Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I would like to address a very important issue, which is the right for American citizens to know what is in their food. I am going to be talking about the topic of genetically modified ingredients in food. I will be pointing out that there are genetic modifications that are largely considered to have been beneficial and others that are largely considered to be causing significant challenges. In both cases, there is science to bring to bear around the benefits and there is science to bring to bear around the disadvantages. Ultimately, I will conclude--to give a preface here--that this is not a debate about the pros and cons. There is information on both sides, different aspects. What is at debate is whether our Federal Government wants to be the large, overbearing presence in the lives of Americans and tell them what to think, or whether we believe in our citizens' ability to use their own minds and make their own decisions. To be able to do that, they have to be able to know when there are genetically modified ingredients in the foods they are consuming. Let's start with the point that there are significant benefits from various GM modified plants. One example is golden rice. Golden rice, as seen here, has been modified in order to produce a lot more vitamin A. So growing this in an area where there is a vitamin A deficiency has been beneficial to the help of local populations. Let's take, for example, a certain form of carrot. It has been modified to produce an enzyme that helps rid the body of fatty substances. When you can't do that, you have Gaucher's disease. We have a lot of trouble with Gaucher's disease, with brain and bone damage, anemia, and bruises. But through the modification of these carrots, there is a solution, and should you be afflicted with Gaucher's disease, you would be very happy about that. Let's take another example. These are sweet potatoes that have been modified to resist a number of viral infections common in South Africa. So a place where otherwise you may not be able to grow these sweet potatoes, where the local population might not be able to benefit from nutrition in these sweet potatoes, they can now do so. These are some of the examples of some of the benefits that have come from some forms of genetic modification of plants. But just as there is science that shows benefits, there is also science showing concerns. I am going to start by explaining that the largest modification in America--the largest deployed modification--is to make plants such as corn, soybeans, and sugar beets resistant to an herbicide called glyphosate. The use of glyphosate has increased dramatically over the last two decades. In 1994 we are talking about 7.4 million pounds--not very much. But by 2012, we are talking about 160 million pounds of this herbicide being put onto our crops. Well, one's reaction may be this: OK, but is there any downside to that massive deployment of herbicides? Yes, in fact, there is. This herbicide is so efficient in killing weeds that it kills milkweed. Well, milkweed happens to grow in disturbed soil. So it has been a common companion to our agricultural world. Milkweed is the single substance that monarch butterflies feed on. So as the glyphosate expansion has increased over this time period, the monarch butterfly has radically decreased because its food supply has been dramatically reduced. This is not the only factor considered to affect the Monarch butterfly, but it is an example of a significant factor. That is something of which you think: What else could happen in the natural world as a result of changing dramatically the variety of plants that surround our farm fields? Let's turn to another impact. Millions of pounds of glyphosate go on the fields, and much of it ends up running off the fields and running into our streams and rivers. It is an herbicide. So it has a profound impact on the makeup of organisms in those streams and rivers. For example, it can have an impact on microorganisms, algae, and things that feed on that up the food chain--fish, mussels, amphibians, and so forth. We don't understand all the impacts of massive amounts of herbicides in our streams and rivers, but scientists are saying: Yes, there is an impact. Studies are underway to understand those impacts more thoroughly. Of course, we care about the health of our streams and rivers. Let's take another example. Sometimes you just can't fool Mother Nature. One impact of the massive application of glyphosate is that weeds start to develop a resistance to it, and then you have to start to use more of it. Also, that is true in a different sphere. I am talking about a particular genetic modification that goes into the cells of plants and is designed to fend off the western corn rootworm. The western corn rootworm eats corn when it is in the larvae stage-- that is the worm stage--and it does so when it is in the beetle stage. Some beautiful examples are shown here. It can eat the pollination part of the corn so that the corn doesn't produce healthy kernels as well. It can eat the leaves. It pretty much loves the entire corn plant. This genetic modification produces a pesticide inside the cell and was in the beginning very effective in killing these corn rootworms. But guess what. Mother Nature has a continuous stream of genetic mutations, and if you apply this to millions and millions of acres and millions of pounds, eventually Mother Nature produces a mutation that makes it immune to this pesticide. Then those immune rootworms start multiplying, and you have to start applying a pesticide again, and maybe you have to apply even more than before because they develop a resistance to it. That is exactly what is happening here. So that is a significant reverberation. All I am trying to point out here is that this is not really an argument about science. Science can tell us that there have been occasions in which genetic modifications have had an initial beneficial impact, and science will tell us that there are situations in which the reverberations of using the genetically modified plants are having a negative impact. So that is where it stands. It is like any other technology. It can be beneficial. It can be harmful. So the question is this: Does our government--the big hand of the Federal Government--reach out and say to our cities, our counties, and our States that there is only one answer to this and that is why we are going to ban you from letting citizens know what is in their food. Of course, there is no one answer. We have seen there are benefits and there are disadvantages. Quite frankly, I think it is just wrong for the Federal Government to take away our citizens' right to know. That is why I am doing all I can to publicize this at this moment. Various States have wrestled on whether to provide information to citizens so that the citizens can decide on their own whether they have a product that has genetically modified ingredients. Most of our food products do because virtually all of our corn, sugar beets, and soybeans are genetically modified, but citizens can look at what type of genetic modification. They can respond and use their minds with information. This is really what is beautiful in democracy. Government doesn't make up your mind for you. Government doesn't impose a certain framework in which you have to view the world. Yet, right now, at this very moment, there are a group of Senators in this body who want to impose those blinders on you, American citizens. They want to tell you how to think. They are supporting a bill that says the Federal Government will take one side of this argument and tell you it is the truth and spend your tax dollars publicizing it. This is the type of propaganda machine that you would expect outside of a democracy but not here in the ``we the people'' government of the United States of America--not here, where we value our citizens' ability to make their own choices. So it is very important that we wake up quickly and respond to this, because the simple truth is a group of very powerful companies are working right now to get a bill passed that will take away our citizens' right to know about GM ingredients in their products. This bill is called the DARK Act, or the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act, and it has passed out of committee. The majority leader has said it is a priority for him to put the DARK Act on the floor of this Senate next week with virtually no notice to the United States of America. Most of these positions percolate inside committees for a length of time and then get digested on the floor for a length of time. But, no, there is an effort to slam this through--this imposition on the right to know in America. That is just absolutely wrong. Now let me talk a little bit about how American citizens feel about this. There was a survey done at the end of 2015, just a couple of months ago. This was a nationwide survey of likely 2016 election voters done in November of 2015. The question that was asked of the participants was this: As you may know, it has been proposed that the Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, require foods that have been genetically engineered or contain genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled to indicate that. Would you favor or oppose requiring labels for foods that have been genetically engineered or contain genetically engineered ingredients? After the respondent gives the answer, then the follow-up question is this: Is that strongly or not so strongly? Well, 89 percent of Americans say they favor mandatory labels on foods that have genetically modified ingredients. That is powerful. That is nine 9 of 10 Americans. Furthermore, 77 percent of the respondents said that they not only favor mandatory labels but they strongly favor the proposal. Now, this is very unusual to have nine Americans line up on one side versus one on the other. Is this something that has to do with party affiliation? Absolutely not. Across the great spectrum of ideologies in America, citizens agree in this poll, with 89 percent of Independents--the same as overall--84 percent of Republicans, and 92 percent of Democrats. In other words, regardless of party, basically 9 out of 10 individuals say the same thing on the right, on the left, and in the middle. Well, that should be listened to up here on Capitol Hill because we are intended by constitutional design to be a ``we the people'' government, not the government of, by, and for powerful ag companies. If you want to serve in that kind of government, go to some other country because that is not the design of our Constitution. Our responsibility is to the people of America. They don't like Big Government trying to tell them how to think, and that is why this DARK Act is just wrong. There are some ideas floating around this building today. One of those ideas is, well, we will put a label on a food product that will be just a phone number, and if you, the citizen, want to know details about this product--whether it contains genetically modified ingredients--well, you can ring up this phone number and maybe somebody will answer your question. You can call the company, and the company will tell you what they think about their product. Well, first, Americans don't want to stand there in the grocery store and start making phone calls to companies. Can you imagine, you are standing there--and you actually care about whether there is a GMO in this product. You are going to make a phone call. You are going to wait while you go through a telephone tree. You are probably going to have to speak to somebody overseas who may not even understand what you are asking, or you get a company spokesman who is going to lay out the company line and never really give you an answer. Why should you have to do that? Think about the parallel situation. We have all these other ingredients on the package. We include things such as sea salt as opposed to salt. We have preservatives. We have colors that are incorporated into the food because people want to know about the colors, the food dyes that have gone into the food. They want to know about the preservatives that have gone into the food. We even tell companies that on the label they have to tell the consumer whether the fish has been caught in the wild or raised on a farm. Why do we require that label? Well, we require that label because citizens want to know about the ingredients in their food--in this case, the makeup of their fish, because it is different. There are different farming practices between catching wild salmon and raising salmon on a farm, in a pond, or in an ocean-contained area. There are different impacts. Citizens care about that, so we require it to be disclosed. We require our juice companies to say whether the juice is fresh or reconstituted. Why do we provide that information? Why do we require that? Because citizens want to know. There is a difference between the two products, and they want to know. It is their right to know what they put into their own bodies, what they feed to their families, what their children consume. It is their right to know. Again, 9 out of 10 Americans say this is important to them. This telephone idea is just the worst possible scam. Let's put it frankly. Nobody is going to stand there comparing soups, making phone call after phone call after phone call. Nobody who wants to know if there is high fructose corn syrup in their food is going to stand there, look at a can, and dial phone number after phone number. That is why it is printed on the label. That makes it very simple. There is another idea floating around here: Put a computer code on the product, and people can scan it with their smartphone and get information. Well, this may be even more ludicrous than the phone idea in terms of stripping the power of American citizens' right to know. First, you have to be in the grocery store, and here are the different cans of soup you are going to compare. Oh, let me take a picture of the first one with my phone. Oh, OK, now I have to go to the Web site. I am taking a picture of the bar code, and I am going to go to the Web site. OK, which page of this Web site do I go to? Oh, look, this Web site was written by the company that makes it. They are making it hard for this information to be found. They are making it hard for this to be understood. They are not disclosing the details of the type of genetic modification. Well, that is absurd. Can any Member of this Chamber really tell me--can you stand and tell me that you are going to take pictures of 10 different products while your child is sitting in your grocery cart? And that is just to buy one thing on your grocery list. Does anyone here want to stand and claim they would do that? I think the silence speaks for itself. Certainly we are in a situation where people don't want to take pictures of these codes with their cell phones because it reveals information about them that the companies collect on them. Why should they have to give up their privacy to know about an ingredient in their food? Let's be clear. There are two scams being discussed right now by the majority leaders of this Chamber, this esteemed Chamber which should stand for free speech and knowledge, not suppressed speech and lack of knowledge. They want to send you down this rabbit hole of 800 numbers or this blind alley of computer bar codes rather than a simple indication on a package. Let's recognize that this is a pretty easy problem to resolve because most of the world has figured it out--64 other countries, 28 members of the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Brazil. They all have a simple disclosure on the package, a consumer-friendly phrase or symbol. That symbol is straightforward. There is no smokescreen. There is no blind alley. There is no rabbit hole. There is no cleverness over an 800 number or a bar code or another computer code called a quick response code. No, they simply give the information, the way we do on everything else, the way we do on preservatives, food colorings, core ingredients, wild-caught fish versus farm fish, and juice from concentrate versus fresh juice. They make it simple. They just have a simple marking on the package. Do you know who else provides this simple information to their consumers? China. Do our citizens deserve less information than the Chinese, who live in a dictatorship? Why are Members of this Chamber trying to strip more information away from American citizens than does the dictatorship of China? That is just wrong. There is an easy solution here. There are a number of reasonable arguments that Big Agriculture is making. They say: Look, we do not want 50 States producing 50 different label standards. I absolutely agree. They say: We don't want a bunch of counties and cities producing yet other label standards; that could go into the thousands. Fair point. One common way of doing this would make sense. You cannot have a warehouse that is serving three or four different States or multiple communities that need to have this product sorted and distributed, one group to here and one group to there. You can't keep it all straight. It is expensive. There are all these different labels. It is confusing. That is a fair point. I agree. Let's do one 50-State solution. The industry says: We don't want anything pejorative. We don't want anything that says GM is scary or GM is bad. I pointed out that there are some advantages to genetic modifications and there are some disadvantages. So I agree there too. Let's not put a marking on a package that is pejorative. The industry says: We don't want anything on the front of the package. It takes up space. It may suggest there is something scary about this if you are putting it on the front of the package. OK, fair enough. Let's not put it on the front of the package. I completely accept that point. The industry says: There are several different