Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, when a child predeceases the parent, it is a grievous occasion, and we have been grieving for the President of the Senate, the Vice President of the United States, for what he has been going through--his whole family. It is my belief Joe Biden has known for some period of time the progression of his son, Beau's, cancer and, as a result, he has continued to carry on his public duties while at the same time carrying this huge burden. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the speech Joe Biden made to the Yale graduating class about 2 weeks ago on Class Day.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Reed, the ranking member. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but there is budgetary fakery in here. I want to, in my words, describe this budgetary fakery. But before I do, I want to commend the chairman, Senator McCain, and Senator Reed for how they have conducted the committee. I thank them for their professionalism. They show how two leaders of opposite parties can get along, and Lord knows we need a lot more of that around here. But for this budgetary issue, Senator Reed and I would be voting for this on the final passage coming out of the committee. I, too, will be supporting Senator Reed's amendment to try to straighten out some of this budgetary trickery. Let me say that in front of our committee, we have had general after general and admiral after admiral and the top enlisted folks come in and say that sequestration is harming the national security of this country. When we do that, it puts us at a risk that the American people would find intolerable if they knew what was going on. Now, let me see if, in my words, I can describe what this is. After Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan put together a bipartisan budget--and for 2 years this artificial ceiling, like a meat-ax approach, sequestration, across the board was enacted to be implemented over the next several years, not a budgetary strategy of program by program but a meat-ax approach across the board, regardless of the importance of the program. Their bipartisan budget lifted that for 2 years. We are at the end of that 2-year period, so that sequestration is kicking back in. That is why we need to get rid of it. We need to get rid of it not only for defense but nondefense as well. I will talk about that in a second. But in defense, it now kicks in and limits the overall spending for the Department of Defense. But we know we have to spend more than that. So this defense bill, which Senator Reed and I voted against, takes operational and readiness funds out of the Department of Defense request, which is a major part of the defense of the country. You want your troops to be operationally ready so that we can fight two wars if we have to simultaneously. But they take that money--that funding--out of the defense budget, and they put it over here in this special account that is not counted against the budget caps, which is an account for conducting the war originally in Iraq, then Afghanistan, and primarily for purposes of funding Afghanistan now. As Senator Reed has very appropriately and accurately discussed, if you do that, first of all, this is nothing but budgetary fakery to meet an arbitrary cap on budgets, because you are spending a lot more than that ceiling. You are just spending it over here on something that is off budget, and the total amount that is moved over is about $39 billion. In that account, there is approximately $50 billion already for conducting the war in Afghanistan. But now we are going to take operational readiness for the entire Department of Defense and pull it over here. If we are going to be straight with what we are spending so that we really know what we are spending, why don't we keep it in the budget and let the total budget rise instead of having an artificial ceiling so we know what we are spending? Senator Reed is concerned that if you do that and you are spending it over here, then in future years, as this continues to stay there, we are not going to be able to show that operational readiness is something that ought to be a normal part of the funding of the Department of Defense, as it has been for years and years. That is basically what is going on. Military strategy is not just dependent on defense spending, but it is also dependent upon nondefense national security spending, which at this point is not even being addressed. What will the generals and the admirals tell you? They will tell you that a strong national economy is one of the most important of all the strengths of our country to be able to project American military strength. And as a result, if we continue to budget like this, not only in defense but in nondefense as well, in nondefense areas that directly affect defense--I mean the Coast Guard, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, Customs and Border Protection, air traffic control, TSA--then all of these areas in the Federal Government are going to be under this artificial meat-ax approach of cutting across the board, and all of those agencies directly affect the national security. So what we have been doing is artificially avoiding what is the obvious. It is sequestration. It is this meat-ax cut across the board. I want us, as we discuss this budget--now highlighted first by Senator Reed--to start talking about how we are going to get rid of the sequester. We did it in the bipartisan Murray-Ryan budget over 2 years ago. We need to do it again. Otherwise, we are going to be wasting our time working on bills that at the end of the day may well not get the 60 votes to proceed to final passage or we will have a veto by the President. So we need to fix the budget caps for defense and nondefense spending. If we have bleeding in an artery, we do not need a Band-Aid. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Has the Senator heard many times from the press: Well, nobody has come forward and shown us one case in which the holding of these telephone business bulk records has paid off. Has the Senator heard that statement by the press?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this is a good example of the chairman of the intel committee, a Republican, and this Senator from Florida, a Democrat and a former member of the intel committee, agreeing and being so frustrated--as was just exemplified by the Senator from North Carolina--that there is so much misunderstanding of what this legislation does. The fact is, as the chairman has just said, ``metadata''--a fancy term--is nothing more than business records of the telephone company. A telephone number is made to another telephone number on such and such a date, at such and such a time, for such and such duration. That is all. We don't know whom the call was from or to. It is when there is the suspicion, through other things that are authorized by court order, that the analyst can get in and open up as to what the content is in order to protect us. Would the Senator from North Carolina agree there is so much misunderstanding in the press, as has been reported, about how this is an invasion of privacy, as if the conversations were the ones that were being held by the National Security Agency? Would the Senator agree with that statement?

