Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senator Coons will be joining us very shortly. He was on the floor a moment ago and will be back very shortly. I wish to take a moment before he returns--here he is. I will not take a moment before he returns. I yield the floor to the Senator from Delaware. I await hearing from him.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator from Colorado that in an environment in which the bulk of the political spending is being done by outside groups and the bulk of the outside spending groups is secret, what is the likelihood of those goals being accomplished with the best interests of the American people in mind and not with the best interests of the special interests behind those secret donations in mind?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In conclusion, I note that S. Res. 520 recognizes the 103rd anniversary of the founding of the NAACP, which for reasons I will discuss later, is an interesting irony in today's debate coming from the Republican side. I will now yield to Senator Bennet of Colorado, and he will be followed by Senator Hagan.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is an interesting question. One would have to look into the hearts of those five Justices to get the answer to it. But why they would be willing to make such a dramatic, activist move without working with four other colleagues to try to bring them along-- why it is always those five making these activist steps toward the Republican agenda is a question I can't answer. What is their motive? They know that in their hearts. I don't. One can observe that over and over again, the five Justices who are performing the Republican role on that Supreme Court are delivering the goods and doing things that advance the Republican agenda. That is not me talking, those are people who have followed this Court for decades-- the most prominent writers about the Supreme Court--who noted that fact.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I can add an additional point that Senator McCain and I made in our brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the Citizens United decision and asking for its reconsideration. It is terrible what these negative ads filled with deception do to the American public, and it is discouraging to people about the participation we expect of Americans and government and, ultimately, it leads to corruption, as the Senator points out. At least in the example Senator Landrieu gave, you see the spending. There is at least a dirty, deceptive, negative attack campaign up on the air. So it is not completely invisible. You just don't know who is behind it. What that leaves open--again, this is the prosecutor in me talking-- is the threat of that same campaign--the visit from the lobbyist who comes in to the Congressman and sits him down in a quiet room and says: Have a look at this and places a 30-second commercial--negative, deceptive, slashing, vitriolic, vile, all against him, and says, you know what, under Citizens United, we have the right to spend $5 million playing that ad against you all through the next election, and we are thinking about doing it. You know what, under Citizens United, we have the right to put up phony shell corporations so they will never see our fingerprints. The only thing the public will see is Americans for peace, puppies, and prosperity. That will be the phony name we are going to use. If you vote right, this will be the last time you hear from me. If you don't vote right, you are going to hear $5 million worth from me through my shell companies. How are you going to vote? If the Congressman gives way to that kind of pressure--pressure that was never possible before Citizens United and is not as possible if it is not secret--then you have no clues and you have actual corruption and the system is even worse than what we see out there. In some respect, as awful as what we see is that it might be the iceberg that you see above the water and the 90 percent that is under the water that you don't see could be worse still.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There it is, 85 percent. I underestimated it.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I will be the last speaker for tonight. Let me close with a number of thank-yous. First, let me thank the Presiding Officer, Senator Landrieu of Louisiana, for staying past the midnight hour to help keep the Senate open. Let me thank Senator Merkley, who has been--to the extent one can be enthusiastic about staying until this hour, there he is, smiling. Yes, ``enthusiastic'' is the right word. He was part of a group Senator Schumer organized himself, along with Senator Michael Bennet, Senator Tom Udall, Senator Al Franken, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Jeff Merkley, and myself, who worked together to redraft this legislation, trim it down, and to organize today's vote and events and tomorrow's vote. So I thank all of them for their enormously hard work. I thank the pages, who have had to stay very late, and the floor staff, who have had to stay very late. I appreciate the fact that we have put a burden on them and on their families, and we would not be doing that if we didn't consider this to be a very important issue. I wish to thank the entire Democratic caucus for their support. Our colleague Bill Nelson has had a unique experience. He has actually ridden a rocket up into space. He has been up with the NASA program as an astronaut. In some respects, I feel that I and others who were leading this were really doing nothing more than riding a rocket of the enthusiasm of our caucus to get this thing done for the sake of our country. I thank the American people, who went out of their way to have their voices heard in this debate. We know the public is strongly behind this. Six in ten Americans say the middle class isn't going to catch a break while the big lobbyists and big donors control things in Washington. Americans get that you don't spend this kind of money without a motive, and they get that if you will only do it in secret, it is probably not a good motive. They can figure this out, so they understand. Seven out of ten believe super PACs should be outright illegal--not secret, but illegal. Seven in ten agree with the statement that new rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to super PACs will lead to corruption. Seventy percent of Americans agree with that. Seventy-seven percent want to reform the campaign finance laws and consider that to be very important. As a number of my colleagues have said, one in four Americans is so upset by what this has done to degrade American democracy. They think it makes them actually less likely to go out and vote because they figure, why bother, this is just a racket at this point. These numbers really should be a call to arms for the people who believe America is, in fact, a city on a hill, the American exceptionalists--of which I consider myself to be one--the lamp held up to other nations, the alabaster city is gleaming. That is all for real, but the Citizens United decision and the failure to support us on DISCLOSE does nothing for that. But it wasn't just the polling that brought that up to a lot of people. People came online in a very big way to participate in this debate--617,000. Mr. President, 617,000 Americans have signed up as supporters of the DISCLOSE Act now on a variety of different Web sites, including DISCLOSE Act.Com. DISCLOSE Act.Com got so much activity just before the vote that the public