Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize and congratulate the Endocrine Society in honor of its Centennial anniversary this year. Founded in 1916, the Endocrine Society is the world's oldest and largest professional society for endocrinologists and endocrine scientists, who focus their efforts on understanding and caring for the large interconnected system of glands in our bodies that produce hormones needed for the daily function of our bodies. These physicians and researchers are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time--from diabetes and obesity, to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. Throughout this year, the Endocrine Society is celebrating its 100th anniversary by focusing on endocrinology's past contributions to science and public health, while keeping an eye on today's promising research, which will lead to the discoveries of tomorrow. I am very pleased that this included holding its annual meeting and expo in Boston which drew thousands of endocrinologists from around the globe to Massachusetts. I am also pleased to note that this year the president of the Endocrine Society is Dr. Henry Kronenberg, chief of the endocrine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Over the Endocrine Society's past 100 years, there have been remarkable discoveries and advances in biomedical research, but there is still much to learn. Thankfully, advances in endocrine research are accelerating. Today, thanks in part to funding from the National Institutes of Health, we have many doctors and scientists working to create fascinating tools to improve human health. As one example, the bionic pancreas, developed by Dr. Ed Damiano, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, completely automates the process of tracking and adjusting blood sugar. This device does not cure diabetes, but it battles its greatest threat: the dramatic fluctuations in blood sugar that cause significant side effects and even death. I am truly appreciative of the accomplishments of endocrinologists and endocrine researchers--many who work, study, and practice in Massachusetts--over the past 100 years, and I am excited about the future of this field and better understanding how our environment impacts the way in which our hormones function and contribute to disease. I offer sincere congratulations to the Endocrine Society on their 100th anniversary, and I look forward to seeing future advancements in the field that lead to women and men living longer, healthier lives.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I would like to start my remarks on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act with a story I received from one of my constituents, David. He is a patient at Hope House in Boston. Hope House is the oldest and one of the largest residential treatment programs for adults in Massachusetts. This is what he said: Senator Markey: Addiction has totally ruined my life. It quickly took everything from me and my family. It has stripped me of my dignity and self worth along with my self respect. I also lost the trust of my entire family. Addiction started late for me. I was 44 years old. I had everything I could possibly dream of. A beautiful wife, a son, two step-daughters that I raised and put through college. We also built a new home in 2000. I had a great career and was a few years away from 20 to retire. Then my family and I went on vacation for two weeks and I came home with a parasite in my stomach for which I was prescribed pain medication. That was at the end of April that year. In May, I had my appendix taken out. In June, I had to have my gallbladder out. All the while being prescribed pain meds. Before I knew it, I was addicted. It wasn't long after that there were no more scripts to be had. Then I was doing heroin. This was so scary for me because I had not used any drugs my entire life. Within two years, everything was gone. Wife, family, job, house. Everything. It has been a real struggle to get out and stay clean between not being able to get a detox bed, or, if I did, after five days, only to be told that there were no beds available for further treatment. Which meant back on the street to start the whole process over again. I finally did make it to the Hope House, which I am so grateful for. I know I am going to make it this time; I just feel it. Thank you for the chance. I pray for David and all the patients at Hope House. They found the help they needed, and we hope they will have the strength and the support to achieve long-term recovery. I am proud that this opioid legislation contains provisions of the TREAT Act--The Recovery Enhancement for Addiction Treatment Act--a bill I introduced with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and other colleagues here in the Senate. The TREAT Act addresses the demand side of the opioid epidemic. I firmly believe that if we are going to reduce the supply of heroin, fentanyl, and illicit prescription drugs, we have to reduce the demand through treatment. But for far too long, outdated and scientifically unsound Federal restrictions have severely limited access to effective medication-assisted treatment like Suboxone for opioid addiction. The TREAT Act removes these restrictions. Importantly, the TREAT Act would allow appropriately trained nurse practitioners and physician assistants to treat patients with these lifesaving therapies. These TREAT Act provisions, which are included in the CARA conference report, will increase access to treatment, especially in community health centers and rural communities across this country. I am grateful that these provisions are included in the bill we will vote on today. I am hopeful they will have an impact in the future. It has been a long haul and hard work over the last few years, but we have achieved a measure of success that will impact lives as soon as this bill is signed into law. I sincerely thank Senator Murray and Senator Alexander for their support on the TREAT Act. I thank Senator Hatch and Representatives Pallone and Upton and all the CARA conferees who worked to get the TREAT Act provisions included in this final package we are voting on today. I would like to express my appreciation to Senators Whitehouse and Portman and all of the Senate and House cosponsors of the TREAT Act who supported efforts to get the law changed so that more people can get the treatment they need. In Massachusetts, I am hearing enormous frustration from people who don't feel that adequate resources are being brought to bear on this enormous epidemic of prescription drug and heroin addiction. Just like David, countless people suffering from addiction cannot find a bed for detox, and then when they are at their most vulnerable moment in recovery, they cannot find a place or provider of long-term treatment. For the months that we have been debating CARA in this Chamber, we have heard the statistics. Our Nation is experiencing more deaths from drug overdoses than from gun violence or auto deaths. Eighty percent of people suffering from heroin addiction started on opioid pain medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration and prescribed by doctors who aren't required to receive education on safe opioid prescribing. Nearly 30,000 people in the United States died of an opioid overdose in 2014. Approximately 1,300 of those were in Massachusetts. Of those 1,300, 754 had fentanyl in their system. Massachusetts is 2 percent of America's population. If you multiply 754 times 50, you are up to 37,000 people dying from fentanyl in our country. That is like having a war in Korea every single year. We haven't even begun this battle on fentanyl. But it is coming, and it is coming with an urgency that is very difficult to even imagine. The total deaths from opioids in America would be equivalent to a Vietnam war every single year, and fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than morphine--unbelievable. That is how powerful it is--50 times more powerful. This is just something that we are going to have to deal with, and approximately 2.5 million Americans abused or were dependent on opioids in 2012, but fewer than 1 million received treatment for their condition. Out of the 2.5 million people who needed help, only 1 million got it in our country. We are being overwhelmed by a tsunami of heroin, prescription drugs, and fentanyl addiction, and we must stop it before it drowns any more families in our country. We had an opportunity here to make sure we put real funding into this bill for more treatment. We are not going to meet that challenge here today. We do need funding for those families--funding for treatment providers who help put people on the path to recovery and funding for our sheriffs, firefighters, and other first responders who carry the overdose prevention drugs that save lives. We need funding for the public education campaign so that we can prevent addiction before it takes hold. We will not save lives and stop this scourge of addiction unless we, in fact, ensure that there is full funding for treatment. We will save lives with more treatment options, more Narcan, more counselors, more education, more beds, and a better continuum of care, but we must fund it. The bill we are voting on today is a good step, but we still have much further to go. Without that funding, this effort will not do the full job that our country wants us to do. Our cities are fighting a war, and we need to help them. We are hemorrhaging lives by the day. If we are to staunch the flow of suffering and death, we desperately need funding to implement all of the programs in this bill. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a defining moment in our national discussion to address the public health crisis of addiction. Our work doesn't stop here. It has only just begun. Let's be clear. Stopping the overprescription of opioid pain medication that is fueling addiction and overdoses starts with the prescribers. We need to require anyone who prescribes opioid pain medication and other controlled substances to undergo mandatory training on safe prescribing practices and the identification of possible substance use disorder. We need to make sure that people who enter the judicial system don't arbitrarily have their Medicaid coverage terminated, making it more difficult to access treatment once they are released and fueling, once again, the vicious cycle of incarceration. We need to make sure that all opioids approved by the Food and Drug Administration are first reviewed by independent experts to ensure that these drugs are not only safe and effective but also won't continue to fuel the epidemic of addiction in this country. We need to make sure that prescription drug monitoring programs are fully utilized and nationally interoperable in order to prevent doctor shopping, and we must let Big Pharma know that their army of lobbyists on Capitol Hill will be matched by an army of advocates that work every day to raise awareness and save lives. The Congress has an opportunity to let all those struggling with addiction know that help is on the way. We know that we have heard their stories, and we will not forget them. We must let them know that no matter how dark life seems right now, there is hope, and sunlight will grace them once again, and this Chamber has not finished this job--this journey--that we must be on with every family in our country. Substance abuse is a crisis the likes of which we have never seen in America. A decade from now people will ask: What did you do to help end this epidemic? That is why I stand today congratulating all of those who worked on this bill, and we must also pledge to continue to stand up and fight for the funding and other investments we need to make. We must stand united to end this crisis of addiction in our communities now and for generations to come so that children will not have to look to the history books to find that there ever was a year like 2016 with an epidemic that is raging across the country. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, fishing is a way of life on Cape Cod. But it is not always smooth sailing. That is why, in 1991, a group of Cape Cod fishermen came together to respond to the challenges facing the fishing industry in order to protect their way of life. This year, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance, as they are now known, is celebrating their 25th anniversary of advocating for commercial fishermen and protecting their livelihood. A few local fishermen created what is now a nationally recognized nonprofit organization and leading voice for Cape Cod's commercial fishermen. Today the organization represents 400 independent small businesses that annually bring in over 12 million pounds of seafood worth over $16 million. They are a vital component to the local economies of the cape towns, Cape Cod as a whole, and the entire Bay State. These fishermen have firsthand experience at sea and understand the importance of a healthy ocean and fisheries. They have come together for 25 years to share their solutions and their successes. The Fishermen's Alliance provides an outlet for the knowledge of generations of Cape Cod fishermen to be passed to the next generation. It provides help for entrepreneurial fishermen who want to use the latest business tools to enhance their efficiency and profitability. Whether it is loans or lobster, dogfish or data, the Fishermen's Alliance provides critical support to the cape's fishing industry today and works to ensure that it has a vibrant future for many years to come. But it is not just about Cape Cod or Massachusetts, the Fishermen's Alliance is sharing its success story with other fishing communities, too. In 2015, they published a detailed roadmap for starting a permit bank based on their experience running loan programs for groundfish and scallops. This guide will help local fishermen across the country create sustainable and successful businesses in their communities. Just as cod from the waters off the cape helped sustain America in its early years, the Fishermen's Alliance ideas can help sustain small boat fishermen around America. The Fishermen's Alliance truly lives up to their slogan: ``Small Boats. Big Ideas.'' They are constantly striving for a better tomorrow. They have provided my office with valuable insight and perspective for many years. Their work to create sustainable fisheries for Cape Cod and future generations of fishermen distinguishes them across this great Nation and today in the U.S. Senate. I once again congratulate the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance on their 25th anniversary.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, it is summer. It is supposed to be hot, but if last month felt hotter than past summers, you are right. Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, or NOAA, said the United States experienced its warmest June on record ever. Already this year there have been eight weather-related and climate-related disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. Globally, it was found that 2015 was the hottest year on record, and so far this year is on track to beat last year. We can't even hold the record for a year--2016 has been as hot as Pokemon GO--and anyone watching the Senate floor tonight who is younger than 31 has never experienced in their life a month where the temperature was below the 20th century average. That last happened in February of 1985. Ronald Reagan was starting his second term as President, and ``Beverly Hills Cop'' was the No. 1 film at the box office. If you went to the movies that month, you probably saw a trailer for what would be that summer's blockbuster, ``Back to the Future.'' Well, that future is here. Temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, rainfall is more extreme, and the oceans are more acidic. Why is that? It is mostly because of carbon dioxide pollution that is released from the extraction and burning of fossil fuel. Virtually all climate scientists agree that the climate is changing and that human interference with the climate is now the driving force of that change. Thanks to excellent investigative reporting at Inside Climate News and other news outlets, we now know that as far back as the 1970s, Exxon and the other oil companies were following the latest developments in climate science and Exxon was undertaking its own research on the impact of carbon pollution on the climate. The top leadership of Exxon was warned in July of 1977 by its senior scientist James Black: ``In the first place there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.'' That is from 1977 to Exxon from its own scientists. A year later in 1978, that same scientist once again told senior management: ``Present thinking holds that man has a time window of 5 to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies that might become critical.'' Ten years later in 1988, a memo laid out Exxon's position, which included these three points: No. 1, emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse gas effect; No. 2, urge a balanced scientific approach; and No. 3, resist the overstatement and sensationalization of potential greenhouse effects which could lead to economic development of nonfossil fuel resources. Exxon knew full well back then the impact of carbon dioxide on the climate and what that could mean to their businesses. Exxon, the Koch brothers, Peabody Energy, and other individuals and businesses whose profits might suffer under rules to reduce carbon pollution have had a vested interest in stopping climate action for decades. That is why Congress still hasn't sent comprehensive climate legislation to the President. More than 50 years ago, in a special message to Congress on pollution, President Lyndon Johnson noted that ``the increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has altered the composition of the global atmosphere.'' Since then, the scientific evidence and observation of climate changes already underway have continued to mount. But even as the science has become overwhelming, climate policies have gotten trapped in a web of denial. During the last 2 days, we have heard many of my colleagues talk about the many strands of this web of denial. Like a real spiderweb, it is hard to see this web unless the light catches it in just the right way. So this evening I am going to shine a light on a few threads of this web. At the heart of this web is denial. That is where you find the George C. Marshall Institute, whose attacks on the science of the so-called nuclear winter consequence of nuclear war and its opposition to the nuclear freeze movement expanded over the years to include anti-climate change efforts. The institute was named after the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during World War II who then became Secretary of State. He helped to rebuild Europe and won the Nobel Peace Prize for what is now called the Marshall Plan. Given Marshall's view of the need to address hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos, it seems likely that if he were alive today, he would agree that national security experts see that climate change is a security threat to the United States. Marshall himself would likely support efforts like the Green Climate Fund to ensure that the poorest countries in the world have the resources necessary to overcome the challenges climate change pose to their economic development. He would likely support American leadership of global climate efforts to ensure that all countries are taking action to address climate change. But the institute that carries the George Marshall name has countered international climate science and action every step of the way. When the Marshall Institute first expanded into environmental policy in the 1980s, the environment and climate change had bipartisan support. In the 1988 election, George Herbert Walker Bush pledged to meet the ``greenhouse effect with the White House effect.'' Increasingly, world scientists were raising concerns about carbon pollution. In 1990, the first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, detailed what the fossil fuel companies already knew-- that carbon pollution released from burning fossil fuels was causing the Earth to warm. The very business model of the fossil fuel industry was altering the planet. So while the scientific community was sounding the alarm, it has now been revealed that Big Oil and fossil fuel companies conspired to mute that alarm, and the Marshall Institute soon became a critical part of their climate denial web. Mind you, we are not talking about the original George C. Marshall. He would have had no part of this. This is just the absconding of his name and having it placed above an institute--the Marshall Institute-- which is now disseminating this bad science. That is what has happened. In 1989, this Marshall Institute published a report on climate change casting doubt on the impact of carbon pollution and spinning a core component of the web of denial. As Washington insiders, the institute's report was read by the White House, shared by media outlets, and became a so-called side of a new public debate on climate change. The Marshall Institute turned debating climate change into a game, and the science became a political football. It was exactly what they wanted. By dividing climate science into sides, pitting each one against the other, they had found a foothold for doubt and a reason to delay climate action. Still, the first Bush administration signed and the Senate ratified the historic United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. The goal of the treaty was to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions and prevent ``dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate system.'' But it took another 23 years, until 2015, for the countries of the world to agree on a global solution in Paris last December. That 1989 Marshall Institute report, funded by the fossil fuel industry, was an especially sticky strand of this web of denial. Since then, the tactic of casting doubt on climate science has been used time and again by the Marshall Institute and other organizations to delay policies that could hurt the profits of oil, coal, and petro-polluters like the Kochs. This is what Senator Whitehouse has led all of us in trying to bring out here to the Senate floor--that there is a web, and the web goes back to money, and that money is the profits that are made by the coal, the gas, and the oil industries. Those millions of dollars that the Marshall Institute has received from Exxon and the Koch- connected foundation over the years have allowed the web of denial to grow. The Marshall Institute misinformation campaign doesn't just come in the form of reports. Their chairman, William Happer, has testified in front of Congress multiple times espousing climate denialism and perpetuating the self-serving interests of the fossil fuel industry and the Kochs. He may be an accomplished physicist, but Dr. Happer's views on climate science have been routinely debunked. When I was chairman on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, in the House of Representatives, I heard Dr. Happer use the theatrics of a CO2 meter as proof that climate change doesn't exist. He advocated for the government to support an ``alternative hypothesis'' and to support his alternative hypothesis, which was nothing more than the denial of climate change. Just last year, while the climate talks in Paris were underway, Dr. Happer testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, continuing to spread doubt. But this past May, William Happer was a signatory on a misleading, full-page ad in the New York Times. The ad, placed by another thread in the web of deceit, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, attacked the reasonable efforts of New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and a coalition of other attorneys general united for clean power who are investigating more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals to see if they misled the public about climate change. But the Marshall Institute's efforts alone were not enough. So they helped form the cynically named Global Climate Coalition in 1989, shortly after the formation of the IPCC at the U.N. to fight climate change. The Marshall Institute CEO, William O'Keefe, a former lobbyist for Exxon, chaired the coalition that included members of manufacturing, automotive, oil and gas, mining and chemical industries, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They invested in denial and delay to allow business as usual to continue. But climate science and international climate efforts continued to advance after the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force. Of course, the fossil fuel coalition's concern continued to increase. As the IPCC worked on its second report in the early 1990s, it decided to include a chapter entitled Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes. It became clear that the world's climate scientists were examining the considerable collection of climate observations and research to see what they could say about human influence on the climate. So the Global Climate Coalition sprang into action to influence what the IPCC might say about the human influence on climate. At a November 1995 session to finalize the text of the IPCC report, alongside Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti representatives, the Global Climate Coalition weighed in heavily against the chapter focused on the detection and causes of climate change. After a flurry of negotiations and additional objections, the IPCC agreed that the amassed climate observations ``now point toward a discernable human influence on global climate.'' The world's climate scientists, the government representatives had now acknowledged that humans were altering the climate. So the calls for climate action got louder, and the effort to extend the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and draft what would become the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 increased. But in an effort to silence the calls to action, the investment in the web of denial grew. The Global Climate Coalition spent more than $13 million opposing the Kyoto Protocol. Between 1994 and 1997, they spent $1 million every year downplaying the threat of climate change. Ultimately, this broad coalition collapsed as their business interests and the impact of climate change on their profits changed. The Global Climate Coalition closed its doors in 2002, but the web of denial was already stretching to find new places to grow. Those threads have since expanded with the careful cultivation and collusion by the fossil fuel industry and the petrol polluters. We know that the Koch brothers, Exxon, and other major donors have invested millions of dollars into organizations that actively work to discredit climate change and oppose climate legislation. Those organizations pressure elected officials to take increasingly extreme stances with specific reference and focus on the members of the Republican Party. During President George W. Bush's first campaign in 2000, he promised to fight climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But in 2001, he pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2005, his Vice President, Dick Cheney, helped pass an energy bill that included massive subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry. As recently as 2008, the Republican Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, recognized the science of climate change and supported action. This was an era that has now passed. The web of denial has firmly trapped this issue in the Republican Party in such a way that no action is possible at all. But even in the face of the millions of dollars pumped into the denial machine, the House of Representatives was able to overcome it in 2009. The Waxman-Markey bill passed the House just over 7 years ago. It was the only comprehensive climate change legislation ever to pass a Chamber of Congress. It has been reported that the oil and gas industry, including the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil, spent $175 million and hired more than 800 lobbyists in 2009 to kill the Waxman- Markey bill. Let me give those numbers again: $175 million and 800 lobbyists to kill a bill that would have put a clamp on the increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. They saw any action on climate, especially legislation, as a threat to their bottom line. But Members of the House knew better. They saw that Waxman-Markey was good for our environment, good for our economy, good for America. A Congressional budget analysis found that Waxman- Markey would have reduced the Federal deficit and cost the average American household less than 50 cents per day. An analysis of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that Americans would save about as much as CBO's cost estimates from energy efficiency policies in the bill that CBO did not take into account. With an outstretched arm to lift them into the clean energy future, the bill included more than $200 million for the coal industry, $200 billion to capture carbon and to sequester it. Seven years ago, we gave the fossil fuel industry a choice: legislation or regulation. But Exxon opposed the bill. The Koch brothers opposed the bill. Peabody coal opposed the bill, except for the parts that helped the coal industry. Rather than change their current business model, centered on pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, they fought attempts to change the law. Now, 7 years later, Peabody coal has filed for bankruptcy. We are continuing to untangle the Koch brothers' web of denial. The Koch brothers have lied to the American people for decades about climate change. They have also lied to their own employees. When Waxman-Markey was being debated, the Koch Industries newsletter published an article attacking the climate change legislation and encouraging employees to check out specific Web sites for more information. The listed Web sites were funded by the Koch brothers. They sent their employees to other parts of the web of denial. When a Republican tries to stand up and publicly support climate action, the Koch brothers' ``spidy sense'' goes off and their web of denial springs into action. They mobilize, they target, they attack every Republican who stands against their business plan. Koch money floods primary campaigns to ensure that their self-serving lies trump in every election. The oil and coal industry will not stop their efforts because now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is a climate denier. But their obstruction and climate denial tactics are as bogus as a degree from Trump University. Trump says he wants an ``all of the above'' energy agenda, but we know he is really running on an ``oil above all'' platform. But the Koch brothers are now bigger than the Republican Party. The Kochs have built upon the tactics practiced by the tobacco industry generations ago in its campaign to discredit the science linking smoking with increased risks of lung cancer. The Kochs' goal is to discredit the science itself. How successful are they? Donald Trump has said that if he is President, he is going to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States--abolish it. I guess he assumes that Americans think that the air is too clean, the water is too clean, the soil is too clean, the rivers are too clean in the United States, and that we can afford to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency of our country. This is the world that the Koch brothers have forgotten. Their mission has always been to create doubt across America on climate science. They fund attempts to counter the fact that climate change is a threat to our national security and to our public health. Their funding attempts to counter the fact that action to combat climate change is feasible and necessary and will create American jobs. They fund the web of denial to serve their own interests to make billions in profits at the expense of America's health, America's safety. But for someone who is focused on protecting the poor and the vulnerable of this world--that person understands the threat presented by climate change. I have in my hand Pope Francis's encyclical on climate change, ``Laudato si','' subtitled ``On the Care for our Common Home.'' The Pope is a chemistry teacher. That is what he did before he became Pope. When he came to Washington, DC, last year, he spoke to Congress and delivered his sermon on the Hill. He said that the planet is dangerously warming and that the science is settled. He said that human beings are a significant contributor to the dangerous warming