Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I do not control the time. I was prepared to speak, but when my colleague requested to go first, I asked if he might keep his comments to a reasonable period.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to address the bill before us, a bill that presents itself as a labeling bill but which is deeply defective, with three major loopholes that mean this labeling bill will not label GMO products, and I am going to lay out those challenges. First, I want to be clear that this is about American citizens' right to know what is in their food. We have all kinds of consumer laws about rights to know, but maybe there is nothing as personal as what you put in your mouth or what you feed your family. That is why emotions run so deep. Citizens have a right to make up their own mind. We talk a lot about the vision of our country being a ``we the people'' democracy, and certainly it was Jefferson who said ``the mother principle'' of our Republic is that we can call ourselves a Republic only to the degree that the decisions reflect the will of the people, and that will happen only if the people have an equal voice. In this case, we have a powerful enterprise--a company named Monsanto--that has come to this Chamber with a goal, which is to take away the right of consumers across this Nation and take away the right of citizens across this Nation to know what is in their food. I am specifically referring to the Monsanto DARK Act. Why is it called the DARK Act? It is called the DARK Act because it is an acronym: Deny Americans the Right to Know. But it also very much represents the difference between an enlightenment that comes from information and knowledge, and a darkness that comes from suppressing information. James Madison, our country's fourth President and Father of the Constitution, once wrote: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. That is what this debate is about--whether citizens can arm themselves with the knowledge, arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. And this act before us, the Monsanto DARK Act, says: No, we are not going to allow citizens to acquire in a simple way the information about whether the product they are considering buying has genetically modified ingredients. There is something particularly disheartening about that, and that is that this is one of the few issues in the country about which you can ask Republicans, you can ask Democrats, you can ask Independents, and they all have the same answer. Basically, nine out of ten Americans, regardless of party, want a simple indication on the package: Does this container include GMO ingredients? That is all--a simple, consumer- friendly right to know, and this bill is all about taking that away. Let me turn to the three big loopholes in this bill. Monsanto loophole No. 1: A definition that exempts the three major GMO products in America. Isn't it ironic to have a bill where the definition of GMO has been crafted in a fashion never seen anywhere else on this planet, is not in use by any of the 64 countries around the world that have a labeling law, and it just happens to be crafted to exclude the three major Monsanto GMO products? What are those products? The first is GMO corn when it becomes high-fructose corn syrup. Well, it is GMO corn, but under the definition of high-fructose corn syrup from GMO corn, it is suddenly not GMO. Let's talk about soybeans. When Monsanto GMO soybeans become soybean oil, they magically are no longer GMO under the definition in this bill. Let's talk about sugar beets. Monsanto GMO sugar beets--when the sugar is produced and goes into products, it is suddenly, magically not GMO sugar. Isn't it a coincidence that this definition is not found anywhere else in the world? This bill happens to exclude the three biggest products produced by Monsanto. Well, it is no coincidence. They are determined to make sure they are not covered. High-fructose corn syrup, sugar from GMO sugar beets, oil from GMO soybeans--none of those are covered. This has been an issue of some debate because folks have said: Well, the plain language in the bill might be overruled and modified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture when they do rules. Of course, a rule that contravenes the plain language of the bill would in fact not stand. It wouldn't be authorized. So what does the plain language of the bill say? It says: ``The term `bioengineering,' and any similar term, as determined by the Secretary, with respect to a food, refers to a food . . . that contains genetic material that has been modified.'' That was the magic language not found anywhere in the world-- ``contains genetic material that has been modified''--because when you make high-fructose corn syrup, when you make sugar from sugar beets, when you make soy oil from soybeans, that information is stripped out. That is what magically transformed a GMO ingredient to a non-GMO ingredient. They have a second loophole, and that loophole says ``for which the modification could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding.'' Well, the ``could'' factor here certainly raises all kinds of questions. In theory, is it possible to obtain through natural selection what we obtain through genetic engineering? Well, then suddenly it is not genetic engineering. We haven't been able to find out exactly which crop they are trying to protect, wave that magic wand, and convert a GMO crop into a non-GMO crop, but certainly it is there for a specific purpose. What does this mean? This means that if you look around the world and you examine the labeling laws from the European Union or Brazil or China, corn oil, soybean oil, sugar from sugar beets--all of those, if they come from a GMO form, GMO soybean, or GMO sugar beets, they are all covered. They are all covered everywhere in the world except, magically, in this bill. We have consulted many experts. The language of the bill is very clear, but many experts have weighed in and they say things like this: This definition leaves out a large number of foods derived from GMOs such as corn and soy oil, sugar beet sugar. That is because, although these products are derived from or are GMOs, the level of DNA in the products is very low and is generally not sufficient to be detected in DNA-based assays. That is the basic bottom line. That is loophole No. 1. Let's turn to Monsanto loophole No. 2. What this loophole is, is this law doesn't actually require a label that says there are GMO ingredients. It provides a couple of options, voluntary. Those options already exist in law so that is not giving anything we don't currently have. Under this law, a manufacturer is allowed to put in a phrase and say this product is partially derived from GMO ingredients or partially made from GMO ingredients. They can do that right now. It also says the USDA will develop a symbol, and that symbol can be put on a package to indicate it has GMO ingredients. Somebody can voluntarily put on a symbol right now. If you don't voluntarily do those things that actually disclose it has GMO ingredients, this is the default. We see here this barcode. It is also referred to as a quick response code. It says: Scan this for more information. Scan me. Of course, package after package across America already has barcodes. Package after package already has quick response codes, as these are referred to, these square computer codes--scan me for more information. It doesn't say there are GMO ingredients in this package. It doesn't say: Scan here for more information on the GMO ingredients in this food. No, just scan me. Certainly, this defies the ability of anyone to look at that and say whether there are GMO ingredients. All it does is take you to a Web site. How do you get to that Web site? You have to have a smartphone. You have to have a digital plan you pay for. You have to have wireless coverage at the point that you are there. You have to scan it and go to a Web site to find out--the Web site, by the way, will be written by the company that makes the food so it is not going to be easy to find that information. The bill says it will be in the first page of the Web site. There could be a lot of information on that Web page and always in a different format. This is not a label. This is an obstacle course. It is an obstacle course that causes you to spend your own money and your digital time. If I want to compare five different products and see if they have a GMO ingredient and I have five versions of canned carrots, I can pick up that can, and if there is a symbol or a phrase that says ``partially produced with genetically modified ingredients,'' I can pick that up, turn it over, and in 1 second I get the answer. In 1 second, I can get the answer about the number of calories. In 1 second, I can get the answer of whether it contains peanuts. In 1 second, I can get the answer on how much sugar it has. I can compare these five products in 5 seconds, which one--oh, here is the one I want. I want one that does have GMO. I want one that doesn't have GMO. That is a GMO label. This is an obstacle course. This provides no details unless you go through a convoluted system that takes up a lot of time. If I want to compare those five products, I would have to stand in the aisle of the grocery store for 30 minutes trying to go to different Web sites, hoping there was wireless coverage. Quite frankly, that whole process, no one would do that. That is exactly why Monsanto wants this code because no one will use it. They don't know they should use it for GMO ingredients because it doesn't say it, and they know it will take so much time that no busy person or not-so-busy person would see that as a significant way to obtain the data desired. Let's say I am going shopping for 20 items. If each of those items required comparing five products, if it was a 1-second label, it would take up to 50 seconds of my time shopping for 20 products--or 100 seconds of my time, excuse me. In this case, if it took half an hour per product, it would be 10 hours standing in the grocery store, on just 20 items, trying to figure out which variety does not contain GMOs. That obstacle course, combined with the definition that excludes Monsanto products, comprises Monsanto loophole No. 1 and Monsanto loophole No. 2. There is a third loophole in this bill. Wouldn't it be wonderful, Monsanto says, to have a bill with no enforcement in it. When we look at other labeling laws, there is always enforcement. You violate this, there is a $1,000 fine. You violate it again, there is a $1,000 fine or something of that nature. This is the type of provision we had in our COOL Act. What was COOL? C-O-O-L--Country of Origin Labeling, the COOL Act. That was something that required labeling to say that meat-- specifically, pork and beef--whether it had been grown and processed in the United States of America. If I, as a patriotic American, wanted to support American farmers, American ranchers, I could do so because the meat had a label. What was the consequence of failing to provide that label? There was a fine. This bill does not have a USDA fine. This bill does not have any enforcement. It is very clear. They cannot recall any product. They cannot ban a product going to market. The only consequence in this bill is the Secretary could have the possibility of doing an audit of a company that had been the subject of complaints and could disclose the results of an audit. In a press release, he could say: We