Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, earlier today Donald Trump called for the United States to ban all Muslims from entering our Nation. This is the single worst idea I have heard from any Presidential candidate, ever. It is inconsistent with our American values. It is inconsistent with our national history. The Nation has looked back on events in our past--for example, the Chinese Exclusion Act or the internment of Japanese American citizens-- and realized it was a huge mistake to make one significant group our enemy. It is inconsistent with the vision of our Constitution, in which all came to the United States seeking to escape persecution and to be able to practice whichever religion they chose. The Founders of the United States did not seek to make our Nation one in which only a single religion could be practiced. They did not seek to establish one religion as a preeminent religion. They instead wanted a safe haven where people could worship as they pleased, which is the heart of our First Amendment. This idea is wrong and wrongheaded. It is wrong in the context that we are not at war with Islam. In fact, we are working in partnership with Islamic nations to take on a terrorist group known as ISIS. It is wrong in that all patriotic Americans of every religion are working together to take on this terrorist group known as ISIS. In addition to being wrong, it is wrongheaded in that making Islam the enemy is playing straight out of ISIS's playbook, which wants to create a war between America and Islam. In that sense, this type of irresponsible statement endangers our national security rather than strengthens it. So let others stand up and embrace our citizens of every religion and recognize the partnership we are in together to take on terrorist forces, that we are working in partnership with a variety of nations that have a whole variety of religions, including Islam, to take on the terrorist force known as ISIS.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want to note that right at this moment there are Senators of this esteemed body who are doing something that is not so esteemed. They are working to put into some of the must-pass legislation that we will be considering today and in the days to come something known as the DARK Act. The DARK Act is the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act. It takes away the ability of States to make sure the citizens of their State have the knowledge they would like to have about the food they eat. We have seen in the toxics discussion in the Senate how important it is to individual States to have the ability to identify for their citizens what is in the everyday household products they have: their spoons, their plates, their bedding, and so forth--but it is much more important. It is an order of magnitude more important to citizens to have the right at the State level to decide how to inform individuals about what is in the food they eat. This proposal to put the DARK Act--taking away the rights of the States, taking away the rights of citizens to use their democracy to be able to know what is in the food they eat--is being proposed to be put into a bill in the dark of night. The DARK Act should never go into legislation in this Senate. It should never be considered airdropped in, in the dark of night, into must-pass legislation. It should be debated openly in committee, thoroughly vetted, thoroughly considered, because that certainly is the type of consideration merited by an issue so fundamental to citizens as knowledge about the food they eat and the food their children eat. Let us not, as a Senate, commit such a disgraceful act as taking away the State right and the individual desire to have knowledge about the fundamental food that we consume. Let us not have that airdropped in the dark of night. That would be a huge mistake. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern Jeff Slyfield and my intern Maria Givens be given privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. So $11 billion in returns. I believe that number includes real cash returned to individuals but does not include the vast savings that have come from families who were never cheated in the first place.

Mr. MERKLEY. I know my colleague and I have talked about this--the number increases. I will say something like the CFPB has returned $3 billion, and my colleague will say: Oh, Senator, it is now $5 billion. And when I say it is $5 billion, my colleague will remind me it is now $8 billion. And here we are at $12 billion?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the senior Senator from Massachusetts, who has brought so much personal research in the course of her career and passion and insight to this battle and who put forward the idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to provide oversight of these predatory practices and who has been such a watchdog about these practices. I would just ask her before she leaves the floor, why is it that this discussion is happening right now, in terms of policy riders on must- pass spending bills, rather than happening in the light of day with a committee hearing--a banking committee hearing--where this can be fully discussed and debated?

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for his comments and insights. Now we are going to turn to the Senator from Massachusetts. We will be delighted to hear her thoughts on this challenge of taking serious issues related to the Wall Street casino, a system that brought down the prospects for so many American families, and how there is the consideration of restoring the Wall Street casino in the dark of night by policy riders being attached to other bills.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, 7 years ago Wall Street imploded, sending us into a recession that we hadn't seen since the Great Depression. While our economy has slowly bounced back, the memory of that crisis is still fresh in the minds of many Americans, millions of whom lost their jobs, millions of whom lost their homes, and millions of whom lost their retirement savings. Nobody wants to repeat the financial collapse, the bailouts, the recession. Indeed, we have spent the last 6 years digging out of a hole. Despite this, Republican colleagues at this very moment are holding meetings and preparing policy riders to gut the reforms that shut down the Wall Street casino. They are working to open up that casino again, to the great detriment of families across this country. Their goal is to add poison pill policy riders to the fiscal year 2016 appropriation bills that may well be consolidated into an omnibus. That is why I am here on the floor with my colleagues from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Our colleague, Senator Bill Nelson from Florida, spoke earlier about these issues. We are here to say no to these policy riders that are seeking to reopen the Wall Street casino and put American families at peril. To start things off, I turn to my colleague from Rhode Island, who has brought great expertise and diligence to this conversation over the responsible regulations, the ones that serve like the traffic signals that enable traffic to move slowly so they don't end up in auto wrecks, but they don't shut it down--the responsible regulations that will keep us from having another crash doing great damage to American families.