of the planet. He said that since humans are contributing to the problem, we have a moral obligation to do something about it. When the rest of the world looked up, they saw red, white, and blue CO2. Since the United States has historically been the largest contributor of carbon pollution, we must be the leader in working to reduce our own pollution. As soon as the Pope spoke out urging action on climate change, the well-oiled climate denial machine shifted into high gear. The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is another strand of the web of denial. Between 1990 and 2014, the Acton Institute received millions from Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund, the Koch-funded dark money ATM, as well as money from the Koch families and from Exxon. Reverend Sirico, the founder and president of the Acton Institute, testified in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee just last year. Reverend Sirico claims that the Catholic Church does not have expertise in science and should stick to matters of faith and morals. Well, here is the irony. A lack of expertise surely has not stopped Senate Republicans from blocking any and all climate change legislation. Informed by the scientific evidence, the Pope made a clear moral case to act on climate and to act now. The Pope's comments came from the heart and from his belief in our ability to act collectively. It is just common sense that when you learn something is dangerous for you, for your health and for our Earth--and especially, as the Pope said to us, its impact on the poorest people on our planet, those who will be most severely harmed by climate change--we have a moral obligation to stop that harm. There is no doubt that fossil fuels forever changed our society, but pointing to the benefits from them does not take away the harm they cause or the urgency to transition to clean energy now. Many of those who oppose action on climate invoke the importance of preserving the free market. As an example, consider the Lexington Institute, an organization funded by ExxonMobil and those pushing so-called free market solutions. The Lexington Institute--and may I add, the Lexington Institute is in Virginia; it is not in Lexington, MA, where the shot heard round the world was fired. No, this is just, again, absconding with a name and placing it upon an institution to try to give it the veneer of credibility. Of course, beneath the veneer is just more veneer. There is nothing. There is no science. There is nothing that backs up the arguments which they are making. So the Lexington Institute claims that renewables need to be able to compete with fossil fuels without Federal subsidies, but the real truth is, the fossil fuel industry has never succeeded in the free market alone. Its success is built on more than a century's worth of tax breaks and subsidies. The Lexington Institute sheds these crocodile tears about how much they care about the free market, but for 100 years they missed the fact that the oil, the coal, the gas, and the nuclear industries were all subsidized by the Federal Government. It is only when wind and solar show up that all of a sudden they become greatly concerned about the fact the free market is being distorted. Well, by giving tax breaks to wind and solar, of course, we are just making it a level playing field so they get the same kind of breaks all of these other industries have received for 100 or more years. The subsidies for the fossil fuel industry top more than $7.5 billion annually. You got that? It is $7.5 billion per year. These tax breaks go back 100 years. Multiply that by 100, and then the crocodile tears start getting shed over something we do for wind or solar or fuel cells, biomass, geothermal? There is no need for fossil fuel CEOs to come to Congress to justify the support for long-established subsidies, which they have always been getting. They do not even come up to defend it. They get it automatically--the extension of their tax breaks. The oil and gas industry have the Federal subsidies, coal has Federal subsidies, nuclear has Federal subsidies. What has happened every year, when we try to extend subsidies for renewable energy--for wind and solar--for even just 1 year, it is the end of the world as we know it in the capitalist system. Just last year, the Koch brothers wrote a letter to every single Member of Congress urging them to oppose the tax breaks for wind and solar, and of course they cited ``the free market.'' Because even though billions of dollars in Federal subsidies have benefited their companies for years and years, they have never come up here to say: Oh, take them away. It makes my company feel unclean. Oh no, they took those billions every single year. It is only when wind and solar step up and say: Well, how about us? We are clean. We don't pollute. We are what the younger generation wants to see us investing in as the technologies of the 21st century. Then they get morally offended. Then their free market principles start to get offended. So the Lexington Institute, citing the free market, has fought the extension of renewable tax credits for wind and solar, but unlike the battle of Lexington that started the American Revolution, this Lexington is trying to stop a renewables revolution. Economic growth and climate action go together. We can have a country with clean air and water and clean energy and a strong economy. History continues to prove that the benefits of environmental regulation are enormous and beyond just financial. Recently, we have seen global economic growth hand in hand with no increase in energy-related carbon pollution. We are seeing GDP go up but not carbon pollution. And in Massachusetts, since the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative started in 2009--the real Lexington revolution, the one in Massachusetts--we have seen powerplant greenhouse gas emissions go down 34 percent while Massachusetts' gross domestic product increased 25 percent. So we are left with a really simple question: Why do fossil fuel companies continue to get Federal subsidies, but we do not extend them to clean energy? The answer is this: Koch, Exxon, the Marshall Institute, the Global Climate Coalition, the Acton Institute, the Lexington Institute, and their partners in the web of denial. Millions of dollars are spent to deceive and to mislead all in the name of self- interest and profit. The Global Climate Coalition collapsed more than a decade ago. The Marshall Institute broke up last year, and its climate denial arm morphed into the CO2 Coalition. Exxon is now publicizing their support for a carbon tax that they began espousing in 2009. The American Petroleum Institute is reportedly rethinking its messaging on climate. The threads of the web of denial are breaking and weakening, and the more light we shine on it--especially light fueled by the power of the Sun--the sooner it will fall apart. We are in the midst of a clean energy revolution. The United States has a massive reserve of untapped renewable energy. Our reserves are so massive that just a small fraction could power our entire country. The question is no longer if we can power our country with renewable energy, it is when and it is how. We will make the transition to 100 percent renewable energy before the year 2050 if we keep the right policies on the books, and I believe we are going to meet that goal. In the last 10 years, we have seen a dramatic expansion of renewable energy in our country. Just as the Pilgrims harnessed the wind to sail across the ocean to Plymouth Rock, we too can power our economy. Our current capacity is 74,000 megawatts of wind, and we have 14,000 more megawatts of wind waiting now to be deployed in our country. U.S. solar capacity is now more than 27,000 megawatts. Over 25 percent of this capacity was added in 2015 alone. We are projected to double that capacity by the end of this year. Megawatts are hard to understand. Simply put, by the end of this year, we should have enough wind and solar energy to power over 25 million homes. That is one-fifth of all American homes. We must continue to untangle ourselves from the Koch brothers' web of denial sewn by lies and doubt. The science is overwhelming. Climate change is real. Carbon pollution is accelerating the warming, and right now American cities and towns are preparing for an uncertain future in a world with a changing climate and rising seas. While the Senate has yet to knock out all of these old cobwebs of climate denial that are holding back action, we know, if we focus on the future, we cannot continue to have these decisions of today be borne by generations yet to come. We must focus on resiliency and clean energy and what we are going to do to leave the world better off for future generations. No matter what lies and information the climate deniers try to peddle, the facts are with us, the moral authority is with us, the economic opportunities are with us. We have a chance to create a clean energy revolution that increases jobs as it cuts pollution. This is job creation that is good for all of creation. We must take the climate deniers and their fossil fuel funders to task for their obstinate, obdurate, oblivious opposition to the clean energy to battle climate change. Here is where we are. By the end of 2016, there will be 400,000 people employed in the United States in the wind and solar industries and 65,000--65,000--coal miners. By the year 2020, at the current pace, there will be 600,000 people employed in the wind and solar industry. Half of all new electricity on the planet last year came from renewable electricity. This is a revolution, and it is a revolution we cannot allow to be derailed because we will be employing people, giving them the jobs they want, which will make it possible for us to save this planet. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for organizing all of the Members over the last 2 days to come out on the floor to make this case about this web of denial, which is at the core of what has been blocking this Senate from taking the actions necessary to deploy the technologies, to create the jobs which can save the planet by deploying these technologies all across the planet. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island once again for his incredibly great and historic leadership, and I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we just celebrated Independence Day and rightfully so. It was a big break with the past, a big break with the whole history of the United States, up until July 4, 1776. Well, we have good news. There is another new dawn of independence which has arrived in the United States, and that independence is growing by the day. By ``independence,'' I am talking about how we generate electricity in the United States. For 100 years, we were dependent upon oil, upon natural gas, upon coal as our principal source of electricity in our country, combined with nuclear generation, plus some hydropower. But now, over the last 10 years, we have seen a true American revolution which has broken out. In 2015, in terms of new electrical generation in the United States, 8,600 new megawatts of wind--again, people ask: What is a megawatt? Well, when we think of a big coal-burning or natural gas-burning or electrical-generating facility, that 8,600 of new wind megawatts would be about 8 or 10 new electrical generating plants using coal in our country. Last year: 7,500 new megawatts of solar in the United States. Seven to ten new coal-burning plants never had to be built because, instead, solar was used as the means of generating electricity in our country. And the importance of that is that all of those greenhouse gases that otherwise would have been emitted into the atmosphere from these new coal-burning facilities and these new gas-burning facilities in the United States will never happen because those plants never had to be built. Let's go back to 2015. In 2015, there was 6,000 new megawatts of natural gas electrical generation capacity in the United States that was installed, and all other electrical-generating new capacity in 2015, including coal, was almost nonexistent, although there was some but a very small amount. Now, let's go to this little bit of history that I think is important for Senators and for the American people to hear about. Let me give my colleagues an idea as to what the profile of electrical generation in America looked like in 2005. In 2005, 50 percent of all electrical generation in America came from coal, 20 percent came from nuclear, which is about the same as it is today; natural gas was 19 percent; hydropower, 5 percent, and that is about the same as today; oil, 3 percent, and that is pretty much down to zero in the United States today, but wind and solar combined were less than one-half of 1 percent of all electrical generation in the United States in 2005. We had gone through the entire energy history of the United States, and that was the best we could do--one-half of 1 percent wind and solar. Again, the tax breaks weren't there for wind and solar. They were there for natural gas and coal and oil and nuclear, but they were not there for wind and solar. Then policies in America began to level the playing field so wind and solar could compete. So, now, by the time we reach 2015, coal is now down to only 33 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, natural gas is up from 19 percent, up to 33 percent from 2005. Again, natural gas emits half of the greenhouse gases that coal does when it is generating electricity in our country. Nuclear stays the same at about 20 percent, hydropower is still 5 or 6 percent, but here is the interesting thing. All of a sudden, solar plus wind is up to 6 percent of all electrical generation over the last 10 years. But the interesting story is how fast wind and solar are now being added to the total mix of electricity in our country. Now let's go to 2016, this year. What is on the books for this year is 14,500 megawatts of solar, 9,000 new megawatts of wind, natural gas at about 8,800 megawatts, and nothing else coming in. There is no coal on the books planned for this year in the United States of America. You can see that solar and wind are on track to produce two to three times as much new electricity as natural gas, and there is no other competition. This revolution is taking place at a very rapid rate in our country. In the year 2016, we now have 310,000 jobs in the solar industry, and we have 88,000 jobs in the wind industry. In other words, we have 400,000 people working in the wind and solar industry in the United States of America. It is on pace to have 600,000 people working in those two industries by the year 2020. We are down to 65,000 coal miners in America as this new set of technologies continues to expand, continues to lower in price, and we are seeing a dramatic change in this energy mix. Let me add that the United States is not alone in this. Last year in 2015, across the whole planet, one-half of all new electrical generating capacity came from renewable energy--one-half for the whole planet in new electrical generation capacity. Something else that is important for people to understand is that even as we make these incredible investments in the new energy technologies across the planet, for the last 2 years global energy- related carbon emissions actually stayed flat while the global economy grew. That defies conventional economic wisdom that there is a direct correlation between how much you pollute and how much you can generate in new gross domestic product. That has now been broken. It is an anomaly. Gross domestic product continues to go up, and emissions are flat. That means we are now on a pathway where, as more and more renewables, more hybrid automobiles, electric automobiles, and more new technologies come on line, we are going to see a decline in greenhouse gases even as the global economy continues to grow. How are we going to accomplish it? Well, we have to have tax policies on the books that give incentives to these new technologies. You don't have to worry about the oil industry. They have been taken care of for 100 years. What we do have to look at, however, is the Koch brothers and others who have a business stake in oil, gas, and coal and continue to argue against giving the same kinds of tax breaks to the renewable energy industry that have always been given