency. That is a big deal. It is something that was agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans. What happened? Well, too many Republicans wanted to vote on the Keystone Pipeline issue. They knew the vote on the Keystone Pipeline was going to fail because they don't have the votes in order to be successful, so they took a bill that would cut carbon emissions and said they wouldn't pass it unless they got a vote on three additional amendments to increase global warming emissions: No. 1. Stop EPA from cutting emissions on powerplants. They wanted to vote to take away EPA authority on that. No. 2. Allow massive export of natural gas that will actually increase costs to consumers in the United States and move us back to coal because the higher the price of natural gas, the more people are going to go back to burning goal. They all understand that. That is what the game is all about. No. 3. Prevent the Senate from considering global warming pollution controls in the future. That is right--just have a vote that prohibits the Senate from considering global warming pollution levels. Obviously, this is a debate about pollution, not about energy efficiency, from the perspective of the Republican Party--although I give credit to the many Republicans who were working on a bipartisan basis with Jeanne Shaheen in order to put together a bill that actually accomplished something and showed this institution can work. A second event actually happened yesterday as well. Two new climate studies were released saying that the West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing and the melting of the West Antarctic is unstoppable. Twelve feet of sea level rise is coming. Did you hear that? The West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing, the melting is unstoppable, and 12 feet of sea level rise is coming. What does that mean? That means Boston, underwater; South Florida, underwater; New Orleans, underwater. In the Senate, we are moving at a glacial pace on climate change. We are frozen. But while we do nothing, the pace of glacial collapse is accelerating. The world's ice is melting. The Senate has been called the cooling saucer of democracy. But when it comes to climate change, it is the warming plate, cooking the Earth as we continue our slide into an ocean of dysfunction. The next major piece of the West Antarctic glacier that breaks off into the ocean should be reserved as an island for all of the climate deniers. We will just call it the Island of Deniers. They can all live there because there will be plenty of room on this huge, massive body of ice that keeps breaking off and heading into the ocean. Secondly, we are about to take up tax extenders, and we have a fantastic chance to extend the production tax credit for wind in our country. Unfortunately, because of the unpredictability of the tax breaks for the wind industry, 30,000 people in the wind industry were laid off last year. That is not because the wind industry didn't prove it could increase the amount of electricity in our country generated from wind; it is because--unlike the oil industry, unlike the gas industry, unlike the nuclear industry, unlike the coal industry--the wind industry has to come in, hat in hand, to beg to continue their tax breaks year after year. There is no predictability for that marketplace. This gives us a chance to extend those tax breaks. So it is a big challenge, but ultimately if the oil and gas industry is going to receive $7 billion in tax breaks per year, the wind industry should receive the tax breaks it needs. We need a level playing field. We need a way to ensure that there is, in fact, a fighting chance for these new renewable energy industries. The existing industries have received tax breaks going back 100 years. These newer industries are there. They are creating jobs at a massive pace, but we need to ensure that the tax breaks are there. My hope is that we will be able to pass these tax extenders. Again, there are extensions for tax breaks that are in there for many industries across the board. It is the kind of bipartisan effort that deserves support, like the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill. My hope is that the institution can work in order to accomplish that goal. Civility on matters such as these should not melt away. We need to make sure we are, in fact, protected for generations yet to come. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I wish to express my warmest congratulations to both Rabbi Dr. Gershon C. Gerwitz and Dr. Mindy Gerwitz of Brookline, MA upon their departure. Rabbi Gewirtz has served as Young Israel of Brookline's dedicated Mara d'Asra for three decades, alongside his wife Mindy, and their children Yossi, Henoch, Sorah Leah, Adina and Doniel arrived in 1984. His wife, Dr. Mindy Gerwitz has also been a longtime passionate and dedicated community leader in her own right, contributing tireless decades of service. Rabbi Gewirtz leaves Young Israel of Brookline with an indelible legacy as one of the prime architects of Young Israel and as a local and national Jewish leader, in Brookline, the Greater Boston Jewish community, and the national Orthodox movement. Rabbi Gewirtz has led in times of great joy, incredible challenge, deep tragedy and monumental growth. Through it all, Rabbi Gewirtz has kept the Young Israel community together. He represented the Orthodox Jewish community locally and nationally with wisdom and integrity. Most importantly, he established personal relationships with his congregants, always serving their religious, spiritual, intellectual and halachic needs. I wish to express my boundless gratitude to Rabbi Gewirtz for his many years of devoted service to Young Israel of Brookline and to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has had a storied career, and I know the best is yet to come for him and his family.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Indira Talwani to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Ms. Talwani is a brilliant and accomplished attorney who will make an outstanding addition to our district court. She is an American success story. Her parents were immigrants from India and Germany. If confirmed, she will be the first Asian-American district court judge in Massachusetts. She has received honors throughout her career, and her background and experience unquestionably qualify her for the bench. She will be someone the people of Massachusetts, of New England, and our whole country can be proud of. I believe she will be an objective, unbiased decisionmaker, and that is exactly what we need for our district court judges. I recommend her wholeheartedly to the Members of this body. The Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill is going to be considered here today, and I recommend it to all of the Members of this body because it is a bill that has been developed across parties in a bipartisan way--across industries, across labor, across consumer groups. This is a bill which on a bipartisan basis is going to lead to improvement in the building codes of the United States to reduce energy consumption, increases in the efficiency of industrial equipment to reduce energy consumption, to increase the energy efficiency of Federal buildings in our country to reduce energy consumption. None of it is being done on a mandatory basis. It is all done on a voluntary basis. That is why we have a consensus here today. The consensus includes an understanding that this is going to create 190,000 new jobs in our country--from the Shaheen-Portman bill. It will save consumers $16 billion per year. And it will cut carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, polluting our country and our world by the equivalent of 22 million automobiles per year by the year 2030. These are benefits that are going to be maximized because we are going to start working smarter, not harder, just reducing the amount of energy we consume, reducing the amount of CO2 we send into the atmosphere, and doing it on a voluntary basis--voluntary. So let's have a vote here on the Senate floor. Let's just get it done. Let's agree on what it is that we know is going to help our country. We know it is going to create more jobs. But the Republicans say: No, we need a vote on the Keystone Pipeline. We need a vote on something that is highly controversial, and we demand that vote. Majority Leader Reid agrees to have a vote on the Keystone Pipeline-- agrees to have a vote on the Keystone Pipeline. How controversial is that? Well, you are going to take the dirtiest oil in the world, coming down from Canada, build a pipeline through the United States, bring it down to Port Arthur, TX, which is a tax-free export zone, and then that oil is going to be exported out of the United States. Where are the benefits for the United States in this scenario? We take the environmental risk, the Canadians get the benefit of having the dirtiest oil in the world come through that pipeline, and then it is going to be exported out of the United States. How do I know it is going to be exported out of the United States? Because I, as a member of the House of