Mr. NELSON. Has the Senator come to the conclusion that with regard to the holding of that data and the many cases that are classified, that that data has protected this country from terrorists by virtue of just the example he gave of terrorist records apprehended in the raid in Syria a couple of weeks ago and that those telephone numbers may well be like mining gold in finding other terrorists who want to hit us?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, if the Senator will further yield, and I will conclude with this. The American people need to understand there is so much agreement behind the closed doors on the Intelligence Committee, as they are invested with the oversight of what is going on in order to protect our blessed country. My plea now is we would get to the point that as the chairman has suggested, even by waiting until tomorrow, we can collapse this time and get on to passing this by sending down some minor modifications to the House that they can accept, then get it to the President so this important program that tries to protect us from terrorists can continue. I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. NELSON. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, if the Senator will further yield.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we are here because the Senate is not functioning. We were here last night because the Senate is not functioning. Oh, it is functioning according to the rules, which say that you have to go through this arcane procedure of cloture on the motion to proceed and get 60 votes before you can ever get to the bill. Once you get to the bill, then you file another motion for cloture. The Senate rules say that there are 30 hours that have to run unless, as has been typical of Senate business, there is comity, there is understanding, and there is bipartisanship. But one Senator can withhold unanimous consent, and that has been done--so the 30 hours. Now, normally that may be standard procedure for the Senate, but it is getting in the way of our national security. At midnight last night the law that allows our intelligence community to track the emails and the phone calls of the terrorists evaporated. It won't be reenacted until sometime later this week because of the lack of unanimous consent. But this Senator from Florida is not putting it at the feet of just the one Senator who is withholding the unanimous consent. This Senator from Florida is saying that this should have been planned on over a week ago. This Senator is saying that we should have gone through the laborious procedures--not assuming that we were going to have the votes last night, not assuming that there was going to have comity and unanimous consent. This Senator thinks that we should have done this because of the urgency of national security. It is interesting that this Senator from Florida comes to the floor with mixed feelings. I voted for the Leahy bill, which is identical to the House bill, but I did that because we didn't have any other choice. When I had another choice, I voted for Senator Burr's--the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee--version, which was to continue existing law. I did so because I clearly thought that was in the interests of our national security. But since that is not the prevailing vote of the Senate, we need to get on with it and pass the House bill. Then I would urge the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who is on the floor, that--down the line--the 6-month transitional period from the old law to the new law be extended with a greater transition time to 12 or 18 months. I would further urge the chairman of the Intelligence Committee that as to a major flaw in the bill passed by the House, which we will eventually pass this week, we add to it a requirement for a certain amount of time that the telephone companies would have to keep those telephone business records, so that if there is an urgency of national security going through the FISA Court, those records would be available to the intelligence community to trace the telephone calls of the terrorists. That would be my recommendation, and I see the chairman nodding in somewhat agreement. I hope we will get on. I hope better hearts and minds will prevail and that we can collapse this period of darkness where there is no law governing emails, phone calls, cell phones, et cetera, as we try to protect ourselves from the terrorists. I would hope that this would be collapsed into a much shorter time instead of having to wait until late Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday of this week. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I wish to speak about the FISA bill, but before I do, I want to express what is in every one of our hearts--our grieving with the Joe Biden family. That family has had more than its share of tragedy, but what it has produced is, in the case of Beau Biden, an extraordinary public servant who served his country not only by elected office but by serving in uniform as well. Most of us in this Chamber know the Biden family. The dad and the now mom, Joe and Jill, are extraordinary human beings who have contributed so much. It is not necessarily easy to be in public service as long as the Vice President has been and still raise a family that is so extraordinarily accomplished and contributes so much. Then to have that eldest son taken from him is like a dagger into our hearts. So we grieve with the family. We grieve for them and with the Nation. I just wish to put that on the record.