Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 24, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I also ask unanimous consent that two fellows in my office, Mr. Todd Bianco and Mr. Benjamin Cady, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 6:30 p.m. today and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we all know in the Senate and in the House of Representatives about the low grades Congress receives in public opinion polling. Everybody knows what the public reports: Congress is partisan. Congress is divided. Congress is dysfunctional. One recent survey that got a lot of media attention reported that Congress is less popular than a root canal. Across the country, people are fed up with Congress. Indeed, Members of Congress are fed up with Congress. Americans want a Congress that can take on the tough challenges of today. But another recent poll by USA Today and Gallup showed that 77 percent of Americans feel ``the way politics works in Washington these days is causing serious harm to the United States.'' Americans think Congress has a problem. Indeed, Americans think Congress is a problem. Well, if we want to fix a problem, we ought to be specific about it. A doctor wouldn't try to fix a patient without a precise understanding of the patient's problem. An engineer wouldn't try to fix a system without a precise understanding of the system's problem. A mechanic wouldn't try to fix your car without a precise understanding of your car's problem. So if we are going to fix what is wrong with Congress, we better have a precise understanding of what Congress' problem is. Let's start with the Senate. We do have our share of dysfunction in the Senate, I will confess. Undoubtedly, the filibuster is being abused. Certainly, nominees awaiting confirmation are unjustifiably delayed. Indeed, they are held hostage. So everything is not all roses in the Senate. But we did pass a highway bill, a bipartisan highway bill, that passed the Senate with 74 votes. We did pass a farm bill, a bipartisan farm bill. Although I did not support that particular measure, it was a bipartisan measure that passed the Senate with 64 votes. We passed the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief bill, also in bipartisan fashion, with 62 votes. We had open debate, we had discussions, we had amendments, and we passed legislation. Particularly, we passed, by a powerful bipartisan vote of 89 to 8, a bill that avoided tax increases for 99 percent of Americans and extended emergency unemployment benefits for another year and protected us from the fiscal cliff. When it comes to legislating, the Senate actually has a pretty strong bipartisan record. How did those Senate bills do on the House side? Well, the House couldn't pass its own highway bill. Congress has been doing highway bills since the Eisenhower years. This isn't rocket science. The House couldn't do one. The best the House of Representatives could do was to pass a short-term extension that allowed some of their Members to get to conference on the Senate bill, but they took no bill into conference because they couldn't pass one. Even then, they delayed the conference negotiations, putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy before they finally came around and passed an amended version of the Senate bipartisan highway bill. So their record on the highway bill is nothing to be proud of. The House also couldn't pass a farm bill. Farm bills are pretty ordinary legislative business too. We do them all the time, but the House has passed no farm bill. We passed a strong bipartisan Senate farm bill. They can't even agree to call up the bipartisan Senate farm bill and pass it. With 80 percent of the agricultural land of the country in drought, there is no farm bill. It is trapped in the sinkhole of the House. The House almost couldn't pass a disaster bill. If you go back to Hurricane Katrina, when Katrina hit back in 2005, the House of Representatives then had emergency aid on its way to the 850,000 damaged or destroyed homes of the gulf coast in 11 days. In 11 days aid was on its way. This time, with this House of Representatives, the House balked at the bipartisan Senate disaster bill and, finally, it took them 78 days after the landfall of Hurricane Sandy to send help to the half million homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by that storm. The condemnation of the House of Republicans was bipartisan. The Republican Governor of New Jersey blamed, and I quote, ``the toxic internal politics,'' the toxic internal politics, of the House Republicans for this fiasco. ``This,'' he said, and I will quote again, ``is why the American people hate Congress.'' Is there a problem over in the House? You bet there is, to the point where one departing House Republican Member compared the Speaker of the House to the manager of an asylum and the Speaker's House Republican colleagues to the asylum inmates. That is pretty strong criticism from within the Republican Party. The reason I give this speech is to try to be precise about what the problem is that has driven Congress's approval into the cellar, and what exactly is that problem? Well, I think the House votes on the so- called fiscal cliff bill and on the emergency Hurricane Sandy aid illustrate what the problem is. Those bills passed the House for one reason and one reason only: