Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have been on the floor here waiting for 2\1/2\ hours to deliver my speech on WRDA, and I don't think my colleagues across the aisle have been here for that amount of time. Maybe we should stick to the list that has been worked out on both sides.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to share a few thoughts on the Water Resources Development Act, or, as it is referred to, the WRDA Act. This is a bill which has a tremendous number of water projects across America that in general will work to make many communities' economies work far better. These are widely distributed across the country, and they are widely needed. It was worked out through a tremendous amount of effort on the Senate side and on the House side. There are certainly projects there I have fought for that will be of assistance on the Columbia River and to the tribes who were affected by the dams on the Columbia River and on the WIFIA, the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act--a vision I have been working on for years to put in place. All of that is very good, but I have real concerns about a provision that was airdropped into the conference. This is not just a little one- sentence rider; this is 90 pages called the California Drought Act. Picture the big vision here. For years, the Central Valley of California has been a massive consumer of water for agriculture. We have had years of drought. During those years that the Central Valley was a massive consumer of water, they planted a lot of crops that consume a lot of water. Crops like almonds--it takes a gallon of water for every almond. There are crops like rice, where you have to flood the paddies of rice and there is massive loss to evaporation. But the agricultural community there wants to continue growing the same crops even throughout the drought, and so they are looking for ways to pull more water out of the Northern California rivers and ship it to the Central Valley. Why is this a concern? This is a concern because these rivers in the northern part of the State are key rivers for salmon. If you drain these rivers to fulfill the water needs of the Central Valley, you will do enormous harm to the salmon and to the salmon fishermen. When salmon go downstream and head out to sea for 5 or 6 years, they swim north. They have a huge impact and role to play off the Oregon coast and off the Washington coast. That is why during the course of this debate you have seen two Senators from Washington State, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, talk about how concerned they are and why you have seen my colleague from Oregon, Ron Wyden, talk about how concerned he is--because we have at play here a battle between the salmon fishermen and that industry and its iconic species and all it provides to the Northwest and the agricultural growers of the Central Valley. It isn't as if the growers in the Central Valley haven't benefited from taking water from north California--from the northern rivers; they have been doing it for decades. They have been increasing the amount of water for decades. Now they are asking to use this drought, through this California drought bill, to give them authority to take even more water despite a negative impact on the salmon. That is why I am troubled, and there are some key provisions that I thought are worth talking about specifically because some folks have come to this floor and said: Don't worry, be happy. Nothing in here is going to change the provisions and applications of the biological opinions that control how we make sure we sustain a healthy environment for the fish. Others have come and said: Don't worry, there is nothing that changes the application of the Endangered Species Act. But unfortunately that is just not accurate. I thought I would give some insight into how this works. Section 4001 in the bill provides an opportunity to bypass biological opinions by setting up a pilot project and then studying the outcome of the pilot project. It uses the pilot project as a way to do an end run around the biological opinions and the Endangered Species Act. Just to share a little bit of the language, quoting directly from the bill, ``[T]he California Department of Water Resources . . . [will] implement a pilot project to test and evaluate the ability to operate the Delta cross-channel gates daily or as otherwise may be appropriate to keep them open to the greatest extent practicable . . . and maximize Central Valley Project and State Water Project pumping.'' Here is the thing. What you have is a river coming down, and salmon that are coming back from the ocean swim up that river in order to spawn. But along the way are these gates that control water that can move into the delta toward the Central Valley. If those gates are opened, the salmon, instead of going upstream to spawn, get diverted, and it has a big impact on the species, so those gates are kept closed in order to protect the success of the spawning salmon. This basically says: Do a pilot project and open the gates. Then it proceeds to say that what we will do about that is to collect data on its impact. I will quote again: [W]ith respect to the operation of the Delta cross-channel gates described in (1), collect data on the impact of that operation on . . . species listed as threatened or endangered. So it is a direct impact on the Endangered Species Act. It gives permission through this so-called pilot project to open the gates and then to collect data on how much harm it does to the fish. That is very unlike the information that has been presented by some on this floor. Here is another provision within the 4001 section. It instructs adoption of ``a 1:1 inflow to export ratio for the increment of increased flow,'' and it gives a bunch of details about that, and it says this must happen ``unless the Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Commerce determine in writing that a 1:1 inflow to export ratio for that increment of increased flow will cause additional adverse effects.'' It doesn't say you can do this 1:1 flow unless it causes adverse effects; it says you can't do this 1:1 flow unless the Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Commerce say it will cause bad effects. So essentially here is another end run around the biological opinion and around the Endangered Species Act by just giving the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior of the incoming administration the power to just let this water be diverted unless they act. That is not something that can be challenged in court because there is no standard being applied for violating the biological opinion, no standard being applied for violating the Endangered Species Act, except the opinion of the Secretary of the Interior and the opinion of the Secretary of Commerce. Those two things are in section 4001. Let's turn to section 4002. Section 4002 says essentially there is a range at which a biological opinion allows you to drain a river. When you normally think of water being taken out of a river, you picture the river flowing down, and maybe there is a place where some of that water is pulled out of the river, but the rest of the river keeps flowing on down. But in this case, the amount of water taken out is called a negative flow because it actually ends the river. It pulls the water back. That is very dramatic. This bill has specific instructions, and in that range of possibilities that might be considered within a biological opinion, they are instructed to pump at the maximum rate, a rate that will not be less negative ``than the most negative reverse flow''--I am reading from this bill--``the most negative reverse flow rate prescribed by the . . . biological opinion.'' So they are instructed specifically not to find the right space within the judgment of the scientists and the biological opinion, but if there has been an estimate--as it could be from here to here--to take the very maximum rate, and this rate is so high that it causes this negative flow of water, which is why they talk about rivers running backward to feed water to the Central Valley. So that is a precise instruction that changes the normal application and work of scientists who are evaluating the effect, under all the various conditions, of how much water to pull out, and so it very much affects the biological opinion and very much affects the Endangered Species Act. There is a way that this can be overridden recent, but not by challenging it in court--the only way it can be overridden is if the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Commerce shall document in writing that it is going to go have a very bad impact. So, again, this is giving no recourse to those who see enormous damage to the fish because they have no power. All the power is given to the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce. Let's go to another section, 4003. The language itself essentially says that the Central Valley projects and the State water projects should take the absolute maximum flow rate that is allowed and then go beyond that. In section 4002, it was like: Here is the range. Take the top end of the range. Don't use your scientific judgment about where you should really be to protect the fish and the salmon industry. This one says: Here is the range from here to here, but you have to go further, take even more. This is almost unbelievable. I have never seen anything like it. I will quote: ``authorize the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, combined, to operate at levels that result in OMR flows more negative than the most negative reverse flow rate prescribed by the . . . biological opinion.'' So when some of my colleagues have come to this floor and said this doesn't affect the biological opinion a bit, yes it does. It says it in plain language. Here is the opinion; you have to be between here and here. And the law, if passed, if adopted, says: No, no, no. Go further, go beyond the range of the biological opinion. This language is unambiguously inconsistent with the requirements of the biological opinion. It just says in plain, straight language: Ignore it. Go beyond it. It also says that these transfers through delta water for the State water project can occur even if they violate the 1992 Central Valley Improvement Act--even if they violate it. So what is in that section (a)(1)(H) of the Central Valley Improvement Act that can be violated? I pulled up that language. Let's just check this out. It refers to contractual obligations or fish and wildlife obligations under this title. So, in other words, this bill says you can ignore the obligations related to fish and wildlife. So, once again, we see a provision aimed at ignoring the impact upon fish or upon wildlife and authorizing the raiding of water from Northern California for more almonds in the Central Valley. Now, 20,000 people work in the salmon industry, and a huge part of this are the salmon that come out of these streams--streams that are already compromised. So the reason there is such a profound objection from Senator Boxer of California, from Senator Murray of Washington, from Senator Cantwell of Washington, from Senator Wyden of Oregon, and from me is that this is a blueprint for running over the top of carefully crafted biological opinions designed to prevent the extinction of key species. In this case, it is not just the extinction. It is also a key commercial enterprise--the salmon industry. So I am offended that this overrun of the salmon, this permission slip to drain the rivers of the north to feed the Central Valley, is being presented as having no impact on the biological opinions for the Endangered Species Act. It is a full-fledged bulldozer running over the top of the poor protections for the salmon. This is a terrible precedent for Congress because each time an industry is threatened, there will be those who will point to this precedent and say: Look, when the almond farmers were threatened because they didn't have enough water in the Central Valley, we gave them permission to destroy the salmon. So when something else is threatened, let's give permission to run over some other aspect of the Endangered Species Act or some other aspect of the biological opinion. This is an unacceptable precedent for anyone who cares about the balance between our commerce and the diversity of species in our States and other competing industries. This is not just almonds against the survival of a species; it is almonds against 20,000 fishermen who depend upon the salmon runs that will be so grievously impacted by this bill. So I encourage folks to read it. Read the fact that it lays out specific instructions that require the maximizing of water beyond the highest levels already existing within a biological opinion. This is wrong. I will be opposing closing debate on this bill because this air- dropped provision did not go through the House side, and it did not go through the Senate side. It sets a precedent that should be fully debated in committee. The American people should have a chance to respond and know about this air-dropped provision--an attack on the Pacific salmon--before this Chamber votes on this bill. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Oregon, who, back in the year 2000, fought so hard to right a wrong. The wrong was that a variety of measures related to these timbered acres reduced the ability to pull as much harvest off as in the past. Part of that was the fact that there was simply a lot of second growth that wasn't ready to be cut yet. Another was a variety of rules related to environmental protections, to forest fire prevention. There were a whole series of things. The bottom line is that these counties, which originally had these lands before they transferred them to Federal Government for safekeeping, are dependent upon revenue from the timber sales on these lands. My colleague pointed out that those timber sales simply can can't operate at the same level to provide the resources those counties operated on. Much as with Payments in Lieu of Taxes, or the PILT program, we stepped in--my colleague stepped in and led the effort to honor the promise made to those counties. We have been doing so now for 16 years. One of the challenges that has emerged is that we reauthorize it only for a short period of time. We say we will still honor the promise but only for a year or only for 2 years, which means the counties never know what is going to be coming. They are really caught in limbo. Because they are rural counties--they don't have a great amount of manufacturing; a lot of the counties don't have a lot of farmland--they are really dependent upon the forest industry as the heart of their economy. This is very important to them. We need to honor the promise to these counties, just as we have through the PILT program. It is a situation we can debate at whatever level that should be, but it needs to be a long-term commitment to this promise to these counties. Remember, these were county lands that were transferred back to the Federal Government to essentially hold in trust for them. I share with my colleague the desire that we address this in a fashion that provides a strong foundation, a strong commitment to the promise made to rural America, to rural forested counties. As mentioned, 720 counties in 41 States--that is a pretty significant deal across the country. We need to act, and we need to act now. I turn this back over to my colleague.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Emma Peterson, be granted privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, colleagues, we are now 4 weeks out from a Presidential election in which millions of American voters indicated they wanted a change. Donald Trump, our President-elect, campaigned and was elected on a platform he called draining the swamp. Getting rid of entrenched special interests sounds good. Fighting on behalf of middle-class Americans sounds good. Taking on Wall Street's powerful special interests sounds good. In fact, month after month, our President-elect attacked Secretary Clinton, saying she was too close to the Wall Street banks. He said things such as ``Hillary will never reform Wall Street.'' He said, ``I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total control'' over his opponent. These are pretty harsh words. With months of hammering Wall Street and hammering his opponent, it came as a big surprise to many last week, when President-Elect Trump announced that he would be naming Steve Mnuchin, a darling of Wall Street, a 17-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, a career in the financial industry, to run the Treasury Department--the single most important post in our economy to be run by Wall Street. Instead of draining the swamp in Washington, it looks as if our President-elect is turning our government intended to be of, by, and for the people into a government of, by, and for Wall Street. Appointing a 17-year Goldman Sachs executive to oversee financial regulation is the definition of the fox guarding the hen house. It has the potential to undo all the progress and recovery we have made since shutting down the Wall Street casino, which dragged our country into the Great Recession. Furthermore, wouldn't it be great to have someone at the helm of our economy who fought to put people into homes, instead of fighting to kick people out of their homes and onto the street, as he has done. One of the great things about America is the resiliency of the American people. They come upon a challenge, sometimes a catastrophe, and they work to put the pieces back together again. We have made our way through the Great Depression. We made it through two world wars, we made it through the September 11 terrorist attacks, and we have worked to recover from the Great Recession. That crisis saw 8.7 million jobs lost, trillions of dollars of lost family wealth, and more than 2 million businesses shuttered. It was a financial crisis that cost about 4 million Americans their homes. It wiped out the hard-earned retirement savings of millions more families. The American people are working to rebuild, but they haven't forgotten. They haven't forgotten foreclosed homes. They haven't forgotten the lost jobs. They haven't forgotten the retirement savings. They haven't forgotten the shuttered businesses across our great land, and they definitely haven't forgotten the recklessness of Wall Street that made it all happen. It seems that perhaps President-Elect Donald Trump has already forgotten not just the driving force behind the Great Recession of 2008 that caused these calamities for millions of American families and businesses, but he has also forgotten his campaign vow to take on Wall Street. Instead, Mr. Trump is planning to put Wall Street in charge of the Treasury Department--again, the most powerful economic position in the United States of America. Where does Wall Street stand on these issues? Wall Street hates the provisions that Congress adopted to end predatory lending practices in mortgages and consumer laws. They hate those provisions, and they want to get rid of them. They want to get rid of the watchdog that makes sure those provisions don't return. Wall Street hates the provisions that we adopted to shut down the Wall Street casino, where Wall Street firms made huge bets with the deposits of American savers to terrible consequences. Bloomberg News reported that Trump's nominee, Steve Mnuchin, was front and center during these operations of the Wall Street casino. Have no doubt that he plans to do what he can to restore that casino. While being interviewed right after his nomination, he promised to ``strip back parts of Dodd-Frank'' and went on to suggest that the Volcker rule, which is the provision that shut down the Wall Street casino, should be weakened or eliminated. It is not speculation; it is straight from his own testimony to the American public, after he was nominated, that he wants to restore the Wall Street casino. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is another target. That protection bureau is a watchdog on the beat against predatory financial practices. It is a pretty good thing when you have an organization that has returned nearly $12 billion to 27 million American citizens harmed by illegal and predatory practices in the lending business. Furthermore, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has saved far more by preventing these practices in the first place on current lending--$12 billion returned, but who knows how much they saved consumers on the front end. Maybe it is $50 billion, maybe it is $100 billion, maybe it is more. But the fact is, our citizens are getting a better foundation for our financial success. If you believe in the success of American families, you want to block predatory practices designed to undermine them. That is what we did in Congress, and that is what is at risk. We did a lot of powerful things to rectify the excesses that led to the disaster of 2008 under the Bush administration. We created stress tests to ensure the strength and security of our largest banks--that they had sufficient reserves to withstand periods of economic challenge. That makes sense. We put procedures in place to unwind megacorporations when they fail so they can be unwound and not take the rest of the economy, the financial system, down with them. That makes sense. We established a cop on the beat to make sure people aren't scammed by credit card companies. It makes sense. We made sure we had an organization to which people could appeal when they thought there was a predatory practice, to have it rectified and have the funds returned to them if they were right. That makes sense. All of this makes sense. It makes what type of sense? It makes common sense. Isn't it just common understanding that when a predator damages a family, our entire community suffers and when a family loses its home, our entire community suffers? Don't we understand that when people are thrown out into the street--as Steve Mnuchin's banks specialized in-- the families are hurt, the children are deeply hurt? But now we have a nominee who specialized in Wall Street and specialized in foreclosures. I say again, wouldn't it be great to have a nominee to head our economy who worked to put people into homes, who worked to make families successful, not someone who specialized in throwing them out of their homes and onto the street? In 2009, in the depths of the financial crisis, Steve Mnuchin purchased the fourth largest failed bank, IndyMac, when it collapsed in July of 2008. After buying IndyMac, he renamed it OneWest and took over as the CEO. Under Mnuchin's leadership, OneWest became what housing advocates in California called a foreclosure machine. Why did they call it a foreclosure machine? Because in the midst of the Great Recession, it pushed forward 36,000 homeowners into foreclosure, using tactics that were certainly off limits, such as robo-signing, fake signing--let me put it directly, fake signing of documents. His bank was responsible for more than one-third of all reverse mortgage foreclosures, which disproportionately were targeted at America's seniors. Let me tell you the story of Ossie Lofton. Ossie Lofton, a 90-year- old woman from Lakeland, FL, took out a reverse mortgage on her home. This is a type of loan that allows an elderly individual to draw up the equity of their home to help them meet their basic monthly expenses. The beauty of this is that once you have that have reverse mortgage, assuming it is not designed with predatory features, it can supply to a senior some steady supply, and they don't have to write a steady mortgage check to anyone. Instead, they get income to help meet those basic expenses, so it is hard to imagine how you would end in default in this situation. But individuals are still responsible for paying property taxes and homeowners insurance. In Ossie Lofton's case, there was confusion over her homeowners insurance coverage. The bank sent her a bill for $423.30. Ossie looked at that. She thought she had it right, and so she sent the insurance company a check for $423, overlooking the 30-cent payment. Well, they sent her back another bill for 30 cents. Again, she misread it. She thought they were asking for 3 cents, and she mailed them 3 cents--27 cents shy. What did OneWest do under Steve Mnuchin's leadership? They foreclosed on Ossie for 27 cents. In my hand I have 30 cents, a dime and four nickels. Why would a bank foreclose on a woman who owed them a few cents? Why would they do that? Well, if you followed these predatory practices, some banks looked at it this way. They said if we can find a technicality to grab someone's home, we can resell it for far more than we are owed. That is a huge profit. So for that 27 cents, she lost her home. She and thousands of others lost their homes so this bank could profit rather than work out a mortgage modification. That is really a crime against an American citizen, a specialty of this bank, a specialty through which Steve Mnuchin profited millions and millions of dollars. Millions of dollars of income was accumulated based on the suffering inflicted on thousands and thousands of American homeowners. We could look at another story. Leslie Parks took out a subprime adjustable rate mortgage to pay for repairs. She faced some hard times and was falling behind, but under very constructive negotiations with One West to stay in the home, you will recall we had this program called the Home Affordable Mortgage Program--the HAMP program--wherein a bank could rework it. They were saying to her that we are reworking it, all is good, but, meanwhile, they were pursuing foreclosure. The result was, thinking she was working out a modification, she came back to her home in the middle of a blizzard and found herself locked out. This is an example of the widely publicized two-track policy in which banks would pretend to work out a modification while aggressively pursuing foreclosure. That is not a good practice. It is not fair to the homeowner. Let's look at another story. Gregg and Diane Horoski. They refinanced in 2004. They paid off their original mortgage with a loan from Deutsche Bank and used the rest of the money to cover health care costs, but it is one of those loans with an exploding interest rate, and the loan interest soared to 12.375 percent. Then Gregg Horoski started having health problems so they were having trouble keeping up with those high interest payments. So they asked the bank to work with them. What bank? One West. They asked One West to work with them to modify the loan, but the bank turned them down, misled them about how much they owed, lied to them about how much was at stake. The Horoskis felt betrayed by the misrepresentations and they took One West to court and Judge Jeffrey Spinner said the following about the bank's behavior. Which bank? One West, the bank that Steve Mnuchin was heading. He called the bank's behavior ``harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive.'' He also added, ``unequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious.'' He pretty much summoned every word in the English dictionary to say how wrong the bank's action was as they dealt with this couple. Now, the bank lost that case, but they were aggressively pursuing everything so they took it to appeal. They spent a lot of money and had a lot of lawyers take on this couple and eventually the bank won. They won no grace period, no compromise, no home for this couple. The bank won and the Horoskis lost, as did thousands and thousands and thousands of individuals and couples who owned homes who lost them to these very aggressive foreclosure strategies. That is not all. Mr. Mnuchin and his bank didn't just prey on hard- working Americans, they also had an operation that has a record of discriminating against minority home buyers and minority neighborhoods. Fair housing applicants have filed legal complaint after legal complaint against their practices. Here is an example. According to the California Reinvestment Coalition and Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, the bank's Southern California branches made a total of only two mortgage loans to African-American home buyers during 2014 and 2015. That is one per year; two loans over 24 months in one of the country's most diverse communities--a community that includes Los Angeles, where African Americans make up more than 9 percent of the population. This practice is known as redlining. It is an egregious practice. What is more, of the 35,877 homes that One West foreclosed on just in California between April 2009 and April 2015, 68 percent were majority non-White areas. Looking at this record, it is pretty clear that Mnuchin has not used his skills in life to put people into homes; he has used his skills to kick people out of their homes and into the street. Instead of fighting for homeowners, he has made a living--the life of a mega-multimillionaire--off the suffering of low-income and middle- income Americans. Our President-elect bashed his opponent for being too cozy with Wall Street banks. He told Iowans: ``I am not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,'' but then he nominates an individual with this record of predatory practices, of private profit over the suffering of thousands of families, to lead our economy in the years ahead. This is just 4 weeks after his election, just 4 weeks after we heard the cries that he would stand up to Wall Street, and now he is putting Wall Street in charge. There is more. He is not appointing just one but two former Goldman Sachs executives to key positions of power and influence. One is Steve Bannon, assigned to be his Chief Strategist. That is right--Goldman Sachs--Chief Strategist for our President-Elect. Now we have an economist in chief, the Treasury Secretary, also coming from the same direction. It sounds like instead of ``draining the swamp,'' our President-elect is helping Wall Street restore the predatory practices that destroyed the living and the lives of millions of American homeowners. This is wrong. I call on President-Elect Trump to reverse course, to fight for government of, by, and for the people--not government of, by, and for Wall Street. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments made by my colleague from Minnesota. He has been a strong champion for America's workers and believes we should make this Nation and our economy work for working Americans. His leadership on this overtime rule is certainly much appreciated. Today should be a day of celebration. It should be a day in which 4 million American workers who work overtime without getting paid but earn very modest salaries were going to get rewarded for their overtime work--get paid for their overtime work--but instead those 4 million Americans are getting scrooged. You all remember the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. He made a lot of money as a very successful businessman. He enjoyed counting his coins while treating his workers in a terrible fashion and paying them as little as he could get away with. That is exactly what is at stake with this overtime rule. The vision of the overtime rule was that when you had a very well-paid manager who was clearly earning far more than they would if they were earning a more modest amount plus overtime, you could reduce the complexity of tracking their overtime hours and instead simply pay them a salary without compensation for overtime. The key to that was that it was a very well-paid worker or manager and not someone earning near the bottom of the scale and barely making more than minimum wage. As I said, today should be a day of celebration with the overtime rule being modified so that it would catch up with inflation. Many decades have passed since it was put forward. It was supposed to be adjusted for inflation from here forward, but it was not adjusted. This is not a day of celebration; it is a day in which approximately 4 million Americans are getting scrooged, and that also means 40,000 Oregonians who were looking forward to finally getting compensated for the overtime they will be working during this coming holiday season will also be told: No go. No paycheck. No compensation for your overtime. These folks earn as little as $23,000 a year. Going into the holidays, a lot of retail workers are asked to work far more than 40 hours a week. They are asked to work 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week without a dime of overtime, and that is wrong. A whole lot of these workers are parents raising children. It is pretty hard to raise a child on $23,000 a year. I don't think anyone in this Chamber--any one of the Senators here in this Chamber--has raised a child on $23,000 a year. If they had attempted to do so, they would have an understanding of why they should be up here right now joining this fight for the overtime rule--which is hopelessly outdated and hopelessly unfair to America's workers--to be implemented in a timely fashion with legislation that we could pass today. Instead, Senators with their far larger salaries are very happily preparing for their holiday without considering that today is a day in which 4 million American workers are getting treated unfairly. Since 1975, the salary of full-time workers who qualify for overtime has plummeted from 62 percent to 7 percent. That is a pretty dramatic reduction. For over a year now, millions of American workers have been looking forward to today when their long hours of overtime were finally going to be compensated, and it is only fair that they have that compensation. But just like Ebenezer Scrooge, the Republican Party, in coordination with 21 States, has said to those 4 million American workers: Bah humbug. You don't get compensated for your overtime. We are putting a lump of coal in your stocking, and it is too bad that you are trying to raise kids. This happened because States filed a lawsuit and got a preliminary injunction granted by a judge to take away the power of today's overtime rule, the modified overtime rule, to assist American workers. I grew up in a blue-collar family. My dad was a mechanic, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. My father, who had a basic blue-collar wage, was able to put food on the table, buy a three-bedroom ranch house with a garage, acquire a car, and have modest family camping vacations. It was a pretty square deal to provide a foundation for his children to thrive and have opportunities by working with his hands. Our blue-collar community was in much the same situation. When he worked overtime and stayed on the job because a machine needed to be repaired and finished in time for a client of the company to be able to put that heavy equipment to work to build highways, work in the forest, or work to build dams, he got paid for that overtime, and it was right and fair that he did. It is not right and fair that today America's workers are not getting paid for their overtime. They are working longer and harder only to see that extra wealth go to the CEO of the company. American workers are working longer hours, but their wages and paychecks are getting spread thinner and thinner. The overtime rule is a long overdue adjustment for those who are working those long hours. You don't get any help from this rule if you are not working more than 40 hours a week. When President Franklin Roosevelt was talking about the importance of living wages to support families, he said: ``By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level--I mean the wages of decent living.'' Isn't that what we are talking about, the wages of decent living? Is there anyone who would contend that a parent raising a child on $23,000 a year is making a wage that would allow them to have a decent living? I don't think so, at least not at the cost of what it is to exist in today's society, not when rent on a two-bedroom apartment is $800 to $900 in Portland, not when the cost of groceries is where it is, and not when the cost of health care is where it is. Franklin Roosevelt said that no one who works full time should live in poverty. He said that working Americans should make enough to raise and support a family and provide a foundation for their children to thrive. He meant that you should be able to earn enough to save up over time and retire with dignity. He meant that a working American should be able earn enough to cover the basic necessities of life, such as food, clothes, and shelter, but for many Americans, those goals are out of reach even though they are working a lot of overtime, overtime in which they are not getting paid. We just haven't kept pace with the vision of families being able to earn, as Roosevelt put it, the wages of a decent living--the wages that enable you to live decently. This rule is critical to changing and fixing that. While the courts tie up the process at the request of my Republican colleagues and State governments, we should instead have a bill here on the floor and simply pass this adjustment ourselves. Has anyone noticed that we just had a Presidential campaign in which both candidates talked about making America work for working Americans? The candidate who won the vote in the electoral college but lost the popular vote, by the way, has claimed he is going to watch out for working Americans. Well, where is he today on the day 4 million Americans are getting scrooged? Where is Donald Trump today on the day that those who worked overtime are now told they will not get paid for that overtime? How about a tweet in the middle of the night saying: I get it. If we return to the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, we remember the fact that he was resisting any effort to enable his employee, Bob Cratchit, to have Christmas Day off with his family or to be able to have a decent amount of food on the table on that day. His heart was a few sizes too small. The night before Christmas he had a dream, and in that dream ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future came to him and showed the poverty--the spiritual poverty of his life. They showed him the emptiness of his life. That life is not about building up treasures you can count coin by coin, but helping other families to thrive and succeed and share in their joy. When he woke up, he was a changed man. He woke up and said: Yes, my team--my workers-- shouldn't be working on Christmas Day. Yes, I should pay them more. Yes, I should make sure they have bountiful food so they can care for their family. Yes, their son, Tiny Tim, should have the health care he needs so he can live a full and productive life. He took care of these things and personally went out and acquired the largest turkey he could for the Cratchit family. Isn't today the day when my colleagues who have been playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge and fighting fair compensation for overtime--isn't today the day when they should take a nap and go to sleep tonight and have a little bit of a dream about the circumstances of working Americans? Here we are, just coming off a campaign where everyone talked about the plight of working Americans. Maybe a little of that should reverberate in their dreams tonight so that they might think about how families are struggling across America and how hard it is to put food on the table, not just during the holiday season but throughout the year. They should think about how unfair it is for someone to work 80 hours a week and not get paid overtime because they are being paid only $23,000 a year. Do I hear a single colleague volunteer to work for 80 hours a week for a year and get paid $23,000? I would love to hear that speech on this floor when someone says: I get it. I am all for the overtime rule of the past because I am willing to live on $23,000 a year. I don't think I have heard that from a single colleague. Colleagues here are paid many times that increment. Maybe it is a little hard to understand the plight of American workers when you are living in a bubble. Think about what it would be like to raise a family on $23,000 a year, given the expenses you experience in today's society. So tonight, let's have a few of our colleagues who have been such advocates of the Ebenezer Scrooge strategy of denying overtime to workers who are paid very little go to sleep and maybe get visited by the ghosts of the past and the present and the future. Maybe they will be able to put themselves in the same pair of shoes that working Americans work in and place themselves in the same set of circumstances and financial challenges that American workers have. Maybe they can wake up tomorrow with a different vision--a vision of being a partner with working America--to make this Nation work for working America, make our economy work for working America. Maybe they can come to this floor and insist that we immediately pass a bill to take care of these workers so they are compensated for their overtime. That would be a Christmas story to celebrate. Maybe, while we are at it, our President-elect can tweet tonight in the middle of the night that he had a dream and he was visited by the ghosts of the past and the present and the future and he saw a vision of treating workers fairly, and he wants the Senate to act tomorrow morning. Wouldn't that be a fabulous Christmas story--one that is completely consistent with the rhetoric we heard in the campaign about an economy that works for working Americans. I hope tomorrow morning that is exactly what we hear. