Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, last year I had the opportunity to travel to the Vatican. During my visit, I had the chance to overlook St. Peter's Square from a Vatican balcony. As I took in the view of that historic square, the Sun glinted off the future. Across the square, I saw the rooftop of Pope Paul VI Audience Hall on the Vatican grounds covered with solar panels. It was clear from that view that the Vatican takes climate change very seriously and had long been preparing to have a profound impact on this generational issue that touches every living creature on the planet. I was at the Vatican as the only U.S. representative in a group of high-level legislators from around the world who are all working to address climate change in their own countries. We met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Vatican leaders responsible for writing the initial draft of Pope Francis's historical environmental encyclical, and shared the impact of climate change in our own home countries with the two cardinals who were going to be writing that encyclical. The conversation then turned to what was happening in the countries of the legislators who were visiting. The lawmaker from the Philippines discussed the destruction that Typhoon Haiyan brought to parts of her country. Legislators from South Africa and Mexico shared the challenges their countries and regions face from drought. The representatives from Europe pointed to the damage from extreme heat waves and rainfall. I relayed my concern with the rising levels, temperature, and acidity of the ocean and the impacts on coastal communities. Rising sea levels are eroding our shores in Massachusetts and New England and across our country, increasing the damage in New England of nor'easters. In recent years, ocean temperatures in our part of the Atlantic ocean have been the hottest ever recorded. In one case, off of Cape Cod, it was 21 degrees warmer than normal this January, in Massachusetts, off of our coastline. But all of us who had gathered at the Vatican were in agreement that the world's poorest people are suffering the worst consequences of climate change--extreme poverty, famine, disease, and displacement-- which is why it should be no surprise that Pope Francis, a Jesuit trained in chemistry who is devoted to the poor and ensuring a just and better future for all mankind, would be the only Pope to devote an entire encyclical to humanity's relationship with the environment. In releasing his encyclical and giving us his message to protect what he calls ``our common home,'' Pope Francis has also given us a common goal: We must act now to stop climate change. But make no mistake--this Pope is looking for leadership. Pope Francis is looking for results. He is looking for all of us to lead to solve this problem. Next week, we will have the honor of hosting Pope Francis here in Washington, DC, and hearing him address a joint meeting of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate--unprecedented--and the entire Nation will be watching the Pope as he speaks because we all need to hear Pope Francis's message of love, of compassion, of justice and action. And we need to join in the conversation he is calling the world to engage in about protecting people and our planet. The science of climate change has been clear for decades. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising. Extreme downpours and weather events are increasing. The ocean is becoming more dangerously acidic. Last year was the warmest year ever recorded. Today, NOAA announced that this summer was the hottest summer since 1880. Increasing temperatures increase the risk for bad air days, in turn increasing the risk of asthma attacks and worse for people who actually have lung disease. Global warming is also a public health crisis. The economic and security costs are now dangerously evident. Climate change is aggravating tensions around the world, especially where food and water security are at the heart of the conflicts. It is spawning new crises that are displacing millions of people and creating an era of refugees. This will require action by our diplomats and aid organizations, but every nation must do its fair share. Pope Francis's address to Congress next week will offer us the opportunity to examine our own policies, their impact on not only the people of our Nation but on the entire planet, and our duty as leaders and as human beings to take action. Pope Francis has brought this moral imperative to act on climate change just as the nations of the world are working to forge an international agreement in Paris this December as the world gathers to deal with this issue. The United States must lead this effort. The United States must heed the message of Pope Francis. The United States must be the nation in Paris in December saying to the rest of the world that we can and must do something to solve this problem. We know that clean energy will be at the heart of meeting any of the goals which we have to establish here and across the planet in order to cut pollution. We must continue to improve the fuel efficiency of the automobiles and trucks we drive here in the United States. We must deploy more wind and solar energy and renew tax breaks for those projects. By making a commitment to reduce the pollution imperiling our planet, we can engage in job creation that is good for all of creation. The United States can be the leader in the technological revolution to reduce the pollution imperiling our planet, and then we can partner with other nations to share this technology and protect the most vulnerable around the world. Pope Francis said in his encyclical, ``Today, in the view of the common good, there is an urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially life.'' We know that to agree on a course of action is no easy task in this Chamber, but if we harness the ambition of the Moon landing, the technological power of our workers, and the moral imperative of Pope Francis's message, we can leave the world a better place than we found it. We have done it before. We have the tools to do it again. Now we need to forge the political will in order to accomplish those goals. We need more solar, we need more wind, and we need the batteries for the vehicles we drive in order to reduce the amount of polluting fossil fuels we send up into the atmosphere. We need to invest. We need to be the technological giants. We need to unleash the same kind of revolution in the energy sector as we did in the telecommunications sector in the 1990s. No one on the planet except the United States had a device like this on their person just 15 years ago. We invented telecommunications. We invented the way in which people not just here in America but all across the planet--Africa, Asia, South America-- communicate with these wireless devices. We can do the same thing on energy. We can do the same thing with wind and solar. We can reinvent the kinds of vehicles we drive--cars, trucks, buses. We can do it. We have to have the will. We have to listen to the Pope. We have to play the role that the United States is expected to lead by the rest of the world in order to meet this moral imperative. And we can do it by creating millions of new jobs here in the United States. So that is our challenge. The Pope is arriving next week. For me, as a boy who grew up going to the Immaculate Conception Grammar School, Malden Catholic, Boston College, and Boston College Law School--Catholic school every day for 19 years--this is just an incredible thrill, knowing that, in a way, when he is standing up on that podium, it is going to be a latter-day ``Sermon on the Mount'' that he delivers to us telling us what our job is today: to save this beautiful planet God has created while also avoiding the worst consequences for the poorest people on the planet if we do not solve the problem. Let's work together in a bipartisan fashion in order to heed the message of Pope Francis. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, on March 11, 2015, at Washington National Cathedral, a memorial service was held for former Massachusetts Senator Edward W. Brooke III. Ed was one of the first African Americans to serve in combat during World War II. He was the first African American to be elected a State attorney general, and the first elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote. In 2004, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. In honor of his extraordinary life and service to our Nation, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the remarks made at Senator Edward W. Brooke III's memorial service by Secretary of State John F. Kerry; Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; Milton C. Davis and Edward W. Brooke IV.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, there is a proposal that is going to be made before the House of Representatives and before the Senate. That proposal will lift the ban on the exportation of American oil--oil that is drilled for here in the United States. The oil industry wants to have this ban lifted. You have to go back in history 40 years, to 1975, in order to find why that ban on exported oil is on the books. In 1975 we were at the height of the first oil embargo from OPEC. We were importing 30 to 35 percent of the oil we consumed in the United States. A ban was put in place for us to export our own oil if we were importing 30 to 35 percent of the oil that we were consuming in America. It put us at a big disadvantage if we took that approach to our own oil. Today the United States imports 25 to 30 percent of all the oil which we consume. Mark Twain used to say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does tend to rhyme. Today is a lot like 1975 in terms of the amount of oil that we import into our country. Right now we import 5 million barrels of oil a day. We import oil from Iraq, we import oil from Venezuela, and we import oil from the Persian Gulf in order to fuel our economy. Now the oil industry says: Let's start selling the oil we have and drill for in the United States out in the open market. Why does the oil industry want to do that? Because when oil is drilled for in the United States, the price that is set is set in Oklahoma. Cushing, OK, is where the price is set. On average that price is $3 to $6 less expensive per barrel than the oil that is on the open market. That is called the Brent crude price. But it is the world price. That is not our price. Our price is $3 to $6 less. The oil industry in America wants to get our oil out in the open market so they can sell it to other countries. What countries? First in line would be China. After that, most likely, are other Asian nations. That makes a lot of sense for oil companies. It does not make any sense for American consumers. By keeping the ban in place, Barclays Bank estimated that all that oil here put pressure on prices and lowered prices for consumers by $11 billion last year. You can see it when you look at the price at