Brian Schatz

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, back on the topic of the evening: the Congressional Review Act action to overturn the SEC's rule. I am just kind of at a loss for words. There are people back home asking how politics is going, and they have a certain set of assumptions about the way Congress works. They watch ``House of Cards.'' They watch movies about politics. They have watched other TV shows on Hulu and Netflix, whatever it may be. I submit to you that what we are doing right now is so corrupt, so grotesque, so obvious, so trite that it wouldn't even make the cut as a plot for a TV show about politics because who would believe that the Republican Congress, as one of their first acts, would pass a law prohibiting the implementation of a rule that requires oil companies to disclose what kind of foreign payments they are making for the privilege of extracting resources. So what does that mean? You have oil companies that in order to extract resources in places like Africa and elsewhere--mostly poor countries around the globe--they have to cut a deal with whoever is in charge of the government in order to have access to that resource. Whether it is in Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Africa, Myanmar, or elsewhere, they cut a deal with the governing despot, usually. That money very often makes it directly into the pockets of the family of the people who run the country. This is what Senator Cardin was elucidating, as was Senator Leahy and the ranking member, Senator Brown. But this issue was new to me, and I came to the floor not as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but as a citizen. I can't believe we are doing this. This is one of the stinkiest pieces of legislation that I have seen in my now 5 years in the Senate and my 8 years in the Hawaii State Legislature, in my life in politics. I can't believe that we would have the gall to put a bill on the floor to prevent us from disclosing what kinds of foreign payments--that is a euphemism--are being made to despots and autocrats around the planet. These are American companies traded on the stock exchange, American companies making foreign payments, euphemistically, for the privilege of extracting primarily oil. Our ability as a country to be the world's lone superpower--as Madeleine Albright called us, ``the indispensable nation,''--to be the superior country when it comes to money, morals, and might is now in question. Everywhere you look, it seems like America is ceding global leadership. China is set to outshine the United States on climate change policy-- China. Germany's Prime Minister is explaining international conventions on refugees to the President of the United States. We have insulted some of our closest allies in the fight against ISIS with a Muslim ban. Now we are alienating ourselves from Australia, a country that has stood with the United States in every major conflict since the beginning of the 20th century. It is hard work to offend Australia. You have to go out of your way in a phone call between the United States and Australia to have it go sideways. So the world is asking if the United States will still lead in the fight against ISIS. The world is asking if the United States will still keep its word, and they are asking if the United States is still the moral leader for the world. I think everyone in the Congress would agree that the answers to these questions should be a resounding yes, but somehow one of the first orders of business in this Republican Congress is not a bill that demonstrates American leadership but one that concedes it, because that is exactly what we would do if we overturn the Cardin-Lugar amendment. If we diminish our moral compass, the rest of the world stops looking at the United States as the leader among nations. The law we are voting to repeal set a new international standard in the fight against corruption. It requires oil and mining companies that are listed on the U.S. Stock Exchange to report any payments they may make to foreign governments. The idea is that the companies won't bribe dictators in mineral rich countries because they know they will have to disclose the payments. After the United States passed this law in 2010, some 30 countries followed our lead, but we never got to implementing it. So today, more than one-third of the world's oil and gas companies have strong legal incentives to do business the right way. If Republicans get rid of this disclosure requirement, it will be bad for American consumers. In 2004, a Senate subcommittee uncovered that oil companies, including ExxonMobil, have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the President of Equatorial Guinea, which is an oil-rich country in Africa. That money didn't go to the businesses and citizens. It went directly into the pockets of the President who has been called Africa's nastiest dictator. Instead of buying food or roads for people--by the way, most people who live there live on less than $1 a day--the President and his family bought real estate in Paris, luxury cars and life-sized statues--plural--of Michael Jackson. Getting rid of this amendment will also be bad for national security. Senator Lugar is one of the Republican Party's most distinguished foreign policy voices and the former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He understood the risk. He understood how corruption fuels insecurity, poverty, and oppression in other countries and how that can contribute to the condition that breeds violent extremism. That is why he fought for the level of transparency required by this rule and to make it harder for dictators to steal from their own citizens. That means that getting rid of the Cardin-Lugar amendment is also bad for investors. If a company is operating in a risky, corrupt, unstable country, investors have the right to know. If a company is perhaps even adding to the region's insecurity, investors have a right to know that too. But that right is now in jeopardy. The way Republicans are going about this, we won't be able to revisit this once it is all said and done. This is an important point. I said it last night on the stream protection rule, and I think it bears repeating. If you do a CRA action--we are now on the third in American history, and the second was yesterday. The first was sometime in the eighties, about ergonomics. The reason this never gets done is because, when you overturn a regulation using the Congressional Review Act, it is an incredibly blunt instrument. What happens under law is that the rule can't be promulgated again. You can't tweak this thing. As to the concerns that were expressed by some of the Members on the Republican side about the modifications they would like, if we want to legislate, let's legislate. But what they are going to do is overturn this rule and the Securities and Exchange Commission from doing anything ``substantially similar'' ever again. Everybody who understands the CRA under the law understands that, basically, we can't touch this topic again. So this isn't about fixing a reg or being a check on runaway bureaucrats. These so-called bureaucrats, these civil servants in the Securities and Exchange Commission, had a statute. They were told to do something. Now, they took forever to do it, but that is not running away and going rogue. That is going a little slow, I will grant you, but they did the right thing pursuant to the law. Now--I don't know why, but I have my suspicions; I don't know why, but I have my suspicions--we are overturning both a rule and a law that requires the disclosure of payments to foreign governments made primarily by oil companies. It is one of the most awful things I have seen done in the Congress--not just when I have been here but as I have observed it over the last 20 years. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the stream protection rule. One of the first things we learn as kids is that if you make a mess, you are responsible to clean it up. It is good manners, but it is also a matter of ethics. It is about doing the right thing. This is the spirit, this is the idea behind the stream protection rule. It simply tells coal companies doing mountaintop mining that they need to clean up their mess if they make a mess. It seems pretty common sense to me. Opponents of this rule argue that this is somehow an unfair burden on coal companies because coal is doing poorly in the emergency markets. Opponents seem to want to say that asking companies to be responsible to clean up whatever mess may have been made makes it harder for them to compete. The truth is, coal is having a very difficult time in energy markets, but it is not because they are being required to clean up after themselves. It is because other energy resources are becoming cheaper. Solar is cheaper now than ever. The natural gas revolution is now in competition with coal. It is very difficult to get a new coal-fired powerplant on line. It may be even more difficult to recapitalize an old one. So coal is struggling, but the reason is not the stream protection rule. There is another aspect of this, which is, since when is there no cost to doing business? Since when are any companies allowed to come in, pollute, and then walk away without doing anything about it? If you hired a contractor to work on your house and they left a pile of materials in your kitchen, you wouldn't say: Well, that is just the cost of doing business. You would say: Clean up the mess. That is part of the job. There is no question that coal mining is a tough business, but it also can sometimes be a messy business. That is a simple fact. If we ignore the pollution that is caused, if we ignore the cost the public bears when toxic substances are dumped without proper treatment or when coal-fired powerplants spew carbon pollution into the atmosphere, for that matter, we are ignoring the cost of doing business. To be fair, we have to make sure every industry, including the coal industry, plays by the same rules as everyone else. Up until December of last year, some coal companies just were not playing by the same rules. Mountaintop mining had leaked dirty water and waste into the streams. Researchers estimate that this has destroyed 2,000 miles of stream in the United States of America. That destruction has a domino effect. It threatens the health of people who depend on those streams for their drinking water, it poisons fish, birds, plants, and it reduces the quality of life for people across the country. That is why the stream protection rule was established. It is there so parents don't have to worry when their kids go play by the stream or go fishing behind their house. It is there so ranchers don't have to worry about a nearby mine that could harm their land, and fishermen don't have to worry if the salmon catch is poisoned or if there are fewer fish because salmon are dying from pollution. This rule is so communities don't have to worry that their daily lives will be changed because