The Speaker of the House of Representatives waived what is called the Hastert rule. What is the Hastert rule? The Hastert rule is probably the most significant contributor to dysfunction in Washington right now. It is not even really a rule, it is a policy, a political policy of Republican Speakers. It began under former Republican Speaker Hastert, hence its common name as the Hastert rule. The rule is that the Speaker will bring no bill to the floor of the House of Representatives without a majority of his own party supporting the bill. It doesn't matter about a majority of Congress; Democratic votes don't count. It is only when the Speaker has a majority of Republican votes supporting it that the Speaker will allow legislation to come to the floor. It has actually gotten a little bit harder under Speaker Boehner, who has said, I don't feel comfortable scheduling any controversial legislation unless I know we have the votes on our side first, which sounds like he is saying he has to be able to produce a majority of the House out of just the Republican caucus before bringing a bill. But whether it is the original Hastert rule requiring a majority of the majority before they will even bring a bill to the floor or what appears to be the Boehner rule, that they have to have the votes on ``our side first,'' it is a rule of obstruction. There are somewhere between 50 and 60 Members of the House Republican tea party caucus and a whole bunch more House Republicans who are scared of the tea party and scared of what might happen to them if they get a tea party primary challenger. So getting a majority of his party together for anything reasonable is a challenge for Speaker Boehner. House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to support a highway bill. So the Hastert rule kicked in and there was no House highway bill, none--they couldn't do one at all because they couldn't get it through their conference under the Hastert rule. That is why there was no highway bill. The House Republicans could not get a majority of their conference to support a farm bill, so under the Hastert rule there is no House farm bill. The Speaker won't bring up the stalled bipartisan Senate farm bill, because under the Hastert rule he can't get a majority of his party to support even the bipartisan Senate farm bill. We were headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff--we were headed for the exact same result on the fiscal cliff. Speaker Boehner could not get his party to support protecting America from the fiscal cliff. So, with literally minutes left to spare, and with the House Republican Conference ready, willing, and about to pitch the country off the fiscal cliff, Speaker Boehner did what? He ignored the Hastert rule. He ignored the Hastert rule, and he let the fiscal cliff bill come to the floor of the House without having the votes on ``our side first,'' to use the Speaker's language. Two-thirds of House Republicans actually voted to roll America off the fiscal cliff. Here is the vote count. Republican ``yes'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were only 85. Republican ``no'' votes on the fiscal cliff legislation were 151. He wasn't even close to making the Hastert rule. That fiscal cliff bill passed the House 257 to 167 because the Democrats came out and voted for it, 172 to 16; 172 Democratic ``yes'' votes, 16 Democratic ``no'' votes. Two-thirds of the ``yes'' votes that put the fiscal cliff bill across and saved America from a 100-percent tax increase and protected our economy from the fiscal cliff--two- thirds of those votes came from Democrats. If the Speaker had enforced the Hastert rule, we would be over the fiscal cliff today. What happened on Sandy? After nearly 3 months of stalling, while my State, while the Presiding Officer's State of New York, while the States of New York and New Jersey, struck by Sandy, were waiting urgently for the relief that we got to the coast within 11 days, they stalled and they stalled because they could not get a majority of the Republican caucus to support Federal relief for our hurricane-ravaged States. Under the Hastert rule, they couldn't get that bill to the floor. So Speaker Boehner once again decided to forgo the Hastert rule. That is how they got the Sandy emergency aid bill passed. Look again at the votes. Republican ``yes'' votes for the disaster bill, 49; Republican ``no'' votes for that bill, 179. That bill was dead on arrival under the Hastert rule. The Republican caucus couldn't support it, wouldn't support it, and we would be without any help now if they had followed the Hastert rule. On the Democratic side, what was the vote on the Hurricane Sandy bill--192 ``yes'' votes to 1 ``no'' vote. The final count was 241 ayes, 180 nays. The bill passed, but about three-quarters of the support came from Democratic votes. If the Speaker had imposed the Hastert rule, not only would we be off the fiscal cliff, but we would have failed at providing disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy. The only reason these critical pieces of legislation avoided the fate of the highway bill and of the farm bill is that the Speaker didn't follow the Hastert rule. He couldn't follow the Hastert rule because he wouldn't have been able to pass legislation. If his tea party caucus had forced America off the fiscal cliff, he knew there would have