the pump when you go to fill up. This year Barclays Bank estimates that there will be a $10 billion reduction in cost for consumers. You can see it at the pump. You can see the price coming down. The pressure works for consumers. The oil industry does not like that. They want to get that oil out of America. They want to get a higher price on the global market. As to national security, does it really make any sense for the United States to be sending young men and women over to the Middle East in uniform, into that highly unstable part of our planet in order to ensure that this stability leads to huge ships with oil in it coming from the Middle East into America, while simultaneously having the oil industry saying let's export our own oil that we already have? It makes no sense. As long as we are exporting young men and women over to the Middle East to fight, to protect ourselves, we should not be exporting our own oil domestically. It makes no sense whatsoever. Our own Department of Energy says that our production in America is going to peak in the year 2020--peak--and then decline for the next 20 years. We import 5 million barrels a day. Our oil production will peak in the year 2020 and then start to decline, and the oil industry wants to start exporting our own oil. Many of the advocates of that say: You wouldn't have a ban on any other product being exported from the United States. That is probably right. We don't have a ban on the export of widgets or watches. But on the other hand, we don't fight wars over widgets. We don't fight wars over watches. Oil is different. Oil has been at the center for 50 years of this powerful geopolitical battle that the United States has been drawn into in the Middle East. Let's not kid ourselves. We are living it every day, looking at the lead stories on every television network in our country--every day. In terms of what we lose, the domestic refining industry is totally opposed to this. The oil refining industry of the United States is totally opposed to exportation. Why? Because they are investing in the construction of new refineries here to refine American oil here in refineries that are constructed and employing hundreds of thousands of people within our own country. The refining industry opposes it. It would be a $9 billion loss and a reduction by 1.6 million barrels of oil per day that could be refined in the United States. The shipbuilding industry is opposed to it. We are seeing a 40-percent increase in the amount of shipbuilding in America. Here is what is happening. The oil is produced in the oil patches. It is put on ships, and it is sent to Pennsylvania, sent to New Jersey, sent to other parts of America. You need ships to do that. Then that oil gets refined in Pennsylvania, and it gets refined in other parts of the country. That would end this incredible shipbuilding boom that we have seen. Where will these exports go? We are not like Russia. We are not like Saudi Arabia. We don't have state-run oil companies. We are a capitalists. Capitalists go for the highest price no matter where it is. You put the oil out on the open seas, and our companies will head toward the highest price. Who is going to pay the highest price? China is going to pay the highest price. Other countries that are wealthy are going to pay the highest price. We can't pretend that it is going to go to where the geopolitical needs of the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense are going to go. That is not how capitalism works. You go towards the highest price. That is the fiduciary responsibility that you have as a CEO of a company. That does not get mixed up within our society. The hand on the tiller of those ships is heading towards the highest price. Who benefits? The oil companies will benefit. There are estimates that by 2025, they will be making an extra $30 billion a year in profits--per year. It makes sense for the oil companies. Who are the losers? Our consumers are going to be big losers. Our national security is a big loser. We are exporting our strength, our oil, even as we need 5 million extra barrels a day. Our domestic refiners are big losers. Our U.S. shipbuilding industry is a big loser, and our environment is a big loser. Can you imagine it? The Pope is arriving next week, and he is going to talk about the role that human beings are playing in the dangerous warming of our planet. What the oil industry wants us to do is to continue to engage in expanded fracking of oil on our own soil, even though we haven't fully figured out how to contain the methane that comes out of that fracking, and then put it on ships and send it around the world. Where are the benefits for the American people? Our environment takes all of the risks, and the oil goes out to the open seas with the benefit to the oil companies. It makes no sense at all. Within 10 years, they are making an extra $30 billion every single year from that additional profit that they get by selling it overseas, rather than keeping it here and keeping the pressure on lowering the price for consumers here in our country. Many times you hear them saying: We really should be able to drill off the coastline of the United States, all the way up to Maine, down to Florida, from San Diego up to the top of Alaska--right off the coastline. What about the fishing industry? It could endanger it. What about tourism on those beaches if this is spilled? It could endanger it. But they say: We must do it in order to ensure that we have the oil that we need here in the United States. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that we have enough oil that we can export it out of our country, and simultaneously say that we must drill off of our coastlines in dangerous conditions because we don't need the oil because we can export it. You can't have it both ways. No one is allowed to do that. There is a pretty high contradiction coefficient in the argument made by the oil industry. We need to have this debate. The American people must know that they are going to run the risk of being tipped upside down at gasoline stations all across the country and having money shaken out of their pockets as they fill up their tanks because the oil industry just wants more. So national security--let us know when we have produced the extra 5 million barrels a day here. Let us know when they have the evidence that proves that the Department of Energy is wrong and our production doesn't start to go down after 2020. Let us know when they have invested in the safeguards that ensure that methane does not come up from the fracking wells. Let us know when we put as a priority those American young men and women that we are sending over there into the Middle East. It makes no sense. It is a bad policy. They had it right in 1975. We are still importing about the same amount of oil as we were back then. We don't want to invoke the first law of holes, which is, when you end one, stop digging. We want to make sure that we abide by that rule, that we guarantee that we start to come out of that hole, that we use American oil here first before we sell it overseas and hurt consumers, the environment, and our national security. This is the beginning of a very important debate in our country. I am looking forward to it. I think the American people are going to rise up and realize that this is very dangerous for them on so many different levels that it will be rejected on the floor of the Senate before this entire process has ended. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, for more than half a century, the United States has led global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Since the 1970s, the international community has set rules and procedures to prevent these weapons from spreading, particularly to unstable regions plagued by international and civil war. Today, the world faces precisely this challenge in Iran. A nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran is a very real and dangerous threat not only to Israel and the entire Middle East but to all of humanity. We are in unanimous agreement that Iran must never become a nuclear weapons state. Iran has given us good reason to be skeptical of its intentions. It has misled the world about its nuclear program, is a state sponsor of terrorism, and is a destabilizing force in the Middle East. With nuclear weapons, the threat posed by Iran would increase exponentially. Because of these factors, we cannot ever trust Iran or ever give it a free pass on its destabilizing activity in the region and around the globe. As we speak today, Iran has the capability to develop a nuclear weapon within 3 months. With the Iran nuclear agreement, that will no longer be possible. I believe that our negotiators achieved as much as possible and that if the agreement they negotiated is strictly implemented, it can do the job. On the other hand, if we walk away now, our diplomatic coalition will likely fall apart and the prospects for any renewed efforts would not be promising. Together with many other Senators, I met with the Ambassadors of the five countries that joined in the effort to reach this agreement--Great Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia. Their message was unified and crystal clear: If the United States walks away right now, we will be on our own and they will not come back to the table. I acknowledge that the agreement carries risks, but, as recently stated in a letter signed by 29 leading American nuclear scientists, including six Nobel laureates, this agreement contains ``more stringent constraints than any previous negotiated nonproliferation framework.'' The agreement puts strict limits on Iran's nuclear program for the next 15 years. It reduces Iran's existing nuclear program to a fraction of its current size. It virtually eliminates Iran's plutonium capabilities and reduces its uranium capability by two-thirds. It pushes back the time required before Iran would be capable of building a nuclear bomb from 3 months to more than 1 year. As I said earlier, this agreement is not based on trust. It imposes the most invasive, stringent, and technologically innovative verification regime ever negotiated. The agreement empowers inspectors to use the most advanced and intrusive methods to monitor Iran's compliance. This verification system will provide an unprecedented amount of reliable information and insight into Iran's nuclear program, ensuring that if Iran ever tries to develop a nuclear weapon, we will find out about it in time to stop them. After 15 years, under both this agreement and the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, Iran will remain bound never to seek nuclear weapons. In paragraph 3 of the agreement, Iran categorically makes the following binding obligation: ``Under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.'' Under the agreement, Iran will be required to give the IAEA detailed plans for how it intends to develop nuclear technology for peaceful use. It will remain forever subject to IAEA inspection