to the fossil fuel industry. In fact, when we were debating last year whether or not we were going to have extensions of tax breaks for wind and solar, the Koch brothers wrote a letter to every Member of the House and Senate saying that would be destructive to the free market system. They forgot to write this letter with regard to subsidies for the oil industry, the coal industry, the natural gas industry, and the nuclear industry. All of a sudden, when there is a new technology that does not pollute and which they are not heavily invested in, they decide that the purity of this system requires that we not have tax breaks for the new energy technology. How do they handle that? They just make sure that they have all kinds of interests out there that try to then make the argument, an economic or climate argument, that those same kinds of tax breaks the other industries have always received are not justifiable, aren't needed for the solar and wind industry. So this is an incredible revolution. Whereas in 2005 only 79 total new solar megawatts were installed in the country, this year 14,500 megawatts are going to be installed. This is a delayed revolution. The regulatory policy, the tax policy did not in fact give a break to the new energy technology, but the truth is that we are now on a pathway to having a revolution where, by the year 2030, we could easily have 400,000 megawatts of wind and solar and other renewables installed in the United States. By the end of next year, we will have 150,000 megawatts. After 70 years, the nuclear industry has 100,000 megawatts. Every time I use that term ``megawatts,'' I know that it can get confusing, but just understand the bottom line is that wind and solar are coming as new additions to the grid at an average of 1 to 1.5 percent to the total every single year. So by the year 2030, it could be between 25 percent and 30 percent of all electrical generation at the current peak at which it is being deployed in our country. So that level playing field that we have been working hard to create and which we have to continue to work hard to create is making a huge difference. The Clean Power Plan which President Obama has propounded will drive it more. The 30 States that have renewable electricity standards as a goal in their States make a difference, but also the policies we create here for tax breaks for these new industries will make a huge difference toward meeting our goals. From my perspective, we have a chance to have America with 100 percent renewable electricity by the year 2050 in our country. We have a chance to change the whole path of the planet in terms of how they look at these energy technologies. No one had these small cell phones in their pockets in 1993--no one. They were big bricks that cost 50 cents a minute, but we began to have a revolution, and 7 or 8 years ago everyone decided to have one in their pocket. It was unimaginable to a preceding generation of Americans. How about this: 800 million Africans who did not have wireless devices in the year 2000 now have them in their pockets. We can deploy wind and solar to Africa, Asia, South America, and all around the planet if we make the same kind of investment in developing these new technologies. Recently, in Germany, for 1 day the whole country was renewable. In Portugal, for 4 days the entire country was generating renewable electricity. I believe that we can and should do 100 percent generation by the year 2050, and that is why I will be introducing a resolution in the Senate, expressing the sense of this body that the United States should commit to generating 100 percent of all of our electricity from renewables by the year 2050, and I urge my colleagues to support me in this effort. This will provide massive job creation, reduction in greenhouse gases, world leadership, and an ability to avoid the worst, most catastrophic consequences of climate change to our planet. Last year was the warmest year ever recorded. This year is the warmest year ever recorded. It keeps getting more and more dangerous, but the answer, the solution, is within our grasp. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on this issue. It is the issue we should be debating this week and next week in the Senate. I thank him and Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, Senator Durbin, Senator Booker, Senator Cardin--everyone whose voices down here are saying the same thing. We have learned a lot about this problem, but we still don't know all of the answers. The answers we do know we should be voting on this week. We should be putting those protections on the books. There is some commonsense knowledge we each have--that the FBI should have the authority to block gun sales to potential terrorists. How hard is that? No gun sales to potential terrorists in the United States. The NRA says no. The NRA said no last year. The NRA said no the year before. The NRA controls the agenda of the Senate. They control this body. They are the ones who decide whether guns can be sold to terrorists in the United States of America--the NRA. The American people say that NRA should stand for ``not relevant anymore'' in American politics, but it is not so. The NRA controls whether we are going to be able to vote on banning terrorists from being able to purchase guns. So a terrorist can be on a no-fly list and can't get on a plane. We don't want a terrorist in the passenger cabin of a plane in the United States, so they are banned from getting on that plane. But they can just walk across the street into a gun shop and buy an assault weapon that they can then use to kill people whom they hate in the United States. Does that really make any sense? Of course not. Why don't we have the vote? Because the NRA does not want a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate. They don't want a debate on this issue. So we are going to continue to stand up and fight for this vote, for this issue to be considered on the floor for as long as it takes because if the FBI believes there is a reasonable chance that someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack on our people, it should have the ability to block the sale of a gun to that person. That is only common sense. That is what the police chiefs want. It is what the FBI wants. Why are we being denied a vote on the floor of the Senate on that issue? Historically, this goes all the way back to the incredible power of the NRA. From 2004 until 2014, people on the terrorist watch list legally purchased guns more than 2,000 times because the FBI had no authority to block those sales. Over a 10-year period, over 2,000 times, the FBI could not stop a terrorist--a potential terrorist--from buying a gun in the United States because the National Rifle Association does not want potential terrorists to be denied purchasing guns in the United States. What kind of crazy position--that potential terrorists should be allowed to buy guns in the United States--is that for the NRA to take? Back in 1994, we were having a debate over the ban of assault weapons in our country, but it came to my attention that China was actually selling 1 million semiautomatic assault weapons per year for $80 apiece inside the United States--1 million guns a year--and we were negotiating a treaty with China at the same time. So I organized about 130 members of the House on a letter to President Clinton saying no support for any deal with China until China agrees that they will not be selling assault weapons for $80 apiece in our country. That was 22 years ago--1 million assault weapons a year being sold by China. That would be 22 million additional assault weapons in our country coming in from China. That is banned. However, the domestic ban here expired a couple years ago. Now, here we have another case of a terrorist saying that he was inspired by ISIS--inspired by this so-called caliphate outside of our borders to buy a weapon to kill Americans. Like China, are we just going to allow the NRA to say: No, it is all part of free commerce; no, we don't have any rights to limit the sale of these weapons. Or are we going to say there has to be commerce with a conscience; that not everything can be sold to anyone in our country; that some people and some things are too dangerous to be allowed to be purchased within our country. I support very strongly the bill which Senator Feinstein has introduced to give the Attorney General the discretion to prevent someone from buying a firearm or explosives or obtaining a firearms dealer license if the Attorney General determines the individual is a known or suspected terrorist and has a reasonable belief that the individual may use the weapon in connection with terrorism. Can it happen again? You know that it can happen again. This terrorist cited the two terrorists in Boston, the Tsarnaev brothers, as an inspiration to him. There is an online brainwashing recruitment which is going on all across our country. So that idea is out there. The question is, How easy are we going to make it for them to be able to gain access to the instrumentality of their devastating acts against our society? Are we just going to allow them to walk into any gun store once they have been so radicalized that they are about to act on these dangerous activities? Well, Senate Republicans oppose that commonsense legislation. Senate Republicans aren't allowing us to have a vote or a debate on this issue out on the Senate floor. One day after the tragic terrorist attack in San Bernardino last December, Senate Republicans voted against Senator Feinstein's legislation to close the terrorists' gap in terms of their ability to be able to buy these assault weapons. Six months later, Omar Mateen, a terrorist investigated by the FBI, targeted the LGBTQ community and murdered 49 innocent people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Yet Republicans continue to willingly follow the NRA and oppose this bill from becoming law in our country. The NRA has repeatedly opposed and worked to block that legislation, and apparently they think it is OK for someone like Omar Mateen to be able to buy an assault weapon with impunity in our country. Mark Twain once remarked that common sense is very uncommon. He was surely talking about the Senate Republican caucus when it comes to having a terrorist be prohibited from buying an assault weapon in the United States of America. This mass shooting in Orlando has exposed the Senate Republicans and their common suffering from a commonsense deficit disorder. Today I call on them to stop their opposition. I call on them to have the courage to stand up for what is right for the American people and for the people of Orlando because I truly believe that a vote on that bill--if you hold hands with the NRA, the Americans will hold you accountable. I hope our Republican colleagues understand that and fear that because Americans are tired of living in fear that their community will be the next Orlando. I ask another question: Wouldn't it be easier to develop effective solutions to gun violence in America if our Nation's top researchers could actually do research on gun violence? We are facing an epidemic of gun violence. More than 33,000 people are dying in our country each year from gun violence. It is a public health emergency, and we must treat it that way. So shouldn't we ask ourselves: Why is it happening and what can we do to stop it? When disease and illness bring widespread death, doctors, scientists, and public health researchers study the causes so that they can find solutions, and the Federal Government invests in those efforts. For diabetes, which kills almost 76,000 people in the United States each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention receive $170 million. For planning and preparedness against the flu, which leads to 57,000 deaths each year, the CDC's budget is more than $187 million. For asthma, 3,600 people, the CDC receives $29 million. For gun violence, which kills more than 33,000 Americans a year, the CDC's budget is zero dollars--yes, zero dollars. That is because, beginning more than 20 years ago, an appropriations rider has prevented the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from advocating or promoting gun control. Many interpreted this provision as a ban, and it has chilled any research into the causes of gun violence and how to prevent it. But in 2013, President Obama directed the CDC to conduct critical public health research, and the principal congressional author of the rider, former Republican Congressman Jay Dickey of Arkansas, has now disavowed it, recognizing it was a mistake and calling for Federal gun violence prevention to move forward. Just yesterday, the American Medical Association--the Nation's largest association of physicians--voted for the first time in support of ending the so-called ban on CDC gun violence research. As AMA president Steven Stack said yesterday: With about 30,000 people dying each year at the barrel of a gun, an epidemiological analysis of gun violence is in fact necessary. So that is the question which I ask of Senator Murphy, that is the question which I ask of Senator Durbin, and that is the question which I ask of the Senate president: Why can't we find a way to at least fund the research on the causes of gun violence? Why can't we find a way of just putting $10 million a year into that research? Why can't we do that? I ask Senator Murphy the question, but he knows the answer. The answer is that the NRA does not want a single nickel to be spent on that issue, and the NRA controls the agenda on the Senate floor with a vice-like grip, and it will not let it go. But we have reached a defining moment. The American people have seen in this one incident how tightly the NRA controls the agenda of the Republican Party in our country. We should already have voted on this ban. We should already have moved on to other gun control issues--but, no. Whether it be the terror watch list or it even be research at the CDC on gun violence, there is no action. We can study how to prevent children from operating pill bottles, from suffering from head injuries on bicycles, how to use a cigarette lighter so they don't hurt themselves, but shouldn't we study how to stop kids from firing guns that can hurt them? Let's give the medical, scientific, and public health community the resources they need. Let's ensure that if someone is going to buy a gun, they have to get a background check completed before they are allowed to do it. Let's make sure that we put in place all of the protections that are going to be needed to protect ordinary Americans from this action. So I say to Senators Murphy and Blumenthal from Connecticut, what you suffered in Newtown, CT, is sadly just a preview of coming attractions unless we change the laws in our country, unless we put the preventive measures on the books, so we can avoid the worst, most catastrophic consequences of this out-of-control gun epidemic in our country. What the Senator is doing here today, along with Senator Booker, is forcing America to understand the cause of their problems and why we cannot ban a terrorist from buying a gun in the United States. All issues go through three phases: political education, political activation, political implementation. What the Senators are doing today is forcing this political education and forcing people to understand that this is not bipartisan. This is not the whole institution doesn't work; this is a deliberate decision made by the Republicans to abide only by what it is that the NRA--an outside party--wants to permit being debated on the Senate floor. But at 33,000 deaths a year, with terrorist activity after terrorist activity now occurring on our own shores--in Boston alone, we had Mohamed Atta and nine others who hijacked nine planes; we had the Tsarnaev brothers who detonated explosives on Patriots Day at the Boston Marathon. It is time for us to just stop here. It is time for us to start to do the right thing so we can make it harder for these acts to take place. I don't think we should stop this discussion until that happens. That is why I thank Senator Murphy for taking this time--Senator Booker, Senator Blumenthal, and everyone who has participated. I am going to be with you every step of the way until we get the votes the American people expect from their elected Senators. I thank the Senator for yielding for a question.