interest in it actually crashed the Web site. So the American public is really paying attention. I thank those folks who paid attention, and I thank those who set up the opportunities for those Americans to have their voices heard. I appreciate it very much. I want to thank some of the leading newspapers in this country for their editorial support in the past few days. I have already spoken before about the New York Times' editorial, so I won't go back and repeat it at length, except for the phrase they used: Corporations love the secrecy . . . because it protects them from scrutiny by nosey shareholders and consumers. The Washington Post had a very strong editorial entitled ``Expose the Fat Cats.'' It said the following things: Not a single Republican in the chamber has expressed support for the Disclose Act . . . It should be interesting to hear how the Republican senators justify this monumental concealment of campaign cash. They allude to the Watergate break-in and the bad old days of unregulated cash contributions and describe what has happened recently after Citizens United as, ``We seem to have created the political equivalent of secret Swiss bank accounts.'' They asked the question, Who is writing checks for $10 million or $1 million at a single throw? And what do they want? We don't know. This shadowy bazaar undermines our political system. They note that until recently Republicans supported full disclosure. Now that the tide of money is running in their favor, they don't. They described this DISCLOSE bill as a reasonable bill that would, among other things, require identification of donors of $10,000 or more to certain organizations that spend money on political campaigns, and they close with this question and this observation: There is a very good chance that when some government decision or vote comes along next year, responsible politicians will find themselves haunted by the secret money of the 2012 campaign. Is it really worth it? The Washington Post asks: Do these donors deserve to remain hidden? Why can't they handle a little sunshine? I want to thank USA Today for a July 6 editorial supporting this: ``Freed by the Supreme Court from spending limits,'' they observed, ``all manner of special interests are opening the spigots to buy influence.'' ``Especially worrisome,'' USA Today points out, ``are secret donations, which are proliferating. A corrupting influence in any campaign, secret money is even more dangerous in less expensive races where it can buy a seat in Congress or a state legislature, without voters knowing who the buyers are or what their agenda is.'' USA Today folks said: Citizens United left the public only one way to protect itself from the rising threat disclosure. At the federal level, this would be achieved by the Disclose Act. . . . Today's version, scheduled for Senate debate this month, requires that all groups--social welfare, union and business--report all expenditures and all donations more than $10,000. They fear that ``the inevitable result is that come November, voters in many closely contested races will make their decisions based on a late flood of ads of dubious credibility paid for by people whose names and motives are unknown. How long it will take voters to realize they're getting conned and demand disclosure is anyone's guess.'' I will briefly point out that the claim that the DISCLOSE Act favors unions is a complete nonstarter as a criticism. The bill is very short. It has very big print. You can read it very quickly. There is nothing in the bill that gives unions any advantage over any other form of organization. It is just not there. I have challenged Republican colleagues to point to a single provision or make a single counterproposal, and they have done neither. The DISCLOSE Act applies equally to all corporations, period, end of story. The $10,000 threshold eliminates another problem, which is this business that membership organizations are going to have to disclose their donor list. As recently as today, the Republican leader said this will force organizations to disclose their donor lists. It won't. Not at a $10,000 threshold. You can get a lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association for $1,000. If you are a cat and you have nine lives, you can get nine lifetime memberships in the NRA and still not break the $10,000 threshold. It will catch 93 percent of the money that goes into the super PACs because it goes in in such big chunks. So it is a good number to use. It protects the small membership organizations but hits virtually all the big donors. Clearly, it is not an attack on the first amendment. This charge has its roots only in the opponents' imagination, not in the U.S. Constitution. It contains no restrictions or limitations on speech of any kind. None. Pure disclosure legislation, plain and simple, as my Republican colleagues have heretofore usually supported. The Court, in Citizens United, fully supported disclosure. Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions. An important point, going back to the words that began this vote, from our Founding Father James Madison: A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. The Supreme Court recognized this, and clearly it is constitutional. The last is the argument that this bill in some way will intimidate the big spenders. First of all, the idea of the billionaire Koch brothers or gigantic coal barons or ExxonMobil--the largest corporation in the world--being intimidated by the unkind words of some blogger is preposterous on its face. Second, Justice Scalia has said: Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. May I point out that it is a rather small courage. On the way here this afternoon, I passed through the trolley lobby. Down in the trolley lobby was a young marine from Pennsylvania who had lost both his legs to an IED explosion in Afghanistan. We can ask our young men and women to travel the roads of Kandahar and to risk blowing off their legs and coming home like that young man, but we can't ask billionaire big spenders to even show who they are even though, clearly, the link to motive and influence and control and corruption is apparent? It is a ridiculous proposition, and I hope my colleagues will not persist in following it. They have even compared themselves to the NAACP during the civil rights movement--Black families burned out of their homes, and they compare the Koch brothers being criticized by bloggers to that. It simply isn't so, and it simply isn't right. I will conclude by saying that we are not done. This is too important. It is too important for what America stands for. It is too important for the middle class who are going to be losers in the debates that are influenced and corrupted by special interest money. It is too important for the world which depends on the example that America provides. So we didn't have any luck today. We are going to vote again tomorrow. I urge my colleagues to vote with us. But even if we don't win tomorrow, we will be back again and again and again. When Joshua took the Israelites around the city of Jericho, they went around and around blowing their rams horns so that those walls would come tumbling down. It didn't happen on the first circuit, it didn't happen on the second. According to the Bible, Joshua had to go around the city of Jericho seven times before the walls came tumbling down. I don't care if we have to do this 7 times or 77 times; we are going to do this because it is right.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I know we have Senator Hagan, Senator Bennet, and Senator Franken all here waiting, but I would like to do some quick parliamentary business that needs to be accomplished. Resolutions Submitted Today

