Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, today I rise to discuss the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. This is landmark legislation that will honor the legacy of our dear colleague Frank Lautenberg. I had the privilege to serve with Frank for a number of years and know how passionately he wanted to undertake this challenge of the toxic substances that are in our everyday products, our household products, that are causing cancer and causing other diseases because we have completely failed to regulate them. I so much appreciate that Frank Lautenberg took on this cause, pushed it forward, and presented it in a bipartisan fashion--a fashion that continued following his death. In this Congress, this bill is the equivalent of a unicorn, as the phrase goes, a bipartisan, bicameral compromise that majorly reforms a badly broken law. It has brought Democrats and Republicans together to take action to protect public health. I felt honored and privileged to be a part of this coalition that has worked toward a final bill for over a year. This process has not been easy, but things that are worth doing rarely are easy. I think it is important to recognize some of the champions in this process. Of course I recognize Frank Lautenberg and all he did to put this in motion. Following his death, Senators Tom Udall and David Vitter deserve a tremendous amount of credit for having the bold vision to come together and to carry the torch of bipartisan compromise after his passing. Their persistence and their dedication in this effort through thick and thin have been remarkable. Chairman Inhofe also deserves a great deal of credit for his work to shepherd this bill through the Environment and Public Works Committee. Hopefully, we will get it through the floor of the Senate. Certainly the result of the bicameral negotiations that have been completed--the bill has now gone through the House and is coming back over here. I commend Ranking Member Barbara Boxer for her leadership and her determination to make this the strongest bill it could possibly be. Her determination to make sure of the ability of States to act was not compromised, knowing that her State, California, has been a major leader--one of the few States that really have gone after toxic chemicals and set an example for the country. Her tenacity unquestionably has led to a stronger bill. Senator Markey, as the subcommittee ranking member, brought enormous depth of knowledge and leadership to this process and was instrumental in the negotiations. Finally, I especially want to thank Senators Whitehouse and Booker, who teamed up with me to push for important changes before the markup in committee and who have been tremendous partners through the process. There are many others, of course, in the Senate and in the House, on the Republican side and the Democratic side, who have played a role in getting this bill to where it is now--a few small steps from being signed into law. I would like to specifically thank the Environmental Defense Fund. On any project like this, you need forces inside the building, but you also need forces outside the building marshaling expertise, creating a conversation among grassroots proponents, and bringing their expertise and their insights to bear. Their lead senior scientist, Richard Denison, played an instrumental role in the preparation of this bill. Many Americans don't know that the chemicals in their household products are completely unregulated. It has been 40 years since the last major reform to our Federal chemical laws took place. There has been absolutely no action of any kind since 1991, when there was a failed effort to regulate asbestos, which, again, citizens believe must surely be regulated given its incredible impact on the public health of our Nation. But for 40 years the law has been badly broken, and for 40 years generations of Americans have been exposed to unsafe chemicals and the Federal Government has been powerless to act. That is four decades too long. The most powerful Nation on the Earth should not be powerless to regulate toxic chemicals in our everyday products. Now we are on the cusp of passing a historic bill that will change all of that. How bad is this problem? Last year I partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund and with researchers at Oregon State University to find out just that. The Oregon State University researchers developed a small silicone wristband that picks up toxic chemicals that each of us is exposed to every day, in the air and water around us, in our furniture, and in our household products. Twenty-five participants wore one of these silicone wristbands for a week, and then the wristbands were taken to a laboratory to analyze what the individual had been exposed to. The results were sobering. Each participant had been exposed to at least 10 potentially dangerous chemicals. Beth Slovic, a reporter for Willamette Week who wore one of the wristbands, described scouring labels in her household after her results came back, trying to find out which products were the culprits so she could get rid of them, but largely she couldn't find the source. She wrote: Even if I had [found the source], I wouldn't have been safe from worry. You can try to avoid certain synthetic chemicals in your own home, but try avoiding them at work or on the bus. Products with industrial chemicals, such as those sprinkled in carpets and cushions supposedly to keep them from bursting into flames, break down and are in our dust. As the information packet for the [wristband] experiment explained, ``You can't shop your way out of the problem.'' Beth mentioned the issue of industrial chemicals that are put into our carpets, supposedly to keep them from bursting into flames. There is quite a story behind these flame retardants in our carpets, in our upholstery, in our foam cushions, and it is not a story that will make any of us feel good. It will make all of us feel we need to have this bill passed, however. Here is the challenge: These flame retardants are cancer-causing. The chemical industry got a bill passed requiring them to be put into household products such as foam, upholstery, and carpets. Imagine that you are a new mother or a new father and your little baby is down there on the carpet, their nose 1 inch from the floor, and then you read about the fact that carpet is permeated with cancer- causing chemicals, that those chemicals cling to the dust that comes from the carpet as it is worn out, walked on and so forth, and that virtually every child gets exposed in this fashion, increasing their risk of cancer. Wouldn't you as a mother or father say: That is outrageous. Why doesn't Congress do something about that? We are now poised to do something about that, to regulate cancer- causing toxic chemicals in our household products. It is way past time, but we have to seize this moment and make it happen. Right now Americans are powerless to protect themselves from chemicals that hurt pregnant women, chemicals that hurt young children, chemicals that can hurt their child's development, and chemicals that could cause cancer. Since TSCA passed in 1976, over 4 million babies have been born with birth defects and 15 million babies have been born preterm. Since 1976, 21 million people in the United States have died of cancer. And just since the Fifth Circuit case that struck down the Environmental Protection Agency's ban on asbestos in 1991, about 375,000 Americans have died from mesothelioma, a disease directly linked to asbestos exposure. Clearly we need to change our law and replace a dysfunctional law with one that will work. This bill is set up in a fashion that it will take on the most serious, high-risk products that are already in our environment--the high-risk molecules--and have a thorough process for studying them and then acting appropriately in the cases where citizens are exposed to those products. This bill provides a process for looking at future chemicals before they are put into our products, before they cause health problems for Americans, before they cause disease, before they cause cancer, before they cause birth defects, and before they are attached to dust that gets into the lungs of our little babies crawling on carpets. That would be a tremendous improvement. We will make sure everyday products are safe before they are in our classrooms, before they are in our workplaces, and before they are in our homes. Because of this bill, the EPA will have the tools and resources needed to evaluate all of the dangerous chemicals that are already in the market, and they will have the muscle to eliminate unsafe uses. There is nothing more important than helping the health and well-being of Americans now and for generations to come. One key element of this dialogue has been on whether it compromises the ability of States to act when they detect chemicals they are concerned about. This bill has been specifically constructed to make sure States have that power. Any law written before April 22 is grandfathered. Certainly any bill that was written to control lead pipes in homes, that was written in the past, is grandfathered. You don't have to worry about any sort of pause or preemption of State authority. Anytime the Federal Government says there is a high-priority chemical--one they are going to take a close look at--there is a period of time called scoping. In that period of time, any State that proposes a rule--all action on that rule is grandfathered; it can go right ahead. If the State has passed a law in that period, the law is grandfathered. Then, during the period of time which is referred to as risk evaluation following the scoping and determining what particular forms of exposure are ones that create a risk, during that time, the only thing that would cause a State to be unable to act is if it was exactly the same chemical in exactly the same use out of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals in the world. Furthermore, even then, there is a waiver that says the State can act if they show there is a scientific paper that shows that chemical is a risk, if they are not violating the supremacy clause of the Constitution and if they are not violating the commerce clause of the Constitution. So, in fact, States have full power to operate throughout these phases as a result of these various clauses. The bipartisan team that has worked on this has run a marathon together. Now, after many miles, innumerable meetings, and late nights, we are just inches from a momentous improvement over current law. Current law has been completely, 100 percent dysfunctional for decades, leading to the exposure of our children, our babies, ourselves, and everyone in America to a huge list of toxic chemicals. Senators in this Chamber will get a lot of attention for their work on this bill, but I wish to note that behind the scenes, the staff has labored day and night--a bipartisan team of staff. They worked many late nights and they had many sleepless moments while trying to figure out and finesse good policy and a path that would keep this bipartisan effort rolling forward. I especially wish to thank my staffer who has taken the lead on this issue. Adrian Deveny has done a tremendous job. He has put in an enormous amount of time contributing substantial expertise and has worked hard to reach out to other staff members and other offices to listen and understand the challenges and the many perspectives and find a way forward. He made sure that when things were tense, lines of communication stayed open. Because people stayed in the room and listened to each other, the staff and the Senators, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, remained committed to the vision laid out by Frank Lautenberg that we will no longer allow Americans to be routinely exposed to toxic chemicals in their household products. That means taking on the existing chemicals, and that means having a process for new chemicals before they are introduced and making sure they do not pose a new challenge, a new disease, a new risk. The finish line is within sight, and it is up to all of us to get there for the safety and health of every American. Let's get it done. Madam 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. Mr. President, the most important three words in our Constitution are the first three words: ``We the People.'' When our Founders were crafting our Constitution, they put those words in oversized print so that hundreds of years later Members of Congress-- the House and Senate--and citizens across this Nation would remember that this is what our Constitution is all about--``We the People.'' It is not ``we the powerful'' or ``we the privileged.'' It is ``We the People.'' President Jefferson said that we can only claim to be a republic to the degree that the decisions of our government reflect the will of the people. He went on to say that the only way our government will make decisions which reflect the will of the people is if the people have an equal voice. An example of that was the town square, where each individual could stand up and make their position known before a vote was held on whom they were going to elect, and so on and so forth. The challenge today is that the town square is the television, radio, and Web. Unfortunately, those are not free, the way the town square was in Jefferson's day, and that means that the role of money can change everything. Unfortunately, we have had a couple of Supreme Court decisions that do not do due accord to the very heart of our Constitution because they have essentially said that even though the commons, or town square, is for sale, we are going to allow the few people and corporations with billions of dollars to buy up the town square and use the equivalent of a megaphone sound system to drown out the voice of the people. That is the opposite of what ``We the People'' is all about, and that is the opposite of what our Constitution is all about. Periodically, I have come to the floor to talk about a variety of issues that are relevant to the Jefferson vision--that we can only be a republic to the degree that our decisions reflect the will of the people. The issue I will talk about today--and this is an issue that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents overwhelmingly support--is about whether or not their food has been genetically modified, and if so, should those ingredients be listed on the package. I am raising this issue today because on July 1 of this year, Vermont will have a new law which will require labeling on the packages of food that have genetically modified ingredients, and that has led to a conversation here in this Chamber about whether we at the Federal level should allow that to happen. Should we allow Vermont to make this requirement? There are a lot of food producers who say: We really don't want the people to know about the details of their food. Well, I think Americans across this country disagree. As I mentioned, the overwhelming majority support the right to know. The argument has been made that we can't allow State after State or county after county to have conflicting standards about what we list on food labels because that would be impossible for interstate commerce, and that is a fair point. How can a food manufacturer be expected to accommodate a multitude of different labeling requirements from county to county, city to city, or State to State? That is a fair case if there is a risk of multiple standards. There is no risk of that at this moment because only one State has passed a standard which will be going into effect in a couple of months. Just as we have seen with other policies across this Nation, to something that one State tries, another State might say: Yes, let's do that but in a slightly different way. So there is