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am going to speak on the three bills that are pending before the Senate: The trade bill, the highway bill, and the continuation of the PATRIOT Act. Every one of us is in love with our cars. America is in love with their cars. Every one of us can remember the first time we learned to drive. I started out on country roads in an International pickup truck with cow bodies on the side--those are the wooden slats that go out--so I could put my heifers on the little Ranch that I had, so I could haul them around. That is how I got to and from high school. Every one of us has a different story like that. America has been spoiled because of the automobile. It has now become an exceptionally creature-comfort room in which we can suddenly climb in and lose ourselves in beautiful music, comfortable seats, while easily accessible in the cup holder is a cup of coffee. But America's love affair with the automobile will not do us any good if we don't have any roads to drive on and especially if the roads are just filled with potholes or if you can't go across the bridges because they are in danger of falling down. Of course, that leads us to the obvious; that here in front of us is the highway bill, a transportation bill which involves other things as well--transportation safety and considerable transportation enhancements in urban areas. But we can't get together, even though probably every one of the Members of the Senate would agree we have to pass a highway bill. The problem is we can't figure out how to fund it. It has to be funded with something called revenue. It either has to be taken out of the general revenues of the U.S. Government--and Lord knows those revenues are being cut back with this meat-cleaver approach across the board called the sequester, the results of which--for example, we have had the Joint Chiefs up here telling us this is going to severely hamper their ability to protect the national security. We have had the head of NIH up here telling us about the consequences of the sequester in the past. A few years ago, when the sequester kicked in, he had to cancel 700 medical research grants, all of which almost all of us would support because of the extraordinary medical research successes that were going on. So general revenue out of the U.S. Treasury is going to be hard to come by to fund the highway bill. If we do this month, 2- month, 6-month extension, all that is saying is that we are going to pull that out of general revenue. Then, transportation companies, departments of transportation back in our respective States, can't plan on building the roads because they have to have such lead times for the design and engineering and the eventual building of the roads. It is similar to building an aircraft carrier. Money cannot be appropriated for an aircraft carrier in 1 year. It is going to take, in the case of an aircraft carrier, a decade to build. Well, it doesn't take a decade to build most of our roads, but clearly one has to plan ahead to know the money is there so you can proceed. What good is America's love affair with the automobile if we don't have the efficient roads to drive on? Where is the money coming from? Well, some people have suggested a sales tax, others have suggested updating the gas tax, and others want to look to general revenue. It is time for us to come together and determine what that should be. I can say to the Senate that this Senator will consider anything that will give us the revenue so we can build this crumbling infrastructure, particularly roads and bridges. One of the things that immediately does is it creates all kinds of jobs. I have seen one commentary. I don't know that this is accurate, but it illustrates the point. If you spend $1 billion in building roads, there is some huge number of thousands and thousands of construction jobs. So let's get real. Let's come up with the revenue. Now that is the Finance Committee. One place to start is the gas tax. The gas tax has not been updated. Also, when it is updated, it needs to be calculated for the increases in the cost of living over time. Since it is a user tax, it perhaps needs to be combined with other sources of revenue because we are going to have to face the music and come up with the revenue. One of the issues that is holding us up right here, right now, on a Friday afternoon just before Memorial Day weekend, is figuring out what we are going to do on continuing the highway bill authorization. Mr. President, one of the other issues in front of us is the trade bill. This Senator is one of the Democrats who has voted for the trade bill known as fast-track, which is to enact a procedure that when the Pacific trade agreement is negotiated, finalized, and announced, it can be considered by the Congress, after ample time for examination, and it would then be considered with an up-or-down vote, instead of the normal process where it would be subject to amendment. Put a trade bill together with another 11 nations in the Pacific region. If it were subject to the amendatory process in the Senate and the House, it would get pecked to death. It would never survive the legislative wars; thus, the need for this trade promotion authority, the TPA, that we have in front of us. I believe we will pass it, I believe it will be an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, and I believe a big vote out of the Senate will send a significant message to the House, where there are some rumblings of a problem. At the end of the day, when the Joint Chiefs come in front of you and say that this is one of the most important things for them for the national security interests of the United States in that region of the world, the Pacific arena, then at the end of the day, it likely will pass, and in this Senator's judgment it will be in the interests of our country. Mr. President, the third issue that is before the Senate is the PATRIOT Act. Now, every one of us, if we were here--whether you were here or not, you remember exactly where you were on that fateful day of September 11, 2001. A number of us were in a room right off the floor, right over here on the west front. We were in a meeting with the Democratic leader, the majority leader, Senator Daschle. The meeting started at 9 a.m. We saw on this grainy black-and-white TV what had happened in New York. The human mind wants to play tricks and deny the reality of what was happening; that, in fact, it was no accident that two planes had flown into the two distinct towers of the World Trade Center, but all doubt was cast aside when suddenly someone burst into the room and said, ``The Pentagon has been hit.'' We leapt to the window overlooking the west side of the Mall and looked in the direction of the Pentagon, and sure enough there was the black smoke rising where the third plane had hit. I immediately raced to a telephone to try to reach my wife because we had just moved into an apartment overlooking the southwest corner of the Pentagon. I wanted to tell her to get out of the apartment and move down into the basement. I couldn't reach her. By the time I came back, the room was vacated. Out in the hallway, I saw security take the majority leader and the minority leader off in a different direction to a prearranged place for the congressional leadership in times of national security threats and national attack. I will