ways we could do this. We would like flexibility. Absolutely. Let's have flexibility. So I have put together a bill which hits all these key points the food industry has raised. It is a 50-State solution. There is nothing on the front of the package. There is nothing pejorative. And it gives the type of flexibility the industry has talked about. Under the bill I have put forward, they are allowed to put initials behind an ingredient in parentheses or to put an asterisk on the ingredient and put an explanation below or to put in a phrase--as Campbell Soup plans to do--that simply says: This product contains genetically modified ingredients. Campbell Soup is planning to do that because they say they want a relationship of full integrity with their customers. Shouldn't we all be for full integrity with our citizens? Doesn't that make a lot of sense? Yet another option would be to put a simple symbol--any symbol chosen by the FDA, so certainly not one that suggests there is anything pejorative about it. Brazil uses a little ``t.'' OK, how about a little ``t'' in a triangle or in a box or something else that the FDA or the food companies would like? The point is, if someone cares enough to pick up a package, turn it over, and look at the fine print on the ingredients, if they care enough to look, just as they might care enough to look up whether there is high fructose corn syrup, just as they might care enough to see if there are peanuts in it because they have a peanut allergy, or just because they want to look at the ingredients to see how many calories are in a product, if they care enough to pick it up and turn it over, a little symbol--all of those options are available under this type of reasonable compromise. It would appear on each product involved in interstate commerce. OK, so that is consistent, and that is a point made. It is clear. These symbols are clear. The public that cares get educated. They know what to look for. It is easy to find. It is right there on the package. There is no sending you off on a wild goose chase through a phone tree and an 800 number. There is no proceeding to tell you that you have to use a smartphone, which many people don't have. They might not even have reception to be able to use it effectively if they wanted to. No. It is a simple, straightforward phrase or initials right there on the ingredients package. What could be more appropriate than the simplicity of that? Many folks have stepped forward to say this makes tremendous sense. Campbell Soup said: Yes, we endorse this. This makes sense. Also, Nature's Path, Stonyfield, Ben & Jerry's, Amy's Kitchen, Consumers Union, the American Association for Justice, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Just Label It coalition. Yes, OK, that is fine, we are not asking for something on the front of the package. It doesn't have to be on the front. It doesn't have to be scary. It can be in that tiny print on the ingredients page. When an earnest, sincere citizen wants to know, they have the right to know in a consumer-friendly fashion. I particularly thank the Senators who have already signed on to endorse this legislation: Senator Leahy and Senator Bernie Sanders, who come from Vermont, which has a State labeling bill that would be preempted by this bill. It would be replaced by this 50-State national standard. But because this is a fair standard for consumers, they are endorsing this bill. I also thank Senator Tester of Montana, Senator Feinstein of California, Senator Murphy of Connecticut, Senator Gillibrand of New York, Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, Senator Boxer of California, Senator Markey of Massachusetts, and Senator Heinrich of New Mexico. All parts of the country, different parts of the country, and they are all saying: You know what, our citizens, 9 to 1, want a simple, fair statement or symbol on the ingredients list. That is just the right way to go. If you are going to step on the authority of States to provide information that citizens want, you have to provide a simple, clear, indication on the package. That is the deal. That is the fair compromise. That is standing up for citizens' right to know. That is honoring the public interest. That is a compromise in the classic sense that works for the big issues the companies are talking about. They don't want the expense from individual States and they don't want the complexity and confusion from individual States. What consumers want is a simple indication on the package. Let's do the right thing. Let's not be worse than China and block our consumers from having access to information. Let's do the right thing that virtually every developed country has done and provide a simple, clear system for citizens to be able to know what is in their food.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask that my intern, Anastasiya Parvankin, be conveyed the privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to address the responsibility of the Senate in its advice and consent role under the Constitution. Of course, the President's duty is to nominate a Justice when the vacancy exists for a Justice, and that responsibility is very clearly written into our Constitution. The Constitution also very clearly conveys the Senate's role in providing advice and consent. This is the vision of our founding document. Actually, our Founding Fathers wrestled with exactly how to best construct this nomination and confirmation process. They knew there had to be a way to appoint judges in the judiciary and certainly ambassadors and directors in the executive branch, how to go about that. In those early efforts to craft the Constitution, some argued that this responsibility should be with the Executive, with the President; others argued that, no, no, it is better given to the assembly, to the body. Well, that conversation went back and forth. We can read a little bit about the thinking through Alexander Hamilton's The Federalist Papers 76 because he laid out the conversation as it went back and forth. They recognized that there were certainly advantages to having the President make the appointments. I quote from Alexander Hamilton's paper: The sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation. He will under this account feel himself under stronger obligations and more interested to investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled. In short, direct your accountability to one individual who would be responsible for carrying that out. But they were also concerned about some disadvantages of the Executive making appointments. Giving absolute power of appointment to the President could lead to unwarranted favoritism, as it was put, or incompetence in those appointed. Well, then again they thought, how about the assembly? They recognize that you have certainly a rich makeup of views in an assembly and perhaps that could be of value. On the other hand, they also felt that there would be a lot of horse-trading over appointments and that they would just never get the job done, and indeed, as Hamilton noted, ``the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often left out of sight.'' So that was the dilemma, and they came up with a strategy to take the strength of the Executive and the strength of the assembly; specifically, that you would indeed have the power invested in one person, and of course the Executive, in creating nominations for the executive branch, wanted to make sure those--there was an inherent desire to make sure those folks were competent, but there was also still this concern about, what if there was too much favoritism and what if individuals of unfit character were appointed to the bench? So give the Senate the chance to review and provide consent or, as Hamilton wrote, ``to prevent the appointment of unfit characters.'' That is what it boiled down to. So the strength of the Executive and the strength of the Senate combined in order to solve this knotty problem of how you filled the key posts in the judiciary and the key posts in the executive. All of this led to the exact crafting of article II, section 2, of the Constitution. It referred that the President--``and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court,'' and so on and so forth. Of course, this isn't, when there is a vacancy, the President can if he or she desires; no, it is shall. This is a responsibility. You have to fill the position. So the President has an obligation under this clause, and we in the Senate have an obligation to follow up with the advice and consent function. That is where we stand and why this esteemed Chamber has operated now throughout the more than 200-year history in providing that check and balance on the Executive. It is the President's responsibility to nominate, and it is our responsibility to vet those nominees, to examine them, to see if they have the fit, the characteristics of both their own qualifications and their character. That is the basis: qualifications and character. That is the question that we have addressed in this Chamber century after century. But here we are today with a unique circumstance in which the leadership of this body has said: We are not going to fulfill the responsibility that is given to us under the Constitution. We are going on strike. We don't want to do our job. I think the American people are saying the opposite: Senate, do your job. Senate, you were assigned a job in the Constitution. Senators, you signed an oath to abide by that Constitution. You have a responsibility under the vision of our Government to make it work. You have a responsibility to fulfill that job, to do that job. The Supreme Court is only the latest manifestation of the challenges we have had with nominations for the executive and for the judicial. I hope we can come together and develop a much more rapid system of vetting nominees and, if there is not a major objection, having those at lower levels essentially conveyed quickly into their posts, because this is something that we know will be the case. We know that over time, there will be Republican administrations and there will be Democratic administrations. We know that under the vision of three co-equal branches of Government, it is not the role of Congress to systematically undermine the other two branches. That was not the design of our Constitution. So we wield a particularly sacred responsibility not to use our partisan inclinations as a tool to try to destroy the Presidency of a different political party or to pack, basically, the courts according to our own philosophy. We are not doing that now. As a body, we are failing our responsibility. The Constitution says: Do your job. The people of America say: Do your job. The leadership here in the Senate is saying: We refuse to do our job. That is just wrong. Our Court does play this critical role in making sure that our laws and regulations stay within the bounds of the Constitution. It is not since the Civil War that the Supreme Court has been left with a vacancy of more than a year. The Civil War is a very unique circumstance. Since the 1980s, every person appointed to the Supreme Court has been given a prompt hearing and a vote within 100 days. Since 1975, it has taken on average only 67 days to confirm Supreme Court nominees. We can look at the list: Justice Kagan, 88 days; Justice Sotomayor, 67 days; Alito, 83; Roberts, 63; Breyer, 74; Ginsburg, 51; Thomas, 99; Souter, 69; and, on through the list, Kennedy, 65; Scalia, who just passed away, 85; and Rehnquist, 89. You notice that these are nominations by both Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. And in each case, the Senate--regardless of the party in control of the Senate--did their job, vetted these nominees, held a vote on them, and proceeded. But now we have more than 317 days still left in this administration, and the leadership of this body is saying that they are not going to do their job for 317 days. They are not going to meet with a nominee, not going to hold a committee meeting on the nominee, not going to report that to the floor, not going to hold a floor debate--not because of the standards set up in the Constitution, not because of this standard: Is this a fit character? Is he or she fit by qualifications? Is he or she fit by judicial temperament? The standard of unfit character--no, this is a strike, a job strike based solely on partisan politics. This is bringing partisan politics into the very place it should never be-- confirmation of our judges not at 100 days but more than 300 days, which is totally out of sync with the history of this Nation, totally out of sync with the responsibility that each of us is assigned to help provide advice and consent. More than a dozen Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed in the final year of a Presidency. I want to emphasize that because there have been folks here in the Chamber who have said: Well, there should be some special rule. In fact, they even thought there was some special rule that you don't confirm a Supreme Court Justice in the final year of a Presidency. That simply is not the case. More than a dozen Justices have been confirmed in the final year of a Presidency. Most recently, Justice Kennedy was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan's final term. It was not a Republican-led Senate that did that confirmation. It was a Democrat party-led Senate that did that confirmation because the Democratic Party leadership and Members said: This is not partisanship. This is a responsibility we have, and we are going to execute it. But, unfortunately, we are hearing a very different story at this moment from the Republican leadership in this body, and it is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to this Chamber. It is an embarrassment to our responsibility. I certainly am appealing that it be remedied. There is time to remedy it. The President hasn't put forward his nomination yet. It is time to recognize that perhaps those comments that were put forward in the heat of the moment can be set aside and we can still do our job. When people elect a President, they don't say to the President: Do your job for 3 years, but you get the last year off. When they elect us, they don't say: Well, do your job for 5 years, but you get the last year off. They certainly don't say: And by the way, after a couple of years, you can take a year off from your constitutional responsibilities. A President is elected for all 4 years. Our responsibility is to provide advice and consent, and it goes on continuously. In the last 200 years, the Senate has carried out its duty to give a fair and timely hearing and a floor vote to the President's Supreme Court nominees--whether the President was a Democrat or a Republican, whether this body was led by a Democratic majority or a Republican majority. Let's not change that tradition. Let's not fail our responsibility. In fact, let's honor our constitutional responsibility. I will close by calling on my colleagues: Let's work together to diminish the partisanship and improve the problem-solving. Let's turn down the rhetoric in terms of our back and forth during this campaign year and, certainly, turn it down enough that we can fulfill that core responsibility that provides advice and consent on nominations and certainly on what is probably the most significant and important nomination--that of an individual to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. To summarize, the Constitution lays out the job before us. The American citizens expect us to do our jobs. Let's do our job. Genetically Modified Food Mr. President, I am going to shift gears here to discuss a bill that has recently come out of committee and the way that we should consider responding to it. This conversation is all about defending Americans' right to know what is in the food they buy and Americans' right to know what is in the food they feed to their family and they feed to their children. I will also discuss the legislation I am putting forward to attempt to be a bridge between some very different visions on that topic. Let me start by saying this is all about genetically modified food and the information provided to citizens on the package about that. This often turns into a debate: Well, GMO has done some wonderful things over here. Others say: Well, it has created some problems over here. I am going to acknowledge that both of those are true. It has done some very positive things, and I will mention some in specific. But it has also created some challenges, some problems, and I will mention some of those. But after we recognize that that is the case, where do we come back to? Here is where we come back to: We should enable the individual in our beautiful Republic to make the decision and not have Big Government make the decision or suppress information. That is what happens in the non-``we the people'' world. That is what happens in dictatorships. That is not what should happen here in the United States of America, where individuals have the right to know what is in their food. Let me go ahead and explain some of the benefits and some of the challenges. Let's start with the example of golden rice. Golden rice was developed by the International Rice Research Institute. It provides greater amounts of vitamin A in the rice to reduce the deficiency that exists in many diets around this planet for that essential vitamin. That is a pretty positive development. I don't know at this point of any side effects or other things that have been brought to light. Nature is complicated, but for now, let's recognize that providing vitamin A where it is needed is a pretty positive thing. Let's take a look at carrots. Carrot cells have been transgenically modified to produce a chemical that treats Gaucher's disease. Gaucher's disease is a metabolic disorder where people lack a specific enzyme which helps rid the body of certain fatty substances. Those fatty substances then