been hell to pay, so he waived the Hastert rule. Now, of course, House Republicans are all in a fuss about having waived the Hastert rule. One tea party lawmaker admitted that the New Year's Day tax vote left a lot of his fellow Republicans with a very bad taste in their mouth. So it is probably back to Hastert rule business as usual on the House side, with death by tea party to any major bipartisan Senate legislation. The tea party over on the House side wanted to vote for extreme things, such as voting to repeal or defund ObamaCare over 30 times-- over 30 times--or voting to turn Medicare into a voucher program. If it is extreme enough, then they will vote for it. But those are actions which are not supported by the American people, and they can't pass the Senate. For the regular business of government, for the regular business of passing Senate bipartisan legislation, the tea party-Hastert rule combination is deadly. So back to where I began. If you are concerned about dysfunction in Congress, if you are wondering why we are less popular than a root canal, if you are wondering why 77 percent of Americans look at Congress and think we are actually doing more harm than good, and if you want an explanation of the dysfunction, take a look at the Hastert rule. If you look at this problem the way a doctor would look at a patient, the way an engineer would look at a system, the way a car mechanic would look at an automobile, and you look for what is broken, be specific; it is the application by the Speaker of the Hastert rule that prevents strong, bipartisan Senate legislation from going forward. When something moves, it is because the Hastert rule has been waived. So if you want to see what is wrong, that quest takes you straight to the House of Representatives, and there it leads you straight to the House Republican conference, and there it leads you to that toxic combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule. When you understand the problem, the cure is obvious: The House should ditch the Hastert rule. Call things up for a vote. Let everybody's vote count. Don't refuse to proceed unless only your own party will let you. It is the obvious and only solution. The fiscal cliff bill and the Sandy bill and the votes on those bills prove it. With those tea party extremists dominating the House Republican conference and ready to pitch the country over the fiscal cliff and leave hurricane victims high and dry, the Speaker had to ditch the Hastert rule. The only way the House can do bipartisan business on major issues is to ditch the Hastert rule. As we saw, the Senate has its problems, but we are actually doing OK, just as our legislative record shows. Over and over, we pass real, significant, bipartisan legislation after a real process on the floor of argument and amendment. As the House's legislative record shows, the problem is over there. More precisely, the problem is within the House Republican conference. Still more precisely, again, the problem is that toxic combination of the tea party and the Hastert rule. If we want Congress to function effectively, if we want to succeed at doing the work of the American people, such as the fiscal cliff bill and the hurricane relief bill, and if we don't want to see more important legislation, such as highway bills and farm bills, fail in the House, unable to pass in the House, blocked in the House, the solution for the problem is clear: We have to ditch the Hastert rule and let the House as a body work its will, just as the American people elected it to do.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jacqueline Emanuel, who is a fellow in Senator Mark Udall's office, be granted floor privileges for the Senate's sessions of the 113th Congress for the remainder of the month of January 2013.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes; that is absolutely true. It is hard to amend a judge.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is also true. In fact, I believe there have been multiple filibusters of the various steps on the way to a conference committee, even after all amendments have been considered. So the Senator, I believe, is correct.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I think that is true, and nobody is more alert to this than the Senator from Oregon, but it is my belief there has been a little transformation in the nature of the filibuster. It always used to be the individual right of individual Senators to get up on their feet and to say their piece, to hold the floor for as long as they needed to and to speak themselves--to read the Bible, to read the Constitution, to read the phonebook--into exhaustion. They did so when they felt deeply about an issue, when they were deeply opposed to something on the floor. Then cloture came along and it established a 30-hour block of time for debate. But, tellingly, it didn't require anyone to do any debating during those 30 hours. My belief is the minority party figured out if they filibustered everything, including very popular bills and amendments and judges that normally pass with huge majorities--up in the nineties--then each time the majority leader has to file cloture we end up with another 30-hour block of floor time that can't be used for anything productive. If that is done hundreds of times, that becomes thousands of hours of floor time, and it is very