Representatives, had this amendment over and over brought to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and every time the American Petroleum Institute opposed it. Even though they say it is all about North American energy independence--ha-ha--when you have a vote, every Republican votes to keep that provision out of the bill so the oil can go out of the United States. So just stop this about ``energy independence for North America'' if you don't, as a part of the Keystone Pipeline, accept a provision where the oil has to stay here. Otherwise, what is the point? I will tell you what the point is. It is maximizing profit for the oil industry because they make more money when they sell the oil outside the United States. American consumers don't get the benefit of it, no. The world is going to get the benefit of it; the oil industry is; the Canadians are. Majority Leader Reid said: We will have a vote on that. We will have a vote on it. And then what happens? We come back this week, and the Republicans say that is not enough. This nice energy efficiency bill is going to be the vehicle for even more highly controversial issues, which at the end of the day is all meant to do what? To kill the energy efficiency bill because it reduces the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere on a voluntary basis. How do we know that? Well, we know it because their amendments go right to the heart of what it is that we should all now finally accept. They want to have a vote and a big debate here that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States of America from regulating greenhouse gases, from regulating global warming. That is the debate they want to have. They are saying: No energy efficiency bill--which everyone agrees on--unless we have a debate on whether our Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases. It is 2014. It is 100 degrees in Kansas today. There are hurricanes, cyclones, the tides are rising, the water is warmer, and the storms are more intense. It is not just here, it is all across the planet. The scientists agree that there is global warming. Their amendment would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating global warming pollution. That is what they call something that is reasonable. We have a bill everyone agrees should pass, but after getting an agreement that the Keystone Pipeline would be debated, they just continue on down the pathway. Yesterday the Obama administration released a third U.S. National Climate Assessment. From droughts in the West to deluges in the East, this new report shows that we are becoming the United States of climate change and that we must act in order to keep our Nation safe and strong. Second, they want to attach a provision to massively expand our exports of natural gas. They want to take the natural gas that is being drilled for here in the United States and put it on ships and send it out of our country. The more natural gas we export out of our country, the higher the prices are going to be for natural gas in our country. It will be more expensive to generate electricity. It will be more expensive for manufacturers to make their products in our country. It will be more expensive for those who want to build natural gas buses and natural gas trucks to be able to do so. That is something they want to do--export the natural gas of the United States to other countries. Does that make any sense? Is that the kind of noncontroversial discussion we should have at the time we have an energy efficiency bill that should go through? No, not at all. This is meant to dynamite the energy efficiency bill. That is what that amendment is all about. Then they want to add a rider to the bill as well that will prohibit the EPA from even considering at any time in the future a price on carbon--or, for that matter, prohibiting anyone. These are loaded, highly controversial amendments, all at their heart denying the reality of how much harm they will do to the United States. Meanwhile, the Koch brothers smile. They smile because they know it is all going to accomplish their principal goal: making sure no energy efficiency bill passes in the Senate this year, no reduction in the amount of greenhouse gasses we are sending up. That is the agenda. It is going to be the agenda into the future for the Republican Party. It has been the agenda. I look out and I see Republicans who have worked hard to put together this energy efficiency bill. I praise them for their willingness to come together on commonsense, reasonable provisions that reduce the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere on a voluntary basis by encouraging the creation of 190,000 new jobs in our country that Democrats and Republicans agree on. And I see this whole process getting hijacked by the Koch brothers, by the oil industry, by the natural gas industry that wants us to devolve into a big debate over science that is now completely and totally consensus not only here but around the planet. The planet is running a fever. There are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in preventive care to avoid the worst, most catastrophic impact of climate change on this watch we have here in the Senate. But, no, the process is being hijacked. You can see it here. They want to torpedo this process so that more oil, more coal, and more profits for the coal and oil companies become the agenda. So all I can say, ladies and gentlemen, is that we are at a historic turning point. The headlines in the newspapers across this country and across this planet tell the story today: Climate risk growing. That is the consensus. That is the reality. That is what this energy efficiency bill is meant to deal with. And what will happen--and we are going to see it over and over--is we are going to have Member after Member on the Republican side get up and demand that we have a debate on something unrelated to this energy efficiency bill where there is a consensus. They want to take climate science that is a consensus around the planet and have another huge debate here on it. That is the tragedy of this. The green generation, the young people in our country, they know this is the challenge of this generation. We as a nation have to stand up. A high percentage of that CO2 in the atmosphere is red, white, and blue. We cannot preach temperance from a barstool. We cannot tell the rest of the world ``you must do something'' if we are not doing something. That is what the bill we should be debating here today would do on a bipartisan basis: reduce greenhouse gases, create 190,000 jobs, and do it all on a voluntary basis--too simple, too good, too clearly consistent with these two objectives of job creation and greenhouse gas reduction. So I think what we are seeing is that the conserve in conservative no longer exists--not with the Koch brothers around. So this is now just going to be something that short-circuits the legislative process. It ensures that the energy efficiency bill is collateral damage because of their insistence on these amendments, when instead we have a chance this week to say that we are going to move forward on a smart energy policy; that we will work smarter, not harder; that we should come together to pass this bill without these giveaways to the oil industry and to the coal industry so that we can create jobs and save energy. And I would recommend to my colleagues that is the correct historical position this Chamber should be in right now. At this point, Madam President, I yield the back the remainder of my time.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I am proud to stand here today to support raising the minimum wage. No person in America should work full time and not earn enough to be above the poverty level. The poverty level in the United States in 2014 is about $23,000 for a family of four. Today, if someone works under the minimum wage for 40 hours a week they are still in poverty. No one should work 40 hours a week and be given a salary that does not lift them and their families out of poverty. That is absolutely wrong. Millions of people in our country have been trying to climb into the middle class. But no matter how hard they work, they are stuck in the same place. In America today, nearly half of those who grow up in families in the bottom fifth of income earners will stay there as adults. Tens of millions of Americans labor tirelessly for years to scale the economic ladder but they can never get off the ground. That is unacceptable, it is immoral, and that needs to change. Raising the minimum wage is a first step to fighting income inequality in our country. We must help restore the dignity and the value of work and help millions of families escape poverty by increasing the national minimum wage. Today, more than 46 million Americans are living in poverty. The average American household made less in 2012 than it did in 1989. That is wrong. It is plain wrong. Over these last 20 years, the top 1 percent of wage earners in America has seen their income skyrocket by 86 percent. In the years ahead it is going to get worse for those making the minimum wage. Over the next 5 years the real value of the minimum wage is projected to decline by 10 percent or over $1,400 of purchasing power for a full-time worker, unless we increase the minimum wage. What does that mean? It means Americans will be able to buy less if we don't do it, and it will be harder for families to get by. The poor will effectively get even more impoverished. Even as they are working 40 hours a week, they get poorer and poorer and poorer because that minimum wage does not buy as much as it did the year before and the year before and the year before. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is the system we have right now unless we take action to make sure those who earn the minimum wage are keeping pace with what it takes to buy the food, to pay the rent, to pay for the schools for the children in their family. If we don't do this, they get poorer and poorer while continuing to work 40 hours a week. We know low-income Americans would benefit from raising the minimum wage, but they are not the only ones. Hundreds of small businesses in my home State of Massachusetts have signed on to a petition for a fair minimum wage of $10.50 per hour. That petition says that raising the minimum wage makes good business sense. That same small business petition says workers are also customers. They are right. Increasing the purchasing power of minimum-wage workers helps stimulate the economy. Research has shown time and time again that minimum-wage workers spend the additional income they receive when the minimum wage is increased. If we increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, 28 million workers would receive about $35 billion in additional wages. Raising the minimum wage does not cause job losses, even during periods of recession. Most minimum-wage workers need the income to make ends meet and spend it quickly. It goes right into the economy. So economists believe it will actually boost the economy by creating about 85,000 new jobs and increasing economic activity by about $22 billion. That means everyone in our economy should be on board. Raising the minimum wage is about giving families security, opportunity, and dignity--the security to know they can make ends meet, the opportunity to climb out of poverty and into the middle class, and the dignity to know they are getting paid a fair wage for a hard day's work. That is why I am proud to stand here today to urge my colleagues to increase the minimum wage so that we give America the raise it needs for those who are working so hard for our economy. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent from the roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Michelle Friedland to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit. Had I been present, I would have supported cloture on the nomination of Michelle Friedland.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, the Armenian genocide is sometimes called the ``forgotten genocide.'' But every April, we come together to remember and commemorate the Armenian genocide and to declare that we will never forget. In order to prevent future genocides, we must clearly acknowledge and remember those of the past. For many years the Congress has had before it a resolution which clearly affirms the factual reality that the Armenian genocide did occur. I was a strong and vocal supporter of the genocide resolution for my entire tenure in the House, and I am proud to have joined Senator Menendez and Senator Kirk in introducing the Armenian genocide resolution in the Senate. This is the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, yet the suffering will continue for Armenians and non-Armenians alike as long as the world allows denial to exist and prevail. It is long overdue for the United States to join the many other nations that have formally recognized the Armenian genocide. That is why today's passage by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the genocide resolution in advance of the 99th anniversary is so historic. I was proud to vote for this important resolution today in committee, and I will keep fighting to ensure its passage by the full Senate. I will continue to work with the Armenian-American community to build a prosperous and bright future for the Armenian people. We must continue to stand with our ally Armenia to address the challenges they face. Armenia is confronted with blockades by Turkey and Azerbaijan--one of the longest lasting blockades in modern history. The United States must provide increased assistance to Armenia, work to promote trade with Armenia, and work to reestablish the Turkish Government's commitment to normalized relations. And the United States should work to facilitate a closer relationship between Armenia and Europe. The Armenian people are true survivors. Despite repeated invasions, loss of land, and the loss of between one-half and three-quarters of their population in the genocide, the people of Armenia have prevailed. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that the Armenian people are able to build their own independent and prosperous future. Together we can continue to build an Armenia that is respected and honored by its allies and neighbors. But for this to happen, there needs to be universal acknowledgement of the horror that was the Armenian genocide.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent from votes during today's session. Had I been present, I would have opposed the motion to table the Reid amendment to H.R. 3979 and I would have supported the motion to table the Vitter motion to appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. MARKEY

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

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, every day firefighters and other first responders around our country put their lives on the line to protect the public. Yesterday members of the Boston Fire Department bravely entered a burning building in Boston's Back Bay in a selfless effort to save lives and keep the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts safe. Firefighters head toward the danger as ordinary citizens run away from danger. They are a very special breed, these firefighters. It is with a very heavy heart that I come to the floor today, along with Senator Warren, to honor two of these courageous men, Lieutenant Edward Walsh and firefighter Michael Kennedy, who became caught in the fire and heroically sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. Thirteen other firefighters were injured in the blaze and are expected to survive. Firefighter Michael Kennedy was 33 years old. A native of the Roslindale section of Boston, he lived in Hyde Park and had been with the Boston Fire Department for the past 6 years. A former marine, Michael was among the first responders who nobly and bravely served those injured in the Boston Marathon bombing almost 1 year ago. Lieutenant Edward Walsh was 43 years old. He lived in West Roxbury with his wife and three children. Lieutenant Walsh came from a firefighting family. Both his father and uncle were fire lieutenants in nearby Watertown. He had been with the Boston Fire Department for 9\1/ 2\ years and was stationed at Engine 33, Ladder 15, just blocks from the building where the fire occurred. Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy are American heroes. Their memories will live on forever as everlasting examples of the extraordinary courage and dedication that is at the very heart of the Boston Fire Department and in the hearts of firefighters everywhere. Boston is strong because of heroes such as Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy who place the safety of others before themselves. In this nine-alarm fire, there were zero civilian casualties. These two brave men put their lives on the line so that others may go on living. I offer my condolences to the families of Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy and to the Boston Fire Department. Massachusetts has lost two of its finest sons, and I grieve along with the rest of the Commonwealth, along with Senator Warren, and along with everyone else for the loss that has been suffered. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, the science proves there is a danger, the economics prove there is a solution, and the politics tonight begin the process of saying there is a way to deal with this issue. The planet is running a fever, but there are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in the preventive care so that we deploy the strategies which make it possible for our planet to avoid the worst, most catastrophic effects of climate change. We can do it and do it in a way that helps our economy. There are now 80,000 people working in the wind industry in the United States. There are 142,000 people in the solar industry. That is 220,000 people. There are 80,000 people in the coal industry. Most of the wind and solar jobs have been created in the last 5 years. This is a job-creating revolution which is taking off. Tonight we are going to stay up all night to talk about this climate change issue in the hopes that tomorrow will be the dawn of a new era where the Congress begins to do something about this issue and where it responds to its historic duty to the next generation to end this crisis.