to verify that it never seeks nuclear weapons or engages in any nuclear weapons- related activities. If the IAEA ever finds anything suspicious--not just in 10 or 15 or 25 or 40 years but forever--then it will be the IAEA's duty to promptly report its suspicions to the world. The IAEA's ability to verify Iran's compliance is the key to this agreement. It will be critical to provide international inspectors with the support they require to detect, investigate, and respond to any suspicious nuclear activity before Iran has time to cover up the evidence. With our support, the IAEA can and must aggressively investigate any indication of Iranian nuclear weapons activities and report promptly and unequivocally if Iran cheats. Likewise, we must be prepared to react at any time if the IAEA sounds the alarm. I supported the tough sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. There are mechanisms in this agreement to snap back sanctions quickly and prevent a Chinese or Russian veto. Even without nuclear weapons, Iran poses very real risks, particularly to Israel, our closest friend in the region, and to our partners in the Arabian Peninsula. The administration has assured us that it is working closely with regional partners to enhance their security. Congress must be an active, insistent, and bipartisan partner in this effort, both with this President and his successors. We must increase our security assistance to Israel to unprecedented levels. I have always been a strong supporter of Israel. When Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons in 1981, I supported Israel's decision to bomb the Osirak reactor. When Israel needed more funding for a missile defense system in 2010, I voted to accelerate the development of the Iron Dome system. When Hamas attacked Israel in 2012, I supported its right to self-defense. We must continue to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge in the region and promptly finalize our new 10-year memorandum of understanding to cement our security assistance commitments. Likewise, we must strengthen our relationships with all of our regional partners. The countries of the Arabian Peninsula require our assistance to counter threats from Iran. Our cooperation in ballistic missile defense and countering violent extremists through intelligence sharing and interdiction must continue and be enhanced. Over the past 2 months, I have consulted with many stakeholders, groups, advocates, and concerned constituents on both sides of this debate. Without exception, their passion is born of an unwavering desire to secure a lasting peace for the Middle East, Israel, the United States, and the world. This is a passion I share. The world has come together in a historic way. With the agreement, we gain much, but most importantly, we avoid missing the significant diplomatic opportunity to ensure that Iran never emerges as a nuclear weapons state. With this agreement, we will maintain the international solidarity that will enable us to reimpose sanctions if Iran ever does try to get a nuclear weapon. We will keep and continue to improve all of our capabilities required to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state, including a military option. I thank Secretary Kerry, Secretary Moniz, and the entire U.S. negotiating team for their tireless efforts and service to our country in helping reach this agreement. I also thank President Obama for his leadership and commitment to diplomacy. I urge the Senate to come together to support this diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon--not just this month or this year but forever. We must be ever-vigilant to ensure that every part of this agreement is verified. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Rhode Island, my friend from California, Senator Boxer, Senator Schatz from Hawaii, and all the Members who work on these issues. This is the big one. This is the issue. This is the threat to the entire planet. Young people want us to do something about it. They are wondering when the older generation is finally going to get around to doing something about it, from moving to sending pollution up into the air to moving to clean energy, moving to new energy technologies. So as they look at this, they look at coal, they look at a 19th century technology--coal--and they say: When are we moving to the new era? Well, that is a good question because in 2005 in the United States of America we deployed a grand total of 79 megawatts of solar. In 2014, we deployed 7,000 megawatts of solar--100 times more--because we started to have a plan. Democrats put a plan in place by creating tax breaks for solar, by incentivizing more investment in solar across the country. Individual States started to put new regulations on the books--7,000 megawatts. Now we have 20,000 megawatts of solar in the United States. But we only deployed 79 in 2005. Now, if you really want some great news as to what is possible, in 2015 and 2016, we are going to deploy 20,000 more--in just 2 years. So we are going to double the total amount of all solar ever deployed in the United States in just 2 years. Over on the wind front, we are going to have about 80,000 megawatts total deployed by the end of next year, bringing it up to 120,000 megawatts. How much is that? When you look at a big nuclear powerplant and you see the picture of it, that is 1,000 megawatts. So we are talking about 120 of them being deployed by the end of next year. So the young generation looks at us and they say: Can we do this? Can we meet the goals President Obama is setting? Can we meet the objective of having 28 percent of all of our electricity coming from renewables by the year 2030? Well, if you hear from the coal industry or you hear from the nuclear industry, if you hear from the other fossil fuel industries, they say: Well, that is impossible. You can't do it. It is absolutely just going to be a very small part of the total amount of electricity that we generate in our country. Well, they are just dead wrong. We are proving that in 2015 and 2016 because of the fight that is taking place at the State level--the tax breaks for wind and solar that were put on the books largely by Democrats here nationally. We are doing it. It is there. We now have over 200,000 people working in the solar industry in the United States. There are only 85,000 people who are in the coal industry. Got that? It is 2015. There are 80,000 people working in the wind industry in our country. These are the growth industries. These are the Internet corollaries in clean energy. This is where young people are going. This is where innovation is going. This is where venture capital in America is going. This is where the innovation around our planet is going. We can do this. We can reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, increase employment simultaneously, and create wealth and health for our planet. The President's plan will reduce by 90,000 per year the number of asthma attacks in our country. It will reduce by 90 percent the total amount of sulfur that is sent up into the atmosphere. It will be something that is supported by doctors and nurses and by Presidents and Popes. That is what we have. That is what this plan is. It is a beautiful plan. It is a plan that spans not just the technological and the political but also the moral imperative that is presented by this problem. So yes, the big question that is being asked is this: Where is the Republican plan? Well, of course, there is none because they are still in denial that there is a problem, notwithstanding the fact that every single national academy of sciences of every single country in the world says there is a problem. This is basically a small cabal of fossil fuel executives still trying to peddle 19th century technologies in the 21st century. It would be as though there were a cabal to stop us from moving from black rotary dial phones to wireless devices so that people could walk around with the new technologies. Oh, wait. There was a cabal. They fought it for years and years and years and years because they had the monopoly. The black rotary dial phone in the living room was all anyone would ever need. We had to break down those monopolies, and we have to break down these as well. But here it is more than just having a phone in your pocket. Now it is actually saving the planet. It is ensuring we put in place the preventive measures that will reduce greenhouse gases while creating new jobs. Senator Whitehouse and I are part of a plan called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative across New England, New York, Delaware, and Maryland. We already have a plan in place that has, in fact, reduced greenhouse gases, which has simultaneously seen dramatic increases in wealth, creating $1.5 billion in savings for consumers. We can do this. We can do this. The auto industry said we could not increase the fuel economy standards of the vehicles that we drive. We just went right past them. The telecommunications industry did not want us to be moving to this wireless revolution. We just went right past them. The coal industry does not want us to act right now. For the sake of the planet, for the sake of generations to come, we must go right past them and ensure President Obama's plan is enacted. I thank the Chair, and I now yield to the Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Schatz.