often why people who are watching us, expecting to see debates on the floor, see the tedious quorum call. They see our wonderful floor staff quietly reading the names of the Senators as the quorum call drones on and nothing is happening. That puts immense pressure on the majority because they now have less and less and less time to work with because these 30-hour bites of time over and over again have been taken out of the year and it makes doing business very difficult. That, I believe, has been the transformation. We have changed from being a Senate where an individual Senator has the right to get on his or her feet and oppose anything with a filibuster for as long as they can stand on their feet to a Senate where the minority filibusters everything, creating these 30-hour blocks of dead time which puts great pressure on the body to try to get things done in the time that remains. That is my view of why we are where we are and why it is important to change the rules. I will yield after saying I do think the Senator from Oregon and the Senator from New Mexico have done this body a great service by their leadership on pressing forward on rules changes. I think it is very clear that however this ends up turning out, the majority leader has 51 votes for a change to put the Senate back on a footing where it is behaving as a Senate again and we are not spending our time in the dead zone of endless quorum calls. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I reclaim the floor for one moment? I will yield the floor, not just for a question--I will yield the floor to the Senator from Alabama with the understanding that I will be recognized at the conclusion of the point he makes, so he does not have to frame it in the nature of a question.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield for a question.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Alabama for his comments today. I think they are helpful in moving us forward, and I hope very much that we can find a way to go forward without having to use the constitutional doctrine that at the beginning of each Congress the Senate has an opportunity to adjust its rules with 51 votes. I think that is constitutional doctrine at this point. I reject the notion that it is breaking the rules to take advantage of that constitutional moment. But the Senator makes a fair point that from a point of view of precedent--very different than breaking the rules, but from the point of view of precedent--it sets a new standard that we should be very cautious about going to. I strongly support the Senator's recommendation that there needs to be a more vibrant amendment process. I believe the status of the discussion is regarding the filibuster on the motion to proceed, that if the majority leader is able to move to procedure without a filibuster, there will be amendments under that rule. I think that is an important qualification as we go forward.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Please do. The Senator from Alabama has heard my questions.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have a question for the distinguished Senator from Alabama, for whom I have very high regard. He has been my ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, and he is my ranking member on the Budget Committee, and we share the experience of having served as U.S. attorneys. I have great admiration for him. I heard him say something that brought me to the floor, and that is that it has been the practice of the majority leader to seek to pick and choose amendments the minority may offer. My question to the distinguished Senator from Alabama is, does that not overstate the case? Can he identify a time when the majority leader has ever said to the minority party: You can bring up an amendment, but it has to be this one. The reason I ask that question is because my understanding is that the effort to control the amendment process by the majority leader has been limited to two things: No. 1, the number of amendments, which makes a lot of sense when we consider that the very small bill to raise the minimum wage that Senator Kennedy offered when I first got here--I was sitting where Senator Cardin from Maryland is now presiding watching this debate take place on the floor, and they got to over 100 amendments on a one- or two-page bill. The Senate could never get to the bill if Members had to spend the rest of the session going through all these amendments. So to limit the number of amendments seems reasonable. The other restriction that I think sometimes the majority seeks to impose is that the amendments be germane. I know when I was working with a number of colleagues of the distinguished Senator from Alabama on trying to form a bipartisan solution to the cyber compromise, every time the Republicans and the Democrats got together, we would start our discussion with the same back-and-forth, and that would be the Republicans saying----