a legitimate concern about conflicting standards. Again, it is not an immediate concern or something to cause this Chamber to act today. But if indeed other jurisdictions say they would like to have the same type of information available to their citizens, who also overwhelmingly want that information, then there is a potential for that and a legitimate cause for us to discuss it here. Here is the thing. If you are going to take away the ability of cities, counties, and States to respond to the citizens' desire to know about whether there are GMOs, or genetically modified ingredients, in their food, then you have to replace it with a national standard that answers that question. If you fail to do so, you are simply denying the rights of citizens across the country to know what is in their food, and that is just wrong. There is a name for the bill for denying Americans the right to know, and it is called the DARK Act, or Deny Americans the Right to Know Act. It is appropriate that it be called the DARK Act because it is all about keeping consumers in the dark about something they would like to know. There are many people here who say: Well, we know better than consumers. They want to know, but we don't want them to know because there is no reason they should know because why would they have any concern if they knew all the facts? Is that our decision to make? We decided to label food and let people know whether there is salt in it. Some people want it, some people don't. We decided to put calories on the package. Some people want more calories, and some want less, but they have the right to know. Some people want preservatives to make it taste better and some don't, and so on and so forth. It is simply the consumer's right to know and make choices accordingly. This conversation is not about whether GMO food is safe to eat. Person after person has come to this floor and said it is safe to eat, there is no proven impact on citizens, and so therefore it is legitimate to strip citizens from the right to know. There are lots of ingredients we put on packages that have no carcinogenic effects, but citizens want the full list, and that is what we provided them. Some want to know the individual pieces of that story. Let's turn back to this question about the fact that GMOs themselves--genetically modified plants--are not substantially in one camp or another, wonderful or terrible. There are all kinds of genetic modifications that have taken place. For example, this chart shows golden rice. Golden rice has been modified to have vitamin A. In parts of the world where there is vitamin A deficiency, this has been very beneficial. Let's turn to carrots. Some carrots have been modified to treat for a genetic disorder called Gaucher's disease, a metabolic disorder where people lack a specific enzyme which helps rid the body of fatty substances that then accumulates causing enlarged livers and spleens and bone damage, bruising, and anemia. So people are very happy we have a way to address that. Researchers have been developing sweet potatoes that withstand multiple viral infections commonly encountered in Southern Africa. That enables sweet potatoes to be grown and be part of the subsistence and is a substantial source of food in that region. There are also genetic modifications that cause concerns. Most genetically modified crops grown in the United States have been altered to confer resistance to a chemical herbicide known as glyphosate. Glyphosate is a weed killer, and essentially as the application of glyphosate has gone up dramatically from 1994 to the current time--we can see the huge increase in the application of this weed killer on this chart--we have had a corresponding general depletion of the monarch butterfly in those regions where glyphosate is used. That is a concern. Monarchs have been crashing, and that is a concern to folks. Look at and think about the runoff. If you put billions of gallons of weed killer on crops, and there are billions of gallons running into the waterways, it has an impact on the waterways. It changes the makeup of the waterways because of the weed killer killing various organisms within the streams. Herbicides in our waterways can have a negative impact on fish, mussels, amphibians, and microorganisms. There is also a challenge in which plants evolve in response to the applications of glyphosate. We can end up with what are called superweeds, which are weeds that have been in the presence of the herbicide so often that the natural mutations occurring cause the weeds to evolve and they become superweeds. We had the same problem with these corn-destroying rootworms. They have been evolving to be resistant to the pesticide that is placed into the plant cell by genetic modification. In short, there are competing considerations to balance, some benefits and some concerns. Some people have reached the conclusion that they are very comfortable consuming genetically modified foods, and other individuals can reach a different equally justifiable conclusion that they have concerns and want to know more about the specific types of modification. The way they find out is, they get an alert on the package to show there are GMO ingredients and they can go to the Web site and look at the herbicide involved. That is why labeling matters. It is an alert to the citizens so they can gain more information and decide if they are comfortable or uncomfortable. What we have seen are companies that are starting to say, because we value the relationship with our customers, because our company believes in having high integrity in that relationship, we do not want to be part of the DARK movement--the ``deny Americans the right to know'' movement. We want to be part of the movement that says if our consumers want to know, we are going to give them that information. There are a variety of companies that have announced they are going to provide that information on their foods. One of them is the Mars company. Here I have a package of M&Ms, and right on the package they are now disclosing. They have a phrase. I know it would be impossible to read this so we have enlarged this a bit and reproduced it. It says ``partially produced with genetic engineering.'' So they give a heads- up on every package of M&Ms across the country. They give a heads-up to consumers, and if they want to know more about the details, they can contact Mars to find out about the details. That is integrity. That is honoring citizens who have a desire to know what is in their food. We have all grown up seeing the wonderful pictures of Campbell's soups in advertisements and the warm hearty meal of tomato soup. I know when I was sick as a child I always looked forward to that Campbell's tomato soup. Campbell's has said: We want to honor the integrity of the relationship with our consumer. We are not going to be part of the ``deny Americans the right to know'' movement. We are not going to be on the side of the DARK, and we are going to be on the side of information that citizens desire to have. They are putting labels on their products, and a number of companies are following suit in honor of protecting the consumer's right to know. That is certainly commendable, and I commend the companies that do not feel like they are trying to mislead or hide from their consumers, but in fact support the integrity of the relationship with the folks who buy their products. Some of the companies that have done this are ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg's, and, as I mentioned, Mars. They have already begun to label their products in anticipation of Vermont's July 1 requirement. Vermont has a 6-month grace period--so, again, it is not just around the corner--but the beginning period companies are asked to meet is July 1. Because companies are now putting it on their labels, they are discovering there is nothing scary to consumers about it. Just like anything else on the ingredients list on labels of packages, it is information that different consumers can evaluate when it matters to their life. There is a group of Senators who have said they do want to be part of the DARK Act, deny Americans the right to know. So we will have a voluntary labeling plan nationally. We will take away State's rights to put information on the package and replace it with a voluntary request for companies to disclose. That is no justification for taking away the ability of States to require what consumers want, which is not a voluntary disclosure, it is a required disclosure. If a State wants to do that, they should be honored. If we take away that right, we need to do a replacement at the national level. As a part of this movement, this Deny Americans the Right to Know Act, they say: You know what. We are willing to suggest that companies put a barcode on their product and consumers can scan that code or they can put a quick response computer code, which is a square code with all the little squares on it--something like what you have on an airline ticket. They suggest that we put this quick response code on it, and if somebody wants to know what is in our product, they can scan it with their smartphone and look it up on a Web site. That is not a consumer- friendly label. That is a scam. Not all consumers have a smartphone. Not all consumers have a digital plan that allows them to scan something in that fashion. They don't all have a phone with a camera. We are asking them to have to spend money out of their phone plan in order to look up information that should have just been on the package in the first place. That is a tax. That is a DARK Act tax on American consumers. Some of my colleagues who talk about not putting taxes on individuals just voted for that DARK tax a few weeks ago. I hope they reconsider that type of imposition on the moms and dads and brothers and sisters throughout America. No one going down the aisle to shop is going to sit there and compare four different soups by taking pictures of four different soups and going to four different Web sites to look up that information. Plus, consumers are also disclosing information about themselves when they go to those Web sites. That is an invasion of privacy on top of the DARK tax that my colleagues want to impose on American consumers. It is wrong on multiple levels. Some of my colleagues say: Let's put an 800 number on the label, with no explanation of why it is there. Well, you can take most products in America and you can probably find an 800 number somewhere on that package with some corporate information line, but when you put an 800 number on with no explanation of why it is there, that is not consumer information. That is like taking an ingredients list on the package and replacing it with an 800 number. Call this and we will read you a list of ingredients on the phone. It is absurd, it is ridiculous, and it is offensive to try to say that type of scam is a replacement for consumer-friendly information right on the package. Do you want to know how to determine whether you are being true to the desire of consumers to have a consumer-friendly label? Well, I will tell you. It is called the 1-second test. We have a product on the shelf. We pick it up, turn it over, and look--1 second. I see the answer that there are or are not genetically modified ingredients in this package. That is the 1-second test. That is a fair replacement for State standards. It can be done in a variety of ways. There can be a symbol on the package. I suggest that the FDA or USDA can choose a symbol. Brazil chooses to have a key for transgenic in a triangle. We can do that. We can put a ``B'' on it for biotechnology. We can put a ``G'' or ``GM'' for genetically modified. There are all sorts of options that would be a simple way for consumers to see what is there. We can put a phrase such as Mars has done on their candy or we can put an asterisk on the ingredients that have been modified with a phrase below to explain the asterisk. All of those are possible, but an unlabeled phone number, an unlabeled barcode or quick response code--because it is a deliberate effort to pretend you are solving something when you are not, that is a shameful scam, and it should never pass scrutiny on the floor of the Senate. I said earlier that citizens across this country want a consumer- friendly label. We can look to a survey that was done. This is a 2016 likely election voters survey that was done in November of 2015, and it shows that 89 percent of Americans said they would like to have the information on the label. They say they favor labels on foods that have been genetically engineered or contain genetically engineered ingredients. So it is basically 9 out of 10 who not only favored but strongly favored such labeling. To put it simply, 9 out of 10 Americans want the information on the label, and rounding off, 8 out of 10 feel very strongly about this. Here is something that is interesting. We are often divided by party here. The Republicans are sitting on the right side, the Democrats are on the left side. There is partisan division--maybe Independents have a view in the middle. On this issue, Democrats believe, 9 out of 10, rounding off, that we should have these labels. Republicans believe, 9 out of 10, that we should have these labels. Wouldn't it be ironic if the one thing Americans can agree on--whether they are east coast or west coast or North or South or Democrat or Republican or Independent-- the one issue they can all agree on, this body decides to do the opposite and take away that ability. That certainly counters the fundamental principle that Jefferson put forward of the ``we the people'' democracy. We can only claim to be a republic to the degree that what we do reflects the will of the people. So we should think about that a lot because there is a lot of conversation about folks who want to spring a surprise on the American people. They want to come down here to the floor on some bill in the near future, with some amendment or some motion or some reconsideration, and spring a surprise and drive the DARK Act through with little public notice. Why is that? Because they are afraid of the opinions of the American people. They want to hide their decision in a short period of time with no ability for the American people to be filled in on the fact that they are attempting to pass legislation that overturns what 90 percent or 9 out of 10 Americans want. So we need to be aware of this. I encourage my colleagues: Do not be part of this ``deny Americans the right to know'' movement--this movement that is opposed by 9 out of 10 Americans in the Democratic camp, in the Republican camp, in the Independent camp, in every geography of America. Don't be part of going so profoundly, so fundamentally, so overwhelmingly against the will of the American people. We put a lot of things on packages because the American people ask for that information. If you buy in a grocery store of any size, they are required to put whether fish is farm raised or wild. Why do we require that? It is not because being farm raised is going to kill people; it is because citizens have a desire to know and to vote with their food dollar--vote with their food dollar for something they believe to be important. It may have to do with the taste of the product. It may have to do with the difference in antibiotics that are used in farmed versus wild. It may have to do with their desire to envision that food when it was swimming the broad, beautiful Pacific Ocean, the incredible salmon of the Pacific Ocean and the salmon of the Atlantic Ocean. But the point is, it is their right to know. Nothing much is as important to us as what we put into our bodies. People fundamentally feel they should be able to have full information. We, indeed, provide information on whether juice is reconstituted from concentrate