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it has now been 23 days since the election--3 weeks and 2 days. Certainly it has been a time of great frustration and anxiety for Americans across the board, anticipating what our government will look like, what our executive branch will look like under the leadership of President-Elect Donald Trump. The early signs have been ones that have indeed given a great deal of concern to many groups across America, beginning with the appointment by Mr. Trump of a White nationalist as his Chief Strategist, an individual, Steve Bannon, who has run a Web site, Breitbart, that specialized in hate, specialized in division. It certainly reverberated in the campaign, but to bring that into the White House was something very few people anticipated would occur. It has been followed up by other appointments that were certainly a cause of deep concern. Just yesterday, there was the nomination of Steve Mnuchin, a Wall Street banker being assigned to the key post in our economy, the Treasury Secretary post--a post that will come before this Chamber for confirmation. This is not just someone from Wall Street but someone who specialized in acquiring a bank that had been deeply involved in predatory lending, proceeded to foreclosure on thousands and thousands of families, was using robo-signing to accelerate that in violation of the law, was a specialist in turning people out of their homes, profited enormously in the strategy at the expense of working Americans seeking to have the fundamental comfort of owning their own home. There is a list of other appointments, nominees who have certainly more than raised eyebrows, raised anxiety, other individuals who have specialized in hate and division, and other incidents such as the attack on the cast of ``Hamilton'' for proposing that individuals with a background of hate and division not be put into the Cabinet Then we have this from our President-elect. I quote his tweet: ``In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.'' It is a straight falsehood. It has been debunked by every major analytical group, news organization in America. It is a complete fiction created in the middle of the night by our President-elect, but why? I think most people conclude that the fact he lost the popular vote is so disturbing to the President-elect because he wants to claim a mandate, but he cannot claim a mandate because the majority of Americans voted against him. They have voted against his strategy of division. They have voted against his strategy of incurring hate against Muslims, against immigrants, against women, against Hispanics, against African Americans. No, Donald Trump, you did not get the popular vote, you lost it. You lost it straight out by more than 2 million votes and perhaps a great deal more. No fiction you can stir up in the middle of the night can change that fundamental fact that you have no mandate in America for these politics of hate and division. The fact is, the citizens' vote against Donald Trump would have been far larger except for a strategy of voter suppression. Voter suppression is a crime against the Constitution. Our Nation was founded on the vision of citizens being empowered to have a direct voice. President Jefferson wrote a letter in which he referred to the mother principle of our democracy. He described the mother principle as we can only claim to be a democratic republic to the degree that our decisions reflect the will of the people. Then he went on and said and that will only happen if the people, each person, has an equal voice. Then he went on to say that the biggest factor in equal voice is the power to vote. We know the original Constitution was incomplete in this vision, that it did not provide that full empowerment to women or to minorities-- flaws that we have addressed over time in this vision and understanding that the power to vote is fundamental to a democracy. Indeed, President after President over the course of our Nation has recognized the power of the individual to vote as fundamental to our democratic Republic. LBJ said: ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.'' Of course, he was referring to race and the battle over the Voting Rights Act in 1965. FDR said: ``The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country.'' Robert Kennedy put it this way: ``Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship.'' These are not simply ideas that Democrats put forward, these are not simply ideas that our Founders put forward, these are ideas that Republican Presidents have put forward. Let's turn to Ronald Reagan, who said: ``For this Nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted, or defiled.'' Ronald Reagan was right and that is why voter suppression is wrong. It is an attack on the vision of our Nation in which citizens are in charge, not powerful elites, powerful special interests. Citizens are in charge. When you deliberately set out to take away the vote from citizens, you really are trying to shred the Constitution. So those in this Chamber who have been so engaged in promoting voter suppression and your attack on our Constitution--because it is simply wrong. As Ronald Reagan put it, it takes away the power of the individual, it denies, it dilutes, and it defiles. Quit denying, quit diluting, and quit defiling. Honor the vision of this Nation in which citizens are in charge. Unfortunately, we have seen quite the opposite. We have seen a systematic Republican strategy to tear down the power to vote in our Nation, and this must end. The Supreme Court set the stage for this by saying enough years have passed that the Voting Rights Act, which required areas and counties that had been active in voter suppression in the past, to get preapproval for changes in their law so they wouldn't go back to defiling and denying the right to vote, said: Enough time has passed. We can now trust them. That Supreme Court decision was clearly a mistake because, immediately, jurisdiction after jurisdiction proceeded to enact voter suppression laws, often carrying out a debate deliberately about how to keep minorities from voting. This wasn't something hidden. This wasn't sneaky. This was straight out: We don't want those people to vote who might vote against us. I tell you what I believe in. I believe in our Constitution. I believe in the power of citizens to vote, to be the rulemakers in our country, to have Jefferson's vision, his mother principle of a democratic republic to make decisions in accordance with the will of the people, not the will of the powerful, special interests who are driving this voter suppression attack on Americans' right to vote. A study of nearly 400 counties in Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi found more than 860 polling places were eliminated in those counties. In Arizona, almost every single county shut down voting locations. More than half the counties in Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama did so. They provided data to the researchers. Let's take a look at North Carolina, a State that passed a voter suppression law which included restrictive voter ID, ending same-day registration, requiring votes cast at the wrong polling location to be thrown out, and shrinking the time for early voting a week--and which did these things after debating directly how to suppress the right of minorities to vote. That is an evil crime against our Constitution and against citizens of the United States of America. The law targeted African-American voters with what the Fourth Circuit of Appeals described as almost surgical precision. The law was overturned by the court, but that didn't stop the North Carolina Republican Party's very direct efforts to suppress the vote, to eliminate early voting days--especially on Sunday, to severely curtail the number and hours of voting places, of closing all but one early voting location in largely African-American counties, and leaving 27 fewer polling locations than in 2012. This strategy, successful in Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte and has more than 15 percent of the State's Black voters. The State reduced early voting sites from 22 to 4. In three North Carolina counties with large African-American populations, the Republican Party put out a piece of mail and challenged thousands of voter registrations and tried to get them stripped from the rolls until the Federal court ordered them to stop. Long lines were the result at polling places that ``put early voting totally out of reach for people without the time or resources to travel long distances to vote.'' It is a crime against the Constitution, it is a crime against the citizens, and it significantly reduced turnout. It was successful. In 2008, 70 percent of African-American voters in North Carolina voted early. The rough estimates are that about 10 percent fewer ballots were cast in North Carolina in 2016, and at least a substantial share of that change has to be attributed to these voter suppression efforts that produced those long lines and made it so hard for individuals to vote. We saw glaring examples of voter suppression in Wisconsin, which has one of the strictest voter photo ID laws in the country. It is a law that by lower courts was ruled to serve no legitimate purpose, to make it unnecessarily harder to vote, and designed to disenfranchise African Americans, Latino students, the elderly people with disabilities, and low-income residents. It is a pure, partisan crime against the Constitution, a partisan crime against the citizens of Wisconsin. As a result of this law, Wisconsin saw its lowest voter turnout in two decades for an election decided by fewer than 30,000 votes in the Presidential election. Neil Albrecht, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said: ``Some of the greatest declines were in districts we projected would have the most trouble with voter ID requirements.'' That is not all. There were online voter suppression strategies. In the final days before the election, there were a series of ads put out that were claiming to be from Secretary Clinton's campaign and basically said to folks ``vote from home'' by text message or online. Well, of course, the law doesn't allow people to vote by text message. It doesn't allow people to vote online, although there may be a few exceptions around the country, the vast majority of places you cannot vote online. We have come a long way technologically in this country, but by and large you still have to show up in person. You still have to vote your ballot. In Oregon, you have to fill out your ballot, drop it off or mail it in. In other places around the country, you have to show up in that voting booth, whether it be early voting or day-of voting. An effort to mislead people is akin to the other voting suppression tactics where we have seen people put out messages that tell people the voting location has changed. People put out messages that the voting hours have changed. This--a new clever strategy--is saying: Don't bother to go to the voting place, you can vote by text or you can vote online, encouraging people not to go to the polls. When somebody does something like that, it should be a crime that puts them in jail for years, misleading voters about where to vote, the times to vote, or how you can legally vote. It should be a crime that puts people in jail for years. Why is that? Because it is an attack on the foundation of our democratic Republic, the right to vote. It is this voter suppression strategy, a tactic which is completely at odds with the vision of a nation in which citizens are in charge-- not powerful special interests, not powerful special interests like the Koch brothers who promised, in January of 2015, to put nearly a billion dollars into the 2016 election. The Koch brothers take credit for essentially controlling this Chamber. Indeed, their money played a key role in race after race after race. We saw it in 2014. We saw it this year in 2016. What kind of Nation do we want? A nation where oil-and-coal billionaires control this Chamber, the Senate, or a nation in which the citizens control this Chamber, a nation in which we honor Jefferson's mother principle or a nation in which we have handed over the keys to a few powerful special interests and billionaires. Do we want a nation of, by, and for the people or a nation of, by, and for the powerful and the privileged? That is what is at stake here. A senior member of the Trump campaign publicly said: ``We have three major voter suppression operations under way.'' One of those was Operation Project Alamo, the campaign's custom online database that contained detailed identity profiles on 220-million Americans. The point is, they used this information on more than 200 million Americans to target Secretary Clinton supporters with negative and misleading Facebook ads, the goal being voter suppression, as clearly stated by a senior member of the Trump campaign. Well, let's go back to the principle laid out by President Ronald Reagan, and again I quote him: ``For this Nation to be true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted or defiled.'' So I call on my colleagues who have been the proponents of voter suppression, who have been the proponents of attacking the Constitution, who have been the proponents of government of, by, and for the most powerful and the most privileged rather than the people, to listen.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Chair. Those words should continue to reverberate in this Chamber. Colleagues, set your sights on the vision of ending your denying, diluting, and defiling of the most fundamental right close to the hearts of Americans and the foundation of a government of, by, and for the people. Only then will we have a government that responds to the real issues Americans face rather than the special goals of the most powerful and the most privileged. I thank the Chair.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent my intern, Jill Goatcher, be given the privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleagues from Massachusetts and Illinois to express strong objections to the 21st Century Cures Act, a bill that is being considered in the House today and will be considered in the Senate. This bill proceeds to make effective $6.3 billion in cuts to programs while laying out a vision of what might possibly be spent in the future to assist in medical research. This is very much an imbalance. Real cuts--and as I will point out, those cuts hit things that matter with a promise of some of future possible action. We have seen these promises made and broken time and time and time again in this Chamber. If you are going to make a real commitment, then why isn't the real commitment in this bill? I ask my colleagues from across the aisle: Why isn't the real commitment to these programs in this bill? Why isn't the spending in this bill? Why isn't the spending on precision medicine that is promised to be considered in the future in this bill? Why isn't the funding for the Cancer Moonshot promised to be considered at some point in the future actually in this bill? Why isn't the program to help address an understanding of and pursue cures for Alzheimer's, which is actually just a promise to be considered in the future--why isn't that actually in this bill? Why isn't the work promised to be considered in the future for adult stem cell research, which could have application to multiple cures and multiple diseases, actually in this bill? Well, I will tell you what is in this bill. What is in this bill is a provision that loosens the rules governing how companies market their drugs and the anti-fraud laws that go along with them--headache pills being advertised on television as a cure for the common cold and hair loss, perhaps. This is just what Big Pharma wants: freedom, freedom to mislead consumers about what drugs actually have been proven to do. I will tell you what else is in this bill. It allows people to sell untested treatments and drugs without final FDA approval that has demonstrated the treatments are safe. Two big factors deregulating responsible provisions for Big Pharma are in this bill. But all of those rainbows, all those stars promised--those are for future consideration, to dress up special interest provisions for Big Pharma. I will tell you what else is in this bill. There are special interest provisions for Big Tobacco, taking away $3.5 billion in prevention funds from the public health fund, $3.5 billion real dollars in prevention. The tobacco companies hate prevention programs because they make their money from addicts. Their goal in life is to get people addicted. This prevention fund is to prevent people from getting addicted. As you ponder all the diseases that stem from the use of tobacco--cancer of the lungs, cancer of the esophagus, heart disease in one form or another, all kinds of forms of decimation due to the daily inhaling of these toxins--that is what the tobacco industry thrives on, and they thrive on it from addiction. Here we have a fund designed to help people avoid the addiction that takes away from their quality of life, often for decades of their time on our beautiful, blue-green planet, and, instead, encourages a process through which people will not only suffer personally but have massive medical bills, driving up the cost of health care in America for everyone, driving up the cost of insurance for everyone in America. Since its launch in 2012, the Tips campaign has helped more than 400,000 smokers quit for good. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it saved 50,000 lives. At a cost of less than $400 for each year of life saved, in public health circles it is considered a best buy, dollars well spent that improve the quality of thousands of people's lives and reduce costs in the health care system. That is a win-win. But what is in this bill? An assault on that win-win to help the tobacco companies get more addicts. The chronic diseases and unhealthy behaviors the prevention fund is intended to address impose tremendous costs. Tobacco use alone costs about $170 billion a year. Last year in health care expenses, more than 60 percent of it was paid by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid, so we all feel the impact of this. What else gets cut? Oh, Medicare funding gets cut. If you are for taking apart the preeminent health care system so that our seniors can retire without the stress of worrying about access to health care, then vote for this bill. This is an assault on Medicare--big favors for Big Pharma, big favors for Big Tobacco, and an assault on Medicare. It doesn't trim some Medicare programs that maybe are not as effective as others and help the others be stronger, more effective. No, it just takes away from Medicare. Those are the things that are in this act, but what is not in this act? The mine workers protection act championed by my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Manchin. The mine workers protection act isn't in here, but the provisions expire for thousands of mine workers in the near future. There are 12,500 coal miners who will lose their health insurance on December 31. Another 10,000 will lose their health coverage next year and on into the future if we don't restore this program. If this bill is about health care, why isn't the coal miners' provision in here? I think it should be, but it is not. What else isn't in here? Senator Wyden's provision to help children who are foster children gain access to programs to help them address mental health and addiction. That was in here yesterday. That would have been a positive talking point for this bill yesterday, but it was stripped out last night. This bill isn't ready, not just for prime time; it is not ready for consideration at all. If we are going to cut real programs to fund other real programs such as the Moonshot and Alzheimer's research, strengthening NIH, then get it into this bill. Don't just put in the real cuts and then say there is some promise and an invitation to chase a rainbow down the road. Put it in the bill. The things that are in here are powerful, deregulatory giveaways to Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, making the lives of our citizens worse, not better. That is why we should kill this bill. Thank you. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our Nation has gone through a difficult, bruising Presidential election. Normally, we would be making the pivot to healing those wounds, but this election has been particularly rough, and the wounds sustained during the campaign continue to haunt our Nation. Many groups of Americans across our country are frightened for the future, of being deported, of being targeted as Muslims, of resurgent racism toward African Americans, of anti-Semitism, of losing their right to marry the person they love. Unfortunately, they have good reason to be afraid. We have seen a surge, a wave of hateful bigoted, racist, sexist attacks happening in communities across our country since the election. The divisive rhetoric and conduct of President-Elect Donald Trump's campaign over the past year and a half is responsible for unleashing this blight on our country. He has the responsibility to turn things around, to put an end to this division, and to start the healing. That is why, earlier today, 10 of my colleagues in the Senate joined me to send a letter to President-Elect Trump, demanding that he stand up and condemn these verbal and physical attacks occurring around this country, that he denounce his own past campaign rhetoric that gave life to so many of these acts of hate and violence, and that he exclude proponents of hatred and discrimination from the ranks of his administration, including immediately firing white supremacist Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist. Here is what the text of the letter says: Mr. President-Elect: Your campaign conduct and Electoral College victory have unleashed a wave of verbal and physical assaults against our fellow Americans. In just the last six days, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented hundreds of acts of discrimination and violence toward many of the ethnic and social groups you attacked in your campaign. These attacks are absolutely unacceptable. We condemn them. We stand united with our fellow citizens. Unfortunately, these acts of hate have been enabled by your campaign strategy of promoting bigotry, racism, and sexism. It is the logical consequence of your campaign attacks on and discrimination aimed at Hispanics, African Americans, veterans, immigrants, women, Muslims, Jews, and individuals with disabilities. Millions of Americans see a President- elect who has chosen to knock them down rather than to lift them up. Your conduct has empowered too many Americans to act on their darkest impulses. This is the wrong vision for America and the wrong path for your coming Administration. We call on you to change course. We urge you, as our future President, to join us in rejecting hate and embracing respect for every ethnicity, race and gender. We urge you to join us in fighting for a nation free of discrimination, where every child has the opportunity to thrive and contribute according to his or her ability. We urge you to join us in fighting for our Constitutional vision of equality and opportunity and the vision in our Pledge of Allegiance of liberty and justice for all. As you assume the mantle of leadership in office, it is your responsibility to put an end to the crimes of hate and prejudice sweeping our nation. These wounds to our national citizenry are of your making. It is your responsibility to rectify the damage. You have the power as President to move beyond the hate-filled rhetoric of your campaign. We call on you to repudiate your campaign attacks against diverse communities of Americans. We call on you to address the American people and demand that all Americans end these verbal and physical attacks and replace acts of hatred with acts of kindness. We call on you to exclude the proponents of discrimination and hatred from the ranks of your Administration, and that includes immediately firing Steve Bannon as your Chief Strategist. The letter concludes: It is time for you to act boldly and powerfully to put the nation on a path of healing. For the sake of all Americans, we call on you to rise to the challenge. In addition to myself, it is signed by Senator Mazie Hirono, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Sherrod Brown, Senator Ed Markey, Senator Bernard Sanders, Senator Al Franken, who spoke so eloquently a few moments ago, Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator-Elect Chris Van Hollen, and Senator Tom Carper. I thank my colleagues who have appropriately said that at this moment--at this unusual moment in our history, in our time here in the 21st century--that we have a President-elect playing on hate and prejudice and bringing a white supremacist in as Chief Adviser is unacceptable. Some will say that President-Elect Trump cannot himself be accountable for what is happening across our country, but they are wrong. His words and his conduct are directly connected to the harassment and the physical and verbal assaults that we are seeing. I am going to share with you all the comments of the campaign and the acts of citizens in category after category to show how these are tied together--how, indeed, these verbal assaults and these physical assaults are motivated by and justified by the campaign of our President-elect--just to emphasize that it is time for our President- elect to take responsibility, to change course, to embrace the connectedness of our American communities, the vision of equality and opportunity in our Constitution, the vision of a nation with justice for all, and the fact that our President should be working to raise up all families--not raising up a few by tearing down the rest. Let's start by looking at what Mr. Trump said about our Nation's Latino citizens. At the start of his campaign, Mr. Trump said: When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best . . . they're sending people with lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with them. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. . . . And some, I assume, are good people. Later in the campaign he promised to build a wall--``a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.'' When discussing Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a U.S. district judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University--by the way, an American-born citizen--the President-elect said the judge couldn't be impartial and should be removed from the case because ``this judge is of Mexican heritage.'' Judge Curiel was born and raised in Indiana. Mr. Trump's right-hand man, his designated Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, used his position at Breitbart News to continue attacks against Latinos. Under his leadership, Breitbart frequently used anti-immigrant slurs and published ``war on Spanish'' and nativist-appealing content in his quest to make his platform a platform for White nationalism. It is important to note that even many Republicans and conservative commentators believe that Mr. Bannon is a man with unconscionable views and frightening ties to white supremacist movements. John Weaver, a former top adviser to Governor John Kasich tweeted of Mr. Bannon's selection as Chief Strategist: ``The racist, fascist extreme is represented footsteps from the Oval Office.'' Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist, called Bannon: ``White supremacist, anti gay, anti Semite, vindictive.'' Ana then said: ``Be afraid, America.'' Glenn Beck, known to all of us as a rightwing radio commentator--a very conservative commentator, a person who has attacked virtually every idea to help working America that comes from the blue side of the aisle--said Bannon is ``terrifying'' and said that he has helped to give voice to White nationalists. Former KKK leader David Duke and the American Nazi Party have praised Bannon's elevation to the White House. So there should be no mistaking or sugar coating what precisely this individual, Steve Bannon, stands for. Under his leadership, Breitbart became a leader in anti-Latino, nativist material--one headline after another attacking Hispanics here in America. So when we look at what is happening right at this moment to Latinos today, what do we see? We see students in our schools taunting and bullying their classmates. At DeWitt Junior High School in Lansing, MI, White students formed a human wall and refused to let their Latino classmates into the school. In Ventura, CA, a Latino mother reported seeing fifth graders at her child's school chanting: ``Build a wall.'' Latinos all across our Nation are being harassed and told they are going to be deported, they don't belong here in America, even if they were born here in America. In Andover, MA, a group of white men in a car threw a water bottle at a young Hispanic woman and screamed: ``Time to go back to your country''--insert expletive--``my man Trump is on top now and we don't want you here!'' In Southern California, a college student was accosted by a man who said: I can't wait until Trump asks us to rape your people and send you back over the biggest damn wall we're going to build. Go back to hell. Then he inserted a racist slur for a Mexican and then threw water in the young woman's face. Walls all across the Nation are being spray painted with phrases such as: ``Build the Wall Higher.'' In the face of attacks such as these, it is hard to remember that we are, indeed, a nation of immigrants. Unless you are 100-percent Native American, you are the child, grandchild, great grandchild, or the descendent of immigrants. Your forefathers and foremothers came to our country and felt they had come to a place where they could thrive. We have those beautiful words carved into the base of the Statue of Liberty: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' It inspires all of us. Each one of us--again, unless we are 100- percent Native American--have an ancestor who came to the country and felt that moment of freedom and opportunity no matter where they had come from. Latinos are not the only group of Americans suffering because of the rhetoric of the Trump campaign. African Americans have become a significant target in post-Trump America, as too many take their cues from our next President's words and actions towards that community-- words like the ones President-Elect Trump used to talk about African Americans who work for him. He said: I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. He then went on to say: I think the guy is lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It's not anything they can control. Those are the words of our President-elect. When he talked about the Black Lives Matter movement on FOX News, he said: I think they are trouble. I think they're looking for trouble. He often shows a startling disconnect with the African-American community, generalizing that they all live in inner cities that he regularly describes as poverty-stricken war zones. This disconnect started very early on in his real estate career when President-Elect Trump was publicly sued twice for discriminating against African Americans who were trying to rent apartments in his buildings. Of course, we can't talk about Mr. Trump's--President-Elect Trump's-- relations with the African-American community without bringing up his longstanding promotion and advocacy of the birther movement, which tried to delegitimize our country's first African-American President. Those efforts go back to 2011, when Mr. Trump was considering a run for the White House and said on one talk show: ``If he wasn't born in this country, which is a real possibility . . . then he has pulled off one of the great cons in the history of politics.'' He went on and on and on--month after month--questioning the legitimacy of our President in office. To his credit, on that particular point Mr. Trump has recanted himself, but he used it as a race card time after time after time to delegitimize our President--President Obama--because he is African American. The views of President-Elect Trump's right-hand man, his Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, aren't any better. Under Bannon's leadership, Breitbart created a news section titled ``Black Crime.'' Just 2 weeks after the Charleston massacre in which nine African- American churchgoers were slaughtered, Breitbart ran this headline. By the way, in that attack, the attacker used the Confederate flag as a symbol--a racist symbol--to justify attacking these nine individuals. What did Steve Bannon do? He ran this headline: ``Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.'' In a lengthy July post on Breitbart, Bannon accused the left of a ``plot to take down America'' by fixating on police shootings of Black citizens. Well, the list goes on and on, but he proceeded to say: ``There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.'' That is certainly a direct racist statement. And what is the result we see today of all of this racism from our President-elect and from his Chief Strategist? Well, we have seen a startling rise in people's willingness to use the ``N'' word in public. At a school in Maple Grove, MN, the boys bathroom was defaced by graffiti that included racial slurs such as the ``N'' word and porch monkeys, alongside pro-Trump messages such as ``Trump Train'' and ``Make America Great Again.'' Students from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse who were living off campus found the quote ``Go Home'' and the ``N'' word written on their front door. A man in Knoxville, TN, woke up one morning to find his car vandalized with the phrase--and I am paraphrasing--expletive deleted ``U'', insert ``N'' word, and then the word ``Trump'' spray-painted on his car. We have seen incidents harkening back to a time in history of discrimination and segregation. At a high school in Jacksonville, FL, an individual put up these signs: ``Colored'' and ``Whites Only''--the time of Jim Crow in America, where African Americans were treated as second-class citizens--and a ``Whites Only'' sign was found on the door of a bathroom stall at a high school in Duluth, MN. These are just a few of the incidents. There are the assaults as well, one incident after another of African Americans being assaulted. There is the softball field dugout in Wellsville, NY, where the phrase ``Make America White Again'' was spray-painted and the defacement of a wall in Durham, NC, where someone decided to write ``Black lives don't matter and neither does your vote.'' There was a horrific incident in my State of Oregon in which an African-American woman was attacked in the parking lot of a grocery store in Hillsboro, OR. A group of three men threw a brick at her, broke her ribs, called her the ``N'' word, threatened to rape her, and they said: Now we finally have a President who feels how we feel. It is hard to imagine how our President-elect, with his own racist commentary, his own past acts of discrimination, his own racist campaign, his own racist Chief Strategist, isn't at all connected to these events sweeping the country. They are directly connected. And that is why we are calling on the President-elect to change course. The election is behind us. Before the President-elect is 4 years of opportunities to improve the lives of Americans. Take the assaults of the past and make them the assaults of the past. Look to the vision of partnership to build a better America in the years ahead. Leave that past behind. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. . . . Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and the passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Let's make that the spirit of the next 4 years, where together we are dedicated to progress for all Americans toward reaching that goal of opportunity and equality and justice. Another target has been our women across the country. Our President- elect repeatedly treated women as sexual objects. Women have worked so hard to be seen as equals in our society. Women have flown as astronauts. They have reached the heights in science. They have reached peak after peak in leadership across our country. They bring their insight and wisdom to this Chamber here in the U.S. Senate and in the House of Representatives 100 yards across Capitol Hill. But our President-elect has seen it differently. Referring to the media, he said: ``It doesn't really matter what they write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of''--insert a demeaning term for women. He declared that ``You don't give a''--insert expletive-- ``if a girl can play a violin like the greatest violinist in the world. You want to know what does she look like.'' Our President-elect derided a political opponent by commenting on her looks, saying, ``look at that face! Would anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that, the next face of our President?'' During the campaign, our President-elect called a female lawyer disgusting or at some point in passing he called a female lawyer disgusting because she asked to take a medical break to pump breast milk for her 3-month-old daughter. I think we are all aware of the comments he made towards FOX News debate moderator Megyn Kelly--words I choose not to repeat at this moment. And then he said pregnant women are an inconvenience for his business. And of course our President-elect was caught on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women, saying: I'm just automatically attracted to beautiful--I just start kissing them. Just kiss. I don't even wait. Then he went on to talk about groping the women and being able to get away with it because he is a star. He has brought into the White House his Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, who shares these views about women, putting up a headline: ``There's No Hiring Bias Against Women. . . . They Just Suck At Interviews.'' Another one said: ``The Solution to Online `Harassment' is simple: Women Should Log Off.'' Here is another: ``Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?'' as if women's rights are a disease. We see that these comments and the conduct of the President-elect and the comments of his Chief Strategist have had an impact. Two men at a concert in Ohio threatened to ``Donald Trump'' a female security guard because she wouldn't let them into a restricted section of the venue. According to one teacher, a 10-year-old girl was taken home from school after a male classmate grabbed her private parts, and when asked why he did it, the boy said that if a President can do it, he can do it too. In Oklahoma City, a woman was chased on the highway because of her Hillary bumper sticker, while men in another car hurled sexual insults at her. These are just a small number of the hundreds and hundreds of events happening across this country. Every Member of this body, every Member of the Senate can relate stories from people who have shared with them over the past few weeks, stories from their constituents who have written to them to share the harassment they have suffered. We have just seen a historic milestone. We have had, for the first time, a woman as the nominee of a major political party--and not only that, she got a lot more votes than did Donald Trump. The women's suffrage movement has come so far since the days when Elizabeth Cady Stanton said: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal'' and that ``the history of the past is but one long struggle toward equality.'' We have come a long