have done an audit of this company and they are not following the law. That is the consequence--a public announcement. Well, hardly anything this compelling--it just invites people to ignore this law. At every level, Monsanto has undermined this being a legitimate labeling law--a definition that excludes the big Monsanto products, an obstacle course instead of a label, and no enforcement. This bill says we oppose the bill because it is actually a nonlabeling bill under the guise of a mandatory labeling bill. That sums it up. It pretends to be a labeling bill, but it is not. This is a letter signed by 76 pro- organic organizations and farmer groups. I had to do this very quickly. There has been no hearing on this bill. For this unique, never-in-the-world definition that exempts the Monsanto products, there has never been a hearing. What kind of deliberative body is the U.S. Senate when it is afraid to hold a hearing because people might point out that a very powerful special interest, Monsanto, had written a definition that excludes their own products? Apparently, Senators are quaking in their boots for fear the public might find out they just voted on a bill with a definition that excludes Monsanto products so they didn't want to risk a hearing that would make that clear. I am so appreciative of these groups. While you can't make out this print, it gives you a sense of what type of groups we are talking about from across the country--the Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch, Biosafety, the Cedar Circle Farm, Central Park West, Food Democracy, Farm Aid, Family Farm Defenders, Good Earth Natural Foods, on and on--because these groups believe citizens have a right to know what is in their food. Some folks have said: Well, they don't deserve to have that right because this food is not going to do them any harm. Boy, isn't that Big Brother talking once again. The powerful Federal Government is going to make up your mind for you and not going to allow you to have that power that comes from knowledge. As I noted earlier, James Madison wrote: ``Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.'' Big Brother says we don't want the people to have the power of knowledge; we don't let them make their own decision. Why is it so many people feel so powerfully about this issue? First, various groups have determined a major genetic modification that makes crops glyphosate- resistant, weed killer-resistant is a health issue. Why is it a health issue? Because glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. That is something citizens have a right to be concerned about, the possibility of cancer. In areas where glyphosate is sprayed on crops, it has shown up even in samples of rainfall, and it has shown up in the urine of people who live in that area. Do people have the right to be concerned about the fact that a weed killer is being sprayed, and it is ending up in their urine? Yes, I think they do. They have the right to be concerned about that. Do they have a right to be concerned about the impact when this massive amount of weed killer flows off the farms and into our streams and rivers because that weed killer proceeds to kill organisms in the rivers, in the streams, altering the biology of the stream? Yes, they have a right to be worried about that. Do they have a right to be concerned when the huge application of glyphosate is producing superweeds; that is, weeds growing near the fields that are exposed so often that mutations that make them naturally resistant proceed to produce weeds that are resistant to glyphosate, meaning you have to put even more weed killer on the crops. Do they have a right to be concerned when there is a genetic modification called Bt corn that actually causes pesticide to grow inside the cells of the corn plant? What is the impact of that on human health? We don't yet know. Yet that particular genetic modification that causes pesticide to be growing inside the cells of the plant is covering more than 90 percent of the corn grown in America. That is a legitimate concern. Do the citizens have a right to be concerned when they discover the insects a pesticide is designed to kill are evolving and becoming superpests and are becoming immune to that pesticide; meaning, not only is there pesticide growing in the cell of the plant, but now the farmer has applied pesticide to the field as well, which was the whole goal of ignoring that in the first place--that you wouldn't have to do that. They have a right to be concerned. They have a right to educate themselves. They have a right to make their own decision. This is a Big Brother bill if there ever was one, saying, for those who supported cloture on this bill: This bill says citizens do not have the right to know. We are going to have a label that actually doesn't label. We are going to have a label that is an obstacle course. We are going to have a definition that excludes a commonly understood definition of what GMO crops are, and we are going to have no enforcement. This is not good work. This is not a deliberative Senate. Let's send this bill to committee and have a complete hearing on the deficiencies I am talking about. Let's invite Monsanto to come and testify. Let's invite the many scientists who weighed in about the fact that this exempts the primary GMO products in America. Let them come and speak. Let all of us get educated, not have this rammed through the Senate at the very last moment. There are individuals here who said: Wait. Time is urgent because we can't have 50 different State labeling standards. We only have one State that has a labeling standard, and that is Vermont. There is no real concern that we have two conflicting standards because we only have one standard. Could there be more than one standard down the road? Yes, that is a possibility, but that is down the road. That doesn't require us to act today. There are folks who say: Well, the Vermont law goes into effect July 1 so we have to act now to prevent the Vermont law from going into effect. The Vermont law has a 6-month grace period. It doesn't go into effect until January 1 of 2017. We have lots of time to hold hearings. We have lots of time to embrace knowledge rather than to convey and enforce ignorance, lots of time. So these arguments that are made about the urgency are phony arguments. They are made to take and enable a powerful special interest to push through a bill that 90 percent of Americans disagree with, to do it essentially in the dark of the night by not having hearings, not on the House side, not on the Senate side, not having a full debate on this floor. No, instead we are using an instrument that is a modification of a House bill that is a modification of a Senate bill because procedurally it makes it easier to ram this bill through without due consideration. That is wrong. What I am asking for is a simple opportunity to have a series of reasonable amendments voted on, on the floor of this Senate. Let's actually embrace the Senate as a deliberative body. There is an amendment that would fix the definition. That is the amendment by Senator Tester from Montana. That amendment would simply say: The derivatives of GMO crops are GMO ingredients. Soybean oil from GMO soybean is a GMO ingredient. Many proponents of the bill said they think that is what is going to happen with the regulation down the road. If you believe that is what will happen, then join us. Let's correct the definition right now. Why have law cases? Why go into our July break having passed something with a definition that we don't have a consensus on what it means? I know what the plain language says. I know what it exempts as GMO crops, but some say: Well, maybe not, maybe there is something that the USDA can do to change that, and they will be covered. The USDA was asked that question, and they wouldn't answer it directly. They sent back this very convoluted legal language that said: Foods that might or might not have GMO or non-GMO ingredients might possibly be covered, of course, based on what other ingredients are in the food. Would the soybean oil from a GMO soybean be considered a GMO ingredient? That is the question. The USDA needs to answer that yes or no instead of this long, convoluted, lengthy dodging that occurred because they were afraid to answer the question. That is knowledge we could use on the floor of the Senate. Would high-fructose corn syrup from GMO corn be considered a GMO ingredient? The USDA wouldn't answer those questions directly, but lots of other folks did. The FDA, or the Food and Drug Administration, answered the question in technical guidance. They said: Absolutely they wouldn't be covered. All kinds of other experts weighed in and said: Absolutely they wouldn't be covered. Maybe that is the type of information that we should have from a hearing on this bill. How about voting on a simple amendment that clears up this confusion and clearly uses a definition, not one written by and for exempting three major GMO Monsanto crops. We need a straightforward definition that is used elsewhere and covers all of the products that are ordinarily considered a GMO. That is not too much to ask. Let's have a debate on that amendment. We should vote on whether we are going to have a clear definition in this bill. Let's vote on changing the QR code. The QR code has a phrase in it that says: ``Scan here for more food information.'' What if this simply said: Scan here for information on GMO ingredients? Now we have a GMO label. Now it would be truthful and authentic to say that this bill is going to require a GMO label simply by saying: ``Scan here for GMO ingredients in this product.'' Let's have an amendment that changes that language. I have such an amendment, and I would like to see us have a vote on it. To the proponents who are saying this is a GMO labeling bill, this would actually make it a GMO labeling bill. I know the two Senators from Vermont each have an amendment they would like to have considered, one of which would take the Vermont standard and make it the national standard, thereby making one single national standard, and another would grandfather Vermont in and say: Let's not roll over the top of Vermont. Maybe there are a couple of other Senators who have things that will improve this legislation. How about an amendment that would actually put in the same authority to levy fines that we have on the country-of-origin labeling law. I have that amendment. What about a vote on that amendment? These should be things that we can come together on. If you truly want to have a national labeling standard, you want a definition that has integrity and is consistent with what is commonly understood to be a GMO. You want to have a label that indicates there are GMO ingredients inside because that is authenticity. You want to have the ability to have the U.S. Department of Agriculture levy a fine if people disobey the law so that it actually has some teeth in it and some compelling force. That is what I am asking for. Let's have a vote on several basic amendments rather than blindly embracing ignorance and denying Americans the right to know. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Do I need to make any specific request to reserve the remainder of my 1 hour?