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I believe the Senator has the floor, but I will stay and engage in a brief colloquy, if that is the Senator's desire.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate the point the Senator from Alabama is commenting on, and I think it is important that we recognize that is a floor or a minimum number of amendments and not a ceiling. I think the more we can allow Senators amendments, the better institution this will be. That said, the calendar is unyielding. Days come and days go, Congresses end, work periods end. The majority leader and minority leader have the responsibility for trying to fit the work into those time periods. Clearly there is the prospect of vexatious amendments, either in nature or in number, whose purpose is to interfere with their ability to manage the floor in a sensible way for all of us. I think we do have to be prepared to defend against that, and I think number and germaneness are the usual touchstones. The story I was telling, when the Senator from Alabama reclaimed his time, was of the cyber negotiations. When the Republicans and Democrats met together, the opening moment of virtually every discussion was the Republicans saying, when we get this bill to the floor, there will be amendments, correct? We were saying, absolutely, that is our understanding, we will stand by you having your amendments, but let us have them be germane, let us have them be relevant to cyber. That was always kind of a mutual agreement going forward until a Senator came to the floor and gave notice that they would insist on a repeal ObamaCare amendment on any cyber bill. That threw a pretty big spanner into the works of what I thought was moving toward a good bipartisan solution there. I think we have real problems here in terms of the abuse of the filibuster. When the majority leader can say that Lyndon Johnson as majority leader faced 1 filibuster, and this majority leader has, I think he said, 291 times--391 times had to file cloture, that is a pretty big change. When you see judges who have been cleared in the Judiciary Committee unanimously sitting on the Executive Calendar in what has become a hostage pool for purposes of trading--these are judges who are ready to go, and there may very well be a judicial emergency in their district; they have Republican and Democratic support, and they are held hostage to be used as trading pieces on either judges or other issues--I think that is a very poor way to go about doing business, particularly when you consider where that leaves an individual who has put their life on hold waiting to see if they will be confirmed, and all they are is a pawn in a chess game, even though everybody thinks that substantively they are qualified and should serve as judges. You see situations in which we have a cloture fight and then, when we actually have the vote, the measure passes with 90-plus votes. Clearly, there was not a great dispute over that. That is cloture being used for obstruction and to, I believe, take those 30-hour blocks of cloture time and stack them up into a wall of obstruction. I will say one final thing and then I will yield the floor. The good Senator from Alabama mentioned the budget process, and he is our ranking member on budget, so he knows this very well, but I have to dispute his description of the budget not passing and of why the majority leader said it would be foolish to have a budget. The reason it would have been foolish to have a budget is because we had a budget. In the ordinary course, a budget is developed from the committee up. We start in the Budget Committee. We propose a budget. It then goes to the Senate floor. We have budget day, which is often irreverently called a vote-arama, where we vote and vote and vote on amendments, and we ultimately get a budget. A similar process happens in the House. The President then has a budget to work with and we go forward. In this case, because the question of the Nation's budget is such a hot political issue, the budget was negotiated at the very top, between the President and the Speaker and the Senate leadership, and it was passed into law. We didn't pass a budget; we passed a bill. We passed a law, and the law set the budget. So when your budget is being set by law, yes, it is a little foolish to go through the process as if none of that had happened and try to build a budget from the ground up when it has already been established by law and when we wouldn't change it with our budget procedures. It has already been established by law, by negotiations at the highest level. So I think that is why it was foolish. I think the budget process will continue to go forward in circumstances in which we are building a budget from the ground up, the way we do in the ordinary course, but I do think it was important to clarify that. With that said, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Wyoming and considerable affection. Indeed, he is my ranking member on the HELP Committee, and he has been kind enough to offer his perspective on this question of the rules change. I will reciprocate by offering my perspective. We were in the caucus the other day. Our leader reported that during the time Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, which was a very active and disputatious time in the Senate, he faced one filibuster, and Leader Reid reported that he had faced 391, I think was the number he used. So clearly the use of the filibuster as measured by the number of cloture motions is completely out of control. The Senator from Wyoming correctly points out that filling the tree is a challenge to the minority, but I believe, if I recall correctly--I was planning to speak on something else, and I don't have the numbers exactly accurate at hand--I