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Coons for his remarks, echo one point he made, and make an announcement. The point I wish to echo is that the importance of American democracy and of clean American elections does, indeed, extend beyond our borders, as Senator Coons mentioned from his role as the chair of the Subcommittee on Africa in the Foreign Relations Committee. I grew up in the Foreign Service and served on the Intelligence Committee. I have traveled pretty widely in that role. There is a reason Presidents have talked about our Nation as a city on the hill. There is a reason Presidents have described our Nation as a lamp raised in the darkness, that the glow from what we accomplish lights the world. There is a reason the hymn ``America The Beautiful'' talks about how our ``alabaster cities gleam.'' There is not much gleam on those alabaster cities tonight, not after this vote. There is a lot of mud on the walls of those cities, and it is going to get worse unless we pass this vote. And people get it, which brings me to my announcement, which is that up to this evening, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has had 34,269 Americans sign its petition supporting the DISCLOSE Act. Demand Progress has had over 50,000 Americans sign up for its petition supporting the DISCLOSE Act. CREDO Action, as I mentioned earlier, has had 213,000 Americans--213,000 Americans--sign up as citizen cosponsors of the DISCLOSE Act. This stack of papers I have in the Chamber has 57 names to a page--213,000 Americans who really put their name down there, something that, evidently, the big, sneaky donors are not willing to do and our colleagues are not willing to force them to do. And DISCLOSEAct.com has 320,378 signatures supporting the DISCLOSE Act. That Web site got so much activity earlier tonight, as we rolled into this vote, that the Web site crashed from the activity of Americans trying to be a part of the debate we are having here, trying to make their voices heard because they perfectly well understand that these big special interests--the ones that do not want how and why they spend their money in politics to be known to anybody--they do not have Americans' best interests at heart, and they see this coming, and they want to fight back. That total is 617,000 Americans who have signed up to have our backs and to support this bill. So as we go forward into the remarks from Senator Pryor, Senator Blumenthal, and then Senator Franken, we should know that it is not just the one, two, three, four, five, six of us who are now in this Chamber. For each one of us, there are 100,000 Americans who are behind us and want this to happen.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the resolutions be printed in the Record at the appropriate place as if read.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Inhofe be recognized for 15 minutes for his remarks regarding the Law of the Sea, that Senator Shaheen and Senator Klobuchar then be recognized, and then for the duration of today's session Senators be able to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, in 1822, the Founding Father James Madison wrote: A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A vote for DISCLOSE is a vote to arm the people with the power that knowledge gives, to arm them with the popular information about elections--information necessary to prevent this great popular government of ours from becoming a special interest farce, information necessary to protect this democracy from the tragedy, as John McCain predicted, of scandal that will result. Give the American people the information they need to be their own governors. Vote for DISCLOSE. I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, legislation that will shine some much needed light into the flood of secret money that is now polluting our elections. I would like to open with thanks to Senators Chuck Schumer, Mike Bennet, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom Udall for their hard work in our task force that developed this legislation. I look forward to continuing to work with them through this debate. On Thursday, Majority Leader Reid moved to proceed to this vital piece of legislation, and we will vote on it this evening. I thank the leader. I and many of my colleagues are looking forward to the opportunity to make the case for this important measure. But in a sense, for the American public, the case has already been made. As anyone who watches television knows, our airwaves are filled with political attack ads. The organizations paying for many of these ads have patriotic and benign-sounding names with words such as ``prosperity'' and ``freedom'' and ``future'' frequently to be found. These names sound harmless, but all too often the ads are actually paid for by secret special interests, such as billionaires and wealthy corporations seeking secret special influence in our democracy. In the process, they drown out the voices of regular American families who wish to participate in elections. The Republican leader indicated we were going after the impression of mischief where there is none. Many Americans certainly have the impression of mischief. As U.S.A. Today put it last week in an editorial supporting this DISCLOSE Act: Everybody's watching what's expected to be by far the most expensive presidential campaign in history, and not without a dose of horror. Freed by the Supreme Court from spending limits, all manner of special interests are opening the spigots to buy influence. Here is how my home State paper, the Providence Journal, explained the Citizens United decision that unleashed this torrent of special interest money. The [Citizens United] ruling will mean that more than ever, big-spending economic interests will determine who gets elected. More money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns. Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their voices will count for even less than they do now. They will simply be drowned out by the big money. I think the Providence Journal hit the nail right on the head. What has happened since the Citizens United decision has, in fact, proved them right. Senator John McCain said earlier this year: The United States Supreme Court--in what I think is one of the worst decisions in history--struck down the restrictions in the so-called McCain-Feingold law, and a lot of people don't agree with that, but I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck down that law, that there would be a flood of money into campaigns, not transparent, unaccounted for, and this is exactly what is happening. Senator McCain is right. This is exactly what is happening. It is not an impression of mischief, it is mischief on the loose. Richard Posner, a leading conservative legal scholar and a Federal judge, recently said: Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment. Our political system is pervasively corrupt. This is from a conservative Federal judge. The impact of Citizens United has been very clear. In the 2010 midterm elections, the first after Citizens United, there was a more than a fourfold increase in expenditures from super PACs and other outside groups compared to 2006--$69 million up to $305 million--with nearly three-quarters of political advertising coming from sources that were prohibited from