accumulate, causing enlarged livers, spleens, bone damage, bruising, and anemia. These transgenic carrots are part of the answer, part of the solution. Let's turn to sweet potatoes. Researchers are genetically modifying sweet potatoes to withstand multiple viral infections commonly encountered in South Africa, making this a much more successful crop and providing more food to people who need more food. So that is a positive development. All of this is not a one-sided scientific picture. There are also scientifically documented concerns. We can call them scientifically documented problems that have occurred with transgenic crops. Let me start by noting that the most common transgenic crops in America are crops that have been modified to be resistant to glyphosate. That is an herbicide. After the introduction of these resistant crops, which means you can put more herbicides or weed killers--you can put a lot more weed killer onto the acreage--you basically knock out the weeds much more easily and less expensively than with other strategies. What happened? Well, basically, since 1994--early 1990s--several major crops have become almost 100-percent transgenic-glyphosate tolerant. The amount of glyphosate put on the crops has grown from 7.4 million pounds in 1994--let's round it off--to 160 million pounds in 2012, and the number keeps climbing. This is a huge amount of herbicide. Try to picture in your head 160 million pounds of herbicide. Well, it is so effective in killing everything except the GM corn, GM soybeans, and GM sugar beets. It is so effective in killing everything else that very few weeds survive. One of the weeds that doesn't survive, because most don't, is milkweed. Milkweed happens to be the food for the monarch butterfly. As we have seen the enormous increase of glyphosate applied to our fields, we have seen a crashing of the monarch butterfly ecology. It is not the only thing affecting the monarch. Several other things are affecting them as well, but it is--in scientific study after study--a very significant factor. Let's also take a look at something else; that is, that all of this glyphosate doesn't stay on the fields. When it rains, it gets washed into our waterways. Our waterways are full of things that are affected by our herbicides, and so it has a big impact on the ecology of our streams and rivers. That is a serious scientifically documented issue that we are continuing to learn more about as time passes. Let's turn to another issue. This is a fascinating story. It is about a pest that bores into the roots of corn. It is called the corn rootworm. The corn was modified so it would have a pesticide in the cells and would kill the rootworm when it bored into the corn, but guess what happened. If you do this on a vast scale, Mother Nature comes along and has a few genetic mutations here and there and suddenly that rootworm starts to propagate with others that are now resistant to this pesticide that has been put into the roots. So now more pesticide has to be added to the corn, and as a result of that we have an opposite outcome than what was expected. The hope was that this would reduce pesticides, but now you have to put the pesticides back in it, and so now we have the evolution of superbugs. Here we have the adult beetle, and the rootworm is a reference to the larvae stage of this beetle. These are the type of concerns that are raised. I say all of this just to explain that while there are benefits of transgenic crops, there are also issues that are raised in the natural world. So anyone who takes this floor and says that nobody should be concerned about bioengineered crops is simply refusing to look at the scientific literature that says, no, there are things we should be concerned about. That is why it comes back to the right of the individual to know what is in their food. They want to know if it is a transgenic crop, and they can look up the details and make their own decision. Why have Big Government say that we are going to make the decision for you? Why have Big Government say that we don't trust you with information and we are not going to allow you to know what is in your food? No. That should be in some dictatorship, not in the United States of America. Well, we have a big battle now because out of committee last week has come a bill, and this bill is known as the DARK bill. It stands for Deny Americans the Right to Know because Big Ag says that we don't believe in this whole ``we the people'' model of a republic. No, we like to have a government that makes decisions for people and that denies information to people because we don't trust them, as consumers, to decide what they want to eat. We don't want them to know what they are feeding their children and their family. We want to make the decision for them. Well, 90-plus percent of Americans disagree. They want the information to make the decision on their own. They can find out about the benefits over here. They can find out about the concerns over here. Different foods have different transgenic crops in them. They should get to make the decision and not have Big Government making the decision for them. This bill, the DARK Act, prohibits counties, cities, and States from any decision to provide information on a package to their citizens about what is in their food regarding transgenic crops. I got together with the representatives of the food industry and advocates for consumer information. I tried to find out if there is an overlap so we can craft a bill that will bring these two communities together, and we made some progress on that, and so I will share that with everyone. Basically, a big concern of the food industry--totally legitimate--is that they don't want 50 different standards in 50 different States or to have a bunch of counties decide to make up their own rules, which would result in hundreds or thousands of rules. If you operate a warehouse, you can't send different cans of soups to grocery stores across the country. No. So that makes sense. They want a 50-State solution. Furthermore, they want to have it acknowledged that there is nothing pejorative about the concept of bioengineering or transgenic. They want to know that people know this is a situation where there are some positive benefits, and I have mentioned some of those positive benefits. They don't want a label on the front of the package because they think it would be scary to consumers, and they want flexibility as to exactly what system they use to alert consumers. The bill I put forward provides all of those goals for a 50-State solution. There is nothing on the front of the package, nothing pejorative, and provides flexibility for the food industry. It does not go to the final step that much of the food industry wants, which is no unpackaged labeling because then there is no compromise between the two sides. The consumer side would like to have something mandatory so it is on each package of food. They want it clear so a person can pick up the food or the can or the sack and have it easy to identify on the package. That is the compromise bill I have put forward. It enables the food industry to either put an asterisk on an ingredient that is bioengineered and have it explained below or it enables an industry to put a symbol in parentheses after the ingredient or it enables an industry to just put a symbol on the ingredients panel. In Brazil they use a ``t.'' It is a very simple ``t.'' It is not scary, but for those who want to know, it is identified. This approach of simplicity--nothing scary, simple access that is easy to see--this is the bulk of what both sides want to accomplish so we can have a 50-State standard. It has been endorsed by a number of groups. Over the last few days my bill has been endorsed by Campbell's, Stoneyfield, and Nature's Path. It has been endorsed by Amy's Kitchen and Ben & Jerry's and Just Label It. We can give up the ability of each State to have a separate labeling system if we do this simple symbol or parentheses or asterisk on the ingredients panel so a person who cares can look it up. I think about it this way. My daughter has always wanted to buy products that don't have highly enriched corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. Along the way, she read something and said: I am just not sure that is something I want to buy. So she picks up a package, turns it over, and often the ingredients on the package have tiny print, but she can figure it out. It is the same for this. Enable the consumer who is willing and wants to make the effort to be able to pick up a can-- again, it doesn't have to be on the front--and find out what is going on. This is the world standard. There are 64 other countries, including 28 members of the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Brazil, that all require some type of indication on the ingredients panel or on the package. Do you know who else is in that group? China. China is a dictatorship. China doesn't deny its citizens the right to know. How is it possible that a bill in this Chamber has been introduced to take away the right of Americans to know what is in their food? Even China doesn't do that, and we must not do it either. I appreciate the folks who have already signed up to sponsor this bill. Senator Leahy, Senator Tester, Senator Feinstein, Senator Sanders, Senator Murphy, Senator Gillibrand, and Senator Blumenthal, thank you. Thank you for standing up for your citizens' right to know. Thank you for standing up for a fair compromise that solves the big problem the food industry is facing with the potential of 50 different States having 50 different standards. Thank you for finding the area of compromise that works on both sides of this equation. I appreciate the endorsements. I appreciate the sponsors, but what I really appreciate is that we have freedom of speech in our country to be able to carry on this conversation, but how is it consistent to have freedom of speech and then say that we want to ban information from our consumers? How is that consistent? This is like the mob that says that we don't want our citizens to read certain books so we are going to burn them, we are going to ban them--and that is what this DARK Act does. It has been introduced and went through the Agriculture Committee. It bans the ability of States to provide information to their consumers. That is just wrong. Even China doesn't go there, and we should not go there either. I thank the Presiding Officer. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the genius of America was a government designed, as President Lincoln so eloquent summarized, ``Of the people, by the people, for the people.'' I will be rising periodically to address issues that affect Americans across our country and that this Chamber should be addressing. This week I am using my speech to highlight the labeling of genetically modified foods. This is truly a ``We the people'' versus ``We the Titans'' battle because citizens routinely poll in very high numbers about their desire to know what is in their food, and they like the idea of being alerted when their food contains genetically modified organisms or GMOs, but that is not necessarily the consequence, as when we go through the legislative process, often the ``We the people's'' commonsense vision is lost in favor of pressures applied by powerful interest groups. We are in the middle of a debate like that right now. So that is why I thought it appropriate to rise at this moment to address this. This is a debate about whether you believe that in a democracy, citizens have a right to know or whether that right to know is going to be taken away from them. I guess it goes to whether you feel that citizens have the minds they are put on this Earth with to make decisions of their own versus being told what decisions to make by a Federal Government. This debate over genetically modified organisms is a debate that gets complicated because there are tremendous differences in the types of genetic changes in plants. Let me give you some examples. You might have a crop where the crop has been modified genetically in the laboratory to produce natural toxins that defend plants against root- dwelling insect pests. Perhaps as a result of that, the farmers can reduce the amount of synthetic pesticides they apply to crop lands. That might be a very positive thing. It might save a lot of money, and it also might save a lot of runoff of pesticides. That is one example. Other crops have been modified to fortify foods with vitamins and nutrients. For example, golden rice, developed by the International Rice Institute, provides greater amounts of vitamin A to reduce the deficiency of this essential vitamin in our diets. There are other positive impacts. For example, you have transgenic carrots--carrots that have been modified genetically to produce drugs inside the carrot to treat the genetic disorder known as Goucher's disease. Other genetic modifications have been used to attempt to increase crop yields through more efficient photosynthesis. So that is a whole variety of different ways of trying to make plants contribute better to our nutrition and certainly in terms of the dynamics to the farming environment, but there are also changes that are made that raise concerns among some of our citizens. For example, most of the genetically modified crops grown in the United States have been altered to confer resistance to a chemical herbicide known as glyphosate. I was looking at a chart. I do not have it to display, but I will describe it. After the introduction of these GMO crops in the early 1990s, the amount of acreage that has been planted with glyphosate-resistant crops has gone to nearly 100 percent. With soybeans, it went to 100 percent by about 2005--just about every soybean plant in America. Glyphosate-resistant cotton, virtually all cotton, falls into that category, and a great deal of the corn, the vast majority of the corn planted in our country falls into that category. So now we have millions of acres being sprayed with glyphosate. At first glance, one might say: Well, that is a great thing because it is an easy way to reduce weeds--but often Mother Nature is complicated. For example, when you have all of that glyphosate being sprayed on acre after acre, millions of acres, the weeds start to evolve a resistance to it. Then that resistance means you have to put more herbicides on than before. So that is a concern or, for example, as you put more glyphosate on, you have more glyphosate runoff, and that runoff becomes a concern because you have herbicides running off into our waterways, and that can have an impact on sensitive aquatic species, including fish, mussels, amphibians, microorganisms. So it merits study, but it is certainly something to be concerned about. You can also have the impact of going to a separate item in which you have, as I mentioned as a positive, the fact that plants have been genetically modified to resist certain bugs that attack the roots. Western corn rootworm is an example of that, but now it appears to be evolving to eat the corn that was bioengineered to kill it because, over time, with millions and millions of acres, there is some genetic change, and some worm that would have been killed because it has a genetic diversity and genetic changes is now resistant. It produces offspring, and suddenly you have a bug that is sometimes referred to as superbugs that are evolving to be resistant to pesticides. What is the impact of that? Let me give you another example. We had a huge drop in the population of Monarch butterflies, magnificent creatures. I think humans just see a Monarch and they fall in love, just seeing one beautiful butterfly. Of course, these butterflies manage to travel thousands of miles in the course of their lives, which is just stunning that such a fragile, beautiful, little creature could travel so far to go way south in order to reproduce and come way back north. When we apply huge amounts of glyphosate herbicides, one of the side effects is that it kills a lot of the plants; that is, the milkweed, that the Monarch eats. So you have an attack on the Monarch. That is not the only impact on the Monarch, but it is a contributing factor, and the result is that it has contributed to a crash in this population. To summarize, you have many potential positive impacts of genetic engineering, and you have many potential concerns from genetically engineered crops.So there are considerations that need to be balanced. Some individuals hear that and are not concerned at all. They say: It is fine. I want to buy products that are genetically engineered or I would like to buy these and not those. Others say: I am really concerned about a specific feature of genetically modified crops, and I don't want to use my dollars to buy that crop and contribute to the problem I am concerned about. This is an adult conversation. It is a complex conversation. There are benefits and there are disadvantages and there are more studies to be done to discover just how much the concern should be. Some individuals are concerned that with this huge amount of biphosphate being sprayed--and biphosphate is now a known carcinogen--is there any residue that stays on the crops that people harvest and eat. So they are concerned about that. That is why labeling is leveling the field. It allows those who are concerned to know what is going on. It allows those who are not concerned to not pay attention. My daughter happens to like to look at ingredient lists and tries not to consume high-fructose corn syrup. It is helpful to her to know what is in it, and she can exercise her consumer preference. Other folks don't want to have excessive salt or maybe they are allergic to peanuts, so peanuts are on the ingredients list, and it is helpful to them to be able to make that decision. Honoring our citizens' right to know seems to be disappearing on Capitol Hill because we have powerful special interests that don't