never forget going down those major stairs right out this door of the Senate Chamber, and at the bottom of the stairs the Capitol Police shouting at the top of their lungs: Get out of the building. Get out of the building. Run. Run. They had heard the reports that there was a fourth airplane inbound. That was a fateful day. I huddled up outside with Senator Rockefeller, trying to get hold of our staff to tell them to vacate. Later in the day, the Capitol Police told Senator Rockefeller and me not to come back to the Capitol Complex. We ended up at Senator Rockefeller's home. I was still desperately trying to get my wife on the telephone. I will never forget the eerie silence over Washington because all air traffic had been stopped, and that silence was pierced by F-15s and F-16s as they were flying CAPs over the Nation's Capitol. Well, because of that attack that killed some 3,000 Americans--the first time, by the way, that we were rudely awakened to the fact that our national security was not protected here at home by two big oceans; that an enemy could, in fact, attack and attack within--then how to go after them to prevent it in the future. That led to the PATRIOT Act. That led to trying to give our intelligence community and the NSA, the National Security Agency, the tools to, when the bad guys are planning--wherever they are, abroad or here--and we get some snippet of evidence that they are planning a dastardly deed, we can give our intelligence community and our law enforcement the tools to try to go after them. Now, let me give you an example. It used to be that if we would invade somebody's privacy by going after their telephone, we would have to get a court order to be able to tap that telephone. Well, then came the present-day technology. The terrorist does not use just one telephone. The telephone they use now is multiple cell phones and, therefore, you had to update the law to allow you to be able to go after them and see whom they were calling--not from one telephone but from multiple telephones. That is just one example of how the law was updated. The law was also updated to allow the NSA to be able, at the request of the telephone companies, to obtain the business records--not the private conversations but only the business records--which showed that on such and such a date this number called this number and for how long. All the telephone companies did not comply. A lot of them did. The PATRIOT Act was enacted to allow a process whereby you would go to a special court classified for national security information, called the FISA Court, and that court would give the appropriate legal authority for the NSA to obtain those records. Now, this whole disagreement in front of the Senate is over how you hold those business records. It has been misstated on the floor of the Senate that this is obtaining private conversations, invading privacy. This is just a question of how you hold those records. There will be an attempt to extend the current law, toward which I have some degree of positive attitude, and that is at the request of the NSA. Those records are held by NSA--the telephone business records. But the legislation that we are going to vote on, the USA FREEDOM Act, is a change--a slight change--of the current law. It says that those records would still be retained by the telephone companies; that they would have to retain those records and not destroy them for some period of time; that if the government suspects terrorist activity, it would go to get a court order to obtain the business records of a particular number or person subject to a judge's order, just as we do if law enforcement or the FBI wants to go into our home and get evidence. They have to go to a court to show probable cause to the judge that, in fact, there may have been a crime committed. This is the same process. You go to the classified court that can handle the classified information. The court gives an order to obtain those business records. Why is that important? It is important because we might get a snippet of information about such and such a terrorist or such and such a number that has been used by the terrorist or someone suspected to have been talking to a terrorist. Then, in order to protect ourselves, the intelligence community and law enforcement are going to have to go and get the records so they can see where that call went and then, from that person or number, where it went one more hop, with a limit of two hops. This Senator prefers not to have those limitations. But that is not what is in front of us. So this Senator from Florida is going to support the USA FREEDOM Act because it is so necessary that by the end of this month the PATRIOT Act does not cease to exist because of all the other provisions in it that allow our intelligence community to try to get the information to protect us before the terrorists can strike. I can tell you, as a former member of the Intelligence Committee at the time that this PATRIOT Act was drawn up and later amended, and I can tell you as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, it is my judgment that this is clearly in the national security interest. We cannot take the risk to let the PATRIOT Act cease to exist so that we do not have the tools to protect ourselves. My final comment is that every day these bad guys are trying to do us in. Every day they are trying all kinds of things to find what is the little flaw or what is the little defect in our defenses. If we do not continue this legislation, as I am suggesting it be amended by the legislation in front of us, then, in fact, we are not giving just a little crack in the door for the terrorists to get in, we are opening up the entire barn door. That clearly is not in the interests of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, today the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are responding to yet another oilspill in the water. In a moment, I will bring out a photograph which shows the fresh crude oil on the beach of Refugio State Park in California. This oilspill brings back the images from 5 years ago of the oil-coated pelicans and tar-stained beaches, which were once sugar white, covered with gooey mats of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. Although the spill happened in 2010, a lot of that oil is still sloshing around out there in the gulf. Last week, the Department of the Interior told us that the oil leaking in the gulf since 2004 from Taylor Energy