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Vermont and the work his State has done to take on this very important issue. I wish to amplify somewhat or add to the remarks he has made. This debate is about one simple concept; that is, a simple, mandatory label that is consumer-friendly to inform consumers whether a product has been produced with GMO ingredients. That is it. It is the consumer's right to know and nothing else. It has been quite an interesting journey we have been on to this point. We have had the DARK Act--the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act--about the GMO status of the foods they consume, and now we have the DARK Act 2.0 coming to this floor in a deceptive strategy to persuade Americans that we are doing something important in order to justify the preemption of our State legislators from taking on this issue State by State. Unfortunately, the bill before us is an echo of what we have seen before. So let's ask the simple question: Does it meet the 1-second test for consumers knowing what is in their foods? That is, by the way, information 89 percent of Americans want to know. This is an issue where if you poll Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, they essentially all say the same thing. Nine out of ten Americans say: We want this information on the package. It is relevant to us. We think consumers should have the right to know. It is unusual to have an issue 9 out of 10 Democrats and 9 out of 10 Independents and 9 out of 10 Republicans all agree on, but here we are at this moment, with this Senate about to consider a bill written by and for the most powerful agricultural groups in America to deny Americans the right to know. Let us take a closer look at what is wrong with the bill that is coming before us--the Roberts bill. First of all, it does not require that simple consumer-friendly label. Instead, it says: Well, that can be an option. A company could do that, if they would like to. Well, you know what. They can do that right now, without the permission of our Federal Government. Then it says it could be an option for a company to put a symbol on a package. Well, that option is there for a group right now. They can put a symbol on a package, if they want to. So we have granted nothing. Then it says: In lieu of putting actual information on the package, they can put a computer code on the package. A computer code is a square, like this, or it could be a barcode, but when you put that on the package, people say: Well, those are on the packages already. Why is it there? This bill does have a little information in it. It says: If you put this quick response code or computer code on the package, you have to say it is for additional ingredient information--no reference to biotechnology, no reference to GMO ingredients. It could be what version of peanuts is in the product, what version of corn, where was it raised. These are all questions a consumer might possibly want to know. All it says is, for more information on the ingredients. So if you look to the ingredients, and the ingredients say: tomato puree, high-fructose corn syrup and wheat flour and water, you get a little more information about those ingredients. That is what it is suggesting, even with the language in this bill that says ``for more information on ingredients,'' and nothing about the fact that this product was or wasn't produced with bioengineering, nothing about the fact that this product does or doesn't contain genetically modified ingredients. So this is a sham because it doesn't give that consumer-friendly information, and it is easy to give that consumer-friendly information. For example, let's take a look at what is happening right now on M&Ms. Here it is. The Mars corporation has said: We want to have integrity with our consumers so we are just going to tell them: partially produced with genetic engineering. It is a simple phrase. It meets the 1-second test. You can grab that candy bar or that bag of M&Ms, you can turn it over, and, boom, there it is, right there. That is what States have wanted to do in response to their 9 out of 10 citizens who desire simple information on the package. But let's turn back. What does this bill do? This bill says companies can put on a barcode with no reference, no reference to the fact there are GMO ingredients. This is a completely different thing. The bill also says it can put on an 800 number. We have been through this territory before too. You can put an 800 number on it. OK. That certainly is not consumer-friendly. You have to call up, wait for 20 minutes to go through a phone tree and talk to somebody on the phone. Maybe you are talking to somebody in the Philippines. Maybe they know the answer or maybe they do not. Are you kidding me? A shopper is going to go down the aisle of the grocery store, wanting to know the status of these different options before them, and they are going to make a call for each of them, standing there for 30 minutes, when it could have been answered in 1 second? No, of course not. The authors of this bill know this is a sham. This is disturbing that we are seeing DARK Act 2.0 coming back again. If you ever do get to that person on the phone line or you ever do get to that computer Web site, there is a provision in this bill that says the information on the Web site has to be on the first page, it has to be presented clearly, but it is being done by the company itself. So how big is that first page going to be, and how is it going to incorporate other information about the ingredients? This is not something being produced in a standard fashion, easy to use. Let's realize this. In order to use the 800 number, you have to have a phone in your pocket. In order to use the barcode, you have to have a smartphone in your pocket. You have to use up your monthly digital plan. You have to expand your money to find out this information. Furthermore, some of your information is captured by the Web site when you go there. You have to give up your privacy. Again, we are seeing the sham and the scam brought forward in a new version, and that is not all. This bill has a definition that excludes the food derived from major GMO crops. I have the bill in front of me, and right up front it says what is covered. It says food that contains genetic material--that contains genetic material. Why is that important? Well, when you process crops into the ingredients that go into our food, you basically strip out, in many cases, the genetic material. Therefore, the things that are commonly thought of as GMO ingredients wouldn't be GMO ingredients under this bill. I have a commentary from the Food and Drug Administration, and here is what it says. It says the phrase ``that contains genetic material'' means that many foods from GE sources will not be subject to this bill, and it gives the example of genetically engineered soy--oil made from that. It goes into all kinds of products that everyone thinks of as a GMO ingredient that wouldn't be covered. What about high-fructose corn syrup? What about oil derived from corn? Corn oil. What about sugar derived from GMO beets--the sugar that has the genetic material stripped from it. So in the very start of this bill, it excludes the three major crops or major components of the three major crops that are GMO in America--soybeans and corn and sugar. That is disturbing, but if that isn't disturbing enough, another loophole has been put into this bill. Let's turn back to what the bill actually says. It says not only must it contain genetic material, thereby bypassing the soy oil and the corn oil and the sugar from the three major GMO crops, you also have to prove the ingredient ``could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature.'' So all a person has to do is to assert it is possible, it could be, and then you have another massive loophole. To what point? We know it is a GMO ingredient. It is in the food. But they could say: Yes, but you could have possibly developed the same thing from a non-GMO process, and they assert that so they don't put it on their can, they don't put it on their label. There are two major loopholes undermining this bill, showing there is no serious intent to do a consumer-friendly label that justifies State preemption. I would like to say that is all, but then, as was pointed to by the Senator from Vermont, there is no enforcement in this bill. There is no authority for the USDA--U.S. Department of Agriculture--to do a recall of products improperly labeled. There is no enforcement power to exercise a fine on companies that fail to use some option under this bill. We can see the basic facts. This does not give a consumer-friendly label and instead sends people off through a maze, through a rat hole of telephone calls and Web sites, not in any way practical to a shopper in a store. Second, it has a definition that excludes major products from the major sources of GMO crops in America. Third, it has a huge loophole expressing the theory that if you can assert something could have been derived from a conventional breeding program, you don't have to label. Then, fourth, no enforcement. This is completely different than the power that Vermont has under their existing bill. They have a simple 1-second test label, they have a definition that does not exclude the major crops, they do not have a loophole about some theory you could possibly have reached the same thing through conventional breeding, and they have enforcement. So this represents not even a shadow of what Vermont is doing. I have supported the idea that you could have a strong case to have a single Federal standard. It makes sense in the production of food in the country not to have different label standards in different States-- the food runs through warehouses. It is spread out through different locations. Fair enough, but if you are going to take away a consumer- friendly label--the power to do that from a State--if you are going to preempt that, then we need to replace it with a credible, mandatory, consumer-friendly label at the Federal level. This bill fails the test in every major way, and that is why we should not strip States of their power. That is why we should reject this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to do so. A consumer's right to know about the food they put in their bodies is a powerful right, and we are taking it away if we pass this bill. Let us not do that. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern Andrew Dunn be given the full privilege of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my staff member Michael McKieran be given privileges of the floor until his paperwork is processed.