want to let citizens make these judgments, make these evaluations, between the advantages and the disadvantages. Last summer, a few hundred yards from here in the House of Representatives, the majority voted for a law that blocks States from passing laws to provide this type of information on a label. Just yesterday in the Senate, the Senate Agricultural Committee voted out a law to block the rights of citizens to know whether GMOs are in their food. That is an outrageous--outrageous--bill. It would halt any progress in ensuring that consumers can simply and easily access information about GMO ingredients through labeling. This bill that was passed out of committee also included a proposal that the Secretary of Agriculture do an education campaign touting the economic, nutritional, humanitarian, and scientific benefits of GMOs, but the bill didn't say--and educate consumers about the substantial concerns the scientific community has, about the impact on the evolution of weeds, about the impact on the evolution of bugs, about potential residues that are on the crops, about the runoff that is in our waterways affecting how healthy our waterways are and the organisms that live in our streams and in our rivers. So this is a very unbalanced presentation to the American public. It is the type of thing that government shouldn't be involved in-- basically, running a promotional campaign on taxpayers' dollars to not create a balanced understanding of an issue but instead an unbalanced understanding of an issue. The truth is, all Americans have the right to know what is in their food. They are buying food to feed their children. They have the right to know the ingredients so they can make responsible decisions. Providing information regarding genetically modified ingredients is a commonsense way to empower consumers to make their own personal decisions on issues they care about on the food they purchase. It is a pretty emotional issue when you start talking about the food you are putting in your own mouth or the food you are feeding your children. Campbell's Soup has begun taking steps to voluntarily disclose on all of their soups whether the products contain genetically modified ingredients. Why are they doing this? They say they have a relationship of integrity with their customers. They want their customers to know full information about their products and let the customer decide what the customer wants, and they will provide information about the type of genetic modifications and what they mean so the customer will have enough information to make a decision. There are advantages and disadvantages to GMO ingredients. Our Federal Government already requires the labeling of ingredients and basic nutritional information in order to protect the public and guard against false product marketing. These food labels tell consumers many things. They are supposed to tell how many calories. They tell how much there is of a variety of vitamins. They list the ingredients and do so in order of how prominent they are in the product. Our labeling laws even say that when fish are sold in large supermarkets, they have to state whether a fish is farm raised or wild caught. Why do we require supermarkets to label the fish as farm raised or wild caught? Because our consumers care about that. There are implications of whether a product was grown in an artificial lake or whether it was caught in the wild. Consumers want to know and use their own minds to make these decisions. That is something about being in a free society-- you get to make your own decisions based on disclosure. We make the information available. This type of labeling about genetic modifications or genetically modified organisms in the ingredients is routine around the world. Sixty-five other countries, including twenty-eight members of the European Union, plus Japan, plus Australia, plus China, plus Brazil, already require mandatory GM labeling. Has it come to the point that we in America are denying information that is routinely required in China for consumers? Is that the point we are coming to on this bill, this DARK Act, Denying Americans the Right to Know Act? This is not the direction we should be going. Instead, we believe in our American citizens, we believe in education, we believe in individual decisionmaking, and consumer information on the label honors that. Blocking States from being able to provide information that those State legislators or those State citizens, by initiative, say they want, that is an overstepping of Federal authority to crush States' rights on an issue important to citizens. That is why today I am introducing a compromise bill, a bill trying to bring this conversation to a commonsense compromise. It is called the Biotechnology Food Labeling and Uniformity Act. I am introducing this bill today with Senator Tester and Senator Leahy. It would give the FDA the authority to develop a uniform Federal standard for on- package disclosure of genetically modified ingredients. I have met with industry groups. I have met with the pro-label groups. I tried to find that area of compromise between the two. What I found is a great deal of flexibility on the labeling groups. Those groups said there doesn't have to be information on the front of the package. It is OK if it is on the ingredients list on the back of the can or the back of the package. It doesn't have to be in supersized print. It is OK if it is in the same small print that the ingredients are printed in. In fact, they are open to many different versions of how a company discloses this information, as long as a person can go to the store, pick up the package, turn it over, and quickly find out if there is a GMO impact. These are some of the ideas--and there are a variety--that are acceptable to the labeling side of the world. One is on the ingredients area. After the ingredient, it could either say it is genetically modified or put in a code like GM--it doesn't take up much space, it is on the list of ingredients--or if there are several ingredients and you would rather use an asterisk, you would rather put an asterisk and put what the asterisk means: ``This ingredient has been genetically modified,'' or ``May contain genetically modified ingredients.'' So a simple phrase at the bottom or a symbol. Brazil uses a symbol. They use a T. This is an example of using a symbol T for transgenic--not all of them at once, just each of them would be fine. It will take effort for consumers to look and see it. It is not upfront. They have to pick up the product. They have to look. It can be typed in small print, but it gives a person who cares the ability to get to the bottom of the question. Then, if they want, they can look up at the Web site the product, through a quick response code, and get more details. That range of flexibility is where the compromise can be honoring a citizen's right to know, while not taking up a lot of space on a package or not doing anything on the front of the package that says that this product is healthy or unhealthy or otherwise. It means the share of Americans who want this information--just as there is a share of Americans who want to know if there is high-fructose corn syrup, there is a share of Americans who want to know if fish is farmed or wild fish--can in fact find this out. This also addresses the big issue manufacturers have been raising. They don't want a patchwork across the country of 50 different States having different labeling laws. Our supply inventory doesn't work that way. We don't have a warehouse that only serves one State. Quite frankly, it gets very complicated and even more so on the East Coast, where the States are all packed together, than it does back home in Oregon. That is a legitimate concern. So there are big concerns. About 50 different versions of the law or maybe counties even having different laws is addressed. I am going to simply conclude with this understanding: Citizens have a right to know in a free society what is in their food. Let's honor that. Should the DARK Act--the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act that passed out of the Agriculture Committee--come to this floor, many of us will stand up to fight it in every possible way. It shortchanges American citizens, denies them critical information, and takes the right of a fundamental privilege in our society. It strips our States. It is a Federal overreach, and it is an assault on consumer information and consumer rights. It is just wrong, and we will oppose it vigorously.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tim Brown, a research follow on my team, be allowed privileges of the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the genius of America was a government designed, as President Lincoln so eloquent summarized, ``Of the people, by the people, for the people.'' I will be rising periodically to address issues that affect Americans across our country and that this Chamber should be addressing. This week I am using my speech to highlight the labeling of genetically modified foods. This is truly a ``We the people'' versus ``We the Titans'' battle because citizens routinely poll in very high numbers about their desire to know what is in their food, and they like the idea of being alerted when their food contains genetically modified organisms or GMOs, but that is not necessarily the consequence, as when we go through the legislative process, often the ``We the people's'' commonsense vision is lost in favor of pressures applied by powerful interest groups. We are in the middle of a debate like that right now. So that is why I thought it appropriate to rise at this moment to address this. This is a debate about whether you believe that in a democracy, citizens have a right to know or whether that right to know is going to be taken away from them. I guess it goes to whether you feel that citizens have the minds they are put on this Earth with to make decisions of their own versus being told what decisions to make by a Federal Government. This debate over genetically modified organisms is a debate that gets complicated because there are tremendous differences in the types of genetic changes in plants. Let me give you some examples. You might have a crop where the crop has been modified genetically in the laboratory to produce natural toxins that defend plants against root- dwelling insect pests. Perhaps as a result of that, the farmers can reduce the amount of synthetic pesticides they apply to crop lands. That might be a very positive thing. It might save a lot of money, and it also might save a lot of runoff of pesticides. That is one example. Other crops have been modified to fortify foods with vitamins and nutrients. For example, golden rice, developed by the International Rice Institute, provides greater amounts of vitamin A to reduce the deficiency of this essential vitamin in our diets. There are other positive impacts. For example, you have transgenic carrots--carrots that have been modified genetically to produce drugs inside the carrot to treat the genetic disorder known as Goucher's disease. Other genetic modifications have been used to attempt to increase crop yields through more efficient photosynthesis. So that is a whole variety of different ways of trying to make plants contribute better to our nutrition and certainly in terms of the dynamics to the farming environment, but there are also changes that are made that raise concerns among some of our citizens. For example, most of the genetically modified crops grown in the United States have been altered to confer resistance to a chemical herbicide known as glyphosate. I was looking at a chart. I do not have it to display, but I will describe it. After the introduction of these GMO crops in the early 1990s, the amount of acreage that has been planted with glyphosate-resistant crops has gone to nearly 100 percent. With soybeans, it went to 100 percent by about 2005--just about every soybean plant in America. Glyphosate-resistant cotton, virtually all cotton, falls into that category, and a great deal of the corn, the vast majority of the corn planted in our country falls into that category. So now we have millions of acres being sprayed with glyphosate. At first glance, one might say: Well, that is a great thing because it is an easy way to reduce weeds--but often Mother Nature is complicated. For example, when you have all of that glyphosate being sprayed on acre after acre, millions of acres, the weeds start to evolve a resistance to it. Then that resistance means you have to put more herbicides on than before. So that is a concern or, for example, as you put more glyphosate on, you have more glyphosate runoff, and that runoff becomes a concern because you have herbicides running off into our waterways, and that can have an impact on sensitive aquatic species, including fish, mussels, amphibians, microorganisms. So it merits study, but it is certainly something to be concerned about. You can also have the impact of going to a separate item in which you have, as I mentioned as a positive, the fact that plants have been genetically modified to resist certain bugs that attack the roots. Western corn rootworm is an example of that, but now it appears to be evolving to eat the corn that was bioengineered to kill it because, over time, with millions and millions of acres, there is some genetic change, and some worm that would have been killed because it has a genetic diversity and genetic changes is now resistant. It produces offspring, and suddenly you have a bug that is sometimes referred to as superbugs that are evolving to be resistant to pesticides. What is the impact of that? Let me give you another example. We had a huge drop in the population of Monarch butterflies, magnificent creatures. I think humans just see a Monarch and they fall in love, just seeing one beautiful butterfly. Of course, these butterflies manage to travel thousands of miles in the course of their lives, which is just stunning that such a fragile, beautiful, little creature could travel so far to go way south in order to reproduce and come way back north. When we apply huge amounts of glyphosate herbicides, one of the side effects is that it kills a lot of the plants; that is, the milkweed, that the Monarch eats. So you have an attack on the Monarch. That is not the only impact on the Monarch, but it is a contributing factor, and the result is that it has contributed to a crash in this population. To summarize, you have many potential positive impacts of genetic engineering, and you have many potential concerns from genetically engineered crops.So there are considerations that need to be balanced. Some individuals hear that and are not concerned at all. They say: It is fine. I want to buy products that are genetically engineered or I would like to buy these and not those. Others say: I am really concerned about a specific feature of genetically modified crops, and I don't want to use my dollars to buy that crop and contribute to the problem I am concerned about. This is an adult conversation. It is a complex conversation. There are benefits and there are disadvantages and there are more studies to be done to discover just how much the concern should be. Some individuals are concerned that with this huge amount of biphosphate being sprayed--and biphosphate is now a known carcinogen--is there any residue that stays on the crops that people harvest and eat. So they are concerned about that. That is why labeling is leveling the field. It allows those who are concerned to know what is going on. It allows those who are not concerned to not pay attention. My daughter happens to like to look at ingredient lists and tries not to consume high-fructose corn syrup. It is helpful to her to know what is in it, and she can exercise her consumer preference. Other folks don't want to have excessive salt or maybe they are allergic to peanuts, so peanuts are on the ingredients list, and it is helpful to them to be able to make that decision. Honoring our citizens' right to know seems to be disappearing on Capitol Hill because we have powerful special interests that don't want to let citizens make these judgments, make these evaluations, between the advantages and the disadvantages. Last summer, a few hundred yards from here in the House of Representatives, the majority voted for a law that blocks States from passing laws to provide this type of information on a label. Just yesterday in the Senate, the Senate Agricultural Committee voted out a law to block the rights of citizens to know whether GMOs are in their food. That is an outrageous--outrageous--bill. It would halt any progress in ensuring that consumers can simply and easily access information about GMO ingredients through labeling. This bill that was passed out of committee also included a proposal that the Secretary of Agriculture do an education campaign touting the economic, nutritional, humanitarian, and scientific benefits of GMOs, but the bill didn't say--and educate consumers about the substantial concerns the scientific community has, about the impact on the evolution of weeds, about the impact on the evolution of bugs, about potential residues that are on the crops, about the runoff that is in our waterways affecting how healthy our waterways are and the organisms that live in our streams and in our rivers. So this is a very unbalanced presentation to the American public. It is the type of thing that government shouldn't be involved in-- basically, running a promotional campaign on taxpayers' dollars to not create a balanced understanding of an issue but instead an unbalanced understanding of an issue. The truth is, all Americans have the right to know what is in their food. They are buying food to feed their children. They have the right to know the ingredients so they can make responsible decisions. Providing information regarding genetically modified ingredients is a commonsense way to empower