Mr. MERKLEY. One of the things we have a lot of concern about is making sure that predatory mortgages don't return. They were a key product in helping drive the collapse in 2007-2008. We are concerned those could return if the ability of the CFPB to regulate them is diminished by changing the government structure of the CFPB or shutting down the funds that enable it to operate. Would that be a good idea or a bad idea?

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent to conduct a colloquy with my colleagues from Massachusetts and Florida for roughly the next 30 minutes.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Senator very much. Mr. President, as we have heard from this colloquy--and I appreciate that Bill Nelson was here earlier, the Senator from Florida, to discuss his insights on these dark-of-night policy riders designed to restore the Wall Street casino and cheat American families. I appreciate the comments he brought to this and that Jack Reed, the senior Senator from Rhode Island, has brought forward and Elizabeth Warren, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, each of whom made important points. So I will be brief because they have laid out most of the issues I will try to echo. The key point is the debate over changing the rules for these powerful financial institutions should be debated in the open, in front of the TV cameras, in front of the American people, not in secret negotiation rooms and not in the dark of night, which is happening at this very moment, because a lot is at stake. We found from before that when regulations were stripped away and the Wall Street casino went wild, we ended up with a crash that destroyed the finances of millions of families, many of whom will never recover. They lost their homes, their dreams of homeownership. That has been shattered, and they are not going to get it back. They lost their job and have been derailed and will never get back on track. They lost their retirement savings, and they will never be able to rebuild them. In fact, that golden vision of retirement may be something they feel they will never be able to be a part of--that chapter of their life will never come. So a tremendous amount is at stake, and these dark-of-night negotiations to repeal, to undermine, to delay the shutdown of the Wall Street casinos are just wrong. Let us have the debate in the committee where it belongs. This is critical for working families everywhere in the country and certainly in my home State. Let me mention one of the riders, which is to take and allow the Volcker rule to be voided for some of the financial institutions. What is the Volcker rule? The Volcker rule shut down the Wall Street casino. It said banks cannot bet with taxpayer-insured deposits. If a group wants to make big bets on the future of interest rates or monetary exchanges or the quality of mortgages and so forth, they must do so with private wealth funds, where the only persons at stake are those who have invested in the fund. Don't do it with taxpayer-insured banks. That is one example. A second example is that we need to keep the quality mortgages we have now so they do not return to being a predatory instrument. We had a legalized kickback scheme, and that structure meant mortgage originators were paid for steering families from a prime mortgage that would build their wealth into a subprime mortgage with an exploding interest rate which would destroy their wealth. We ended those kickbacks. Let us not let that happen again. Let us not undermine the role of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. When we had this dramatic massive increase in subprime loans, starting in 2003 and going through 2007, nobody was watching. We need to have someone say: Look at that surge in subprimes. And because of that surge, what is going on? Is this creating a bubble? Is this a big bet that is going to go bust? Is this going to destroy families? We actually had an agency that was responsible for controlling these predatory practices. It was the Federal Reserve, but the Federal Reserve, full of sophisticated economists, said: Well, we want to talk monetary policy. That is what we do up in the penthouse of the Federal Reserve building. So they put consumer protection down in the basement and they locked the door and threw away the key and said: You know, we have that responsibility, but we just aren't going to do anything about it, and they let predatory schemes run wild and destroy millions of American families. Now we have an organization--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--that is the watchdog making sure the disclosures and the structures are fair and square for American families so we can build the success of those families. You cannot be for the success of American families and be for these secret, dark-of-night measures designed to destroy the effort to rein in this Wall Street casino. I hope we will see a return to regular order, the type of regular order my colleague from Rhode Island talked about, the type of light- of-day committee discussions my colleague from Massachusetts talked about because this is so important to our future and the success of American families. Let's make sure we work together to build the wealth and success through fair financial practices, not special favors done for very powerful institutions that are designed to exploit and operate as predatory measures to strip the wealth of American families. I thank the Chair.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague so much for presenting this idea before she came to the U.S. Senate and for helping--well, stepping in to be the initial Director, getting it up and running, and now being here to make sure we defend its ability to provide fairer financial products for America's families--products that enable families to build their wealth rather than having wealth-stripping scams hurt and destroy the finances of American families.