or is fresh, not because it will cause you to get sick, not because it is unhealthy to consume, but because consumers desire to know and they want to exercise their food dollars appropriately. Some people say: I really would like to have the stuff the way it was squeezed out of the fruit rather than frozen and condensed and reconstituted. So we provide that information because of that citizen desire. Should we not honor our citizens in this issue as well? Isn't it wrong for a group of Senators to plot to come to this floor and to put forward an amendment or put forward a reconsideration or put forward a bill on short notice so that the American people have little chance to weigh in? Personally, I think it is very wrong. That is why I am speaking today. It is not as if this question of putting labels on food is something new or different; it is being done all around the world. Sixty-four countries, including 28 members of the European Union and Japan and Australia, already require mandatory GMO labeling. We can add Brazil to that list. We can add China to that list. China has no democratic forum in which to respond to the will of the people. The decisions are top down. Yet the leadership of China has said: Our consumers care enough about this that we are going to disclose that information. Isn't it profoundly ironic that here in the United States of America, where citizens have a voice, a group of Senators are trying to suppress that voice, are trying to implement and deny Americans the right to know, when the leaders of China have decided this is information consumers deserve? Let me return to where I started--the vision of a ``we the people'' democracy. We have gone far afield from that. The role of money in politics has put us in a very different position because that money weighs in, and it corrupts the fundamental nature of our legislative process. That is why we are having this debate over denying Americans the right to know when 9 out of 10 want that information--because of the corrupting power of massive concentrations of campaign cash in our system. So let's do something we should do all the time: Set aside the campaign. Set aside the desire to raise money. Set aside those issues and ask yourself, aren't we here to help pursue the will of the people? In this case, in our ``we the people'' democracy, shouldn't we give our citizens the same right to know--a right they overwhelmingly expect and demand--as 64 other countries in the world? I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to use a visual aid during my speech.

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, Sierra Brummett, be granted privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, today I rise to talk about a movement-- a vision--called ``Keep It in the Ground'' and why it is so important to the future of our energy policy here in the United States and our energy strategy around the world. The core challenge we face as citizens of this planet and as policymakers in the United States is that the impact of global warming is having devastating effects across our country and the world. We can simply look at my home State of Oregon and see that because the winters are warmer, and the pine beetles are thriving and killing a lot more trees. There is such a broad swath of dead trees that it is referred to as the red zone. You can fly above the red zone, as I have, in a plane and see--it feels like it is from horizon to horizon--this swath of red. It is causing extraordinary damage to the forests, and it impacts the natural ecosystem and timber industry, which is a key part of the economy of Oregon. We could go across the State to the Oregon coast where the oyster industry started having severe problems about the time I was elected to the Senate. The problem was rooted in the fact that baby oysters were dying, and they couldn't figure out why. They thought that perhaps it was due to a bacteria or virus. They had help from research scientists who stepped in to study the situation. It turned out to be the increasing acidity of the Pacific Ocean, and that acidity was making it very hard for the baby oysters to form a shell. As a result, they were dying. So they artificially manipulated the acidity of the water that the baby oysters were bred in, and that is helping quite a bit. What other challenges are there for the food chain in the oceans if our oceans have absorbed so much carbon and produced so much carbonic acid that it is affecting the formation of shells on our oysters? What else will start going wrong? We can turn to the changing weather patterns that are producing drought and floods with greater intensity and understand the impact on agriculture. We can look to the Klamath Basin in my State, which has had the three worst droughts within a 15- year period. We can look at the impact of the snowpack in the Cascades and realize and see the decline of the winter snow entertainment industry. We can look around the country and see all kinds of other impacts. We see that the moose are dying in the northeastern part of the United States because the winters are not cold enough to kill the ticks. The ticks are killing the moose and the moose are disappearing. We can look at Louisiana. Recent reports say that they are losing a football field's worth of coastline every 48 minutes due to global warming. That is less than an hour. That is a substantial amount of land that is disappearing hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and, of course, year after year. It is having a huge impact. We have come to understand that as the weather warms, certain insects that provide hosts to various diseases gain a greater terrain. As the temperature changes, mosquitoes from the southern part of the United States are moving north, and two of those mosquitoes carry the Zika virus. That is just one example of the concerns that are presented by changing insect populations. We can look at the impact on the lobsters in Maine. The lobsters are moving north as the water warms in Maine. They are also dealing with the loss of their cod fishery because of the changing water temperatures. The impact is everywhere. For anyone who looks across the United States and does not recognize that we are in an extraordinary time of multiple changes in the weather patterns, temperatures, and the impacts on animals, insects, agriculture, and timber--if you can't see that, you are really choosing not to look, and we cannot afford not to look. It is our responsibility to be aware of what is happening, why it is happening, and how we need to respond. That is why I am on the floor today. I am here to talk about ``Keep It in the Ground.'' I will be doing a series of speeches about different components of the challenge we have in responding to global warming. A part of those conversations will involve looking at these various effects in more detail, such as what I have already mentioned, and other speeches will talk about the promise of new policy strategies, new technologies, new investments, mission innovations, et cetera, that provide a glimmer of hope of what is happening here in the United States and across the globe. Here is the challenge. What this all boils down to is that these problems are created by the massive burning of fossil fuels. I think people are generally aware that fossil fuels are created by hundreds of millions of years in which plant life has settled to the bottom of the ocean, then is trapped and submerged. Over time, it is converted into coal, oil, and natural gas. We are pulling out that carbon that has developed over these hundreds of millions of years in a very short span of a few generations on this planet--just over the last 150 years. It has been just over the last 150 years. We have been burning it so it is putting this massive infusion of carbon dioxide back into the air and changing the chemistry of our air. Therefore, it is changing the heat retention of our thin layer of atmosphere that covers our planet and thereby warming our planet--the greenhouse effect as it is referred to. So our core challenge is to pivot from burning fossil fuels for energy to other forms of energy that do not put carbon dioxide into the air and to do so in a very short period of time. Naturally, this leads to the question: How much of these fossil fuels can we continue to burn without devastating consequences? That is something that is referred to as the climate math, and that is what I am going to turn to now. The basic situation is, we have proven reserves that equate to about 2,800 gigatons of carbon dioxide. Those are fossil fuels in the ground equating to about 2,800 gigatons of carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all of those proven reserves that we have in the ground currently, we would massively accelerate global warming, and with the feedback mechanisms, that is disastrous for our planet. The international community has gotten together and said: What do we need to aim at in order to avoid these catastrophic consequences? There will be serious consequences. We already have serious consequences and we can't avoid them. How do we avoid catastrophic consequences? The general position they have put forward is that we need to limit the warming of the planet to no more than 2 degrees centigrade. In the United States, we primarily operate in terms of Fahrenheit, so we translate 2 degrees centigrade to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the time we started burning coal until now, we have already raised the temperature of the planet about half that amount--1 degree centigrade or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. So we are already halfway toward the limit beyond which the effects become more and more catastrophic. As scientists have evaluated that 2,800 gigatons of carbon dioxide trapped in fossil fuels and asked how much more can we burn, they essentially have come to the conclusion that we can burn about one- fifth of it--one-fifth of the proven reserves. Let's translate what that means. That means, to avoid catastrophe, we have to leave 80 percent of the proven reserves in the ground. This is an enormous challenge for human society--for governments and policymakers and individuals across the planet--to undertake because every owner of those proven reserves has the knowledge that their coal, their oil, their natural gas has substantial value on the market. They want to preserve the ability to extract it out of the ground and sell it for combustion. For example, some oil is used in making plastics, but the great majority is utilized in combustion--the creation of energy. That is where this challenge is coming from. So how do we go about creating policies that keep 80 percent of the proven reserves in the ground, when they have so much value to their owners and the owners want to retain the ability to extract them? That is the challenge we face. It is an extraordinarily difficult challenge. The reason I particularly want to emphasize this ``Keep It in the Ground'' movement is it shines a bright light on this carbon math, this global warming math. When we talk about, well, the planet is getting warmer, and we have to burn less so we need to make our buildings more energy efficient, that is absolutely true, and we should do everything to make our buildings more energy efficient, but it doesn't convey the fundamental understanding of the size of the challenge we face, which is to keep 80 percent of the proven reserves in the ground. When we talk about the need to make our cars more fuel efficient in order to burn less gasoline, which means burn less oil to produce less carbon dioxide, that is true. We absolutely need to make our cars more energy efficient, but talking about that doesn't convey the enormity of the challenge, which is to keep 80 percent of the proven reserves in the ground. When we talk about the need to move more freight on trucks that are more efficient and shift more freight to trains because they are more fuel efficient, that also is absolutely true, but again it doesn't convey the key challenge. As we look at each of these areas of strategy and conservation, all of them are tools we are going to need to use to keep our reserves in the ground. We are also going to need to use other tools. Those tools certainly involve a quick pivot to produce more renewable energy to substitute for the electricity that is generated by the burning of coal and the burning of natural gas. We have to pivot quickly, but again, when we talk about pivoting quickly, it doesn't convey the size of the challenge. What is that challenge? We must leave 80 percent of the proven reserves in the world in the ground. That is the challenge. So we must do energy conservation. We must proceed to pivot quickly to renewable energy, but we need to understand the urgency, the speed with which we do so because we have a limited carbon budget. On this chart, the layout in the orange bar is the size of the proven reserves that are in the ground. Here, with this yellow bar, is the amount of fossil fuels we can burn and not exceed 2 degrees centigrade or a 3.6-degree Fahrenheit temperature change. As we can see, the vast bulk of the reserves that are in the ground have to be left in the ground. That is the 80 percent that has to be left in the ground. This ``Keep It in the Ground'' movement is all about understanding this core carbon math and crafting policies in which we emphasize that we are on a pathway to achieving success; that is, to leave this 80 percent in the ground. This also leads to a conversation about the U.S. ownership of a vast amount of fossil fuels. You and I, as citizens of the United States, we are owners of a huge amount of coal, a huge amount of natural gas, a huge amount of oil. We don't think of ourselves as energy barons, but each and every one of us as citizens collectively own a vast amount of fossil fuels because on Federal land there is a tremendous amount of oil, a tremendous amount of coal, and a tremendous amount of natural gas. We have the responsibility in the Senate and in the House and in the executive branch to manage what we own as citizens of the United States for the public good. In the past, managing for the public good meant let's do leases and raise some revenue for the Federal Government, and we have leased out about 10 percent of the carbon reserves that we own as citizens--our citizen-owned carbon, fossil fuel reserves--but 90 percent of it has not been leased out. When we do a lease, it creates a legal contract in which the individual company that has purchased the lease now has the right to extract that oil, to extract that natural gas, to extract that coal for years to come, and to renew the lease. There are many leases that result in extraction going on for decades--for 10 years, for 20 years but even three decades, four decades, five decades into the future. We cannot afford, as Americans or as citizens of this planet, to be facilitating the extraction of fossil fuels to be burned three, four, or five decades into the future. There is no way that the world is going to meet this challenge of keeping 80 percent of the carbon in the ground, 80 percent of their fossil fuels in the ground if the public entities can't even exercise discipline not to extract and burn these fossil fuels. So how much do we own? How big of oil barons are the citizens of the United States? How much oil and natural gas and coal do we have? Well, the total amount measured in terms of carbon dioxide is about 300 to 450 gigatons. That is this green bar. If we think about the 80 percent we leave in the ground, that substantial amount, which is over 2,000 gigatons, this amount we own as citizens is a substantial percentage. It has been estimated to be in the range of about 14 to 20 percent of the amount the world needs to leave in the