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am honored to be joining Senator Schatz who has been working with Senator Whitehouse and with Senator Boxer to put together this very important discussion, very important evening. While we are discussing climate change, I thought I would first talk a little bit about baseball. Something very funny happened in baseball. From 1920 all the way through the entire modern baseball history, the average number of players who hit more than 40 homeruns in a season was 3. That is all--Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio. No matter who was playing in the United States, the average number of players was 3.3 who made it over 40 homeruns in a season. Then something very strange started to happen. All of a sudden there was a dramatic spike in the number of players who could hit more than 40 homeruns. In 1996 it went up to 17 players all of a sudden, with an average of only 3.3 who hit more than 40 homeruns. Year after year the same thing was occurring. Then it occurred to someone, maybe they are injecting these players with steroids. Now some people said, no, the ballparks are getting smaller, maybe they are corking the bats, maybe they are juicing the baseball. But, no, it turned out that they were injecting steroids into baseball players. And all of a sudden the average of 3.3 players averaging more than 40 homeruns in a season had spiked to three and four times that, until Major League Baseball decided that they were going to test for steroids. A very strange thing started to happen. The average number of players hitting more than 40 homeruns went right back down to the traditional average. Well, ladies and gentlemen, NOAA has the same kind of chart for our climate. NOAA has been able to do the calculation going back to 1880 of what the average temperature is on the planet. As you can see, it stayed at a pretty current level until all of a sudden, especially beginning in the 1970s, there is a dramatic spike. As we all know, 20 of the warmest 30 years ever registered have occurred in the last 30 years. As we all know, the fourth warmest year of all time ever recorded occurred just last year, 2013. But we haven't applied the same steroids equivalent test for this change in temperature. We have a pretty good idea of what has happened because scientists all across the United States agree on this issue: It is manmade. The chemicals we are putting into the atmosphere are causing the same kind of chemicals ballplayers were putting into their bodies were causing in the dramatic rise in the number of homeruns that were being hit in Major League Baseball. (Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumes the Chair.) This is basically an obvious correlation between what we are doing as human beings and impact on the world in which we live. And just as those homeruns went up when the players used chemicals, so too has the temperature on the planet. And the same distortions that occurred in our national pastime are now occurring on our planet. Ladies and gentlemen, the planet is running a fever, but there are no emergency rooms for planets. There are no hospitals to go to. We have to engage in preventive care. We have to put in place the measures that reduce dramatically the likelihood that we are going to see the worst catastrophic effects of this dangerous warming of our planet. If you are still skeptical, perhaps the findings of another skeptic, Dr. Richard Muller and his colleagues at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, will reassure you. Let me quote from Dr. Muller's July 2012 New York Times column entitled ``The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic.'' Here is what he said: Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the last 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emissions of greenhouse gases. Our current understanding of human influence on climate change rests on 150 years of wide-ranging scientific observations and research. It is informed by what we see today with our own eyes measured by our own hands. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme downpours are increasing. The ocean is becoming more acidic. But climate change is more than just numbers in a scientist's book. In my home State of Massachusetts it is having tangible impacts now. My State, Massachusetts, loses an average of 49 football fields of land to rising sea levels each and every year. Rates of sea level rise from North Carolina to Massachusetts are two to four times faster than the global average. Extreme downpours and snowfall in New England have increased by 85 percent since 1948. According to scientists at the University of New Hampshire, New England winters have become 4 degrees warmer on average since 1965. In other words, we now have in New England the same weather that Philadelphia had in 1965. We are 4 degrees warmer than we were in New England in 1965. We have Philadelphia's weather. Thank God in Boston we do not have their athletic teams, but we do have their weather and it is getting warmer. In Massachusetts and most of New England, spring has sprung 5 days earlier on average than it did in the latter part of the 20th century. Around the iconic Walden Pond, plants now flower 10 days earlier on average than they did in the 1850s, according to the careful records kept by Henry David Thoreau. Our iconic cod have been moving north as ocean temperatures warm. Cod need cold water. As the ocean warms, they are moving farther and farther north. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod is our iconic beach front, ocean front, and fishing front. The cod are moving north and away from our State because they need cold water. The coastal communities that depend upon them are being affected negatively by the absence of these fish. Scientists are just beginning to understand the consequences of the increasingly acidic ocean on scallops, lobsters, and plankton, which are the base of the food chain in the gulf of Maine. As Dr. Aaron Bernstein, from the Harvard School of Public Health, has written, climate change is a health threat, no less consequential than cigarette smoking. Increasing temperatures increase the risk for bad air days, and in turn it increases the risk of asthma attacks. It is worse for people with lung disease. I have two stories. Rachel is from Cambridge and Sylvia is from Amherst. Their moms talked about the impact of pollution on the health of their children. I think it is important for us to understand that asthma and other illnesses that are created by pollution are preventable but only if we here in the Senate put in place the policies that make it possible for us to reduce the risk to these young people all across our country. I strongly support all of the efforts the Members are putting together tonight to focus on this issue. It is not just the planet, it is the children of the planet who are negatively impacted by all of this additional pollution. Left unchecked, the impacts of climate change will only become worse in the future. An analysis by the Sandia National Lab found that changes in rainfall alone could cost Massachusetts $8 billion in GDP and nearly 38,000 jobs between 2010 and 2050. That is Massachusetts alone. New England could see a $22 billion hit to our GDP and almost 100,000 jobs lost from changing precipitation patterns. Sea-level rise will also threaten coastal communities where one-third of the Massachusetts population lives. The seas are getting hotter and they are getting higher. Those hotter, higher seas are making storms more damaging. Storm surges on top of sea-level rise could cause hundreds of billions in damages to cities on the Massachusetts coast during the next decade. In 1775 Paul Revere warned Massachusetts revolutionaries of an invasion coming from the sea. With climate change, Boston and the Bay State could face an invasion of the sea itself in Massachusetts and all across New England. As sea levels rise and storms become more severe, many of Boston's best known landmarks will be threatened, including Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, North Station, Fan Pier, Copley Church, John Hancock Tower, the Public Garden. The Back Bay will revert to its original personality as a bay. We have to be realistic about this. The threats are there. The scientists are warning us. This can happen. There but for the grace of God and a few degrees, Hurricane Sandy would have damaged the city of Boston. We have been warned. Anyone who hasn't been hit by a Hurricane Sandy yet has been warned. It is coming, and it will be worse than Hurricane Sandy. By the end of this century, Massachusetts summers could feel like North Carolina's summer--not Philadelphia. By the end of the century, the temperatures are going to keep warming. By 2100, Maine could be the only State in New England that still has a skiing industry. That is how rapidly the snows are disappearing. The economic impact of climate change isn't confined to New England because we already feel the cost of climate