a company is not being responsible and cleaning up after itself. This may surprise some people, but the rule will actually create jobs. People like to talk about how burdensome regulations are, especially in the environmental space, but the truth is, it will not lead to fewer jobs. The Department of Interior predicted it will actually create hundreds of jobs a year, not take them away. Most of all, it is going to have a real positive impact on the world we live in. Over the next two decades, researchers estimated that the stream protection rule would protect or restore 6,000 miles of streams. That is more than the distance between eastern Maine and my home State of Hawaii. So if you care about protecting local water supply, if you care about having a place for your kids to go hiking and fishing, if you care about holding everyone to the same standard, then don't let this bureaucratic mumbo jumbo get in the way. This rule was created to fix a specific problem, and repealing it could effectively exempt mountaintop coal mining from modern regulation indefinitely. This is a very important point that has to be made about Congressional Review Act votes. We are going to have a slew of them over the next probably 2 or 3 months. Here is the thing about a CRA vote because it gets rather technical. It is not just overturning a regulation. The way the law works, is that not only is the regulation overturned but an administration can never touch this issue again. We can't do anything that is ``substantially similar.'' So if you want to do something about the stream protection rule, make a law; override the rule that was just made and craft legislation. You have a working majority in both Chambers, work with the bipartisan group. You have four or five Democrats who voted for the CRA. Let's legislate. What is going to happen when the CRA vote succeeds is we are never going to be able to touch the question of pollution from mountaintop removal again--literally. That is how CRA works. So every time we have a CRA vote, it is not just whether you like the particular rule and want to overturn it, it is whether you never want to touch this subject matter again. That is a rather serious threshold that we have to come through. We are going to do a lot of CRAs. I know everybody on the Republican side is raring to go to sort of undo all the rules that were done under the Obama administration. Fair enough. We understand. You have the Presidency. You have both Chambers. It is certainly your prerogative to take up all of these CRAs, but be careful because you are not going to be able to touch these issues again. You are forfeiting your prerogative to touch these issues again. So for the sake of public health and in order to leave a better world for our kids, we need to keep this rule in place. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, American history has been shaped by U.S. Secretaries of State. Secretary Dean Acheson guided the United States through the Cold War. Secretary Madeleine Albright proved that diplomacy does not depend on gender and that protecting refugees and human rights are core American principles. Secretary Henry Kissinger laid the groundwork for peace between Egypt and Israel. And forgive me for using such a recent example, but Secretary John Kerry helped to bring the international community together to tackle climate change. As our Nation's top diplomat, the Secretary of State is the highest ranking cabinet member and the President's top adviser on U.S. foreign policy. The Secretary balances relationships with some 180 countries and is responsible for tens of thousands of Americans working at more than 250 posts around the world. In other words, it takes a remarkable knowledge base and skill set to be Secretary of State, particularly as the United States takes on a complex and complicated set of issues. At the top of the list is climate change. The global changes we have seen in the climate are affecting almost every part of the world, from droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa to rising sea levels in parts of Asia. We have also not seen this level of refugees and migrants since after World War II. The Rohingya, Syrians, Afghans, Guatemalans, and many others are fleeing war, violence, persecution, and instability. Globalization and technology have disrupted economies, leaving governments, companies, and workers trying to figure out how to keep up with the times without being left behind. Terrorism and violent extremism haunt parts of the globe, from the Middle East to Europe, and to our own borders. The Secretary of State has to take on all of these challenges and do it in a way that advances U.S. interests and values. After reviewing his record and his testimony before the Senate, I am not satisfied that Rex Tillerson is the right person to lead the State Department. On each of these criteria--views, knowledge base, and skills--I have concerns about his nomination at this point in the process. First, I am not satisfied with Mr. Tillerson's views. There has been a clear consensus among both parties on the foundation of U.S. foreign policy. Throughout the confirmation process, however, Mr. Tillerson indicated that his views did not necessarily align with that consensus. During discussions on international human rights, the hearing record shows that Mr. Tillerson was vague about oppressive governments, extrajudicial killings, and the bombing of hospitals. He demurred when given the opportunity to rule out a Muslim registry, a concept that is anathema to American values, and yet this administration is dangerously close to implementing one. Perhaps most concerning were Mr. Tillerson's views on Russia. I don't need to be the umpteenth person to list the many, many concerns we have about a country that is not America's ally. For decades, there has been bipartisan consensus about U.S. relations with Russia, and I am uncomfortable with confirming a Secretary of State who does not share that bipartisan view. Secondly, I am not satisfied that Mr. Tillerson has the knowledge base to lead U.S. diplomacy. His vision for the State Department seemed to confuse the roles of the Department of State and the Department of Defense. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Tillerson responded to a question on the South China Sea, but his answer focused on military solutions instead of the long list of diplomatic options which we should first explore. That is not to say a Secretary of State can't recommend military solutions. There is certainly a long history of the State Department doing just that, but it should always be as a last resort. It always comes after a long pursuit of peace through diplomacy. Finally, I am not satisfied that Mr. Tillerson will be able to translate the considerable skills he has from ExxonMobil to the State Department. His long career at Exxon is certainly impressive, but it is the only international job on his resume, and let's be clear, the company's record does not at all align with U.S. foreign policy, from accusations related to human rights abuses to Exxon's business operations in countries that are not friendly to the United States. I am not arguing that this makes Mr. Tillerson a bad person. As the CEO of a big company, he had his own imperatives and his own obligations, and I understand and respect that. But it is not enough to say that I used to care only about ExxonMobil's interests, but now I only care about the U.S. interests. The next leader of the State Department will have to argue for our values and our priorities with friends and adversaries alike. He or she will need to balance business interests with national security and with American values. I approach this nomination process with an open mind, but Mr. Tillerson's confirmation hearing left me with too many doubts about his views, his knowledge set, and his abilities. I will be voting no on his nomination. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, in just a few weeks, our great country will mark the 75th anniversary of President Roosevelt's Executive order authorizing the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian Americans during World War II. They were rounded up with their families and held behind barbed wire like war criminals. But they had done nothing wrong; their crime was being Japanese, German, or Italian. They were labeled ``enemy aliens.'' Mark Twain reportedly said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and this seems to be the path the President has pursued with his Muslim ban. This ban has already harmed green card holders, students, business people, and those fleeing violence and persecution. Remember, these are the people fleeing the violence, not the perpetrators of the violence. They are the victims, not the criminals. They have been pulled from their flights, left stranded in the airports. They have been detained without the ability to talk with a lawyer. And they are wondering if the United States of America is still the beacon of hope, the lamp by the golden door, the shining city on the hill. Iraqis who risked their lives to serve our country as translators saw their visas revoked. An 11-month-old baby was detained. That is disgusting. It is un-American. It is contrary to everything we stand for. We stand for providing refuge for those who want to escape their own awful circumstances and live in freedom and opportunity. It is my grandparents escaping Ukraine. It is my wife's grandparents leaving China. It is the Schatzes. It is the Binders. It is the Kwoks. It is Albert Einstein. It is Madeleine Albright. This is who we are. We are people from all over the world. We are united not by our ethnic extraction or religious affiliation but tied together by our love for America. Here is the thing: It is not even as though we are trading liberty for security. We are getting no additional security. This is all about being cruel to Muslims because it is good politics for some people. This isn't just morally wrong, it is also guaranteed not to work. This ban is ridiculous as a homeland security measure. First, zero people from the countries on the ban list have been involved in terrorist attacks in America. Zero people from the countries on the ban list have been involved in terrorist attacks on America. It is almost as though the criteria for picking the countries is something other than the threat of terrorism. Second, this ban has the potential to strengthen violent extremist groups by playing right into their hands. It encourages everyone to be afraid of people we don't know from other places. That is not America, and it will not work. When President Gerald Ford repealed the Executive order interning Japanese Americans, he asked citizens across the country to make a pledge. He said: ``I call upon the American people to affirm with me this American promise--that we have learned from the tragedy of that long-ago experience forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American, and resolve that this kind of action shall never again be repeated.'' That promise is being broken. It is broken for the American who came to this country as a lost boy from Sudan and who now cannot see his family. It is broken for the American married to an Iranian, whom the government is splitting from her husband. It is broken for the millions of Americans, the majority of us, who want us always to have the moral high ground. The world is watching. History is watching. We have to ask ourselves: What do they see? Do they see Lady Liberty or do they see something darker? The choice is ours. We can fix this. We start by following the wise words of Fred Korematsu, an outspoken voice against Japanese internment and an American hero who was born 98 years ago today. He said: ``Protest, but not with violence, and don't be afraid to speak up.'' Today I call on every Member of the Senate to follow Mr. Korematsu's advice. Speak up, stand against this ban, and fight chaos and paranoia as official government policy. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, more than 50 years ago, when Medicaid was created, Congress made a smart decision. Lawmakers designed a program so that if health care costs rise, if the economy starts to struggle, Medicaid would be there for the American people, no matter what. A couple of days ago, the counselor to the President said that, as part of the replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid will be converted to block grants. Let's be clear about what this means. People like grants, and they like Medicaid. Maybe they are not sure about whether they like block grants. Whether intentional or not, this kind of technocratic, bureaucratic language can trick people. It sounds fine. Maybe it is even the smart thing to do. Let me be totally explicit about what block granting Medicaid actually means. It means cutting Medicaid. It means less money for Medicaid. It means less health care for people. It is a euphemism. It is not quite a lie, but it is a way of describing something so that you don't know exactly what it is. They are calling it a block grant because they don't want to say that they are cutting Medicaid. These cuts are going to hurt millions of people. They will hurt working families who rely on Medicaid to pay for nursing home care for their families. We have to be pretty out of touch to not know anyone who at some point in their life will rely on nursing home subsidies from Medicaid. It is happening in my extended family right now. It is important to remember that Medicaid certainly helps children. Medicaid certainly helps people who are economically disadvantaged. It helps poor people. But it also helps middle-class families, because at the end of a family member's life, who can pay for nursing home care out-of-pocket? You may have saved all of your life, but, for instance, in Hawaii a nursing home costs around $10,000 a month. So it is a rare family who can pay $10,000 a month for a grandmother or a great- grandmother or a father or a mother. Nobody can do that. This is going to harm middle-class families. It is also going to hurt women in particular. Women need Medicaid for maternal health services and for family planning. These cuts are going to hurt seniors and people with disabilities. These people have nowhere else to turn. That is the point of Medicaid. Medicaid is their only option. Now, I have heard some people say: Well, this is going to expand local control. That is preposterous. The truth is that block granting Medicaid, which is the same thing as cutting Medicaid and giving a fixed amount to the States, gives States less control, not more control. They force States to choose between seniors and kids, between people with disabilities and women, or between health care and education. Look, it does not matter whom you voted for. American voters--left, right, and center--have this sense that what we do in Washington is that we run for office saying one thing and then we get in office and we do exactly the opposite. Frankly, the Congress has earned that reputation. This is another instance where a party has promised to not cut Medicaid, but here we are--week 1, day 5--debating cuts on this important program. This is a deal breaker for me and many of my colleagues, and it will be a disaster for millions of Americans. I call on everyone on both sides of the aisle to stand up for seniors, to stand up for women, to stand up for children, and to fight any cuts to Medicaid. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, having Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA is bad for the air we breathe and the water we drink, and it is bad for American leadership on climate. It is not just that I have a different view from Mr. Pruitt on the Environmental Protection Agency, it is that he has made a career out of undermining the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It is not just that he is a Republican or that he doesn't share my views about clean energy. Look, I understand that when a Republican administration comes in, their EPA nominee is going to have a different view of what the Agency ought to be doing. I am not suggesting that we are going to get Henry Waxman or Jeff Merkley to run the EPA. That is not what is going on here. Here is what it is, and I want people to listen carefully. Scott Pruitt is a professional climate denier. That is his job. He has made his political bones trying to shred the EPA's ability to enforce the laws that protect clean air and clean water. The core mission of the EPA is to safeguard public health by enforcing the laws on the books, and the cornerstones of the EPA's authorities are the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. These laws were passed over 40 years ago with huge bipartisan majorities, and they have been extremely successful. It is especially important for the dozens of young people watching C- SPAN right now to understand that the state of the environment in the late 1960s was catastrophic, like out of a science fiction movie. Even for those of us who were around, it is a good reminder of what the EPA has accomplished over the decades. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted that it caught on fire. Lake Erie was so polluted that almost nothing could live in it. Bacteria levels in the Hudson River were 170 times above levels that could be considered safe. Raw sewage was directly discharged into rivers and streams where children swam. The FDA found that 87 percent of U.S. swordfish contained so much mercury that they were unfit for human consumption. Then the Clean Water Act was passed. We made incredible progress in the last 44 years. We still have a long way to go, as about one-third of our waterways are not yet fishable and swimmable, as the law requires. Scott Pruitt's opposition to the Clean Water Act and EPA makes me terrified that we could go back to the bad old days of water pollution. EPA's enforcement of the Clean Air Act is an even bigger success story. This law has saved millions of lives and improved the health of millions of others. EPA's enforcement of the law has reduced air pollution by 70 percent since 1970. Smog levels in L.A. have fallen two-thirds since their peak. Lead in the air is down 98 percent, carbon monoxide down 85 percent, sulfur dioxide down 80 percent. Acid rain is down over 50 percent and at a fraction of the anticipated cost. But this progress is in real jeopardy. As the Oklahoma attorney general and as the head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, he dismantled the unit in his office charged with enforcing Federal environmental laws and stood up a unit to undermine Federal environmental law. He led the opposition to the Clean Power Plan. He sued the Federal Government over a dozen times to prevent the implementation of rules that would protect our health and our environment. What he does is fight the EPA. That is his thing. As Oklahoma attorney general, he literally--I am not making this up-- he literally copied and pasted a letter from a major oil company onto his official State attorney general letterhead and then sent it to the EPA as though it were his own. I have never met Mr. Pruitt--and I assume he is personally a good guy--so I will say it like this: A person who works so closely with industries that pollute our air and water is an unusually bad fit to run the EPA. Never before in the history of the EPA has a President nominated someone so opposed to the EPA to run it, and on the most significant environmental challenge of our generation, he is aggressively wrong. He has said that the climate debate is ``far from settled'' and that ``scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connections to the actions of mankind.'' This, of course, is nuts. The climate debate is settled and has been for some time. More than 97 percent of climate scientists agree that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible. Ask a scientist, ask a farmer, ask a fisherman, ask a skier or snowboarder. If you don't believe 97 percent of scientists, will you at least believe your own eyes? His position even puts him at odds with the Department of Defense, which has called climate change a ``threat multiplier.'' Here is the good news. We are actually making a lot of progress in clean energy, almost all of it in the private sector. The cost of solar power has dropped by 60 percent in the last 10 years and more new solar capacity was added in 2016 than any other energy source. Wind power was by far the largest source added to the grid in 2015. Clean energy generation grew by about 20 percent in the last year, and the long-term extensions of the renewable energy tax credits give us hope to think that kind of trajectory can be sustained. This comes at a time when public concern about climate change is at an alltime high, and with three-quarters of Americans, including half of Republicans, supporting Federal efforts to reduce carbon pollution. This progress is fragile, and confirming Scott Pruitt can undermine our momentum. Again, here is Mr. Pruitt in his own words about the Clean Power Plan: ``The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plant.'' This is flat wrong. Let me quickly explain a lawsuit called Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate air pollution and carbon pollution as a pollutant so it is not only that the EPA may regulate greenhouse gas emissions, under the Clean Air Act they are actually required to do so. Mr. Pruitt has bragged that he ``led the charge with repeated notices and subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.'' On climate change, he has said: Is it truly manmade or is it just simply another period of time when the Earth is cooling, increasing in heat? Is it just typical, natural type of occurrences as opposed [to] what the administration says? I cannot think of a person more ill-suited to run this Agency. On clean energy, the Chinese are leading. Mexico is leading. Europe is leading, Germany, Africa. The question isn't