wells could continue for a century or more ``if left unchecked.'' This is the oilspill that just happened in the last few days. It is fresh crude, and it is on the beach in California. Of course, when I see this kind of picture, it brings me back to that experience all of us on the gulf coast had 5 years ago, and we wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Remember, to begin with, they said, Oh, it is just a few hundred barrels of oil, even though it was ruptured 1 mile beneath the surface of the water. Then we got the streaming video. We actually put that video on my Web site. The chairman of the environment committee, Senator Boxer, put it up on her committee Web site. Once scientists could see how much was flowing, they could calculate, and then they saw that it wasn't going to be a few hundred or even a thousand barrels of oil a day; it was approaching something like 50 times that. We know what, in fact, happened. Almost 5 million barrels of oil was spilled. The court in Louisiana--the Federal court that is hearing this case against BP--indeed has concluded that those who are going to be held responsible under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 will be responsible for somewhere around 4 million barrels. That is court- decided. A lot of that oil is still out there. Yet, appallingly, today the economy and the environment of the State of Florida are again under attack. I have just been informed that Senators from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas are seeking to invite oil rigs within 50 miles of Florida's coastline. Now, of course, that goes against all logic. It is certainly not what the people of Florida want and it is not what the Department of the Interior has said is appropriate or necessary under the next 5-year leasing plan. Florida is a unique State. This is a photo of a dead dolphin covered with oil that is just another casualty of what we are seeing that is happening this week. The reason I am here today with these Senators who are threatening Florida is because in 2006, in a bipartisan way, the other Senator from Florida, Mr. Martinez, a Republican, and I, a Democrat, joined together to put in law that the Outer Continental Shelf off Florida is off- limits to oil drilling. We were successful in doing that, even though no other Outer Continental Shelf off the United States is off-limits. In the administration's 5-year plans, they have complied with that because the off-limits to oil drilling is until the year 2022. Therefore, in the next 5-year plan, from 2017 to 2022, the administration honored that. It is, after all, the law. But why is Florida different than others? Well, in the first place, there is no oil off of Florida. People think of where the oil is. It is off of Louisiana. The sediment came down the Mississippi River for millions of years and was compacted by the Earth's crust, and that formed these oil deposits. There is a lot of oil in the central Gulf of Mexico and, indeed, that is what is happening. A lot of oil is being produced there. That is the first reason. There is not oil off of Florida. But there are other reasons, not the least of which is of all the Gulf Coast States, Florida has the most beaches and, therefore, the economy is directly charged with the fact of having those pristine, sugary white beaches as such an attraction for our guests to come to Florida and enjoy nature's seaside. Well, we found out, as a result of the gulf oilspill, that even though just a little oil reached Florida--Pensacola Beach was blackened, tar mats came into Pensacola Bay, Destin got oil on the beach, and some tar balls got as far east as Panama City Beach. So people saw those pictures of oil covering the beach and they thought that was the entire State of Florida and they didn't come. For a whole season, the guests, the visitors, the tourists did not come. So the motels were not filled and the restaurants were not filled and the drycleaners, and all the ancillary businesses associated with a tourism economy on the coast, they did not come. Now, there is also, obviously, the environmental interests because we do have a lot of the bays and estuaries and marsh grasses where critters spawn so much of the marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, and it starts in these bays and estuaries. That is obviously a reason as well. But there is a special reason why we have kept oil off our shores. Bottlenose dolphins in the gulf have been dying at unprecedented rates over the last 5 years. This is one of those sick dolphins. So from the BP spill, science is showing, in fact, what we intuitively knew. And just yesterday, a team of scientists confirmed the Deepwater Horizon oilspill contributed to the highest number of dead bottlenose dolphin strandings on record in the northern Gulf of Mexico. So it certainly makes little sense that we would seek more drilling in even riskier areas when we are still picking up the pieces from the last major oilspill. Today, I am introducing legislation that implements many of the hard lessons learned in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon BP oilspill. This legislation is going to make sure that NOAA and the Coast Guard have the tools to prevent, to prepare for, and to respond to marine oilspills. The bill is going to give gulf coast communities a seat at the table in the decisions about oil drilling that affects their way of life. It will strengthen State-level planning for oilspills or seismic exploration. But, most importantly, the bill will protect Florida from Big Oil's reach by keeping the eastern Gulf of Mexico off-limits beyond 2022 and in statute until 2027. Back in 2006, we passed the bipartisan Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. In that act, that is what we did in establishing this off-limits in law. But now, some of our neighboring States, at the behest of Big Oil, are trying to drill again and to drill off of Florida. We are going to do everything we can to make sure we don't lose another tourism season. We are going to do everything we can to make sure we don't lose an entire year for our recreational fishermen, charter boat fishermen, as well as the commercial fishermen. Drilling off the coast is not what the people of Florida want. We want fishing vessels hauling in prize catches, not Coast Guard vessels skimming oil. We want dolphins rolling in the waves, not washing ashore, and we want sunbathers on the beaches, not HAZMAT workers.