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are at a crossroads. We have a catastrophe that is looming for our planet. We have the world looking at the United States wondering if we are going to lead. We have the Pope coming to the United States and speaking out on this issue. We have the world gathering in Paris this November, this December, discussing this issue because it is now the focal point of the world; that is, the danger of ever-escalating, dangerous climate change, the warming of our planet, and the catastrophic consequences of the warming of our planet. The tides are rising. Snows are melting. In other places, the snows are greater than they have ever been before. Climate change--dangerous climate change--that is what is happening. What is the response from the Republican side of the aisle? We hear nothing. We hear denial. We hear essentially an argument that it is not our responsibility to deal with it, but the Pope is asking us to be the leader. The world is asking us to be the leader. The young people in our country, the green generation, are asking us to be the leader. The United States is a technological giant. We have the capacity to invent the technologies that are going to radically reduce greenhouse gases, not only in our own country but around the world: new renewable energy technologies, new battery technologies, and new ways of generating electricity in the 21st century. We do not have to be tied to 19th century technologies--oil and coal. It is the 21st century. In our country, in 2015 and 2016, we are going to generate 40,000 new megawatts of wind and solar. We ask, Well, what does that translate into? What are 40,000 megawatts? If we think of all the nuclear powerplants that have been constructed in our country over the last 70 years, we now have 100,000 megawatts of electricity coming from nuclear power. In these 2 years, 2015 to 2016, we are going to add 40,000 in wind and solar. The experts did not think this was possible 10 years ago. The experts would have said: Oh, wind and solar, that is nice, but it can't replace the coal that has always been relied upon to provide our electricity going back to the 19th century. Impossible, they said. No. This new generation is rising up. And what is doing it? Well, we have put tax breaks on the books now for wind and solar. We are giving them the same breaks we always gave oil, we always gave coal. But what do we hear from the Republican Party? Should we eliminate the coal and oil tax breaks? Oh, no. You can't touch those. But when we say, well, let's renew the tax breaks for wind and solar, they say it is time for us to now allow these new industries to go it alone. That has been the problem all along; there isn't a level playing field. What we have done over the last 7 years is create a level playing field, so the new energy technologies can compete against these old tax breaks for coal and oil that have been on the books for generations. We can do it. We can solve this problem, but we can't create an unlevel playing field. The same thing is true with automotive technologies. All of that CO2 coming out of automobiles, coming out of trucks, people said we just have to live with it. The average for vehicles that ordinary families drove in our country just 6 years ago was 25 miles a gallon, essentially the same as 1975. The green generation, the young people in our country, say let's do better, let's invent new technologies. Let's have electric cars. Let's have plug-in hybrids. Let's have a generation of hybrids. No, says the industry. It is too difficult. We can't figure it out. It will cripple our industry. We pass new laws here on the Senate floor and on the House floor. What has happened? We have a revolution in automotive technology. We now have people driving around in computers on wheels. The dashboard looks like it is a spaceship. The cars are infinitely more efficient, and we are heading toward 54.5 miles per gallon. What did the experts say 10 years ago? Impossible. We cannot do it. These are the same people who said to President Kennedy that we cannot put a man on the moon in 8 years. President Kennedy said: ``We choose to go to the moon . . . and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.'' We are the United States of America. We will invent the new propulsion systems. We will invent the new methods. We will invent all of the things we need so that America dominates the Soviet Union and not the opposite. The whole world is looking at this generation, this Senate. We have a plan. President Obama has a plan to control emissions coming out of the powerplants of our country. Our plan is one that moves toward renewable energy and away from these smokestacks of CO2 going up into the atmosphere and creating a blanket that holds in the heat and continues to dangerously warm the planet. That is what the greenhouse effect is. It holds in the heat, all of this pollution. When we move toward solar, when we move toward wind, when we move toward geothermal, when we move toward all the new technologies, the CO2 is cut radically and the planet is able to breathe, and breathe in a way that says to generations to come that we will have left this planet better than it was before. That is what the Pope is going to come and talk to us about-- dangerous climate change. That is what the Pope is going to come and ask the United States--to be the leader and not the lagger, to not allow the deniers of climate change to dominate our debate in the United States of America, to not allow the technologies of the 19th century dictate to the 21st century. Just 18 years ago, a small percentage of all Americans had a wireless device in their pocket. Do you want to know why? The experts said it was impossible; you can't do it. Today everyone is walking around with one of these in their pocket, including 700 million people in Africa. We can do it. In Kenya and in Ethiopia, they are moving toward geothermal, solar, and wind. They are skipping the landline delivery of telecommunication service in favor of wireless, and they are also skipping the landline system of generational electricity and moving to renewables. They are not relying on coal. They are moving on to the new. You can't eliminate it totally. You need some coal. You need some oil. But we can continue to reduce it year after year. What is the plan we hear from the Republican Party? How do we reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we are going to be sending into the atmosphere? What is their plan? They say they don't like President Obama's plan. Where is their plan? What are they going to do? What are they going to tell the green generation--all these pages on the floor representing tens of millions across our country? They are asking the question: Where is the plan? How do we do this? How do we solve the problem? How do we invent the new technologies, as we did with wireless technology, and spread it across the planet? How do we do it for climate change as well? That is going to be the essential debate. Shruggy says: I am not happy; I am sad. Where is the Republican emoji? Where is the one who says: We can do it; we are America. We are not going to allow the rest of the world to have a problem from which the United States is going to exempt itself because it is the only country that is denying climate change. The Senate has a great responsibility. We have an opportunity to be the global leader. We can save all of creation while engaging in massive job creation here in America. We now have 100,000 clean energy jobs in Massachusetts. It is a big job creator. It is an employer of Americans all across our country. We have a chance to do something special. We can begin this transition in a much more serious way--away from coal, away from oil, and toward this renewable solar era of the 21st century. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

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, 46 years ago yesterday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon. September will bring the 53rd anniversary of President Kennedy's speech that launched America on the quest to land them on the Moon. He set that goal for the country not because it was easy but because it was hard. I am here to congratulate the men and women of the New Horizons mission for making the hard work of sending a spacecraft to Pluto look easy. One week ago today, what had once been a fuzzy picture of Pluto came into sharp focus. Dramatic transformations inspire everyone. As you can see, NASA delivered an amazing before-and-after story. Until the New Horizons flyby, the best picture we had of Pluto offered little detail of our neighbor at the edge of the solar system, but now we can see distinct features on its surface, including something that looks like a heart. Who couldn't love that. Thank you for this great picture. It took the New Horizons spacecraft 9\1/2\ years to cross the 3 billion miles between Pluto and Earth, but it was a mission much longer in the making. In the late 1980s, a group of scientists came together to advocate for sending a spacecraft to the edge of the solar system. Such a mission would tell us more about Pluto and once again push back the edge of the known frontier. Many of those scientists are still involved with the New Horizons mission, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's own Richard Binzel. While these scientists pushed to get the green light for the mission, it was only achieved by the partnership between NASA, some of our best U.S. universities and the aerospace industry, and the hard work and innovation of their scientists, engineers, and staff. From just the initial information returned this week, scientists have to rethink what they thought they knew about Pluto, its Moons, and its space environment. Images came back of mountains of frozen water as high as the Rocky Mountains on Pluto. On its Moon Charon, we can now see deep canyons and a row of cliffs and troughs stretching 600 miles, as far as from Washington, DC, to Atlanta. Instruments on the New Horizons probe confirm that the Pluto system contains a large amount of frozen water. That is an essential building block of life. One thing scientists didn't see--many of the meteorite impact craters--suggests that Pluto was geologically active relatively recently. The voyage of discovery from the flyby will continue for years to come. Not only will scientists learn more, but they will also train the next generation of planetary scientists. I am proud the youngest member of the New Horizons team is Alissa Earle, a graduate student at MIT. The New Horizons team is following in the great American exploration tradition. They are pushing back the boundaries of geography, knowledge, and technology. In doing so, they are inspiring the world. No matter what you think of the classification of Pluto as a dwarf planet, we can all agree that the New Horizons mission is already a massive achievement. I look forward to the further revelations it will bring as its data streams back to Earth and it travels to the far edges of our solar system. Finally, I would like to note that in the same week of taking us to Pluto, NASA also commenced the continuous monitoring of the Sun and the Earth--the only home humans have known thus far. I hope the events of this past week confirm the importance of using all of NASA's tools to further the exploration of our solar system and universe and better understand our own planet as well. I yield back the remainder of my time. 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. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 2 minutes on my amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, my amendment is very simple. It would create a competitive grant program to support the development and improvement of educational materials and teacher training on climate change science and solutions. The scientific evidence of climate change is longstanding and wide- ranging. The National Academy of Sciences and numerous science professional organizations all recognize the reality of climate change and the influence of human activities upon it. The children of our country deserve the best scientific education they can get on this topic. They are the future leaders of our country and the world. They must be equipped for this generational challenge. This is without question one of the overarching issues of our 21st century. We must ensure that we provide the best science training available for this next generation--the green generation. They are going to have to confront this problem. They should have the best scientific evidence available.

