Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Ms. Halligan is an outstanding nominee with sterling credentials and broad support among the legal community. By the accounts of everyone who has worked with her or observed her work, she is a first-rate legal mind and a tireless worker, with great personal integrity and a thoughtful temperament that is perfectly suited to the Federal bench. Her nomination deserves prompt confirmation. Ms. Halligan has spent much of her career as a dedicated and distinguished public servant. She has a strong record in law enforcement, including in her current role as general counsel at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, an office that investigates and prosecutes 100,000 criminal cases annually. She is highly esteemed by the New York and national law enforcement communities. Her nomination has been endorsed by New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly, former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, the National District Attorneys Association, several Republican district attorneys from New York, the New York Association of Chiefs of Police, and the New York State Sheriff's Association, among many others. Ms. Halligan is also widely recognized as one of the finest appellate litigators in the country. As solicitor general for the State of New York, she supervised 45 appellate lawyers and represented the State of New York, then-Governor George Pataki, a Republican, and other State officials in both State and Federal courts. She has been counsel of record on nearly 50 cases before the Supreme Court and has argued before that court 5 times. Twenty-one of the top lawyers from across the political spectrum who have worked with Ms. Halligan, including conservatives Miguel Estrada and Carter Phillips, have endorsed her nomination. She was rated unanimously ``well qualified'' by the American Bar Association. President Obama first nominated Ms. Halligan in 2010. Despite Ms. Halligan's outstanding qualifications and broad support, our Republican colleagues have refused to grant her an up-or-down vote for over 2 years. Some have argued, because of positions that she took in litigation at the behest of a client, that she does not have adequate respect for the second amendment. Yet both at her hearing and in response to written questions, she stated unequivocally that she would faithfully follow and apply the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the second amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. When asked whether the rights conferred under the second amendment are fundamental, Ms. Halligan answered, ``That is clearly what the Supreme Court held and I would follow that precedent.'' It doesn't get much clearer than that. In 2011 Republicans filibustering her nomination claimed that the caseload of the DC Circuit did not warrant filling that seat because the other judges serving on the court had too few cases. At that time, Ms. Halligan was nominated to fill the ninth seat out of 11 on the DC Circuit. Even at the time, that argument was questionable. Senate Republicans confirmed President Bush's nominees for the 9th, 10th, and 11th seats on the DC Circuit without concerns about caseload. That court's caseload has only gone up in since then. Also, the DC Circuit's caseload is uniquely challenging, as the former chief judge of the DC Circuit, Patricia Wald, has explained: The D.C. Circuit hears the most complex, time-consuming, labyrinthine disputes over regulations with the greatest impact on ordinary Americans' lives: clean air and water regulations, nuclear plant safety, health-care reform issues, insider trading and more. These cases can require thousands of hours of preparation by the judges, often consuming days of argument, involving hundreds of parties and interveners, and necessitating dozens of briefs and thousands of pages of record--all of which culminates in lengthy, technically intricate legal opinions. Even if we accept the argument that the DC Circuit did not need another judge when Ms. Halligan was nominated for the ninth seat, the circumstances have changed. Because an additional vacancy has opened, Ms. Halligan is currently nominated for the eighth seat, meaning there are now four vacant seats on the court. To put it another way, the court is now understaffed by over one-third. At the same time, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts reports that the caseload per active judge has increased by 50 percent since 2005, when the Senate confirmed President Bush's nominee to fill the 11th seat on the DC Circuit. Thus, there is no basis for debate now about whether an additional judge is needed on the D.C. Circuit. With an extra vacancy and a growing caseload, the court considered by many to be second only to the Supreme Court in its importance in our Federal judiciary desperately needs help. Luckily, we have the opportunity to send the court an outstanding legal talent in Caitlin Halligan. I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation. More broadly, I hope that we can come together and return the Senate to its best traditions of holding up-or-down votes on judicial nominations. We have an opportunity this Congress to move past this obstruction and get back to the proper manner of handling judicial nominations. Doing so will bring much needed assistance to the Federal judiciary, which has been forced to contend with unmanageable judicial vacancy rates. It also will do credit to this institution, which is failing in its duty to confirm Federal judges. We do not deserve the moniker of the ``world's greatest deliberative body'' if we cannot do something as simple as confirming judicial nominations. There have been some encouraging signs that we are making real progress in this regard. For instance, the rules reforms that we voted on in a bipartisan manner earlier this year included a provision to shorten the postcloture debate window on district court nominees from 30 hours to a more reasonable 2. This change could dramatically streamline the nominations process without limiting the minority's ability to filibuster a nominee they do not like. It will expire at the end of this Congress, however. I hope that we can come together in bipartisan agreement to extend it permanently and perhaps even expand it to include circuit court nominees like Ms. Halligan. Even with this change, there is still much to be done. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently reported that the confirmation percentage for President Obama's nominees is the lowest of any President in the last 36 years. The effects are obvious. The judicial vacancy crisis in this country is real, and it is growing. As Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has said, ``a persistent problem has developed in the process of filling judicial vacancies. . . . This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts. Sitting judges in those districts have been burdened with extraordinary caseloads.'' As he explained, there is ``an urgent need for the political branches to find a long-term solution to this recurring problem.'' So let's return to the principle that barring ``extraordinary circumstances'' a nominee should receive a prompt up-or-down vote on the floor, and let's confirm the nomination of the outstanding nominee before us today, Caitlin Halligan.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to interject just for a moment to sort out the order on the floor. I apologize to the Senator from Arizona for the last exchange. I thought I had the floor at that point. I understand now this is a colloquy. I think Senator Ayotte seems to be in order, but the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is here, so perhaps she could be recognized at the conclusion of Senator Ayotte's remarks. I see Senator Inhofe, so if he could follow Senator Mikulski and then I will follow Senator Inhofe, I offer that as a proposal.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if I may interject, I believe I have the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am rising today in strong support of Leader Reid's proposal to stop the sequester. We need to reduce our debt and deficit. We should do so in a thoughtful manner. We have so often on this floor heard our Republican friends criticize Democratic legislation as job killing: a job-killing bill, a job- killing proposal. We hear that all the time. Often that charge has been without much factual support, but it is part of the common rhetoric in this room. But now we face an event that actually is expected to cause the loss of 1 million jobs, and yet so many Republicans support these cuts in their fixation, frankly, on what economists call budget austerity, cutting your way out of a recession. How has the budget austerity record worked? There is a record now, because a lot of countries have tried it--from Spain to Portugal to Greece, countries slashed spending to address deficits in the name of budget austerity. Their record? Lousy. Persistent double-digit unemployment and negative economic growth. The U.S. unemployment rate of 7.9 percent--which is actually even higher in my home State--is for sure too high, but it is far better than the rate of 26 percent unemployment in Spain and Greece, the record of 16 percent unemployment in Portugal. Our 2.3 percent growth rate may seem inadequate, and it is; but as we recover from the deepest recession we have seen since the Great Depression, it is much better than the negative growth rates in the countries that took the austerity path. The results are clear. The evidence is in from the austerity experiments. The countries that cut the deepest have been hurt the most. If we want to continue growing our economy and creating jobs, we need to resist the European path that is championed by Republican austerity advocates. We need to maintain the balanced approach that has brought the U.S. economy up out of recession--admittedly, not fast enough. But look at what the alternative has been. Leader Reid's bill would replace the indiscriminate cuts of the so- called sequester with targeted cuts to agricultural subsidies and defense spending--as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said--after the troops are home when the costs can necessarily come down, paired with revenue not from raising taxes but from closing a loophole, a tax loophole that allows the highest paid people in America to pay lower tax rates than regular middle-class families. I heard the passion of Senator McCain--and I respect him immensely-- on the harm the sequester will do to the military. We have a way out. It is a question of priorities. Do you really want to protect the military from these cuts or is it more important to protect the low tax rates of billionaires? That is the choice, and that is the choice they are making. Leader Reid's is a smart and balanced bill, and I hope it will pass. To put this into some context about where we are on spending cuts, the ranking member of the Budget Committee said this week that President Obama was opposed