ground. So if we make the decision as Americans to leave what we own in the ground to save our planet, we have helped set the world on a course in which we reach this 80 percent target of what is left in the ground, but if we can't exercise discipline and quit leasing out our fossil fuel reserves, often at $1 or $2 per acre--if we can't stop that, how can we anticipate adopting the policies necessary to help lead the world in this enormous challenge? So this has led to the keep-it-in-the-ground bill I introduced last year. The keep-it-in-the-ground bill says the fossil fuel reserves that you and I own best serve the public good by not burning them, by not doing new leases for extraction--extraction that will continue 30, 40, 50 years into the future; that we cannot afford to do that without devastating consequences to our planet. The existing leases--we have already leased out 10 percent of the fossil fuel reserves, which means there isn't a complete shutdown of the fossil fuel enterprise on public lands, but it does mean we are not going to go any further or, as it has been put, if you are in a hole, quit digging. In this case, we are in a carbon hole and we absolutely need to quit digging. There have been a number of Senators sign on to the keep-it-in-the- ground bill, recognizing the best, highest use of our citizen-owned fossil fuels is to keep them in the ground, and I appreciate their support a great deal. There has also been a series of conversations around the country since the time the bill was introduced that have been very relevant or related to these issues. The first conversation was about the Keystone Pipeline. Should we build a pipeline that turns the tap on to some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet, the Canadian tar sands? The answer is no. Those tar sands need to be left in the ground. We need a Canadian keep-it-in-the-ground movement to say that Canada, too, is going to utilize its citizen-owned fossil fuels at the highest purpose, which is to leave them in the ground, to keep them in the ground. Certainly, the United States shouldn't be facilitating the extraction by building a convenient, cheap way to move those fossil fuels out of the ground. So I applaud all of those who stood with humanity in this key mission and said no to the Keystone Pipeline. Another aspect has been offshore drilling. There was a big conversation about drilling in the Arctic. The Arctic, because it is so cold and frozen and full of ice, has been a terrain, particularly offshore, where drilling is extraordinarily difficult, with extreme risk of oilspill. Should an oilspill occur in very cold water, that means the damage will be enormous because the oil will break down so slowly. So I put forward a keep-it-in-the-ground bill for no offshore drilling in the Arctic. And that is not the bill we have had action on here in the Senate, but, as it turns out, we have moved forward. Shell, which was the leading company to explore offshore in the Arctic, sent ships up for several years. They had one calamity after another, one disaster after another because of the harsh and challenging circumstances. Citizens in the United States, in a grassroots movement, said: Shell, no. Shell, no. This is wrong. This is the height of irresponsibility to our environment and to have the U.S. leading extraction in a whole new area. We should be leading the Arctic nations and leaving the Arctic off limits as part of this ``Keep It in the Ground'' movement, not leading the front edge of extraction. Well, Shell abandoned its leases, both because of the difficulty of drilling and because of citizen reaction here at home saying what they were doing is wrong. I thank Shell for ending its Arctic drilling program, and I thank the administration for saying that they are not going to issue any more leases for drilling in the Arctic waters. Let's go further. The United States is the chair of the Arctic Council. Let's use that chairmanship to lead nations in putting the Arctic off-limits. That would be a tremendous collaborative effort among a small group of nations to move forward this ``Keep It in the Ground'' movement and to save our planet. Another big piece of this conversation has been about coal leases. As I mentioned, we often lease acres of coal for just a few dollars. It is no substantial revenue in the large scheme of things to the United States. It is hugely beneficial to the cheap extraction of coal, though, which is the opposite of the direction we need to go. So we need to quit doing new coal leases. That is part of the keep-it-in-the ground bill I introduced. No more leases of citizen-owned fossil fuels. And the Obama administration has now suspended its leases on coal, new coal leases. That is a tremendous event. Part of what the administration said was that we need to pause and evaluate the impact on global warming in doing these leases. We need to also evaluate the impact on American leadership in the world on this major issue facing humanity. If we are telling other nations ``Please don't burn coal. Please expand your use of renewable energy and do it quickly,'' how is that consistent? How is our plea for partnership--because we must do this as a collection of nations--how is our request for partnership in this great and important mission of our generation consistent with us continuing new leases of coal? It certainly is not consistent. We need to put an end to these coal leases, and I applaud the administration. And in the next administration, whether it is Democratic or Republican, we need to work together to do no new coal leases. So that was a tremendous step forward in this effort. Back in December, nearly 200 nations came together to work together to create an international accord with the singular goal of reducing the burning of fossil fuels and converting to renewable energy or reducing the burning of fossil fuels because of energy conservation. The countries made a variety of pledges. One of those countries that made those pledges was India. I had a chance to lead a bilateral meeting between legislators from the United States and members of the Government of India. They said: We have 300 million citizens in India who do not have access to electricity. As a national government, we have to expand our electric infrastructure to provide electricity for a basic standard of living and basic economic development. We can certainly understand that mission. We went through rural electrification. Our goal was to make sure there was wiring in every house in America to improve the standard of living for Americans. So Americans we are certainly understanding of the goal of the Indian Government. They proceeded to say this: Right now we plan to provide electricity to 100 million individuals through renewable energy and 200 million citizens of India through coal-burning power. It almost causes your heart to sink, this plan for massive increases in coal-burning in India. So here is an opportunity. How can we in the United States work with India so they can meet that demand of 300 million citizens with conservation and renewable energy rather than new coal plants? How can we work in partnership with China as they work to provide electricity to their hundreds of millions of individuals and to do so with renewable energy and conservation, not new coal-burning plants? This is a challenge for us, and an important challenge, but we certainly have no credibility talking to India about trying to make sure they do no new coal-burning plants if we are signing new leases to extract coal off of our public lands. Credibility is very important in this international conversation. It has been said that we are the first generation to feel the impacts of global warming and we are the last generation to be able to do something about it. That is profoundly true. That is the moral challenge to American leaders in our generation. That is the moral challenge to international leaders in our generation. Our children and our children's children, our children's grandchildren and great- grandchildren are going to say: You were the generation that saw the impact of global warming on our Nation and on our planet, and you knew from the science that we had to move quickly to pivot off of fossil fuels, and yet you did too little and you damaged the quality of life for billions of children and children of children for generations to come because of your short-term failure to act. Let that not be the story told by our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. Let them instead say: That generation was the first to see the impact of global warming and know they had to act quickly to reverse the steady climb of temperature on our planet. Let's thank them because they saw the challenge and they acted, and we are forever indebted to them for doing so. Let that be the story that is told. Let this be the moment that we act. Thank you, Madam President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important words in the crafting of our Constitution are the first three words: ``We the People.'' With those three words, the Founders described what the government of our new Nation was all about. As President Lincoln later summarized, it is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In fact, even in the crafting of the Constitution, the Founders put special emphasis upon those three words, putting them in supersized font before all the details that were to follow. Periodically, I will come to the floor to talk about issues that are closely related to the ``we the people'' vision of our Constitution and our responsibilities under the Constitution. This week, I rise to address the responsibility of the Senate and its advice and consent role under the Constitution. The President's duty is to nominate a Supreme Court nominee when there is a vacancy. That responsibility is written very clearly into the Constitution. It says that ``he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme Court'' in article II, section 2 of our beloved Constitution. The Senate then has the responsibility to provide advice and consent, as required, and over time it has been understood that we need to vet the nominee, determine whether the nominee is fit to serve in the post he or she will serve in, which is particularly important in the Supreme Court. That is how this esteemed Chamber, our beloved Senate, has operated for more than 200 years. In fact, we need to go back now and understand how this design was created. I have come to the floor before and read from Hamilton's Federalist Paper 76 that summarizes a conversation that was taking place over the nomination process. Some folks--in crafting the Constitution--thought that responsibility should be solely with what they referred to as ``the assembly,'' which is this body, the Senate. The reason they argued that is, it would be a balance to the power of the President in the executive branch if the assembly, the legislative branch, were to make the appointments. However, they then realized that those appointments would probably never get done because there would likely be a lot of horse trading and the most qualified person probably wouldn't be nominated. Instead, it would most likely be the friend of one Senator traded for the friend of another Senator, and that didn't make sense. They said: No, it would make more sense to invest the responsibility for the quality of the individual in a single individual. As the expression goes, the buck stops here. It stops at the President's desk. The President would have the responsibility to nominate individuals to serve in the executive and judicial branches and will bear the public responsibility for the credibility and quality of those nominations, but in that conversation, they also thought that was too much power for the President to have. What if the President starts to appoint friends or those with little experience or those of unfit moral character? There needs to be some kind of check, so in that regard then came the role of the Senate to give advice and consent. In order to do that, the nomination would go before this body for debate and then this body would vote on that nominee. The words that were the key words Hamilton used in describing the responsibility was to determine whether the individual was ``of unfit character''--fit character, unfit character. Did that nominee have the qualifications necessary for the job and the personal characteristics required to fulfill the job effectively? Well, here we are and President Obama has fulfilled his responsibility under the Constitution. He has nominated Judge Merrick Garland. We now have our responsibility in the Senate to vet this nominee, examine Judge Garland's record, examine any aspect of his writings or his previous court decisions, and determine whether Judge Garland is a fit character or unfit character. That is our responsibility in the Constitution. A number of my colleagues across the aisle--my Republican colleagues--have said: We don't want to fulfill our responsibility under the Constitution. We are just going to ignore the responsibility that has been vested in the Senate of the United States. They are in the majority, and a nomination can't go to a committee for a hearing and determine whether an individual is of fit character or unfit character without the majority making it happen. The nomination can't come to the floor without a majority vote in committee so it can then be put forward for our consideration. Unfortunately, the job strike of the majority party in the Senate--failing to fulfill its responsibility under our Constitution--is now imposed on this entire body. If we were within the usual timeline, we would be holding a hearing on Judge Garland this week. Since 1975, the average time from nomination to committee hearing has been about 42 days, but instead the leadership has said: We are not going to honor our responsibility. I find that deeply disturbing. Each and every one of us stood before this body and took an oath to fulfill our responsibilities under this Constitution, and that is what we should be doing right now. I say to my colleagues: Do your job. After a bit of reflection on the importance of how our government functions, one would think there would be a bit of reflection upon what we owe to maintain the integrity of our institutions and that this decision to go on a job strike would have been reversed. I have talked to colleagues who are, quite frankly, somewhat embarrassed because they have been asked to toe the line, and they don't feel it is right that they should be, in fact, failing to fulfill their responsibility, but there is a lot of pressure on them. We need to set aside political pressure when it comes to the integrity of our institutions. Since the 1980s, every person appointed to the Supreme Court has been given a prompt hearing and a vote within 100 days of their nomination. This chart shows three different phases as to the vacancies. Sometimes those vacancies have been longer or shorter in terms of before a nomination occurs. The red bar shows the start of the nomination process and the green bar shows the time before a vote is taken, which is the period of consideration. In every case, the red and green bar together are 100 days or less. This dates all the way back to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. It has now been 100 days. How many days are there between now and when the next President takes office? What is the math? Well, there are 268 days. So for anyone who comes to this floor and says there isn't time, that individual is making a case with no foundation because the record shows that from the time the nomination was made until a vote, time and time again--under Democrats or under Republicans--it has been less than 100 days. Yet we have more than 260 days left before the