Mr. MARKEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we do not have to look any further than the recent data breaches at the Government Office of Personnel Management, Target, Home Depot, Sony, Neiman Marcus, and countless others to know there are pitfalls to the rush to store our personal, sensitive data online. And there is no information more personal and more sensitive than that of school-aged children. The business of sifting through and storing the records of grade school and high school students is growing as fast as students are. By collecting personal information about students' test results and learning abilities, teachers may find better ways to educate their students. We can help improve their test scores, improve academic achievement, and prepare students for the future. The increased use of data analysis of student performance holds promise for increasing student achievement, but at the same time there are perils from a privacy perspective. Putting the sensitive information of students in the hands of third parties and private sector companies raises a number of very serious questions about the privacy rights of parents and their children. The information being collected is about students as young as 5 years old. As a nation, we have already decided that children require extra protection, and that is why in the House of Representatives I was the principal author of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which is what it is called. COPPA is the communications constitution for protecting children when they are online. I believe very deeply that parents, not private companies, should have the right to control information about their children, even when a child's data is in the hands of a private company. We know that the pre-K through 12 educational software and digital content market is currently worth more than $8 billion. I will say that again. An $8 billion industry has now been built up around pre-K through 12 educational software, and nearly all of America's school districts rely on cloud services for a diverse range of functions that include data collection and analysis related to student performance. As data analytics companies increasingly play a role in the education area, Congress must act to ensure that safeguards are in place for student data that is shared with third parties. Show-and-tell should be a classroom exercise with students, not with students' personal and sensitive information. A child's educational record should not be sold as a product on the open market. That is why earlier this year I introduced the Protecting Student Privacy Act with Senators Hatch and Kirk. That is why today my colleague Senator Hatch and I are offering a bipartisan amendment which the Senators will be asked to vote on which will establish a commission to report to Congress on how we protect student privacy and parental rights in the digital age. These recommendations the Senators will be voting on here today will include a number of things--No. 1, how to prevent marketers from using educational records to target students with advertisements. The goal here is to help young scholars make the grade--not to have private sector companies make a sale. They should not be using the information they have in order to target young kids with products. That should be an issue for which we have a national policy. No. 2, when should student information be deleted? Permanent records of children shouldn't be held permanently by private sector companies, but only by students and their parents. No. 3 is how parents should be able to access and correct private information about their children. Just as there could be an erroneous charge on a credit report and that should not prevent someone from getting a loan, a false grade or a false bit of information on a report card shouldn't prevent a young person from getting into the college of their choice, and parents should have the ability to say they want that changed. No. 4, how do we ensure that outside vendors, outside companies that handle and store this sensitive information put in place the strongest possible data security standards? This is a business. These companies are making money, saying: We will store this information so you don't have to build more physical storehouses. We will put this information up into the cloud. That will be a real cost savings for the school system. Well, how much security is that private sector company now going to build around the cloud with all of that information? Are they going to have the highest level of cyber security protections built in? Or are they just going to buy something that is dirt cheap and say they have security precautions but, like Target, like Sony, like the Office of Personnel Management, they will not have actually put in place the security protections which will ensure that children's most sensitive information is not compromised as it is being stored up in the cloud. The reality is that our data is being increasingly compromised, and companies of all shapes and sizes must devote the resources necessary to protect that information. As it is stored in the cloud and as it is being subjected to malicious attacks, there must be a security system that can repel those attacks. The amendment Senator Hatch and I bring to the floor here this afternoon at 5:30 brings together privacy experts, parents, school leaders, public advocates, and the technology industry in order to tackle how to best balance protecting students' personal information while promoting greater academic achievement. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan amendment. There is a Dickensian quality to this digital world. It is the best of technology and the worst of technology simultaneously. It can be used to enable and ennoble. It can be used to degrade and debase. How we choose will only be determined by human beings and by those who represent them in the Senate. We have to ensure that we put in place policies that ensure we have the best use of these digital technologies while not having children and their parents be robbed of the private information that is so sensitive to the long term well-being of a child as they are developing. That is what this amendment is all about here today. I urge an ``aye'' vote. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, June is Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month--an opportunity to join the global conversation about this equal opportunity killer, Alzheimer's. Everyone with a brain is at risk to develop Alzheimer's. Worldwide right now there are 47 million people living with Alzheimer's and with other dementias. Without a change, these numbers are expected to grow to 76 million people globally with Alzheimer's by the year 2030. In 1998, my mother passed away from Alzheimer's. That is the year that I created the bipartisan Congressional Alzheimer's Task Force. The reason I did it was that it is very hard--as people who have an Alzheimer's patient in their family know--to deal with this disease while my mother had it. But for me, it became something very important, something that I felt that Congress had a responsibility to deal with. For 13 years, my mother just stayed in our living room, being cared for by my father. My mother was quite fortunate because my father had been a milkman. The right arm of a milkman carrying milk bottles for decades is the strongest right arm you can have. My father could care for my mother. My father could keep my mother in our home. But not every family has a strong right arm of a milkman. Keeping an Alzheimer's patient at home is a difficult task. We have to accept the fact that statistically, we now have more than 5 million Americans with Alzheimer's. Let me say that again: 5 million Americans, as we gather here on the Senate floor, have Alzheimer's in our country, but that is before all the baby boomers have retired. By the time all of the baby boomers in America have retired, 15 million of them are going to have Alzheimer's. Like my family, someone else in each one of those families is going to have Alzheimer's as well because they will be the family caregiver. That will be about 30 million people by the time all the baby boomers have retired whose principal reality in life will be this one disease. How big is this disease as a drain on our country? This year we are going to spend in Medicare and Medicaid dollars $153 billion on Alzheimer's patients. I will say that again. This year in America, with 5 million people with the disease, we are going to spend $153 billion. How big is that number? While we are debating the Defense bill for our country--how big is the Defense bill to protect our entire country here and overseas? It is $560 billion. One disease, Alzheimer's, is going to cost us $153 billion. By the time all 15 million baby boomers have the disease, the amount of Federal money in Medicare and Medicaid that we will be spending will be equal to the entire defense budget of our country. That is obviously not sustainable. We have to find a cure for Alzheimer's not just for our country but for every other country in the world. We have to be the leader. Our caregivers are the heroes today, but even heroes need help. As the true neurological wasting effects take hold of the next generation of Alzheimer's patients, the costs to our society will mount unless we make the smart investments to treat and defeat this disease. We have an opportunity here in the Senate to provide the leadership. For every $27,000 in 2015 that we are going to spend from the U.S. Senate on Alzheimer's out of the Medicare and Medicaid budget, the National Institutes of Health invests $100 in trying to find a cure. That is right. You heard me correctly. For every $27,000 of Federal money this year on an Alzheimer's patient, we are spending $100 to try to find a cure. The NIH budget has to increase, and it has to increase dramatically because in the long run we cannot balance the Federal budget if in 30 years one disease is going to consume as much Federal money as the entire defense budget in our country. Every 67 seconds, someone new in this country develops Alzheimer's. In my State of Massachusetts, 12 percent of all seniors have Alzheimer's. We need a breakthrough in research. Research is medicine's field of dreams from which we harness the findings that give hope to families so that one day children will have to look to the history books to find that there ever was such a disease as Alzheimer's. Right now is not the time to cut funding at the National Institutes of Health. They are not only the National Institutes of Health, they are also the national institutes of hope, and we must give that hope to American families that we can find a cure. We cannot cut that budget. We cannot allow sequestration to come in and slash the NIH budget once again. In 2015, NIH has buying power that is 20 percent lower than it was 10 years ago. This is at a point where it should be ramped up 20 percent higher, not lower. This is a debate which we should be having. The terrorist call that people fear is that some doctor will call their house to them that yet another member of their family has Alzheimer's or some other tragic disease. We need to increase the NIH budget. We need to give that hope to American families. And that is why Senator Crapo and I worked to pass the Alzheimer's Accountability Act into law. It requires the Director of NIH to submit an annual budget directly to Congress outlining what resources are needed to meet the goal of preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease by 2025. That is why my colleagues, Senator Stabenow, Senator Collins, Senator Capito, and I introduced the Hope for Alzheimer's Act, which will allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive comprehensive care-planning services when they are diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That is also why Senator Wyden and I included the Independence at Home Program as part of the Affordable Care Act. This program allows chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries, such as those with Alzheimer's, to receive primary care services in the comfort of their home. Independence at Home allows teams of doctors and nurses to continue to care for severely ill Medicare patients in their home by bringing the house calls of the yesteryear physicians into the 21st century. Just last week, some game-changing data was released on the success of the first year of this