disruption. The GAO added climate change to its 2013 high- risk list based in large part on two reports they did at my request. GAO found that climate change presents a significant financial risk to the Federal Government. GAO could just as easily say it presents a significant financial risk for all of America. As daunting as the impacts of climate change are, the good news is we have the solutions to address it. We can generate good jobs in America that are also good for saving all of creation. With wind and solar, we have a tale of two tax policies. Here is the solar industry in the United States. Back in 2007, there was a production of perhaps 200 megawatts of electricity from solar. It was at the dawn of the solar industry. It wasn't as though the Sun had not been up there or that the technologies did not exist or could not have been created in order to capture it, but the tax policies were not there. In 2008, Congress passed a law which added an 8-year tax incentive for the solar industry. We can see what happened to this industry. It had been denigrated for years--up until last year when there was 5,000 new megawatts. Think of five Seabrook nuclear powerplants of electricity generated by solar in 1 year. That tax break stays on the books until the end of 2016, and by the end of 2016, there is an expectation that 10,000 new megawatts of solar will be installed in the United States in 1 year, ladies and gentlemen, if we keep those tax breaks on the books. We can see what happens when there is a consistent, predictable tax policy on the books. Let me show you another tax policy. This is the tax policy for the wind industry. The wind industry has not had the same good fortune which the solar industry has had. Every time there is a tax policy that is put on the books, wind starts to build upwards of 2,000 megawatts in 2001, but then the tax policy evaporated and it collapsed as an industry. When we put it back on the books, it went back up to 2,000 megawatts. It expired at the end of that year and collapsed again. In 2005, we put a policy on the books that began to see the kind of installation of wind that we knew was possible from the beginning of time. We all knew it. We all knew the Dutch were right with those windmills. We all knew there was something to it, but there was no tax policy that was consistent, until we reached 2012 when, unbelievably, 13,000 new megawatts of wind was installed in the United States--13 nuclear powerplants. There is only 100,000 megawatts of nuclear power in the United States after 70 years of tax subsidies. Look at what happened with wind in 1 year--13,000 megawatts. But then it expired, and it collapsed down to only 2,000 megawatts in the year 2013. That is our challenge, ladies and gentlemen. If we give the same kind of predictable tax and policy treatment to these renewable energy resources that were given to the oil industry over the last century, they have a lot to worry about. By the way, you don't have to worry about the oil or the gas industry. Their tax policies stay the same. Through the good times and the bad times, the oil industry keeps the same tax breaks on the books. They know they can rely upon that. Those two industries know the $7 billion in tax breaks they rely upon are going to be there year after year after year. Let's talk about what else can happen in other industries. Let's talk about the automotive industry. The Senator from Minnesota just talked about the fuel economy standards we put on the books. Look what happened since the fuel economy standards were put on the books and implemented by Barack Obama. George Bush did not implement them. I am proud to be the host author of those fuel economy standards, but it took Barack Obama to put them on the books--54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2026. Look what has happened. We are now nearing 600,000 hybrids, plug-in vehicles, and all-electric vehicles per year. It is skyrocketing. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are reporting record profits and record sales. People will buy them, but you have to create the policy in the country. By the way, that one policy--the fuel economy standards that were put on the books in 2007 in this body, and over in the House of Representatives--backs out 4 million barrels of oil per day that we import into our country by the year 2040 when all of these standards that we put on the books are finally implemented. How much is that? The United States imports 3 million barrels of oil a day from the Persian Gulf. We are backing out 4 million barrels just by putting together a policy that incentivizes the industry to invest in the kinds of technologies that Americans want to buy and citizens around this planet want to buy. Wind, solar, hybrids, all-electric vehicles--it is all there. It is what we can do in order to create jobs and at the same time save the planet. I will talk about some other numbers that I believe are really relevant. The coal industry now has 80,000 employees. The wind industry has 80,000 employees in the United States. We saw how low it was in 2007. Well, they now have 80,000 employees. The solar industry has 142,000 employees. Coal only has 80,000 employees. We saw what happened from the moment that predictable tax policy went on the books until today, and it is continuing to go off the charts, but we know there will be people who are going to be out here fighting to take away those tax breaks and will compromise the ability of the EPA or the Department of Transportation to keep those standards on the books. Back in the 1990s, I was the chairman of the Telecommunications Committee in the House of Representatives, and I was able to put three bills on the books. One bill created the 18-inch satellite dish, another one created the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth cell phone license. That is what drove the price of a phone call from 50 cents a minute down to 10 cents a minute. It was 1996 when you started to have one of these devices in your pocket. At 50 cents a minute, you didn't have one. By the way, it was the size of a brick before that bill passed. Finally, the 1996 Telecommunications Act moved us from analog to digital. It moved us from narrow band to broadband. It created this revolution of Google, eBay, Amazon, YouTube, and Facebook. All of that happened because of the policies created by the House and Senate and signed by the President, and it unleashed $1 trillion worth of private sector investment. It revolutionized villages in Africa and Asia. We invented those technologies and sold them around the world. We have the same kind of economic possibility for renewable energy and new energy technologies as we had in the telecommunication sector, and we have a chance to cap another $1 trillion to $2 trillion worth of investment in the private sector. Let's move on to our Nation's carbon emissions from energy due to fossil fuels. The total amount of greenhouse gases in our country from energy sources fell from 2005 to 2012 by 12 percent. We installed more wind, solar, and fuel-efficient vehicles. We got more efficient and we reduced our coal use from 2005 to 2012, but in 2013 that reversed, and the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources increased by 2 percent in 2013. What happened? The price of natural gas increased in 2013 by 27 percent. As a result, U.S. electric utilities returned to burning more coal and using less natural gas. U.S. energy-related carbon emissions are still 10 percent below 2005 levels, but to keep driving them down, we need to keep the price of natural gas low and continue to drive the deployment of wind and solar up. For the oil and gas industry, the crisis in the Ukraine is an opportunity to throw open the doors to unrestrained exports of American natural gas. But the notion that gas exports will help Ukraine is an illusion. It is a talisman, some lucky charm. This is a simple matter of geo-economics, geology, and geopolitics. We have already approved five export terminals that could send 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas abroad every year. That is nearly equal to all the gas consumed by every home in America. Just take that slice of the pie, and we are going to export all that natural gas. That is twice as much as Ukraine consumes every year. Exporting natural gas could raise U.S. prices upwards of 50 percent and create an energy tax of $62 billion each year on American consumers and businesses, and it will put the coal industry back in business because coal will then be less expensive than natural gas. Then our ability to meet this goal of reducing greenhouse gases will be replaced by a policy to export all the natural gas we can get to the ports of the United States, and the lower our supply is, the higher the price is going to be for the remaining natural gas within our boundaries. The Energy Information Agency says that just with the terminals that are now being proposed, it is a 52-percent increase in the price of gas here. We saw it last year. When gas went up 27 percent, coal replaced natural gas, and our emissions went up, not down. So we just have to be realistic about