to spending cuts. I have the transcript of what he said in committee here: The President believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut. Well, let's look at the facts. Through the Budget Control Act of 2011 and several other measures, we have cut spending almost $1.5 trillion in the budget period of the next decade. When you include interest savings--the top part--from that reduced borrowing, it comes to $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and associated interest savings. On the revenue side, we have only generated a little over $700 billion from ending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent--at least over $450,000 in income--and from the associated interest savings. This together puts us $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction toward our goal of $4 trillion in total deficit reduction that most economists agree is needed to stabilize our budget. But notice, in the balance between spending cuts and new revenues, spending cuts are ahead by $1 trillion. The ranking member of the Budget Committee said President Obama believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut. And he is $1 trillion ahead on spending versus revenues. We have cut $7 of spending for every $3 of revenue, even though right now U.S. Government revenue is at its lowest percentage of GDP in more than 50 years, more than half a century. Our proposal going forward is 50/50, spending cuts and revenues. So let's not pretend we are immune to or allergic to spending cuts. There have been more spending cuts than new revenues. We have tried to find a balanced approach and so far, in this $2.4 trillion, we have not even looked at tax loopholes, at spending that happens through the Tax Code that mostly benefits big corporations, special interests, and super-high-end American earners. Take a look at how big that amount is. We collect, in individual income tax revenue, a little over $1 trillion every year from individuals. But the total liability of individuals under the Tax Code is over $2 trillion. What happens to this other $1.02 trillion? It flows back out. It never comes into the government as revenues. It goes back to people as tax deductions, loopholes, and various ways that we spend money through the Tax Code. If you look at the corporate income tax side, it is about the same. We look at our corporations--which, by the way, contribute about one- sixth as much into our national revenue as they used to. They are at an all-time low in terms of contributing to our national revenues in the last couple of decades--60 years, I want to say. They are at $118 billion that actually gets collected and becomes revenue. And there is another $157 billion that is corporate tax liability, but we let them get it back through loopholes in the Tax Code. You put them together and you have $1.16 trillion that we can use to help defeat or replace the sequester. It is a big deal to look at the tax spending as well as just the revenues that come in. We have done nothing on that yet. That should be part of this discussion. That is what we do in the proposal I put out. Last year we spent a great deal of time in this body debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent, and we ultimately set the rate at 39.6 percent for families whose income is over $450,000. But what we know is that many of those families will never pay anything close to that rate. The Tax Code is riddled with those special provisions that I talked about, the loopholes, the tax spending that disproportionately benefits high-income folks. They are special deals for special interests. Of them all, perhaps the most egregious is the so-called carried interest loophole that allows billionaires--literally billionaires--to pay lower tax rates than regular families. That is why in the last election it became apparent that Mitt Romney was paying something like an 11-percent tax rate. It is not just Mitt Romney. The IRS tracks the effective tax rates paid by the top 400 highest income earners in the country. In 2009, the last year they have data, the top 400 earned an average of over $200 million each, 1 year's income, over $200 million each. What did they pay in taxes on average? About 20 percent. About 20 percent on average. Some paid more. The nominal rate was supposed to be 35 percent. How many Mitt Romneys are there paying 11 percent in order to average to 20 percent? And 20 percent is the same rate that an average firefighter pays in Rhode Island, or a brickmason pays in Rhode Island. Don't tell me a billionaire hedge fund manager cannot pay a higher tax rate than a brickmason. It is not just the top 400. The Congressional Research Service estimates that about a quarter of people in America who make more than $1 million a year, about a quarter of them pay lower tax rates than over 10 million middle-income taxpayers. In that sense the Tax Code is upside-down in favor of these high-income earners. Loopholes let them do that. So we cut across all these loopholes with the so-called Buffett rule. They are supposed to pay 39.6 percent. The Buffett rule says: Ok, take all the loopholes you want, but you cannot go below 30 percent. We will let you take off 9.6 percent of the rate the law says you are supposed to pay but you cannot go below 30 percent. You can't go to 11 percent. You cannot be paying lower than a brickmason pays. That is in our sequester replacement bill. It produces $71 billion. High-earning professionals can perform another trick. They can avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes simply by calling themselves corporations for tax purposes. You heard the Republican Presidential candidate say corporations are people. This is the flip side. These people are corporations. If you make enough money you can afford to turn yourself into a corporation to dodge paying your Social Security and your Medicare contributions. So the second item on my list closes that loophole too, which is another $9 billion. The next item on the list contributes $3 billion by ending special depreciation rules for private jets. Private jet owners can depreciate their aircraft faster, for tax purposes, than commercial aircraft. I am very happy for anybody who is successful enough to have a private jet. But that luxury need not be subsidized by taxpayers. Setting aside the need for this because of the sequester, this is a change that makes sense just on fairness grounds. It stands on its own and it is another $3 billion. The fourth provision in my bill would end tax breaks for big oil companies. Over the past decade the big five oil companies have collectively enjoyed over $1 trillion in profits--yes, trillion with a T. Repealing taxpayer giveaways to them is something we should be doing anyway. It is another $24 billion toward getting rid of the sequester. The final provision in my plan helps replace the sequester by ending a tax break that, unbelievably, rewards manufacturers that close up shop in the United States and move jobs to other countries. It does that by allowing those corporations to indefinitely delay paying taxes on profits from those foreign overseas operations. Ending the deferral loophole for companies that manufacture goods overseas for sale to American customers is something we should do anyway to support our domestic manufacturers. It adds almost $20 billion toward replacing the sequester cuts. Each one of these five provisions would make the Tax Code more fair for ordinary Americans. I love our chairman of Appropriations. She can speak to issues on the floor of the Senate like nobody else. When she said these are cushy, lobbyist-driven earmarks, she is dead right. They do not deserve to stand on their own. And we can get rid of some of the smelliest ones and spare ourselves the sequester and the loss of a million jobs at the same time? Gosh, I think we ought to be doing that. I strongly support Leader Reid's bill to replace the sequester cuts with a 50/50 mix of revenue and spending. But I also want to show we can avoid the sequester for the coming year by looking at the vast tax spending we do through loopholes and gimmicks in the Tax Code--usually for the benefit of powerful corporations, special interests, and very high-income individuals. When you set that against the economic harm the sequester is going to cause to our country, closing those loopholes should be a higher priority, on economic grounds and on grounds of fairness. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Having the floor, why don't I propose now that at the conclusion of my remarks Senator Toomey be recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield for a question.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator has that right, and she will yield to him.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from West Virginia is going to have the floor, followed by the Senator from Tennessee, and I wish to be recognized to make some remarks following the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am here, actually, Mr. President, to once again urge Congress that we have to wake up to the growing threat of climate change. The alarm bells are ringing. The signs are all around us. Yet we continue to sleepwalk through history, ignoring the warnings from the scientific community, from economists and business leaders--even from our military--of long-term shifts in the climate of our planet. Another alarm has now sounded--this time by the Government Accountability Office, the taxpayers' watchdog. For the first time ever, the threat to the Federal Government of climate change has been included on the Government Accountability Office's High Risk List. Every 2 years, at the start of a new Congress, GAO--the Government Accountability Office--provides the House and Senate with a list of program areas that are at high risk. GAO was the government's nonpartisan auditor, and the High Risk List is its catalog of threats to the integrity and performance of the Federal Government. GAO says: Solutions to high-risk problems offer the potential to save billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and strengthen the performance and accountability of the U.S. government. House Oversight Committee chairman, Darrell Issa, has called the High Risk List ``the most important report published.'' As we face the indiscriminate spending cuts of the multibillion-dollar sequester, Chairman Issa pointed out that ``the list represents tremendous opportunities to save those billions of dollars.'' It is enough, actually, to prevent the sequester we are careening toward twice over. Only 55 issues have been elevated to the High Risk List since it first began in 1990. The current list comprises 30 big-ticket problems, such as improving defense program management, protecting the Nation's cyber infrastructure, and modernizing Federal health programs. When a problem reaches GAO's High Risk List, it shouldn't matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican. These issues must be among the top priorities of Congress and of the Nation. Add now to this list of serious national problems the destabilizing fiscal risk posed by climate change. The Federal Government and our military--and by definition, the American taxpayer--own and operate hundreds of thousands of buildings and extensive infrastructure in every State, including utilities, flood control and navigation systems, powerplants, distribution networks, and irrigation systems, not to mention the usual roads and bridges. The Federal Government also manages about 650 million acres of land for grazing, for timber, for conservation, and for recreation. That is nearly 30 percent of the total area of the United States, and climate change is affecting virtually all of it. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that the air and oceans are warming, that sea level is rising, and that we are changing the very chemistry of our oceans. These changes--some of them unprecedented in human history--increase the risk of extreme weather, such as heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms. As GAO points out, Federal assets in every corner of the country are at risk. Storms crashing into the Southeast, wildfires burning throughout the West, and floods inundating the Northeast are not just local problems. Droughts are draining aquifers in the Midwest, warm temperatures are melting permafrost in Alaska, and rising, warming, more acidic oceans are eroding our national coast lines and threatening our lives and our seas. These are not just local problems. Climate change is a high-risk threat to our shared national well-being, our shared national wealth, and our shared national heritage. The GAO High Risk List sounds yet another alarm that we are fools to ignore. For instance, GAO found that neither the National Flood Insurance Program nor the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation is prepared to deal with climate change. Between 1980 and 2005, the Flood Insurance Program's exposure quadrupled to nearly $1 trillion. The Crop Insurance Program increased 26-fold to $44 billion. Yet GAO reports that these programs have not even developed the ``information needed to understand their long-term exposure to climate change and not yet analyzed the potential impacts of an increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related events.'' Major private insurance companies such as Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re, and Lloyd's of London have for years been developing strategies to address climate change. Our Federal insurance programs don't even have the basic information to address these risks. Understanding and preparing for these risks is essential to protect our communities from catastrophic loss. According to NOAA, the value of flood insurance coverage in my home State of Rhode Island was $2.2 billion in 2011. The Ocean State has received $57 million in payouts since 1978, some of which helped Rhode Islanders recover from our record floods of 2010 brought on by extremely heavy rainfall. Folks who have flood coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program should know that heavy rainfall has increased in the Northeast by 74 percent since the 1950s, and scientists predict that warmer air will continue to increase the frequency of heavy rainfall and consequent flooding in the Northeast. Disaster aid is expensive. FEMA has obligated more than $80 billion in Federal disaster aid between 2004 and 2011. Another $50.5 billion in emergency aid was just approved for the northeastern communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy. PSE&G, New Jersey's largest utility, plans to spend over $4 billion over 10 years to make its electric and gas systems more resilient to these severe storms. New Jersey's second largest utility, JDP&L, announced that it intends to spend $200 million to do the same. According to Jeanne Fox, who is a commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, ``This is a cost of climate change, pure and simple.'' It is really time for us to wake up. In the private sector, the insurance and utility industries are facing the threat. Congress must now act responsively. House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings asked GAO Comptroller Gene Dodaro if it was ``GAO's opinion that regardless of the outcome of global negotiations to reduce carbon emissions, the United States Government should take immediate action to mitigate the risk posed by the climate change.'' Comptroller General Dodaro responded with a simple and unequivocal ``yes.'' In the High Risk List, GAO states that despite any possible future reduction of emissions, ``greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere will continue altering the climate system for many decades.'' That is the way the laws of physics and chemistry work. Damage with lasting consequences is already done. Many effects of climate change can be mitigated, and it is the responsibility of this Congress to help our Nation prepare and adapt. Some Federal efforts are underway. In 2003 the U.S. Department of Transportation initiated a study of climate risks to gulf coast transportation. It is now cooperating in that study with the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission. The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service are developing a drought vulnerability model, a carbon storage map, and an alpine monitoring program to help land managers in southwestern Colorado cope with the effects of a changing climate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a Climate- Ready States and Cities Initiative to help local health departments prepare for changes in health risks driven by climate change. EPA partnered with New York City's Department of Environmental Protection to develop a software tool that helps drinking water and wastewater utility operators understand how climate change poses risks to their facilities. Rhode Island, I am proud to say, is one of many States that have formed a climate change commission. The commission is coordinating with Federal officials to identify specific State and local challenges that are presented by our changing climate. Twenty other States have similar climate action plans developed or underway. Despite the actions by States, the actions in the private sector, and the warnings in the GAO High Risk List, special interest politics in Congress prevent the Federal Government from using our resources effectively and efficiently against this threat. The polluting special interests have Washington gripped in a barricade of obstruction, and the effect truly is disgraceful. Consider, for example, NOAA's proposal to create a National Climate Service, akin to its renowned National Weather Service. This was a no- cost restructuring that would have centralized NOAA's work on understanding the climate, including its observations of climate change. The National Climate Service would have helped meet the growing local demand for climate change science information. This proposal was blocked by Republicans over in the House who simply don't want to hear about climate change. That kind of thinking will not get climate change off the High Risk List. According to GAO, ``The Nation's vulnerability can be reduced by limiting the magnitude of climate change through actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While implementing adaptive measures may be costly, there is a growing recognition that the cost of inaction could be greater and--given the government's precarious fiscal position--increasingly difficult to manage given expected budget pressures.'' Congress has been asleep long enough. We have a tradition in this body of taking the accounting of GAO--our nonpartisan watchdog-- seriously and of taking GAO's High Risk List seriously. GAO now joins our defense and intelligence communities, our scientific research communities, our State and local governments, and major sectors of private industry that have all elevated climate change from their to-do list to their must-do list. It is time for Congress to wake up to its duties and to get to work. I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, while the Senator from Tennessee is on the floor--and because he referenced the filibuster of district judge nominees--let me say that there was a concerted effort to try to filibuster a district court nominee, one whom Senator Reed and myself had a particularly keen interest in, since we recommended this candidate to the President, and it was the Senator from Tennessee, along with 10 of his Republican colleagues, who decided that was not in the best traditions of the Senate and who voted against the filibuster and to allow cloture so that the precedent remains that district judges will not be filibustered. I just want to take this opportunity to thank him for doing that, and to let him know he has my gratitude for that. I think it was in the best interests of the Senate. I do not think the Senator did it in order to gain any gratitude from me. I think he did it because, as a matter of principle, he thought this was the way the Senate should behave. But I certainly do appreciate it and I want to take this moment to say so.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the heroic service of Rhode Island Air National Guard TSgt. Gregory M. Grutter. Technical Sergeant Grutter was awarded the Bronze Medal Star with Valor and the Purple Heart, and I honor him for the courageous actions he took to earn these awards. In 2008, Technical Sergeant Grutter was assigned as a security officer for the Defense Intelligence Support Office-Afghanistan. On March 20, 2008, while driving a convoy vehicle for the Guard, Technical Sergeant Grutter twice risked his own life to thwart enemy ambushes and save the lives of others. In the first instance, Technical Sergeant Grutter used his own vehicle as a shield to protect Afghan National Police officers driving an unarmored vehicle. Then, noticing the Afghan National Police's machine gun crew in distress, he dismounted from his own vehicle, ran through intense fire, and helped the police repair their weapons. While Technical Sergeant Grutter was working with the machine gun crew, enemy insurgents moved in to flank the convoy and began to prepare an attack. With great bravery, Sergeant Grutter ran approximately 200 meters over exposed terrain to engage the insurgents, which forced them to retreat. Shortly thereafter, the enemy disengaged and left the area. Unfortunately, a second ambush was already in the making. A large number of civilians became trapped by small arms fire from enemy forces. Without regard for his personal safety, Technical Sergeant Grutter provided suppressing fire from an exposed position, which allowed the Afghan National Police to evacuate the civilians to safety. As a result of the courageous actions taken by Technical Sergeant Grutter, lives were saved and the convoy continued its mission. I thank Technical Sergeant Grutter for his brave actions and honor his distinguished service and meritorious achievement in earning the Bronze Medal Star with Valor and the Purple Heart. The courage he demonstrated during his combat mission brings great honor to our country, the Air National Guard and the state of Rhode Island. Along with his fellow Guardsmen, I thank Technical Sergeant Grutter for his outstanding commitment to serving and protecting our country. We in Rhode Island are lucky to call him one of our own, and we are proud of him.