program. We learned that when implemented properly, the Independence at Home Program has the potential to save $21 billion of Medicare money over the next decade, and at the same time it also improves the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. This is a win-win situation. It is possible to design Medicare so that it works smarter, saves money, and improves the lives of beneficiaries. Patients want to be cared for in their living rooms, not in the emergency room. That is what my father, John Markey the milkman, was able to provide for my mother with Alzheimer's. That is what the Independence at Home Program does. It is a program where nurse practitioners, physicians, and nursing homes are able to say: We are going to help to keep your loved one at home. We will give you the help that makes that possible. Independence at Home is steering our health care system toward a focus of quality and not simply the quantity of care. As we build a future free of Alzheimer's disease, Congress and the American people need a blueprint on how to be more effective at prioritizing Federal resources to reach our goal. When America makes a plan, America can do great things. We need an action plan to cure Alzheimer's and to care for those who suffer from it. In the 1960s, President Kennedy called for a mission to the Moon, and we accomplished great things to make that happen. In the 21st century, it is not a mission to the Moon, it is a mission to the mind which is our challenge, and we must make the same kind of investment in research that was made in the 1960s. We did not allow the Soviet Union to dominate. We cannot allow this disease to devastate 15 million lives with Alzheimer's in this baby boom generation. The legacy we should be leaving is that we found the cure. It was first identified more than 100 years ago. We now have to make sure that our legacy in the 21st century is that we have been able to build the momentum to fund the research that ensures families in our country have hope. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I wish to begin by extending my deepest condolences and prayers to the families and loved ones of those lost in the heinous church shooting in Charleston, SC. Our hearts break for the people of Charleston and especially for the congregation of this house of God--a place of refuge, a place of peace, a place of love. The perpetrator of this hate crime must be found and swiftly brought to justice. Tragedies like this remind us that we are all interconnected, in our hometowns, in our country, across the planet. Whether it is our common home of worship or the common home of our planet, we are called every day to care for one another, especially those who are most in need.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, today, Pope Francis released a historic encyclical--a message to the world to preserve the planet from climate change and environmental degradation. In giving us his message to protect what he calls ``our common home,'' Pope Francis has also given us a common goal--we must act now to stop climate change. Pope Francis's encyclical calls all people of conscience to examine our own lives, our relationships to people and the planet, and our duty to take action. The Pope's message is clear: Mankind created the problem of climate change and now mankind must solve it. Pope Francis delivered this message to the world, but the world needs America to lead. As the wealthiest Nation in the world and one of its largest pollution emitters, it is our economic and moral responsibility to act now. There is time to avoid the worst effects of climate change, but we must act now. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme downpours and weather events are increasing, the ocean is becoming more acidic. Last year was the warmest year ever recorded, and it is the poorest and the most vulnerable in developing nations who have suffered the most from the developed world's pollution. By reducing U.S. carbon pollution, the United States can be a leader, not a laggard, in answering Pope Francis's call. Climate change deniers may be the doubting Thomases of the 21st century, but there is no doubting the science anymore when national academies of sciences across the globe, including the Vatican's, all agree that burning fossil fuels is changing the Earth's climate. So to all of the critics of Pope Francis's message, let's stop denying the science and let's start deploying the solutions. Let's deploy more wind and solar energy and renew tax breaks for these projects. Let's make our cars and trucks even more fuel efficient. Let's fully implement and defend President Obama's Clean Power Plan that will reduce carbon pollution from America's powerplants. The United States can be the leader in the clean energy revolution to reduce the pollution imperiling this planet, and then we can partner with other nations to share this technology and protect the most vulnerable. The United States has the technological imperative to lead on clean energy. We have the economic imperative to engage in massive job creation that will make it possible to save all of creation. We have the moral responsibility to protect our planet for future generations. The Pope has given us the guidance--the moral guidance--in his encyclical, and we know, ultimately, science and technology will be the answer to our prayers. But the leadership must begin here. This cannot happen without leadership from the U.S. Senate, from the United States of America. If we want to see more solar and wind deployed in our country, then we must put the tax credits on the books that incentivize the private sector and individuals across the country to deploy it. Last year, there were 5,000 new megawatts of solar installed in the United States. That is twice as much as has been deployed in the whole history of the United States up until 5 years ago. This year, there is going to be 7,500 new megawatts of solar installed in the United States. That is triple the whole history of the United States up until 5 years ago. Next year, there is going to be 10,000 new megawatts of solar installed in the United States. That is four times as much as had ever been deployed in the whole history of our country cumulatively. So this is a revolution that is absolutely helping to transform the way in which we generate electricity in the United States. The same thing is true for wind. Wind is expanding at the same exact pace, in terms of generating sources of electricity from a place that has always been there, using God's energy in order to provide electricity for American homes and businesses. What is happening in both areas? Well, the Republican Senate has allowed the wind tax breaks to already expire. Already they have expired. The solar tax breaks expire at the end of next year. We have no agreement, no signal that this Senate is sending to the investors and solar consumers across the country that solar will be given any incentives past the end of next year. Similarly, we have seen a dramatic increase in the fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive. In fact, much of the problem we have in finding a source of revenues for a robust transportation bill comes from the fact that people are now consuming less gasoline in their much more fuel-efficient cars since President Obama took the authority--by the way, which this Senate gave to him in 2007--to dramatically increase the fuel economy standards for those vehicles. We have to go all the way up to the 54.5 miles per gallon which the President has proposed. That will dramatically reduce greenhouse gases. And we must ensure that the President's clean power rules, which he is going to promulgate within the next month, stay on the books. There are already those in the Senate who are saying they are going to try to vitiate, to overturn, to make impossible the implementation of those powerplant rules which will keep the greenhouse gases coming out of coal-burning plants--especially across our country--to a minimum, to reduce by 30 percent the amount of greenhouse gases, carbon, that comes out of powerplants generating electricity in our country by the year 2030. We can do this. We are a technological power. The Pope, the world, they look to us. They say to us: President Kennedy challenged the Nation to put a man on the Moon in 8 years in order to say to the Soviet Union that we would not allow them to dominate outer space, and in 8 years our country invented new metals, invented new propulsion systems, returned that crew from the Moon safely. And we, with our American flag, said we are going to use outer space for peaceful purposes. Well, the flag that flew on the Moon is now in the Capitol. That is the return on investment in science and technology in the United States to help the rest of the world ensure that outer space would be used for peaceful purposes. The rest of the world expects us to be able to invent new technologies, new batteries, solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency, vehicles, metals that will dramatically reduce the amount of pollution we are sending up into the world but simultaneously spread these technologies across the planet. In the 1990s, we invented new digital technologies. It was first just a very plain phone, but no one had one in their pocket until 1995 and 1996 because the phone was the size of a brick and it cost 50 cents a minute. No one had one. It was too expensive. But then this Congress moved over 200 megahertz of spectrum. It incentivized the private sector to begin to move. Within 3 years, everyone had one of these phones in their pocket. Within another 8 years, it moved to a smartphone because we had begun the revolution. Where was the smartphone invented? Right here in the United States. Let's take Africa, for example. Twenty years ago did anyone believe that 700 million people in Africa would have a wireless device in their pocket? No. Why do they? Because the United States invented--the United States put the policies on the books that generated this revolution. They skipped telephone poles. They went right to wireless, right to cell phone towers. We did that. We gave the leadership. That is leading to a lot of economic development in Africa and in continents around this world. We have to do the same thing in energy technology. They can envision a day where they bypass having to put wires down the street for electricity as well and solar panels could be on their roofs, providing electricity to power their cell phones, their refrigerators, their stoves, their air-conditioning. We can do this. We have the capacity to do it, but we have to set our mind to doing it because there is an economic incentive for us. Oh, yes, there is a national security incentive for us. Oh, yes, we can tell the Middle East we don't need their oil anymore than we need their sand. We are going to provide our own power, and we are going to give other countries in the world the capacity to produce their own power. But we can do it as well because it is a moral imperative, because God's Earth, his creation is, in fact, now in jeopardy. We have to be the leaders. We have to answer this moral cause. We cannot say we can't do it. We can't say we can't invent our way out of this potential catastrophe for the entire planet. The Pope is calling upon us to be the world's leader, morally and economically. We can do it. Today is an important day, I think a watershed moment. I am a Catholic. The Pope is a Jesuit who is trained as a chemist. For those who say the Pope has no business talking about climate, he is a chemist. There are many people who say: Well, I don't have a view on climate because I am not a scientist. The Pope is a scientist. He has looked at the evidence. He has asked the Vatican academy of arts and sciences to study this issue. They have come back with their conclusions. Man is creating the problem and mankind now must solve the problem, but it is those who have created the pollution that the greatest responsibility falls. You cannot preach temperance from a barstool. You cannot tell people to reduce what they are doing--smoking or drinking or engaging in dangerous activities--if you, too, are engaging in them. The leadership must come from this Chamber. The leadership must come from the United States of America. Pope Francis's message must resonate throughout this Chamber in the months and years ahead. If we do it, we will have been doing--as President Kennedy said in his inaugural address--truly God's work here on Earth. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I seek recognition to speak for up to--I ask unanimous consent to withhold my motion at this time.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, on Thursday, Pope Francis will officially release a historic encyclical on the environment. An encyclical is a personal message from the Pope to Catholic bishops and the 1.2 billion Catholics around the world on a topic that he feels requires urgent attention. It is an opportunity for the Pope to bring together accumulated teachings in a comprehensive way. This will be only Pope Francis's second papal missive, and it has garnered enough attention that the conservative Heartland Institute traveled to the Vatican this spring to respectfully inform the Pope that there is no global warming crisis. Earlier this week, my colleague Senator Inhofe agreed with the Heartland Institute and told them that Pope Francis should ``stay with his job and we'll stay with ours.'' Well, I disagree with Senator Inhofe. Pope Francis is doing his job, but it is Republicans in this Chamber who are not doing theirs. To those critics who say that Pope Francis shouldn't be speaking out on this, I will give them a very simple history lesson. Pope Francis is not the first to speak out on climate change and environmental protection. He will join a chorus of previous pontiffs who drew attention to the crisis of climate change and its impact on people, especially the poor and the children of our planet. In 1971, Pope Paul VI warned that human actions that harm nature may make the future intolerable. Pope John Paul II first raised the greenhouse effect as a moral issue in his landmark 1990 World Day of Peace message. Two decades later, Pope Benedict XVI shined a light on environmental refugees in his World Day of Peace message and committed the Vatican to going carbon neutral, including installing a massive solar panel energy system on one of the largest buildings in the Vatican. As the leader of more than 1 billion Catholics around the world, many of whom are suffering from the worst consequences of global warming-- disease, displacement, poverty--it is the Pope's responsibility to speak out on behalf of the people he leads. And that is exactly what he will be calling all of us to do. The same people who want to deny Pope Francis's right to speak out on climate change are the same people who deny the science of it. But our understanding of human influence on climate change rests on 150 years of wide-ranging scientific observations and research, and it is informed by what we see today with our own eyes and measured by our own hands. Here is the reality. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme downpours and weather events are increasing, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and last year was the warmest year on record. Increasing temperatures increase the risk of bad air days, in turn increasing the risk of asthma attacks and worse for people with lung disease. We have a public health crisis. We are already feeling the cost of climate disruption. The Government Accountability Office added climate change to its 2013 high-risk list and found that climate change ``presents a significant financial risk to the Federal Government.'' GAO could just have easily said it presents a significant financial risk for all of America. But the United States is not tackling this climate change alone. Efforts are underway in countries all around the world. We are seeing academies of science in country after country all coming to the same conclusion. What can we do here in the United States to answer the call of the Pope? Here is what we can do. We can make sure the wind and the solar tax credits do not expire. That is what is happening in this Congress. We can continue this incredible revolution in wind and solar and other renewable sources. That is going to die in this Congress unless we renew them. We can ensure there is a dramatic increase that continues in the fuel economy standards of the vehicles we drive--the cars, the SUVs, the trucks--that dramatically reduces greenhouse gases. We can ensure when President Obama propounds his clean powerplant rules, which will reduce by 30 percent the amount of greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere by the year 2030, that they are not repealed on the Senate Floor. We are the greatest innovation country in the history of the world. Science and technology are the answer to our prayers. They are going to give our country the ability to give the leadership and hope to the rest of the world when we answer the prayer of Pope Francis. The poorest in the world are going to be those who are most adversely affected by the richest countries in the world. We can, in fact, save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation--the new vehicles we drive, the new energy technologies we create, the new technologies that will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases going up from powerplants. We did it once with the Clean Air Act of 1990, and we can do it again. So while Pope Francis preaches to the world, the world turns to us for leadership. We cannot preach temperance from a barstool. We cannot tell the rest of the world they should change their habits unless we take the leadership in creating the new technologies that we deploy here and then see deployed around the rest of the world. We can transform the way energy is in fact produced across this entire planet within the 21st century. That is what the Pope is asking us to do--not to sacrifice but to innovate, not to give up but to invest in those technologies that will transform this planet. President Kennedy called upon us in 1961 to put a man on the moon by investing in new metals and new propulsion technologies, so that we could ensure that the Soviet Union did not impose its communistic regime across the entire planet. We invented the new technologies for peaceful purposes. And when our astronauts stepped foot on the moon, that American flag that flew was the return on investment of that generation. This generation of Americans is now being asked to make the same kind of commitment to a new generation of energy technologies that can reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, give leadership for the rest of the world, and answer the call from Pope Francis. Those who say it is not Pope Francis's business to speak out on something that is obviously created by human beings and that can be solved by human beings are wrong. It is his place. He challenges us to put on the books of the laws of this country the kinds of standards that unleash the green energy revolution, that create jobs by the millions, while ensuring that we reduce the greenhouse gases going up and endangering the planet. I thank the Chair for the opportunity to be recognized, and I say in conclusion that it is just an incredible moment when the Pope speaks on an issue of this importance. I am not saying action will be easy, but if we harness the ambition of the Moon landing, the scope of the Clean Air Act, and the moral imperative of Pope Francis's encyclical, we can leave the world a better place than we found it. We have the tools to do it. Now we need to forge the political will. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I voted against the Budget Control Act as a Member of the House of Representatives because I did not think it was a responsible course for our country. To me, ``sequestration'' is just a fancy term for mindless budget cuts. Unfortunately, sequestration became law and the mandated across-the-board spending cuts went into effect in March of 2013. I have been fighting to completely eliminate sequestration through a balanced approach to Federal spending and changes to our Tax Code to reduce our budget deficit. That is why I am very disappointed that the Defense authorization bill we are considering today uses a budget gimmick to end sequestration cuts for defense spending but continues to impose mandatory cuts for critical domestic priorities, such as education, health care, and medical research. This legislation transfers nearly $40 billion in defense spending to a glorified slush fund called the overseas contingency operations account, OCO account, as a way to avoid triggering sequestration cuts. Let's be clear. OCO really stands for ``open checkbook operation'' for our budget, and it stands for ``outrageous copout'' by the GOP. Instead of cutting funding for defense, Republicans choose instead to cut programs for the defenseless. This is not responsible budgeting; it is a cynical game. The majority is attempting to avoid its responsibilities under sequestration that they themselves demanded be enacted into law just a few years ago. Instead, we get $40 billion in additional spending for the Pentagon and $36 billion in cuts to food stamps, Head Start, preventive health care, and critical social programs. This is what the game is all about. Sequestration is now being dishonored. They believe they have found an exit ramp for the Defense Department for the cuts that they had accepted as a party--the Republicans--would be imposed if the Democrats would accept in equal measure cuts in social programs. That is the deal, a sword of Damocles hanging over both programs, defense and nondefense--that is civilian and domestic programs--to force us as an institution to work together in a responsible fashion. That was the deal with sequestration. That was the point of it. It was to force us to work together. Instead, the Republicans want an exit ramp for the Defense Department out of the sequestration program while allowing the social programs for the poor, for the sick, and for the elderly to stay inside of these cuts that occur under a sword of Damocles on an automatic basis. We are endangering our ability to teach our kids the skills they will need for the jobs of the future. We are making it harder for poor families in Massachusetts and across the country to put food on the table. We are jeopardizing the health of grandma and grandpa. And what are we really protecting when we mandate these cuts for critical social programs but not for our defense spending? We are protecting America's nuclear arsenal budget of $50 billion a year that is filled with waste and can be cut significantly without harming our national security. We spend more money on nuclear weapons than all other countries combined. This is the epitome of overkill. Can we find anything in the nuclear weapons budget that could be cut? Absolutely not, say the Republicans. We have to increase that budget. How are we going to pay for it? We are going to pay for it from poor children, from the elderly in our country. We spend more money on nuclear weapons just because the Defense Department and the military contractors want them. That is why I have introduced legislation with Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, and Al Franken called the SANE Act, the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act. It would cut $100 billion over the next 10 years from our bloated nuclear weapons budget. It is time to stop funding a nuclear weapons budget that threatens to undermine our long-term economic security. We should be funding education, not annihilation. We should be helping people find jobs, not helping to build new nuclear weapons. We should be curing diseases, not creating new instruments of death. Even within our own budget, the Department of Defense should be prioritizing higher pay for marines, not more Minutemen missiles. Somewhere, Dr. Strangelove is smiling from the grave while millions of American families struggle to meet the daily budget they have to balance. I am a cosponsor of the Reed amendment to stop any increase in this so-called OCO account until the Budget Control Act caps for both defense and nondefense spending are lifted equally. For those who say the cuts to defense spending endanger our security, I say we face a very real type of economic security threat here at home. Millions of seniors worry about an end to Medicare and Medicaid. Millions of students need help to pay for college. Millions of American workers cannot make ends meet on the minimum wage. I support the Reed amendment. That will keep America truly safe, healthy, and secure.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield the floor.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up the following amendment: Markey No. 1645.