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to continue the discussion about ``We the People,'' those beautiful, first three words in our Constitution. My colleague from New Mexico has laid out the case that our Nation is far off track from our founding principles, and what is more ``founding'' than the very heart of our Constitution? Our authors of the Constitution wrote these initial words in supersize font so decades or centuries later we would realize this is what our form of government is all about. It was not about a small group of highly powerful individuals charting the course of our country. It was not about a small group of highly privileged individuals charting the course for our country that our Nation was to be very different. It is symbolized by ``We the People'' or as summarized by President Lincoln many years later, ``a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' We are at a time now where this core principle is being profoundly challenged. Let's think for a moment about how Thomas Jefferson laid this out. He said we can claim to be a republic only to the degree that our decisions reflect the will of the people and that we can claim to be a republic only to the degree that the individuals within that government have an equal voice, so there is there principle. He referred to it as the ``mother principle,'' but the test of whether our government lived up to this vision of ``we the people'' would be whether our decisions reflect the will, and that would only be possible when the citizens each had an equal opportunity to participate. In fact, today that vision of equal opportunity to participate has been profoundly undermined. We had a court case 40 years ago, Buckley v. Valeo, that basically said money is speech and money can be spent without limits. We have the ongoing situation of the Court taking a look and saying corporations can be treated as if they were people. This gives a small group of individuals on the board of a corporation the assets of thousands or millions of Americans, and they can spend it at their will--never informing the people who own that money, the owners of the corporation, without ever informing them about the political positions they are taking. This is not free speech. This is stolen speech. If a group spends my money without telling me how they are spending my money, it is stolen speech. Yet that is what we have in Citizens United, a Supreme Court 5-to-4 decision that went way off track, a Supreme Court where the majority failed to understand what the heart of our democracy, our Republic, is all about. If we turn the clock back, there was a world in which we had the town square, and the town square was free. Anyone could stand and express their position on a policy issue or express their position on a candidate. It didn't cost a thing. Then we evolved into the electronic age. The electronic age town square is on television, it is on the radio, and it is on the Internet. It costs a lot of money to participate. Then there was a Supreme Court that said we could spend unlimited sums, which means the affluent--whether they are a multimillionaire or a billionaire or a corporation--the powerful can buy up the town square and deliberately exclude the voice of the people. They can exercise a megaphone that is equivalent to that of a stadium sound system that drowns out the voice of the people. That is what our Supreme Court has allowed to happen with our precious, our beautiful ``we the people'' Republic. This must not stand. We see a multiplication of the corrupting influences embodied by these decisions. When the Senator from New Mexico and I were up for reelection in 2014, the Koch brothers decided to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to essentially buy control of this Chamber, the U.S. Senate. They spent their money in unlimited fashion. They did so in Louisiana and in Arkansas. They did it in North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan, in Colorado, Alaska, and--yes, my home State-- Oregon. They won most of their cases. In most cases, their megaphone worked pretty well because that is what happens when you control the town square and exclude the people. Now we have a Chamber that responds to the every whim of the Koch brothers like a puppet on a string, from the very first bill that was ever considered in this Chamber after my colleagues across the aisle took control, until now, where for the first time in U.S. history--the first time in U.S. history--the Republican Party, the majority party, has gone on a job strike, failing to fulfill their responsibility under our Constitution, a Constitution that carefully laid out a check called advice and consent. That check on nominations was laid out by Jefferson and Hamilton. They said: We are going to place the responsibility for nominations with a single person because there is accountability, but we are concerned if that single person goes off track, if that single person hires cronies who are unqualified, hires people who don't have the appropriate background, then there has to be a body that says that individual is unfit--of ``unfit character'' is the term Hamilton used. That is our responsibility, to decide if someone is of fit or unfit character. That is it. It isn't to utilize advice and consent, to undermine the executive branch, to undermine the courts. Yet that is the way it is being wielded at this very moment in the Senate. Never have we seen such an abuse of the Constitution as to fail to hold any effort to fulfill responsibilities to determine if a nominee is of fit character, a nominee for the Supreme Court. This is a deliberate effort driven by the Koch brothers to pack the Supreme Court, to say we will go on a jobs strike for more than a year in the hopes that we can get a nominee to the far right who will support changing ``we the people'' to ``we the powerful,'' a nominee who will support changing ``we the people'' to ``we the privileged.'' That is the goal of the majority of this Chamber that has essentially been hired by the Koch brothers in the 2014 campaign. We must reclaim our Republic. That is why this ``we the people'' legislative package that is put together is so important. The first major principle of this package is disclosure and transparency. Virtually every Member of this body has said disclosure is the sunlight that disinfects the political system, but when it came time to actually vote for disclosure, the Koch brothers intervened and said: No, no. That will take away some of our power, of the ultrawealthy, if we have to disclose what we are doing. Again, just like a puppet on a string, Members switched their positions--deeply disappointing--supporting the web of dark money entities. We must change this. We must secure disclosure because it does help disinfect the political system. It may not completely cure the problem, but it is an important way to advance as a remedy. The package includes Senator King's Real Time Transparency Act to require all candidates for Federal office to report contributions of over $1,000 to the Federal Election Commission within 48 hours. That is a valuable addition to transparency. It includes Senator Leahy's Stop Super PAC-Candidate Coordination Act, which would end individual candidate super PACs and strengthen the rules, prohibiting coordination between outside entities that are super PACs and an individual's campaign because right now that coordination has grown to the extent it makes a mockery of the Supreme Court, drawing its distinction from third-party campaigns and an individual campaign. It includes the Federal Election Administration Act from my colleague from New Mexico that he was speaking to just moments ago. A second area the ``we the people'' package takes on is to take on lobbying and the revolving door. Senator Bennet has the Close the Revolving Door Act, which would put in effect a 6-year ban for congressional staff from lobbying and a lifetime ban for Members of Congress. If you have the honor and the privilege of serving in this Chamber, it shouldn't be that you do so with an eye to becoming a multimillion-dollar-per-year lobbyist when you resign. Yet that is all too common in the Halls of Congress, corrupting the responsibility we have to the American people. It also closes the lobbying registration loophole by requiring someone who has two or more lobbying contracts in a 2-year period to register as a lobbyist so it is more accurately understood when somebody is a paid advocate. It also includes Senator Baldwin's Financial Services Conflicts of Interest Act, which prohibits private sector employers from offering bonuses to employees for leaving to join the government. Picture this. A Wall Street firm says: Oh, you are going to serve in the Treasury Department, you are going to serve in the Securities and Exchange Commission, where you will have vast influence over the rules we live by. Great. We are going to give you a bonus. We will pay out that bonus at multiple thousands of dollars every month while you serve in the government. It is essentially a way for powerful entities to put a government employee on their payroll. We have another problem. People leave these Commissions. They leave these appointments with the executive branch. They return to industry, and they get a platinum paycheck in appreciation for what they did for the industry while they were here in the Halls of Congress. That, too, is extremely corrupting. There is much work to be done. In my lifetime, I never thought I would see the situation of the Supreme Court majority of five fail to understand the core principles on which our Nation was founded, grotesquely politicizing the Court, becoming an activist for the powerful rather than for the people. We must reclaim our core institutions. We must reclaim the ability to have balance of power between our three branches of government. We must reclaim transparency. We must reclaim our Nation with this beautiful, revolutionary concept of a nation of, by, and for the people rather than of, by, and for the powerful.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Marty Bergen, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, global warming is the most grave concern facing human civilization on this planet. We are the first generation to see the impact, and that impact is occurring in so many ways right before us. In my home State of Oregon, we are seeing the impact on our forests, which has resulted in a longer and drier fire season that burns more acreage and has more lightning strikes. We are seeing smaller snowpacks, and that is having an impact on our agriculture and trout streams. Everyone realizes that a smaller, warmer stream is not a pleasant place for trout to thrive. We are even seeing it in our Pacific Ocean oysters. The oysters are having trouble reproducing. They are having troubling reproducing because the ocean is more acidic. Because of the wave action, the oceans have absorbed a lot of the carbon dioxide, which has become carbonic acid, and the carbonic acid affects the formation of shells. These impacts are having a steady, detrimental impact, and it is occurring right before our eyes. It is affecting our fishing, farming, and forestry, and it is an assault on our resources. It is incumbent on all of us, this generation, to address these issues. What we know is that the impacts we have seen in Oregon are being echoed in States across the country and nations across the globe. If you go to the Northeast, you might hear folks talking about how the moose are dying because the ticks aren't being killed by winters that are cold enough. You might hear about the migration of lobsters going north to find colder water, and so on and so forth. We are seeing it everywhere. We know that in order to prevent the temperature of the planet from going up more than 2 degrees Centigrade, which is about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, we have to leave the vast bulk of our proven fossil fuel preserves in the ground. In other words, we have seen a 1-degree increase in temperature Centigrade, which is about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit--almost 2 degrees--and that has come from burning fossil fuels. If we keep burning them, it will have a devastating impact and will burn up the planet. We have to stop and quickly pivot off of fossil fuels. We have identified vast reserves of gas, oil, and coal across the planet, which is worth a lot of money, so of course the owners want to pull it out of the ground and sell it to be burned. Somehow