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, 7 years ago, Wall Street came closer to imploding than at any other time since the Great Depression. Wall Street had stacked the deck for themselves and against consumers by turning a banking system that in the past had helped families and businesses build their prosperity into a casino for Wall Street's own big bets. When things went badly, taxpayers were left holding the bag. While our economy has slowly returned, the memory of the crisis is fresh in the minds of American families--millions of families who lost their jobs, millions of families who lost their homes, millions of families who lost their retirement savings. For this reason, there is broad bipartisan support across America for not allowing the return of the Wall Street casino, with 9 in 10 likely voters saying it is important to ensure they are safe and fair for consumers and that they are designed to build the success of consumers. Through the Wall Street reform bill, we ended predatory home lending practices. We stopped teaser rates that then had exploding interest loans. These loans went from 3 or 4 percent in the beginning, and then, after 2 years, would turn into 9 percent or 10 percent, ensuring that the family was unable to make their payments. We stopped the kickbacks that went to loan originators to steer their unsuspecting home-buyer clients into high-cost loans. We stopped the liar loans designed to fail just after originators got their commissions. In short, we restored home ownership and home loans as a powerful, wealth-building tool for the middle class in America. Indeed, over the course of the post-World War II history, home ownership has been the most significant wealth builder for the middle class. Wall Street turned it into a predatory, wealth-stripping experience, and we restored it to ensure the financial success of working families. We ensured that banks and financial institutions have skin in the game, mandating they retain risk in the products they sell. We established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, to prevent scams from stripping wealth from our working families. Before we established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumer protection was handled by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve also handled monetary policy. Monetary policy was much more exciting, and perhaps they thought it was more up to their sophisticated educations. They took consumer protection and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve, and they locked it up and then threw away the key. They never honored their responsibilities for consumer protection, allowing all of these predatory practices that we had to end through the Dodd-Frank legislation. To date, the CFPB has returned more than $11 billion to 25 million wronged consumers. That is a pretty impressive record. Show me something else that has brought a little bit of justice and a lot of financial restitution to 25 million wronged American citizens. The commonsense reforms we established laid the groundwork for a financial system that is not premised on elevating quarterly profit margins on Wall Street. It is not about the size of bonuses on Wall Street but is instead about providing a foundation for our businesses and families to thrive financially. That is building the future prosperity of America. Nobody wants to repeat the financial collapse, the bailouts, and the economic recession. We spent 6 years digging out of the hole that was created. But despite the fact that to return to this model would be so destructive to American families, there are at this very moment colleagues of mine gathering in rooms in the Senate and in the House who are preparing policy riders to return us back to those dark days. They want to add policy riders to the financial year 2016 appropriations bills designed to turn back these improvements that restored home ownership for American families, that restored financial systems for small businesses. I wholeheartedly oppose attaching these policy riders to the spending bills. And the American people don't like it either. So what is going on? One conversation is to design policy riders to reverse the improvements we made in mortgage guidelines, to ensure that mortgages did build the wealth of the middle class instead of preying on the middle class. Second, there are conversations going on about policy riders designed to weaken the tools and authorities of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC. During 2002, 2007, 2008, we didn't have anyone systemically looking at weaknesses in the system. I remember looking at a chart that laid out the vast growth in predatory teaser rate loans that started in 2003. As that chart surged upwards for those loans as a percent of all loans done in America, the number of prime loans came down just as dramatically. We now understand why. The originators were telling their customers: You don't want this prime loan--this low-interest rate locked in for 30 years. You want this teaser rate loan. You get a little bit of a lower rate in the beginning. They never explained to their customer that their interest rate was going to go up dramatically just 2 years later to a level they wouldn't be able to afford, and yet that originator was getting undisclosed kickbacks. I say this because had there been an FSOC in place, we would have been reviewing that chart and saying: Wait; what is going wrong? From 2003 to 2005, we have this huge surge in predatory lending. Why do we have this huge collapse of prime lending? They would have talked to the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal ran an article, an analysis, a study that looked at this and virtually said that all those folks who are being steered into these subprime loans qualified for prime loans. This is the essence of a predatory practice. An FSOC would have seen that and said that something needs to be done. That is why we have it--to look at bubbles or possible bubbles in our economy or practices in our economy that are going to cause a future collapse and to remedy these problems before they happen. Despite that, we have folks right now trying to undo the creation of the FSOC or disable it from being able to do its job. There is another group that is gathering to try to undermine the success or ability of having a watchdog--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--on the beat, ending predatory loan practices from here forward. They can't just go through statute, because as soon as they outlaw this practice over here, another one develops over here. There are newly invented strategies to continuously find new ways to turn solid, successful financial products into predatory products--misleading products, gouging products, products that explode in a couple years that consumers are not fully informed on. So we have to have a commission to be able to stop those practices. It is the same thing we have in consumer products. We don't have detailed legislation that says: You