this whole debate in Ukraine about what it means for us in handling this issue. By the way, it is what has been leading to manufacturers returning to the United States. It is what is a big part of why there is a move towards natural gas vehicles, which also backed out imported oil. But the higher natural gas prices are the more we undermine our ability to make real progress on climate change, on manufacturing, on natural gas vehicles, on utilities moving from coal over to natural gas. That is our challenge as a people. Then, finally, we are the leader, not the laggers. The whole world is looking at us. So much of that CO2 is red, white, and blue, and they look to us to be the leader. You started your industrial revolution in the 19th century, they say to us. If you want us to reduce our greenhouse gases, you reduce yours. So we cannot abdicate this responsibility. Last week I attended a conference here in Washington called Globe. There were 100 legislators from around the world who came here--the key players on energy and the environment in each country in the world. We had a conference over in the Russell Building. Each of these legislators said they are looking to us for leadership. Five hundred new laws have been put on the books over the last 15 years in these countries on climate change. But the question comes to us. What are you going to do this year, next year, the year after on these issues? Their countries are even more vulnerable than our country. They do not have the resources which our country has. So that is our opportunity. Henry Waxman and I built a coalition of utilities, of businesses, of labor, of faith and environmental groups, and concerned citizens in 2009. The pieces are still out there, I say to my colleagues. We can do it again, but we are going to need everyone's help. Recently, the books of Massachusetts author and national treasure Doctor Seuss have been popular and read on the Senate floor. I wish I had time to read the entirety of his environmental classic ``The Lorax.'' But since there are so many Senators who want to talk about the impacts of climate change and the benefits addressing it will bring our country, I will just have to close with this short portion. Here is what it says: But now says the Once-ler, now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. So to my colleagues in the Senate and to everyone watching and following tonight, thank you for caring a whole awful lot. This is not for us; it is for all the subsequent generations of this country and this planet who are looking to this Chamber for leadership. We are going to make things better from tonight onward. This is a moment. The science is clear; the economics are clear; and now the politics is clear. We are going to have a big fight about this in 2014 because future generations are going to look back and know that this Senate stood up and we had the debate on the most important issue facing this planet. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

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

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I seek recognition to speak for 10 minutes.

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we have now engaged in a debate over the last couple of weeks over whether we should begin to expand a massive exportation of American natural gas--our own natural gas--to put it out onto the world market as a way of helping Ukraine deal with Russia. This whole notion is constantly being invoked, like an incantation--a talisman--that somehow or other this is some kind of a magic bullet that will help solve the problems in Ukraine. In fact, it really is nothing more than another aggregation encyclopedically of discredited notions, nostrums, that have no relationship to the reality of the global energy marketplace. These are actual arguments being made, false premises that do not, in fact, have any likelihood of having any substantial impact on the totality of the Ukrainian situation. Let me give a few facts as a way of dealing with where we are right now. The United States has already approved five export terminals that could send 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas abroad. How much natural gas is that? Let me tell my colleagues: It is more than twice what Ukraine uses in a year. The United States has already committed to doing that. More than a quarter of all of the gas Europe imports in a year would be ascribable to the amount of natural gas the United States has already approved. It would be nearly as much as every single U.S. home uses yearly. That is how much natural gas is part of the already approved export terminals in this country. The Department of Energy found that exporting 4.4 trillion cubic feet--a level we will reach within the next approved export terminal-- could raise the price of domestic natural gas up to 54 percent. That could mean that American consumers would pay $2.50 more per thousand cubic feet. That translates into--listen to this number, I say to my colleagues--a $62 billion energy tax every year on American consumers and businesses. What do I mean by energy tax? I mean that but for that exportation, consumers' bills, corporations' bills, would be $62 billion lower per year over the next 10 years. Can we imagine the debate here in the Senate over increasing $62 billion worth of taxes on Americans in one year? We would come to a standstill if we had that kind of debate. But because it is part of energy policy, people assume it is something that is outside the purview of what should be a great national debate which we are having. Let me tell my colleagues, low-cost domestic natural gas has allowed the United States to add--let me say this--530,000 manufacturing jobs since 2010, according to Dow Chemical. If low prices continue, we could add 5 million more jobs in the manufacturing sector by 2020. Who says this? America's Energy Advantage. Who is in that organization? Dow, Alcoa, Nucor, and other major corporations. To what do they relate the manufacturing revival in our country? Low prices. Energy that gives them a reason to return the manufacturing jobs from overseas. Except for the cost of labor, what is the single largest component in a manufacturing job? The cost of energy. The lower it is, the more likely the manufacturing company will have the jobs here in America. If we increase the price by 54 percent or more, which is what many people here are now proposing, we reduce the incentive for a manufacturer to create those new jobs here in the United States. Let me give my colleagues another fact. Every dollar invested in domestic manufacturing creates $8 in finished products. Manufacturing is at the heart of who we are as a country. This is something that right now is a discussion we should have in this country--the relationship between low-cost energy and the new manufacturing jobs we want to see. We can generate that economic value here in America, but if we send our natural gas overseas, that same kind of manufacturing future can be constructed in China. Let's have that debate here in our country. Last month the U.S. chemical industry topped $100 billion in new investments as a result of low-cost U.S. natural gas. According to the American Chemistry Council, those 148 new factories and expanded projects could generate $81 billion per year in new chemical industry output and 637,000 new jobs in manufacturing here in the United States by the year 2023. Now let's go to, in my opinion, some of the complete canards that are thrown out about where this natural gas will go if it is put out into the free market. First of all, let me say this: We are not Russia. We are not Venezuela. We are not a Communist country where the government controls where energy goes. No. We are a capitalist country. We are proud of it. The decision as to where natural gas is going to go is going to be made by the CEOs of oil and gas companies in our country, and they are going to send it to where they can get the highest dollar. Let me say this right now: The highest dollar is in China. The highest dollar is in South America. The highest dollar is not in Ukraine. So anyone who thinks that setting up these export terminals and sending our natural gas that could be helping our manufacturing sector overseas is going to help Ukraine's geopolitical situation doesn't understand the geo-economics of it, the geology of it, or the geopolitical implications of it. They have not thought through the totality of what happens when we take our precious resource and we start spreading it around the world. Some are going to argue that it helps Ukraine. Well, it is going to help China more than it helps Ukraine. It is going to help South America more than it helps Ukraine. It is for sure going to help the CEOs of big oil and gas companies. That is what this debate is really going to be all about. Because we don't captain those ships. ExxonMobil has a tiller for those ships, and those ships are going to steer toward where the highest price is on the world marketplace. When those LNG tankers set sail for Asia or South America, we should know what else we are sending abroad on those ships. American