spending money back in 2006. Also, in 2010, those 501(c)(4)s and (c)(6) not-for-profit organizations spent more than $135 million in unlimited and secret political contributions. Anonymous spending rose from 1 percent of outside spending in 2006 to 44 percent in 2010. We are already seeing the influence of money on the 2012 elections. Super PACs and other outside groups have spent over $150 million in this election cycle, about twice of what was spent in the same period of 2008 during the last Presidential election. Nondisclosing groups, said the New York Times, ``have accounted for two-thirds of the political advertising bought by the biggest outside spenders so far in the 2012 election cycle . . . with close to $100 million in issue ads.'' Campaigns are no longer waged by candidates and parties fighting over ideas, they are now waged by shadowy political attack groups posing as social welfare organizations run by the likes of Karl Rove and other political operatives and fueled by millions of undisclosed dollars from secret special interests. When these secret special interests take over our elections this way, it drowns out the voices of regular individual Americans. It also puts in jeopardy some of the key pillars of a strong middle class, pillars such as Medicare, Social Security, and Pell grants that have paved the way for generations to achieve the American dream but have always been the targets of special interests. These special interests have motives. They have motives to spend this kind of money. If those motives were good for America and were welcomed by the average American, they wouldn't need and wouldn't want to keep them secret. We need to ask ourselves a very important question: What are they hiding? Why do they demand secrecy? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: Americans who worry that Washington is too beholden to special interests now need to be concerned more than ever. Hang onto your wallets, here come the special interests, and you won't even know who they are. As recently reported in the New York Times, secret spending groups have accounted for two-thirds of this advertising. Two-thirds of ad spending from groups, other than candidates or parties, has come from secretive corporations and billionaires whose names and agendas the voters may never know and who will have no accountability for how that money is spent. Impression of mischief, indeed. Of course, when we don't have accountability, there is no limit to what people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the filth that is so often part of the American political debate is that candidates have to stand by their ads. If someone says something that is awful, if they engage in relentless negative attacks, voters may charge them a price for that. They may find that unwelcome. That, of course, disappears when the name behind the ad is attached to no living person or corporation. It is just an entity, a sham, a phony, a shell. How has this worked out? Not well for the American public. An April study found that about 70 percent of ads in this election cycle have been negative. That is up from only 9 percent through the same period in 2008. In 2008, 9 percent of ads in that time period had been negative. In this cycle, 70 percent have been negative. Over the last 6 months, if we look at the four top-spending political 501(c)(4) organizations, the ones that don't have to disclose their donors, they spent an estimated 85 percent of their election spending on ads containing deceptions. So 70 percent of the stuff out there is negative, up from only 9 percent, and 85 percent of the big spenders are spending their money on ads that have been determined to be deceptive. The names of the organizations sound lovely: Americans for Prosperity, American Future Fund, American Energy Alliance, and Crossroads GPS. Without knowing who funds these shadowy groups, the American voter has no idea what mischief they are up to. This is all a result of the Supreme Court's disastrous and misguided decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This is the decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited and secret corporate and special interest money pouring into our elections. This chart shows how easy it is under our current system for wealthy interests to skirt existing disclosure rules and spend secret millions in election ads. This amounts to a form of legalized political money laundering or, to use the phrase Senator McCain and I used in our brief to the Supreme Court, ``identity laundering.'' Super PACs are supposed to disclose their donors under current law, but that can sometimes be weeks or months after a deceptive ad runs. If a donor wants to avoid even that disclosure, it can set up a shell corporation, which may be nothing more than a P.O. box someplace, and send the money through that super PAC through a shell corporation without a real name showing up on a disclosure form. They just launder it through the shell corporation, and the next thing they know the money is doing their work. They can also pass the money through a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. I put the words ``social welfare'' in quotes because that is the IRS phrase that is used for these organizations. There is very little social welfare being accomplished by the big political donor groups known as social welfare associations. The IRS gives nonprofit status to these groups whose primary purpose--and in many cases their only purpose--is to shield big spenders from having their identities disclosed. In many cases, these 501(c)(4) so-called social welfare groups are so closely affiliated with the super PACs that they have all the same staff and the same office space. It is a 501(c)(4) independent social welfare organization for the IRS with the same staff and the same office space as a super PAC. Please. Of course, the 501(c)(4) groups still don't have to disclose their donors, even when they are the same staff and the same office as the super PAC. On this chart, we see the money raised by one of them, Citizens United, by Republican political operatives, including Karl Rove. They raised money through the Crossroads PAC. It is a super PAC, and it is supposed to disclose its donor. It has attached to it Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) group that is not the super PAC and it can maintain complete secrecy for its donors. Guess which one has raised the most money. It is an easy question. It is the 501(c)(4) group that doesn't have to disclose its donors. The group raised $76.8 million through 2011 as opposed to only $46.4 million raised by its sister super PAC. This is by no means a unique situation. As the New York Times wrote in an editorial last Sunday in support of the DISCLOSE Act, ``Corporations love the secrecy provided by Mr. Rove's group because it protects them from scrutiny by nosy shareholders and consumers.'' They want a big influence on elections but without leaving any tracks. An unnamed corporate lobbyist told the newspaper Politico earlier this year that nondisclosure is always preferred by corporate donors. Why is it preferred? Because it makes it impossible for the public and law enforcement to track down the corrupting influence of the money that these corporations spend in elections. The DISCLOSE Act puts an end to this nonsense. It puts an end to using 501(c)(4) groups and shell corporations to shield the identities of big donors. One thing that should not be lost in the discussion of anonymous spending is the fact that