whether the clean energy revolution will occur, the question is whether we will lead it or get left in the dust. This is where we are. A nominee who does not understand the vital role of clean air, clean water, and protecting the environment has been nominated to lead the EPA, who denies decades of scientific research. To my Republican colleagues, I have had many encouraging, rational conversations about climate with you but almost exclusively in private. I say this. This vote is the litmus test, the one your grandkids will ask you about. I know being in the Senate is about making choices--and lots of times it is great--but this issue, this vote is absolutely simple: Don't vote for a climate denier. You cannot dabble in conservation or energy efficiency or vote for a budget amendment recognizing the scientific consensus on climate change and then vote yes on this nominee. If you say you are not a climate denier, this is the point in your career when you get to prove it. If we find another nominee, even one who hates the Clean Power Plan, who shares your view on federalism, who shares your view about the United Nations, about President Obama, that is fair, that is fine, but this nominee is out of bounds. Please, consult your voters, your university experts, talk to your kids. It is their planet. It is their future--or consult with your own conscience. I know sometimes politics is complicated and the right thing to do is not that easy to determine in the fog of the battle. This is not one of those times. For future generations, for the planet, for the future of the Republican Party, you have to get this one right. If you are not a climate denier, do not put one in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam Clerk, how am I recorded?

Mr. SCHATZ. I vote no on behalf of the people who need mental health care.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I want to thank the junior Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on ACA. Since we arrived in the Senate together, he has been stalwart, not just on the many benefits of ACA but specifically on mental health and the benefits and the destigmatization of mental health care in the context of ACA. It wasn't so long ago that people wouldn't step up and say: I need help. I need mental health care. But now I think it is broadly accepted on both sides of the aisle, partly because of Chris Murphy's leadership, that mental health is health and that just as if you tweak your shoulder or need something with your lungs or have a crick in your neck, if you have some mental health issues, you need to get them taken care of. The plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no replacement reminds me of a car I used to have. It was an OK car. I remember I bought it in 2006. It was a 2005, but it was new--one of those in the back of the lot. I got it for $2,500 less than MSRP. It was a station wagon. It was ugly. It was purple, and I just sort of rode it into the ground. I kept driving it. I didn't take great care of it. I have gotten better about taking care of my cars. At the time I just rode it and rode it. The AC busted, and I didn't fix it. There was a fender bender, and I didn't fix that. The car was OK. It needed some TLC, but it got me around. What if I had taken this car to Jiffy Lube in Honolulu just to get a little tuneup and left it, and then I came back an hour later and it had been dismantled? That is what the Republicans are doing with the Affordable Care Act. Instead of fixing what is wrong and keeping what is working, they are going to destroy the American health care system. I try very hard not to be too apocryphal with my language. I try very hard not to be too nasty and too partisan on this floor, but this is factual. They are going to destroy the American health care system. That is what repeal and replace is all about. They are going to remove a law from the books and come up with something terrific in a few months or a few years, but they are also going to keep the stuff you like. Here is the first thing that everybody across the country needs to know about this process. It is not on the level. There is no way around it. This is just not on the level. Anybody who has spent any time thinking about health care policy knows that covering people with preexisting conditions like cancer, mental illness, and diabetes is a popular thing to do. It is the right thing to do. People also know that the only way to do that is to create a risk pool that includes healthy people. If you are going to insure folks, you can't just be paying out for the expensive cases; you also have to be bringing in revenue and not paying out, so you need young people in the risk pool. You need professionals in the risk pool. You need nonsick people in the risk pool. That is how this all works. Everybody understands that. Everybody who is working on this in good faith understands that you need to create a risk pool in order to cover more people. So they know that if they eliminate the individual mandate, they eliminate the benefit, but they are stuck with a promise they made to repeal this law totally, root and branch--not to improve upon the law. Just remember that it was an article of faith that we couldn't make even the most modest improvements to this law at any point in the last 6 or 7 years; that if you did so, you ran afoul of Republican orthodoxy. It is not that they wanted to fix the law. It is that they had told everybody it was so bad--partly because it was ObamaCare--that there was nothing good in it; there was nothing worth preserving about the Affordable Care Act. Now they are into repeal and replace. They are stuck with the promise they made to repeal this law totally, and they know people are about to be very, very angry because President Obama is the President only for another 10 days, and people are not going to accept the premise that we are going to rip health care out from under you, but don't you hate health care because it is called ObamaCare? That is an argument that may have worked 3, 4, or 5 years ago, but with a new President-elect and a new Congress, we have an obligation to have a better strategy than that. Republicans do not have a replacement plan. If they had one, they would be adopting it shortly. It has been 7 years. It has been 7 years, and we haven't seen any legislative language--none. They have no plan at all for American health care other than to cause immediate harm and to try to blame it on the law that they are repealing. There are only a few ways this could end up. I will give you a couple of them. First there could be the equivalent of a health care cliff, which is similar to what we have done with our fiscal situation where they have to periodically shovel money at the problem and bail out the insurance companies. What will happen is they are basically eviscerating the revenue that provides the subsidies for individuals, but they are going to realize: Hey, these subsidies are quite popular, but we just eliminated the revenue. We don't want to increase taxes so let's borrow money and keep shoveling money at the insurance companies or they may make minor reforms in the ACA and call it a replacement. That would be great. I do not see that they are on this path right now or they are really going to repeal the law and take health care coverage away from millions of Americans. This is completely irresponsible. So what happens when they repeal ACA? Twenty-two million people will have their health care coverage ripped away from them, more than 22 million men, women, and children. For those of you who still have coverage, I want you to know that this impacts you too. If you have a preexisting condition as common as diabetes or high blood pressure or mental health issues or cancer or Crohn's disease or Lupus or in a lot of instances pregnancy is a preexisting condition, you are not going to be able to keep your coverage. If you are a woman, you are likely going to lose access to preventive health care services like birth control. If you live in a rural area-- everybody in rural America should understand this. There is this thought that there are rural States and nonrural States. Every State is both a rural State and a nonrural State. I know the Presiding Officer has an urban area and plenty of rural areas. I have one of the densest cities in the United States, and then I have far-flung, very small towns that are old plantations. Everybody in the Senate represents rural America in some form or fashion. If you live in a rural area, chances are that your local hospital will lose millions of dollars in funding, which will force many rural hospitals to turn away patients and close their doors. This is not an exaggeration. I encourage every Republican Member of the Senate, Member of the House, citizen out there to ask their health care leaders in rural hospitals what is about to happen. They are in a panic. Let's be totally clear about what this means. You lose rural hospital money and you lose rural hospitals. For a lot of small towns, from Hawaii to the Dakotas, to the Carolinas, and everywhere in between, the rural hospital is the economic center of the community. It is often by far the largest employer. I want you to understand, if a rural community loses its rural hospital, a lot of the working-age folks leave. They move to a more urban area. What happens is, the elderly citizens also have to leave because if you need access to emergency services but you are nowhere near any of that care, you are going to have to go too. So there is not a single thing we can do in the Congress that would harm rural communities quicker than what is being done this week by the Republicans. I want to be really clear about how much harm is about to be done to rural communities, not just rural health care providers, not just nurses and doctors and technicians and admins and janitors and everybody who works at those rural hospitals. That is important because in a lot of instances, that is the economic driver of a small town. It is also about, people start to make choices with their own life and with their own planning, especially as they get older, and they think to themselves: How do I stay close to health care? If that rural hospital goes away, that rural town goes away. We have seen it in Hawaii. That is why we fight for Molokai Community Hospital. That is why we fight for Lanai Community Hospital. That is why we fight for Waianae Coast Comprehensive Treatment Center. That is why everybody fights so hard for their community rural hospitals-- because it is the center of a community, not just economically, but without it, you basically have no community. All of this will cause the entire insurance market to unravel, raising costs for everyone. This means families are going to pay more for prescription drugs, pay more on their premiums, and pay more for out-of-pocket costs. So if the Republicans are still unfazed by the health impacts of the repeal I just outlined, and have been outlining for the last 4 or 5 