we have to find the political will to take this on and leave 80 percent of those proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. That is the magnitude of the challenge, and we can do all kinds of things that will help. We can produce more renewable energy, we can produce more conservation, and we can proceed to find ways to pull carbon out of smokestacks and store it in the ground, or at least we can try. We need to approach it from every possible angle. I will keep coming to the floor, as I have before, to talk about keeping it in the ground. I especially wanted to emphasize that because when we simply talk about saving energy--like putting more insulation in a building, installing double-pane windows, or better mileage for cars--we aren't embracing the size of the challenge we are facing. It is an extraordinarily difficult challenge, and it is up to our generation to address it. When I come to the floor, sometimes I will be speaking about the math behind the temperature increase, such as how the amount of carbon dioxide and methane in the air is changing the atmosphere of our planet. Other times I will be talking about the calamities we are seeing on the ground, things I have already mentioned, such as the pine beetles that are thriving because the winter is not cold enough to kill the pine beetles and ticks or the coral reefs that are bleaching across our planet. I will also highlight emerging technologies because we have to realize that as much as we talk about the problem, we also have to talk about efforts to address the problem. I will pick out various ideas and efforts that are appearing in our newspapers and scientific literature, and that is what I will do today. The first innovation I will highlight today is about a strategy in Iceland to store carbon dioxide in the ground. This is one of the carbon capture strategies. This is not easy to do, and there are many different scientists working on different ways to attempt to capture carbon, but this is a new one, so I thought it merited discussion. Scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University invented a way to store carbon dioxide. It was invented here in America at Columbia University. They have found a way to store carbon dioxide by first dissolving the gas in water and then storing that water in rocks, where it reacts to form the mineral calcite. The calcite will then store the carbon dioxide as a solid deep underground. This project at Columbia University being experimented with in Iceland is called CarbFix. They pumped about 250 tons of carbon dioxide, which was mixed with water, into rocks in 2012. When they came back in 2014, they found that 95 percent of the carbon dioxide had become calcite. While there are some very specific requirements to make this particular technology work, such as the right kind of rock, the right amount of water, and the carbon dioxide being generated close to the right kind of rocks, it is an example of innovative technology that could prove useful as another tool in the fight against climate change. A second idea that is starting to expand is to recognize that we can put solar panels in a variety of places--not just on the ground and on our rooftops but also on bodies of water. This was reported in May 2016. This is referred to as floating solar. Here we have a lake, and we can see these floating solar panels. Floating solar panels have several potential advantages over land-based panels. One advantage is more efficient cooling, and a second is that they might create less of an eyesore for the public. They might prevent surface water from evaporating, which can be a side effect that would be useful. Japanese, Australian, and U.S. companies are currently pursuing this technology. There is a planned array--50,904 panels floating on the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan. It would generate 16,000 megawatt hours annually, or to translate that to something more understandable, they could power 5,000 homes for a year, so it is significant. In the United States, there is a winery in California, and it goes by the name of Far Niente. They have combined both land and water arrays, and that combination produces 477 kilowatts of electricity at its peak. It is expected to pay for itself by 2020, or maybe sooner, so it has a high rate of return. These floating panels provide an opportunity for cheaper, out- of-the-way energy generation that has the potential to protect reservoirs from evaporation and water loss. We must continue to invest and encourage innovative technologies-- floating solar panels are one example--to make renewable energy adaptable to all environments, usable all over the world. I thought I would highlight a third technology. One of the biggest uses of fossil fuel is vehicles. Vehicles burn gasoline and diesel. Oftentimes when the vehicle finally gets up to speed, it suddenly has to brake for a red light. Let's say you are traveling at 35 miles per hour on an urban road and you suddenly stop. You are wasting enormous amounts of energy. All of the momentum with that mass--that car or truck--traveling down the road is then converted primarily into heat through your brakes. That heat is lost, and it is not recaptured. Along the way, as different companies started exploring electric cars, they said: We already have electric motors. We already have a battery sizable enough to accommodate quite a bit of electricity. Why don't we try to capture that energy from the braking process and put it back in the battery? What they do is they utilize magnets, and as the magnets go through a field, that field creates resistance, it produces a current, and that current--those electrons are stored in the battery. This is called regenerative braking, and we have seen this on a variety of electric cars. It just makes sense, since they already have an electric drive and they have the batteries to accommodate it. We have seen a lot of interest in electric cars. Recently, Tesla put out an invitation for people to put down $1,000 and get in line to buy their Model 3. They had the Roadster, they had the Model S, and now the Model 3. The Model 3 will be cost competitive with the Chevy Volt. It is going to be much cheaper than their previous cars. Their waiting list has already grown beyond 400,000 people--an enormous, unprecedented response. Tesla cars, like the Volt and other electric cars, use regenerative braking, but what I wanted to highlight today is an effort to apply this in new ways. UPS, the United Parcel Service, has a fleet of delivery trucks and they have invested in hybrid electric vehicles and they have used regenerative braking. Last October, they announced the deployment of 18 new delivery vehicles that use regenerative braking to reach pretty much close to a zero-emissions status. They have to take into account the source of the initial electrons that are used to charge the trucks. In their announcement, they estimated those 18 delivery trucks, by using clean technologies, would save 1.1 million gallons of diesel fuel over 20 years. When we start talking about anything that includes the word ``million,'' such as 1 million gallons, that is a lot of savings from just 18 delivery trucks. Even more recently, we have an article in which Mack Trucks is developing the ability to use regenerative braking on garbage trucks. They have developed a new electric hybrid garbage truck. It incorporates a powertrain technology developed by Wrightspeed. Wrightspeed powertrains use electric motors to drive the wheels of the trucks, and the motors are powered by batteries on board the trucks, which are then recharged from the regenerative braking when the garbage truck comes to a stop. The point is, when you have a very heavy truck that accelerates and stops often, it wastes a vast amount of energy, and now they are working to design an effective drive train to recapture that energy. The founder of Wrightspeed, Ian Wright, says this new technology can power these vehicles for a substantial distance, and very heavy vehicles--66,000 pounds--it can power them up pretty steep hills. A 40- percent grade is a very steep hill. The main point is, it is capturing that energy that would otherwise be lost every time they stop. If you have watched a garbage truck go down the street, it stops, the men and women on board jump off, pick up the garbage cans, dump them into the truck, and then they accelerate and four houses later they are stopping again. So this is a very appropriate application. I wonder how much energy would be saved if every car in America had regenerative braking. Almost every car is used in an urban setting where there is lots and lots of braking. How much would be saved if our light pickups had regenerative braking? How much energy would be saved if every delivery van that is heavy and starts up and stops many times--how much would be saved? At some other point, I want to try to put together a calculation of that because it could be a substantial contributor. Each of these technologies I have mentioned today--a new strategy on storing carbon dioxide underground, a new way of deploying solar panels through floating solar panels, an expansion of the use of regenerative braking--represent modest efforts in this effort to take on this large challenge of global warming. Added together, they can make a great difference and other technologies to come will make a great difference. It is our challenge. It is our generation's responsibility to pivot quickly off of fossil fuels, and these strategies can help. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to ask a question of my colleague from Connecticut. Earlier I came to the floor and I was reflecting on the connection between Connecticut and Oregon in terms of the shooting in Sandy Hook and the shooting we had last year at Umpqua Community College, the 10 individuals who were killed at Umpqua Community College. But as I was pondering during the day, my head was going further back in time to 1998 when I was running for my first race for State legislature. Our primary was held May 19 of that year, and I was immersed in this primary. I was running a race against two former State representatives and the head of the water district, and I was the individual who had never run for office and never held office, and I assumed I would lose. But on May 19 when the results came in, I had won the primary. Two days later, on May 21, a young man who had been expelled from his school--his name was Kip Kinkel--Thurston High School in Springfield, OR, took the guns from his house. He murdered his parents. He proceeded to go to Thurston High School. He had with him a 9mm Glock. He had a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle, he had a .22-caliber Mark II pistol, and he had 1,127 rounds of ammunition. His goal was to shoot as many students, to kill as many students as he could. He shot a lot of students. Two died and twenty-five were wounded. As he exhausted the ammunition in his semiautomatic rifle, he had to reload the magazine, and as he did that, he was tackled by one student who was already wounded, six others piled on, and the carnage ended. But he had only begun to tap into the 1,127 rounds of ammunition he was carrying. Thank goodness that individual, that student, Jacob Ryker, succeeded in stopping him when he was reloading that rifle. The year went on. November was the general election. I was elected to the Oregon House. The Oregon House came into session in January of 1999, and we