jobs will be on those ships. They will be sailing to other countries. Fighting climate change is on those ships, because we will burn more coal here in the United States rather than natural gas, which has half of the pollutants of coal. We will be increasing the greenhouse gases the United States of America is sending up into the atmosphere. When we are sending that natural gas overseas, we will be increasing the cost of a conversion of our large bus fleet and our large truck fleet over to natural gas as the fuel which makes it possible to drive them around our country. Here are the statistics. It is quite simple. If we move one-third of our fleet off of oil and on to natural gas as a way of fueling large buses and large trucks, then we back out 1 million barrels of oil--1 million barrels of oil--per day. That is a signal we should be sending to the Middle East. That is a signal that we are serious, that we are tired of exporting young men and women overseas and getting nothing in return. So let me summarize by saying this: No. 1, it is a $62 billion consumer tax. No. 2, it slows our conversion from coal over to oil in our utility industry. No. 3, it slows the conversion of vehicles over to natural gas. No. 4, it slows our manufacturing revolution. No. 5, it slows our economic recovery. Our real strength is in our strong economy fueled by this low-cost oil and natural gas in our country. We need a huge national debate in our country about the impact on our economy before we start putting it out on the high seas believing, erroneously, it is going to have some huge impact on Ukraine. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, the coal under our Federal public lands is a tremendously valuable asset that belongs to the American people. For nearly my entire career in Congress, I have been working to ensure that we do not shortchange taxpayers by giving this asset away to the coal companies for bargain-basement prices. As we are facing Federal deficits and budget cuts for programs that benefit hard-working, middle-class families, we need to ensure more than ever that we are not giving a windfall to coal companies on the backs of taxpayers in Massachusetts and across the Nation by selling this public coal for less than it is worth. In 1982, following coal lease sales by the Department of the Interior on public lands in the Powder River Basin, PRB, in Wyoming and Montana, I asked the Government Accountability Office, GAO, to investigate whether taxpayers had received a proper return in these lease sales. The GAO found that this Federal coal was sold for pennies on the dollar. The GAO report concluded that the Interior Department had sold this public coal in the Powder River Basin for $100 million less than it was worth. Following that revelation, there were a number of recommendations made to reform the Federal coal leasing program and ensure that taxpayers were protected. Unfortunately, I have concerns that similar problems with the Federal coal program may persist today at the expense of taxpayers in Massachusetts and around the country. This week, I am releasing a new public GAO report on the Federal coal leasing program. This is the first time in 20 years that the GAO has evaluated this program and it is well overdue. The findings in the latest GAO report highlight the fact that there still is a lack of competition for Federal coal leases. This dearth of competition amongst coal companies means that it is the Interior Department, and not the market, that is ensuring a fair price is set for these valuable resources. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this issue, for every cent per ton that coal companies decrease their bids for the largest coal leases, it could mean the loss of nearly $7 million for the American people. We have to act to correct the issues identified in the report and make sure national resources are not being given away at below market prices. The GAO has found that the Interior Department is not properly considering the potential of future exports of this coal from Federal leases. These coal leases are issued for 20 years and can be further extended. Coal exports for electricity generation in other countries have doubled in just a few years. Companies want to sell U.S. coal overseas to China and European markets to increase their profits. If we are not properly valuing the possibility that coal exports to higher priced markets will continue to increase, we risk not only costing taxpayers money but also exacerbating climate change by, in effect, subsidizing coal companies to send more coal abroad to be burned in dirty power plants. Moreover, the GAO has concluded in its public report that the Interior Department lacks transparency and is not providing sufficient information to the public on the Federal coal leasing program. I am extremely concerned that a lack of transparency and public information for the American people and for the Congress is inhibiting proper oversight of this important program to protect taxpayers. When I was serving as ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, I began an oversight inquiry into the Federal coal leasing program in July 2012. While the Department has provided me, and my staff has reviewed, hundreds of pages of leasing documents, certain critical information necessary to properly evaluate this program has been withheld. As a result, the Interior Department is not providing information on the Federal coal program to the Congress in a way that allows for proper oversight. While the intent of this restriction may be to protect the integrity of future lease sales, the effect is to hamper congressional oversight. As part of its investigation, the GAO released two reports to me, one that is public and one that is not able to be made public. GAO kept one of these reports nonpublic because the Interior Department believes that the proprietary information contained in the nonpublic report could harm the integrity of future lease sales. I believe that increased transparency with these coal lease sales would increase the integrity of the process, not lessen it. It would be very helpful for the American people to be able to review this information. But even if that is not possible because of concerns about proprietary information, Senators should be able to review this information and debate it in order to ensure that taxpayers are protected. Unfortunately, we are not able to have that debate on the floor of the Senate for the American people. That is wrong and very troubling. It is concerning to me that an agency would seek to withhold this sort of information from Congress. Without this information, we cannot make a legislative decision about whether the statutes governing coal leasing on Federal lands are working as intended and whether the Department is administering them properly. Based on my staff's examination of the materials provided to me by the Department and included in the nonpublic report issued to me by the GAO, it appears that the Interior Department may be consistently undervaluing Federal coal leases. The GAO report found that the Interior Department is using information that is outdated in valuing coal leases. Based on the examination of the materials provided to me, I believe that this problem may be even greater than stated in the GAO report. I am concerned that the Department may be using extremely outdated information and boilerplate analysis that does not reflect current market conditions. These are tremendously serious problems. Based on my staff's examination of the materials, I believe that using appropriate market calculations and assumptions in some recent coal lease sales could potentially have yielded $200 million more for the American people and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars more. Therefore, I am transmitting two letters to the Interior Department, one that I am able to release publicly and one that I cannot, which seek answers to how the Department will respond to the recommendations in the GAO report and other issues involved in Federal coal leasing. I believe that until the questions and issues that I have raised in my letters to the Department are properly addressed to guarantee sufficient taxpayer protections are in place, the Interior Department should temporarily suspend further Federal coal leasing. I will also be introducing legislation in the future to reform the Federal coal program to guarantee a fair return for the American people. Congress needs to be able to conduct the necessary oversight to ensure that the problems we have seen in the Federal coal program in the past do not continue. Until that happens we cannot assure taxpayers in Massachusetts and every State that they are getting a fair return on this public resource that they own. Until that happens, we lack the assurances that we are not subsidizing coal companies to increase carbon pollution by sending our coal overseas. It is time for the Congress to be able to conduct the oversight of this program that is required.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the GAO Report on Government Support For Bank Holding Companies.''