consumers to make their own personal decisions on issues they care about on the food they purchase. It is a pretty emotional issue when you start talking about the food you are putting in your own mouth or the food you are feeding your children. Campbell's Soup has begun taking steps to voluntarily disclose on all of their soups whether the products contain genetically modified ingredients. Why are they doing this? They say they have a relationship of integrity with their customers. They want their customers to know full information about their products and let the customer decide what the customer wants, and they will provide information about the type of genetic modifications and what they mean so the customer will have enough information to make a decision. There are advantages and disadvantages to GMO ingredients. Our Federal Government already requires the labeling of ingredients and basic nutritional information in order to protect the public and guard against false product marketing. These food labels tell consumers many things. They are supposed to tell how many calories. They tell how much there is of a variety of vitamins. They list the ingredients and do so in order of how prominent they are in the product. Our labeling laws even say that when fish are sold in large supermarkets, they have to state whether a fish is farm raised or wild caught. Why do we require supermarkets to label the fish as farm raised or wild caught? Because our consumers care about that. There are implications of whether a product was grown in an artificial lake or whether it was caught in the wild. Consumers want to know and use their own minds to make these decisions. That is something about being in a free society-- you get to make your own decisions based on disclosure. We make the information available. This type of labeling about genetic modifications or genetically modified organisms in the ingredients is routine around the world. Sixty-five other countries, including twenty-eight members of the European Union, plus Japan, plus Australia, plus China, plus Brazil, already require mandatory GM labeling. Has it come to the point that we in America are denying information that is routinely required in China for consumers? Is that the point we are coming to on this bill, this DARK Act, Denying Americans the Right to Know Act? This is not the direction we should be going. Instead, we believe in our American citizens, we believe in education, we believe in individual decisionmaking, and consumer information on the label honors that. Blocking States from being able to provide information that those State legislators or those State citizens, by initiative, say they want, that is an overstepping of Federal authority to crush States' rights on an issue important to citizens. That is why today I am introducing a compromise bill, a bill trying to bring this conversation to a commonsense compromise. It is called the Biotechnology Food Labeling and Uniformity Act. I am introducing this bill today with Senator Tester and Senator Leahy. It would give the FDA the authority to develop a uniform Federal standard for on- package disclosure of genetically modified ingredients. I have met with industry groups. I have met with the pro-label groups. I tried to find that area of compromise between the two. What I found is a great deal of flexibility on the labeling groups. Those groups said there doesn't have to be information on the front of the package. It is OK if it is on the ingredients list on the back of the can or the back of the package. It doesn't have to be in supersized print. It is OK if it is in the same small print that the ingredients are printed in. In fact, they are open to many different versions of how a company discloses this information, as long as a person can go to the store, pick up the package, turn it over, and quickly find out if there is a GMO impact. These are some of the ideas--and there are a variety--that are acceptable to the labeling side of the world. One is on the ingredients area. After the ingredient, it could either say it is genetically modified or put in a code like GM--it doesn't take up much space, it is on the list of ingredients--or if there are several ingredients and you would rather use an asterisk, you would rather put an asterisk and put what the asterisk means: ``This ingredient has been genetically modified,'' or ``May contain genetically modified ingredients.'' So a simple phrase at the bottom or a symbol. Brazil uses a symbol. They use a T. This is an example of using a symbol T for transgenic--not all of them at once, just each of them would be fine. It will take effort for consumers to look and see it. It is not upfront. They have to pick up the product. They have to look. It can be typed in small print, but it gives a person who cares the ability to get to the bottom of the question. Then, if they want, they can look up at the Web site the product, through a quick response code, and get more details. That range of flexibility is where the compromise can be honoring a citizen's right to know, while not taking up a lot of space on a package or not doing anything on the front of the package that says that this product is healthy or unhealthy or otherwise. It means the share of Americans who want this information--just as there is a share of Americans who want to know if there is high-fructose corn syrup, there is a share of Americans who want to know if fish is farmed or wild fish--can in fact find this out. This also addresses the big issue manufacturers have been raising. They don't want a patchwork across the country of 50 different States having different labeling laws. Our supply inventory doesn't work that way. We don't have a warehouse that only serves one State. Quite frankly, it gets very complicated and even more so on the East Coast, where the States are all packed together, than it does back home in Oregon. That is a legitimate concern. So there are big concerns. About 50 different versions of the law or maybe counties even having different laws is addressed. I am going to simply conclude with this understanding: Citizens have a right to know in a free society what is in their food. Let's honor that. Should the DARK Act--the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act that passed out of the Agriculture Committee--come to this floor, many of us will stand up to fight it in every possible way. It shortchanges American citizens, denies them critical information, and takes the right of a fundamental privilege in our society. It strips our States. It is a Federal overreach, and it is an assault on consumer information and consumer rights. It is just wrong, and we will oppose it vigorously.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Bayley Sandy, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder 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. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to address a topic under the broad notion of the first three words of our Constitution: ``We the People.'' These are the most important three words because they set out the theory, the strategy for our entire Constitution and what it is all about, which is to ensure that we do not have government of, by, and for the most affluent in our society; or government of, by, and for the titans of commerce and industry; but instead a government of, by, and for the people, the citizens. It is within the framework of this Constitution that we find many elements designed to preserve this ``we the people'' purpose. In recent years, in recent decades, we have had major attacks on the theory of our Constitution, ``we the people.'' We had the Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision 40 years ago that said it is all right for the most affluent citizens in our society to drown out the people in the election process. We had Citizens United, which said the Constitution doesn't say ``we the people''; it says ``we the titans of commerce and industry; we the corporations.'' So the Supreme Court has made several decisions that have taken us far afield, and we see the results of this. We see the impact of policies crafted by a legislature elected with fabulous sums of money from the people at the height of our society, the height of power and influence, of wealth and connections. Somehow, we have to reclaim our Constitution. In fact, this understanding is something that is way off base, is the foundation of the frustration we see across our Nation. We see it reflected in the Presidential campaigns this year on the Democratic side and on the Republican side. People know that something is wrong when over the last four decades virtually all additional income in our economy has gone to the top 10 percent. People understand that the middle class is being squeezed and crushed. People are starting to see tent cities pop up in cities across our Nation because policies made here are no longer crafted for ``we the people'' but instead for ``we the titans.'' Well, I am going to rise repeatedly to address this challenge that is at the core of who we are as a nation, the core of our Constitution. Our Constitution is being attacked continuously, and we the people must fight back to reclaim it. The most recent attack has come from colleagues in this body who said they don't want to honor the responsibilities that they took on when they took the oath of office. One of those responsibilities is to give advice and consent on nominations. Recently, we have the majority leader who said: I don't even want to talk to a nominee from the President, let alone take my responsibilities under the Constitution seriously to give advice and consent. So I thought it might be useful to go back and think a little bit about this advice-and-consent power and how it came to be, what it meant, and what it means for us to honor our responsibility today as Members of the U.S. Senate. In those days in which the Founders were crafting the Constitution, they had a couple of different theories about how they might possibly create this power, and some said it should go solely to the Executive, solely to the President. Others said that is too much power to concentrate in single hands, that it should go to the body of a legislature, it should go to an assembly. Some decades after our Constitution was signed, they had a Federalist Paper written by Alexander Hamilton that laid out this discussion. He noted--and I am going to quote at some length here--that the argument for the Executive is as follows: The sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation. He will, on this account, feel himself under stronger obligations, and more interested to investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them. So that was the argument for the President to exercise these powers. In addition, there was discussion of the weaknesses of an assembly, a body like the U.S. Senate having that responsibility all to itself. Again, I will quote Alexander Hamilton: Hence, in every exercise of the power of appointing to offices, by an assembly of men, we must expect to see a full display of all the private and party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies, attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight. So thus the argument for the Executive over the assembly to have these appointing powers. But there was a concern, and that was, what if the Executive, the President, goes off track? Wouldn't it be useful to have a check on nominations when the Executive goes off track? So Hamilton explained why this check on the President's nomination power was placed into the Constitution. Once more I quote: To what purpose then require the co-operation 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 from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. He goes on to note that the body would be expected to approve most nominations, except when there are special and strong reasons for the refusal. So that is our job. That is how it is laid out, that we are to make sure the power the President has is not exercised in a way that results in unfit characters being appointed. Thus, this mutual system that took the strengths of the assembly as a check--that is, of the Senate--and the strength of the President in terms of accountability was combined. And Hamilton notes: ``It is not easy to conceive a plan better calculated than this to promote a judicious choice of men for filling the offices of the Union.'' So that is where we fit in. That is our role. We are to make sure that a nomination--an individual has the preparation, the qualifications, the character, if you will, to fill an office effectively. Hamilton points out in his conversation that just the fact that the Senate will be reviewing the nominations will serve as a check for, if you will, off-track nominations, inappropriate nominations. During the time I have had a chance to be connected to the Senate-- and that now spans four decades; it was 1976 when I came here as an intern for Senator Hatfield--I have seen this body operate as envisioned in the Constitution. I saw this body operate as a simple majority, with rare exception. The use of the filibuster was not used to paralyze, and the power of confirmation--of advice and consent of the Constitution--was not used to systematically undermine the President because he simply happened to be of a different party. It was not used to undermine the judiciary by keeping judicial vacancies open. Indeed, when this body starts to operate in that fashion--as it has been during the time I have been here as a Senator, seeing across the aisle the effort to systematically change the makeup of the core by undermining the responsibility to give advice and consent--then we deeply polarize and undermine this important institution that is our judiciary. I must say, even though I have seen for years the effort to really harness some gain through the strategy of undermining the ability of the President to appoint, I never thought it would come to this. Article 2, section 2, declares that ``the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.'' It is a responsibility of the President to nominate. It is a responsibility of the Members of this body to give advice and consent on that nomination. Yet here we are today with the majority of this body saying we do not take seriously our responsibility under the Constitution to give advice and consent. We have seen the process of really slowing--slow-walking nominations, but this is on a different scale of magnitude. It is our responsibility to have a committee vet the nominees, our responsibility to have a floor debate on the floor, our responsibility to have a vote, and that certainly is a way the Senate has operated decade after decade, century after century. I just have to ask each of my colleagues across the aisle, do you find in this beautiful Constitution any phrase that says the President shall nominate but only in the first 3 of the 4 years he or she is in office? Can you find that in the Constitution? Can you truly raise your head and say you are doing your responsibility when you say: I only want to exercise my constitutional responsibility of advice and consent 3 out of every 4 years, and then I will take a year off. I think if you read the Constitution you will find that is not what it says, and the American people know this. They know the Supreme Court is very important to calling the balls and strikes when actions or laws move into areas that are out of bounds. That is what the Supreme Court does. It makes sure our structure of laws and regulations stay within the bounds of the rights and rules of our Constitution. This is a critical part of the construction of American democracy. The Supreme Court serves as a check on the overreach of the President, the overreach of this body, and the overreach of its regulators. It cannot do its job if it does not have a full set of members. Not since the Civil War has the Supreme Court been left with a vacancy for more than a year, and of course the Civil War was a very unusual situation. Since the 1980s, every person appointed to the Supreme Court has been given a hearing and a vote within 100 days. Since 1975, on average, it has taken 2 months to confirm Supreme Court nominees. Despite what some of my colleagues claim, the President's duty to make nominations to the Supreme Court does not disappear during a Presidential election year. Our responsibility to do advice and consent does not disappear in a Presidential year. Let's look to history. More than a dozen Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed in the final year of a Presidency. More recently, Justice Kennedy, who is still on the bench, was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan's final term. That was done by a Senate led by the opposite party. It was a Democratically controlled Senate that honored its responsibility to give advice and consent. The American people spoke overwhelmingly when they reelected President Obama in 2012 to a 4-year term. They expect him to fulfill his duties for a full 4 years. They expect us to do our duties under the Constitution. The current campaign events do not stop the responsibilities of the U.S. Senate. For the last 200 years, the Senate has carried out its duty to give a fair and timely hearing and a floor vote to the President's Supreme Court nominees. Let us not change that position today, this week or this year. Let's not only honor the tradition, let's honor the constitutional responsibility. I note it is not only the Supreme Court we have to worry about. Last year the Senate confirmed just 11 Federal judges, the fewest in any year since 1960--in the last 56 years. Only one Court of Appeals judge was confirmed, the lowest in any given year since 1953. The number of judicial emergencies, where there are not enough judges confirmed to do the workload, has nearly tripled over the past year, from 12 in January 2015 to 31 judicial emergencies today. The obstruction is not limited simply to the judicial branch. The abuse of advice and consent or disregard for the responsibility extends to the executive branch. When we elect a President, the President is not a President of the party, he or she is the President of a nation. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, the President is our President. Systematically using party politics to undermine the individual because they were elected from the opposite party diminishes the individuals who serve in this body, it diminishes the stature of this institution, and it diminishes the function of our Nation so carefully crafted in our Constitution. Let's ponder the path forward this year. Let's not diminish this institution by forsaking our responsibility. Let's not politically polarize the Court that is so essential to making sure our laws and regulations and attitudes stay within the bounds of the Constitution. Let's instead restore this institution. Let's restore the Senate. Let it be at least as healthy as it was when we were youngsters serving here as interns, coming to DC for the first time or simply reading about it in a book back home. Let's restore the effectiveness of our judiciary. When we have judicial emergencies, we have justice delayed, and justice delayed is justice denied, and that does not honor the vision of the role of justice in the United States of America. So I call on my colleagues to end this obstruction that diminishes your service, diminishes this institution, and damages our Nation. In short, do your jobs. Work together as 100 Senators for the future of our Nation. Thank you, Mr. President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important words in our Constitution are the first three words of that document: ``We the People.'' These are words that the authors put in supersized print to tell us that this is what our government is all about--and also, what it is not about. They did not start out this document by saying that we are a government to serve the ruling elites. They did not establish this Constitution to serve the titans of industry and commerce. And they did not write our Constitution to serve the best off, the richest in our society--quite the contrary. The genius of America was a government designed, as President Lincoln so eloquently summarized, to be ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' This Senator will be rising periodically to address issues that affect Americans across our Nation. It is important to a government of, by, and for the people to address issues that we should be addressing in this Chamber. Today I will use this time to talk about the challenge we face in climate change. Last month, scientists reported that 2015 was the single hottest year on record. NASA says that this past year was a full 0.9 degrees centigrade. That is well over 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average during the 20th Century. Moreover, it rose significantly warmer from 2014, which was the previous hottest year on record--0.23 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than 2014. That is an unexpectedly massive increase in the challenge of global warming. These numbers come from the best scientific analysis. They take the combined temperatures from the land, water, and air to get a comprehensive picture of what is going on in our beautiful blue green planet. In total, 15 of the hottest years our planet has experienced while humans have tread this Earth have been in the last 16 years. These temperature records send a strong message to us, but there is also a message coming from what is happening on the ground--the facts on the ground. We see the impact of global warming on our own communities. We see the impacts in terms of the pine beetle expansion because the winters are not cold enough to kill them off. We see it in terms of the red zone that comes from that. We see it in terms of the longer fire season--60 days longer in the last 40 years in my home State of Oregon. On the Oregon coast we are having trouble with oysters reproducing because the first few days it is difficult to form a shell with waters 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution. We see it in the Cascade Mountains, where the snowpack has been smaller. It affects our winter sports, and it certainly affects the runoff that serves our farms. We have had massive, difficult droughts in southern Oregon in the Klamath Basin. These changes are not just happening in Oregon. They are happening across our Nation. They are happening across the world. This change is driving huge costs that can be measured in lost lives, lost homes, lost farms, lost businesses, burnt forests, and billions of dollars in disaster relief. Scientists agree that we must keep the warming of our planet under 2 degrees Celsius to avoid catastrophic impacts. We are seeing severe impacts now, but these will be nothing compared to what is anticipated if we allow global warming to continue. At this stage below 2 degrees Celsius or 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, we must pivot off of the fossil fuels to a clean energy economy. That means pursuing energy efficiency in our vehicles, in our freight transportation, and in our homes. It does mean investing in renewable energy, noncarbon electrical energy produced by sunlight and by wind. The simple, sobering fact is this: Energy efficiency and renewable energy will not be enough to stop the warming of our planet unless we leave 80 percent of the currently known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. That is a powerful statement because there are enormous financial forces that seek to extract those proven reserves, to burn those proven preserves, and in doing so will destroy our planet. You and I, fellow citizens, are owners together of a vast amount of fossil fuels, of coal, of natural gas, of oil. This is the oil and gas and coal that is underneath our public lands and water. We should use our ``We the People'' power to manage these fossil fuel reserves for the public good, and the public good is to move away from an era where the U.S. Government facilitates the extraction and burning of our citizen-owned fossil fuels to a new era where the Federal Government, together our ``We the People'' government, leads the transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy. As we face the threat of catastrophic climate change, the public good in regard to these fossil fuels is to keep them in the ground. When we do a new lease for the extraction of our citizen-owned fossil fuels, we lock in carbon extraction for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, even 50 years into the future. That is unacceptable. That is morally wrong because that extraction, decades into the future, will do enormous damage to our planet, to our forests, to our farming, and to our fishing. This is an assault, first and foremost, on rural America, and it is our responsibility to stop it. That is why I introduced the Keep It in the Ground Act. This legislation ends new leases for coal and oil and gas on public lands and waters, and it would drive a transition from fossil fuel extraction and combustion toward a renewable energy economy. Critics might argue that we cannot simply end consumption of fossil fuels tomorrow. They might point out that society still depends on fossil fuels for electricity and for transportation, and they might know the leases that have already been put out there provide extraction opportunities decades after this bill is enacted. That being said, it is all the more important that we not do new leases, that we not do new leases that empower more extraction decades into the future. Time is short and public lands and waters are citizen owned. Public lands and waters are the right place to start, and it is critical to the future of our planet. The success of this moment, the ``keep it in the ground'' movement, will depend on grassroots organizing. The grassroots stopped the Keystone Pipeline, which would have turned on the tap for some of the dirtiest fossil fuels in the world. Grassroots organizing has driven the administration to suspend and possibly to stop drilling in the Arctic waters--drilling, which is the height of irresponsibility in the fragile Arctic region, and just recently grassroots organizing and energy has encouraged the President to put a pause on coal leasing to evaluate its climatic impacts. While these are important steps in the right direction, I want to encourage our President to go further. Just as he has suspended new leases for coal, President Obama has authority to do the same for oil and gas. Last week I joined with nine other colleagues in calling on the Department of the Interior to strengthen its climate commitments by dropping all new fossil fuel leases from the 5-year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. I emphasize grassroots organizing as critical because this building on Capitol Hill is full of individuals, such as I, who have been elected, and in our elections vast funds from the fossil fuel industry are holding sway. So it is going to take citizens and a ``We the People'' government--of, by, and for the people--to be able to continue to drive what we all know is right. It will be essential to sustain and expand the ``keep it in the ground'' movement. Not so long ago, when individuals outside of this building were talking about ``keep it in the ground,'' and then inside this building we started to have that conversation, many said: It is just too much of a stretch. It is just too much of a paradigm change from the past, when we sought to lease out our fossil fuels, that this wouldn't work. Where are we now? Not only did we have success in the Keystone, not only did we have success in the Arctic, not only did we have success in terms of suspension of coal leases, but we have a broader conversation about ending all of these new leases in each of these areas of fossil fuels on our citizen-owned property. Senator Bernie Sanders, who is a cosponsor of my keep it in the ground bill, said in November: We cannot continue to extract fossil fuels from Federally owned land. He continued and said: You can't talk the talk and say I'm concerned about climate change. And at the same time, say we're going to extract a huge amount of oil, coal, and gas from federal land. Last Friday Secretary Clinton called for banning fossil fuels or banning fossil fuels on public land a ``done deal,'' and she went on to say: ``No future extractions, I agree with that.'' That is what she said. So we have come a long way in a short period, from action in three specific areas to the leading Presidential contenders on the Democratic side calling for moral action to take on this threat. Moving forward, there are two options before us. Our Federal Government can be a government of, by, and for the titans, and it can be complicit in digging our carbon hole even deeper and doing more damage to the land we love or our Federal Government can be the ``We the People'' government that was laid out by our Constitution, and it can lead this effort to manage our fossil fuels on public lands for the public good and work with our partners around the globe to save our planet. It has been said we are the first generation to see the impacts of global warming and that we are the last generation that can do something about it. So the choice is simple. Let's move aggressively away from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy. Let's work in partnership with the world to take on this worldwide challenge and let's do the smart thing. When it comes to our publicly owned fossil fuels, let's keep it in the ground. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for my intern, Aaron Nelson, to be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am delighted to join the two Senators from Maine--Senator Collins and Senator Angus King--in this dialogue, as well as Senator Klobuchar. I believe a few other Senators may join us. Senator Collins has been a great leader in advancing the debate or the conversation recognizing the carbon benefits of biomass. Her State and of course Senator King's State is so much like Oregon. If you fold the map of the United States in the middle and put east and west on top of each other, Oregon and Maine end up closely associated. We have similar coastlines. We have shellfish industries. We have timber industries. We have salmon runs. We having similar initiative systems and our largest cities are named Portland. I know that when I had the pleasure to visit Maine--and I went there with my wife and children to visit friends from many walks of our two lives, my wife's life and my life--we went from town to town visiting these friends who moved to Maine. We picked up a newspaper, and we felt like we were right at home in Oregon. The same initiatives were being done at that time in the State as we had on the front page back home. This issue of biomass is close to our hearts in the forests of the Northeast and in the forests of the Northwest. When I first came to the Senate and the conversation was going forward about renewable energy, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota--now retired--said that his home State was the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. I heard Senator Reid from Nevada say Nevada is the Saudi Arabia of solar power. There was a county commissioner from Douglas County--the county I was born in--which has the largest concentration of Douglas fir trees, its enormous biomass area--who referred to how Douglas County can be the Saudi Arabia of biomass energy. I thought, with all these Saudi Arabians in the United States, why are we still importing oil from Saudi Arabia? But indeed these efforts to develop an alternative to pivot from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy should include solar, should include wind, and should include biomass. When I came to the Senate, I undertook the project of helping the Environmental Protection Agency recognize that you have to look at the life cycle. You can't simply look at the moment of combustion. You can't compare coal being burned in a coal furnace or oil in an oil furnace and say that is equivalent to wood being burned in a biomass furnace because, indeed, as you take that biomass, that wood, you are engaged in a life cycle that doesn't involve bringing more carbon out of the Earth and adding it to the cycle of ground. Our colleague, Angus King from Maine, was referring to that difference earlier in his comments. It has been an effort to make sure our government takes account of this significant contribution of forest biomass. In the Northwest, the biomass is the potential for a win-win as a renewable source and improving forest health, and Senator Collins was referring to the goals of responsible forest management and conservation. Indeed, if you drive along the roads in our national forests in my home State, you will see slash piles. These piles are there because as we go through for forest health, we thin the trees. If they are good saw logs, we take them off to the mill, but the debris remains, and we put them into piles. The goal is to remove those piles, but often there is no economical way to remove those piles, and then you have to burn them in the forest. A couple of months ago I was in the forest in Southern Oregon with a torch, lighting fire to these piles. In this case it was an area where there is often a temperature inversion and you get smog from the smoke. They only can be burned a couple days a year. It is a big challenge. Isn't it so much better to be able to take those piles of biomass and put them to work instead of burning them in the forest? Burn them in a situation that produces heat and electricity. That is a win-win outcome. So when you hear people in the Northwest talk about forest biomass, there is a lot of excitement about how to grow this market, a market that has the means of improving the health of our forests while providing renewable energy. On private lands a growing domestic biomass market also has the potential to create a new value stream for our forest landowners. By adding another value stream for forest landowners, biomass can create incentives to keep forestland as forests and avoid conversion to a nonforest use. The modification made to Senator Collins' amendment reflects this dynamic, that one of the contributions to emissions in the forest sector is actually the conversion of forestland and nonforest use because trees are no longer there to sequester carbon. So if we can help prevent this, that is a beneficial side effect of this overall effort on biomass, to amplify the role of the forest, not to remove them. The most important example that has been brought up as a concern that doesn't fit this model of conservation or burning the byproducts is whether entire forests might be ground up and used to create pellets and so forth. I believe--and I certainly will be corrected if I am wrong--that certainly is not the framework in which this amendment is crafted with the dedication to enhancing the health of our forests and energy and forest conservation. I think this amendment sends a clear signal to EPA that in many cases forest biomass is carbon neutral and should be treated as such. It reinforces the conversation we have been having since I came here over the last 7 years and earlier with Senator Collins' hard work. When EPA takes regulatory action, it should reflect the opportunities where biomass is carbon neutral. In fact, policies like the Clean Power Plan should provide an incentive for forest biomass that is carbon neutral. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on this topic because this is a very significant win-win opportunity for energy, for the environment, and those are the type of opportunities we should seize.