can't design a toaster with this, this, this, and this. Instead, we have a Consumer Product Safety Commission that looks at it and says: These new products are unsafe, and for these reasons they can't be allowed. New products come in, they get examined, and they make sure we continue to have safe products. It should be the same for our financial products. The CFPB has done an extraordinary job ending predatory practices and returning funds to ordinary working families. If you want working families to fail, then allow predatory products. If you want them to succeed, if you have a vision for America that involves the success of families, then let's end these financial wealth-stripping predatory practices. That means the CFPB has to be able to do its job. So it would be 100 percent the wrong direction to put these policy riders in the dark of night to dismantle the Dodd-Frank protections on these spending bills. The Senate Democratic caucus is going to keep fighting for our American families. We are going to keep fighting for our American consumers. We are going to keep fighting for the success of individuals across this country and to ensure that the Wall Street casino stays closed. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Zachary Fergus, have privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I rise today to oppose the Congressional Review Act to derail the Clean Power Plan. It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, ``Of all the questions that can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.'' Theodore Roosevelt was at the core of the conservation movement in the Republican Party. It is a Republican Party far removed from the party it is today. Roosevelt's determination to ``leave this land a little better'' has been replaced by complete abdication of responsible leadership for the stewardship of our planet. The Clean Power Plan that this resolution concerns is the single most significant step this country has taken now or in the past to combat climate change. Many citizens do not know that over the past few decades we have seen the carbon pollution rise in the atmosphere, and it is now in the upper level of 400 parts per million. As that carbon dioxide concentrates and comes to a higher level, it traps the heat, and that heat is producing profound consequences. We haven't had this level of carbon pollution for 3 million years--long before humans walked this planet and when sea levels were as much as 80 feet higher than they are today. So this is no ivory tower issue; it is very real, not only in the measurement of pollution in the air but in the facts on the ground. In my home State of Oregon, we are seeing impacts on our forests. We see impacts of pine beetles spreading and creating a big red zone of dead trees. We see it in impacts in terms of fiercer forest fires and a longer forest fire season--a season that has grown 60 days in 40 years. We see it in terms of the diminishing snowpack in the Cascades, which not only makes our trout streams warmer and smaller, but it decreases the water we have for agriculture, and we have a massive drought year after year. The three worst ever droughts have been in the last 15 years in the Klamath Basin in the south. We see it in terms of our sea production--our oysters, which are struggling to create shells when they are small because the Pacific Ocean is 30 percent more acidic now than it was before the industrial revolution. Carbon pollution is really a war on rural America. It is a war on forestry, our fishing, and our farming, and that cannot be allowed to stand. There is no question that we have conclusive evidence of global warming. Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 15 years. They have all occurred in this century, and 2014 was the warmest year ever on a global basis. This year, 2015, is on course to be even warmer yet. This translates into damage to our rural economy not only in terms of our forestry, our fishing, and our farming, but also in terms of the economic impact that occurs from the damage. The damage we see today is going to only get worse in the years ahead. These rural industries will suffer, and American livelihoods will suffer. It is irresponsible to continue business as usual. We need to dramatically change course. We need to pivot from a fossil fuel energy economy to a renewable energy economy. The Clean Power Plan sets achievable standards to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent of 2005 levels by the year 2030--strong but achievable standards. We have the technology today, but do we have the political will? Or is this body going to be ensnared by the powerful lobbying of the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, which have announced they are going to spend $1 billion in the next election to make sure their policies are the ones adopted in this room and that their policies will guide our future. Well, how about this? How about we have policies that are the policies related to the welfare of American citizens, related to the welfare of our farmers, our fishing industry, and our forest industry? How about we fight for rural America instead of being led astray by the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry? We know the Clean Power Plan will have a powerful, positive impact that will provide significant public health benefits, reducing premature deaths from powerplant emissions by nearly 90 percent, and that will avoid 3,600 premature deaths, will lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks for children, and will prevent 300,000 missed work and school days. We know this plan will create tens of thousands of jobs while driving new investments in cleaner, more modern, and more efficient technologies. We know it will save the American family nearly $85 on their annual energy bill. Fewer deaths are a good thing. More jobs are a good thing. Saving families money is a good thing. So let's fight for good things. Let's not follow the path my Republican colleagues are proposing, in which they are saying no to reducing bills for families, they are saying no to creating good-paying jobs, they are saying no to improving public health, and they are saying no to saving lives. Well, let's say yes. It has been said that we are the first generation to feel the impacts of global warming and the last generation that can do something about it. This is a moral challenge to our generation of humans on this planet--on our beautiful blue-green planet. This responsibility rests not with some future generation or some past generation but with all of us right now. This resolution to try to torpedo the most effective measure America has ever adopted in the past or in the present is, in fact, deeply, deeply misguided. Let's turn back to the test President Theodore Roosevelt put before us when he said that there is no more important mission than leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Our children and our children's children are counting on us to act. They are counting on us to save jobs, to save lives, and to save our planet. We must not fail this test. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to recognize the damage global warming is doing to our beautiful blue-green planet and talk about a specific bill, the keep it in the ground bill, that can be part of the way we successfully address global warming. There is no doubt our planet is getting hot: 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded, and 2015 is on course to be yet hotter and set a new record. In fact, the top 10 hottest years have all occurred since 1998. We see the evidence of warming everywhere. The Earth is crying out. Maine's lobsters are moving North, Pacific oysters are struggling to form shells in a more acidic Pacific Ocean, glaciers are disappearing from Glacier Park, moose are dying in Minnesota and New Hampshire because winters are too warm to kill the ticks that prey on the moose, and they are also too warm to kill the pine beetles that kill our trees. Wildfires are raging in the West, towns in Florida are flooding at normal high tide, droughts are killing crops, and the most powerful storms are doing major damage to communities across our Nation. Everywhere the impacts of global warming are substantial. They are damaging. Our planet is in danger. So we need to act to keep our planet from being destroyed. It is time for our Federal Government to show some real leadership on this. Specifically, we need to accelerate the transition from a fossil fuel energy economy to a clean energy economy. All the damage I was citing, damage to our forestry, damage to our farms, damage to our fisheries, all of this is caused by a less-than-1- degree-Celsius change. The current estimate is about 0.9 Celsius degrees. Scientists have said the maximum the planet can tolerate without catastrophic damage is 2 degrees Celsius or about 3.6 degrees Farenheit. So we have almost used up half of that global warming quotient. How much more damage will we see if we get to 2 degrees? The answer is, a whole lot more. Scientists say it will be catastrophic for our ecosystems, it will be catastrophic for human civilization. The simple fact is that carbon dioxide is serving as a blanket on our planet making it warmer. The simple fact is that the major culprit for carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels. To limit our planet's warming to 2 degrees Celsius, we must leave, as human civilization of this planet, 80 percent of the identified proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground--not to extract it, not to burn it. Part of the answer to this challenge is beneath our feet. We, the U.S. citizens, own fossil fuel reserves that constitute a substantial percentage of the proven reserves on the planet. Various estimates are 6 to 10 percent. If we must keep it in the ground; that is, keep our fossil fuels--80 percent of them--in the ground, then isn't it counterproductive to do new leases, leases that will extend production not 10 or 15 years but 20 or 30 years on gas and 40 or 50 years on coal, into the future? We lock in extraction and burning of fossil fuels far into the future, when our planet cannot bear the burden of the carbon dioxide from burning that far into the future. Shouldn't our public reserve, that citizen-owned reserve, be managed for the public benefit and not for private profit? It is said that if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. This is one place where literally we must quit digging. That is why today I have introduced, with a number of my colleagues, the keep it in the ground bill. A big thank-you to my cosponsors: Patrick Leahy, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ben Cardin, and Barbara Boxer. That group of Senators are standing up and saying we must be responsible stewards of our ecosystem and particularly we must stop this global warming that is doing so much harm to rural America. The bill does three things: It stops new leases and ends nonproducing leases for coal, oil, gas, oil shale, and tar sands on all Federal lands. It stops new leases and ends nonproducing leases for offshore drilling in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. It prohibits offshore drilling in the Arctic and in the Atlantic. This effort is a crucial component of good stewardship of our planet--really saving our planet. Our First Nations talk about thinking about the seventh generation. In a single generation, we have seen substantial impacts occurring right in our local communities. Every State can cite the impact. None of us is expecting that there is going to be quick action on Capitol Hill. It is grassroots organizing that came together and said we should not turn on the tap to the tar sands in Canada because it is the dirtiest oil on the planet. It is grassroots organizing that has come together and said that drilling in the Arctic is the height of irresponsibility. It is going to be grassroots efforts across this Nation that come together and say to us in the Halls of the Senate and the Halls of the House: Please act. Please exercise your responsibility as stewards of our planet. Please stop this egregious attack on rural America, on our forests, our farming, and our fishing--because on Capitol Hill, the voice heard right now is not the voice of common sense, it is not the voice of stewardship; it is the voice of those who own the oil and the coal who have invested massive amounts in the elections in the House and the elections in the Senate. They have come up here and said they plan to invest nearly $1 billion in the 2016 election. The Citizens United court case has opened the door wide open to this corruption of common sense, this corruption of stewardship, this corruption of the democratic process. So it is going to be grossroots that make a difference, to rally, to keep it in the ground. This message is one that should be debated in every congressional campaign. It should be debated in every Senate campaign. It should be debated in the Presidency. It should be debated in December in Paris when nations comes together. It should be debated in other nations that have public assets, as they ask how are they going to be good public stewards, because we need the international community working together. Yes, we can work on the demand side--fuel efficiency and better insulated buildings--but we need to work on the supply side of keeping fossil fuels in the ground as well. We need to attack this problem from every direction. In doing so, as we transition from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, we are going to create millions of good-paying jobs. In doing so, we need to make sure that in that transition we don't leave our workers behind. Those working in the fossil fuel industry have spent their lives providing the energy that has fueled tremendous growth in our economy, often at the expense of their personal family health and their families well-being. So this must not be a green-versus-blue transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, but it has to be green and blue together, side by side fighting for the environment and fighting for our workers. We will not leave our workers behind. It has been said that we are the first generation who feels the impact of global warming, and we are the last generation who can do something about it. So the choice is simple. Let us take on the climate challenge as policymakers and stewards. Let us take on the climate challenge fighting for rural America because of the terrible impact warming is having on our forests, our fishing, and our farms. Let us make our Federal lands off limits. Let us do the smart thing. In terms of those Federal citizen-owned reserves of fossil fuels, let us keep it in the ground.