believe the number of times the tree has been filled is something like 70. So there is a huge disparity between the number of times the majority leader has filled the tree and the number of times he has been forced to file cloture. The reason is that very often there is not agreement on amendments. While on a major bill, an open amendment process is good, I believe, and we have seen examples of that recently on this floor--Senator McCain and his work on the Armed Services bill, along with Senator Levin, is an example--there are also times when filibuster by amendment takes place and it becomes abusive. I can remember sitting in the chair where the distinguished Senator from Ohio is now sitting and watching Senator Kennedy on the floor. He had a bill that would raise the minimum wage. We often get big, fat bills on the floor. This was a bill that I think was literally one page. It was the smallest, shortest bill because it was just changing a number, basically. Hundreds of amendments--literally hundreds of amendments had been filed against it. When the majority leader is faced with that--many of them were completely nongermane and not relevant--when the majority leader is faced with a circumstance where hundreds of amendments are filed on a small bill like that, it is easy to see why you have to move forward by trying to limit the time because the whole rest of the session could have been devoted to that bill if you can't get control. If you can't get an agreement--and very often, agreement is withheld as to a fixed number of amendments--then you have no choice but to take your best shot with the bill by filling the tree. Even if I am right that the number is 70, I contend that the number of what the minority might consider a malicious filling of the tree might be a number considerably smaller than 70. Many of them might be made necessary by the actions of the minority by offering hundreds of amendments and by refusing to enter into agreements to offer a reasonable number. I think it is a problem, but I think on balance I stand by the view I have expressed before that there is an unprecedented level of obstruction in this body, and I say that with some humility because the distinguished Senator from Wyoming has been here a bit longer. I have been here only for 6 years. But that is what people who have been here for many, many years confirm--that there has been really nothing like it.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask to speak for 15 minutes but probably not that long.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business for debate only be extended until 5 p.m., with Senators to speak up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. What I am here to talk about is not the topic of the day because the fiscal cliff is the topic of the day. What I am here to address is never the topic of the day. It is the unmentionable issue; that is, climate change. It is so apparent now that changes in our climate and in our environment are occurring from pole to pole and from the height of our atmosphere to the depths of our oceans. The overwhelming majority of scientific research, indeed statistically the now virtually unanimous scientific view, indicates that all these observed changes in the Earth's atmosphere are the direct result of human activity--specifically the emission of carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels. If we continue with these destructive levels of carbon pollution, carbon change will not just alter our environment, it will alter our economy. Very often discussions in Washington steer away from things that have to do with environment and the health and enjoyment of human beings of the natural world and instead it comes down to money, as it so often does in this town. Let's talk about climate change in the context of money. Markets and businesses across this country have developed to fit the prevailing environmental conditions in their different regions of the United States. These markets and these businesses are going to face real challenges when our climate changes those prevailing conditions. Whether it is higher sea levels, stronger storms, warmer winters or dryer summers, no State and no economy will be unaffected by climate change. We are already seeing real-life examples of economic consequences of a rapidly changing environment. The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 80 percent of American agricultural land is experiencing drought, making this the most expensive drought since the 1950s--more than half a century ago. Last month, Deutsche Bank Securities estimated that the drought will reduce 2012 economic growth in the United States by one-half to 1 percent. Shipping on the Mississippi River has been reduced and may stop in areas where drought has left water levels too low for safe passage. The American Waterways Operators and the Waterways Council estimate that $7 billion worth of commodities are supposed to ship on the Mississippi in December and January alone. An interruption of that would have a considerable economic effect. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun a $10 million project to clear rocks from the waterway to prevent that shutdown. The other option is to release water from the Missouri River, but that would just draw down water supplies in upriver States that are already suffering from drought themselves, such as Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Water is also essential for power generation. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, powerplants account for nearly half the daily water withdrawn in the United States. Drought and heat go hand in hand to push powerplants toward shutdown. A 2008 drought put several powerplants in the Southeast within days or weeks of shutting down. Texas, California, and the Midwest now face a similar challenge with drought stressing their power production. In the Northeast, it is not low water but warm water that caused the shutdown of Unit 2 at the Millstone powerplant in Connecticut. The temperature of the water in Long Island Sound, from which the plant draws its cooling supply, climbed to over 75 degrees Fahrenheit this summer--too warm for cooling the Newark reactor. Of course, the cost to our economy of disruptions in our power supply is particularly high during warm weather, when energy use is at its height to run air- conditioners. Scientists tell us the droughts and heat waves will get worse and water temperature will continue to increase. Agriculture, shipping, and power industries will be operated under new baseline environmental conditions. Warmer oceans, ocean acidification, and extreme weather events create an obvious threat for our fishery industries and the marine trades they support. It is not just the fishermen who are affected but the people who repair their engines and nets, sell them equipment and gear, as well as the companies that buy and process their catch are affected. In my home State of Rhode Island, average coastal water temperature has risen by 4 degrees over the past two decades, affecting our historic fish stocks and hurting local fishermen. It is not just in Rhode Island where the seas are changing. To use another example, rising ocean temperatures and acidity threaten corals, which, as well as being a cornerstone of ocean biodiversity--but never mind, this is supposed to be a speech about the money--the coral reefs are a mainstay of Florida's water and boating industry. People go there to snorkel, scuba dive, and see the corals. If the corals are not there, it is going to affect those industries. The increasing acidification of ocean water driven by the rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lowers the ocean's saturation levels of calcium carbonate. That sounds boring. Who the heck cares about the ocean saturation levels of calcium carbonate? Calcium carbonate is the fundamental building block of the shells of aquatic species such as oysters, crabs, and lobsters. Fisheries we actually do care a lot about, even if we may not care about calcium carbonate. It is the basic building block of the plankton that comprise the very base of the food web. Ocean acidification caused 70- to 80-percent losses of oyster larvae at an ocean hatchery in Oregon from 2006 to 2008. Wild oyster stocks in Washington State also failed under the stress of that more acidic water. This is an industry worth about $73 million annually along our Pacific coast, and it is faced with the threats from climate change. The pteropod, which is also known as the sea butterfly, will be harmed by ocean acidification. The pteropod is a humble beast. It is a tiny aquatic snail. Nobody goes fishing for pteropods, so who the heck cares? Salmon care. Indeed, 47 percent of the diet of some Pacific salmon species is pteropods. The salmon fisheries which support coastal jobs and economies care an awful lot about the salmon. Extreme weather events such as storm surges have become more frequent as our climate and oceans warm. Extreme storms such as that are particularly hard on shell fisheries. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that ``because oysters require two or more years to grow to marketable size, full recovery from . . . hurricanes may take years, and some oyster habitats may be lost permanently.'' National Geographic noted that after Hurricane Katrina, 90 percent of Mississippi's oyster beds and 74 percent of Louisiana's oyster beds were destroyed. Just this fall, Hurricane Sandy disrupted shellfisheries all along the east coast. Coastal economies, such as in my home State of Rhode Island, are threatened in other ways by sea-level rise and extreme storms. The Rhode Island economic development Council notes that tourism in Rhode Island is at the absolute center of our summer economy. People from all across the Nation come to Rhode Island in the summer to enjoy our beautiful beaches, our sparkling bay, sail, and participate in all the beachside activities. Damage to that economy would be very significant. We are rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy so we will be ready when our beach visitors come this summer, but it is a reminder of how important that economy is to Rhode Island, and it is a reminder of how vulnerable it is to extreme weather. Let's turn to the West, where by August of this year more than 6 million acres had burned in wildfires. A new analysis by NASA predicts that by the middle of the century we can expect to match the severity of 2012 fires every 3 to 5 years. It is going to become commonplace. A recent study by the University of Oregon--and I see the Senator from Oregon on the floor--found that large wildfires caused long-term instability in local labor markets. Increased