ways in the few decades since Martin Luther King said that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. Across our country, citizens have worked to bend that arc in this vision of a nation that embraces opportunity for all--not opportunity only for the rich and powerful to have more opportunity, but opportunity for all, for every child to have the ability to contribute to this country. My father, now deceased, was a mechanic. He never went to college. But he told me when I was in grade school: Son, if you go through the doors of that schoolhouse and you work hard, you can do just about anything here in America. That is the vision we want to strive toward, where the son of a mechanic, the daughter of a janitor, the child of a Hispanic couple or an African-American couple or a gay couple or a lesbian couple--where every child has the opportunity to thrive. To do that, we have to set aside these racist attacks, these sexist attacks. Another target has been our Muslim-American community. For the last year and a half, they, like other groups of Americans, have been denigrated and insulted by President-Elect Trump and his campaign. His campaign has worked to fan the flames of Islamophobia. Take Mr. Trump's views on registering Muslim-Americans. When asked whether the United States should have a registry of Muslims, he said, ``I would certainly implement that. Absolutely. . . . There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems.'' When the reporter followed by asking ``Would Muslims be required to register?'' he answered, ``They have to be. They have to be.'' Well, let me share with the President-elect that we are not a nation that discriminates because of one's religion. It is called freedom of religion. Our vision is opportunity for all. There were nations that discriminated based on religion. Those were European nations. That is why a lot of our forefathers came here--to escape that oppression and to have the freedom to thrive and to maintain the religious views they wanted to have, not what somebody else told them they had to have, or to be imprisoned, or register them for discrimination because of their religious background. So when any American attacks our Muslim-American brothers and sisters, we need to stand with them shoulder to shoulder. And if any other religious group is attacked, we need to stand with them shoulder to shoulder and stand for the vision of opportunity and equality for all. That is what every Member of this Chamber should be coming down here to say--that when those groups are attacked, we will stand with them because that is not the vision of America. That is not the spirit of America. That certainly is 100 percent contrary to the vision of America. Our President-elect tried to foment fear of Muslims seeking refuge in our Nation from war zones. He told a crowd in Minneapolis that allowing refugees into our country ``will import generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism into your schools and throughout your communities.'' This statement is so far diverged from the truth as to make it impossible to recognize where he got this notion. Every expert will tell you that if a terrorist wants to come into our Nation, the hardest path is to come as a refugee: You have to go to refugee camp, you have to be registered, you have to be vetted for years, and if you are male, you are probably not going to make it, but because the goal was to foment Islamophobia, this lie was repeated again and again. It is much easier to come into our country on a tourist visa, a business visa, a student visa, not a refugee settlement visa. Our President-elect told the same crowd that refugees settling in Minnesota were ``joining ISIS and spreading their extremist views all over our country. . . . `' Now there are reports from some connected with the transition team that the incoming administration is considering implementing a system for registering Muslim Americans, just as President-Elect Trump talked about, and using our country's shameful internment of Japanese Americans to justify this idea because it is a precedent. Let me be clear: Imprisoning fellow Americans as we did during World War II was a shameful and dark chapter and a mistake. We need to make sure we remember that it was a mistake and never use it as a precedent for action in the future. Then, again, here we have our President-elect's Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, who has run headlines like, ``Political Correctness Protects the Muslim Rape Culture'' or ``Immediately After Muslim Mayor Elected, London's Iconic Buses Proclaim, `Glory to Allah.''' Mr. Bannon has personally suggested that we are in a global war against Islam. So it is no wonder the rhetoric of our President-elect and the leader of the White supremacist Web site is causing discrimination and confrontation with Muslim Americans around our country. Some are being physically assaulted, like the woman at San Jose University who lost her balance and choked when a man attempted to rip off her headscarf or the Muslim student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus who reported having a knife pulled on her. Then there are those who are being verbally abused and otherwise intimidated, including a woman riding the BART train in San Francisco who was accosted when another passenger called her a terrorist who should be deported, and a pickup truck that has been driving around Brooksville, FL, with writing on it that says: ``All Muslims are Terrorists,'' ``Deport them all,'' and ``I hate Muslims.'' In Georgia, a Muslim teacher found a note left for her that said: ``Headscarf isn't allowed anymore'' and telling her to ``hang yourself with it.'' That is the level of Islamophobia sweeping our Nation at this very moment, inspired by the rhetoric of our President-elect and his Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, and it is unacceptable. It needs to stop. As Robert Kennedy once said, ``America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity--the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.'' We need to embrace that heritage, we need to cherish that heritage, and we need to strive to live up to the best instincts of our Nation, not the darkest impulses. Yet another group that is feeling threatened is our LGBTQ community. I will note that Donald Trump in his campaign did not attack our LGBTQ community overtly, and he said on ``60 Minutes'' the other night, as the question of same-sex marriage came up, the question of same-sex marriage is ``settled.'' Actions speak as well as words, and of all the possible men and women he could choose as a running mate, he chose now-Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, the most anti-LGBTQ Governor in America. This individual is someone who has signed a draconian religious ``liberty law'' in Indiana that allows individuals and businesses to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Our Vice President-elect supported conversion therapy to change people's sexual behavior. As a radio host, he gave a speech and declared marital equality would lead to ``societal collapse.'' Mr. Trump's Chief Strategist echoes much of this. One headline on Breitbart News said: ``Dear Straight People: I'm Officially Giving You Permission to Say''--and then it goes on to list anti-LGBTQ slurs. Another headline that he put up on his Web site said: ``Gay Rights Have Made Us Dumber, It's Time to Get Back in The Closet.'' Yet another headline said: ``Kids Raised By Same-Sex Couples Twice As Likely To Be Depressed, Fat Adults.'' How has this kind of rhetoric impacted our Nation since the election? A gay couple in Ogden, UT, woke up to find their car vandalized with anti-gay slurs painted on the side. Rainbow flags, the symbol of the LGBTQ movement around the world, were burned in Rochester, NY. An individual in North Carolina found a note on their car that said: Can't wait until your ``marriage'' is overturned by a real president. Gay families = burn in hell #Trump 2016. Like so many of the other groups of Americans I have talked about, the LGBTQ community has struggled for a long time to be accepted, to be recognized as full members of our society, to not be discriminated against when they seek employment in our country, to have the same rights against discrimination that we adopted for race and gender and ethnicity in 1964. We have come a ways, but we haven't yet made it to the point that we have provided the same foundation against discrimination that we provided in 1964 to other groups. So while Donald Trump himself did not attack the LGBTQ community, the person he chose as Vice President and the person he elevated to Chief Strategist for the White House very much have, and that is a powerful, powerful message that has unleashed attacks across this country. As our next President, Donald Trump has the responsibility to put an end to the prejudice and to put an end to the hate crimes sweeping our Nation and to calm the fears and anxieties of millions of Americans who are frightened about their future in this country--about whether they will have an opportunity to contribute to this country, whether they will be fired from their job, whether their car will be vandalized, whether their children will be taunted and bullied, whether they will be attacked in a parking lot. Across the Nation, thousands of people have been turning out to walk the streets and to protest. They are trying to send a message. Sometimes that message has gone off-track. In Portland, OR, thousands turned out to send this message to our President elect: Put the hate speech and hate acts behind you. Don't bring White supremacists or deeply prejudiced individuals into your administration. Let's have a next 4 years that embraces all Americans and their opportunity to succeed. They are trying to send a message by walking with their feet from park to park, across bridges, through the streets. Unfortunately, some anarchists decided to destroy the effectiveness of this protest by breaking windows and setting some fires. The organizers of these protests condemn the anarchists and try to keep them out, and most of the protests have succeeded. I ask for our President-elect, if you won't listen to those of us who are publicly asking you to change course, and if you won't listen to my colleagues who are privately calling you and saying to you and your team to change course, then listen to the people in the streets across America who are trying to peacefully convey the message that we are a diverse nation, with a fabulous vision of embracing people of every religion and every ethnicity and every race. Let's continue that tradition. Let's strengthen that tradition. Let's build on that tradition. That is the message all of us are trying to send. I join my colleagues to repeat the requests we have made on the floor in Senate, the letter we sent to you, the message sent privately by many of my colleagues sitting across the aisle, the message sent by many of our leaders from civil rights groups and other organizations who have contacted the transition team, the message that has echoed with thousands and thousands of emails sent to Capitol Hill to ask us to help convey this message. From every direction, Americans are reaching out and saying: End the hate speech. End the hate commentary. Bring people into your administration who believe in opportunity and justice for all. Change directions. It is a time for leadership. It is time for our President-Elect Donald Trump to rise to the occasion and to help build a nation that provides the foundation for every American to thrive. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wish to remember the late James ``Jim'' B. Barlow. On October 19, 2016, Oregon lost a great one in Mr. Barlow. To many Oregonians, Mr. Barlow was not only an incredible teacher and community leader, but an extremely loyal friend, brother, uncle, and husband. Throughout his life, Mr. Barlow was a fierce advocate for Oregon's schools and students. He attended Lewis and Clark College and Oregon State University before teaching at three different Oregon public institutions. His countless teaching awards on both the local and national level, including ``Teacher of the Year,'' speak volumes about Mr. Barlow's pedagogical excellence. He furthered his dedication to students when he served as a senior leader on the Oregon High School International Relations League Model United Nations and the Oregon Council for the Social Studies and Advanced Placement Teachers of the State of Oregon. In 1964, he took political learning and engagement to another level when he founded the Model Presidential Nominating Convention. These conventions were entirely student-led, but made possible with the encouragement and guidance of Mr. Barlow. The conventions became critical in Oregon's Presidential politics, as national leaders such as Robert Kennedy, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton visited and gave speeches to thousands of Oregon high school students. Mr. Barlow understood, as demonstrated by these model conventions, that civic engagement is fundamental to our ``We the People'' democracy. In his teaching and leadership, Mr. Barlow spread the message that it is up to all of us to create the change we wish to see in the world. With his involvement in Oregon schools, model conventions, and his local church, Mr. Barlow became an example of how we can make a significant impact in our communities through simple acts of participation and leadership. We need more leaders like Jim Barlow in our Nation. I thank Mr. Barlow for his decades-long devotion to his students and to our great State of Oregon. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they honor his memory and the truly impressive legacy he leaves behind.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I join with my friend and colleague, Senator Wyden, to recognize the somber anniversary of the tragedy that struck our home State of Oregon a year ago. On October 1, 2015, the town of Roseburg was changed forever. Roseburg is a quiet, beautiful, small town, like so many others across our Nation. I spent part of my childhood in Roseburg. I was there as a toddler, in kindergarten and first grade. That is where I learned to swim, in the Umpqua River. It is a place where I find it hard to imagine anything terrible happening. Community members are so supportive of each other, but something terrible did happen that beautiful autumn day of October 1, when the lives of 9 Oregonians--students and teachers--at Umpqua Community College were tragically cut short by the actions of a crazed gunman. Nine incredible, innocent people were taken from us in the blink of an eye. I want to take a moment to share the names of those nine victims and to say a few words about each of them. There is 19-year-old Lucero Alcaraz, who was a freshman who had graduated from Roseburg High School. She wanted to become a pediatric nurse and to help care for the most vulnerable of our citizens. Quinn Cooper was a member of the Cow Creek Band of Indians who graduated with Lucero from Roseburg High School. That fateful October day was only his fourth day of college. He loved dancing and voice acting. He loved martial arts and was just a few days away from taking his brown belt test. Lucas Eibel graduated from Roseburg High School. Lucas was studying chemistry. He loved soccer. He loved animals. He spent his time out of school volunteering at the Wildlife Safari animal park, as well as at a local animal shelter. There is 20-year-old Treven Anspach. His parents called him the perfect son, who was, in their words, larger than life and brought out the best in those around him. He was a talented athlete who also loved working with the Douglas County Fire District. Kim Dietz loved the outdoors, her husband Eric, their daughter Shannon, and their two Great Pyrenees dogs. She would carpool with Shannon every morning and worked alongside her husband for many years as a caretaker at the Pyrenees Vineyards in Myrtle Creek. Jason Johnson. Jason had been facing substantial challenges, as so many others have, but he was proud to have taken control and turned his life around. After completing a 6-month rehab program with the Salvation Army, Jason decided he wanted to go back to school and continue his education. Jason's mother said: ``He finally found his path. Sarena Moore. Sarena came from my hometown of Myrtle Creek. She was in her third semester at UCC studying business. She was an active member of the Grants Pass Seventh-day Adventist Church and the proud mother of two adult sons. Lawrence Levine was an English professor at UCC who loved the blues, and he loved fly fishing. He was a quiet, laidback guy who loved teaching, but his true passion lay in writing novels, though tragically his life was cut short before he could publish his work. Rebecka Ann Carnes. She was my first cousin's great-granddaughter. She was an 18-year-old graduate of South Umpqua High School. She was an avid hunter and loved four-wheeling. Rebecka was a beautiful spirit. She was excited for college and excited to get out and explore the world. In a picture she posted online, you can see that she had written on her high school graduation cap, which she was holding in front of her, ``and so the adventure begins.'' She was ready for the adventure of a life to come, but it was an adventure that was cut short in a hail of bullets. Though the persistence of time may force us to move forward, we must never forget these beautiful members of the community or forget the tragedy that took their lives. Their families, the Roseburg community, the Douglas County community, and the entire State of Oregon continues to mourn their loss. There is an Irish saying which goes: ``Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.'' Our hearts continue to ache for these nine wonderful individuals who were taken from us far too soon. In the aftermath of this tragedy, the fabric of the Roseburg community and greater Douglas County community has only grown stronger. The community has rallied together through the UCC Strong Fund to support the families of those who died, to give aid to those who survived, to make Umpqua Community College an even greater asset to the community than it was a year ago, and to celebrate the lives of these nine men and women and ensure that their memories continue to live on. This Saturday, another autumn October 1, the community will come together and walk together to mourn, remember, and support the families of those lost, embrace and help heal those who were injured and those who were traumatized, and continue to rebuild the community. As they come together on Saturday morning, all of Oregon will come together with them by holding them in our thoughts, our hearts, our prayers, and mourning with them. We will be remembering, supporting, embracing them, and partnering with the amazing Umpqua Strong community. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today, like many of my colleagues, to express frustration and outrage that we are once again considering leaving town without helping the people of Flint, MI, and people in other communities afflicted by lead poisoning across our Nation. It is the height of irresponsibility, and we are neglecting our duty as representatives of the American people. It has now been over a year since doctors first reported that the high levels of lead in children's blood was caused by Flint's water supply. It has been 9 months since health officials reported that an increase in the cases of Legionnaires' disease was connected to the city of Flint after it changed its source of water, but still, the 100,000 residents of Flint are unable to drink the city's water, so they are still tied to bottled water. Up to 12,000 children living in Flint now have to live with the specter of what their future might be after being exposed to lead in their water, and we know what lead does to developing brain cells. It leads to lower IQ scores, poor performance in school, inattention and impulsive behavior, as well as aggression and hyperactivity. It severely damages the prospects of the children it has poisoned. This is a tragic story that has outraged our Nation. Yet here we are after more than a year, and we still have not taken action. What have we done in this last year to help the families of Flint? While we have heard speech after speech in this Chamber, we have held hearings in which my colleagues have questioned Michigan officials about what happened and what needs to be done. There have been press conferences, there have been op-eds, there have been media interviews discussing the need to take action, but here we are without taking any action and without a bill on the President's desk. Some here may say: Well, we passed the Water Resources Development Act, which did include money to assist the citizens of Flint, but we all know that the House hasn't passed their WRDA legislation. We all know that if they did pass their bill today, it doesn't have support for the citizens of Flint. We all know that a conference committee is far into the future since the House hasn't acted; therefore, a solution is not nearby. The prospect of a water development bill to aid the people of Flint by getting it to the President's desk is simply a hope, but it is a hope that is far away. We have a better vehicle right here, right now, and that is the continuing resolution, which will make sure that the people of Flint get the help they need. It is the bird in the hand, not the bird in the bush. However, at this moment the continuing resolution before us does not contain a single cent for Flint or other communities affected by lead poisoning. It does contain millions of dollars for the people in Louisiana hurt by the terrible flooding that hit the State, and it is certainly the right thing to do to assist the citizens in Louisiana. Thousands of families lost their homes, their belongings, and everything they owned. There were 60,000 homes damaged by the flood. The Coast Guard, National Guard, and local first responders rescued more than 30,000 residents, and in the immediate aftermath, more than 7,000 were living in shelters. What happened in Louisiana is a major natural disaster. It was the largest to hit our Nation since the devastation brought on by Hurricane Sandy. We need to act, but we also need to act on Flint and other cities affected by lead poisoning. Louisiana needs our help, and Flint needs our help. When disaster strikes, we should not weigh our response by whether a community's representatives here in Congress are Democrats or Republicans. Disaster knows no party. When disaster strikes, we should not pay more attention to helping the rich and influential than assisting the poor. When disaster strikes, geography should not determine one's worthiness to receive assistance. When disaster strikes, race should play no part in our response, but when it comes to the failure to act on Flint, I believe that we in this Chamber should reflect on the role race has played. Does anyone here think that it would take more than a year for Congress to act if this disaster in Flint had befallen a wealthy White suburb of Dallas or Orlando or Chicago or L.A., or if it were the upper middle-class White kids of lawyers and doctors and corporate executives who had been poisoned by lead? Does anyone here believe that we would have sat and done nothing? But with Flint, which is a poor African-American community, we have done nothing. Our Nation was founded on a legacy of slavery and racism, but we were also founded on a vision of equality and opportunity, and we have moved step-by-step to put the legacy of discrimination behind us and to embrace the vision of equality and opportunity for all. We still have a long road ahead of us to achieve that vision in its entirety. We have often been too slow to respond to the pain, the suffering, and the loss of life in our minority communities. That is why the phrase ``Black Lives Matter'' resonates powerfully. It is not OK to profile Americans based on race. It is not OK to target one community with stop-and-frisk tactics. It is not OK to treat one race as a client and another as a problem. Black lives matter, and it is time we acted like that here in the Senate. Let's start by responding quickly from this point forward on this crisis in Flint. Let's respond with the same urgency as the crisis in Louisiana. The flooding in Louisiana wreaked havoc on Louisiana families, but we all know that the poisoned water in Flint, MI, wreaked havoc on the families there. If you go to Flint today, you see pallet after pallet filled with water, and it is scattered all over the city, necessary for drinking, cooking, washing dishes, and brushing teeth. They use it because they don't have another choice. Yes, the people of Louisiana have suffered a great loss, and I want to help them rebuild. But we know the people of Flint have suffered a great loss, and I want to help the people of Flint--not at some vague point after the election, not at some uncertain future date. They need action now. The people of Louisiana need action now, and the people of Flint need action now. Well, actually, they needed action a year ago. We cannot choose between helping these two American communities. Both are suffering, both are in need, and both deserve our attention. We cannot play election-year politics with people's lives hanging in the balance. We must provide in this continuing resolution--the opportunity we have before us at this very moment--aid to help the citizens of both tragedies. I hope that our leadership from the right of the aisle and our leadership on the left of the aisle come together to negotiate a compromise that treats the people of Louisiana and the people of Flint equally. If it doesn't, I will be voting against this continuing resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to address an issue vital to the future of our country and to the future of our planet: climate change. When President Kennedy told the Nation that we would land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, he said: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard . . . because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. It was an ambitious goal--one that many believed was beyond reach. The technology was not all in place. But on July 20, 1969, America and the entire world watched Neil Armstrong take one giant leap for mankind and become the first human to walk on the Moon. It was a powerful moment. We achieved President Kennedy's vision. We accomplished the improbable. We accomplished what many people thought was impossible because America and the American people are known for overcoming great challenges and achieving the impossible and because we set an ambitious goal that inspired us to push past the limits of what we had previously thought achievable. Now we have to do it again. But whether we are looking out to the Moon or out to the stars, we have to focus here on spaceship Earth and save our planet from catastrophic climate change. We have to move quickly because to save our planet--our beautiful, blue-green planet--we have to keep it from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius, which is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet has already warmed nearly 1 degree Celsius since we started burning fossil fuels, and we are running out of time. Moreover, despite growing attention and growing concern around the world, humankind's production of global warming gas is still increasing rather than decreasing. We are in a race against time, and at this moment, we are losing that race. We need immediate, bold action. That is why in the upcoming months I will introduce a plan that challenges our Nation to transition to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by the year 2050--a plan referred to as 100 by 50. The 100 by 50 plan will set a goal of having no more than 50 percent of our country's energy come from fossil fuels by 2030 and a complete phaseout of energy from fossil fuels by the year 2050. There will be those who, as with President Kennedy's challenge, will say that is beyond reach, but we already have in hand the vast majority of the technology needed to meet this challenge. We need market incentives that will dramatically accelerate the introduction and deployment of these technologies. We need a continued effort to improve the affordability and efficiency of these technologies. Like going to the Moon, this has to be a challenge that our generation is willing to accept, unwilling to postpone, and that we intend to win. Climate change is here, and it is already having devastating impacts on our world. We can observe climate change in many different ways, through temperature readings of the planet, through the measuring of carbon dioxide which drives temperature increases, and we can see it through the changing, damaging facts on the ground, from glaciers to fire seasons, to droughts, to rising sea levels. Consider this. Since May of 2015, each and every month has set a new temperature record--the hottest May of 2015, hotter than any May ever recorded; June of 2015, hotter than any June ever recorded; July of 2015, hotter than any July ever recorded and so forth, 16 months in a row. As NASA has recently announced, August of this year, 2016, has tied July of this year, 2016, as the hottest month ever recorded, not just the hottest July, not just the hottest August, not just the hottest months of the year but the two hottest months ever recorded on our planet. To put that into context, global temperatures in August were almost a full degree Celsius above the 20th century average, well on the way to reaching that 2-degree threshold that scientists refer to as a threshold for catastrophic consequences. It isn't that catastrophic consequences start just when we reach 2 degrees. We can already see the facts on the ground, and we can already see the carbon dioxide that is driving temperature is continuing to rise steadily. We know carbon dioxide pollution that is spewing into the air from burning fossil fuels is driving those temperatures. That is because, as we burn more fossil fuel and emit more carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide traps the heat on our planet's surface and global temperatures rise higher and higher. You can see that pattern going back hundreds and thousands of years. You can also see it just looking at the time from 1959 until now. We have increased substantially the amount of carbon dioxide from 320 parts per million to now we have broken 400 parts per million. During that time, temperatures have risen steadily just copying that carbon dioxide level, just as it has over hundreds of thousands of years before. What we also see is that in this black line, which are the carbon dioxide levels, we see the slope is going upward, meaning that the rate of humankind pollution is increasing, not decreasing. Not so long ago, scientists said we must curtail the pollution of the planet at 350 parts per million. That is down here, 350 parts. We are no longer there. We passed that level quite a while ago in the late 1980s, and here we are at 400, steadily going up. So we see it in the temperatures, the hottest months ever on record for 16 months in a row, we see it in the carbon dioxide, but we can see it wherever we travel in this country through the facts on the ground. Take my home State of Oregon. Our fire season is now 60 days longer than it was 40 years ago, with ever greater acreage being burned. Just this summer, we saw two wildfires--the Cherry Road and Rail Fires--burn more than 100 square miles of land. Another example, warmer winter months failing to kill the pine beetles, magnifying their destructive infestations. On the coast of Oregon, we see the rising acidity of the Pacific Ocean, the level 30 percent higher than it was before we started burning coal, gas, and oil 150 years ago. That was before the industrial revolution. It is making it much harder for the oyster to be able to reproduce and to form shells in those first few days of life. Now, we may wonder, what does ocean acidity have to do with global warming? Here is the situation. The carbon dioxide we are putting into the air--much of it is being absorbed by the ocean. The amount that is left is the amount you saw on the chart just a moment ago, but the amount the ocean absorbs becomes carbonic acid. The ocean is so vast, it is almost unimaginable that there could be enough carbon dioxide that we are putting into the air to be absorbed by the ocean to create carbonic acid to create this acidity level, but that is exactly what has happened. If the shells of our oysters are being affected, what else is being affected in the food chain? For example, what about the impact on coral reefs? Obviously, it is not just Oregon that is feeling the impact. Every State we go to, we can find an impact of facts on the ground. We see communities all along the East Coast, from Key West and Miami to Wilmington, NC, Annapolis, New York, experiencing sunny-day flooding because of rising sea levels. We have watched the glaciers of Glacier National Park dwindle from 150 in 1910 to just 25 today. As with the pine beetles, warmer weather is great for ticks, and out- of-control tick populations are killing moose in Minnesota and New Hampshire. The lobsters of Maine are moving north. That is not all. It is like the 10 plagues in ancient Egypt--more devastating droughts, more powerful floods, fiercer storms. It is a direct assault on rural America, a direct assault on our fishing, forestry, and farming, and that matters. It matters for rural America and it matters for urban America. Our Earth is changing at lightning speed right before our eyes. We can evaluate this change through temperature records. We can evaluate it through the recording of carbon dioxide levels. We can evaluate it through the facts on the ground, and it is all going to get much worse, year by year. So there is no time to wait. To save our planet, we must move quickly. We must move forward to end the burning of fossil fuels and to do so in a short period of time. We must completely transform our energy system. In the first half of 2016, roughly 60 percent of our Nation's total energy output came from burning fossil fuel. The good news there is, we already have made a significant reduction, if you will, of the total energy picture. There is a lot of clean and renewable energy we are producing, but we have so much further to go. On these bar charts, what we are seeing in red is the amount of energy in different sectors: residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation in the generation of electricity. The red is what is being produced by fossil fuels, and the green represents what is being produced by clean or renewable energy. These red bars have to go. We need to transform them completely and do so to the green bar, renewable and clean energy, by 2050. This goal is achievable, but it is going to take enormous political courage. Those vested deeply in the fossil fuel economy will--for their personal profit, their company's profit--try to hold on to the fossil fuel energy economy. It will not matter to them that they are destroying the planet, but it should certainly matter to every single Senator who serves in the U.S. Senate and every Member of the House. We are responsible. We are responsible to take on this challenge. The first thing we should do, because it is a fabulously effective tool, is put a fee on carbon. A fee on carbon drives our economy to eliminate carbon in the most cost-effective ways, unleashing a torrent of technology, the development of technology in the best possible, cost-effective way to turn these red bars into green bars. We have seen this work before. We applied this strategy to sulfur dioxide, and the result was that with less expense and less time than anyone imagined, we were able to tackle that problem, and what works for sulfur dioxide works for carbon dioxide. The impact on the price of carbon will be immediate and substantial. One of the reasons is, we already have significant, powerful technologies that will be mobilized by such a carbon fee. Let's examine some of the major energy sectors, starting with electricity. The potential electricity we could generate in the United States from just wind and solar is over 120 times the amount of electricity currently generated from fossil fuels. This is the amount of energy currently generated in electricity from fossil fuels. This large green sphere is the potential energy--the theoretical potential energy--from solar and wind. So we have a lot to work with. Here is more good news. Solar and wind energy has grown increasingly affordable in recent years. For instance, photovoltaic solar panels produced electricity at 39 cents per kilowatt hour in 2009. That is up here. In 2014, it was 8 cents per kilowatt hour, an almost fivefold reduction. We see in communities and cities all across the country, businesses and homes with solar panels on their rooftops. We start to see businesses putting up arrays, not just on rooftops but sometimes in their yards. Those declining costs matter. If you put a carbon fee on top of it, you drive that deployment. Over the same period, the cost of wind was cut by more than half, from 14 cents per kilowatt hour to 6 cents per kilowatt hour. In the 2 years since the 2014 numbers, the story has continued to be one of declining costs. Those declining costs, together with Federal tax credits, have resulted in a rapid growth in wind and solar energy deployment. Let's take a look at the solar side. We have on the red line the declining cost per kilowatt hour of solar energy and on the blue bars the increasing deployment of solar energy. That is pretty dramatic, rapid drops in costs, rapid increase in deployment. We see the same thing in wind. On wind power, we see declining costs occurring here, and we see increased deployment since the year 2000. In the early 2000s, I was traveling the State, talking to folks interested in running for the Oregon State Legislature. In the very first trip I took, I was traveling in the area and saw the first big wind turbines being deployed on the plateau east of the Cascades. Then 6 months later, 1 year later, 2 years later, there was a huge increase in deployment of wind turbines, mimicking what we see on this chart right here. Here is a fascinating number. In the first quarter--this is the first 3 months of this year--96 percent of the new electricity-generating capacity has come from wind and solar. That is a stunning number. Most people think the new generation capacity is coming from natural gas because it has dropped so much in cost, but 96 percent in the first 3 months of this year came from wind and solar. If we make a national commitment to these and other clean, renewable sources, such as geothermal and wave energy, we can absolutely achieve 100 percent green electrons--clean, renewable electrons by 2050, eliminating fossil fuels in the generation of electricity. This decision is not without challenges, just as the journey to the Moon was not without challenges. Most significantly, we have to match the supply of the variable solar and wind energy to the demand for electricity. As we know, for solar and wind to generate electricity, the Sun has to shine and the wind has to blow, but there are a number of ways we can tackle this challenge. One answer is to shift demand through peak load pricing, encouraging consumers, for example, to shift flexible consumption, such as drying your clothes, to match the supply. We change the time of day we use our dryer. Another possibility is to increase the grid of electricity from one region where there is excess supply to another region where there is excess demand. A third answer is to store electricity, which can be accomplished through quite a variety of technologies. To name a few, you can store energy in a liquid salt solution at high-temperature solar projects. You can use pump storage, where you pump water up a hill and then you run it back down through turbines. You can use battery storage. By investing in these strategies, the elimination of fossil fuels in the generation of electricity is within our grasp. Let's turn to transportation. Fossil fuels have dominated the transportation sector for a century, but that is changing. One change is the greater deployment and use of mass transit, light rail, streetcars, bicycles, and pedestrian transit. These investments get people out of fossil fuel cars. That trend continues, and we should encourage it. Another