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to recognize the damage global warming is doing to our beautiful blue-green planet and talk about a specific bill, the keep it in the ground bill, that can be part of the way we successfully address global warming. There is no doubt our planet is getting hot: 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded, and 2015 is on course to be yet hotter and set a new record. In fact, the top 10 hottest years have all occurred since 1998. We see the evidence of warming everywhere. The Earth is crying out. Maine's lobsters are moving North, Pacific oysters are struggling to form shells in a more acidic Pacific Ocean, glaciers are disappearing from Glacier Park, moose are dying in Minnesota and New Hampshire because winters are too warm to kill the ticks that prey on the moose, and they are also too warm to kill the pine beetles that kill our trees. Wildfires are raging in the West, towns in Florida are flooding at normal high tide, droughts are killing crops, and the most powerful storms are doing major damage to communities across our Nation. Everywhere the impacts of global warming are substantial. They are damaging. Our planet is in danger. So we need to act to keep our planet from being destroyed. It is time for our Federal Government to show some real leadership on this. Specifically, we need to accelerate the transition from a fossil fuel energy economy to a clean energy economy. All the damage I was citing, damage to our forestry, damage to our farms, damage to our fisheries, all of this is caused by a less-than-1- degree-Celsius change. The current estimate is about 0.9 Celsius degrees. Scientists have said the maximum the planet can tolerate without catastrophic damage is 2 degrees Celsius or about 3.6 degrees Farenheit. So we have almost used up half of that global warming quotient. How much more damage will we see if we get to 2 degrees? The answer is, a whole lot more. Scientists say it will be catastrophic for our ecosystems, it will be catastrophic for human civilization. The simple fact is that carbon dioxide is serving as a blanket on our planet making it warmer. The simple fact is that the major culprit for carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels. To limit our planet's warming to 2 degrees Celsius, we must leave, as human civilization of this planet, 80 percent of the identified proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground--not to extract it, not to burn it. Part of the answer to this challenge is beneath our feet. We, the U.S. citizens, own fossil fuel reserves that constitute a substantial percentage of the proven reserves on the planet. Various estimates are 6 to 10 percent. If we must keep it in the ground; that is, keep our fossil fuels--80 percent of them--in the ground, then isn't it counterproductive to do new leases, leases that will extend production not 10 or 15 years but 20 or 30 years on gas and 40 or 50 years on coal, into the future? We lock in extraction and burning of fossil fuels far into the future, when our planet cannot bear the burden of the carbon dioxide from burning that far into the future. Shouldn't our public reserve, that citizen-owned reserve, be managed for the public benefit and not for private profit? It is said that if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. This is one place where literally we must quit digging. That is why today I have introduced, with a number of my colleagues, the keep it in the ground bill. A big thank-you to my cosponsors: Patrick Leahy, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ben Cardin, and Barbara Boxer. That group of Senators are standing up and saying we must be responsible stewards of our ecosystem and particularly we must stop this global warming that is doing so much harm to rural America. The bill does three things: It stops new leases and ends nonproducing leases for coal, oil, gas, oil shale, and tar sands on all Federal lands. It stops new leases and ends nonproducing leases for offshore drilling in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. It prohibits offshore drilling in the Arctic and in the Atlantic. This effort is a crucial component of good stewardship of our planet--really saving our planet. Our First Nations talk about thinking about the seventh generation. In a single generation, we have seen substantial impacts occurring right in our local communities. Every State can cite the impact. None of us is expecting that there is going to be quick action on Capitol Hill. It is grassroots organizing that came together and said we should not turn on the tap to the tar sands in Canada because it is the dirtiest oil on the planet. It is grassroots organizing that has come together and said that drilling in the Arctic is the height of irresponsibility. It is going to be grassroots efforts across this Nation that come together and say to us in the Halls of the Senate and the Halls of the House: Please act. Please exercise your responsibility as stewards of our planet. Please stop this egregious attack on rural America, on our forests, our farming, and our fishing--because on Capitol Hill, the voice heard right now is not the voice of common sense, it is not the voice of stewardship; it is the voice of those who own the oil and the coal who have invested massive amounts in the elections in the House and the elections in the Senate. They have come up here and said they plan to invest nearly $1 billion in the 2016 election. The Citizens United court case has opened the door wide open to this corruption of common sense, this corruption of stewardship, this corruption of the democratic process. So it is going to be grossroots that make a difference, to rally, to keep it in the ground. This message is one that should be debated in every congressional campaign. It should be debated in every Senate campaign. It should be debated in the Presidency. It should be debated in December in Paris when nations comes together. It should be debated in other nations that have public assets, as they ask how are they going to be good public stewards, because we need the international community working together. Yes, we can work on the demand side--fuel efficiency and better insulated buildings--but we need to work on the supply side of keeping fossil fuels in the