Mr. NELSON

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the time, and I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, today the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are responding to yet another oilspill in the water. In a moment, I will bring out a photograph which shows the fresh crude oil on the beach of Refugio State Park in California. This oilspill brings back the images from 5 years ago of the oil-coated pelicans and tar-stained beaches, which were once sugar white, covered with gooey mats of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. Although the spill happened in 2010, a lot of that oil is still sloshing around out there in the gulf. Last week, the Department of the Interior told us that the oil leaking in the gulf since 2004 from Taylor Energy wells could continue for a century or more ``if left unchecked.'' This is the oilspill that just happened in the last few days. It is fresh crude, and it is on the beach in California. Of course, when I see this kind of picture, it brings me back to that experience all of us on the gulf coast had 5 years ago, and we wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Remember, to begin with, they said, Oh, it is just a few hundred barrels of oil, even though it was ruptured 1 mile beneath the surface of the water. Then we got the streaming video. We actually put that video on my Web site. The chairman of the environment committee, Senator Boxer, put it up on her committee Web site. Once scientists could see how much was flowing, they could calculate, and then they saw that it wasn't going to be a few hundred or even a thousand barrels of oil a day; it was approaching something like 50 times that. We know what, in fact, happened. Almost 5 million barrels of oil was spilled. The court in Louisiana--the Federal court that is hearing this case against BP--indeed has concluded that those who are going to be held responsible under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 will be responsible for somewhere around 4 million barrels. That is court- decided. A lot of that oil is still out there. Yet, appallingly, today the economy and the environment of the State of Florida are again under attack. I have just been informed that Senators from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas are seeking to invite oil rigs within 50 miles of Florida's coastline. Now, of course, that goes against all logic. It is certainly not what the people of Florida want and it is not what the Department of the Interior has said is appropriate or necessary under the next 5-year leasing plan. Florida is a unique State. This is a photo of a dead dolphin covered with oil that is just another casualty of what we are seeing that is happening this week. The reason I am here today with these Senators who are threatening Florida is because in 2006, in a bipartisan way, the other Senator from Florida, Mr. Martinez, a Republican, and I, a Democrat, joined together to put in law that the Outer Continental Shelf off Florida is off- limits to oil drilling. We were successful in doing that, even though no other Outer Continental Shelf off the United States is off-limits. In the administration's 5-year plans, they have complied with that because the off-limits to oil drilling is until the year 2022. Therefore, in the next 5-year plan, from 2017 to 2022, the administration honored that. It is, after all, the law. But why is Florida different than others? Well, in the first place, there is no oil off of Florida. People think of where the oil is. It is off of Louisiana. The sediment came down the Mississippi River for millions of years and was compacted by the Earth's crust, and that formed these oil deposits. There is a lot of oil in the central Gulf of Mexico and, indeed, that is what is happening. A lot of oil is being produced there. That is the first reason. There is not oil off of Florida. But there are other reasons, not the least of which is of all the Gulf Coast States, Florida has the most beaches and, therefore, the economy is directly charged with the fact of having those pristine, sugary white beaches as such an attraction for our guests to come to Florida and enjoy nature's seaside. Well, we found out, as a result of the gulf oilspill, that even though just a little oil reached Florida--Pensacola Beach was blackened, tar mats came into Pensacola Bay, Destin got oil on the beach, and some tar balls got as far east as Panama City Beach. So people saw those pictures of oil covering the beach and they thought that was the entire State of Florida and they didn't come. For a whole season, the guests, the visitors, the tourists did not come. So the motels were not filled and the restaurants were not filled and the drycleaners, and all the ancillary businesses associated with a tourism economy on the coast, they did not come. Now, there is also, obviously, the environmental interests because we do have a lot of the bays and estuaries and marsh grasses where critters spawn so much of the marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, and it starts in these bays and estuaries. That is obviously a reason as well. But there is a special reason why we have kept oil off our shores. Bottlenose dolphins in the gulf have been dying at unprecedented rates over the last 5 years. This is one of those sick dolphins. So from the BP spill, science is showing, in fact, what we intuitively knew. And just yesterday, a team of scientists confirmed the Deepwater Horizon oilspill contributed to the