next President takes office. There are other folks who have come to the floor of this Chamber and have invented this new principle called the job strike during the last year that a President is in office. They act as if there is something in the Constitution which gives this Senate permission not to do its job during the last year a President is in office. Well, I encourage my friends to pull out and read the Constitution, find that clause, and bring it to the floor because it does not exist. The Constitution anticipates that each of us will fulfill our responsibilities throughout the entire length we serve until we exit office, that a President will serve and work through all 4 years of his or her term, that a Senator will serve and work through all 6 years of his or her term. There is no vacation in the Constitution for the last year. There is no special permission to fail to do your constitutional responsibility in the last year of a term. That simply doesn't exist. Many Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed in the final year of a Presidency, and so for those who come to this floor and argue that there is some historical precedent, that precedent doesn't exist either. Republican and Democratic Presidents have issued nominations regardless of the party in control of the Senate and the Senate, regardless of the party of the President, has done its job in case after case after case throughout time. Until this moment, the Senate has vetted the nominees, individual Senators have met with the nominee, the nominee's record has been exposed, thereby giving the public the opportunity to give us their input, and we would have voted in committee and on this floor. (Mr. BARRASSO assumed the Chair.) If we look to the recent past, Justice Kennedy was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan's final term. By the way, the Senate was controlled by Democrats. The Democratic leadership didn't say: We are going to go on a job strike and not vet the candidate and not hold a vote and not fulfill our responsibility. No, they honored their responsibility under the Constitution and so should every Senator today. This is a black mark on the record of the Senate. Think about what it will lead to. For example, let's say the job strike we are engaged in is purely for political reasons in an effort to pack the Court with more conservative Justices. Let's say it succeeds in delaying a nomination until the next Presidency, and the next President nominates someone on the far edges and way out of the mainstream, then what does each party do? Do they say: Well, the other party worked to pack the Court and refused to do their job, and, now, because the consequences would be so destructive and so partisan to the Court, we will refuse to do our job but only because of what preceded it? That is not a conversation we should ever have. That is not a dialogue we should ever have in this Chamber of action to politicize the Court, pack the Court, followed by reaction to try to blunt the impact of the initial action, followed by reaction, back and forth. This will deeply undermine the integrity of the Supreme Court of the United States. Let me tell you, the Court is already in trouble. The activist Court decisions of the far right, trying to write legislation through Court decisions to change the fundamental understandings of how our Nation operates, have already deeply politicized the Court. Citizens United turned the fundamental premise written into our Constitution on its head. Our Constitution was written all about, ``We the People.'' Jefferson talked about the mother principle; that we could only claim to be a republic to the degree that the decisions reflected the will of the people and that in order for that to happen, citizens had to have an equal voice. His vision was one of the town's square, where there was no cost to participate. Everyone had a chance to stand and have their say. Lincoln talked about the equal voice principle for citizens. The fundamental premise in a republic is to express the will of the people. People have to have the ability to participate in roughly equal proportion, but now the town square is for sale. It is the television, the Internet, the Web sites, the radio, and our Court has decided it is OK for the very rich to buy it up and destroy the equal voice principle that our Founders so cherished. This activist Court on the far right has decided to undermine those important first three words of the Constitution: ``We the People.'' This has produced a great cynicism in America because once this massive concentration of money buys up the town square, buys up the airwaves, influences elections, it is no longer ``We the People,'' it is ``we the powerful'' and ``we the privileged.'' Wouldn't it be wonderful not to have had the Supreme Court decisions that have undermined the integrity of our Supreme Court, but we have them and now the majority in this body wants to further damage the Supreme Court, further politicize the Supreme Court, and that is a huge mistake. We should go in the other direction. We should invest in the integrity of the Supreme Court. That doesn't mean a nominee gets automatically passed through this body because we have a job under the Constitution. We have a responsibility to vet the nominee. We have the responsibility, as Hamilton said, to judge if the nominee is unfit or fit. But how can you have that judgment if we do not hold hearings? How can you have that judgment if the committee does not vote? How can you have that judgment if there is not a debate on the floor of the Senate? How can you have that judgment if there is not a vote on this floor? So I say to my colleagues: End your job strike that is so out of sync with the tradition of the Senate. End your job strike that is so damaging to the Supreme Court's integrity. End your job strike that is so damaging to the ``we the people'' principles of our Nation. Do your job. Do your job. Hold the hearing. Meet with the nominee. Exercise your vote. Do your job. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask that my intern, Jonathan Lin, be granted floor privileges for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, these subsidies are a tiny dot compared to the $52 billion spent annually on fossil fuel subsidies and the massive subsidies spent on nuclear. Yet these subsidies are creating jobs in rural America, and that matters. These communities need these jobs. These are clean electrons, these are terrific middle-class jobs, and this is an industry that is still on a curve where research is truly beneficial in making it a success.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we will be voting on amendment No. 3812, which my colleague from Iowa and I have put together to restore research on wind development to the level it was last year. When you see these wind turbines, what you should see is economic development in highly deserving rural communities, putting clean electrons onto the grid, putting jobs into the community, and putting money into the property tax coffers in local communities to do good work. I wish to reserve the rest of my time.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3812.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wish to add a few remarks about this, as we are preparing shortly to consider a number of amendments. This particular amendment is a bipartisan amendment, which I am pleased to sponsor with my partner from Iowa, stating that wind energy is particularly important. This amendment would restore funding for wind energy research to fiscal year 2016 levels of $95.4 million. Otherwise, research in wind energy would suffer a substantial reduction. This program is indispensable to the success of wind energy in the United States. The wind energy program works to advance innovations in the grid integration, manufacturing, and deployment that are key to reducing the cost of wind energy. For example, the Wind Program helps to address market barriers through including wind-forecasting tools in power system operations, which helps utilities and regulators better integrate large amounts of wind energy into the grid. The Wind Program provides research, development, and technical support to manufacturers and distributors of wind technologies that are still emerging. This enhances small wind manufacturing, supports offshore demonstration projects, and will improve the economic viability of distributed wind. Currently, eight National Laboratories across our Nation conduct research or testing related to wind energy. The proposed fiscal year 2017 funding level is only $80 million, which is over $15 million less than last year's funding--thwarting our ability to realize the true potential for wind energy. During debates, we have sometimes heard that wind is a mature industry and that is why the funding for research should be revoked or lowered. But in fact, as wind is emerging, we are seeing continuous innovations resulting in different designs and different strategies for integrating intermittent wind energy into the grid. As that wind component becomes substantially larger, we need to understand the details of how we accommodate it effectively. If we were to talk about mature industries, then we wouldn't be doing studies for the fossil fuel industry, which is about as mature as an industry can get. Clearly, this is an evolving industry with great potential to assist us with clean energy and, moreover, a program that can affect the economy of rural America. In 2015 wind energy supplied about 5 percent of the total electricity generated in the United States. So it is no longer just a fraction of a percent; it has grown enormously in the last few years. But the Department of Energy estimates that wind could provide as much as 35 percent--or more than one-third--of the electricity generated in our country by the year 2050. As my colleague and partner on this bill, the Senator from Iowa, knows, wind energy can be a huge boon to a State's economy. Iowa is already getting over 30 percent of its electricity from wind. And because wind energy is less expensive in the forecast of potential other sources, it could result in billions of dollars of savings to energy consumers in that State. In my home State of Oregon, we already have over 10 percent of our electricity being generated from wind energy. The savings for our State down the road could be enormous, but we can only reach these goals if we support wind energy research. With the development of wind energy comes hundreds of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, in installation, in maintenance, and in supporting services. The estimate is around 600,000 jobs--generally good-paying jobs--by the year 2015. I do a lot of townhalls back home in Oregon, one in every county every year. Much of Oregon is very rural. I hear about the impact property taxes on these wind installations have on our rural counties, enabling them to do things--for example, to build libraries or assist in the development of their local schools. There is no question that this is a boon to the rural economy. It is our job in Congress to look at what policies will be the most successful and give the most bang for the buck in terms of creating jobs now and in the future. We should be supporting programs that spur economic development and support families in rural areas. That is what this amendment calls for. When we create jobs, local communities benefit, certainly the energy industry benefits, and our environment benefits. All of this depends upon robust research, and we are simply asking that research continue at the same level it did in fiscal year 2016. Let's back red, white, and blue, American-made wind energy and support this bipartisan amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Ricky Gandhi, have privileges of the floor for the remainder of today.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to recognize the importance of the signing of the Paris Agreement. Tomorrow marks the 46th anniversary of Earth Day--the first Earth Day--the Earth Day that occurred when I was in seventh grade. My seventh grade teacher made a point of making sure all the students were aware of it. They made sure we had a chance to do a field trip to the community college to learn about some of the issues related to stewardship of the planet. It is a day to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of our blue-green planet but also to recognize, to remind ourselves of the fact that we have a huge responsibility to be good stewards of the wonderful planet we have. It was Theodore Roosevelt who said that ``our greatest central task [is] leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.'' That is the definition of stewardship, and that is what Earth Day is all about. This is why it is so fitting that tomorrow, on Earth Day, America will join other nations in signing the Paris Agreement. This international climate accord is a tremendous step forward. It makes clear the world recognizes that global warming is a very significant and grave concern facing human civilization on this planet. It is, indeed, the moral challenge of our generation. I am proud and inspired by the global community's unprecedented commitment to avert global warming, to avert a climate crisis. We know what the stakes are. We don't need computer models to look 50 years into the future because the impacts are here today. We see it in our own communities. We see it in our own States. We see it through the impact of droughts, the impact of wildfires, the impact of heat waves, the storms, the hurricanes, the tornadoes. We see it through story after story of this year or this month being the warmest ever recorded by humans. These events have profound costs that can be measured in lost lives, lost homes, lost businesses, billions of dollars in disaster relief. It is important to understand that global warming's major assault is on our rural communities, on our farming, our fishing, and our forestry. You can see it across the world. You can see it across the country. You can see it just inside my home State of Oregon. We have had significant droughts greatly impacting our agricultural community in my State. We have had a loss of snowpack in the Cascades, a trend over decades impacting the availability of water for irrigation in farming. We have seen the impact on fishing, with streams that are warmer and smaller than they were in the past. We have seen it on our oyster population on the coast, where now the oysters are having trouble reproducing because the Pacific Ocean is 30 percent more acidic than it was before we started burning fossil fuels on this planet. That greater acidity is affecting the ability of baby oysters to form shells. That should frighten us all--the ability of shellfish to form shells being threatened. It is hard to imagine that we have burned enough fossil fuels to actually impact the acidity of the oceans. But we have, and the problem is getting worse. We see the impact on our forests. We see it in my home State of Oregon through the red zone. That is the term given to the vast swaths of forests that have been killed by pine beetles because the winters now are not cold enough to kill off the pine beetle. So the infestations are much more aggressive, much more widespread. We see the impact on our forests from more vigorous wildfires and a longer forest fire season--a season that has grown by 60 days over 40 years. That is 2 months. In fact, we have even had forest fires in Oregon in the month of January. It is a huge loss, a huge impact on the ecosystem, and a huge impact on the economy. If you care about rural America and our farming, our fishing, and our forestry, you must care about carbon pollution and global warming. Scientists agree that we must keep the warming of our