ground as well. We need to attack this problem from every direction. In doing so, as we transition from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy, we are going to create millions of good-paying jobs. In doing so, we need to make sure that in that transition we don't leave our workers behind. Those working in the fossil fuel industry have spent their lives providing the energy that has fueled tremendous growth in our economy, often at the expense of their personal family health and their families well-being. So this must not be a green-versus-blue transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, but it has to be green and blue together, side by side fighting for the environment and fighting for our workers. We will not leave our workers behind. It has been said that we are the first generation who feels the impact of global warming, and we are the last generation who can do something about it. So the choice is simple. Let us take on the climate challenge as policymakers and stewards. Let us take on the climate challenge fighting for rural America because of the terrible impact warming is having on our forests, our fishing, and our farms. Let us make our Federal lands off limits. Let us do the smart thing. In terms of those Federal citizen-owned reserves of fossil fuels, let us keep it in the ground.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I would like very much to thank my colleagues for coming to the floor and speaking to this issue, my colleagues from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal; from Massachusetts, Senator Markey; and Senator Warren, also from Massachusetts. I must say that this topic of addiction to tobacco and tobacco products being targeted at our children is not one that is only relevant to one State or this State or that State, it affects children in rural America, in urban America, and in every State and corner of our Nation. So there is basically a universal impact. That is probably part of the reason the Senate came together, during a period in which there has been substantial dysfunction and substantial paralysis, and said, no, it is time to regulate these tobacco products as the drugs that they are, but during the 6 years since the bill was passed, we have had no regulation. So I appreciate my colleagues coming to the floor and trying to amplify the message that this is unacceptable, because children will be addicted, they will develop diseases, they will suffer, and they will die because of the inaction in putting the regulations forward. This is completely unacceptable. During this time, there have been a lot of experimental products put out by the tobacco industry. They have put out finely ground tobacco in the form of mints. They put them into hour glass-shaped candy holders so that when students would put them in our pockets, it would look like a cell phone. That may not make sense in this age of smartphones, but just a few years ago, in 2009, when this was being test-marketed in my State of Oregon and test-marketed in Ohio, the shape of the most popular cellphones kind of had a little bit of an hourglass shape to it. So the idea was it would look like a cellphone and not like tobacco when you were in school. They came out with a product of toothpicks made out of finely ground tobacco. They came out with a product of breath strips that you put on your tongue. Can you imagine tobacco to freshen your breath? They were experimenting with everything, but the payday was not toothpicks, it was not mints, and it was not breath strips; the payday product is e- cigarettes. I am going to put the chart back up about the e-cigarettes. There are two fundamental myths propagated by the tobacco industry. The first is that they are not marketing to youth. Well, let's examine the type of flavors in these products. We have apple--these are just the ones on this chart. We have cotton candy. We have gummy bear. We have watermelon. We have candy crave. We have Red Bull. We have peach. These candy and fruit flavors are designed to appeal to children and to mask some of the nastiness of smoking. Well, so that is big lie No. 1 from the tobacco industry, that they are not targeting our children. It is absolutely clear they are. Furthermore, they have to because they know that replacement smokers--getting new smokers to replace those who are dying because of their products requires targeting children because very few people start smoking when they are adults or start using tobacco products when they are adults. The mind of the teenager is the perfect moment to gain traction and produce addiction. That is why the tobacco companies are targeting our children. The second myth they put forward is that e-cigarettes are simply a wonderful health aid designed to get people to quit smoking. Maybe it is healthier than a cigarette with a tobacco leaf ground up inside of it or a clear liquid nicotine rather than a cigarette or a cigar. Do not believe for a moment that tobacco companies are trying to help individuals stop smoking. They did not do billions of dollars in commerce by getting people to stop smoking. Everything about targeting kids is not about getting individuals to stop smoking but to start smoking. That is the goal, to start smoking, to lead them into a life in which they will spend an enormous amount of money buying a product that is destroying their body. Eventually they will suffer. Eventually they will die. It will be a heart attack. It will be lung cancer. It will be a whole host of--emphysema. OK. Maybe not every single individual, but a huge number of folks who become addicted in their youth will suffer substantial health consequences. Even those who don't have cancer or full-blown emphysema will experience other health impacts that make them a less healthy individual and compromise their quality of life. Again, I thank my colleagues so much for coming to the floor to accentuate this message that we have waited far too long for the regulations to get done to take on this industry and that we are demanding that when the regulation is published--and hopefully that will be very soon, as in days or weeks--that will be a regulation that is written in a forceful, comprehensive fashion, that will not have a grandfather clause that excludes existing products from regulation, and it will not fail to address this powerful instrument being used to target our children, which are fruit and candy flavors. We ask, now that the Food and Drug Administration has forwarded this decision to the Office of Management and Budget for final decisionmaking, that OMB come out quickly, forcefully, and strongly to address this tremendous blight on our society. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about an issue that affects the health of our children in every single State. I ask unanimous consent that after I have completed my remarks, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Markey, Senator Boxer, and Senator Warren be afforded the opportunity to continue to address the same topic.