hours, over the last 3 or 4 days, there is another reason to be extremely cautious about what is about to happen. As we know, the vehicle for this is a budget resolution, right? They are trying to characterize this as, no, it is not a budget resolution. The only reason they are doing it as a budget vehicle is so they can do reconciliation. What does that mean? That means they only need 51 votes, where otherwise they would need 60 votes, but this is a budget. If it were not a budget, they would not be subject to the 51-vote threshold. This is the Federal budget. This Federal budget increases the deficit by trillions of dollars. This Federal budget increases the deficit by trillions of dollars-- not trillions of dollars at a flat line with the previous Federal budget, this is trillions of dollars more than last year's Federal budget. So if you are a fiscal hawk, gosh, you must be swallowing hard over the next couple of days. This must be a bitter pill to swallow because on the one hand, boy, do you hate ObamaCare. On the other hand, boy, do you hate running up the national deficit--not the debt, deficit--by trillions of dollars. This is insane. This deficit--what we are doing to the debt and deficit in the next 2 or 3 days makes everything that we have done in the last 3 or 4 years pale in comparison. If you are a fiscal hawk, I cannot see how you get to yes on this. You cannot vote to increase the national debt by trillions of dollars and then still call yourself a fiscal hawk. So we have a choice in front of us. Do we build on the progress of the Affordable Care Act or do we strip millions of Americans of their health care coverage, leave those with preexisting conditions out in the cold, and raise the national debt? We know ACA has its flaws. No one ever said it was perfect. Let us be clear. Every major piece of legislation, every signature piece of legislation that this body has ever passed has been flawed in some way. What do we do when we are a functioning world's greatest deliberative body? We iterate it. We work on a bipartisan basis to fix it. That is what we should do. The benefits of ACA are undeniable. That is what we should be debating, improvements to the ACA, not an implosion. So let's keep our eye on the ball and remember what our common goal is: giving every American the opportunity to get quality, affordable health care they deserve. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ. That is the first time the Senate has ever ended with that one.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on this and so many other issues on behalf of the people of his home State. Before I get into prevention as a policy issue, I just want to reiterate a process point. Here we are in the world's greatest deliberative body--the world's greatest deliberative body--and there really are so many talented individuals who come from county counsels, who come from State assemblies, who come from State senates, who come from the U.S. House, and find themselves in the U.S. Senate, the world's greatest deliberative body. And here we are debating one of the biggest public policy issues over the last decade, arguably over the last generation. Here we are. I am thinking about my early days in the Hawaii legislature and what we would do. If we wanted to move a bill along but we weren't sure exactly what to do, we would flaw the effective date because we knew the language didn't work yet, but we wanted to take it to conference committee. We didn't want it to be enacted into law, but we wanted it to move through the process. So what we would do is we would flaw the effective date. We would say ``Effective year 2100,'' so that even if it were accidentally enacted into law, it wouldn't have the force of law. Yet once in a while, a staffer or a member would make a clerical error and actually enact something with a delayed effective date into law, and they were humiliated. This was a mistake. This was a clerical error, and this showed that it was amateur hour. This showed that somebody didn't know what they were doing. This showed that somebody wasn't a very serious legislator. Yet here we are in the Nation's legislature, here we are in the world's greatest deliberative body, and we are doing that on purpose. We are doing that right away. We are doing this with the Affordable Care Act after 7 years of blasting this law because they know they can't repeal the parts that are popular. So what they are going to do is eviscerate the revenue attached to the bill and leave themselves, as one of my colleagues said, in a ``box canyon'' so the only thing they can do is shovel money to insurance companies--borrowed money--to maintain the benefit because they don't want to deal with the political ramifications of what they had done to their constituents on preexisting conditions, on coverage for people up to the age of 26, on prevention. This is the most unserious effort I have seen in this legislative body. This is absolutely unserious. And whatever your political persuasion is, you should ask every Member of the Senate to stand up and be counted and say what they want to do about health care in the United States. The answer can no longer be because it is an article of faith that because the Affordable Care Act has ``Obama'' in its name--it is ObamaCare--it must be bad, and it must be repealed root and branch. That is no longer acceptable. This President is only President for another 10 days, and we have an obligation to our constituents to say what we are going to do about this law. We all know that we should get a regular check-up from our doctor, eat fruits and vegetables, and exercise as much as possible, as difficult as it is for all of us at times. Why do we do this? Any doctor will tell you that it is better to stay healthy and prevent disease than to get sick. It is not just common sense. It is not only less painful for people, but it is less costly to prevent illness than to treat it. The same is true for public health. If we can prevent drunk driving or the spread of diseases such as Zika, we could save lives and save the public money. That is why Senator Cassidy and I introduced the Public Health Emergency Response and Accountability Act last Congress. Our bill, on a bipartisan basis, recognized, basically, that we should be able to respond quickly to public health threats before they spread and harm more Americans and cost more money. That is what the ACA does through its Prevention and Public Health Fund. The fund serves a very important dual purpose, investing Federal dollars in effective programs that prevent disease and also it saves money. It is a simple concept. We should stop diseases from developing or spreading before they start. This sounds like common sense to almost everybody, but here is the problem. In the partisan battle around the ACA, even a really good idea within the Affordable Care Act must be bad because it is part of ObamaCare. This is insane. This is the Prevention and Public Health Fund that provides money to the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC did an incredible job with the U.S. Public Health Service, with the U.S. military in addressing the Ebola crisis. The CDC did an incredible job, again, with the National Institutes of Health and others in addressing the potential Zika crisis, which looks to have abated. The CDC does incredibly important work in tobacco prevention and cessation, and this Prevention and Public Health Fund has gotten 1.8 million individual smokers to call and try to quit smoking. That is hundreds of thousands of lives saved, not just in blue or purple States but all across the country. This Prevention and Public Health Fund helps our elderly to avoid falls. It helps our elderly to avoid falls. I know there are people of goodwill on both sides of the aisle. I know that we are all responsive to our senior citizens in our individual communities, and I know that this is a smart and humane use of public health money. If we can prevent an elderly citizen from falling in their own home or falling on the way to a bus stop or to church or to a family member's home, that is money well spent, not just morally but fiscally. This is my great regret when it comes to the Affordable Care Act and the debate that is happening. The only time I hear a serious-minded, good-faith debate between a Republican and a Democrat in the Senate when it comes to the Affordable Care Act is in private, because if you look at this side of the Chamber, there is only one Member of the Republican caucus who is here. We are not having the world's greatest deliberative body deliberate over the Affordable Care Act. We have an empty Chamber, full of Republicans who are absolutely bound and determined to walk off this cliff and take 22 million Americans with them. Public health prevention works. Public health prevention is fiscally prudent, and it is the humane thing to do. That is just one of the many attributes of the Affordable Care Act that ought to be preserved. If there is to be a good faith conversation about how to improve upon the Affordable Care Act, we are all ears. I can guarantee you that there are 48 of us who want to have that conversation, but do not put the whole country into this box canyon. Excuse me for mixing my metaphors. Do not take the whole country off this cliff because it is going to be very, very difficult for us to make good policy after that. With that, I yield the floor to the senior Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the legislation I will introduce shortly focuses on a small sector of the Federal workforce. But there is a broader message that I would like to deliver as well today. There is something I want to say to all Federal workers: I have got your back. We have all been hearing statements by politicians in the halls of Congress, in the news, and even on Twitter threatening to gut the Federal workforce, cut earned benefits, reduce paychecks, make it easier to fire people at will, and other destructive and misguided actions. To Federal employees, these statements must be particularly hurtful. Some may feel anxious and disheartened. But I want to assure all Federal workers that I am on your side. Your contributions are integral to our Nation. You live and work in small towns, in urban centers, and around the country. You do crucial work for our government and for the American people. As the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., is often mistaken as the primary location for Federal workers. But this is patently false. Eighty-five per cent of Federal workers actually live and work outside of the D.C. area. Federal workers live and work in every town, city, and State. In many places, the Federal Government is the main employer--and those jobs are vital to the local economy. The Federal workforce represents the diversity of our country. Since 1960, the GDP has multiplied five times, new agencies have been added to the government, and the responsibilities of Federal workers have grown