planet under 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change--impacts much worse than what we are seeing now. But we have already warmed the planet by 1 degree. So we are halfway toward that boundary, which is why an important component of the Paris agreement is not just the substance of the agreement itself but also a compact that the international community will revisit every 5 years, because the measures taken in the Paris agreement are not enough to fend off catastrophe. What they do represent is virtually every nation in the world coming together and saying we understand the challenge to our planet, and we understand that we must be part of the solution. To have more heads of state come together in December for the Paris agreement than at any other time in human history is very impressive. But the commitments made, even if they are fully fulfilled, don't go far enough. We are going to have to come back together every 5 years to add to our understanding and to increase the speed with which we are pivoting from fossil fuels to renewable fuels. At those 5-year gatherings, we will strengthen our pledges, we will work to reduce the emissions even further, and we will review the changing technologies. There is so much investment going on. There is a program called Mission Innovation, which is a number of countries coming together, private companies coming together, and foundations coming together to develop the best ideas--out-of-the-box ideas--to be able to take on the challenge of global warming. Those technologies are going to be a key part of accelerating our ability to tackle this challenge. We have to keep working to drive down the cost curve on renewable energy so that it makes a positive contribution to our economy in every possible way, lowering the cost of power while at the same time putting thousands or, in some technologies, millions of individuals to work. We have to make sure developing countries can afford these options in solar, wind, and other renewable strategies. Together, we must invest in paradigm-shifting technology. One of those might be battery storage, to make better use of solar energy when the solar energy exceeds current demand, or to capture wind energy when the wind is blowing strongly and our wind turbines are producing more than the current demand. It means we have to do things such as investing in a broader grid to ship those amps of electricity around the country--those watts of energy around the country. Here at home, we can't keep up business as usual. If we need to pivot from fossil fuels to renewables, then we shouldn't keep subsidizing fossil fuels. We can't keep drilling oil offshore and opening up drilling in new places like the Arctic. The Arctic nation should come together and reach a pact not to drill in the Arctic and to put it off-limits. As American citizens, you and I own a lot of oil, a lot of coal, and we must recognize that we need to keep those fossil fuels that we own in the ground because here is the size of the problem. For us to succeed in keeping the temperature of our planet below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial age, we have to leave 80 percent of the identified proven fossil fuel reserves in the world in the ground. If we are going to do that, then it makes no sense at all--for what you and I own as citizens--to be pulling it out of the ground. It makes no sense to be doing contracts today--leases--that provide a legal contract for extraction of our coal, our oil, and our gas, which you and I own as citizens, three decades, four decades, or five decades into the future--long after the world has to have pivoted off of fossil fuels. It is said that when you are in a hole, stop digging. In this case, we are in a carbon pollution hole, and we need to stop digging fossil fuels out of the ground. Instead, we must seize the opportunity to invest in the infrastructure of the future, to spur a clean energy revolution, and to build a green economy creating living-wage jobs. It has been said that we are the first generation to feel the impact of global warming, and we are the last generation that can do something about it. That is a huge responsibility. The signing of this agreement consists of doing something about it, something major about it, something important about it, something that all the Nations in the world have come together to do together to take this on and to recognize our collective responsibility. It is a breakthrough moment in the fight-- the international fight, the human civilization fight--to take on this moral, major challenge to our planet. While this deal is by no means the end of the work we must do, having the global community come together around a vision of action is a huge milestone in the path to averting climate catastrophe. This agreement should only strengthen our Nation's resolve to build a sustainable future, to protect our beautiful blue-green planet, and to work harder to fight climate change not just on Earth Day but every day of the year. In fact, this agreement is very much central to the task that Theodore Roosevelt put before us: to leave our land a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Let's get to work. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise today to call attention to a dangerous complacency that threatens the health and the lives of our children, and I rise today to urge our administration to take long overdue action to protect our children. Two years ago this month, the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, released a proposed tobacco deeming rule, which is a blueprint for a regulatory framework for e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. Administration officials believed and conveyed that the final rule would be out by the end of the summer 2015. Well, the summer of 2015 is now history, and soon it will be the summer of 2016, and we wait. We have been waiting a very long time. In total, it has been 7 years since the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed by the Senate and the House and signed by President Obama. This legislation gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. This legislation was sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. It was passed in the final months of his life. It was a tribute to his long advocacy for the regulatory control of tobacco--a dangerous, destructive drug widespread throughout America. The passage was part of his legacy. But now we are failing that legacy, and we are failing millions of our children. When the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed into law, it was heralded as a major victory, giving the FDA real power to crack down on the marketing of tobacco products to our children. After a year, there is no action--2 years, no action. That took us to 2011--3 years, no action; 4 years, no action; 5 years, no action; 6 years, no action; 7 years, no action. Over the course of those 7 years, a lot more Americans have become addicted to nicotine products. In 7 years, the industry has had time to develop new innovative products to entrap our youth, and they have utilized that time well. How much longer will this inaction continue while our children are addicted to products newly invented and aimed directly at them? Each passing month, thousands of children become addicted to these new products. Each passing month, the nicotine addiction industry becomes more deeply entrenched and determined to prevent the regulation that we authorized back in 2009. It has been said that while Nero fiddled, Rome burned. In this situation, while the administration has failed to act, millions of children have become addicted to nicotine, with profound consequences for their health. Once this rule is final, the FDA will be able to regulate new tobacco products in important ways, including imposing minimum age standards, limits on advertising, health warnings on the products, child-proof packaging, and requiring the registration of tobacco product manufacturers by the FDA and FDA approval of some novel products. It is time to get this done because lives are at stake. We all are familiar with the cycle: Tobacco use leads to tobacco addiction. Tobacco addiction leads to disease. Disease leads to suffering and often to death. In fact, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States--the leading cause. It imposes a terrible toll on health and lives and dollars. It affects families and businesses and government. So the best way to improve the health of Americans 10, 20, 30 years into the future or 40 years down the line is to stop the process by which this industry is targeting our youth. Here is what they know. They know that after the age of 21, very few people become addicted to nicotine. It is a product that people try in their youth, and with repeated use they become addicted to it and then continue, normally for years and years. That makes for a very good customer of the tobacco industry, a very good customer of the nicotine industry, and very bad consequences for the health of our children, who become our young adults, who become our middle-aged adults--very bad costs for health at each stage. According to a Surgeon General's report released in March 2012, tobacco use among youth is a ``pediatric epidemic.'' But the thing is that our children just aren't starting to smoke because of happenstance. No, they are aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry. Big Tobacco is working day and night to design products to appeal to kids, to get them hooked on this deadly habit so that they will be reliable consumers or reliable customers. In fact, the industry calls them ``replacement smokers.'' The products we supplied before have resulted in a whole lot of our customers dying. So we need replacement smokers; we need replacement consumers. This clearly is a product with great harm associated with it. There are cigars, cigarillos, tobacco candy, snus, and e-cigarettes, and the list goes on and on. Products cost often as little as 99 cents and are sold in colorful or cool packaging, and nowhere is that more true than in the burgeoning e-cigarette industry. This chart shows very readily the strategy of using candy flavors and fruit flavors targeted at kids. They have everything from cherry and watermelon, and the list continues with all kinds of--check this out-- gummy bear flavors. When you advertise e-cigarette flavors like gummy bears, you are not targeting people over 21. You are targeting our children. You are targeting them with bubble gum flavor and wild cherry flavor and candy apple flavor. These flavors are not for adults. They mask the taste of the product and make it more tempting, more exciting for our young people. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Chair. This is an actual container, like these containers that are shown on the poster. This is called JJuice. They call it juice. They put juice in the title, as if to imply it is healthy. This is liquid nicotine targeted at our children with all of these kinds of flavors. This particular container was a response to the advocacy of myself and others to say that this targeting of our children is not OK. So the industry decided to create a ``Senator's Choice'' flavor, and they call this flavor ``the greatest blend to date'' using ``the purist, highest quality liquid essence of guava, combin[ing] it with all-natural, American-made raw ingredients.'' It is almost like a review of a fine wine, this ``Senator's Choice.'' Again, they created this specifically to protest the fact that Senators were standing up and saying that this targeting of children is not OK. It is immoral, and it is wrong. We have a law in place to end it, but the administration must act or that law has no impact. What is actually in this? Well, the ingredients list does not have essence of guava on the ingredient list. It has glycerin and propylene glycol, nicotine, and artificial flavorings, which somehow doesn't sound nearly as nice as the description on their Web site. Let's see the impact of this targeting of our youth because, unfortunately, Big Tobacco's--the nicotine addiction industry-- strategies work. That is why they are continuing to employ them. High school e-cigarette use tripled in just 1 year, from 2013 at 4.5 percent to 2014 at 13.4 percent. When we have the numbers for 2015, I am sure we will find that it is substantially higher because of this aggressive marketing campaign aimed at our junior high and high school students. Nearly one in seven high school students have used an e-cigarette in the last 30 days. That represents 2 million of our children--2 million of our teenagers nationwide. An updated CDC study released recently confirmed that youth tobacco use is continuing to grow. Our children are not using e-cigarettes to quit smoking; they are using e-cigarettes to start smoking. So when the industry claims that all of these e-cigarettes are improving the health of those who currently use cigarettes, it is another tobacco industry big lie. Big Tobacco brings us another big lie. Children are using these products to start smoking, not to stop smoking. Every day that we don't act, more of our children are at risk for a lifetime of tobacco and nicotine addiction. The choice is simple. Let's end this irresponsible inaction. Let's stop enriching the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry by continuing to delay the regulations authorized back in 2009. Let's do the right thing for America's children. Let's assist our children in living longer, healthier, happier lives by ending the targeting by Big Tobacco. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jessica Hagens-Jordan, an intern in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, an American historian, James Truslow Adams, wrote a book in 1931 entitled ``The Epic of America,'' and in this book he coined the term the ``American dream.'' He went on to say this: ``Ever since we have become an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of the ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it.'' One of those forces that has been overwhelming the effort of middle- class, hard-working Americans to be successful is predatory lending. Today I am specifically rising to discuss the introduction of the SAFE Lending Act. SAFE stands for stopping abuse and fraud in electronic lending. The focus of this is short-term, high-interest loans, often referred to as ``payday'' loans. These loans often have interest rates of 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent. The debt a family has with one of those loans just grows and grows and grows. Consider this: If you take out $1,000 today, a year from now, at 500 percent interest, you owe $5,000. In 2 years you owe $25,000--an impossible sum for a family of modest means. So these payday loans pull families into a vortex of debt from which they cannot escape, and this vortex destroys them financially. These are huge consequences for the parents, certainly, but huge consequences for the children. It does a tremendous amount of damage to American families. This is why many major religions in the world have come out over time--over thousands a year--and said high- interest lending destroys and shouldn't be done, but here we have it, right here in America. Many States, including my State of Oregon, have worked to end this vortex of debt. They have put a cap on the interest rate. They have stopped the every-2-week rollovers, and so they have returned, if you will, small-dollar lending to being an affordable instrument that doesn't destroy families. These tough State laws are under assault by new tactics of the payday loan industry, and we need to address those new tactics. Specifically, the industry is starting to use an instrument called remotely created checks. How does this work? Let's say you have your bank account and you take out a payday loan. The dollars are put into your bank account, and you think they are going to stay there, but now this online payday loan company--and who knows where in the world these people really are; they may be overseas in any remote location, extremely difficult to find, extremely difficult to enforce our laws-- has your bank account number, and that is all they need to write a check to themselves to withdraw the money from your account and put it in their account, an account that is likely to be so remotely located no one can enforce the State laws. In other words--let me say this again--the payday lender, once they have your checking account number, can reach into your account without your permission and take your money out; thereby, having the ability to bypass the State laws. An Oregon law may say if you have interest rates over those established by Oregon law your loan is uncollectible; that it is illegal in our State. Well, these online predatory payday lenders do not care that it is illegal in Oregon. They have your account number, and they are going to reach in and take your money illegally. That is not the only predatory practice that is evolving. These payday loan companies have also established a practice whereby instead of putting money into your bank account, they give you a prepaid card. This prepaid card looks very convenient. You use it like a credit card, a debit card, and we are familiar with that in America, but here is the ringer. They put fees on these cards that add to the 300-percent, 400- percent, or 500-percent interest rate that is already destroying families, particularly over balance fees. You may not know whether your card has $20 or $30 or $50 left on it. Some of these prepaid cards, in other parts of the financial industry, charge for all kinds of things. They charge you to call and ask what your balance is. They charge if you call and ask a question about how the card works or even what the fees are. They charge a fee just for asking what the fees are. Some of them charge a fee every time you use the card. Some might charge an additional monthly fee, but particularly these prepaid payday loan cards are notorious for their overbalance fees. Let us assume you have perhaps $50 left in your account, you buy something for $52, and maybe immediately you get charged a $35 fee, which they can reach into your account and take, but then that is an overdraft fee on the bank, so the bank is now charging you a fee. Then, because you don't know it is an overdraft because they didn't turn down the transaction, you buy a pack of gum for 50 cents, and there is another $35 fee. You buy a hamburger at Burger King for lunch, and there is another fee. So you can see how these predatory fees line up very quickly on top of the 300-percent, 400-percent, or 500-percent interest rates. So here is the thing. State after State has said these are destroying families and we are going to act. In fact, in the U.S. Senate years ago we acted to protect military families from these predatory loans. The admirals and generals came to Capitol Hill to testify. They said: At our military bases these predatory payday loans are destroying our military families, and it is not just their finances. When their finances are destroyed, relationships are frayed, children's opportunities are damaged. We cannot have this type of terrible impact on our military families. So we established a national cap of interest on these short-term loans. It is good we did. It is good we protected our military families from these abusive, destructive practices, but if these practices are so damaging to families in the military, aren't they equally damaging to families who are not in the military? Shouldn't we apply the same protection to every American family we apply to a military family? Don't we value the success of every American family more than we value protection for legalized loan sharking? Certainly we should, in this Chamber, extend to all families in America the same protection we gave to military families. Until we do that, we should at least make sure the Federal framework requires honoring the tough laws passed by State after State after State to stop these practices. I think the total is about 19 States at this point. That is why I introduced the SAFE Lending Act today. The SAFE Lending Act--stop the abuse and fraud in electronic lending. This act does a couple of key things. First of all, it says these remotely created checks in which a company reaches in and takes your money without your permission--those are banned. You regain control of your checking account. Second, the legislation bans the overdraft fees on these prepaid payday loan cards and other predatory fees established through the Commission. Third, it says that all small-dollar lenders have to register in order to be monitored by their States so they are not in an unregulated world out there without people even knowing they exist. Furthermore, it says that every lender of every type has to abide by the State laws. It doesn't matter whom they are regulated by. Finally, it bans lead generators. Now, what is a lead generator? A lead generator is a fake Web site that pretends it is a payday loan company, offers you a product, and their whole goal is to get your bank account number. Again, once they have that bank account number, they can reach in and take funds out of your account. It is incredible that this is true; that you don't have to sign the check. They basically just use your number and ask to take away the money from John Consumer or Jane Consumer and give it to us, and the bank complies and does it. As amazing as that sounds, that is the way the banking system works. That is what these remotely created checks do. So we to make sure that regardless of what your financial regulator is, you have to abide by the State rules, and we ban these lead generators that are fishing for these bank account numbers. Once they have them, they sell them to the lending industry, to the payday loan industry, and who knows what other hands these numbers end up in. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I noticed a charge on my bank account that wasn't something that either my wife Mary or I had purchased from a store we don't go to. I looked at it carefully and discovered the number of the check was out of the order of my checkbook. So I pulled up the copy of the check on the computer, looking through my account on the computer, and I could see the number matched my account, but the name on the check didn't match my account, the address didn't match my account, and the signature didn't match my signature. None of it matched. The only thing on this check was the number of the bank account that matched my bank account, and that is all that is required for someone to reach in and take money out of your account. That type of fraud is surprising as well, but it reinforces the point that once an online electronic payday loan company has your number, they can reach in. That is all they need to take the money out of your account. So we are going to ban these lead generators as another piece of this predatory profile of the electronic payday loan industry. It is why I am introducing the act. I greatly appreciate my cosponsors on this act, and I would like to thank them all. They are Senator Tom Udall, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Blumenthal, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Senator Ed Markey, Senator Ron Wyden, and Senator Cory Booker. Thank you to all of my colleagues who care a lot about ending predatory financial transactions that strip billions of dollars out of hard-working Americans' accounts. We have a lot of work to do on this. We have accomplished some. There is much more to be done. Certainly, when James Truslow Adams said that individuals of each generation will have to stand and fight against practices designed to destroy the American dream, he was talking about things such as this--practices that proceed to undermine the success of America's working families. Let us stop those predatory practices in their tracks and pass the SAFE Lending Act.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, an American historian, James Truslow Adams, wrote a book in 1931 entitled ``The Epic of America,'' and in this book he coined the term the ``American dream.'' He went on to say this: ``Ever since we have become an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of the ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it.'' One of those forces that has been overwhelming the effort of middle- class, hard-working Americans to be successful is predatory lending. Today I am specifically rising to discuss the introduction of the SAFE Lending Act. SAFE stands for stopping abuse and fraud in electronic lending. The focus of this is short-term, high-interest loans, often referred to as ``payday'' loans. These loans often have interest rates of 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent. The debt a family has with one of those loans just grows and grows and grows. Consider this: If you take out $1,000 today, a year from now, at 500 percent interest, you owe $5,000. In 2 years you owe $25,000--an impossible sum for a family of modest means. So these payday loans pull families into a vortex of debt from which they cannot escape, and this vortex destroys them financially. These are huge consequences for the parents, certainly, but huge consequences for the children. It does a tremendous amount of damage to American families. This is why many major religions in the world have come out over time--over thousands a year--and said high- interest lending destroys and shouldn't be done, but here we have it, right here in America. Many States, including my State of Oregon, have worked to end this vortex of debt. They have put a cap on the interest rate. They have stopped the every-2-week rollovers, and so they have returned, if you will, small-dollar lending to being an affordable instrument that doesn't destroy families. These tough State laws are under assault by new tactics of the payday loan industry, and we need to address those new tactics. Specifically, the industry is starting to use an instrument called remotely created checks. How does this work? Let's say you have your bank account and you take out a payday loan. The dollars are put into your bank account, and you think they are going to stay there, but now this online payday loan company--and who knows where in the world these people really are; they may be overseas in any remote location, extremely difficult to find, extremely difficult to enforce our laws-- has your bank account number, and that is all they need to write a check to themselves to withdraw the money from your account and put it in their account, an account that is likely to be so remotely located no one can enforce the State laws. In other words--let me say this again--the payday lender, once they have your checking account number, can reach into your account without your permission and take your money out; thereby, having the ability to bypass the State laws. An Oregon law may say if you have interest rates over those established by Oregon law your loan is uncollectible; that it is illegal in our State. Well, these online predatory payday lenders do not care that it is illegal in Oregon. They have your account number, and they are going to reach in and take your money illegally. That is not the only predatory practice that is evolving. These payday loan companies have also established a practice whereby instead of putting money into your bank account, they give you a prepaid card. This prepaid card looks very convenient. You use it like a credit card, a debit card, and we are familiar with that in America, but here is the ringer. They put fees on these cards that add to the 300-percent, 400- percent, or 500-percent interest rate that is already destroying families, particularly over balance fees. You may not know whether your card has $20 or $30 or $50 left on it. Some of these prepaid cards, in other parts of the financial industry, charge for all kinds of things. They charge you to call and ask what your balance is. They charge if you call and ask a question about how the card works or even what the fees are. They charge a fee just for asking what the fees are. Some of them charge a fee every time you use the card. Some might charge an additional monthly fee, but particularly these prepaid payday loan cards are notorious for their overbalance fees. Let us assume you have perhaps $50 left in your account, you buy something for $52, and maybe immediately you get charged a $35 fee, which they can reach into your account and take, but then that is an overdraft fee on the bank, so the bank is now charging you a fee. Then, because you don't know it is an overdraft because they didn't turn down the transaction, you buy a pack of gum for 50 cents, and there is another $35 fee. You buy a hamburger at Burger King for lunch, and there is another fee. So you can see how these predatory fees line up very quickly on top of the 300-percent, 400-percent, or 500-percent interest rates. So here is the thing. State after State has said these are destroying families and we are going to act. In fact, in the U.S. Senate years ago we acted to protect military families from these predatory loans. The admirals and generals came to Capitol Hill to testify. They said: At our military bases these predatory payday loans are destroying our military families, and it is not just their finances. When their finances are destroyed, relationships are frayed, children's opportunities are damaged. We cannot have this type of terrible impact on our military families. So we established a national cap of interest on these short-term loans. It is good we did. It is good we protected our military families from these abusive, destructive practices, but if these practices are so damaging to families in the military, aren't they equally damaging to families who are not in the military? Shouldn't we apply the same protection to every American family we apply to a military family? Don't we value the success of every American family more than we value protection for legalized loan sharking? Certainly we should, in this Chamber, extend to all families in America the same protection we gave to military families. Until we do that, we should at least make sure the Federal framework requires honoring the tough laws passed by State after State after State to stop these practices. I think the total is about 19 States at this point. That is why I introduced the SAFE Lending Act today. The SAFE Lending Act--stop the abuse and fraud in electronic lending. This act does a couple of key things. First of all, it says these remotely created checks in which a company reaches in and takes your money without your permission--those are banned. You regain control of your checking account. Second, the legislation bans the overdraft fees on these prepaid payday loan cards and other predatory fees established through the Commission. Third, it says that all small-dollar lenders have to register in order to be monitored by their States so they are not in an unregulated world out there without people even knowing they exist. Furthermore, it says that every lender of every type has to abide by the State laws. It doesn't matter whom they are regulated by. Finally, it bans lead generators. Now, what is a lead generator? A lead generator is a fake Web site that pretends it is a payday loan company, offers you a product, and their whole goal is to get your bank account number. Again, once they have that bank account number, they can reach in and take funds out of your account. It is incredible that this is true; that you don't have to sign the check. They basically just use your number and ask to take away the money from John Consumer or Jane Consumer and give it to us, and the bank complies and does it. As amazing as that sounds, that is the way the banking system works. That is what these remotely created checks do. So we to make sure that regardless of what your financial regulator is, you have to abide by the State rules, and we ban these lead generators that are fishing for these bank account numbers. Once they have them, they sell them to the lending industry, to the payday loan industry, and who knows what other hands these numbers end up in. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I noticed a charge on my bank account that wasn't something that either my wife Mary or I had purchased from a store we don't go to. I looked at it carefully and discovered the number of the check was out of the order of my checkbook. So I pulled up the copy of the check on the computer, looking through my account on the computer, and I could see the number matched my account, but the name on the check didn't match my account, the address didn't match my account, and the signature didn't match my signature. None of it matched. The only thing on this check was the number of the bank account that matched my bank account, and that is all that is required for someone to reach in and take money out of your account. That type of fraud is surprising as well, but it reinforces the point that once an online electronic payday loan company has your number, they can reach in. That is all they need to take the money out of your account. So we are going to ban these lead generators as another piece of this predatory profile of the electronic payday loan industry. It is why I am introducing the act. I greatly appreciate my cosponsors on this act, and I would like to thank them all. They are Senator Tom Udall, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Blumenthal, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Senator Ed Markey, Senator Ron Wyden, and Senator Cory Booker. Thank you to all of my colleagues who care a lot about ending predatory financial transactions that strip billions of dollars out of hard-working Americans' accounts. We have a lot of work to do on this. We have accomplished some. There is much more to be done. Certainly, when James Truslow Adams said that individuals of each generation will have to stand and fight against practices designed to destroy the American dream, he was talking about things such as this--practices that proceed to undermine the success of America's working families. Let us stop those predatory practices in their tracks and pass the SAFE Lending Act.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about an issue that affects a part of our Constitution. The Constitution begins with these three words: ``We the people.'' You can talk in any townhall across America and ask ``What are the first three words of the Constitution?'' and they will respond ``We the people.'' They know that the Constitution starts with those words written in a super-sized font, because that is really the heart of what our system of government is all about--not ``we the powerful commercial interests,'' not ``we the titans of industry,'' not ``we the richest in America.'' No. ``We the people,'' the citizens, ordinary citizens. Our Constitution, our system of government is set up to honor and respect and address the concerns of ordinary citizens. That is very different from so many other countries where our early residents came from, from across the sea. So those three words capture the spirit of what our new Nation was all about, or, as President Lincoln later summarized, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I have come to the floor periodically to address various issues related to ``we the people,'' related certainly to honoring the spirit of the Constitution. In that regard, this week I am coming to the floor to address the responsibility of our Senate and its advice and consent role under our Constitution. The President's duty is to nominate a Supreme Court Justice when there is a vacancy. That responsibility is clearly written into our Constitution. The Senate's duty is to consider whether that nominee merits being appointed. In the early ages of our country, as we went from the Revolution of 1776 to the drafting of the Constitution, our Founders were of mixed minds as to how this appointment process should work. Some said the appointments should all be done by what they referred to as the assembly--that is, by all of us in Congress. So the executive branch would have a check on it, but the position would be filled by Congress. Others said: No, no, no, no, that is too difficult. Too much horse trading is going to be going on. The responsibility needs to be vested in the President. That is accountability. But what happens if the President engages in appointments of dubious merit, people of dubious character, of dubious qualifications? So they came out with this compromise that the President nominates and our responsibility here in the Senate is to determine whether the nominee is of fit character. One can get a little flavor of this from the writings of Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, Paper No. 76. He writes: To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters. That is our responsibility--to vet the nominee and to vote upon determining whether the individual is of fit character, and that certainly can be broadly interpreted to include personal characteristics and qualifications for a job that requires specific qualifications. That is our responsibility. Every Senator here took an oath to the Constitution, pledged to honor their responsibilities here as they are laid out in the Constitution. That is why I am so disturbed that at this moment we have Senators in this body who have said: I am not going to do my responsibility under the Constitution. I am going on a job strike. I don't want to work and do my responsibility under advice and consent. I don't want to do the work of vetting candidates and voting on candidates. I am just going to sit on my hands and sing ``la la la'' instead of doing the work the Constitution requires. That is unacceptable. To my colleagues who are sitting on their hands and failing to do their constitutional responsibility, I simply say: Do your job. On March 16 President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Certainly the President has now fulfilled his responsibility under the Constitution. He put forward a nominee to fill this critical vacancy on the Supreme Court. I certainly look forward to meeting with Merrick Garland, reviewing his credentials, and learning more about his vision for the Supreme Court. That is part of the vetting process. That is something all of us should be doing. Then it will be time for the Senate as a body to act. That means the Judiciary Committee proceeds to collect information on Mr. Garland's background and on his decisions, and then they hold a hearing and members of the committee ask penetrating questions: Why did you say this in a particular opinion? He has a whole record to be examined, and that is what we should be doing right now. Not since the Civil War have we left a vacancy on the Supreme Court for over a year, but the job strike my colleagues are engaged in today says: We are going to leave this vacancy on the Court. We are going on a job strike for an entire year and not do our responsibility under the Constitution because we just don't want to. That is a dereliction of duty, and I encourage my colleagues to rethink their positions. Since 1975 it has taken on average only 67 days to vet and vote on a Supreme Court nominee--just 67 days or a little over 2 months. There are some folks here in the Chamber who say: Well, this is a unique circumstance because we are in the last year of a Presidency, and therefore we should just wait and leave the Court spot empty for a year. Wait until the election next November and wait for the new President to come in in January and then get a new nominee and hold hearings then. That argument fails on several accounts. First of all, there is nothing in the Constitution that says one will only do their job in a year, if you will, that is in the first 3 years of the Presidency instead of the fourth year. That is not written in the Constitution. For any of my colleagues who make this argument, I would be happy to read the Constitution to them. Better yet, read it yourselves. Look at the Constitution and our responsibilities under the Constitution. The President is required to nominate in all 4 years, and we here in the Senate are required to proceed to determine whether that nominee is of unfit character or of fit character, and that means vetting and that means voting. The President doesn't get a break in his fourth year and get told to do nothing, and we don't get a break in our sixth year. We are not told that in the sixth year we should wait to make decisions because we have to run for reelection and therefore we should wait until our citizens vote. No. We have a term that runs a full 6 years, and we have a responsibility for the entire 6 years. The President has a term of 4 years, and he or she has the responsibility for the entire 4 years. There is nothing in the advice and consent clause that says that at a certain point in time, we are just not going to do our advice and consent responsibility. It is conceivable that the Founders could have written into the Constitution that in the fourth year of a Presidency, the Senate will not fill any positions, but they didn't write that into the Constitution, and it would not have made sense for them to have done so because the work of the Court is ongoing and the work of the executive branch is ongoing. Indeed, if we want any form of precedent, we can look to the recent past. Justice Kennedy, who sits on the Court today, was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan's final term, and he was confirmed under a Democratically controlled Senate. I have not heard a single Member come to this floor and say that if they had been here in that year, they would have advised that we leave President Reagan's nominee hanging, unvetted, not voted on for an entire year, waiting for the next President. No one here made that argument back then, and nobody is making it now. What we are seeing is a purely political effort to pack the Court to politicize an institution that shouldn't be politicized. From the moment of nomination through the end of this administration, we still have 310 days. The average, after a nomination, to confirm a nomination, is 66 days. In other words, we have five times as many days as needed for the average to confirm. There is no argument that there is not enough time. A job strike based purely on partisan politics designed to polarize and pack the Court is going to do a tremendous amount of damage to this important institution. Our Founders laid out in the Constitution a vision of three coequal branches, but, colleagues, if you take the advice and consent power to undermine the ability of the executive branch to operate or the ability of the Court to operate, you will damage in a serious way the quality of the three branches. You will be saying that one branch has the power to derail the ability of the other two to function. That is absolutely, clearly, completely, 100 percent not the vision that was laid out in the Constitution and not the vision that was laid out for advice and consent. Let me remind you that advice and consent is the responsibility to determine if the nominee is of unfit character. How can we determine if someone is of unfit character if we won't meet with them? How can we determine if someone is of unfit character if we are not willing to review their writings? How can we determine if they are of unfit character if the Judiciary Committee doesn't hold a hearing to actually raise questions and ask the nominee to respond to them? How can we as a body determine and make the decision that someone is of unfit character if we don't hold a vote? Consider the precedent that is being established and the damage it will do. Let's say for example that by refusing to do their job, my Republican colleagues delay until the next administration comes in. It is a Republican administration, and they get a nominee who they feel has far-right views that they like better than the nominee before us. By the way, Merrick Garland's views are about as straight down the center as anyone can ask for. He has been praised voluminously by Republicans in the past. Justice Roberts said that if one disagreed with Justice Garland, one would really have to look carefully as to why. A key Member of this body who has been here a very long time said: If someone like Justice Garland was nominated, well, that would be a very reasonable nomination. So we have a very reasonable, down-the- middle nomination. But what if this tactic of going on strike and failing to do your job worked, so that in the next administration you could secure a Supreme Court Justice who is way to the right? First, it has been a clear and complete effort to pack the Court. You have destroyed the integrity of the Court as one that rises above partisan politics. Then along comes another vacancy, and you have a different President and/or maybe the same President. Now the minority says: Well, we are going to go on strike, or maybe the majority is going to go on strike because they don't like this particular President or they don't like this particular nominee. And they say: We are not going to vet, we are not going to vote, we are going to wait. It is only 3 years until the next President. Let's let the people decide or wait till the next President. Perhaps if the Republican side succeeds in packing the Court and then the question becomes another vacancy, Democrats say: Well, look, we have to restore the balance of the Court, so we are going to absolutely refuse to act on the next nominee of this Republican President. This you can see. This precedent is not only a dereliction of duty; it is deeply damaging to the integrity of the Court. It is deeply destructive of the integrity of the Court. This is a path we do not want to go down as a body, exercising our advice and consent responsibilities, politicizing our judicial system, polarizing our judicial system, destroying the integrity of our judicial system. I appeal to my colleagues, rethink the oath of office that you took to do your job, decide to end this job strike, and do your job. Rethink how important the responsibility that we have as a Senate is to maintain the integrity of our institutions. For short-term gain, destroying the Supreme Court, polarizing, diminishing the Supreme Court is not in the interest of our Nation. I will go back to where I began, with our system of ``we the people''--our ``we the people'' Constitution--designed to create laws of, by, and for the people. There are three coequal branches of government; one creating laws, one executing those laws, and one determining whether or not those laws are within the balance of our Constitution. This action of trying to pack the Court through a job strike is equivalent to shredding key parts of this beautiful document. It is wrong in terms of the short-term action, and it is certainly wrong in terms of our long-term responsibilities. Let's end this show. Let's end this highly politicized moment. Let's actually hold the hearing to vet the candidate. Let's meet with the candidate so we can develop our individual understandings. Let's review the candidate's writings, and let's gather on the floor to vote whether we believe this candidate is a fit character or unfit character. That is our responsibility. Let's do our responsibility. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.