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here again to talk about the effects of climate change on the health of our families and our communities. Just as we know that secondhand smoke and too much sun exposure are bad for human health, we know pollution and variations in climate conditions are as well. I wish to thank our chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Mrs. Boxer, for the briefing she held today with a number of scientists, including one who spoke specifically about the human health effects we can see from climate change. Climate change is threatening to erode the improvements in air quality we have achieved through the Clean Air Act. EPA-enforced emissions reductions have led to a decline in the number and severity of bad air days in the United States. These are the days I know the Presiding Officer is familiar with because I am sure they happen in Connecticut as well as in Rhode Island, where the air quality is so poor that it is unhealthy for sensitive individuals: the elderly, infants, people with breathing difficulties to be outdoors. Even healthy people are urged to limit their activities when out-of-doors. In Rhode Island, about 12 percent of children and 11 percent of adults suffer from asthma. Both are higher than the national average. Our Rhode Island Public Transit Authority runs free buses on bad ozone days to try to keep car traffic down because these days are so dangerous to the public. Of course, the major air pollutant behind bad air days is ozone, commonly known as smog. Ground-level ozone or smog makes it difficult to breathe, causes coughing, inflames airways, aggravates asthma, emphysema and bronchitis and makes lungs more susceptible to infection. That all means asthma attacks, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, which, in turn, result in missed school and work and a burden not only of worry but also a burden on the economy. Smog, of course, forms more quickly during hot and sunny days. So as climate change drives more heat, it increases the number of warm days and the conditions for smog and for bad air days become more common. Climate change is also prolonging the allergy season. I am sure there are a number of people listening who suffer from hay fever in the late summer and early fall. Some people suffer from it most acutely. It is most often caused by ragweed pollen. Since 1995, ragweed season has increased across the country. It has increased by 13 days in Madison, WI. It has increased by 20 days in Minneapolis, MN. It has increased by almost 25 days in Fargo, ND. The further north you go, the greater the increase in the ragweed season. So for folks in Fargo, for instance, it is 25 more days of sniffling and sneezing and 25 more days that ragweed pollen might trigger a child's asthma attack. Not only does more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere mean warmer weather and therefore longer pollen seasons, it also means a higher pollen count. At 280 parts per million, which was the concentration of atmospheric carbon back in the year 1900, each ragweed plant would produce about 5 grams of pollen. At 370 parts per million, which is where we are now--year 2000 levels to be precise--pollen production more than doubles. It doubles again at 72 parts per million, which is the concentration that is now projected for the year 2075. So as we work to improve air quality and to reduce respiratory illnesses and the allergic conditions that trigger respiratory distress, we need to fight the growing trigger, climate change. Warming oceans and lakes can also harm our health. Higher water surface temperature is associated with harmful blooms of various species of algae. These blooms are often referred to as ``red tide.'' They deplete oxygen, block sunlight, and they produce toxins. The toxins are very often captured by clams and oysters and other shellfish. When they are consumed, it can result in neurotoxic shellfish poisoning, which causes debilitating respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms. A warming climate also is predicted to change the range of disease-spreading parasites, such as ticks and mosquitoes. With longer summers and shorter winters, we will face more exposure to these pests and to the diseases they can carry. We in New England and Connecticut and Rhode Island and Massachusetts, of course, are very familiar with lyme disease, which is a tick-borne illness that can have very grave and serious effects. Slow and steady warming is also causing sea levels to rise, which threatens coastal infrastructure and human safety as well. In South Kingstown, RI, Matunuck Beach Road is the only means of access to approximately 500 homes. That road also covers the public water main. For years, the sand erosion has eaten away at the beach. Now the road is immediately vulnerable to storms. Indeed it has been overwashed in recent storms. A breach in Matunuck Beach Road cuts off those 500 homes from emergency services. If it were damaging enough, it could cut off their water. Our water quality is also threatened. Many of Rhode Island's wastewater treatment plants are in low-lying areas and flood zones near the coast. It is the story in many other States. In California, for example, the rising sea level has put 29 wastewater treatment plants, responsible for 530 million gallons of sewage processing every day, at increased risk for flooding. As we know, climate change loads the dice for more extreme weather: heat waves, droughts, storms, all serious threats to human health and safety. Climate change has led to an increase in the likelihood of severe heat waves. Extreme heat causes heat exhaustion. It can cause heat stroke. The need for air-conditioning in heat waves also strains the power infrastructure, which can cause electrical brownouts and blackouts. This hinders emergency services and exacerbates wildfires and drought. These are the kinds of conditions--from extreme heat--that led to literally tens of thousands of deaths in the record-setting Russian heat wave of 2010. Heavy rainfall can cause physical damage, flooding erosion, and sewage overflow. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 118,000 sanitary sewer overflows occur annually from storms overwashing through combined sewer systems, overloading those systems, and being released directly into the open, releasing up to actually 860 billion gallons of untreated sewage and wastewater. In 2010, heavy rainfall and flooding caused millions of dollars in damage in spilled raw sewage in Warwick, RI, my home State. The flood led to the temporary shutdown of the local wastewater treatment facility. These overflows, like the one in Warwick, can result in beach closures, shellfish bed closures, contamination of drinking water supplies, and other environmental and public health problems. Extreme rainfall, meaning both way too little and way too much rainfall, promotes waterborne outbreaks of disease. In the northeast United States, heavy rainfall has increased by 74 percent since my childhood in the 1950s. As we have seen with Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Irene, and Hurricane Katrina, storms can very quickly affect millions of people and require tens of billions of dollars to clean up. The threat gets worse as sea- level rise allows storm surges to reach farther inland and create more damage than just a few decades ago. Much of the east coast was fearful of flooding during Superstorm Sandy last year, including, of course, southern Rhode Island. Because of erosion and sea-level rise, the storm surges on our shores can reach homes that were originally built hundreds of feet from the coastline. I had the experience of standing with a man who had a childhood home that had been through at least three generations of his family. He was now actually older than me, and that childhood home--which had stood well back from the beach--was canting toward the sea and tumbling into the ocean. The ocean had claimed his home of multiple generations as its victim. This map shows by ZIP code where the 800,000 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina sought refuge after that terrible storm. Hundreds of thousands of people were strewn across every corner of the country. Hundreds of thousands of lives were disrupted as a result. Thankfully, not everybody is sleepwalking through these alarming realities. In 2010, Rhode Island created our Climate Change Commission, which has identified risks to key infrastructure and is analyzing data from events such as Hurricane Sandy and the 2010 flood. Other States have formed similar commissions. I brought last night to our President's State of the Union Address Grover Fugate, who is executive director of our Coastal Resources Management Council, which has to look at and address every day and plan for the effects of our rising sea level, increased storm activity, and the risk that that portends to the shores of our ocean State. For the past 3 years, Rhode Island has also been part of a regional greenhouse gas initiative nicknamed ReGGie, along with our neighbors in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. Our region caps carbon emissions and sells permits to emit greenhouses gases to powerplants. This has created economic incentives for both the States and our utilities to invest in energy efficiency and in renewable energy development. And consumers have reaped the benefit of lower prices. In 2012, regional emissions were 45 percent below the annual cap, so just last week the State announced an agreement to cap future emissions at the 2012 rate. I am proud of the work done in my State, and I know the Presiding Officer's home State of Connecticut is working equally hard on this issue. We are working to both slow climate change and to prepare for what are now its inevitable effects. But sadly, when it comes to this particular threat to our national security and our prosperity, Congress is asleep. It is time for us to wake up. The health and safety of Americans and of people all over the world is at risk. We must awaken to what is happening in the world around us and to the fact that the carbon pollution we are emitting is causing it. This is our responsibility. This is our generation's responsibility. It is, indeed, our duty. It is time for us to wake up. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am going to be joined fairly soon by the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, to discuss the upcoming sequester and the impact the sequester will have on this country if it is allowed to go forward. Chairman Levin has been pretty clear about this, as have our national security officials on the defense side. It is equally harsh on the nondefense side. But most important, it will be a real blow to the economy. The economists now are saying if we let the sequester kick in as scheduled, it will cost us 1 million jobs. One million Americans will lose their jobs because we let the sequester hit. Other things--cuts to education; 70,000 young children kicked off of Head Start; 10,000 teacher jobs at risk; funding for up to 7,200 special education teachers and aides and staff could be cut. Food safety--2,100 fewer food inspectors. Research--several thousands of our researchers who are doing cutting-edge research in all sorts of areas from electronics to finding cures for diseases could lose their jobs. Up to 373,000 seriously mentally ill adults and seriously emotionally disturbed children could go untreated at a time when we are talking about the need for more treatment in the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, CT. In law enforcement we could see a lowering of capacity equivalent to more than 1,000 Federal agents. Nutrition assistance-- 600,000 women and children would be dropped from the Department of Agriculture's nutrition programs. More than 100,000 formerly homeless people, including veterans, would be removed from their current housing and emergency shelter programs because they would no longer be funded under these cuts. It is a deadly serious thing, the sequester that is coming at us. There are much better alternatives. What I am doing today is filing two pieces of legislation that would completely eliminate the sequester and pay for the elimination of the sequester, not by running up the debt or the deficit, but by repealing tax giveaways, giveaways in the Tax Code. One of the bills would put in enough tax giveaways that we could get rid of the sequester for about a year, which would allow the budget process we are embarked on now to conclude and then we would be ready to go with the new budget and go forward in the regular order that way, letting the budget process drive the decision. The other way is simply to get rid of the sequester for the full 10 years, just get rid of it for once and for all; do it now and the other bill I proposed would do that. Both bills do this without raising taxes, by going after tax giveaways, and by avoiding these kinds of Draconian defense and nondefense cuts that have been now--I guess ``estimated'' is probably the right word but I think they are pretty confident would cost America a million jobs. A million American families would lose their paychecks because we did this. The first point I want to make as I go about this is these tax expenditures are no small thing. Here is what we collect through the income tax every year from individuals: $1.09 trillion; round numbers, $1 trillion. Here is what we give away in tax deductions, loopholes, different expenditures and deductions: $1.02 trillion. So on the individual side what we pass through the Tax Code and back to people is almost as big as what we actually collect. When you look at the corporate income tax revenue, the corporate income tax revenue is $181 billion in 2011. Here is what went back through to corporations in tax expenditures: $157 billion. Another way to look at it is there is $2.1 trillion of tax liability in this country. One trillion dollars of it comes back to the government in the form of actual revenues and another trillion of it gets distributed through the gimmicks and loopholes and deductions and tricks and so forth in the Tax Code. On the corporate side there is a total of $338 billion in tax liability, of which only $181 billion actually appears as revenue to the government, and the other $157 billion gets distributed again because of tricks and gimmicks and loopholes and provisions in the Tax Code. What some of our colleagues want us to do is say: Well, we raised tax rates once--just now. We raised them on only the wealthiest families in America. We only raised them back to where they were under President Clinton when the economy was booming, but we did that and we should look no further. The problem with that analysis is that only looks at the revenue that is actually collected. It doesn't look at the loopholes. It doesn't look at the tax expenditures either on the individual side or on the corporate side. It is also worth noting that if we add these two up and we get $2.1 trillion or, more likely on the corporate side, if we add these up and we get $338 billion, there is more money out there which that doesn't count. That is the money that never shows up for taxation in the first place because it has been hidden in offshore tax refuges. People have pretended their income is in funds in the Cayman Islands, and they have pretended their intellectual property is in a five-person office in Ireland. There are a lot of gimmicks by which a lot of the money never even gets into this calculation. When we look at the pain the sequester is going to cause, it makes a lot of sense to look at the tax expenditures, which amount to a total of $1.17 trillion, and use that to offset. Another thing worth looking at, just to remember where we are, is that in the last 2 years on this question of reducing the deficit, we have reduced the deficit by $2.4 trillion, and $1.7 trillion of that came in spending cuts and $700 billion came in the form of new revenues. In terms of a balanced approach to deficit reduction that looks at both spending cuts and revenues, we are not balanced yet. We are nearly $1 trillion ahead on the spending cut side. So when Republicans say we are only going to look at spending cuts going forward, they are not just saying that all those goodies in the Tax Code that go to wealthy individuals and corporations as tax deductions, loopholes, and expenditures are off limits, they are also saying that we are going to make it even more unbalanced than it is now. By the way, the way I get to $1.7 trillion is by taking $1.46 trillion, which is the actual cuts, and then adding the interest savings that are associated with it. And I take the same interest savings on the revenue side, so it is even, the way we have allocated the interest. I see Chairman Levin is here, so I am going to yield to him when he returns. Let's look at one more graph while we are here. As we saw here, a lot of this is corporate tax expenditures. Every year there is $157 billion in corporate tax expenditures, which calls to mind, how are we doing in terms of a fair balance between individuals and corporations in the American tax system? Well, we have done some research, and it turns out that corporations are providing less and less of our revenues. When we go back to 1935, this chart shows that for every $1 of revenue the U.S. Government got from an individual, it got $1 from corporations. It was 1 to 1--individuals $1, corporations $1. By 1948 it became 2 to 1. For every $1 that a corporation contributed to our Nation's revenues, individuals had to kick in $2. In 1971 we had 3 to 1--$1 from corporate America, $3 from individuals, regular Americans. By 1984 that was up to 4 to 1--$1 from corporate, $4 from individuals. The ratio as of 2011 is 6 to 1, which means the amount of tax burden individuals in this country bear has climbed sixfold compared to corporations meeting their responsibilities. One of the reasons is that so many American corporations are hiding money offshore and away from the taxman. Now, whether these are the kinds of accounts we heard about during the Presidential campaign, such as in the Cayman Islands and so forth, or whether it is locating intellectual property in some faraway country and using internal transactions to move revenue to avoid the taxman over and over, Chairman Levin and his committee on investigations have looked into this and over and over again, and they have shown this is a really strong area in which an enormous amount of money can be raised. The problem with doing it the other way--going after Americans again and asking them to kick in even more in spending cuts rather than going after the corporate high jinks in the Tax Code--is that leads us down this path of austerity that Republicans have championed. The problem with that austerity path is that when we get into a recession--as we have been in--we should try to cut our way out of it. The problem with that is it has not worked. We argued against that theory from the beginning because it seems wrong, it doesn't make logical sense, and it runs against a lot of principles of economics. Over and over again, our colleagues said: No, no, no. We just need to cut our way out of this, and that will be our solution. When we get in trouble with the economy, we cut spending. That has proven to be a disaster. Where they have gone to austerity in Spain, the unemployment rate is 26.6 percent, and GDP growth is negative. Their economy is actually shrinking. Greece has an unemployment rate of 26.8 percent, and their GDP growth is negative 6 percent. Their economy is shrinking even more rapidly. In Portugal, the unemployment rate is 16.3 percent, and the GDP growth is negative 3 percent. By comparison, the United States, although things are not right yet, is doing much better. I see that the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee is here on the Senate floor, so I will yield at this point.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan. I appreciate very much that he has signed on as a cosponsor of both my 1-year and full 10-year--9 now--sequestration alternatives that avoid a calamity for our economy, the potential crash of 1 million jobs, by looking exactly where Senator Levin suggests--at the tax loopholes. As I showed a moment ago, it used to be, back in 1935, a ratio of 1 to 1 of dollars paid by individual Americans in taxes compared to dollars paid by corporations in taxes. Now it is 6 to 1--$6 out of a family's pocket for every $1. What has allowed America's corporate world to lower their tax liability by so much--down to one-sixth of what it used to be relative to what regular Americans pay? Well, the biggest chunk of it is all the money that flows out through the Tax Code. We have virtually the same amount flowing out through the Tax Code as we actually keep our hands on as revenue. So for $2 trillion in tax eligibility, half of that goes right back, on the personal side, and out here, it is $338 billion, and $157 billion that goes back. It never sees the tax man. It goes straight back through the Tax Code. Lobbyists have been here for years working on those loopholes and making sure different industries and interests get those benefits. That is where it all goes. That is why we are in a situation in which we have what the distinguished Senator from Michigan has talked about--all of these disgraceful loopholes. I echo his point of view. Now is an important time to do this because the alternative, which is more spending cuts, pushes us down the austerity path that has failed in Europe and that is projected by the Bipartisan Policy Center to cost us 1 million jobs. There is an alternative: to go after all of these tax loopholes which, as the chairman said--as Senator Levin