Mr. MERKLEY. I also invite my colleagues to jump in at any point to exchange views as well. This issue is one that we have known about for a very long period of time, which is that tobacco addiction destroys lives. I grew up in a family where my mother didn't smoke and my father didn't smoke, but they both came from large families--many brothers and sisters--and it seemed as though every single year when I was young, one of my aunts or one of my uncles died from smoking. They died from cancer. They died from heart disease. They died from emphysema. This carnage was all too apparent. Anyone who has taken the slightest look at this issue knows that the statistics are just unbelievable, the number of deaths and illnesses caused, the number of years lost, the degradation of the quality of life of individuals. For this reason, it had long been a topic here in the Senate that nicotine--the primary acting element in tobacco--should be considered a drug. It is a drug. It has all of these impacts. We have a Food and Drug Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration should be able to regulate it for the health and welfare of our Nation. Back in 2009, we debated just such a law here on the floor of the Senate and across the way in the House, and that law was adopted. So we anticipated that in short order regulations would be issued and they would help address particularly the effort of tobacco companies to produce new products designed to essentially produce nicotine tobacco addicts among our children, to entice our children into smoking or chewing and this whole new variety, this continuum of products. Here we are years later. It is no longer 2009; it is 2015--6 years later and we have no regulation. During that time, a great deal has happened. Many new products have been introduced in the never-ending quest of the tobacco companies to find what they call replacement smokers; that is, young folks who will continue to buy their products as their current customers die because they use their products. So 6 years have passed and no action out of the administration. Year after year, we have pushed, we have called as Senators, we have talked about it on the floor, we have held meetings with the key officials, and it has always been: We are almost there. We are working on it. We know how important it is. But while this process has gone along so slowly, millions more of our children have become addicted to tobacco. One of the main instruments the tobacco industry is using are flavors designed to target children. We can see here on the chart particularly flavors in the e-cigarette category. We have a whole variety. We have coffee. We have cherry. We have apple. We have cherry bomb flavoring. I was told today on the phone that there is a Captain Kangaroo flavor and there is a Scooby Doo flavor. There is a gummy bear flavor. These flavors are not designed to entice adults into becoming smokers because the industry knows that very rarely does an individual start to use tobacco products after the age of 21. It is the youth who experiment, and then the nicotine, as an addictive drug, does its work and turns them into lifetime users. That is where, of course, the money is. I was asked in an interview today how it is that the tobacco companies say these products are not targeted to children. I responded very simply. It is the big lie. No one, no individual can look at the flavors of these products and not know they are targeting our children. So what has happened in the last few years is the e-cigarette industry is the most successful of the products that tobacco companies have tested. In fact, in just the last year alone, use by our high school students has tripled. That means we now have 2 million high school--the survey was the previous 30 days, and in the previous 30 days, 2 million of our high school students had utilized e-cigarettes. So the tobacco campaign is working, which means they are hard at work compromising the health and welfare of our children and leading them down a path to suffering and death. That is unacceptable. So we are here today--a number of us--to simply say to our own administration, our executive branch: Get the regulations done. They have now been forwarded from the Food and Drug Administration, from the FDA, to the Office of Management and Budget, which does the final review of those regulations. Get the regulations done, and make sure they are strong regulations. Do not put in a clause that grandfathers all the products and exempts them from regulations that have been produced up until now. Such a grandfather clause would tear the heart out, tear the guts out of the entire effort to regulate these killer products. And certainly regulate the flavors. That is the key, core strategy of addicting our children. Do not ignore that key, core strategy. This is something very real that this body debated and decided to do and turn it over to the executive branch. It is way past time for the executive branch to act. So we are asking for quick and powerful, forceful action to stop the carnage that is ensuing from the failure of these regulations. Several colleagues are coming to the floor to join this conversation. The Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, is planning to jump in next, followed by Senator Markey and then Senator Warren.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will note that we secured this language an hour ago. We have no complete insight on the impact of the language, and this is language more appropriately debated in the committee process. I wish to ask my colleague to consider introducing it for action on the floor at some future point and not use it to obstruct funding or authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. If my colleague is not comfortable with such a suggestion, then I would object.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern Bria Justus, who is participating in a shadow day, have privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

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