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to address several amendments that I hope we will have an opportunity to vote on before this bill is completed. The first amendment is amendment No. 3131, research and development for secondary use and innovative recycling research of electric vehicle batteries. Electric vehicles, as folks generally understand, run almost entirely on lithium ion batteries, which are commonly considered to have reached the end of their useful life when the capacity diminishes by 20 to 30 percent. The range of the vehicle diminishes in a corresponding fashion. At that point, it is time for a new set of batteries. But the battery still has a lot of useful life. It still has 70 to 80 percent of its original capacity. So it has the capacity to be utilized in many other potential roles, including, possibly, stationary electric storage. This amendment instructs the Department of Energy to conduct research on possible uses of a vehicle battery after its use in a vehicle, to assess the potential for markets for those batteries, to develop an understanding of the barriers for the development of those markets, and to identify the full range of potential uses. That would be very useful to diminish the flow of potential batteries into recycling, to get the most out of the investment we have made in them, and also to diminish the cost of batteries, because the residual use means that they have residual value, and the overall initial cost would reflect that. So that is an important research goal. It is clearly one of the strategies to enhance our activity from a fossil fuel industry to the utilization of more clean, renewable electricity. Second, I want to turn to amendment No. 3178, the Federal fleet amendment. The General Services Administration currently procures about 70,000 vehicles a year for various agencies. The total inventory of the Federal fleet is now almost 700,000 vehicles. These Federal vehicles are used for a wide range of purposes, some of which may well be appropriate for electric vehicles and others that may not be. But in order to consider the applied role, the General Services Administration needs data on vehicle reliability and maintenance costs to understand what would be a fair and appropriate use and to calculate the lease terms. So this amendment provides GSA with the authority to reach out to other agencies to collect the information on the vehicles the agencies use, to do an inventory of what uses may be suitable for different types of electric vehicles and the numbers that could possibly be deployed, and to use that information to develop a 10-year plan for GSA to submit a report back to Congress so that we can understand what the potential is and make sure that we well position our policies to exploit that opportunity. The third amendment that I want to draw attention to is amendment No. 3191, sponsored by myself, Senator Schatz, and Senator Markey. This is a resolution of the sense of the Senate. It notes that global temperature increases will lead to more droughts, more intense storms, more intense wildfires, a rise in sea levels, more desertification, and more acidification of our oceans, and that these impacts will result in economic disruption to farming, fishing, forestry, and recreation, having a profound impact on rural America. Now, we know this to be the case because we can already observe these impacts on the ground right now. In my home State of Oregon, we have a growing red zone caused by pine beetles--pine beetles that previously were killed off in colder winters that now survive in greater numbers and attack more trees. We have a longer forest fire season. It has grown by 60 days over 40 years. The amount or the acreage consumed by forest fires is increasing. We have a diminishing snowpack in the Cascades, which is resulting in smaller, warmer trout streams, as well as affecting our winter recreation industry. I know that anyone who loves to fish for trout does not want to have a smaller and warmer stream because of its adverse impact. Over on our coast, we are having an impact on the baby oysters, which have difficulty forming their shells in the more acidic Pacific Ocean, an ocean that is now 30 percent more acidic than it was before the Industrial Revolution. This amendment simply points to the fact that already we see all of this. But as the temperature rises, disruptions increase. The impact on our farming, fishing, forestry, and recreation is greater, and it is doing a lot of damage to our rural economies and a lot of damage overall to the United States of America, and it is doing so throughout the world as well. We must work together to transition to a clean energy economy. But there are important first steps in place. Our future President, whomever that might be, must work to build upon the foundation we have put in place with our Clean Power Plan, with increased mileage for our vehicles and increased mileage for freight transportation. Let's build upon those steps in order to work in partnership with the world to take on this major challenge. So I hope these three amendments have a chance to be debated and voted on here on the floor. We are clearly in a situation where we are the first generation to see the impacts of our fossil fuel energy economy, see the destructive impacts on our forests, our fishing, our farming, and our winter recreation. Therefore, we have a responsibility to work together to take this on. Our children, our children's children, may they not look back and say: What happened? Why did our parents and grandparents fail to act in the face of such a massive and important global threat? Our ``We the People'' Democracy Mr. President, I am now shifting to my regular ``We the People'' speech, a series of speeches in which I try to raise issues that go to the heart of the framing of our Constitution and the vision of creating a republic that has a government responsive to the concerns of citizens throughout our Nation. Our Founders started the Constitution with three powerful words, ``We the People.'' They wrote them in a font 10 times the size of the balance of the Constitution as if to say: This is what it is all about. This is our goal, as President Lincoln summarized, a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' It was not the plan of our Founders in writing the Constitution to have a government designed to serve the ruling elites. It was not the design of our Constitution to serve the titans of industry and commerce. It was not the intention of our Founders to build a government to serve the best off, the richest in our society--quite the contrary. So I am rising periodically to address issues related to this vision, this beautiful Revolution, the American Revolution, that sought to have a form of government that served the people, not the elite. This week I am using my speech to recognize the anniversary of two Supreme Court decisions, two decisions which have driven a stake through the heart of our ``We the People'' democracy. One ruling, Buckley v. Valeo, marked its 40th anniversary last Saturday on January 30, and Citizens United marked its 6th anniversary on January 21. These two decisions have forever altered the vision of our government. They have turned our government on its head. They have changed it from ``We the People'' to ``We the Titans.'' It is my hope that visitors will rally together in this country, that Senators and House Members will rally together to defend the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold that was not a ``We the Titans'' Constitution, it was a ``We the People'' Constitution. Central to the promise of ``We the People'' is the right to participate in an equal footing, to contribute one's opinions and insights on elections and on issues. President Jefferson called this the mother principle. He summarized it as follows: ``For let it be agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns . . . by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to him.'' Let me emphasize again, ``republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direc- tion. . . . '' The decisions of Buckley and Citizens United are a direct assault on this fundamental understanding that to have a ``We the People'' republic, you have to have citizens participate in a roughly equal footing. These two decisions bulldozed the ``We the People'' pillar on which our government is founded. President Lincoln echoed Jefferson's equal voice principle. He said: ``Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only is self-government.'' Is there anyone in this Chamber who believes that today all the governed have an equal voice in the government? I am sure no one among our 100 Senators would contend that principle--so eloquently laid out by President Jefferson, so resoundingly echoed by President Lincoln, so deeply embedded in the founding words of our Constitution--is true today. It is not true because Buckley v. Valeo found that individuals could spend unlimited sums to influence issues and the outcomes of election. That decision and Citizens United destroyed the notion that all citizens get to participate on an equal footing. By green-lighting the spending amount of unlimited sums in combination with the high cost of participating in the modern town square--that is, to secure time on radio, time on television, time or space on the Web--these decisions give the wealthy and well-connected control of the town commons and the ability to drown out the voice of the people. Certainly a situation where the top 10 percent can overwhelm, can drown out the 90 percent, is not ``We the People'' governance. Certainly a situation where the top 1 percent can drown out the 99 percent is not ``We the People'' governance. It is the opposite. As President Obama said, ``Democracy breaks down when the average person feels that their voice doesn't matter.'' That is how people feel when they are drowned out by the few under the framework established by Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United. The most basic premise of our Constitution is that influence over elections means influence over governance. That is the whole point. Influence over elections is not limited just to being in the booth and pulling a lever. When you enhance the voices of the wealthy relative to everyone else, you fundamentally shift the outcome of legislative deliberations. Despite the arguments of the plaintiffs in Buckley v. Valeo, the wealthy do not have the same concerns about this Nation, about their lives that everyone else has. They don't have the same concerns about the cost of college. They don't have the same concerns about paid family leave. They don't have the same concerns about the solvency and adequacy of Social Security. They are not worried. They are not staying up nights about the health of their child and concern over the cost and quality of health care, and they are not disturbed over policies that shift our manufacturing jobs overseas and eviscerate the working middle class in America. Yet here we have it. Buckley v. Valeo takes this small percentage of folks who do not have concerns that reflect the vast majority of Americans and gives them overwhelming power in elections and issues. Let me ask you, is it any wonder that the middle class is doing poorly while the wealth of America has grown exponentially? Isn't that what one would expect in a system favoring the wealthy over the workers? Are we, can we be a government of, by, and for the people if individuals at the very top have vastly greater influence over elections and policy than others? Our Constitution says no. Our Founders said no, but Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United said yes-- and they are wrong. With a campaign finance system that gives the most affluent massive influence over elections with concomitant control over laws, we don't have a government that embodies President Jefferson's mother principle; that is, one that reflects and executes the will of the people. So it is time to change this. It is time to recapture the genius of American governance, and it is time to restore the ``We the People'' principles so eloquently and powerfully embedded in the framing of our Constitution. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Sebastian Gomez-Devine, have the privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, did my colleague from Alaska wish to intervene for a moment?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important words in the crafting of our Constitution are the first three words. Those words are ``We the People.'' As President Lincoln so eloquently put it, this is the notion that we would create a system of governance that would be governance of the people, by the people, and for the people. I will be rising periodically to address issues that affect American citizens across our Nation, that are important, that are urgent, and that this body should be addressing. This week I am using my ``We the People'' speech to highlight excerpts from an article written by NASA scientist Piers Sellers. Piers Sellers was an astronaut. He has been a NASA scientist, and he shared this article from which I am taking portions. He says: I'm a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He continues: This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I've spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother? He goes on to note that he examined his bucket list and he found only two things that really mattered: spending time with his family--as he put it, ``with the people I know and love''--and then getting back to his office ``as quickly as possible'' to continue the work on climate science and addressing climate change. He notes: On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence from the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius . . . above preindustrial levels. He continues: It's doubtful that we'll hold the line at 2 degrees . . . but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. He continues, saying that ``Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion . . . The worst impacts will be felt by the world's poorest.'' He continues to examine this and notes that while heavy lifting will have to be done by policymakers--and he is speaking to all of us-- scientists can add a great deal, and scientists at NASA can help by keeping track of the changes in the Earth's system and using their powerful computer models to explore which approaches to addressing this problem are practical, trading off near-term impacts against longer term impacts. He observes that engineers and industrialists must come up with new technologies to address the challenges of clean energy generation, storage, and distribution, and that they must be solved within a few decades. Later in the article, he says: History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tend to be realistic, pragmatic, and flexible; the losers are often in denial of the threat. He closes by saying this: As for me, I have no complaints. I am very grateful for the experiences I have had on this planet. As an astronaut, I space-walked 220 miles above the Earth, floating alongside the International Space Station. I watched hurricanes cartwheel across the ocean, the Amazon snake its way through a sea of brilliant green carpeted forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Ecuador. From this God's-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is, and I am hopeful for its future. ``And so,'' he concludes, ``I am going to work tomorrow.'' I simply want to thank Piers for his lifetime of commitment to science, his service as an astronaut, his continuing to work on this major challenge of addressing the planet, and that he would see--even in these days where he is fighting a battle against a forceful, powerful disease, he is dedicating his efforts to this challenge. Is that not a call for all of us to see how important it is for us to dedicate our efforts to take on this challenge and to recognize, as he points out, that major strategies must be developed in a short period of time to avoid catastrophic consequences. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, 10 minutes.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, just about every successful person can point to a teacher or other adult who inspired and encouraged them as a child, a person who spurred curiosity and love of learning. Today I wish to recognize the hard work and dedication of one of my constituents who played that role for countless Oregonians Ann Marion Furukawa Dondero from Forest Grove. Ann was raised in Sunnyside, WA, and graduated from Whitman College in 1966 with a psychology degree and a teacher's certificate. She taught first grade for 3 years in St. Paul, MN, while her husband, Russ, completed graduate school and later taught second and fourth grade in Boiling Springs, PA, when Russ started his political science teaching career. When Ann and Russ moved their young family to Forest Grove, Ann continued her education and enrolled in night classes at Pacific University where Russ had started teaching. In addition to raising their two sons, Tony and Jason, Ann also began volunteering in Forest Grove's library across the street from her classes. Eventually, Ann's enthusiasm to share her love of reading turned into a career spanning five decades. The library became Ann's classroom where she worked with parents and caregivers to help children become active readers. In 1975, Ann and her former colleague Barbara Dunnette organized BEAR month--Be Enthusiastic About Reading--at the Forest Grove Library, and the tradition has continued ever since. January 2016 will be the 37th annual BEAR month at Forest Grove. Ann's dedication and love of learning is an inspiration to our State and our Nation, and I have no doubt there are kids today who are better off because of Ann's selfless devotion. I thank Ann for her many years of hard work and for the great things she has done to promote reading and literacy in the Forest Grove community.