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, 1.3 million people already have not had a happy new year. That is because, when we tried to extend the emergency unemployment insurance before the holidays, the Republican leadership said no. The temperatures may be dropping to new lows, but we should not freeze unemployment benefits. When the economy was collapsing and AIG, the multinational insurance company, needed funds, we found that money for AIG. But when the Americans who are still recovering from the very recession caused by these institutions need more unemployment insurance, we just cannot seem to find a way to get it done. These are not just numbers. These people, 1.3 million people across the country and 60,000 in my home State of Massachusetts, now face the harsh reality in 2014 that their country no longer has their backs. One of these people is named Vera Volk. She is from Lynn, MA, just north of Boston. She is a 20-year employee in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry who was laid off in May of 2013. Her layoff was in part due to sequestration, cuts in the Federal funding of biotech last year. Last month Vera lost her unemployment benefits when the emergency unemployment insurance program ended. Vera has suffered a double injustice. First, her job was eliminated through sequestration, and then she was denied the extension of her unemployment benefits. Without the additional unemployment insurance, Vera and her family now need help to obtain food and medical assistance. In the near future, Vera's family faces the loss of their car and their home. Thousands of families in Massachusetts are facing similar but equally difficult decisions due to the termination of this critical program. Published reports say that unemployment insurance kept 2.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, out of poverty last year alone. That is why I am a cosponsor of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act that Senators Reed and Heller have introduced, to reinstate and continue Federal support for the emergency unemployment insurance program until the end of March. Under that legislation, unemployed residents of Massachusetts such as Vera Volt would be eligible to receive up to 35 weeks of additional unemployment benefits. Today, there are approximately 11.3 million Americans out of work and looking for a job. In Massachusetts, the unemployment rate is 7.1 percent and approximately 245,000 are looking for work. Unfortunately, in too many cities such as Lawrence, New Bedford, and Springfield--all over Massachusetts there are cities with much higher unemployment rates. Those unemployed workers in Massachusetts and across this country are finding it extremely difficult to find a job in this market. According to the Economic Policy Institute, for every one job opening there are 3.1 unemployed workers. So 2 out of every 3 job seekers have no job that they can actually find. Yet we are going to pretend that there is a job for them to be able to find. There are many people who believe they are not working hard enough to find a job. Let me tell you something. Back in 2000, the unemployment rate in the United States of America went down to 3.8 percent. Guess what happened. People who were unemployed took those jobs. When unemployment goes down to 3.8 percent, when the government and the private sector are doing their job, people come to work. In Massachusetts in 2000, unemployment went down to 2.8 percent. People were not hiding under their beds. People were not pretending they could not work. When the job was there, people took it. This is not ancient history; this is 2000, 3.8 percent unemployment, 2.8 percent unemployment for the State of Massachusetts. People who are offered a job will take a job. The jobs are not there. It is not the fault of these families. It is not the fault of these job seekers. We should not be punishing them. We should not be punishing their families because this capitalist system is not producing the jobs right now. We have to reach out with a helping hand to these families so they can make it through this difficult time when the system is failing them. Instead, we are going to blame them for not finding jobs that do not exist. It is a beautiful circular argument where you never have to help the people who are actually being victimized by a failure in the economy. The truth is--and I restate this--when it went down to 3.8 percent unemployment in 2000, employers called these people back and said we want to put you to work, and the workers said, yes, we are ready to do it. Here we are, once again, back in this cycle where too many people are pointing the finger at the worker when we know the worker will do the job. We have to be honest. The system, this capitalist system, this interaction between the government and capitalism right now is not producing the jobs for these workers. We have to work on that. That is our responsibility. We should be humble enough to say that it is the government, it is the private sector, not working together smarter--not harder--in order to accomplish these goals for all of these workers across our country. If we did that, I think that ultimately we would have the very interesting result, according to all economists, of actually injecting more funding into the economy, creating more jobs, not destroying an additional 200,000 or 300,000 additional jobs this year because we did not inject the funding that would be provided to the unemployed that would be spent on the economy that would keep it on the upward tick it is on right now. Instead, paradoxically, we are going to wind up with Republicans, if they are successful in cutting off this funding for long-term unemployment, seeing unemployment actually rise instead of being lower. We have to work together in a bipartisan fashion in order to make smart investments now that will create the jobs, continue our country's economic recovery, and lower unemployment. I believe that our national strategy for job growth must continue to emphasize the areas where we excel as a nation. It is education, it is health care, it is biotech, it is clean tech, it is technology in general, and it is the investment into these areas that continues to give us the opportunity to be an engine for job growth in the world. But while we chase this dawn of a brighter economy, we must not leave behind millions of Americans and their families. Let's not punish those who are already the victims and who continue to be the victims of a Wall Street collapse because we, as a nation, fail to understand and identify these innocent victims who still sit up there with their families. I hope we can come together on a bipartisan basis to continue this program which is such a lifeline to the unemployed, their families and our economy.