there is one person to whom this spending is never anonymous; that is, the candidate who is either benefited or punished. Although the donors have managed to hide their identities from the public, they can sure tell the candidate how much money they are putting in the candidate's super PAC and, by the way, what position they want that candidate to take on issues. What this creates is a perfect recipe for corruption--wealthy corporations, individuals, and special interests secretly spending millions of dollars to influence a candidate in ways the public never sees. A rich donor can secretly threaten massive spending against a candidate without even putting up the money. If the candidate doesn't take the right position on an issue, then they can pull the trigger, but they can make the threat quietly. Political scientist Norm Ornstein recently said: I had this tale told to me by a number of lawmakers. You're sitting in your office and a lobbyist comes in and says, ``I'm working for Americans for a Better America. And I can't tell you who's funding them, but I can tell you they really, really want this amendment in the bill.'' And who knows what they'll do. They have more money than God. If the candidate complies, of course, the expenditure is never made, there is no paper trail, no trace of that threat. Yet the system has been corrupted. Let's also dispense with the fiction that this spending is independent. The whole rationale for unlimited spending was that it was to be done independently of candidate campaigns. The reality is that super PACs are anything but independent. Campaigns and super PACS share fundraising lists, donors, former staff, and consultants. Candidates appear at fundraisers for their super PACs. Super PACs recycle ads that were originally run by the candidates. They share film. They are free to act as the evil twins of candidate campaigns, as one FEC Commissioner put it, raising unlimited, secret money, and then spending it on massive amounts of advertising--most of it negative--to benefit their preferred candidates. Our campaign finance system is broken, and it lends itself to corruption in new and unprecedented ways. Immediate action is required to fix it. Today we are debating a bill that will at least bring some transparency and accountability into this election spending. This should not be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, and in the past, it has not been. It has always had bipartisan support because it is about protecting our Democratic process. We need to pass the DISCLOSE Act now. The USA Today editorial said: Citizens United left the public only one way to protect itself from the rising threat: Disclosure. At the federal level, this would be achieved by the DISCLOSE Act. I thank USA Today for supporting this bill. The Supreme Court also made it crystal clear in this very Citizens United decision that disclosure was an appropriate and even a necessary part of a healthy campaign finance system. Here is what Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, writing for the majority: [P]rompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation's political speech advances the corporation's interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests. The new version of the DISCLOSE Act will do exactly this. It says nothing more and nothing less than when corporations and other wealthy interests spend money--more than $10,000--to influence our elections, their identities must be disclosed. There is no question where the American people stand on this issue. Americans of all political stripes are disgusted by the influence of unlimited, anonymous corporate cash in our elections and by campaigns that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidate has in his pocket--or advisers, perhaps. More and more, people feel their government responds only to wealthy and corporate interests. They see their jobs disappear. They see their wages stagnate. They see bailouts and special deals for the big guys. And they lose faith that their elected officials will listen to them. Six in ten Americans say the middle class will not catch a break in this economy until we reduce the influence of lobbyists, big banks, and big donors. Seven in ten Americans, nearly, including a majority of both Democrats and Republicans, agree that ``new rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to super PACs will lead to corruption.'' Notwithstanding what the NRA and the chamber and other big DC lobbying powerhouses want, they are at odds with the regular American people. Indeed, one in four Americans says they are actually less likely to vote because big donors to super PACs have so much more influence over elected officials than average Americans. These numbers should be a call to arms for anyone who believes our American democracy is one of our world's shining jewels and should be scrupulously, carefully, ardently protected. Indeed, people are answering this call to arms in numbers that are increasing every day. I have with me today here on the Senate floor 213,000 Americans-- 213,000 citizen cosponsors of this DISCLOSE Act, which were collected by CREDO Action. My colleagues can leaf through them and see people from Apple Valley, MN; from San Francisco, CA; from Ashland, OR; from Austin, TX; from Long Beach, NY; from Imperial, NE; from Yorktown Heights, NY; from Brick, NJ; from Schaumburg, IL; people from all across the country--nearly a quarter of a million of them now--coming from all 50 States, and more than 1,000 Rhode Islanders are in this group. Unlike the corporations and the billionaires who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy our elections and who insist on doing it in secret, these regular people are unashamed to stand up for what they believe in. Their pride in civic engagement reflects the best values of America, and their numbers show that this is an issue where a broad cross-section of Americans demand a change to what is happening in our elections. Justice Antonin Scalia has written: Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. Our friends who have signed on as citizen cosponsors have that courage, and the biggest campaign spenders in the world should as well. Frankly, even those big campaign spenders should be patriotic enough to understand, as Justice Scalia did, that democracy is doomed without civic courage, and they should step up on their own. But, instead, they are hiding behind the rules and hiding their identities and trying to buy influence. I will conclude by saying that prior to Citizens United, there was a long bipartisan tradition supporting laws that require disclosure of spending in elections. This bipartisan consensus may be reemerging. Senator John McCain of Arizona and I recently filed with the Supreme Court a brief that urged the Court to reconsider the flawed premise of its decision in Citizens United--the false premise that independent expenditures can't lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption. As the statistics about anonymous spending and public perception I have cited make clear, this premise has been fully discredited. Although the Supreme Court declined this opportunity to put our elections back on a saner path, I am proud to have worked in a bipartisan fashion on that brief with Senator McCain, who has long been a leader in this Congress and in this country on campaign finance issues. I hope our partnership will mark the beginning of greater cooperation across party lines on this issue of vital importance to our democracy. There