said--we should be going after those anyway. They are just plain wrong on their own. If we had a balanced budget, we should be going after them. It is simply not fair. These are relics of power and lobbying and special influence and special pleading in the Tax Code, and we need to be rid of them. Now is a very good time to be rid of them to avoid pitching the economy into recession. I know my two pieces of legislation are not going to pass. We are not going to pass a bill that has the sequester 100 percent paid for by new revenues from closing tax loopholes. I wish we would, but I know we are not going to. My point in filing the legislation is to prove that it could be done. It could readily be done. It could be done with pieces of legislation that Senators in this body have supported over and over and over again. So it is not necessary to walk into the fiscal band saw of sequestration: to have our national defense take the hit it is going to take; to have regular American families take the hit they are going to take; to have the economy, with 1 million jobs lost, take the hit it is going to take, all for what? To protect the big oil companies so they can keep getting subsidies from the American people? Is that the choice we want to make? So that a billionaire who puts his name on a museum gets more charitable tax bang for his charitable buck than a regular family when they just give money to their church every week? Is that the stuff we want to protect at that cost? That is the question we will have to answer. I am very grateful to the chairman, Senator Levin. He has been working on this for years. His Subcommittee on Investigations has been looking into this in detail. His legislation is a part of what I am proposing as one of the pay- fors. I look forward to continuing to work with him. The American people have our back on this one. This is a starker contrast between where the American people want to go and how to protect them and our economy versus special interest politics in this town that has carved out all of these loopholes that allow corporations to effectively cheat on their taxes. Effectively. It is not technically cheating because they have gotten the law written so it allows that practice. But if a person is a regular American who doesn't have a lobbyist to get them that same sort of treatment, it looks an awful lot like cheating. Let me close by saying if we go the other path--if we follow this austerity route we have seen to be so calamitous in Europe--here are some quotes: If the full sequester takes place as scheduled, 1 million jobs may be lost. That is the Bipartisan Policy Center. Paraphrasing: Growth in real GDP would be about 1\1/4\ percentage points different, depending on which path we choose. We lose 1.25 percentage points GDP growth by hitting this sequester. That is from the Congressional Budget Office. If we look at the American Enterprise Institute, hardly a leftwing group: An abrupt spending sequester at a rate of about $110 billion per year-- Which is what we are looking at-- scheduled to begin March 1 could cause a U.S. recession. Robert Frank, a very well regarded economics professor at Cornell, has said: The cuts scheduled are not a way to run a rational government. Cuts of any kind at this time are not a good idea. It is recessionary. It would slow growth for sure and put people out of work. Another organization not known for its leftwing views, the Wall Street Journal, says this austerity method ``threatens to create a vicious cycle, as mass layoffs to meet budget targets spark a deeper contraction, reducing tax revenue and increasing welfare costs as well as damping consumption.'' That is exactly what has happened in other places. Look at what they say in England where they have done this. The conservative Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner describes what is going on over there. ``This is a truly desperate state of affairs. . . . We seem to have the worst of all possible worlds, with nil growth, some very obvious cuts in the quantity and quality of public services, but pretty much zero progress in getting on top of the country's debts.'' That is not the way we want to go. That is the wrong way to go. There is another way, and it is to look at that vast part of the Tax Code both for corporations and, primarily, for wealthy individuals that allows literally nearly half of what would be tax revenue to flow back through the loopholes. That is where we should be doing our work. That is where we should be looking. I applaud and appreciate Senator Levin for his long and expert leadership in this area. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am going to be joined fairly soon by the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Levin, to discuss the upcoming sequester and the impact the sequester will have on this country if it is allowed to go forward. Chairman Levin has been pretty clear about this, as have our national security officials on the defense side. It is equally harsh on the nondefense side. But most important, it will be a real blow to the economy. The economists now are saying if we let the sequester kick in as scheduled, it will cost us 1 million jobs. One million Americans will lose their jobs because we let the sequester hit. Other things--cuts to education; 70,000 young children kicked off of Head Start; 10,000 teacher jobs at risk; funding for up to 7,200 special education teachers and aides and staff could be cut. Food safety--2,100 fewer food inspectors. Research--several thousands of our researchers who are doing cutting-edge research in all sorts of areas from electronics to finding cures for diseases could lose their jobs. Up to 373,000 seriously mentally ill adults and seriously emotionally disturbed children could go untreated at a time when we are talking about the need for more treatment in the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, CT. In law enforcement we could see a lowering of capacity equivalent to more than 1,000 Federal agents. Nutrition assistance-- 600,000 women and children would be dropped from the Department of Agriculture's nutrition programs. More than 100,000 formerly homeless people, including veterans, would be removed from their current housing and emergency shelter programs because they would no longer be funded under these cuts. It is a deadly serious thing, the sequester that is coming at us. There are much better alternatives. What I am doing today is filing two pieces of legislation that would completely eliminate the sequester and pay for the elimination of the sequester, not by running up the debt or the deficit, but by repealing tax giveaways, giveaways in the Tax Code. One of the bills would put in enough tax giveaways that we could get rid of the sequester for about a year, which would allow the budget process we are embarked on now to conclude and then we would be ready to go with the new budget and go forward in the regular order that way, letting the budget process drive the decision. The other way is simply to get rid of the sequester for the full 10 years, just get rid of it for once and for all; do it now and the other bill I proposed would do that. Both bills do this without raising taxes, by going after tax giveaways, and by avoiding these kinds of Draconian defense and nondefense cuts that have been now--I guess ``estimated'' is probably the right word but I think they are pretty confident would cost America a million jobs. A million American families would lose their paychecks because we did this. The first point I want to make as I go about this is these tax expenditures are no small thing. Here is what we collect through the income tax every year from individuals: $1.09 trillion; round numbers, $1 trillion. Here is what we give away in tax deductions, loopholes, different expenditures and deductions: $1.02 trillion. So on the individual side what we pass through the Tax Code and back to people is almost as big as what we actually collect. When you look at the corporate income tax revenue, the corporate income tax revenue is $181 billion in 2011. Here is what went back through to corporations in tax expenditures: $157 billion. Another way to look at it is there is $2.1 trillion of tax liability in this country. One trillion dollars of it comes back to the government in the form of actual revenues and another trillion of it gets distributed through the gimmicks and loopholes and deductions and tricks and so forth in the Tax Code. On the corporate side there is a total of $338 billion in tax liability, of which only $181 billion actually appears as revenue to the government, and the other $157 billion gets distributed again because of tricks and gimmicks and loopholes and provisions in the Tax Code. What some of our colleagues want us to do is say: Well, we raised tax rates once--just now. We raised them on only the wealthiest families in America. We only raised them back to where they were under President Clinton when the economy was booming, but we did that and we should look no further. The problem with that analysis is that only looks at the revenue that is actually collected. It doesn't look at the loopholes. It doesn't look at the tax expenditures either on the individual side or on the corporate side. It is also worth noting that if we add these two up and we get $2.1 trillion or, more likely on the corporate side, if we add these up and we get $338 billion, there is more money out there which that doesn't count. That is the money that never shows up for taxation in the first place because it has been hidden in offshore tax refuges. People have pretended their income is in funds in the Cayman Islands, and they have pretended their intellectual property is in a five-person office in Ireland. There are a lot of gimmicks by which a lot of the money never even gets into this calculation. When we look at the pain the sequester is going to cause, it makes a lot of sense to look at the tax expenditures, which amount to a total of $1.17 trillion, and use that to offset. Another thing worth looking at, just to remember where we are, is that in the last 2 years on this question of reducing the deficit, we have reduced the deficit by $2.4 trillion, and $1.7 trillion of that came in spending cuts and $700 billion came in the form of new revenues. In terms of a balanced approach to deficit reduction that looks at both spending cuts and revenues, we are not balanced yet. We are nearly $1 trillion ahead on the spending cut side. So when Republicans say we are only going to look at spending cuts going forward, they are not just saying that all those goodies in the Tax Code that go to wealthy individuals and corporations as tax deductions, loopholes, and expenditures are off limits, they are also saying that we are going to make it even more unbalanced than it is now. By the way, the way I get to $1.7 trillion is by taking $1.46 trillion, which is the actual cuts, and then adding the interest savings that are associated with it. And I take the same interest savings on the revenue side, so it