Mr. MERKLEY

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 kick off a series of speeches where I will come to the floor on a regular basis to address issues affecting Americans and propose ways to solve the challenges we face. These speeches will cover a variety of topics, but they will all link back to the fundamental theme of our ``we the people'' democracy. In the summer of 1787, a group came together of patriots, farmers, and scholars. They gathered in Philadelphia, and after 4 months of fierce debate and enduring compromise, they agreed to a set of ideas and a system of governance. They signed their names to a document, our Constitution, which has guided our Nation's progress for over two centuries. They began that Constitution, that key document, with three simple words on parchment--``we the people''--and with that they launched our experience in democratic governance. The Founders wrote this phrase in beautiful script, 10 times the size of the rest of the document, as if to say this is what it is all about, this is what America will be about--governance for ``we the people.'' They did not say at the start of this document ``we the titans of industry.'' They did not say ``we the titans of commerce.'' They did not say ``we the rich and powerful.'' They said ``we the people.'' As President Lincoln summarized, the genius of our governance is that it is of the people, by the people, and for the people. With this guiding light America has been a great nation. Because of our ``we the people'' principle, we insisted on a better, fairer, and freer nation for all citizens--because we the people demanded that all Americans deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness, because we the people never stopped reaching for greater prosperity and growth to the benefit of all. In order to address the challenges of our times, we must recapture this ``we the people'' spirit. We must set aside politics in favor of progress. We must reform a broken system that favors the interests of the wealthy and well-connected over the interests of the American people. That is the framework, the theme that my regular floor speeches will be about. In this Senate Chamber our priority should be to build an economy and a government that works for working people, and, as Hubert Humphrey argued, a government that delivers for those ``in the dawn of life . . . in the twilight of life . . . and those in the shadows of life.'' We all know that our success is not measured by a soaring stock market. America is succeeding when a mom can earn enough not to worry about where her kids' next meal is coming from; when schools nurture the mind, the character, and the creative spirit of every child; when college is affordable to every family; when each individual in our Nation has peace of mind through access to quality and affordable health care; when no American who works full time lives in poverty; and when our economy creates good-paying jobs for American workers here in America rather than shipping those jobs overseas. To achieve these ends we have a lot of work to do. We had after World War II three golden decades from 1945 to 1975. The middle class gained enormously in size and prosperity. During that period the bottom 90 percent received approximately 70 percent of all income growth. From 1975 until now, 2015, we have had four decades in which working Americans' experience has been flat or declining. What a difference that is from the three golden decades where workers fully shared in the prosperity they helped to create--the last four decades when they have not shared and gained over those decades. They received close to zero percent of all income growth. To put it differently, 100 percent of the growth went to the top 10 percent of Americans. We know that our families and our economy will never reach their full potential if growth benefits only those at the very top, if the growth is at best trickled down, coming from the top down, and not from the middle out. So let's commit to changing the direction we are on, to recreating an economy more similar to those three golden decades after 1945, after the end of World War II, putting people back to work rebuilding America's roads and crumbling bridges, raising the minimum wage so that anyone who works hard can make ends meet, and keeping a cop on the beat to block predatory schemes preying on the middle class. We have a lot to do to tackle the greatest challenge facing human civilization: saving our planet from the ravages of climate change. Today it was announced, as anticipated, that the final results are in and 2015 is the warmest year on record. This warmth and the changing weather is having profound consequences on our forestry, on our farming, and on our fishing. All of these are manifested in my home State of Oregon and virtually every State represented in this Chamber. We have to have a ``we the people'' movement to take on the oil and the coal billionaires, cut carbon pollution, and pivot rapidly to a clean energy economy. We certainly have a lot of work to do to make sure that folks who work hard all their lives can achieve a dignified and secure retirement as we watch the pensions in the private workplace melt away, slipping through our hands. We must set our children up for success and expand the promise of education, ensuring that our schools meet the demands of a new age and that all students can attend college without the fear of crushing debt. To achieve these things through legislation is certainly possible. We can envision the pathway for each and every one of these objectives, but we cannot do it if this Chamber is essentially owned by the titans of commerce and industry. That, unfortunately, is what happened in 1976 when the Supreme Court under Buckley v. Valeo said that individuals can spend unlimited sums in the public marketplace and can do so even if they are drowning out the voices of the rest of America. Certainly a situation in which the 1 percent can drown out the voices of the 99 percent is not a ``we the people'' democracy; it is the opposite. It is a ``we the titans'' democracy. It is decisions made by and for the very best off, not decisions by and for the people of the United States of America. This misguided 1976 decision sits right at that pivot point between the three golden decades from 1945 to 1975 and the last four decades of failed economic policy with workers' outcomes being flat or declining. This decision was doubled down on the Supreme Court just a few years ago in the Citizens United decision, which said that not only individuals but corporations would be treated the same. They could use their combined assets even if they had never disclosed to the owners of the corporation, the stockholders, how they intended to spend funds, putting billions of dollars in play with a few people sitting in a boardroom, completely shielded from any public witness. That is why we have to change campaign finance as a way to reclaim our ``we the people'' democracy, to reclaim our Constitution, to fend off the titans who are insisting on grabbing everything for the few and not for the benefit of the public, the 90 percent. We have to continue to look for ways to restore hope for our working families and ensure opportunity for each, to protect the middle class, to empower the middle class against forces that are threatening to overwhelm them, and to build an economy where everyone is sharing in the economic prosperity they are helping to create. The bottom line is that we have to make a choice about the kind of country we want to live in. I don't choose a country in which the rules are made by and for the very few at the top. I choose a country embedded in the first three words of our Constitution, where decisions are made by and for the people of our Nation. I choose a country that honors these Founding principles, that comes together to tackle the big challenges, that works not for the 1 percent or the 10 percent but for 100 percent of Americans. Let us reclaim our ``we the people'' democracy, our ``we the people'' vision, and set our Nation back on track. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Each of these standards has a constitutional foundation. The first reflects the restraints of the dormant commerce clause. The second reflects the Constitution's supremacy clause. The third corresponds to the scientific factual predicate required to meet scrutiny under the due process clause, as not ``arbitrary and capricious.'' Restoring the ability for States to protect their citizens while EPA assesses the safety of chemicals was one of the primary goals of our work to improve this bill and that has been accomplished under section 18(f)(2) of S. 697, as reported by the Environment and Public Works Committee. We believe this does, within the limits imposed by the Constitution.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, a huge thanks to my colleagues who have been presenting so many important dimensions of this battle against a major threat to the health of our planet. Indeed, Henry David Thoreau asked, ``What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' That was an excellent question decades ago but an even more important one today, when we have a significant threat that endangers our forests, our farming, our fishing, and human civilization on this planet. This is the challenge of our generation, to bring human civilization together to address carbon pollution and its impacts. While in Paris something very exciting was going on--150 world leaders came together to kick off the final negotiations. That is unprecedented in human history. Why were so many leaders there? They were there because they are seeing the impacts in their own individual nations that are coming from the rising temperatures. They came together not just with their voice but with their pledges. In fact, more than 180 countries put forward pledges about how they were going to reduce the trajectory of their carbon pollution footprints. They know what is at stake. We certainly know in Oregon what is at stake. We see the pine beetle devastating forests, creating a red zone of dying trees. We see the longer forest fire season having a big impact, with more intense blazes and more of them over more months. We see the impact of the loss of snowpack in the Cascades impacting our streams and impacting the water supply for agriculture. The Klamath Basin, along with California, is locked into a deep drought with devastating consequences. We see it over on our coast, where the more acidic Pacific Ocean is creating problems for our shellfish industry because the baby oysters have trouble making their shells. How is this connected? Because the carbon pollution in the air is absorbed into the ocean via waves and creates carbonic acid, and that more acidic water is eroding the ability of our shellfish to operate as they have for a millennium in making shells. We know this is not just something in Oregon, not just something in Maryland, and not just something in this State or that State but worldwide, where 2014 was the warmest year on record. In fact, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have happened in this century. Now we see 2015 on the trajectory, and it is going to be warmer than 2014. There is nothing disputable about the facts: rising carbon dioxide and methane pollution, rising consequences for our States across America, rising consequences for the world. Scientists tell us it will get worse. We have only had a 0.9-degree centigrade increase. If we get to 2 degrees, it is catastrophic. It is pretty bad now. We must come together as an international community and address that. In Paris we know we need to have a more ambitious agenda than the one we have laid out, even with these wonderful pledges, and we need to come back every 5 years and keep driving the process forward. We know we have to lower the costs for renewable energy so we can come back together and increase the pace at which we pivot from a fossil fuel energy economy to a renewable energy economy. We know we need to invest in solar deployment, and there is the International Solar Initiative that India is going to host a secretariat for and work to deploy a trillion dollars in solar panels. We know innovation matters, and mission innovation with the United States and other nations doubling their investment over the next 5 years will do a lot more to lower costs and increase the efficiency of technologies in clean power and clean power storage. Well, it is a big challenge, and I am so delighted to be able to be part of a community of legislators. One of those legislators who has led on this in the House for decades, brought his expertise to the Senate, is my colleague from Massachusetts Senator Markey.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to share a little bit of details about the climate talks that are going on in Paris at this very moment. A number of us in the Senate were able to go to Paris last weekend and to be engaged in that dialogue. What I was terrifically struck by was that 150 heads of state had come together to kick off these climate talks. That is the largest gathering of heads of state in human history. Why did that landmark event occur? It occurred because the challenge of global warming is the most grave concern facing human civilization on this planet, so heads of state wanted to be there to acknowledge the fact that we must come together as a community of nations across this globe and work together to take this on for the good of our stewardship of this planet. A larger number of nations have put forward pledges on the efforts they are going to make to reduce global warming gases, and 186 nations have put forward those pledges. One of the issues that is embedded in these climate talks is how ambitious the international community should be. There is this broad goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees centigrade over the course of this century. We have already gone up to 0.9. We are almost halfway to that level that has been identified by scientists as a catastrophic level, but the pledges that are being made in Paris are not sufficient to keep us to 2 degrees. So that is one of the points of discussion-- how can the community of nations be more ambitious. One of the points being made is that we should come back together every 5 years to keep redoubling our efforts; that we know the pledges being made in Paris will not be enough, so we have to keep coming back to this challenge. We also have observed how dramatically the amount of information has changed over the last 5 years. We know that in another 25 years we will have a lot more information about what is occurring in the world and how successful the initial efforts have been. Then there is a group that is saying we need to go even further and work to reduce the amount of damage that could be done, and that means limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, which would take an even faster transition from a fossil fuel energy economy to a renewable energy economy. So that is an area of conversation--how ambitious can we be as an international community at this point and how can we improve on the efforts being put forward in Paris in the years to come. A second point is that there is a profound need for working together between developed nations and developing nations, between richer nations and poorer nations. Poorer nations are saying: We have a lot of folks who have never had access to electricity, and we need to provide the cheapest pathway to provide that electricity. Often, that is coal. Well, then, how do we make renewable, clean energy as inexpensive as coal energy so that nations can bypass establishing that utility-scale fossil fuel infrastructure. So that is a key piece of conversation. A third point is about reporting requirements. In order for us to have good policy now and in the future, we have to have good numbers on what is happening around the world, nation to nation. Nations feel a little sensitive about this idea of having an international community kind of working to double check the way they evaluate what is going on at home, but we need to convey the notion that these numbers--good numbers coming from each nation--are essential for nations to be able to participate in this international effort that will lead to success in curbing runaway global warming. I think it is enormously clear that Paris is a tremendous step forward. The number of heads of state that have attended, the number of nations that have put forward pledges, the intensity of the conversation at this very moment--people are recognizing that we are the first generation that has been impacted by global warming, and we are the last that can do something significant about it because, unfortunately, as we go forward a generation from now, we have not succeeded in curbing global warming gases. The carbon dioxide and methane gas will have such a profound feedback mechanism that it will be much harder to address this issue. I am pleased the administration has taken this so seriously and that nations throughout the world are taking it so seriously.

Mr. MERKLEY

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