are some misconceptions about the act that have colored the public debate. We plan to explain during the course of the debate why the critics of this bill have gotten so many things just plain wrong. This act contains only the most basic provisions requiring outside groups to disclose campaign-related fundraising and spending. The legislation has been streamlined from the DISCLOSE Act that nearly passed the Senate in 2010. It places fewer burdens on covert administrations. It contains no prohibitions on spending, no special exemptions for any group or type of group. Contrary to what the Republican leader said, it does not require grassroots organizations to disclose their donors, and it treats every organization exactly the same right across the board. Some have complained, such as a Republican witness in the Rules Committee hearing on this bill, that the so-called stand-by-your-ad requirements originally in the bill were too burdensome. He described them, actually, as radical. So we removed them. We have tried to accommodate. I know that many of my colleagues, including Senator Ron Wyden, who authored this stand-by-your-ad legislation and who has heroically fought for it for many years, remained very supportive of these provisions, and I hope we will be able to reintroduce them at another time. But we didn't, so that complaint should be closed off. Some complain that this was just an attempt to influence this election. Well, its effective date is January 1, 2013, so it will not, to the regret of many, influence this election. According to Republican former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is ``appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored, clearly constitutional and desperately needed.'' I stand ready to work with any of my colleagues, Democrats or Republicans, who want to make this bill better, but we can't use complaints--particularly unjustified complaints--as an excuse to do nothing. While the status quo of unlimited secret money may work to benefit some politicians for the moment, in the long run it will hurt us all, regardless of party. Unlimited money is not a force that anyone can ultimately hope to control, and unlimited secret money is even more dangerous. More important, the American people, who are already beginning to lose faith in our electoral system, can reasonably fear that their elected officials will only care about the anonymous donors writing eight-figure checks in deals and gifts that they will never see. Many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate know this, and they have supported disclosure in the past. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, for instance, was once a great advocate for disclosure. As he said in 2000, ``Republicans are in favor of disclosure,'' adding, ``Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?'' That question is as timely today as it was then. I hope my Republican colleagues will join us in passing this important piece of legislation. Help us restore the fundamental principle of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Washington Post wrote yesterday in an editorial supporting this DISCLOSE Act: We'd like to see a few courageous Republicans rise in the Senate on Monday and declare: Enough is enough. If our friends across the aisle decide to block this legislation which clearly reflects the will of the American people, I am prepared to force this issue by debating this bill long into the night. If they are unwilling to join us in our mission to shine a light on secret money elections, we will keep the lights on here. I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Arkansas now be recognized to deliver remarks regarding a casualty from his home State--for which I will take this opportunity to send my condolences and the condolences of the people of Rhode Island-- and at the conclusion of his remarks that I be recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. This is legislation that will shine a bit of needed light into the flood of secret money in our elections. I would like to start with particular thanks to Senators Chuck Schumer, Michael Bennet, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom Udall for their hard work on developing the legislation. I look forward to joining them as this debate goes forward. This morning the majority leader moved to proceed to this vital piece of legislation. I thank him. I and many of my colleagues are looking forward to the opportunity to make the case in this Chamber for this important piece of legislation. In a sense, that case has already been made. As anyone who watches television knows, our airwaves are filled with negative political attack ads. The organizations that pay for these negative political attack ads all have patriotic-sounding names dotted with words like ``prosperity,'' ``freedom,'' and ``future.'' The names sound harmless, but they are phony. All too often the ads are paid for by secret special interests, billionaires, and wealthy corporations seeking special secret influence in our democracy and drowning out the voices of middle-class American families. As USA Today put it just last week in an editorial supporting this DISCLOSE Act, ``Everybody's watching what's expected to be by far the most expensive presidential campaign in history, and not without a dose of horror. Freed by the Supreme Court from spending limits, all manner of special interests are opening the spigots to buy influence.'' That is exactly right, ``All manner of special interests are opening the spigots to buy influence,'' and because their money is secret, the American public doesn't even know who is behind the negative political attack ads other than the phony name. Here is how my home State paper, the Providence Journal, reacted to the original Citizens United decision that has unleashed this torrent of secret special interest money: The [Citizens United] ruling will mean that, more than ever, big-spending economic interests will determine who gets elected. More money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns. Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their voices will count for even less than they do now. They will simply be drowned out by the big money. The Providence Journal could not have been proven out more correctly by the events that have taken place since. Senator John McCain said earlier this year: I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck down [the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law], that there would be a flood of money into campaigns, not transparent, unaccounted for, and this is exactly what is happening. Senator McCain was right. Campaigns are no longer waged by candidates and parties fighting over ideas; they are now waged by shadowy political attack groups posing as social welfare organizations, run by political operatives, linked to specific candidates, and fueled by millions of undisclosed dollars from secret special interests. When these secretive special interests take over our elections, it puts in jeopardy the key supports of a strong middle class, supports such as Social Security, Medicare, Pell grants, a progressive tax system, and things that have paved the way for generations to achieve the American dream. Why do I say that? I say that because these special interests have motives to spend this kind of money. If those motives were good for America, would they be so desperate to keep what they are doing secret? I don't think so. Americans who worry now that Washington listens too much to