said: It is time to fix the background check system we have in our State. It is time to close the gun show loophole. What makes no sense is to have this background check system when you go to a gun store and then no background check system when you go to a gun show. And we knew that many people who had felony backgrounds were seeking to acquire guns. We knew that many people who were deeply mentally disturbed were seeking weapons. They were being turned away at the gun store, and they were going to the gun show or they were going to the classifieds. So we tried to pass that bill to close that background loophole, the gun show loophole, and we failed. We could not muster the majority, just as this body has not been able to muster the majority to address the complete illogic of this situation. Then the citizens of Oregon took this into their own hands. They petitioned for an initiative. They put it on the ballot, and the citizens of Oregon voted overwhelmingly--by a huge margin--they voted overwhelmingly to close the gun show loophole. But it would be many years later--not until 2015--that the legislature would take the additional step of closing the classified ads loophole, or the Craig's List loophole, as it is often called. So in Oregon, if you go to a gun store or a gun show or to a Craig's List listing, you have to go through a background check. But someone who is turned away in Oregon can go to any of a number of States across our country, bypass that background check, buy those guns, and come back to our home State. It makes no sense to have a national system without national effectiveness. And I so much appreciate my colleagues being here tonight to talk about this, to talk about the fact that those who are on a terrorist list should be on a list to deny guns, and that those who are denied guns--to have it effectively, you have to have a background check system. My State is a State that loves guns. We are a State with incredible wilderness. People love to hunt. They love to target practice. They love to just shoot guns. And they love the Second Amendment and nature. But they voted for the background check system because they knew it didn't make sense to have guns in the hands of felons or deeply disturbed individuals because of the carnage that comes from that. There is another story I wanted to share that is related to 1998. This story fast-forwards from the primary election in May to the general election in October, November. So it was as we were approaching that first Tuesday in November, the general election, which would be held November 3. The day was October 6, so roughly a month away--a month before--a young man named Matthew Wayne Shepard was offered a ride home by two other young men, Eric McKinney and Russell Henderson. They didn't give him a ride home. They took him out to a very rural area near Laramie, WY. They tied him to a fence because he was gay. They robbed him, they pistol-whipped him, they tortured him, and they left him there to die. It was 18 hours later that a bicyclist riding past saw this young man still tied to a fence. The bicyclist thought that Matthew Wayne Shepard was a scarecrow but went to investigate, realized it was a young man, and proceeded to get help. Matthew was extremely damaged. His skull was fractured, his brain stem absolutely inflamed. He never regained consciousness. He died six days later. It was a hate crime that rocked the Nation. It was a hate crime that shocked the conscience. These crimes were happening with some regularity--these hate crimes against our LGBT community--but this one caught the attention of the Nation, and a bill was crafted, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. That bill was championed by my predecessor in office, Gordon Smith, but it didn't get passed until I came to the Senate in 2009--not because I came but because it took that long to build the support on the foundation that others had laid in the years before. So we passed that hate crimes act, but the hate crimes act doesn't stop the discrimination against the LGBT community. It doesn't stop the promotion of hate. I am going to be submitting a resolution, and I thought I would read it tonight. It is a resolution that Senator Mark Kirk has agreed to cosponsor, that Senator Baldwin has agreed to cosponsor, that Senator Cory Booker has agreed to cosponsor, and I hope many others will join us in this. It says the following: (1) Equal treatment and protection under the law is one of the most cherished constitutional principles of the United States of America. (2) Laws in many parts of the country still fail to explicitly prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender . . . individuals. The failure to actively oppose and prohibit discrimination leaves our LGBT individuals vulnerable based on who they are or whom they love; vulnerable to being evicted from their homes; vulnerable to being denied credit or other financial services; vulnerable to being refused basic services in public places, such as restaurants or shops, or terminated from employment or otherwise discriminated against in employment. (4) To allow discrimination to persist is incompatible with the founding principles of this country. (5) Failure to ensure that all people of the United States are treated equally allows a culture of hate against some people in the United States to fester. (6) This hate culture includes continuing physical assaults and murders committed against LGBT individuals, and particularly against transgender individuals, in the United States. (7) The events that transpired on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, were a horrifying and tragic act of hate and terror that took the lives of 49 innocent individuals and injured 53 more. The victims were targeted because of who they were, who they loved, or who they associated with. (b) It is the sense of Congress that-- (1) it is time to end discrimination against LGBT individuals and stand against the culture of hatred and prejudice that such discrimination allows; (2) it is incumbent on policymakers to ensure that LGBT individuals benefit from the full protection of the civil rights laws of the Nation; and (3) Congress commits to take every action necessary to make certain that all people in the United States are treated and protected equally under the law. That is the philosophy embedded in our Constitution--equal treatment and equal opportunity. It is the spirit of anti-discrimination that is our higher self that we should treat each individual with respect, each individual with dignity. It is the principle of opportunity for all that cannot take place when discrimination interferes. It is the spirit that we have carried along a long journey--a journey in which we have reached out to embrace individuals who were excluded. Our original practices in this Nation operated under the vision of full opportunity for all, but it was a flawed vision. It was a vision that didn't include Native Americans. It was a vision that at that time didn't include individuals who were minorities. It was a vision that at that time didn't include women. But over time we have reached out and started to make that incredible picture portrayed in our founding documents and in the hearts of our Founders a reality. We have done so in step by step along an arc. It was Martin Luther King who said that ``the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.'' But that bending takes place because ordinary mortals say they are determined to make it happen. They apply themselves to that effort, whether in their everyday life with the individuals they encounter and work with and live with and worship with and recreate with or in the lives of legislators who work within their institutions to say: We are changing hearts, but let's change our laws as well. We have the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a foundation, a milestone, an anchor, a foundation of laws against discrimination, but when you read the 1964 act, you don't see any protections for our LGBT community. Now many of us have put forward a law called the Equality Act that would remedy that, that would use the foundation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to extend full equality for the LGBT community. It is unbelievable that today in America you can get married to someone you love in the morning and announce it in the afternoon and be fired from your job--legally fired from your job or evicted from your apartment before nightfall because your marriage demonstrates that you are gay or lesbian or transgender or bisexual. Some States have remedied that, but we haven't done it as a nation. And when you have a legal structure that embraces discrimination, that fosters a culture of discrimination among some. Let's end that. Let's end that structure of law. Let's pass the Equality Act. I am sure it will be sometime before they call up the act in hearing in committee. That shouldn't be the case on something so profound, so important. It should have had a hearing right after it was introduced, and we will keep pushing for that hearing. We hope it can get to the floor, but in the meantime, let's stand behind a sense-of-the-Senate that it is way past time for us to address this issue of discrimination that fosters this culture of hatred. We saw that culture in full demonstration the night of October 6, 1998, when Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence, brutally assaulted, tortured, and left to die. We saw that culture of hatred in Orlando, FL, with the deaths of so many beautiful young people on that tragic night. So we have before us two challenges. Let's address simple measures that can make a difference--that terrorists shouldn't have access to guns and that we should have a background check system that actually works, so gun shows and classified ads are treated the same as a purchase at a gun shop. Let's decrease the size of the magazines. When Kip Kinkel took 1,127 rounds of ammunition and 3 guns to his school to kill as many of his schoolmates as he could, he was stopped because he ran out of ammunition and had to reload, and those 2 seconds gave a fellow student, Jacob Ryker, an opportunity to tackle him. He probably saved dozens of lives that day. We have the challenge before us of these simple improvements in our background check system, in our terrorist list, and in our gun magazines, but we also need to end the discrimination that is embedded in the law that treats millions of Americans as second- class citizens and can foster among some, unfortunately, and contribute to a culture of hatred against those individuals. So let's do both. Tonight I am so honored to be here with my colleagues sharing in this joint effort to say enough is enough. Let's not hide from these issues. Let's have a vote on these issues. Let's be accountable to our constituents on these issues. That will not happen if my colleague from Connecticut cannot get a vote on the proposal he is putting forward. I wish this room right now had every desk filled. The beautiful speeches my colleagues have been giving, the reflections, the insight, the wisdom, the earnestness, the grief. But the room is not full. We need our colleagues in the majority to join us in this conversation that affects the lives of so many people in America. What happened in Orlando, FL, not only killed 49 individuals, but it shattered their families, it shattered the community, and it shattered and reverberated throughout this Nation. And this--perhaps not to the same degree, but this type of violence goes on and on and on. I believe my colleague from Connecticut has said that a major event of this nature, of multiple deaths, occurs every month. If you look at the events of person-on-person violence, if you look at what happens in our cities across this country, our rural areas across this country, every day there are acts of violence. Every day there are acts of hate crimes against our LGBT community. So let's do both of these. We ask and we hope that citizens across the country will weigh in with those Senators who may not be here tonight and may not have been here this afternoon and may not have been here when this conversation started over 12 hours ago; that they might hear at least a reverberation, that the thoughts issued here reverberate back through the country and come back in those phone calls and in those letters to our colleagues' offices; that they might be aware and they might read the stories so many citizens could tell of an incident that might have been averted if we had a better system of laws on background checks and if we got rid of the discrimination embedded in our laws in this country. So I ask my colleague from Connecticut, is it your hope, is it your aspiration that this body will indeed embrace and have a full dialogue--not just one side of the aisle but on both sides of the aisle--and that will lead to votes on these very significant proposals so that we can act to make America a better place?