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the Senator, and again I ask my colleague: Why won't the Republicans allow for the debate and a vote on whether or not individuals on a terrorist target list should be able to get a gun anywhere in America? The answer to that question has not been forthcoming from the Republican Party because the NRA, or the National Rifle Association, does not have a good answer to it, except that they do not want any exceptions to the rule that anybody should be able to buy a gun at any time, even if they are on a terrorist target list in the United States. So that is going to be our big challenge out here. What are the limits to the power of the National Rifle Association over the Republican Party; and, as a result, over the United States Senate? Because the American people don't think we have to accept this epidemic of gun violence in our country. The American people do not believe it is preordained. They believe it is preventable. Every week, 56 children die from gun violence. That is nearly three Newtown massacres every single week. Thirty thousand Americans shot and killed each year is not inevitable. It is unacceptable, and it is immoral. We cannot wait any longer to put these commonsense gun laws on the books. We cannot wait any longer to make our streets safer. I believe assault weapons belong in combat, not in our communities. We need a ban on these military-styled assault weapons. We need to eliminate the trafficking of guns into our communities across our Nation. We need to ban high-capacity magazine clips that turn guns into weapons of war. There is no reason for an ordinary American to have this in our neighborhoods, on our streets, or near our schools. We need background checks on all gun sales, including private sales and purchases made online and at gun shows. We need to crack down on straw purchasing. We need to ban gun sales on sites on the Internet like Facebook and Instagram. Right now, anyone can do a search for an AK-47 or AR-15 or even guns for sale on Instagram and find guns for sale. Could you be under 18? Yes. Could you get a gun without a background check? Yes. We should not allow Instagram to be used as ``Instagun,'' enabling the sale and purchase of deadly weapons in possible violation of State and Federal law. We can do something here. We don't have to do all of it this week, but the least we should be able to do is what the Senator from Connecticut just outlined, two steps; one, if you are on a terrorist watch list, you can't buy a gun in the United States, and, two, you can't get around the background check if you go to a gun show or you go to Instagram. You have to go through a background check. Leave all the rest of it off the table, banning assault weapons, all the rest of it. We will not do that. How about just debating and doing those two things, which overwhelmingly the American people want us to do. Now, back on September 11, 2001, Mohamed Atta and nine others boarded two planes at Logan Airport. They hijacked those planes using box cutters to kill the flight attendants, to kill the pilots. We do not allow box cutters into the passenger section of a plane any longer. We don't allow knives in the passenger section of planes any longer. But believe it or not, we actually had a debate at the time as to whether every bag that goes onto a passenger plane should be screened. We had a debate that lasted for 4 years as to whether the cargo, which goes into the bottom of a plane, should be screened--4 years. The cargo industry did not want it. The airline industry said it would be too much of an inconvenience. Who in America wanted to fly on a plane that had cargo underneath their feet that had not been screened after 9/11, after Mohamed Atta? Well, we finally won that issue, and everyone accepts the wisdom of ensuring that screening takes place on every single passenger flight in America because otherwise that is where the new Mohamed Atta would find the aperture to create a disaster in the air. They are smart people. They are cunning people. They are trying to find the opening. They are trying to find the weakness. They are trying to find the Achilles heel in our system so they can kill Americans. That is what is happening here. There is another Achilles heel, and that Achilles heel is the fact that the NRA has a vice-like grip on the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Congress. They will not let it go. They will not make it possible for us to have a straight up-or-down vote on whether this latter-day Mohamed Atta on a terror target list can buy a gun, buy an assault weapon in the United States, whether this new Mohamed Atta, this new terrorist group, can buy assault weapons at gun shows without any background checks whatsoever and then use those weapons to kill innocent American citizens. How can the NRA align itself with latter-day Mohamed Attas? With latter-day Tsarnaev brothers? How can the NRA do that? How can the Republican Party align themselves with the NRA if that is their agenda? These are the votes we should be having. It is very simple. If you cannot fly, you should not be allowed to buy a weapon in America. If you are a terrorist and you are not permitted to fly in our country, how can we have a system that allows you simultaneously to buy an assault weapon that can kill dozens of people or more? We know what is at the top of the terrorist target list in our country. We know what they are trying to do. They try to bring down planes. They try to find ways in which they can terrorize otherwise innocent communities in our country to spread their terror, and we know where the Achilles heels are. We shut it down when it came to airlines. We can shut it down here when it comes to the purchase of weapons if you have already been identified as being on a terror target list, a watch list. The FBI is looking at you, but you can still buy an assault weapon. It makes no sense. How many times do we have to learn the lesson until we finally act? Is this not enough? Is what happened in Orlando not enough--49 people dead, gay, 44 out of 49 names Latino, a hate crime, a terror attack, all of it. Do we really need more? Do we need another and another and another? Because we know the day is coming when this law is going to change. The test of us is that we do it before more innocent lives are lost; that we have these two bills that Senator Murphy referred to brought out here onto the floor; that we block this open door for terrorists to be able to kill in our country, to be able to purchase these weapons of mass destruction that kill at a level that is almost unimaginable. Once again, I thank my friend, and I ask the question of the Republican leadership: Why can't we have this debate? Why can't we have these votes? Now, I know the answer. It is that the NRA--the National Rifle Association--does not want those votes, but our job as elected officials is to ensure that NRA stands for ``not relevant anymore'' in American politics after Orlando, after this massacre. That is our historic challenge out here today. I thank the Senator from Connecticut, the Senator from New Jersey, the colleague of the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, and for all the Members who have participated in this debate, discussion, filibuster. This is the issue. This is the time. This is the place. We are the people who have to resolve this issue. People will look back and they will ask: Did we try? Did we really try to put a ban on the purchase of these weapons by these terrorist list people in our own country? That is going to be the test for us. We can't fight the battles over in Aleppo, we can't fight the battles over in Fallujah, but we can fight this battle here on the streets of America. We know what has to be done. This body just has to have the courage to say to the NRA: No, it is too much. Our country is bleeding. Families are hurting. We don't want to see it happen again. This is going to be the challenge of this week and next week and every week until we have these votes and until we close these loopholes. Again, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for conducting this very important discussion.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Madam President. I rise to echo the sentiments of the Senator from Florida. His State has suffered an unspeakable tragedy. It is something that unfortunately brings together two terrible biases--one against the LGBT community and the other a religiously based radical attack inspired by ISIS at that nightclub. They all came together. To the Senator and to everyone from Florida, our deepest, deepest sympathies go to you. It was, of course, something that was understood in Massachusetts. He mentioned the Tsarnaev brothers as an inspiration to him. They struck on Patriots Day in 2013 in the United States. Mohamed Atta and the other nine hijackers were in Boston when they hijacked the two planes from Logan International Airport. So we know those people are out there. We know that their hate-filled message is intended to kill innocent Americans, and we saw it once again. Unfortunately, the target was a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. But for us, I think we have to learn from this. This man had been investigated as a terrorist suspect, and yet we are blocked--the Senator from Florida and I and others--from passing a law that would prevent anyone on a terror watch list from buying a gun in these United States. It is not against the law. The National Rifle Association has enough power here on the floor of the Senate to prohibit someone who is on a terror watch list from buying guns in the United States of America. We need another vote on that issue here in the Senate. We need to give the protections to the American people for them to know that someone on a terror watch list cannot buy a gun in the United States of America. We also have to ban these military-style assault weapons, like the AR-15, which are the guns of choice for those who seek to inflict mass casualties on civilians. These are not weapons that belong on the streets of our country. They belong in combat overseas, not in our communities. They don't belong in Newtown, they don't belong in San Bernardino, and they don't belong in Orlando. They don't belong in our streets or in our schools or in a civilized society, yet we cannot ban these weapons from being sold in the United States of America. We have to prevent any known or suspected terrorist from buying firearms, and we have to make it impossible, as well, for them to buy these assault weapons. This is our challenge now. Once again, we are warned. Once again, we are told what the weapon of choice is. Once again, we know that they are going to target us if we make it easy for them to access these weapons. How many warnings do we need? The NRA really should stand for ``not relevant anymore'' in American politics. They should not control the agenda here on the floor of the Senate. We should be able to ban people on the terror watch list from buying guns. We should be able to ban these assault weapons from being sold at all inside of our country. The Senate leadership should stop banning a vote here on the Senate floor on ensuring that we do the research at the CDC on this relationship between mental health and the use of guns within our society. The bill that I have introduced calls for $10 million a year for the next 6 years. We can't even get the money to research gun violence in the United States of America. It doesn't have to be this way. We can change. We can learn these lessons, but we can't wait any longer to put those commonsense gun laws on the books. We cannot wait any longer to make our streets safer. So let's close the gun show loophole that allows anyone to go into one of these Kmarts full of killing machines and buy a gun without a background check. Let's close the loophole that allows domestic abusers to buy guns. Let's close the loophole that allows straw purchasers to buy guns and flood our streets with them. Let's repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and take away the gun manufacturers' immunity from civil liability. PLCAA should stand for ``protecting lives, creating arms accountability,'' not protecting these arms manufacturers from liability if these guns are used to kill innocent people in our society. So in the coming days and weeks, you can be assured that the National Rifle Association will be opposed to even these limited commonsense gun measures. The NRA has had a stranglehold over Congress for far too long. It is time to end its reign of power. It is time to end its viselike grip on the safety and security of our Nation. Those in Congress who do not support these commonsense measures are siding with those forces that make it easier for these massacres to happen. That is the bottom line of where we are. Now is the time to stand up for the families of Columbine, of Newtown, of Aurora, of Chattanooga, of Charleston, of San Bernardino, and now of Orlando, and of all of the cities across our country, which are saying: Enough is enough. I was so proud on Saturday to march in the Boston Gay Pride Parade. It was a joyous occasion where love, community, and social justice were all celebrated with a passion and a real sense of progress. But as I woke up the next morning, I saw again how an individual armed with guns and fueled by extremist ideology can fuel violence and terror. We are a nation of hope, not hatred. After this tragedy, after this deplorable attack, let's denounce hate in all of its forms. Let's stand with the LGBT community and raise our voices with dignity, equality, and love. Let's say no to the rhetoric of hate that demonizes our friends and neighbors because of their faith, sexual orientation, or because of their country of origin. Let's recommit to justice and moving progress forward. The American people are begging, pleading for this institution to enact commonsense gun safety measures. My hope is that the Senate can succeed where it has recently failed and muster the political will and courage to deliver badly needed reform of our gun laws. Let's work together to do this and to help prevent yet another mass shooting in our country. I yield back.