exponentially, and yet hiring has stagnated. The civilian workforce, not including Postal Service employees, is roughly the same size it was during the Kennedy administration, at around 2 million. Pledges from short-sighted politicians about privatizing government services and programs like Medicare and Social Security would cause many Federal jobs to vanish and impair access to Federal services. This would put real Americans out of work and cause measurable economic hardship to local and State economies. In addition, the government is the number one employer of veterans, particularly disabled veterans who have trouble finding jobs in the private sector. Freezing hiring or cutting the workforce means fewer opportunities for America's heroes. That is why I want the next administration to understand the importance of Federal workers. Their jobs cannot be outsourced, replaced by machines, cut, or consolidated. I would urge the next administration to stop using our Federal workforce for purposes of partisan rhetoric and political games. I want to let Federal workers know that I will continue to work in the Senate to fight efforts to undermine you and the work that you do. I will look for opportunities to improve the Federal workplace and strengthen the Federal workforce. So keep up the good work across America. You can count on me for support. Today I also rise to introduce the Strengthening American Transportation Security Act of 2016, SATSA. This bill would extend to Transportation Security Officers, TSO, the same worker rights and protections under Title 5 of the U.S. Code that most other Federal workers enjoy and that TSOs are currently denied. TSOs are Federal employees who work on the frontlines of aviation security, and make up 70 percent of the Transportation Security Administration's workforce. They provide essential protection to all Americans by screening passengers and baggage at our airports. Every day TSOs stop eight guns from getting on our airplanes. That's nearly 3,000 guns a year. They hold life-saving jobs and TSOs deserve parity under Title 5 of the U.S. Code. My bill would provide fair treatment to TSO's and, in doing so, would improve passenger safety and enhance the overall capacity of the Federal workforce responsible for protecting our aviation transportation system. I am proud to introduce SATSA, which would improve the morale and stability of TSOs, the Federal workers keeping our airports and aviation travel safe. I want to thank my colleagues that have joined as original cosponsors of this bill: Senators Brown, Merkley, Warren, Franken, Peters, Tester, and Heinrich. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the legislation I will introduce shortly focuses on a small sector of the Federal workforce. But there is a broader message that I would like to deliver as well today. There is something I want to say to all Federal workers: I have got your back. We have all been hearing statements by politicians in the halls of Congress, in the news, and even on Twitter threatening to gut the Federal workforce, cut earned benefits, reduce paychecks, make it easier to fire people at will, and other destructive and misguided actions. To Federal employees, these statements must be particularly hurtful. Some may feel anxious and disheartened. But I want to assure all Federal workers that I am on your side. Your contributions are integral to our Nation. You live and work in small towns, in urban centers, and around the country. You do crucial work for our government and for the American people. As the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C., is often mistaken as the primary location for Federal workers. But this is patently false. Eighty-five per cent of Federal workers actually live and work outside of the D.C. area. Federal workers live and work in every town, city, and State. In many places, the Federal Government is the main employer--and those jobs are vital to the local economy. The Federal workforce represents the diversity of our country. Since 1960, the GDP has multiplied five times, new agencies have been added to the government, and the responsibilities of Federal workers have grown exponentially, and yet hiring has stagnated. The civilian workforce, not including Postal Service employees, is roughly the same size it was during the Kennedy administration, at around 2 million. Pledges from short-sighted politicians about privatizing government services and programs like Medicare and Social Security would cause many Federal jobs to vanish and impair access to Federal services. This would put real Americans out of work and cause measurable economic hardship to local and State economies. In addition, the government is the number one employer of veterans, particularly disabled veterans who have trouble finding jobs in the private sector. Freezing hiring or cutting the workforce means fewer opportunities for America's heroes. That is why I want the next administration to understand the importance of Federal workers. Their jobs cannot be outsourced, replaced by machines, cut, or consolidated. I would urge the next administration to stop using our Federal workforce for purposes of partisan rhetoric and political games. I want to let Federal workers know that I will continue to work in the Senate to fight efforts to undermine you and the work that you do. I will look for opportunities to improve the Federal workplace and strengthen the Federal workforce. So keep up the good work across America. You can count on me for support. Today I also rise to introduce the Strengthening American Transportation Security Act of 2016, SATSA. This bill would extend to Transportation Security Officers, TSO, the same worker rights and protections under Title 5 of the U.S. Code that most other Federal workers enjoy and that TSOs are currently denied. TSOs are Federal employees who work on the frontlines of aviation security, and make up 70 percent of the Transportation Security Administration's workforce. They provide essential protection to all Americans by screening passengers and baggage at our airports. Every day TSOs stop eight guns from getting on our airplanes. That's nearly 3,000 guns a year. They hold life-saving jobs and TSOs deserve parity under Title 5 of the U.S. Code. My bill would provide fair treatment to TSO's and, in doing so, would improve passenger safety and enhance the overall capacity of the Federal workforce responsible for protecting our aviation transportation system. I am proud to introduce SATSA, which would improve the morale and stability of TSOs, the Federal workers keeping our airports and aviation travel safe. I want to thank my colleagues that have joined as original cosponsors of this bill: Senators Brown, Merkley, Warren, Franken, Peters, Tester, and Heinrich. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I rise to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the people of Hawaii, it started as an ordinary sunny Sunday morning in December. Families were getting ready for church; others were preparing breakfast. It was quiet. It was peaceful. Just before 8 a.m., the first wave of Japanese warplanes started their coordinated surprise attack on the island of Oahu. Bombers attacked aircraft clustered wing tip to wing tip at Wheeler and Hickham Airfields, making it too easy for Japanese pilots to destroy their targets. By the end of the attack, Japanese forces sunk four of the eight battleships at Ford Island. Another battleship intentionally ran aground in the harbor to avoid blocking the channel. Three destroyers and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged. It was the worst disaster in U.S. naval history. There were 2,403 servicemembers killed or mortally wounded, and 1,247 servicemembers were injured. Fifty-seven civilians were killed. Across Oahu, people watched as smoke and fire blackened the sky over Pearl Harbor. Among those were two 17-year-olds, Daniel K. Inouye and Daniel K. Akaka. Like many others that day, they were called to duty. Senator Daniel Akaka, then an ROTC student at the Kamehameha School for Boys, grabbed a rifle and guarded the hills above the school from potential Japanese paratroopers. Senator Inouye, then a volunteer medical aid, reported to Lunalilo Elementary School, where for a week he tended to the wounded. In the weeks that followed, the shipyard was back to work repairing vessels raised from the harbor. Incredibly, all but two ships returned to service in just 2 years. The Nevada went on to support the invasion of Normandy. Five other ships damaged at Pearl Harbor later met Japanese forces in the Philippines. That ``Day of Infamy'' and the events that followed would ultimately galvanize more than 12 million Americans to serve in uniform during the Second World War. We remember the men and women who left their homes to fight an enemy they did not know in places they had never heard of. They said goodbye to their families to protect their neighbors--foreclosed the promise of their own dreams to protect our freedom. We know well the stories of courage and devotion: the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd Infantry Regiment. We remember the ingenuity and heroism of Doolittle's Raiders, the Navajo code-talkers, and Nisei translators. The war in the Pacific lasted 2,194 days. When American occupation forces landed 4 years later at the end of the war, Japan was in ruins. But instead of turning our backs on the people of Japan, we extended a hand. We chose to turn an enemy into an ally. American occupiers immediately set out to transform Japan into a peaceful democracy, implementing land and economic reforms, improving working conditions, and granting women the right to vote. The United States sent billions of dollars in economic aid to rebuild Japan. Most of that assistance was delivered as food, for even several years after the surrender, there was widespread starvation in Japan. It is hard to forget someone who sends you milk for hungry children, as Prime Minister Abe recently told Congress. The attack on Pearl Harbor set in motion a chain of events with painful consequences for our two countries, but the decision we made to partner with, rather than punish, Japan helped to forge between our two countries what Senator Mike Mansfield described as ``the most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none.'' Today, Japan is a leader in the Western world. We cooperate as partners to maintain regional peace. Our countries work together to stop the flow of extremism and arms in the Indian Ocean. We work side by side in humanitarian relief missions and to defend against ballistic missile threats. Our relationship has never been stronger. President Obama's trip in May to Hiroshima and President Abe's trip to Pearl Harbor demonstrate the endurance of this friendship and the importance of reconciliation. So as we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we remember the service and sacrifice of the men and women who lost their lives on that day in December. In remembering them and the service of those who fought, we know that their sacrifices were not in vain. America and Japan are forever joined in history. We move forward together, in the memory of those who sacrificed for a better world and for peace. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided between both sides during the quorum call.