strategy is electrify the cars themselves. We have seen tremendous progress in the electric car market thanks to falling prices and growing consumer demand. Today there are approximately 500,000 plug-in vehicles driving on our roads. You can see how that really started in 2010, and here we are 6 years later at half a million cars, with a steady upward growth. Electric vehicles are far more viable today than they were in 2010 because the most expensive component of an electric vehicle is the battery, and the price of batteries--lithium ion batteries--has been plunging, dropping fourfold since 2008 to less than $300 per kilowatt hour. We have also seen other parts of the transportation industry adopt electricity into their fleets. Mack Trucks, for example, has developed an electric hybrid garbage truck. Proterra, an innovator in heavy-duty electric transport, recently unveiled an electric bus that can travel 350 miles on a single charge. They are developing a recharging capacity that can recharge a bus faster than you can put diesel into a diesel bus tank. What about aviation? How do we transition our airlines from fossil fuels? Well, biofuels are a piece of the puzzle. United Airlines has started using a mixture of 30 percent biofuel and 70 percent traditional jet fuel for flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco. JetBlue just announced a 10-year contract to buy 350 million gallons of renewable biofuels to mix into its fuel supply. That will account for about 20 percent of its annual fuel use at Kennedy International Airport. Other airlines, including Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic, are embracing biofuels. Let's think a little bit about long-haul trucking, which currently runs virtually universally on diesel. It is a big challenge. Biodiesel can play a role here, as it does in aviation. A few years ago, Poland Springs switched to a 5-percent biodiesel blend for its fleet of tractor trailers and tanker trucks. The company estimates that not only did it reduce its annual carbon emissions by 1.8 million pounds in the first 2 years, but it saved about $70,000 in fuel costs. That is a pretty substantial incentive. As more and more firms seek to replace fossil diesel with biodiesel, production has surged, increasing from 343 million gallons in 2010 to 1.2 billion gallons in 2014. But while the production and use of biodiesel is growing, we don't anticipate that it will be a complete answer. The production of biofuel has challenges of its own, including a potential disruption of food agriculture. We have to keep developing and looking at a variety of technologies, possibly including, for example, the development of hydrogen fuel cells. Nikola Motor, an electric truck startup in Salt Lake City, announced plans at the end of last month for its upcoming Nikola One big rigs to run on custom-made hydrogen electric fuel cells. These trucks are going to be designed to travel 1,200 miles between hydrogen fill-ups. If hydrogen does become viable along established routes for trucking, we will need to generate a lot of hydrogen, and we can do that from electricity, putting the green electrons to work in this challenge and establishing a fuel deployment infrastructure. What about residential and commercial heating? About one-fifth of all natural gas is used to heat homes and water in residences. Both of these objectives can be accomplished through electrification. The good news here is that heat pumps, powered by green electrons, can be cost- competitive with gas heating in most climates, even at today's very low natural gas prices. Replacing the use of natural gas in the commercial and industrial sectors will be more challenging, especially industrial manufacturing. Electrification will help. Conservation will help. They will be part of the solution. In some cases, there may not be a solution. There may not be a viable answer. We will need to employ carbon offsets to reach net zero generation of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. So there are pieces of this puzzle we will have to figure out. Just as our predecessors in the space program did not have all of the answers when they set out on a mission to put a man on the Moon, we don't have all of the answers now, but we have a lot. With the diligence and determination that has characterized the American spirit, we will find more answers and we can reach these goals. We have so much of the technology in hand to propel ourselves into the 100-by-50 vision, but we need political courage. We need commitment as a nation. We need to take responsibility because we are the first generation feeling the impact of the disruptive ravages of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it. And we do so, driving a rapid transition from a fossil fuel-based energy economy to a clean renewable one. One thing is certain: It is going to mean a lot of new jobs. That is pretty exciting. There is going to be a lot of innovation. That is pretty exciting. Already more than 2.5 million Americans go off to work every day in the clean and renewable energy industry. Some 414,000 are employed in renewable generation, such as solar and wind. In just the past 6 years, the solar industry alone has added 115,000 jobs. Another 170,000 are employed in advanced vehicles, working to move the automotive industry further toward hybrid and electric vehicle technology. Imagine how many more jobs we will create if we truly commit and invest in clean and renewable technologies. Imagine what a boon it will be to our economy to be the leader in these industries, selling and exporting the technology and the products that we develop around the world. As we head into this exciting frontier, we have an obligation to do right by all the American workers, the men and women who rely on jobs in fossil fuel industries to provide for their families. We need to make sure they have the support and the training and the help to transition to work in the new industries. We need to make sure no worker in the fossil fuel world is left behind. These are the basic elements of the 100-by-50 plan I will be introducing to move our country from fossil fuel to clean renewable energy: One. Adopt a price on carbon to put our markets to work on this mission. Two. Utilize energy conservation--virtually always the most cost- effective strategy. Three. Convert all electricity generation from fossil fuel electrons to green electrons. Four. Shift as many uses as possible from the fossil fuel energy world to the electric energy world, including various applications in transportation and home and business heating. Five. Sustain substantial investments in research and development to improve current technologies and develop new ones. Finally, for the most difficult challenges, we may consider utilizing carefully constructed carbon offsets to reach net zero fossil fuels. Fellow citizens, colleagues here in the Chamber, we need a bold plan to save our beautiful, blue-green planet from the ravages of global warming. This 100-by-50 is that plan--completely overhauling our energy system over the next three and a half decades, eliminating carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels by 2050. By leading this fight, America will benefit from all of the technological innovation it generates. By leading this fight, America will generate good-paying jobs. By leading this fight, America will have the moral standing to pull together the nations of the world onto a parallel path. America must lead this charge. We are the only Nation that can. We have the best scientific and technical minds in the world. The American people have the courage to take on big challenges. By leading this fight, America will bring together the nations of the world. Working together, we will save our planet. The world needs to act, and to act now, to tackle the devastating impacts of climate change. It cannot wait. But they will need our example--a national commitment to revolutionizing our energy sector to spur them to action, to set an example, to work in cooperation. Daniel Burnham, the great American architect, once said: Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work. We need to stir our blood and our hearts and our minds and our souls to this great challenge. We need to do everything in our power, utilizing every tool at our disposal. We are in a very real race against time, and it is a race in which we are behind but a race we must not lose. That is our responsibility. That is our moral obligation to our children and their children and their children's children. Some will say this can't be done, but I say to them and I say to you: Do not bet against America. We conquered the electron and harnessed electricity. We beat gravity to soar above the clouds. We cured diseases, invented the telephone, the television, and the Internet. When President Kennedy called us into action, we, America, traveled to the Moon. When we commit ourselves, there is nothing American ingenuity cannot accomplish. We will find the answers. We will achieve the impossible. At this moment, let's embrace the urgency of this mission and determine to act immediately and to act boldly. Fellow Americans, colleagues, let's join together and set ourselves and our Nation and, through our leadership, the world's community of nations on a course to make this giant leap for mankind. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wish to state my congratulations to Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy on her retirement after 12 years of service. Throughout my time in public office, I have worked with Mayor Piercy at countless events and meetings covering a range of important issues. In my experience with Mayor Piercy, I have been particularly impressed by her work to save our environment with a new sustainability commission and local ordinance to cut carbon emissions, to fight for women and families, to revitalize downtown Eugene, and to move forward through a difficult recession. Whether it be serving as a grassroots activist, the House Democratic Leader in the Oregon State Legislature, a board member for the Lauren Hill Center for individuals with mental illnesses, or the public affairs director for Planned Parenthood Health Services of Southern Oregon, Mayor Piercy has always been a fierce advocate for vulnerable community members in need. When elected mayor of Eugene in 2004, Mayor Piercy took her commitment to her community to a new level--especially through her work on environmental justice. She was a key leader on the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, working with 800 mayors across the country to push for changes at the congressional level. At the beginning of her time in office, she led an 18-month initiative to examine how Eugene could support the growth of businesses that create sustainable products or those that adopt more sustainable practices. Thanks to Mayor Piercy's commitment to environmental issues, Eugene has decreased its city carbon emissions by 10 percent. Throughout her time in office, Mayor Piercy acted on her concern for children and families by serving as chair of the Lane County Commission on Children and Families and the Oregon Commission for Child Care. With these groups, she worked to strengthen families through early intervention and prevention services, as well as advised the Governor and legislature on the importance of high quality child care to Oregon's families and its economy. Mayor Piercy has also been a tireless advocate for homeless youth as a member of the State Commission for Children and Families, linking local efforts with those at the State level and advocating with the Oregon Coalition for Runaway and Homeless Youth for an effective State response to the many homeless youth in our State. We need more leaders like Mayor Kitty Piercy in office. I thank Mayor Piercy for her hard work and dedication to public service and wish her the best in her well-deserved retirement.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I have risen on several occasions to bring attention to the challenges confronting our ``we the people'' system of government that President Abraham Lincoln so eloquently described all those years ago as one ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' I have talked about the powerful special interests working to corrupt the nature of our Republic, thanks to the unchecked wealth flowing into our political system because of the Supreme Court's series of misguided decisions in Buckley v. Valeo, Citizens United, and SpeechNow.org. Today, I am honored to join with my colleagues from Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Connecticut--organized by my colleague from Rhode Island, who will be speaking in a moment--to show how these same special interests are using their vast wealth and resources to sway national policies and public debate to benefit their interests at the expense of the American people and turn our government into one of, by, and for a powerful special interest. There is no better example of what I mean than the debate surrounding one of the most critical issues facing our Nation and the world today: climate change. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously stated that ``everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.'' Well, manmade climate change is a fact. Scientists, universities, and government agencies across the world have all said that manmade climate change is real, that it endangers our planet, and that we need to address it quickly if there is any hope for our future. Back in 2005, 11 science academies from around the world--including Brazil, Italy, Japan, and Russia--signed a joint letter stating that ``there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring'' and that ``it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities.'' Five years later, the Pentagon stated very directly that ``the danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe.'' Fast-forward 5 more years to 2015, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that ``we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes'' with potentially ``massively disruptive consequences to societies and echosystems.'' The fact is, we don't really need to turn to our scientists or studies to know that climate change is real; we simply have to look at the world around us. We can see and feel it for ourselves. We saw it when 2014 became the hottest year on record, and then we saw it again in 2015 when 2015 became the hottest year on record. We see it as our forests come under assault from longer fire seasons and insect infestations because the winters are not cold enough to kill the pine beetles. We see it in our waters, our loss of snowpacks, as fishermen fish in ever smaller and warmer streams for trout and salmon, and our farmers face less water for irrigation. We see it in the oceans--oceans that are 30 percent more acidic today than they were before we started burning coal at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The acidic ocean is endangering our sea life, killing coral, and causing a real challenge for our shellfish. We see it in the droughts that hurt our farms and the increasingly powerful storms that regularly devastate communities, businesses, and people's lives. Why, with all of this proof from the scientific community and with all of the proof and facts directly before our eyes, does such strong opposition remain to the effects of climate change? We know the answer. It is because a powerful, moneyed interest has spun a web of deceit, working for years and continuing to work to undermine mainstream, scientific research and deceive the American people about the dangers and causes of climate change. These members are part of a special interest that have made their fortunes from fossil fuels. If they acknowledge the realities of climate change, it would suggest that their industry would have to dramatically change in a very short period of time. In fact, according to conventional science, we have to keep 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to have any hope of keeping carbon emissions within a range that does not trigger catastrophic consequences. That is why, in the minds of this industry, it is better to lie to the American people than to risk their businesses and fortunes. We have seen this movie before, when the tobacco industry lied to the American people for decades to discredit the emerging science and evidence that tobacco was killing millions of Americans. And now the fossil industrial complex is lying to the American people, but this time it is not just the health of Americans at risk, it is the health of the entire planet. The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report last summer which showed that for decades the ``fossil-industrial complex'' knowingly worked to deceive the American public about the realities and risks of climate change. One of the main ways they do this is by funding third-party organizations like think tanks, advocacy groups that produce counter-climate research and make people question which facts and information they can trust. We know this is happening because various studies have revealed the incredible level of coordination between different groups and researchers who always see corporate funding and who all seem to work off the same scripts. Justin Farrell, a sociologist at Yale University, authored a study last November that examined 20 years' worth of articles, policy papers, and transcripts from 4,500 individuals associated with 164 different groups known to be skeptical of climate change science. Comparing the work of those who had received this special interest corporate funding and those that had not, he found a clear, coordinated effort among the corporate-backed groups that cast doubt on the idea that greater amounts of manmade carbon dioxide endangered our planet. Talking about his study, Farrell said that ``this counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own.'' We know these groups are backed by special interests. All we have to do is follow the money. That is how we know, for example, that between 1998 and 2015 ExxonMobil donated at least $30 million to groups and organizations whose main purpose was to spread misleading information about climate change. It was discovered in paperwork connected to his paper between 2014 and 2015 alone that Peabody Energy funded at least $332,000 through a subsidiary to groups and organizations involved in attacking climate science and clean energy policies. As much as the fossil fuel companies have contributed to these efforts over the years, the titles of the masterminds and the kingpins of climate science denial rests with Charles and David Koch. These oil and coal baron brothers, whose estimated $80 billion fortune comes from oil refineries and coal reserves in Texas, Alaska, Minnesota, and elsewhere, control roughly over 4,000 miles of pipeline. These are the same businessmen who have pledged that they and their network of contributors will have spent the better part of $1 billion by the time the polls close on November 8 to try to influence the outcome of this year's Presidential and congressional elections. Since 1997, the Koch brothers have directly funneled $88 million to think tanks and trade associations, advocacy groups, foundations, and academic and legal programs which deny the existence of climate change. According to a 2013 study from Drexel University, they are effective at getting their friends to give their money as well. The study showed that most of the other largest contributors to the anti-climate science movement were associated with the Koch brothers. The foundation run by the DeVos family and Art Pope, a retail magnate from North Carolina, are a regular part of the Koch brothers' donor network. That same Drexel study also shows that as the public opinion about climate change has shifted in recent years, the sources of funding for many of these organizations has become untraceable. On paper, for instance, Koch affiliated foundations have pulled back significantly on visibly funding organizations that deny climate change. It just so happens that funding from other sources, such as Donors Trust, a donor- directed foundation where funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically at the same time. The traceable funding of this network in DC has decreased, and the untraceable funding has increased. According to its Web site, Donors Trust specializes in being untraceable. Our trust is for those ``who wish to keep their charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues. Know that your contributions to your DonorTrust account that have to be reported to the IRS will not become public information.'' In 2003, only about 3 percent of the denial movement came from Donors Trust, but by 2010, as the Drexel study shows, the foundation responsible for providing a quarter of ``all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systemic denial of climate change.'' The sources of the denial movement are being laundered so the American people do not have a direct vision of those responsible, but we know from all of this evidence who is responsible. Could it just be coincidence that at the same time the Koch brothers reduce their traceable donations to climate-denying science groups, the amount of untraceable money going to them increases dramatically? Yes, I suppose it is possible, but it would be a very large coincidence. So we know that the Koch brothers have been prolific contributors to the climate change countermovement over the years, and it is very safe to say that they are continuing to contribute anonymously to the cause of organizations like Donors Trust. But what is the result of all of this? What has been the return on their investment? We have seen report after report from groups like the Koch-founded and Koch-funded Cato Institute with titles like ``Apocalypse Not: Science, Economics, and Environmentalism.'' Or how about this one: ``Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming.'' We know that a grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation helped fund a nonpeer-reviewed study which claimed climate change doesn't endanger polar bears. Now, I do a tremendous number of townhalls--one in every county every year, 36 a year in Oregon--approaching 300 townhalls since I was elected into office. Many of these are in rural areas where people get a lot of their information--well, to put it simply--from web sources and emails and lists that are often directly driven through a rightwing propaganda machine. These are the types of things that the Koch brothers try to spread in order to undermine what is happening before our very eyes. When I talk to my rural townhalls about the challenge, I say: You know what; climate change is impacting you all most of all. It is attacking our forests and our fishing. It is attacking our farming. I go through the evidence on the ground in the State of Oregon, and people start shaking their head. Yes, they are aware of the pine beetle. They are aware of the longer forest fire season. They have heard about the oyster industry in trouble because of the increasing acidity of the Pacific Ocean. They are aware of how the Klamath Basin has suffered the three worst ever droughts in a 15-year period because the snowpack in the Cascades has changed so much over the last few decades, reducing the amount of irrigation water flowing in to the region and the amount of rain that is falling. They are aware of these things. So then they understand it, and they see the reality. Then there is a glimmer of understanding that the messages spun out by this vast web of denial is false and that they are on the front line. Rural America is on the front line. Reports and studies funded by the Koch brothers muddy the waters of scientific fact, making it much harder for the average person to sort through and sift through the information that is available and to know what the real story is. But where we see the Koch brothers' and friends' money paying off the most is the influence they are able to manifest here in Washington, DC. As we work to take on this challenge--the equivalent of an approaching meteor bent on destroying a good portion of the planet--as we work to take it on, they work to make sure we don't take it on, undermining the legislation that is being put forward to incentivize a rapid transition from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. Obviously, an emphasis of pivoting from fossil fuels to renewable energy would undermine the value of the Koch brothers' holdings. It would undermine the value of the fossil industrial complex. So they lie to the American people. We see one substantial strategy after another. We know that the summer that cap and trade was being debated in 2009 and climate change started to become a focus of tea party rallies, a lot of that was organized by Americans for Prosperity--yet again a Koch-founded and Koch-funded organization. The issue seeped into townhalls and public forums, with some members of the audiences planted at various events by groups like Americans for Prosperity to raise the issue. Anti-cap-and-trade members of Congress regularly quoted from a study by the Heritage Foundation, another Koch- funded organization. They predicted that the bill would add thousands of dollars to Americans' energy bills and lead to devastating unemployment--claims thoroughly debunked by the Congressional Budget Office. But in the Koch brothers' climate-denier, fossil-industrial complex world, facts don't matter and that our planet is at risk doesn't matter. They even use piles of letters sent to Members of Congress that falsely claim to come from actual constituents. They worked to build pressure from outside groups, and eventually the Koch brothers and their allies won. The cap-and-trade bill never came up for a vote here in the Senate, even though it had passed the House. That was the type of return on investment the Koch brothers sought. They wanted to use their money and their resources to stop legislation that could have helped the American people and the world begin to reverse recourse on the tragic direction we are headed. That is not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That is a government against the people. That is, instead, a government of, by, and for a powerful special interest. Every one of us here has a public responsibility to act on behalf of our Nation's national interests. We are stewards of the public trust. We are responsible for helping to guide the United States and helping the United States guide the entire community of nations into a future of greater well-being. To do that, we must take back our Republic from the special interests like the Koch brothers who are determined to corrupt our public bodies and our public debates for their own greedy self-interests. We must work together to restore the ``we the people'' government our Founding Fathers envisioned. I am proud to come here to the floor to join my colleagues from Rhode Island, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. I particularly appreciate my colleague from Rhode Island for organizing this series of speeches to expose the special interests behind the anti-climate science forces and to ensure that, as President Lincoln so eloquently declared on those hallowed fields of Gettysburg, ``Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.'' Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the issue before this body is whether there is going to be an opportunity for amendments to be considered and voted upon. We have heard today that we have three Republican amendments--three Republican amendments that address a prohibition on Federal labeling, that address criminal penalties, that address salmon. We also have three Democratic amendments we would like to have votes on. Once upon a time--it now starts to seem like a fairy tale--this Senate was known as a great deliberative body. Well, a great deliberative body entertains ideas, discusses them, and votes on them. So in support and honor of the tradition of the Senate to put amendments forward and have them debated and voted upon, we are offering an alternative. I would ask the majority leader to modify his request and to do so in the following fashion: I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be the only amendments in order to the motion to concur with respect to S. 764 with an amendment: Sanders No. 4948, Leahy No. 4966, Merkley No. 4969, Sasse No. 4972, Paul No. 4947, and Murkowski No. 4954; that there be 1 hour for debate, to run concurrently, prior to votes in relation to the amendments in the order listed; that all amendments be subject to a 60-vote threshold required for adoption; and that upon disposition of the amendments, all postcloture time be yielded back with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it seems as though every time we turn around, we have a situation where some individual in the African- American community is shot while in the custody of police, and many in America, myself included, are mourning the death of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the individuals who were shot in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge. The ubiquity of video cameras today has shown the rest of the country what African-Americans have always known: That with shocking and horrifying regularity, African-American men and boys are the victims of police--the very people who are charged with keeping all of us safe. I don't know what it is like to be fearful for my life during a traffic stop by law enforcement. Unacceptably, however, that is the everyday reality of Black Americans in our Nation. While I will never know this experience firsthand, I stand with communities of color and demand that those who swear to uphold our laws to protect and serve all in America do so equally and that they are held accountable when they don't. We must also realize that this is not just a police problem; it is an American problem. We need to come to terms with our Nation's long history of racism and the many ways that racism continues to permeate nearly every aspect of our society. Our country has made enormous progress from the worst days of Jim Crow. We elected an African-American President to two terms, but there is an enormous difference between progress and success, and that difference is measured in Black lives cut short, the resegregation of our schools, health disparities, housing patterns, dropout rates, and incarceration rates. We will not end the scourge of racism until we understand that racism is not just Bull Connor, firehoses, and dogs. We will never solve the problem if we don't admit we have one. I was thinking about the situation back in the 1980s when I was working with a friend from across the street. He was actually the brother of the woman who lived across the street. He had come up to DC for a while and was helping me install some windows. We needed to go to a hardware store but didn't know exactly where the store was, so when we pulled up next to the sheriff's car, I asked my friend to roll down his window and ask the sheriff for directions to the hardware store. He looked over at the sheriff, and he turned back straight ahead. He just looked straight ahead and didn't say a word. Then I looked over and I saw the two sheriffs, and I saw the gun mounted between them at an upward angle. It was a shotgun or a rifle. But, as I looked to the right past him, I saw the absolute fear on his face. There was absolutely no way he was going to roll down his window and ask the sheriff--the sheriff in the car next to ours--for directions. To me it was just a casual interaction among folks getting a little bit of help, which was to him a potential life-threatening situation. Nobody in our society should live in fear of our public safety officials. Of course, I celebrate that the vast majority of our public safety officials treat everyone equally, but we need for 100 percent of our public safety teams to treat everyone equally. That small fraction that doesn't is responsible for an enormous number of lives cut short, and that is unacceptable, and we have to change that. We have to talk about it, and we have to wrestle with it. So, once again, it seems like this is the case every week or so. We have another death that seems like it should have been possible to avoid, and sometimes these deaths are very clearly ones of intentional infliction. We have to work hard together to change this. Mr. President, I thought it would be worthwhile to consider a little bit about the organics provision in the bill we are considering tonight. Now, there are several organics labeling provisions, and the sponsors of the bill said this is very wonderful stuff. I know that we only have one organic farmer that I am aware of in the Senate, and that individual is the Senator from Montana, Jon Tester. I have heard him speak to this issue. I know that he feels that the bill does not do for organics anything that the organic community doesn't already have. That is my understanding of his perspective. So it is important to call attention to the fact that many organic organizations across the country, despite the language that has been placed in this bill, are strongly opposed to it. They believe that if you are going to put out a bill that is a mandatory GMO labeling bill, it has to actually have mandatory GMO labeling in it. So let me read this from Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety. Andrew says: Organic organizations, farmers and companies rightly fear that this bill could change important regulations governing the federal organic program including those prohibiting the use of genetic engineering in organic. They also refuse to be part of a sham labeling bill that blatantly discriminates against low-income, rural, elderly and a disproportionately high number of minority Americans. Then let me read this as well: Organic organizations, farmer groups and companies around the nation representing millions of organic consumers and thousands of organic farmers have voiced their opposition to the discriminatory and deeply-flawed GMO labeling bill being offered. Thirty-six major organic groups have signed on to a letter sent by a national coalition of consumer, food safety, farm, environmental, and religious groups to all members of the Senate earlier this week. The groups condemn the so- called compromise bill which could be devastating to the organic standard. Organic groups that have signed on to this letter include the following: Beyond Pesticides, Consumers Union, Center for Food Safety, Dr. Bronner's, Equal Exchange, Farm Aid, Food and Water Watch, Genesis Farm, Good Earth Natural Foods, Katchkie Farm, Keep the Soil in Organic Coalition, Kezialain Farm, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service, Miskell's Premium Organics, the National Grocers Coop, the National Organic Coalition, Nature's Path, the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, the Northeast Organic Farming Association, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, Nutiva, Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, Organically Grown Company, Organic Consumers Association, Organic Seed Alliance, Organic Farmers Agency for Relationship Marketing, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, Our Family Farms, PCC Family Farms, PCC Natural Markets, Rural Advancement Foundation International, the Organic & Non-GMO Report, Sunnyside CSA, and Wood Prairie Family Farm. So these are organic organizations, farmer groups, and companies from around the Nation that are representing millions of organic consumers and thousands of organic farmers who are voicing their opposition to the bill that we are considering in this Chamber tonight. So I thought that was worth noting. It is very important because one of the items that the proponents of this bill have said is that they have put some wonderful stuff in there for organic farmers. If there is wonderful stuff, why are the organic farmers saying that this bill could change important regulations governing the Federal organic program, including those prohibiting the use of genetic engineering or organic? That is right. You heard that it is actually possible that this bill would enable those growing GMO crops to label their crops organic--how completely absurd. What hall of mirrors have we entered into with the twisted definitions in this bill that GMO crops could be labeled organic because of this bill? Now, let me turn to why we are here on the floor waiting for these 30 hours to run out. We attempted to strike a deal earlier today simply to have amendments voted on. In fact, get this: We agreed to vote on every single Republican amendment--every single one. We asked for the ability to vote on some Democratic amendments as well. Now, that is what the Senate used to do. This body was known as a deliberative body because people were actually here arguing with each other, debating with each other, offering amendments, debating the amendments, voting on the amendments, voting on the bills--almost always by simple majority. That is why this was a deliberative body. The Members brought the power of their life experiences into this room. They brought their intellect, their knowledge, their reading, and their wisdom into this room. They brought the stories of their constituents, the experiences from the front line in America into this room. They debated, and they argued, and they voted. That Senate is the opposite of what we are experiencing here at this moment--a Senate where the majority leader refuses to allow any amendments on these bills to be debated or to be voted on. Now, the unanimous consent proposal that I put forward a couple of hours ago said there are three Republican amendments that have been filed. Let's vote on all of them. One of them is from my colleague who is sitting in the chair, and that amendment puts a prohibition on Federal labeling. Now, I tell my colleague that if that was up, I would be voting against it, and I would be happy to explain why. He would be happy to explain why it is a good amendment, and that is called a debate. That is called a discussion. The vote is a decision in which we are all bringing our best insights to bear. But, unfortunately, we are not debating the amendment of my colleague on a prohibition on Federal labeling because the majority leader refused to allow him to bring it up. He rejected the unanimous consent request that would allow the amendment of my colleague who is sitting in the chair to be considered. We agreed that the amendment of my colleague from Kentucky, Senator Paul, could be considered. His amendment seeks to clarify and make sure that there are no criminal penalties in this labeling law. Well, I would be happy to vote for that amendment, because there are no criminal penalties and there shouldn't be any, and if we want to put an exclamation point behind that through this particular amendment from my colleague, I would be fine with that. If he were allowed to bring up that amendment, maybe he would show some other aspects of it on the floor--some other ways that reverberate and some other ways that I don't actually recognize when I read his amendment. But he can't fill us in on the details of what his amendment would do because he is not allowed to bring it up. Even though he is a Republican, he is not allowed to bring it up, even though the Chamber is governed by a Republican majority. His own leader refuses to allow him to have his amendment brought up and debated. In fact, we agreed for another Republican amendment, the Murkowski amendment, on the labeling of genetically engineered salmon to be brought up and debated--an issue we have wrestled with here before. We have probably all heard most of the pros and cons. But perhaps in the formulation of this amendment, there are some new aspects that would have been brought to bear that would have influenced us to support it or to oppose it. But this Republican amendment can't be brought up because the Republican leader rejected a unanimous consent request that would have allowed all of these amendments to be brought up. In fact, there were only three Republican amendments, and we agreed to hear all of them and, in exchange, we asked for three Democratic amendments. I see that my colleague Senator Blumenthal has arrived to speak. I think I will come back and explain what those Democratic amendments were a bit from now. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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