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. One second. I just wanted to reinforce what the Senator just said. On the House side, Fred Upton, Frank Pallone, Nancy Pelosi, and Steny Hoyer, that incredible staff, Mary Frances Repko, over there, just indispensable. That is why it happened. It is bipartisan, bicameral. I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today Congress stands ready to reform the last of the core four environmental statutes. It may do so with a stronger bipartisan vote than any other major environmental statute in recent American history. For a generation, the American people have been guinea pigs in a terrible chemical experiment. Told that all the advances in our chemistry labs would make us healthier, happier, and safer, American families have had to suffer with decades of a law that did nothing to ensure that was true. That is because when the industry successfully overturned the EPA's proposed ban on asbestos, it also rendered the Toxic Substance Control Act all but unusable. Children shouldn't be unwitting scientific subjects. Today we have a chance to protect them by reforming this failed law. As ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee of jurisdiction, I was one of a handful of Members who participated in an informal conference with the House. With Senators Udall, Boxer, and Merkley, I have prepared a document that is intended to memorialize certain agreements made in the bicameral negotiations that would typically have been included in a conference report. In our work with the House, we truly did take the best of both bills when it came to enhancing EPA's authority to regulate chemicals. The degree to which States will be preempted as the Federal Government regulates chemicals has been a source of considerable debate since this bill was first introduced. I have always been a very strong supporter of States' rights to take actions needed to protect their own residents. For many of us, accepting preemption of our States was a difficult decision that we only made as we also secured increases to the robustness of the EPA chemical safety program. I am particularly pleased that efforts I helped lead resulted in the assurance that Massachusetts' pending flame retardant law will not be subjected to pause preemption and that there is a mechanism in the bill to ensure that States' ongoing work on all chemicals can continue while EPA is studying those chemicals. The fact that the bill is supported by the EPA, the chemical industry, the chamber of commerce, and the trial lawyers tells you something. The fact that a staggering 403 Members of the House of Representatives voted for this TSCA bill--more than the number who agreed to support the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or the Safe Drinking Water Act amendments when those laws were reauthorized--tells you something. What it tells you is that we worked together on a bipartisan and bicameral basis to compromise in the way Americans expect us to. Although there are many people who helped to create this moment, I wish to thank some whose work over the past few months I especially want to recognize. I thank Bonnie Lautenberg. On behalf of her husband Frank, she was relentless. Senator Inhofe and his staffers, Ryan Jackson and Dimitri Karakitsos, remained as committed to agreements they made about Senate Democratic priorities as they were to their own commitment priorities throughout this process. I couldn't have imagined a stronger or more constructive partnership. I would like to thank Senator Udall and his staffers, Drew Wallace and Jonathan Black, whose leadership--especially during these challenging moments--was very important. I also thank Senator Merkley and his staff, Adrian Deveny, whose creativity often led us to legislative breakthroughs, especially when it came to crafting certain preemption compromises. My own staff, Michal Freedhoff, has done little but this for 1 consecutive year. This is her 20th year on my staff. With her Ph.D. in biochemistry--it was invaluable in negotiating with the American Chemistry Council and all other interests. I want to thank many other Members: Senator Boxer; Senator Whitehouse and his staff, Bettina, along with Barbara Boxer; Senator McConnell; Senator Reid; Senator Durbin--all central players in making sure this legislation was here today. I thank the spectacular and hard-working EPA team, all of whom provided us with technical assistance and other help, often late at night and before the dawn. I thank Gina McCarthy, Jim Jones, Wendy Cleland-Hamnet, Ryan Wallace, Priscilla Flattery, Kevin McLean, Brian Grant, David Berol, Laura Vaught, Nicole Distefano, Sven-Erik Kaiser, and Tristan Brown.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. MARKEY. I also thank Ryan Schmit, Don Sadowsky, and Scott Sherlock. I want to thank Stephenne Harding and Andrew McConville at CEQ, whose day-to-day engagement helped us, especially in these last few weeks. There are some outside stakeholders who worked particularly closely with my staff and with me, including Andrew Rogers, Andrew Goldberg, Richard Denison, Joanna Slaney, Mike Walls, Rich Gold, and Scott Faber. I have enjoyed meeting, working with, and partnering with each one of these outstanding people over the last year. This is a huge bill. It is a historic moment. It is going to make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans. It is the most significant environmental law passed in this generation.

Mr. MARKEY. The old law did not work. This one is going to protect the American people. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. MARKEY. I just want to once again compliment Senator Inhofe and Senator Vitter. It didn't have to wind up this way. It wound up this way because you reached across the aisle, because you ensured that all sides were given a fair hearing, and that at the end of the day there would be this result. I have been doing this for 40 years. I have been on the Environment Committee for 40 years. This is not easy. From my perspective, it is historic and it is unprecedented in terms of ultimately how easy the Senator made this process. I was there at the table of Superfund, Clean Air Act, all the way down the line. You--you, my friend, have distinguished yourself, and along with Senator Vitter you have made it possible for all of us to hold hands here as this historic bill tonight will pass on the Senate floor. I just wanted to compliment the Senator.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, tomorrow President Obama will make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing. He will become the first sitting President of the United States to do so, and I commend him for this long overdue Presidential recognition. Having traveled to Hiroshima in 1985 to witness the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of that atomic bombing, I know from personal experience that any visit there serves as a powerful reminder of America's responsibility to reduce the risk of nuclear war. That risk remains as real today as it was nearly 71 years ago when we dropped that bomb that killed 140,000 people in 1 day. In the last few decades, important progress has been made to reduce the threat of nuclear war. The United States and Russia have reduced the size of their nuclear arsenals. The beginning of an additional change is going to happen in 2018 when both the United States and Russia will have no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads after implementation of the New START treaty. But that progress has come at a cost. In exchange for the support of Senate Republicans for passage of the New START treaty in 2010, President Obama promised to fund major upgrades to America's nuclear arsenal. Since then, the extent of these upgrades and their costs have swelled. Today it is estimated that President Obama's nuclear ``modernization'' plan will end up costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years. However this modernization plan is little more than a plan to expand America's capabilities, its nuclear capabilities. It would create new nuclear weapons, including a dangerous nuclear air launch cruise missile that will cost tens of billions of dollars over the next two decades. Nuclear cruise missiles are a particular concern because they are difficult to distinguish from nonnuclear cruise missiles. As a consequence, if the United States used a conventional cruise missile in a conflict with Russia or China, it could lead to devastating miscalculation on the other side and, as a result, to accidental nuclear war. Worse still, the Defense Department has justified this new nuclear cruise missile by asserting that it is needed for purposes beyond deterrence. The Pentagon explains that the new nuclear cruise missile could be used to respond ``proportionately to a limited nuclear attack,'' meaning that this nuclear weapon becomes more usable in a standoff with Russia, China, or some other country. When President Obama visited Prague in 2009, he pledged to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security. If the President truly wants to make good on this promise, I think it is important for him to stop these nuclear expansion efforts. He should cancel the funding for the new nuclear cruise missile, which would make the prospect of fighting a nuclear war more imaginable. In the meantime, Congress can and must act. Rather than plunging blindly ahead by spending money on this dangerous new weapon, we can call for a timeout while we evaluate its costs and its risks. That is why I have submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would delay any spending on the nuclear cruise missile for 1 year so that we can have the full debate on this weapon; so that we can ensure that we understand the consequences of building this new weapon; so that we can understand how the Russians and the Chinese might respond to it; so that each Member of the Senate can understand that it, in fact, has nuclear war-fighting capabilities. It is not just a defensive weapon; it has the ability to be used in a nuclear war-fighting scenario. How do I know this? It is because this Pentagon, this Department of Defense, says that it is usable and says that it could be used in a limited nuclear war. Do we really want to be authorizing in this Senate that kind of new weapon that makes fighting a nuclear war more imaginable? I think Americans deserve an opportunity to consider whether tens of billions of dollars of their tax dollars should be spent on a redundant, destabilizing, new nuclear missile. They expect that we will ask the tough questions about the need for $1 trillion in new nuclear weapons spending, but they especially want us to ask questions about new weapons that the Pentagon is saying make it possible to contemplate a limited nuclear war. That is a debate which this body needs to have. That is a weapons system we should be discussing. This new cruise missile with nuclear warheads is the tip of the new $1 trillion nuclear modernization program. We should debate that first. We can examine the rest of the modernization program, the new nuclear programs, but we should at least have that debate and that vote out here. We should give ourselves at least 1 year before we allow it to commence so that we can study it. Then next year we can have the vote on whether or not we want to commence. As yet, I don't think we have had the debate or have a full understanding of what the implications of this weapon are. Plans to build more nuclear weapons would not only be expensive, but they could trigger a 21st century arms race with Russia and China, which are unlikely--very unlikely--to stand idly by as we expand our nuclear arsenal. The result would be a tragic return to the days of the Cold War, when both sides built up ever greater stockpiles of nuclear weapons. As we get closer and closer to the contemplation that both sides could actually consider fighting a nuclear war, our goal should be to push us further and further and further away from the concept that it is possible to fight a nuclear, limited war on this planet. The National Defense Authorization Act also contains another misguided provision that would lay the groundwork for a spiraling nuclear weapons buildup. Currently, our policy, the U.S. policy, states that we will pursue a ``limited'' missile defense--limited. This approach is meant to protect our territory against missile attacks by countries such as Iran and North Korea without threatening Russia or China's nuclear deterrent. As recognized by generations of responsible policymakers, constructing missile defenses aimed at Russia or China would be self- defeating and destabilizing. Dramatically expanding our missile defenses could cause Russia and China to fear that the United States seeks to protect itself from retaliation from Russia or China so that we can carry out a preventive nuclear attack on China or on Russia. That plays into the most militaristic people inside of those countries, who will then say that they too need to make additional investments and that cycle of offense and defense continues to escalate until you reach a point where we are back to where we all started--with those generals, with those arms contractors then dictating what our foreign policy is, what our defense policy is. They were wrong in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and they are wrong today. That is just the wrong way to go. We have to ensure that we are backing away, not increasing the likelihood that these weapons can be used. We don't want to be empowering those in our own country-- either at the Pentagon or the arms contractors--because they will have the same people in the Kremlin and their arms contractors who will be rubbing their hands and saying: Great. Let's build all of these new weapons, both offensive and defensive. They would love this. That is why we have to have the debate on the Senate floor. This generation of Americans deserves to know what its government is planning in terms of nuclear war-fighting strategy. That is what a limited war is all about. That is what this new cruise missile with a nuclear bomb on it that is more accurate, more powerful, more likely to be used in a nuclear war is all about. That is why the Pentagon wants it; that is why the arms contractors want to make it. But it is just a return to the earlier era where every one of these new nuclear weapons systems that had blueprints and were on the table over at the Pentagon are over and the defense contractor has the green light to build it. What happened every single time is the Soviet Union said: We are building the exact same counterpart