Mr. SCHATZ. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I am here to speak on another topic, actually, and that is what we are about to do with respect to appropriations. This Congress was told by the majority leader that the Senate would return to the regular order, and I have no doubt he intended to make good on that promise. I know he is an appropriator. I know he is an institutionalist, and he really wanted to get back to the regular order. We were given assurances that keeping the government funded would be an orderly and bipartisan process, and it was true at the committee level, but that was then, and today we are far from that promise. Today the Republican leadership, led by House leadership, has refused to complete funding bills for the current fiscal year. And what is so confounding for the folks who pay attention and who believe in the appropriations process, who believe in our constitutional prerogative, our constitutional obligation to hold the pursestrings and to use that authority to be a proper check on the executive branch, is that simply kicking the can down the road and passing another short-term CR doesn't result in anything conservative at all. Many in this Chamber talk passionately about the need to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse, and yet a CR does exactly none of that. It does the opposite. It means programs that should be eliminated altogether will keep getting funded and programs that are working well and are critical but are in need of additional funding will remain underfunded. A CR puts the government on autopilot, stopping us from shifting investments to the most critical areas and decreasing funding for programs that are not working or are no longer needed. For example, the CR does not support accelerated counter-ISIL operations in Iraq and Syria; it defers work on the Iron Dome, delaying protection for Israel from long-range Iranian missiles; it underfunds the DOD's basic operations and maintenance account by $12 billion; and it delays cyber security efforts led by the Department of Homeland Security. The CR also delays critical funding needed to address the opioid crisis-- something I know the Presiding Officer cares passionately about. Both House and Senate bills provide large increases to fund drug abuse prevention, but the funding will remain flat under the CR. We are on autopilot. We are not doing our job. We are abdicating our oversight role in the appropriations process. There are actually two problems here. One is that things that need to be funded are not funded and things that should be eliminated or funded less are still funded. I don't see what is conservative about that. But the other result in a lot of ways is more insidious from the perspective of the Constitution and from the perspective of this institution, and that is, to the extent and degree that members of the administration, regardless of party, listen to members of the legislative branch, it is because we hold the purse strings. It is because we hold the purse strings. And every time we fail to do an authorization, every time we fail to do an appropriation, we are just shifting authority and clout to the executive. There is nothing conservative about that. There is a mistaken assumption that running up against our funding deadline will somehow pressure the Congress into doing its job. What is crazy to me is that we have now 5 or 6 or 7 years of proof that doesn't work--this idea that what we should do is take difficult decisions and have them coincide with other difficult decisions and coincide with an even bigger difficult decision and then wrap it all up in a bow and do it at once. There may have been a time in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s where we could create these omnibus solutions, where we could get to these grand bargains, but what we need to do now is to hit a few singles. We need to do a few rational things. The idea that what we should do is take the debt ceiling and the expiration of the CR and put them together just doesn't make any sense. It was proven wrong by the government shutdown of 16 days in the year 2013. The administration estimated that had up to a $6 billion impact on the economy. NIH studies were delayed, national parks were shuttered, transportation and energy projects were postponed, and FDA's routine food safety inspections were pushed back. This is not fiscal conservatism. This is not any kind of conservatism. The idea of being a conservative, as I understand it--and I will grant you that I am a progressive, so it is not totally clear to me--is the idea that what you do may have unintended consequences and that whatever changes you make ought to be incremental and ought to respect the institutions that have gotten America this far. This is not a conservative result, to kick the can into the next spring, when we have no idea whether we are going to be able to solve multiple problems at the same time. If we want government to work, piling up all these issues and leaving it to a new administration to deal with in the spring will likely not work. We should finish the work we were elected to do and complete the funding bills for this fiscal year. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I want to commend Senator Whitehouse for his 150th climate speech. It takes a lot of passion, a lot of research, and a lot of focus to be willing to stay on one topic in the Senate for that many consecutive speeches. There are a lot of things that are important in the Senate and it is easy to get distracted, but Senator Whitehouse remains steadfast, focused, and passionate, and history will show that Sheldon Whitehouse was right and is right. I am proud to be his colleague.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the President pro tempore, the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, for his leadership on this and many other issues. Healthcare policy can be a particularly vexing area for those of us who like to get things done because over the last 8 years we have mostly just been at each other's throats, arguing about the Affordable Care Act. But we are here to talk about a bright spot--something we are not arguing about--which can reduce costs and improve outcomes. Telehealth is the future of health care. It harnesses technology to provide patients with high-quality care, whenever and wherever they need it. That is why we need to update Medicare to take advantage of these new technologies in telemedicine and remote patient monitoring. That is why I and 18 other Senators from both parties have introduced and cosponsored the CONNECT for Health Act. I thank Senator Hatch for his support in including provisions from our bill in the Senate Finance Committee's chronic care package. Telehealth will improve the delivery of care to patients, but it will also support providers by giving doctors and nurses the tools to work with and learn from each other. Simply put, a lot of medical education is financially or geographically out of reach for providers on the frontlines, but we can fix that using technology. It is called Project ECHO, and that is what we are about to vote on. Based at the University of New Mexico and with the strong support of Senators Heinrich and Udall, Project ECHO has already had a positive impact across the Nation on patients, providers, and communities. How does it work? Imagine a VTC--video teleconference--with 15 people on the screen. Participants assemble online 2 hours every week for 6 weeks to learn about a selected disease condition--for example, depression. The leader of the VTC is a specialist physician from an academic medical center with a team which would include, for example, a psychologist, a pharmacist, and a social worker. Throughout the 6 weeks, the session time is divided between lessons, case presentations, and discussions. Providers from across the country can learn the latest best practices and develop a network of colleagues to share information and help with the hard questions. This is a game changer. This is the kind of ongoing training for folks in rural areas that has not been available until now. Project ECHO has already been used for infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies, such as H1N1 and Zika; chronic diseases, such as hepatitis C and diabetes; and mental health conditions, such as anxiety and schizophrenia. The results are impressive. Patients in rural or underserved areas now have more access to better trained doctors in their own communities, which decreases costs and improves outcomes. Providers feel less isolated and more connected to a network of high-quality providers across their State. As a result, they are more likely to stay in underserved areas where they are needed the most. The health system runs more efficiently and effectively. Providers have the training to see and treat more patients. We still have many questions about this model, which is new, but among them: What are the best successors? What are the barriers to adoption? For which conditions is it best suited? The ECHO Act, as amended, will direct HHS to study this model and give us the answers we need to make decisions at the Federal level about how to best support expanding it nationally. One final note of thanks. It is not a coincidence that several of the successful health care-related efforts this year have been a result of collaboration with and leadership of Senator Hatch. His bipartisan spirit, his pragmatism, and his understanding of the legislative process make working with him and his staff a true pleasure. I encourage my colleagues to continue to join us in supporting this revolutionary health care model.