highest number of dead bottlenose dolphin strandings on record in the northern Gulf of Mexico. So it certainly makes little sense that we would seek more drilling in even riskier areas when we are still picking up the pieces from the last major oilspill. Today, I am introducing legislation that implements many of the hard lessons learned in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon BP oilspill. This legislation is going to make sure that NOAA and the Coast Guard have the tools to prevent, to prepare for, and to respond to marine oilspills. The bill is going to give gulf coast communities a seat at the table in the decisions about oil drilling that affects their way of life. It will strengthen State-level planning for oilspills or seismic exploration. But, most importantly, the bill will protect Florida from Big Oil's reach by keeping the eastern Gulf of Mexico off-limits beyond 2022 and in statute until 2027. Back in 2006, we passed the bipartisan Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. In that act, that is what we did in establishing this off-limits in law. But now, some of our neighboring States, at the behest of Big Oil, are trying to drill again and to drill off of Florida. We are going to do everything we can to make sure we don't lose another tourism season. We are going to do everything we can to make sure we don't lose an entire year for our recreational fishermen, charter boat fishermen, as well as the commercial fishermen. Drilling off the coast is not what the people of Florida want. We want fishing vessels hauling in prize catches, not Coast Guard vessels skimming oil. We want dolphins rolling in the waves, not washing ashore, and we want sunbathers on the beaches, not HAZMAT workers.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

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

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, the negotiating process has finally worked. Indeed, the spirit of four bills that passed the Finance Committee last week on this issue of trade--the spirit of that overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Finance Committee has now been carried out on the floor of the Senate and, in fact, is being carried out and will be so as we invoke the motion for cloture to go to the bill in the next vote that will occur in 30 minutes. Certainly, trade preferences with regard to African countries, plus the trade preferences with regard to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti, were not controversial at all. We passed that. Certainly, the intent was that the safeguards we put in with regard to considering trade legislation put them on a Customs bill. That was intended to go along with the trade legislation, and now that has passed. Remember, all of this was bollixed up 2 or 3 days ago and we weren't going anywhere, but cooler minds prevailed and brought everybody together. Now we go to the main event.

Mr. NELSON. I am very grateful to my colleague from Alabama for allowing me to do that. Mr. President, the main event is the combined two bills of trade adjustment assistance, which is, if there is a disruption in a local economy or in a particular trade as a result of new international trade arrangements, there will be extra training for those workers to be trained into another job so they have a livelihood--that is common sense. That is combined with the other main event, which is a procedure to fast-track, ultimately, the two trade bills that are being negotiated by the United States, one in the Pacific area, the other one with Europe. Fast-track means that when those trade bills come to the Congress for approval or disapproval, it will be done with an up-or-down vote. In other words, they can't be pecked to death with hundreds of amendments. That is why it is called fast-track. We are getting to the point where we are going to pass this as we get into the consideration of this legislation and amendments that will be coming to it. At the end of the day, this Senator is quite confident we will be able to pass the fast-track, and it will have this Senator's support. Why? Simply because this Senator believes these trade agreements are in the interest of the United States. I would conclude by saying that if we take, for example, the potential Pacific agreement, our military commanders have told us that, in fact, it is one of the best things we could do to get this trade agreement so China can't get in the economic door before the United States. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, just a quick comment, if I may, about this tragedy that is now up to 7 deaths and about 150 people who were injured in this Amtrak derailment. There was a report out of the Wall Street Journal just a few minutes ago that apparently the train was going 100 miles per hour going into a curve and that the curve speed should have been 50 miles per hour. If that is the case, that would indicate the conductor would not have been aware of what was happening or was negligent in what was happening. But there is something we can do about that, and it is called positive train control. Indeed, this is an issue which is facing all of the railroads. The infrastructure is very expensive, and the question is, How much should it be delayed in the future because it is not ready to go? Positive train control would--in places where there is potential danger or the potential of two trains colliding, there is automatic monitoring, and electronically it would change the speed of the