system. Was that making the world more or less safe? Was that bringing us closer or further away from a nuclear war? Which was the correct direction for our country to be headed? Well, thank God, we began to talk at Reykjavik--President Reagan and President Gorbachev. Thank God, we now have a New START Treaty. But as part of the New START Treaty, there was a Faustian deal, and that Faustian deal was that we are going to build a new generation of usable, war-fighting nuclear weapons in our own country. And that Faustian deal is one that would then be lived with by this next generation of Americans and citizens of this planet. So we need to ensure we can have this debate. The fears that I think are going to be engendered into the minds of those in China and Russia would result in a new dangerous nuclear competition that would have our new defenses be responded to by their building new additional nuclear weapons and by putting them on high alert. You would have to be on high alert, if you were in Russia or China, if you thought we had a defensive system that could knock them down, and if our planning included attacking them. We don't want either country to be on high alert for a nuclear war. We don't want that. That is where we were in the 1980s. That is where we were in the 1970s--both sides with their finger on the button. It is unnecessary, it is dangerous, it is a repetition of history, and it is something we should be debating out here. It just can't be something that is casually added without a full appreciation in our country for what the consequences are going to be long term. So we have an incredible opportunity. It is timely. The President is visiting Hiroshima. It should weigh on the consciences of every one of us that we have a responsibility to make sure we are reducing and not increasing the likelihood of nuclear war occurring. I have filed an amendment to strike the provision from the NDAA. I urge all of my colleagues to support it. I think that second amendment is also one that deserves a full debate on the Senate Floor. If we want other countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and restrain their nuclear war plans, the United States must take the lead instead of wasting billions of dollars on dangerous new nuclear weapons that do nothing to keep our Nation safe. President Obama should scale back his nuclear weapons buildup. Instead of provoking Russia and China with expanding missile defenses that will ultimately fail, we should work toward a new arms control agreement. As President Obama said in Prague in 2009, let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. The lesson of the past and the lesson of Hiroshima is clear. Nuclear weapons must never be used again on this planet. President Obama did an excellent job in reaching a nuclear arms control agreement with Iran. That was important, because if Iran was right now on its way to the development of a nuclear weapon, there is no question that Saudi Arabia and other countries in that region would also be pursuing a nuclear weapon. We would then have a world where people were not listening to each other, where people would be threatening each other with annihilation, with total destruction. Here is where we are. We are either going to live together or we are going to die together. We are either going to know each other or we are going to exterminate each other. The final choice that we all have and the least we should be able to say--if that point in the future is reached and those missiles are starting to be launched that have nuclear warheads on board--is that we tried, that we really tried to avoid that day. That is our challenge here on the Senate floor--to have this debate, to give ourselves the next year to have this question raised as to whether we want to engage in a Cold War-like escalation of new offensive and new defensive nuclear weapons to be constructed in our country, which for sure then would trigger the same response in Russia and China. By the way, for sure it is saying to Pakistan, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and to any other country that harbors its own secret military desire to have these weapons that they should not listen to the United States because we are preaching nuclear temperance from a bar stool. We are not, in fact, abiding by what we say that the rest of the world should do. So we should be debating that right now. We should have this challenge presented to us and to have the words be spoken as to what the goals are for these weapons. If the Defense Department says to us this year that this leads to a capacity to use nuclear weapons in a limited nuclear war--and they were saying that to us in the last 6 months--do we really want to have these weapons then constructed in our country? Is that really what we want to have as our legacy?

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I also wish to spend a couple of minutes talking about another issue that is a relic of the Cold War era, and that is TSCA, the legislation that deals with toxic chemicals within our country. There was a law passed 40 years ago to deal with toxic chemicals in our country, but ultimately that law never worked. When we look back, it is like a political, environmental Edsel, still sitting in the garage 40 years later but not useful in protecting American families from the chemicals in our society--asbestos and hundreds and thousands of others. It is just not usable. Congress stands ready right now, thank God, to reform the last of the ``core four'' environmental statutes that have yet to be modernized. I hope we will do so with a stronger bipartisan vote than on any major environmental statute in recent American history, and that we do so soon. This historic vote to comprehensively reform the Toxic Substances Control Act comes after years of hard work by many Senators on both sides of the aisle. We worked for some months to reconcile the two bills, and all of us were driven by the same reason. Since it was written four decades ago, TSCA has sat there untouched. It is a statute that simply does not work to protect anyone. Ever since industries successfully challenged EPA's proposed asbestos ban, EPA has not been able to effectively use the authority Congress intended it to have. In conference, we truly did take the best of both bills. We made sure EPA will have industry fees to do its chemical safety work. We made sure there will be enforceable deadlines for EPA to write chemical safety rules and for industry to comply with them. We fixed the legal problems in the law that caused the asbestos ban to be overturned and that paralyzed EPA and prevented them from regulating some extremely toxic chemicals. We ensured that when EPA studies a chemical, it considers only the environmental or health effects of that chemical, and that it only considers the potential cost of regulation when it is writing a rule to regulate it. We made sure that EPA would act more quickly to regulate the most dangerous chemicals, and that vulnerable subpopulations, such as children, pregnant women, and workers would be protected. We made sure the industry could not continue to improperly keep information about dangerous chemicals secret any longer. In some of the last negotiations that I helped to lead, we made sure that States could continue with the work they are already doing to protect their residents. I am particularly proud that I was able to protect Massachusetts's pending flame-retardant law in these last few key changes to the bill that were agreed to in the last few days. The fact that we have a bill that has the Humane Society and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce both urging a ``yes'' vote tells you something. The fact that the bill is supported by the EPA, the chemical industry, many environmental stakeholders, and the trial lawyers tells you something about this bill. This is like a political Halley's Comet. When you have Jim Inhofe and David Vitter agreeing with Ed Markey on a piece of legislation, you should take note of that moment in the history of passing legislation. That is where we are. We have something that is historic. The environmental bill of a generation is about to pass. The fact that 403 Members of the House of Representatives voted yes-- 403 voted in support of this bill--tells you something. It tells you we rolled up our sleeves and we worked together on a bipartisan, bicameral basis to compromise in the way that Americans expect us to. I thank all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol, and I look forward to watching the President sign this important legislation to protect the health and well-being of all Americans. This is a bill that does protect us from the dangers that Americans are exposed to--whether they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives. This is the way the Chamber should operate. This is the way we should also consider nuclear warfighting policy. We should have the same kind of attention, the same kind of respect for the consequences for generations to come in our country. We should give it the same kind of respectful, bipartisan, bicameral attention that the public can understand. I thank the Chair for this opportunity. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. MARKEY. I just want to thank the Senator for his work. We have been partnering on this issue of eliminating bag fees at airports. Since they have been imposed, 27 percent more bags now go through baggage clearing with passengers. If we could just get that out of the way, get rid of those baggage fees, I think it would expedite dramatically the ability of people to get on planes in this country. So I am glad we are able to have this moment to be able to speak about the importance of this issue.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I wish to open my remarks with a congratulations to the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative based in Gloucester, MA. Since it began less than 11 months ago, this program is now partnering with more than 100 police departments in 24 States around the country to help people with opioid addiction to get the treatment they need. The program's approach is simple, but it is also revolutionary: having law enforcement work with those suffering from the disease of addiction by removing the stigma surrounding it and placing them into treatment instead of behind bars. I thank the founders of this program--Gloucester police chief Leonard Campanello and John Rosenthal--for their leadership and compassion, and I urge everyone to learn more about this national model for combating the opioid crisis. It is that crisis that I am here to talk about this afternoon. Today, I wish to call attention to a serious issue facing Massachusetts and soon to face every single community in the United States of America. Illicit fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Let me say that again. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. It is responsible for the largest increase in drug overdose deaths in recent years. More than 700 deaths in the United States were attributable to fentanyl and its components between 2013 and 2014. In Massachusetts alone, 336 people died from fentanyl-related overdoses between 2014 and 2015. More recently, among the 1,319 opioid-related deaths in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2015 for which a blood test was available, more than half--754--tested positive for fentanyl. That is an astounding number for one State. That is an astounding increase in the impact that fentanyl is having in deaths in the State of Massachusetts. But it is not just isolated to Massachusetts, because fentanyl is the Godzilla of opioids, and it will overrun communities and lay them to waste unless we take action now to stop it. For those who may not know about this new scourge, Mexico and China are the primary foreign sources for illicit fentanyl, for the chemicals and building blocks from which it is made, and for other illicit substances very similar to fentanyl--called fentanyl analogs--and which are trafficked into the United States from outside of our borders. Fentanyl powder is often mixed with other illicit drugs like heroin or is disguised in pill form to resemble an opioid painkiller like OxyContin. Many drug users overdose on fentanyl because they have no idea that it is mixed into whatever substance they are injecting or whatever pills they are swallowing, and they do not realize just how deadly it is until it is too late. But capturing a total and accurate number of drug overdoses caused by fentanyl has been very challenging. Coroners and medical examiners do not usually test for the drug unless they are asked to, and they are often unaware that an overdose has a fentanyl link when an individual tests positive for a different substance such as heroin. Even more troubling, the men and the women who first respond to the scene of an overdose may not know how to identify fentanyl or how to handle the drug. This makes local and State first responders very vulnerable to the drug's harmful effects, because if the fentanyl powder is absorbed into the skin or accidentally inhaled, it can be deadly. In fact, a dose of just three salt-sized grains of fentanyl can be lethal. So think about that. You are a first responder. You are going into a home or a business thinking that you are responding to an opioid overdose situation when, in fact, you might be exposing yourself to the fentanyl in the air or to something which gets on your skin. That is how deadly this new substance is that is creating this epidemic across our country. Recently, DEA agents in Seattle raided a suspected fentanyl lab wearing HAZMAT suits and protective gear to make sure they did not inadvertently breathe in or touch the fentanyl. The DEA has told me that they sometimes cannot use dogs to sniff packages coming in from overseas suspected of containing fentanyl because these drug-detection dogs may die if they even inhale it. The Drug Enforcement Administration is so concerned about this synthetic opioid that in March of 2015 it issued a nationwide alert highlighting fentanyl as a threat to health and public safety. Fentanyl is a very real problem in my home State of Massachusetts. Lawrence, MA, which is about half an hour north of Boston, is a hotspot for fentanyl trafficking. From Lawrence, the drug ends up being processed and sold all over New England. There are efforts already