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, today, September 19, marks the beginning of National Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, GEAR UP, Week, and I would like to recognize the meaningful work of GEAR UP in Hawaii. Since 1998, GEAR UP has provided support and resources to low-income students across the country to inform them about, prepare for, and succeed in college. GEAR UP helps these students, many who are first- generation college students, overcome the challenges they face in their communities. GEAR UP Hawaii serves over 16,000 students each year from low-income and underserved communities throughout the State in grades 7 through 12 and in their first year in college. The program equips students with the tools they need to succeed in college and their careers. GEAR UP delivers a number of services to students, including supporting early college-level academic preparation in high school, providing opportunities for early college options, increasing college access and financial aid information to students and families, and advising students during their first year of college to increase first-year completion. GEAR UP Hawaii has gained national recognition for its success in closing the achievement gap among groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education and helping low-income students prepare for college. Through its collaborative partnerships between Hawaii's State Department of Education, K-12 schools, the University of Hawaii, local businesses, and community organizations, GEAR UP Hawaii inspires students to see postsecondary education as something they can achieve. The early outreach GEAR UP Hawaii performs is key to improving access to postsecondary education for students from low-income families in our State. The program's results demonstrate that GEAR UP Hawaii is making significant strides towards increasing the number of low-income students who are prepared for and enroll in college. For example, 20 percent of Step Up Scholars, a GEAR UP Hawaii program, graduated from high school in June 2015 with the Board of Education Recognition Diploma, BOERD, compared to 14 percent of students statewide. The BOERD is an honors diploma that requires students to earn a minimum cumulative grade point average of 3.0 and complete a senior project. Additionally, GEAR UP has increased the availability of High School Based Running Start, HBRS, courses, which allow high school students to attend University of Hawaii classes to earn both high school and college credits. For the Hawaii class of 2014, 83 percent of students who took at least one HBRS course enrolled in college the semester after graduation compared to the statewide average of 56 percent. Thanks to these programs, thousands of Hawaii's students graduate from high school every year better prepared for college and for their futures. A college education is a path of opportunity for our students. GEAR UP Hawaii has been and will continue to be critical in supporting the State's goal of having 55 percent of working-age adults in the State earn a college degree by 2025. I commend GEAR UP Hawaii for the vital role it plays in helping Hawaii's students access and excel in their higher education.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I hate conspiracy theories. I believe most of the suspicious, confusing, frustrating, or unknowable things in the world are the way they are not because there are 12 people in a room wringing their hands trying to figure out how to trick all of us but because the world is complicated, often unfair, sometimes illogical, and we all operate with incomplete information. So even as a climate hawk, I came to the idea of an organized misinformation campaign with real hesitation. I didn't want to be that guy who believes there is an evil empire that lies for a living. But here is the thing: I have studied this, and I have learned that there really is an organized, well-financed disinformation and misinformation campaign on the subject of climate change. It is straight out of a bad movie about politics, complete with PR guys, dark campaign money, fake scientists, politicians in the mix, and a weakened media. It is like Raymond Tusk actually exists. I rise today to join my colleagues in combating a pervasive and highly damaging campaign of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. For decades, the same hired guns that tried to convince the American people that there was no link between smoking and lung cancer have been following the same playbook on manmade climate change. They want to sow doubt where no doubt exists. Just like the tobacco companies profited from denial, so too have the fossil fuel companies profited by propping up front groups and sham think tanks that try to convince us that the science on climate change isn't settled and that no consensus exists between mainstream scientists, but of course that is not true. The American Association for the Advancement of Science said: The science linking human activities to climate change is analogous to the science linking smoking to lung and cardiovascular diseases. Physicians, cardiovascular scientists, public health experts, and others all agree that smoking causes cancer, and this consensus among the health community has convinced most Americans that the health risks from smoking are real. A similar consensus now exists among climate scientists, a consensus that maintains climate change is happening and human activity is the cause. It is worth pausing here to make two basic points. The first is one I mentioned earlier, and that is that the same techniques which were used to block science and prevent action on tobacco are now being deployed to prevent action on climate. That stands to reason. If you are looking for public relations techniques to essentially mislead the public so you can squeeze additional years and decades of profitability, then you would be wise to use the techniques, methods, and procedures that worked in the past, so that sort of stands to reason. It shocks the conscience, but it shouldn't shock us that this is happening. The really shocking part is this. Of course they would use the same techniques to mislead the public regardless of the issue, but the real shock is that it is literally the same people. It is not the same type of person or the same category of person, it is the same human beings and the same professionals. They are the same PR firms, and they have replicated the machinery of the Tobacco Institute, sharing processes, procedures, personnel, and funding sources. But just as we did against Big Tobacco, we are going to win the war of ideas against Big Oil and Big Coal. The truth is on our side, but the truth is not guaranteed to come out. We actually have to expose their ecosystem of misinformation to make real progress on climate, and so for a moment I will talk a little bit about the media, which has played an unfortunate role. Generally speaking, people in the U.S. media like to get ``both sides of the story'' just to be fair, which under many circumstances works just fine. After all, the definition of a bad story in a lot of reporters' minds is to be one-sided. What happens when one side of the story is factual and the other side is a house of cards? Many in the media still report it as though, on the one hand, scientists say climate change is real, and on the other hand, some say it is not. To be fair, this has improved over the last year or so, but that was the foundational weakness of the American media--their credulity when reporting on deniers--that the climate denial apparatus took full advantage of. There are not two sides to every issue. Sometimes there are just facts on one side and bull on the other. We don't argue about the existence of gravity or whether the Earth is round or, thankfully, whether smoking causes lung cancer. We have known since the 19th century that carbon dioxide traps heat much like a greenhouse. We know that burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. We have seen the evidence of increasing temperatures and rising sea levels for decades. The correlation between levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global temperatures is absolutely undeniable. To deny the reality of manmade climate change in this context requires willful ignorance. How is this happening? Academics from Yale and Drexel Universities, among others, have researched and exposed the many sources of dark money that are fueling the climate denial machine. My colleagues are speaking today--and spoke yesterday as well--about some of the greatest offenders, and I will focus my remarks on just two. One is a small organization that most people haven't heard of, and another is an organization that I think a lot of people who work in politics have heard of. The first is the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and the other is the Heartland Institute. The Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a family project out of Tempe, AZ, that claims that global warming will be beneficial to humanity. The center does not disclose funding information because they believe doing so would bias the way people perceive their purpose and publications, and that may be the only thing they say that is true. Transparency is crucial in the world of science because it allows the scientific community and the general public to determine whether there might be a conflict of interest. In this instance, there is a conflict of interest. We know that at the very least, ExxonMobil and Peabody coal have given significant sums of money to the center. When two companies with a long history of climate denial are paying you to deny the scientific consensus on climate change, it is fair to point out that something smells a little fishy. Better known than the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is the Heartland Institute, which gained national attention after putting up a billboard comparing those who believed in manmade global warming to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. This tasteless stunt rightfully cost Heartland $825,000 in corporate donations, but Heartland still receives millions of dollars a year from fossil fuel companies and others with a vested interest in continuing the status quo. They still have an outsize impact in the national conversation by insinuating that the science on climate change is not settled. Not surprisingly, Heartland follows the tobacco playbook to a T. Their reliance on dark money means that Heartland's funding is notoriously difficult to track. According to the watchdog group Conservative Transparency, Heartland has received more than $14 million from the Koch-initiated Donors Trust and Donors Capital groups, which shield donors' identities. We know that ExxonMobil has contributed at least $675,000 since 1998, and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 40 percent of those funds were specifically designated for climate change projects. The money from these organizations, among others, allowed Heartland to publish nearly 3,000 documents toward climate change skepticism between 1998 and 2013. Heartland also organizes gatherings of climate skeptics and defends fossil fuel funding experts who continue to deny the reality of the changing climate we are already seeing today. We have seen this movie before. What is happening this week is historic. We are no longer going to allow these front groups to pose as on-the-level think tanks. We have a moral obligation to not only solve this problem but to also fix our politics. We should all be making decisions about how best to solve this problem. Let's have this great debate. Let the two major political parties have an argument about the best way to tackle climate change because this isn't just a climate thing at this point, this is an integrity thing. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Thank you. I believe the Senator from Wisconsin has a question for the Senator.