train. Interestingly, Amtrak in the Northeast corridor already has some of this positive train control on the tracks, but apparently it did not at this particular location, in which case, that begs the question, What do we need to do if this is ultimately, by the NTSB investigation, determined to be the cause? One of the things this Senator would suggest is that we certainly do not want to cut Amtrak's budget. To the contrary, I would think we would want to increase Amtrak's budget. I am rounding numbers here, but Amtrak basically has about $3 billion in revenues, but they have about $4 billion in expenses. The difference is made up by the Federal Government. In the past, that difference has been about $1.4 billion. The House is considering legislation that would cut that down to $1.1 billion, when, in fact, Amtrak is asking for $2 billion. Is the funding the only question? I do not think we will know until we get the NTSB investigation report. However, we should know this: Railroads and roads and bridges and other infrastructure are in desperate need of repair and enhancement and expansion, and that is going to take revenue. Is this country going to allow itself to be considered a third-rate country in infrastructure? By the way, that is not even to speak about what infrastructure does when you build it, the number of jobs. If you talk to road builders, they will tell you that for every billion dollars, thousands of new jobs are created. Confronting the safety issue is what we are focused on here with this terrible accident. Our heart goes out to the victims. But at the same time, we have to look to the future, and we have to get our heads out-- our collective heads--of the sand and start producing the funding for infrastructure investment. I think back to the time in the depths of the recession--as the Senator from Vermont will recognize--that we were going to do an economic stimulus bill. We tried to get increased infrastructure spending, and we were voted down in the stimulus bill. Here we are years later, out of the recession, the economy is returning, the jobs are increasing, but our infrastructure is still crumbling. I speak about this as the ranking member of the commerce committee, and fortunately we have a chairman who feels the same way. Senator Thune and I are going to be working on this as well as things I suggested a moment ago about positive train control to improve the safety of our traveling public. Mr. President, I have one more thing I would like to say.

Mr. NELSON. It is not. Does the Senator want me to stop so he can talk about the Assistant Attorney General?

Mr. NELSON. Of course. I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, at 5:30 p.m. today, we are going to vote on S. Con. Res. 16, which calls on the Government of Iran to release Americans who are being held. It also calls on the government to cooperate in finding, locating, and ultimately releasing Bob Levinson. Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent, while visiting the tourist Island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, which is a part of Iran, suddenly disappeared in 2007. It has been 8 years since his disappearance, which occurred on March 9, 2007. Since Bob is a part of this resolution, this is just another of a continuing conversation this Senator from Florida has had over the course of the last 8 years. It is unbelievable that it has been 8 years. It wasn't until 2010--3\1/2\ years after his disappearance--that the Levinson family received a proof-of-life video. Then, 1 year later, they received photographs of Bob, in April of 2011. Since then, nothing. Now, if the Government of Iran really wanted to help, they could. It may be that one part of the Iranian Government is keeping it from other parts. It could be the military--or the special part of the military, the Quds Force--knows, and it may be that the Foreign Minister and the President of Iran do not have the facts. But there is somebody in Iran who can produce the facts, if he wanted to, and that is the Supreme Leader. Now, in this era of intense negotiations over preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon and preventing them from the ability to develop a nuclear weapon any time in the next 10 years without us at least getting 1 year's advance notice so we can take countermeasures; in this time of intense discussions with Iran--of course, it is constantly brought up by our negotiating team, including Secretary of State Kerry, but it is rather inexcusable that the only answer Iran has is, We don't know anything about Bob Levinson. This is, of course, personal to the FBI community because the hostage is one of their retired agents. It is personal to us in Florida as well. Bob left behind a wife, seven children, and four grandchildren. Christine Levinson lives in Florida. A number of the FBI agents who have tried to help her over the course of the years also live in Florida. We are hopefully and prayerfully expectant that if it is a successfully concluded negotiation to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, that the Government of Iran will immediately release all Americans who are in jail whom we know about and likewise will make the effort to find Bob and bring him home to his wife and seven children. That is what humanity would absolutely require. So at this particular time--8 years-plus into the process--we make this plea for former FBI agent Bob Levinson. Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

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