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I begin by noting that the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Oregon have a common thread that runs between our two States. That common thread that runs between Connecticut and Oregon is that our two States have been the sites of two very deadly school shootings. At Sandy Hook in Connecticut, it was in mid-December 2012 when a madman armed for a war zone stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School and began a murderous rampage--a rampage that ended with the death of 6 school staff and 20 little boys and girls. Not even 3 years later, a nightmare came to Roseburg, OR. Roseburg is a quiet little town in southern Oregon. It is the town where I spent part of my childhood. It is a town where I went to first grade. It is a town where I learned to swim in the Umpqua River. As I said last October, if this can happen in Roseburg, it can happen anywhere. But happen in Roseburg it did. It was October 1, 2015. It was a beautiful autumn morning in the small town. There on the college campus we heard the sound of gunfire. A disturbed individual charged into a classroom at Umpqua Community College with six guns, and within the space of just a couple of minutes, he took nine lives, including his own. One of the lives he took was a cousin of mine, Rebecka Ann Carnes. Eighteen years old, she had just graduated from South Umpqua High School the previous June. She was an avid hunter. She was a lover of four-wheeling. In the picture she posted online for graduation, she was holding her graduation cap, which said on it: ``And so the adventure begins.'' She was ready for the adventure of adulthood. She was ready for the adventure of going off to college. She was ready to explore the world. She was excited. She was a beautiful spirit. But her adventure ended so shortly after graduating from high school, before she could really get started on the journey of the balance of life. Our hearts break for Sandy Hook, our hearts break for Roseburg, and our hearts break for all those who are afflicted day after day after day all across this country as victims of gun violence. Now our hearts break for Orlando, the latest name to be added to a list that no town or city ever wants to join. In that occasion, 49 innocent were lives taken--49 young Americans full of hope and promise--and 49 individuals, each with their own story, were cut down simply because of who they are, whom they loved, or whom they associated with. A hate-filled individual targeted a place that was a sanctuary for the LGBT community. He turned this place of solidarity, togetherness, and love into a place of fear, divisiveness, hatred, and bloodshed. This unthinkable carnage leaves Congress--all of us here, all of us here in the Senate--with a choice. It is a simple choice. We have two basic options. One option is to take some action that might diminish the odds of the next Sandy Hook or the next Umpqua or the next Orlando or the next assault--the type of assault that takes place day in and day out across this Nation. The second option is to do nothing. That is where we are. Option one is take some action--take some reasonable action. There is no perfect answer. But there are substantial things that could make a difference. It will not make a difference in every case; it will make a difference in some cases. Isn't that the case with every law we consider? It will make a difference, at least part of the time, to avert a tragedy. I come from a gun State. I come from the beautiful State of Oregon, the best State in the United States of America, where people love to hunt. They love to target practice. They believe powerfully in the individual rights of the Second Amendment. But Oregon is also a State where the citizens believe that we should not put guns into the hands of felons or those who are deeply mentally disturbed. It was in the year 2000 that Measure 5 was put on the ballot as a citizen initiative--and it passed overwhelmingly in the State of Oregon--to expand background checks to gun shows. The citizens did that in an initiative at the ballot. It is a State where our legislature took action just last year in Senate bill 941, the Oregon Firearms Safety Act, to close the Craigslist loophole. Why does this make so much sense? If you keep a terrorist from buying a gun at a gun shop, shouldn't you also keep that terrorist from buying a gun at a gun show? Shouldn't you also keep that terrorist from buying a gun out of the classifieds or the online classifieds, the Craigslist classifieds? Yes, of course. Each piece of this makes sense to keep guns out of the hands of felons or those who are deeply mentally disturbed. In Oregon, folks believe that people should buy their guns legally with a background check and that process shouldn't be averted through straw purchasers subverting the law by putting a different name than the name of the person who is actually acquiring the weapon. Hunters and target shooters in Oregon know you don't need a military- grade, super-sized magazine to go hunting, and smaller magazine sizes may give an opportunity to interrupt a killer during his shooting spree. When you hunt for ducks, you are allowed three shells in the gun--one in the chamber and two in the magazine. My question for the Senator from Connecticut is this: When will Congress finally say enough is enough? How many lives have to be lost in one shooting for Congress to act? When will Congress join with responsible gun owners across this country and support commonsense steps to prevent horrific tragedies? When will we close the terrorist gun loophole? When will we close the gun show loophole? When will we close the Craigslist loophole? As we have seen in Sandy Hook and as we have seen in Roseburg, and now as we have seen with Orlando, all too much tragedy has taken place.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Giselle Naranjo-Cruz be granted privileges of the floor today.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Leahy. The second mercury provision builds upon the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008, expanding the export ban currently in effect for elemental mercury to certain mercury compounds previously identified by EPA or other regulatory bodies as capable of being traded to produce elemental mercury in commercial quantities and thereby undermine the existing export ban. The mercury compound export ban would go into effect in 2020, providing EPA and companies ample preparation time. An exemption is provided to allow the landfilling of these compounds in Canada, a member country to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, with which we have a bilateral arrangement to allow these cross-border transfers. The export is only authorized for landfilling; no form of mercury or mercury compound recovery, reuse, or direct use is permitted. EPA must evaluate whether such exports should continue within 5 years, in part based upon available domestic disposal options, and report to Congress on this evaluation so we may revise the law as needed. I have been happy to partner with Senator Whitehouse and Senator Leahy on these issues.

Mr. MERKLEY. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today, while the Nation has been focused on the final six primaries across the Nation, the final six State primaries across the Nation, something extraordinary is unfolding here on the floor of the Senate. The Senate is taking the final congressional act to send the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act to the President's desk. This is landmark legislation that honors the legacy of our dear colleague Frank Lautenberg. This is landmark legislation that will make a real difference for the health and safety of every American. This is the first significant environmental legislation to be enacted by this Chamber in 25 years. This bill--this extraordinary bill--brought Democrats and Republicans together to take action to protect public health. I have been honored to be a part of this coalition as we have worked toward a final bill for over a year. It hasn't been easy, but things worth doing are rarely easy. A huge thank-you to Senators Udall and Vitter, who cosponsored this bill, lead the way; Senators Boxer and Inhofe, the chair and ranking member of the Environment Committee; and Senators Markey, Whitehouse, and Booker for their leadership and contributions throughout this entire process. Also, a special thank-you to the staff who worked day and night. I know I received calls from my staff member Adrian Deveny at a variety of hours on a variety of weekends as he worked with other staff members to work out, iron out the challenges that remained, so a special thank- you to Adrian Deveny. Just a short time ago, I had the chance to speak to Bonnie Lautenberg, Frank Lautenberg's wife. She would have loved to have been here when we took this vote, but she is going to be down in the Capitol next week with children and grandchildren. I hope to get a chance to really thank her in person for her husband's leadership but also for her leadership, her advocacy that we reached this final moment. She said to me: It appears it takes a village to pass a bill. Well, it does. This village was a bipartisan village. This was a bicameral village. It has reached a successful conclusion. In the most powerful Nation on Earth, we should not be powerless to protect our citizens from toxic chemicals in everyday products. Today marks a sea shift in which we finally begin to change that. For too long, we have been unable to protect our citizens from toxic chemicals that hurt pregnant women and young children, chemicals that hurt our children's development, chemicals that cause cancer. The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act will tremendously improve how we regulate toxic chemicals in the United States--those that are already in products and should no longer be used and those new chemicals that are invented that should be thoroughly examined before they end up in products--and make sure that toxic chemicals don't find their way into our classrooms, into our bedrooms, into our homes, into our workplaces. Now the Environmental Protection Agency will have the tools and resources needed to evaluate the dangerous chemicals and to eliminate any unsafe uses. My introduction to this issue began with a bill in the Oregon State Legislature about the cancer-causing flame retardants that are in our carpets and our couches and the foam in our furniture that should not be there. This bill gives us the ability to review that and to get rid of those toxic chemicals. It was enormously disturbing to me to find out that our little babies crawling on the carpet, their noses 1 inch off the ground, were breathing in dust from the carpet that included these cancer-causing flame retardants. It should never have happened, but we did not have the type of review process that protects Americans. Now we will. So, together, a bipartisan team has run a marathon, and today we cross the finish line. In short order, this bill will be sitting in the Oval Office, on the President's desk, and he will be putting ink to paper and creating this new and powerful tool for protecting the health of American citizens. That is an enormous accomplishment. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Boxer, the printing cost of the statement of additional views with respect to H.R. 2576, TSCA, will exceed the two-page rule and cost $2,111.20. I ask unanimous consent that the Boxer statement of additional views be printed in the Record.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I would be honored to yield for your unanimous consent proposal.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, in February of 2015, on Valentine's Day, a 100-car Canadian National Railway train hauling crude oil and petroleum distillates derailed in Ontario, Canada. The blaze burned for days. Two days later, a 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, WV, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation. The blaze burned for weeks. In November of last year, a dozen cars loaded with crude oil derailed from a Canadian Pacific Railway train, causing the evacuation of dozens of homes near Watertown, WI. Let's take a look at this chart. In all, there have been 32 crashes involving oil trains since 2013. So in less than 4 years, there have been 32 crashes. I just highlighted a few of them. We see a massive increase of crude oil transported by rail. Therefore, there is a corresponding concern because of the explosive nature of this product and the derailments resulting in explosions and infernos. Senator Wyden and I have been calling for reform. We are going to keep pressing. We need better information for first responders on the scheduling of these trains. We need better knowledge of where the foam that can be used to respond is stored. We need more foam stored in more places. We need faster implementation of the brake standards and faster implementation of the speed standards and faster implementation of the railcar tanker standards. But we have to understand what happened in every one of these wrecks. Let's take the same diligence to this that we take to aviation. We study every plane crash to understand what went wrong so we can take these lessons and diminish the odds of it happening again. The result is, we have incredibly safe aviation. Shouldn't we have the same standards when it applies to transportation across America with trains full of explosive oil running through the middle of our towns, not just in Oregon but all across this country? Haven't we learned in crash after crash after crash that these are not one-time isolated incidents, but something that happens with considerable regularity? Can't we do more? Yes, we can. Yesterday, when I talked to the president of Union Pacific, I told him we were going to call for a moratorium, and Senator Wyden and Governor Brown and Representatives Blumenauer and Bonamici have joined in this effort. He heard our voice. He understands the challenge to these communities and the concerns that until the mess is cleaned up and until we understand and address the fundamental problems that contributed to this crash, no more oil should roll through the Columbia Gorge. That is what we have called for. That is what we are going to keep persisting in. Let's stop this process of having oil train crash after oil train crash, explosion after explosion, inferno after inferno. The damage has gone up dramatically as the transportation of this oil has gone up dramatically. Incidents resulted in $30 million in damage last year, up from one-fourth of that the previous year. So let's act. Let's act aggressively. Let's act quickly. Senator Wyden's act would take us a powerful stride in the right direction. Let's not look to our citizens and towns with rail tracks across this country and simply shrug our shoulders. Instead, let's say we know we have a major problem and we are going to be diligent and aggressive in solving it.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise with my friend and colleague Senator Wyden to draw attention to the dangerous oil train derailment that occurred in Oregon last Friday and the urgency to protect communities around our Nation with stronger safety regulations for these rolling explosion hazards. The folks in the Columbia Gorge have experienced a proliferation of trains carrying coal and carrying oil. They have been concerned about the length of the trains and how these trains roll through, dividing their communities and the challenges they have. There is one concern they have above everything else; that is, that a train full of explosive Bakken crude would derail in their community. That happened last Friday. It is the very scenario communities have dreaded. This oil train was traveling through the Cascade Mountains along the Columbia Gorge on its way to Tacoma, WA, with 97 cars loaded with flammable, explosive Bakken crude. Sixteen tank cars went off the tracks. One car ruptured, and when it ruptured, it spewed oil. The oil created an inferno, and the inferno started to heat up the adjacent cars. The adjacent cars had pressure relief valves that as they got hot, started spewing oil out of these pressure relief valves, spreading the fire to three cars. This happened near the town of Mosier, OR, which is just 70 miles east of Portland. We were fortunate. We thank our lucky stars no one was injured in the incident, but it could have been different, as my colleague from Oregon pointed out. The proximity of Mosier resulted in an evacuation of over 100 nearby residents and the nearby grade school with over 200 children. An air quality warning occurred for vulnerable residents from the thick plumes of black smoke. We were fortunate, and we are happy that no human life was taken and no injury occurred. Let's take a look at what that inferno looked like in this photo. We can see the massive plume of burning Bakken crude rising into the air. We see here the fire in the adjacent cars. We see the proximity to the Columbia River. There could have been a massive release of oil into the Columbia River as well. Again, we were fortunate in this regard. The Columbia Gorge is a very special place, but as its narrow channel through the Cascade Mountain occurs, these trains run through the middle of virtually every community along the way. They represent a rolling time bomb. Citizens are right to have grave concerns. I don't think the citizens along the Columbia Gorge are mollified by thinking, well, it could have been worse; we were fortunate this time. Instead, what the citizens of Mosier are thinking and citizens in communities all along the gorge are thinking is, our concerns about these rolling explosion hazards are confirmed, and we need to take serious measures so that one of these trains does not blow up in our community in the future. Now there are inspections that take place. The track was reportedly inspected on May 31. A track detector vehicle used laser and other technology to inspect the track within the last 30 days. But what happened? Why did this occur along this stretch of track? It is reported that a bolt or multiple bolts sheared. Why did they shear? Was it temperature differentials between day and night in our unusually warm spring? Was it because of the weight of these trains rolling through? Was it the volume of the traffic? Was it the speed they were traveling? We have to understand every detail so that we respond and make sure this does not happen again. That is why it is so disturbing that the National Transportation Safety Board declined to investigate. In its mission, the NTSB is supposed to investigate accidents that result in the ``release of hazardous materials''--well, that certainly was the case--and that ``involve problems of a recurring nature''. There have been recurring derailments that involve significant property damage. There was significant damage here. This derailment sent oil into Mosier's wastewater treatment plant. The plant has been closed down, a major challenge for the city to cope with. There has even been a pause in the drinking water because of the modest oil sheen in the river. It was uncertain where it was coming from and whether it would get into the intake for the drinking water. So let's hereafter not have a situation where there is a significant crash and we don't have the investigation to learn everything about it so we can apply those lessons into the future. Senator Wyden has been leading the charge to make sure that we understand accidents, that we have the right set of precautions in place: braking standards on the brakes and speed standards on the tracks and upgraded railroad tanker cars that are far less likely to rupture. I thank him for his leadership on this. I am a full-square partner in this effort. The tank car that ruptured was not one that met the new standards. It was what was referred to by the president of Union Pacific as kind of a ``medium safety''--not the worst car, not the oldest car. It did have some upgrades on it but certainly not the new cars that we have been setting and aspiring to have; that is, a stronger car with more protections, minimizing the chance of a rupture. This is an issue we must take on seriously and urgently. Let's recognize that it is one accident after another. In July 2013, a runaway Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train spilled oil and caught fire inside the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed. Thirty buildings burned in the town center. In December of that year, a fire engulfed tank cars loaded with oil on a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train after a collision about a mile from Casselton, ND. Two thousand residents were evacuated as emergency responders struggled with the intense fire. In January 2014, a 122-car Canadian National Railway train derailed in New Brunswick, Canada. Three cars containing propane and one car containing crude from western Canada exploded after the derailment, creating intense fires that burned for days. In April of that year, 15 cars of a crude oil train derailed in Lynchburg, VA, near a railside eatery and a pedestrian waterfront, sending flames and black smoke into the air. Thirty thousand gallons of oil spilled into the James River. The list goes on. In February of 2015----

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern Elise Brown be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.