the special interests, strap in, look out, and hang on to your wallet because a secret special interest avalanche is underway. According to a study in April, 90 percent of the money being spent by super PACs, nonprofits, and other outside groups to elect the President of the United States is coming from secret sources, secretive corporations, and billionaires whose names and motives the voters may never know and who will have no accountability for how that money is spent. When there is no accountability for how money is spent because the phony front organization that purports to be spending it isn't real and the real party and interest has hidden behind a veil of secrecy, then there is no limit on what people will say. It is accountability that keeps public dialog in reasonable check. That is why you and I, Mr. President, are obliged at the end of our campaign advertisements to say: I am Senator Whitehouse, and I approve this message. I am Senator Coons, and I approve this message. Well, relieved from that accountability, about 70 percent of the ads in this election cycle have been negative. That is up from 9 percent in 2008. I will say it again: 70 percent, up from 9 percent, as this flood of secret special interest money has hit. Even worse, if we look at the four top-spending political 501(c)(4)s--the secret organizations, the ones that hide their donors-- and what they have done in the last 6 months, an estimated 85 percent of their election spending was spent on ads that contained deceptions, according to a recent analysis by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. So we unhinge any real person from accountability for this spending. The special interests behind it remain secret, and the ads become virtually exclusively negative attack ads and they are riddled with deception. This is what the Supreme Court thought free speech looked like. This is all the result of that disastrous decision by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which opened the floodgates of secret, anonymous special interest money. I think it was a deliberate decision, but that is a discussion for another day. For today, our purpose is to point out that the campaign finance system, as a result, is broken and it lends itself to corruption in new and unprecedented ways. The Supreme Court, in the Citizens United decision, in its blissful ignorance, never even considered what happens behind the scenes. They talked only about the public debate and the public expenditure of this money. They assumed it would be independent of the candidates, and they were wrong. They assumed it would be transparent as to who was behind it, and they were wrong. They also assumed that what was put on the air was the end of the issue. They took no consideration of the behind-the-scenes meeting where the special interest comes in to meet the Congressman and doesn't spend $5 million in secretly funded negative attack ads but threatens to. And if the threat works, they buy the vote, nobody ever sees an ad, and the institution of government is corrupted. It is one thing if it is a company and they say: Well, I am going to be against you, and my CEO is going to have a party and raise money in $5,000 increments against you, and our PAC is going to give a $10,000 check to your opponent. We are going to tell our workers that you are not a good person for our industry. OK, that is not great, but it is nowhere near as dangerous as being able to say: We are going to put $5 million into a secret campaign of negative attack ads against you, and nobody is going to know it is us. If you play right and do what you are told, we will lay off, but otherwise, look out, we are coming after you. It will be hidden, it will be negative, and it will be nasty. That is no way to run a democracy. So today the majority leader has moved to a bill that will bring at least transparency and accountability to our elections. At least these big special interests will have to say who they are. Then we as Americans can evaluate what their motives are, what the deal might be, whether we are actually aligned with their interests, and we can evaluate what they are saying about candidates. We will have more information. We will have a better quality of free speech. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. In fact, disclosure has never before been a Republican or Democratic issue. This is about protecting our democratic process as Americans. I really look forward to debating this important measure with my colleagues in the upcoming days. I am joined by Americans of all political stripes who are disgusted by the influence of this unlimited secret money pouring into our elections. We are disgusted by campaigns that succeed or fail, that last or don't last, depending on how many billionaires the candidate has funding their campaign through these special organizations. More and more around this country, particularly in Rhode Island--the people I hear from at home--people feel this government responds only to wealthy and corporate interests. They feel the middle class can't catch a break, that nobody is listening, that everything is done for the big guys. They see their jobs disappear. They see their wages stagnate. They see bailouts and special deals for the big guys, and they lose faith that their elected officials are actually listening to them. If we thought that was a problem before, when at least it was public and at least we knew who the registered lobbyists were and who had made the campaign contributions and at least we knew there were some reasonable limits on all that--all those gates have been knocked down. It is the Wild West now, and it is secret. Six in ten Americans say the middle class will not catch a break in this economy until we reduce the influence of lobbyists, big banks, and big donors. Guess what. With these fountains of secret money behind them, their influence isn't being reduced; it is going to be dramatically increased--and increased in ways that lend themselves to corruption. One out of every four Americans actually says they are less likely to even vote because they believe big donors and super PACs have so much more influence over elected officials than they do that they feel pushed out of the process, so why bother. That is a terrible blow to American democracy. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans, including a majority of Democrats and Republicans, agree with this proposition: New rules that let corporations, unions, and people give unlimited money to super PACs will lead to corruption. One would think that is a blindingly obvious proposition. It escaped the five conservative members of the Supreme Court who decreed that was not going to be the case. Seven out of ten Americans disagree with them. I disagree with them. The closer we get to elections, the more we see that proposition is foolhardy. So we have the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that Republican and former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter said is appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored, clearly constitutional, and desperately needed. I very much hope we can join in this debate; that we can get this bill passed in the Senate; that we can clean up our elections and begin to do something about this foul avalanche of negative attack ads--again, 85 percent of them containing deception-- that are now polluting our public discourse. Prior to the Citizens United decision and prior to the floodgates actually opening, there was a long and rich