Mr. MARKEY. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, what we are about to do is have a discussion about whether the United States of America should start exporting our oil--exporting our oil. The United States right now, along with China, is the largest importer of oil in the world. We are not exactly at but very near to the level of imports of oil in our country that we were back in 1975 when we put a ban on the exportation of oil in our country. Why is that important? It is important for a lot of reasons. No. 1, if we begin to export our oil in the United States, a new Barclays report found that the U.S. consumer last year saved $11.4 billion at the pump because of the lowest U.S. crude prices in a long time, and we would potentially save upwards of $10 billion in prices for consumers at the pump in the United States of America. We understand the oil industry. Here is what happens. The world price is set. It is called the Brent price. The Brent price is the world price of oil. That price is traditionally higher, much higher than the price of crude oil in the United States that is produced in the United States. That is West Texas intermediate. That is a price set in Cushing, OK. If you are an oil company, you want to get our U.S. crude out on the world market because they will then be able to sell it for a much higher price. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with that is that the American consumers will not get that oil at the lower price, and we will still have to import oil into our country because we are still short by millions of barrels of oil per day. The consumer in America is the one who will be paying this tax on their price at the pump. That is the essence of what this whole strategy is about. It is to get the oil companies the highest price for the oil which is on the world market. But who is going to pay? Who is going to have their pockets tipped upside down at the pump and have money shaken out of them so they have to pay a higher price? It will be the consumers. If we want to give more money to the defense budget, let's just do it. Let's have a big debate about increasing the defense budget. Let's have that debate. But let's not have the American consumer at the pump be a special tax that is imposed in order to help our allies overseas. Ultimately, of course, there is a beautiful access there where the oil industry is saying: Yes, sir, we are willing to put our crude oil on ships and send it overseas. It is just a bad, bad economic policy for our country. We are already paying a high price at home. This exportation of our oil would also defy what our own Department of Energy is saying. Our Department of Energy is saying that in 2020, our oil production in America is going to peak, and then we are going to begin to go down once again in our oil production. Who is saying this? Our Government. Who is saying this? The Energy Information Administration of the United States of America. What we are engaging in here is a premature attempt to export oil with the likelihood that by 2019 and 2020 our oil production is going to start to go down again. It also hurts our domestic oil refining industry. The Energy Information Administration has found that lifting this ban on the exportation of our own domestic crude could lead to a fundamental reduction in the amount of investment made by the American refining industry here on our own soil. Some $9 billion less would be invested because the oil would be sent overseas. The crude oil would get refined overseas. It would not be refined here in our own country with American workers and American companies doing it here on our own soil, helping our economy here. This decision, by the way, that Members are going to be asked to make today is opposed by the AFL-CIO, it is opposed by the steel workers, it is opposed by the League of Conservation Voters, by the Sierra Club, by Public Citizen, and by an entire group of American refiners. This is no radical coalition that has been put together. It is a broad base of interest in our own country that wants to make America stronger. How in the world can we be strong if we are exporting oil while we are still importing oil? We will have to import the same amount that we are now exporting under this amendment that is being made by the Senator from Texas, and we will wind up with, ultimately, the price being paid by the American consumer at the pump. From my perspective, this is about as desperate an attempt as the oil industry can have to get out from underneath the 1975 law. They have been looking for an opportunity. But, obviously, the instability in the Middle East should make us very cautious at this time. The oil fields of Saudi Arabia are now very vulnerable. They are right on the border. The Houthis being supported by Iran, right at the bottom of the Red Sea, makes that juncture very vulnerable to a cutoff of oil coming into the world economy. This Shiite-Sunni war is something that we have to be very conscious of because ISIS is targeting those areas in Syria, in Iraq, and in Yemen that have oil resources. We need a big debate in our country about oil and war in the Middle East. We are at a pivotal point here where the Ottoman Empire and all of the lines that were drawn 100 years ago are being erased and with that the protection of oil resources in the Middle East. We should not just have a debate on the Senate floor about cavalierly lifting the ban on the exportation of oil. We should have a debate about what this war in country after country and oil area after oil area means for our country. I would say to you that we should err in a way that is going to protect our own economy. That is what makes us strong. That is what makes it possible for us to project the power around the world. It is that we are the strongest economy in the world, and the indispensable life's blood of economic growth is low-energy cost for every single industry and every single consumer. It puts more money in their pockets. This decision that the amendment of the Senator from Texas asks us to make will send us in the wrong direction. This is a disaster for consumers in our country. It is a disaster for the refiners in our country, and it is a disaster for the national security of our country. We should keep our resources here at home for American families, American businesses, to enhance our national security using America and our economy as the basis for how we project power around the world. For every barrel of oil that we export, we are going to have to import another barrel of oil from some other place. We should have the debate here on the Senate floor about where that oil will be coming back into our country because we still need 3 million, 4 million extra barrels of oil a day. That is a national security consideration that we have to deal with. Which country are we going to call up? Which country are we going to ask to send us their oil? What are the implications for our national security of having phone calls go to country after country--probably not just the oil companies but our government beginning new negotiations to get even more oil to come here as we export the oil that we should be keeping here. The Saudis have been our friends, historically. We have no guarantee that the Saudis are going to even be running that country. Let's be honest about it. Let's talk about that. Let's debate it. ISIS has taken over oil fields in Syria. ISIS has taken over areas of oil production in Iraq. Let's have a debate about that. That is what we should be debating. How is that oil now funding ISIS? How is that oil now being used by Iran, potentially, in Yemen and in other parts of the world to undermine American interests? In one part of the world, Yemen, we want to back the Sunnis against the Shiites. In Iran, we are backing moderate Sunnis against Shiites. In Iraq we are backing the Shiites against radical Sunnis, trying to get moderate Sunnis to help us. All of it, by the way, is with oil as-- if not the central issue, then one of--the central issues in each one of these countries. To have a resolution here today and to be saying that we should be exporting oil--no, ladies and gentlemen, that is not how we should be discussing this issue. How did we get into the Middle East? We got into the Middle East, yes, protecting Israel, but we got in because of our addiction to oil-- not my words, President Bush's words. We have to break our dependence upon imported oil. Increasing fuel economy standards is a big part of it. Having this fracking revolution continue to produce more oil here domestically is a big part of it. Investing in renewables and energy efficiency is a big part of it. But we are still at the earliest stages of this strategy. When we have completed it, when we know we are successful, then let's talk about the generosity that we are going to expect from American consumers at the pump to pay higher prices for gasoline. Again, this is an issue that the American people overwhelmingly want to see resolved in a way that keeps American oil in America. If we are going to continue to export young men and women from America over to the Middle East, then we should not be exporting our oil at the same time. That makes no sense--no sense. It is disrespectful to the sacrifice young men and women are making in the Middle East in order to protect our interests to start an economic policy of exporting imported oil while we still need to import it. This issue, to me, is central to our overall long-term national security and economic interests, and I urge an aye vote on the amendment. I ask for a rollcall on the amendment, Madam President.

Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, 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.