is even, the way we have allocated the interest. I see Chairman Levin is here, so I am going to yield to him when he returns. Let's look at one more graph while we are here. As we saw here, a lot of this is corporate tax expenditures. Every year there is $157 billion in corporate tax expenditures, which calls to mind, how are we doing in terms of a fair balance between individuals and corporations in the American tax system? Well, we have done some research, and it turns out that corporations are providing less and less of our revenues. When we go back to 1935, this chart shows that for every $1 of revenue the U.S. Government got from an individual, it got $1 from corporations. It was 1 to 1--individuals $1, corporations $1. By 1948 it became 2 to 1. For every $1 that a corporation contributed to our Nation's revenues, individuals had to kick in $2. In 1971 we had 3 to 1--$1 from corporate America, $3 from individuals, regular Americans. By 1984 that was up to 4 to 1--$1 from corporate, $4 from individuals. The ratio as of 2011 is 6 to 1, which means the amount of tax burden individuals in this country bear has climbed sixfold compared to corporations meeting their responsibilities. One of the reasons is that so many American corporations are hiding money offshore and away from the taxman. Now, whether these are the kinds of accounts we heard about during the Presidential campaign, such as in the Cayman Islands and so forth, or whether it is locating intellectual property in some faraway country and using internal transactions to move revenue to avoid the taxman over and over, Chairman Levin and his committee on investigations have looked into this and over and over again, and they have shown this is a really strong area in which an enormous amount of money can be raised. The problem with doing it the other way--going after Americans again and asking them to kick in even more in spending cuts rather than going after the corporate high jinks in the Tax Code--is that leads us down this path of austerity that Republicans have championed. The problem with that austerity path is that when we get into a recession--as we have been in--we should try to cut our way out of it. The problem with that is it has not worked. We argued against that theory from the beginning because it seems wrong, it doesn't make logical sense, and it runs against a lot of principles of economics. Over and over again, our colleagues said: No, no, no. We just need to cut our way out of this, and that will be our solution. When we get in trouble with the economy, we cut spending. That has proven to be a disaster. Where they have gone to austerity in Spain, the unemployment rate is 26.6 percent, and GDP growth is negative. Their economy is actually shrinking. Greece has an unemployment rate of 26.8 percent, and their GDP growth is negative 6 percent. Their economy is shrinking even more rapidly. In Portugal, the unemployment rate is 16.3 percent, and the GDP growth is negative 3 percent. By comparison, the United States, although things are not right yet, is doing much better. I see that the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee is here on the Senate floor, so I will yield at this point.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan. I appreciate very much that he has signed on as a cosponsor of both my 1-year and full 10-year--9 now--sequestration alternatives that avoid a calamity for our economy, the potential crash of 1 million jobs, by looking exactly where Senator Levin suggests--at the tax loopholes. As I showed a moment ago, it used to be, back in 1935, a ratio of 1 to 1 of dollars paid by individual Americans in taxes compared to dollars paid by corporations in taxes. Now it is 6 to 1--$6 out of a family's pocket for every $1. What has allowed America's corporate world to lower their tax liability by so much--down to one-sixth of what it used to be relative to what regular Americans pay? Well, the biggest chunk of it is all the money that flows out through the Tax Code. We have virtually the same amount flowing out through the Tax Code as we actually keep our hands on as revenue. So for $2 trillion in tax eligibility, half of that goes right back, on the personal side, and out here, it is $338 billion, and $157 billion that goes back. It never sees the tax man. It goes straight back through the Tax Code. Lobbyists have been here for years working on those loopholes and making sure different industries and interests get those benefits. That is where it all goes. That is why we are in a situation in which we have what the distinguished Senator from Michigan has talked about--all of these disgraceful loopholes. I echo his point of view. Now is an important time to do this because the alternative, which is more spending cuts, pushes us down the austerity path that has failed in Europe and that is projected by the Bipartisan Policy Center to cost us 1 million jobs. There is an alternative: to go after all of these tax loopholes which, as the chairman said--as Senator Levin said--we should be going after those anyway. They are just plain wrong on their own. If we had a balanced budget, we should be going after them. It is simply not fair. These are relics of power and lobbying and special influence and special pleading in the Tax Code, and we need to be rid of them. Now is a very good time to be rid of them to avoid pitching the economy into recession. I know my two pieces of legislation are not going to pass. We are not going to pass a bill that has the sequester 100 percent paid for by new revenues from closing tax loopholes. I wish we would, but I know we are not going to. My point in filing the legislation is to prove that it could be done. It could readily be done. It could be done with pieces of legislation that Senators in this body have supported over and over and over again. So it is not necessary to walk into the fiscal band saw of sequestration: to have our national defense take the hit it is going to take; to have regular American families take the hit they are going to take; to have the economy, with 1 million jobs lost, take the hit it is going to take, all for what? To protect the big oil companies so they can keep getting subsidies from the American people? Is that the choice we want to make? So that a billionaire who puts his name on a museum gets more charitable tax bang for his charitable buck than a regular family when they just give money to their church every week? Is that the stuff we want to protect at that cost? That is the question we will have to answer. I am very grateful to the chairman, Senator Levin. He has been working on this for years. His Subcommittee on Investigations has been looking into this in detail. His legislation is a part of what I am proposing as one of the pay- fors. I look forward to continuing to work with him. The American people have our back on this one. This is a starker contrast between where the American people want to go and how to protect them and our economy versus special interest politics in this town that has carved out all of these loopholes that allow corporations to effectively cheat on their taxes. Effectively. It is not technically cheating because they have gotten the law written so it allows that practice. But if a person is a regular American who doesn't have a lobbyist to get them that same sort of treatment, it looks an awful lot like cheating. Let me close by saying if we go the other path--if we follow this austerity route we have seen to be so calamitous in Europe--here are some quotes: If the full sequester takes place as scheduled, 1 million jobs may be lost. That is the Bipartisan Policy Center. Paraphrasing: Growth in real GDP would be about 1\1/4\ percentage points different, depending on which path we choose. We lose 1.25 percentage points GDP growth by hitting this sequester. That is from the Congressional Budget Office. If we look at the American Enterprise Institute, hardly a leftwing group: An abrupt spending sequester at a rate of about $110 billion per year-- Which is what we are looking at-- scheduled to begin March 1 could cause a U.S. recession. Robert Frank, a very well regarded economics professor at Cornell, has said: The cuts scheduled are not a way to run a rational government. Cuts of any kind at this time are not a good idea. It is recessionary. It would slow growth for sure and put people out of work. Another organization not known for its leftwing views, the Wall Street Journal, says this austerity method ``threatens to create a vicious cycle, as mass layoffs to meet budget targets spark a deeper contraction, reducing tax revenue and increasing welfare costs as well as damping consumption.'' That is exactly what has happened in other places. Look at what they say in England where they have done this. The conservative Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner describes what is going on over there. ``This is a truly desperate state of affairs. . . . We seem to have the worst of all possible worlds, with nil growth, some very obvious cuts in the quantity and quality of public services, but pretty much zero progress in getting on top of the country's debts.'' That is not the way we want to go. That is the wrong way to go. There is another way, and it is to look at that vast part of the Tax Code both for corporations and, primarily, for wealthy individuals that allows literally nearly half of what would be tax revenue to flow back through the loopholes. That is where we should be doing our work. That is where we should be looking. I applaud and appreciate Senator Levin for his long and expert leadership in this area. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. President. By the way, what a pleasure it is to see the new Senator presiding. Climate Change Mr. President, I rise every week on this Senate floor to talk about the dangers of carbon pollution to our atmosphere and to our oceans. This week I want to preface my remarks by talking about America and her role in the world. I can use some very well-known words to make my point. From John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan, we have described our great American experiment as ``a city on a hill.'' Indeed, our hymn ``America the Beautiful'' sings about our ``alabaster cities' gleam.'' President Kennedy's inaugural address said that ``the glow from [our] fire can truly light the world,'' and a generation later, President Obama's first inaugural noted that our ``ideals still light the world.'' We Americans have described ourselves as a beacon of hope, a light in the darkness, our lamp lifted up in welcome and in example. Daniel Webster years ago said that our Founders ``set the world an example.'' That was what the founding of America meant--our Founders ``set the world an example.'' President Clinton has pointed out that the power of our example, the power of that example in the world, has always been greater than any example of our power. That was the way Bill Clinton described it. And when Daniel Webster said that our Founding Fathers had set before the world an example, he went on to say this: The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth. I have spoken before about this small globe of ours, the light of dawn sweeping each morning across its face, lighting cities and cottages, barrios and villages, and across the globe's face people coming forth from homes and hovels into that morning Sun, each knowing, from our American example, that life does not have to be the way it is for them, knowing that an example of liberty and self-government stands free before them, that America stands as an alternative and a rebuke to the tyranny, to the corruption, or to the injustice in which they may be enmired. So like many of my colleagues, I believe America has a special destiny in the world. America's special destiny does not come easy, and it does not come alone. America's special destiny confers upon us a special duty. What is that duty? That duty is to live up to our own example, to see to it that our lamp gleams brightly, to be the promise that each dawn America offers this small globe. So let's look at climate change in that light. What if our carbon pollution is, in fact, changing the planet? What if, in fact, we know this, we know this to any reasonable degree of responsible certainty? And what if, knowing this, we do nothing? And what if the reason we do nothing is the influence of special interests who profit from that very pollution or the groundless ideology of a fringe? What sort of example is that for America to set? How does that meet our special duty? How does that advance our special destiny? Look at what other continents and nations will experience, particularly those that have not enjoyed the economic development we achieved through our carbon economy. I will start in Africa, where temperatures are expected to increase faster than the rest of the world. Rainfall patterns are also expected to change, decreasing in some areas, increasing in others. Floods, droughts, and new crop diseases linked to changes in temperature and rainfall will hurt African farmers in a continent where subsistence farming is still so important to so many individuals' way of life. Research shows that production of crops, such as maize--a core staple in Africa--will decrease by 30 percent over the next 20 years due to climate change. More frequent and severe extreme weather will have dire consequences there. We saw, just a few weeks ago, the worst flood in a decade, killing at least 38 people in Mozambique and leaving 150,000 homeless. Parts of Russia have warmed between 3.5 and 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit just in the last century, leading to the loss of permafrost. Russians, like Alaskans--whom I spoke about before--build homes and roads and infrastructure on the permafrost. When it disappears, communities lose the very foundations on which they are built. NOAA says that the Russian heat wave of 2010, which killed tens of thousands of people, was the most severe since records were first kept back in 1880. And this type of heat wave is now more and more likely. Go to the Land Down Under, where warmer and more acidic oceans have fueled a widespread coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is a natural wonder. It is one of the great wonders of the world. Economically, it is the basis of a $4 billion tourism industry in Australia, and it is dying before our eyes. Scientists say that climate change heightens the devastation from other natural disasters in Australia, such as the 2009 bushfires that claimed 173 lives, the 2011 flooding that killed dozens, and the wildfires that have already damaged hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of Australians this year. Europe is getting hotter, with increased risk of summertime droughts in Central Europe and in the Mediterranean. Tree lines creep higher in European mountain ranges. Glaciers in Central Europe shrink. Alpine ski areas have been forced to adapt to higher temperatures and less snow. South America has been warming, and glaciers in the Andes are retreating at an increasing rate. I have a symbol of that retreat in my office. Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University and Clark Weaver of NASA loaned me this artifact. It is a piece of a plant that has been preserved under the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru for at least 5,200 years--more than 3,000 years before Jesus Christ walked the Earth. This plant was overcovered by glacier and has stayed that way ever since. Now, thanks to glacial retreat, that piece of plant, which was preserved by the weight and cold of the glacier, is in my office. Closer to home, in Canada, a tropical fungus that causes lung disease and meningitis has been discovered. Scientists think the deadly yeast likely came to Vancouver Island in ballast water from ships, but now-- now--it can survive there because of higher temperatures. In the Arctic, we are losing sea ice, permafrost, glaciers, and ice sheets. Arctic sea ice is shrinking at about 5 percent per decade. With that shrinkage, there is less ice to reflect sunlight back into space. More heat is captured, and the warming accelerates. At this rate, Arctic summers will be ice free within decades. For the United States, that means new Arctic waterways to defend, an expanded theater of operations in the Arctic, and increased competition for Arctic resources. Wherever you look around the globe, climate change changes habitats, changes where plants can grow, and loads the dice for more frequent and more severe extreme weather. Heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms create victims and refugees who require humanitarian relief. The poorest nations, those least prepared to weather natural disasters, will suffer the most. Those nations will look to us and to the rest of the developed world for help. They will not look to us for help without reason. The United States is responsible for one-quarter of all industrial-age carbon pollution in the world. Today we no longer emit the most carbon dioxide; China has passed us. But we have emitted the most over time. Nations all over the world have implemented carbon reduction plans. Some have implemented carbon pricing. Many invest far more than we do in renewable energy. The United States is falling behind rather than leading. Even China, today's biggest polluter, recently committed to reduce the amount of carbon it emits relative to its economic output. In 2009, China passed the United States of America in renewable energy investment. Looking at all that, it is hard to imagine that those who will suffer, those who will be displaced, those who will lose their ancient livelihoods all around the world will look benevolently upon our Nation. It is hard to believe they will not resent that they are forced to bear those burdens at the price of our carbon economy. One can readily imagine extremists who wish to rally disenchanted people against us, even to violence against us, finding fertile opportunity where that resentment festers. Will it not be, as Daniel Webster said, ``an argument against [our] experiment?'' Will it not be an argument against our experiment that our democracy, our great American democracy, seized in the grip of polluting special interests or fringe political ideology, was unable to respond to the facts around us to protect ourselves and our world? Will there not be ready ears easy to fill with that argument against our experiment, among those who have been uprooted from traditional homes and livelihoods or among those whose homes and livelihoods have been disturbed by climate refugees? Destiny means duty. Destiny means duty, and we are failing in that duty. It is time for us to awake in this moment to that duty. We can expect in the long and blessed future of this country to have to face unpleasant facts, facts more unpleasant than the facts of carbon pollution and climate change and ocean acidification. We have done this before. With God's help, we will do it again. But if we cannot bring ourselves to our senses now, in this moment, in our day and hour to wake and face these facts, what a terrible admission that is by this generation of Americans. Stand we a chance of being looked back at as a greatest generation if we fail to address this greatest issue facing our planet? Lord Acton noted ``the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.'' Truly, that penalty will be inflicted on us, on our generation, if we do not awaken to these plain facts and to our plain duty. I see the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee is nearby and may well seek the floor with respect to the Violence Against Women Act. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Rhode Island is mourning the loss of one of our most renowned and accomplished citizens. Richard Walton was an activist, a teacher, a journalist, and a force for good in our State, in our Nation, and indeed in the world. It would take most of us many lifetimes to achieve as much and to touch as many as Richard did in his 84 years. Richard organized workers to win collective bargaining rights, and he organized communities to win social justice. He helped build houses for homeless Rhode Islanders, and he helped preserve Rhode Island's historic buildings. He volunteered at and helped lead the State's largest soup kitchen, and he emceed concerts for and helped lead the Stone Soup Folks Arts Foundation. He served in the Navy, and he protested against war. Richard worked to improve our country, promoting third-party politics. He was the Citizens Party candidate for Vice President in 1984, and was a central figure in the founding of the Green Party. Richard worked to improve our world, documenting movements for independence in Africa and heading up educational and medical initiatives in Central America. Richard was known for his hospitality. Every year he welcomed hundreds of friends and strangers to his home on Pawtuxet Cove in Warwick for a combination birthday party/folk music jam. And he was known for his generosity. He asked his guests to donate to one of his favorite causes instead of bringing gifts. One of the many social welfare organizations that benefitted from Richard's passion and brilliance was the George Wiley Center, a grassroots antipoverty nonprofit. In 2008, the Center asked Richard to compose its statement of philosophy. It begins like this: The George Wiley Center is, in the short term, ``a voice for the voiceless,'' but our enduring task is to help them find their own voice, to speak out for their own legitimate basic needs and not let those in power treat them as powerless, for they are not powerless once they recognize that their numbers count, that their voices count, that their moral worth as human beings, as residents of the United States, counts. Richard's allies would attest that this was indeed his own philosophy, lived out each day of his life. Richard will be missed by many, including his children, Cathy and Richard. But his legacy of justice, compassion, and empowerment will be felt by many, for years to come.