local spending fighting the fires is not enough to outweigh the economic loss caused by the disruption of businesses and damage to property from the fire. In August, Reuters reported that wildfires were hurting tourism in Western States. One small business owner in Salmon, ID, claimed she had nothing but cancellations as a result of the fires. The New York Times has reported that the declining snowfall and unseasonably warm weather had been a drag on winter sports and recreational tourism last winter. The reported forecast is that before the end of the century, the number of economically viable ski locations in New Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half. Skiing in New York will be cut by three-quarters, and there will be no ski area in Connecticut or Massachusetts. That will have an economic effect. Looking back West again, the Park City Foundation in Utah predicted an annual local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which would cause a total loss of snowpack in the Park City resort area. The Park City Foundation report estimates this will result in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, and hundreds of millions in lost economic output to Utah. Ominously, in Colorado the ski season was pushed back at least a week this winter for lack of snow. I am sure my colleagues on both sides of the political aisle, whether from coastal, agricultural or mountain States, feel the concern for their State's economy as I do for Rhode Island. To protect these economies, we will all have to act prudently, and that means waking up and addressing climate change head on in Congress. The majority of Americans of all political affiliations accepts the science behind climate change. Yet Congress refuses to act. There is a consensus among scientists where around 98 percent--the other day I came with a circle graph which showed a tiny little wedge of fringe dispute on this question is barely visible in the sea of agreement. Yet Congress refuses to act. Even after hearing from our national security officials about the dangers and threats from climate change, Congress refuses to act. That refusal to act will have an impact on the American economy. A Brookings report has found that well-designed climate legislation would increase investment, increase employment, and significantly increase America's gross domestic product, but here in Congress we are more likely to hear that any climate change legislation would hurt the economy and kill jobs. The opposite is true. We are missing opportunities to grow a clean economy that is manufacturing and export intensive and that creates the kinds of jobs that support a strong American middle class. We are failing to protect against carbon pollution that will harm our States' economies all across the country, and we are failing to take prudent steps to protect ourselves against the coming changes from our carbon pollutants that have now become unavoidable. With the carbons up in the air, the changes are going to happen. We can't stop those. We need to prepare for them, and we are failing to take those prudent steps. Those of us on the east coast who weathered Sandy have gotten a preview of coming attractions as the oceans continue to warm and extreme storms become more common. As I said before, here in Congress we are sleepwalking through history. We are lulled by the narcotic of corporate money from the polluters and from their allies, we are ignoring the scientific facts, and we are refusing to awaken to the many ringing alarms that nature is now sounding. I hope we can soon find a way to correct this grievous folly and omission. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I will speak off the topic of the day. Obviously, we are focused on the fiscal cliff. The measure is now over in the House, and the distinguished Senator from Wyoming and the senior Senator from California expressed their hope--and I would say confidence--that the House will act. Given the dysfunction of the House and its Republican leadership, I am perhaps a little bit more cautious than they are about this. I remember that we did a very good bipartisan highway bill here. It passed with an enormous vote of 70-some, if I remember correctly, and went over to the House. They could not even pass a highway bill. They had no bill at all. They got so snarled up that finally they passed a bill that did nothing but to appoint conferees to argue about our bill. They could not bring a bill of their own into conference. We worked very hard on a farm bill here. It was a bipartisan farm bill. Senator Stabenow was particularly energetic in that, as was her colleague from Kansas. Again, that was a bipartisan bill, which required a lot of hard work and had many compromises. We are in a terrible drought--which is something I will talk about more in a moment--and they cannot pass the farm bill over there. The Speaker tried to respond to having withdrawn from his negotiations with the President on the fiscal cliff by coming up with a new so-called Plan B alternative. He could not even get that through his caucus. There is an unprecedented degree of extremism and dysfunction in the House Republican caucus, and I hope that does not disrupt the progress we have made on the fiscal cliff. We will have to wait and see. Today will tell.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.