in place to address the spread of fentanyl. Mexico and China are its primary foreign sources and have been the focus of diplomatic efforts to curb fentanyl trafficking. We need to make sure that those countries are living up to their promises to combat the flow of this deadly drug and other synthetic opioids into the United States. We know naloxone, sometimes called Narcan, is an effective antidote against an opioid overdose. But a single dose of naloxone is typically not enough to combat an overdose that includes fentanyl. That is why earlier today I called on the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of State to outline our domestic and international strategy against the trafficking of illicit fentanyl into America. As we await their responses, I know there are several critical steps that we must take in order to save lives. We must educate the public about the existence of illicit fentanyl and the harm it can do. We must educate first responders--our firefighters, our EMTs, our sheriffs, our health care workers--so that they can protect against injury to themselves as they are trying to identify a fentanyl overdose and so that they can protect themselves from the harmful effects of that drug. Identifying a fentanyl overdose could mean the difference between administering multiple lifesaving doses of naloxone or death. We should invest in programs that ensure that naloxone--Narcan--is readily available and accessible to those most likely to witness an overdose. We need to make sure that there are no shortages or unnecessary price increases for this lifesaving treatment. We should issue guidance to States regarding the protocol for fentanyl testing in order to obtain a more accurate picture of fentanyl's deadly impact. Illicit fentanyl is different from other opioids. It is difficult to detect and has deadly consequences for those who unknowingly come within its path. We cannot let another day pass without taking the necessary steps to educate our communities about fentanyl, to develop a national strategy, and to collaborate with our international partners-- the Mexicans and the Chinese, especially--so that we can keep this illicit drug out of the cities and towns all over our country. American lives depend on a solution to the latest opioid crisis. It is going to be something that people look back at and say: How can something have been worse than the heroin epidemic? How can something have caused more deaths than the heroin epidemic? That is where fentanyl is already in the State of Massachusetts. It is something that is going to come to each and every State in our country. We have to take action now. We have to ensure that we protect our borders from it entering, but then we have to make sure that we give the proper training and protections and put them in place for every State and every city and town to be able to protect against this infecting our communities. So I thank the Chair for giving me the opportunity to address the Chamber today. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MARKEY

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

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following congressional fellows in my office be given floor privileges for the remainder of this session: Elyssa Hesky, Jeanette Roberts, Karen Paczkowski, Alec Bogdanoff, Angela Cervetti and Hugh O'Donnell.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to applaud Senators Murkowski and Cantwell, the chair and ranking member of the Energy Committee, for their leadership and tenacity in passing yesterday's bipartisan Energy bill on the floor. This kind of bipartisanship has always been the political fuel that has driven some of our most important energy legislation. I thank them for their commitment to working together in a bipartisan fashion to pass this bill, and I look forward to working with them and all of my colleagues going forward to capture all of the potential for America's clean energy future. There are many good provisions in this bill. The bill promotes energy efficiency in our buildings and appliances. It will help to modernize our electrical grid and support energy storage technologies. It permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The bill includes a number of provisions and amendments that I authored that were accepted on the floor. I was pleased that my bipartisan legislation with Senators Inhofe, Rounds, and Booker to reauthorize EPA's brownfields program through 2018 was included in the Energy bill. This legislation will help clean up the decades of abuse our lands have experienced at the hands of corporate polluters. It will help to create jobs and spur economic activity in Massachusetts and around the country, while revitalizing underutilized and polluted lands. In December, Congress voted to lift the 40-year old restrictions on exporting U.S. oil overseas. During that debate, I and other Senators raised concerns regarding the impacts that exporting American oil abroad could have on U.S. consumers and refined fuel prices, independent refineries, and other sectors of the U.S. economy such as shipbuilding. However, the final legislation did not even include any requirement for analyzing and reporting on any potential impacts that exports could have on these industries or on U.S. consumers. Therefore, I offered an amendment, which the Senate adopted, that would require the Government Accountability Office, GAO to review and report back annually for 3 years on the impacts of crude oil exports on U.S. consumers, independent refineries, shipbuilders, and energy production. Exporting American crude oil could be a disaster for independent refineries in regions such as the east coast. Upwards of 55 percent of our refining capacity on the east coast could potentially close as a result of oil exports. The Energy Department has said that exports could lead to as much as $9 billion less investment and 1.6 million barrels less refining capacity in 10 years. It could lead to up to $200 billion less revenue for the U.S. refining sector over the next decade. It could raise prices for consumers who are currently saving $700 a year at the pump and $500 on heating oil this winter because of low oil prices. And it could harm U.S. shipbuilders. We have been having a shipbuilding renaissance in this country. We are currently seeing the biggest shipbuilding boom in 20 years. But exports could stop all of this in its tracks. We should know how exporting American oil is affecting American consumers. We should know how it is affecting key sectors of our economy such as refining and shipbuilding. And we should know how it is affecting energy production in the United States. That is what my amendment would help us do, and I am pleased that it was adopted into the bill. The bill also includes a bipartisan amendment that I authored with Senator Cassidy to improve the way that we are going to be selling oil under a law passed last year to better protect taxpayers. Our Nation's oil stockpile is supposed to be there to protect American consumers and our security in the event of an emergency. We shouldn't use it as a piggybank to fund other priorities. But that is precisely what we did in two bills passed last year. But if we are going to sell oil from our strategic stockpile, we should do so strategically to get the best deal for taxpayers and drive down prices for consumers. That is what the Cassidy-Markey amendment would help us do. For the sales of SPR oil required by the Budget Act that became law last year, the Cassidy-Markey amendment would give the Secretary of Energy more flexibility to sell oil when prices are high. This fix should allow us to sell fewer overall barrels from the SPR and get a better return on these sales for American taxpayers. I am pleased that the Senate voted to adopt this commonsense amendment. However, there are a number of provisions in the bill with which I have concerns. The bill would apply a 45-day shot-clock to the Department of Energy's review of liquefied natural gas export applications. There is no problem with the Energy Department delaying its review of LNG export applications. If there is any problem, it is that the Energy Department is moving too fast to approve these exports of American natural gas overseas. Exporting less than half of the volumes of natural gas that the Department has already approved for export could drive prices up by more than 50 percent for American consumers and businesses. This would be a disaster for consumers in many regions of the country, such as the Northeast. It would be a disaster for domestic manufacturing, where low U.S. prices give us a competitive advantage with the rest of the world. I have urged the Department to take a time-out from approving new LNG exports until we more fully understand how the volumes we have already approved will affect various regions of our country and our energy security. That is what we should be doing, not artificially truncating the review process. I am similarly concerned that a provision about forest bioenergy would interfere with the EPA's scientific review process of the carbon pollution implications of biomass electricity and potentially interfere--with EPA's statutory responsibilities. The provision directs Federal policies to ``reflect the carbon neutrality of forest bioenergy.'' But not all biomass energy is created equal. The timeframe for any climate benefits from biomass energy can vary. In many instances that timeframe can be very long--on the order of 50 to 100 years. Some practices, like clearcutting forests and burning whole trees for energy should never be considered carbon neutral. That is why it is critical to incorporate what science tells us about forests and their interaction with the global carbon cycle into policies governing biomass energy. Biomass energy is already contributing to the U.S. energy mix in ways that help reduce carbon pollution that causes global warming. I look forward to working with my colleagues as this bill moves through conference to ensure that the United States has a smart, sustainable, and scientifically-backed policy for biomass energy. The bill also contains provisions regarding hydropower relicensing. I appreciate the willingness of Senators Murkowski and Cantwell to engage with stakeholders on hydropower relicensing and that they have crafted language that is a vast improvement compared to the House version. It took me much of 1985 and 1986 to reach consensus on the bipartisan Electric Consumers Protection Act of 1986 that for the first time required FERC to give equal consideration to the environment, fish and wildlife, and other nonpower values as it gives to power and development objectives in making licensing decisions. I know how challenging it can be to find solutions that all stakeholders can support. But these hydropower licenses are good for decades, and we need to make sure that FERC's decisions are informed by the best, most up-to-date information, especially in the face of changing rainfall patterns driven by global warming. So I am concerned that this provision in the Energy bill could limit the ability of Federal agencies to require companies to undertake new analyses on the impacts of their dams by emphasizing the use of existing studies and data. I am also concerned that the provision could require agencies to evaluate the impact of their recommendations on issues beyond their core abilities. Rather than speeding up the relicensing process, this could slow it down. Rather than saving taxpayers money, it could require more financial resources for Federal agencies. Finally, I am concerned about what is not in this bill. The tax breaks for the oil, gas, and coal industries are permanent pieces of the TAX CODE that never expire. Meanwhile, tax breaks for wind power will begin phasing down in 8 months and be gone by the end of 2019. The tax breaks for solar will expire in 2021. That schedule would be a disaster for offshore wind in particular, which has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs in Massachusetts and up and down the east coast. In fact, the Department of Energy has found that that there would be no offshore wind projects that would be able to qualify for these tax credits before they expire. That is just wrong. We need to put clean energy technologies on equal footing with mature fossil fuel industries, whose tax breaks date as far back as 100 years. Senators Cantwell and Wyden put forward a Democratic energy bill which I was pleased to be an original cosponsor of, which would repeal these fossil fuel tax breaks and invest in clean energy. It would create a goal for reducing our emission of carbon pollution. And it would create an energy efficiency standard such as I have proposed. These are some of the measures that we should be considering to truly allow us to be a leader in developing clean energy technologies and jobs here in the United States. As we work with the House on this Energy bill, we need to build on the bipartisan efforts that have been done in this bill and ensure that the Senate continues to reject the damaging and highly partisan provisions that the House has included in its bill. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure a final Energy bill that improves America's economy and environment.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, Senator Cassidy and I have offered this amendment in order to correct a problem in the bill. Without this amendment, there would not be the kind of discipline which is necessary in order to make sure the Strategic Petroleum oil is sold strategically so that the Federal Government gets the best price for it, so that we sell high--or as high as we can--in order to limit the number of barrels of oil that ultimately will be sold so that we can keep as many as possible in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In order to meet the budget objectives, this amendment satisfies it but also ensures that we keep the maximum number of barrels of oil remaining in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is going to make millions--tens of millions of extra dollars for the Federal taxpayers because it will be done in a very smart way. We will be selling as high as possible because we bought this oil, for the most part, in a very high-priced marketplace. Senator Cassidy and I urge an ``aye'' vote on the amendment.

Mr. MARKEY

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