bipartisan tradition in this Senate of demanding disclosure of spending in elections. Many of our Republican colleagues in the Senate have loudly and clearly supported disclosure in the past, and I hope they will join us in passing this important piece of legislation. The fundamental principle of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a government that will listen to the people, not just to the big special interests that can afford massive secret money. I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. This explains that the threat is only going to get worse; inaction is not an acceptable option. This letter was signed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Director of National Intelligence and NSA Director ADM Mike McConnell, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, former Defense Secretary Dr. Willian Perry, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, former Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn, III, and former Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Security, Richard Clarke. I also have a letter written to Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell, dated June 6, 2012, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is not just the agricultural sector that is getting clobbered by the drought and the heat. As the Presiding Officer, Senator Udall of New Mexico, knows all too well, and to quote from a New York Times story: Explosive wildfires have burned across much of the west in recent weeks. In southwestern New Mexico, the largest wildfire in state history has burned nearly 300,000 acres. Of course, New Mexico is the Presiding Officer's home State, but the article also describes other fires on the loose in Colorado and Utah. The High Park Fire, which has been burning for weeks near Fort Collins and is one of the largest and most destructive blazes in the state's history . . . The article also mentions that Colorado had more than half a dozen fires burning and said conditions have not been this bad in a decade. So we are seeing exactly the kind of extreme weather conditions the climate scientists, whom the deniers have always mocked and made fun of, actually predicted. They predicted this would happen, and it is, in fact, happening. It is clear we can't take a particular storm and say this storm, this fire, this drought was the product of climate change. The example people use to describe what is going on is that it is akin to loading dice. The more someone loads the dice, the more the numbers they have loaded the dice to show up will show up. So we will get more weather events. Even if we don't load the dice, we are sometimes going to get double sixes. We can't show every double six is because the dice were loaded, but when we see more and more double sixes showing up--more than history would suggest or more than the odds would suggest--then something is going on. That is what we have done by loading our atmosphere with carbon pollution. We have loaded the dice for these extreme weather events, and now we are reaping that bitter harvest from the pollution we have thrown up there. Unfortunately, the bitter harvest in this city is that we continue to listen to propaganda and nonsense from the polluters designed specifically to create enough doubt to prevent us from taking action about something that is creating these immense consequences for foresters and firefighters in the West, for corn farmers in the Midwest, and for anybody who has to experience extraordinary weather events like ``snowmageddon,'' so-called, here in Washington. These things are beginning to have an effect as real life begins to model what the climate scientists predicted. NOAA's Chief Jane Lubchenco spoke before an audience in Australia, which is experiencing very similar conditions, and said these extreme weather events are convincing many Americans that climate change is a reality. We are seeing that more and more. Yale, George Mason University, and the Knowledge Networks did some polling on this subject, and 69 percent of the respondents said they agreed that ``global warming is affecting the weather in the United States'' versus 30 percent who said they disagreed. So better than 2 to 1 the American people are ready for us to do something about this. They know there is a connection and they expect us to take responsible action. Gallup polls are reflecting a rebound in the public's concern about climate change from 51 percent in 2011 up to 55 percent in March of this year. Before the recession, it was all the way up to 66 percent, until the economic issues pushed it aside. The contention the polluting industries and their mouthpieces here in Washington make--that the jury is still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution--is simply false. The jury is not still out. The verdict is in, the verdict is clear, and we should start doing something about it. When I come to the Senate floor to give these talks, I often quote a letter from back in October 2009 that was signed by virtually every major scientific organization in the country--the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Agronomy, the Botanical Society of America, the Soil Science Society of American, the American Statistical Association, and I could go on and on. The point is not to name all the multiple responsible and respected scientific organizations that signed the letter but to read what it was they said. If we think about it, as I read it, think about how cautious scientists ordinarily are in the language they use. Here is what they said: Observations throughout the world make it clear-- Clear-- that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates-- Not suggests, demonstrates-- that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are-- Not maybe, are-- the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. That is a very ``sciencey'' way of saying something that is pretty harsh, which is that all these contrary assertions about climate change simply cannot be reconciled with an objective assessment of the facts, of the vast body of peer-reviewed research. If it can't be reconciled with an objective assessment, what kind of assessment is it getting? What it is getting, I submit, is a phony assessment, a political, propaganda-driven assessment, and an assessment with the purpose of creating enough doubt to slow down political action, to preserve the status quo, and to allow pollution to continue to pour out of these smokestacks. I speak very specifically about smokestacks because Rhode Island is a downwind State, and so much of the coal pollution that gets piped up into the atmosphere through Midwestern smoke stacks ends up landing in my State. It lands in the form of ozone, in particular. There are days in a Rhode Island summer that look clear, look beautiful, and someone can be driving by sparkling Narragansett Bay in the morning on their way to work when off goes the radio and the radio jock, in giving the news announcements of the day, says: Today is a bad air day in Rhode Island. Infants should stay indoors. The elderly should stay indoors. People with breathing difficulties should stay indoors. This is an otherwise beautiful day. Yet children, seniors, and people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors? Yes, because corporations, pumping carbon pollution and other forms of pollution out of their Midwestern smokestacks, will not clean up their act. So they get to hold Rhode Islanders, on a clear summer day, captive indoors because they will not clean it up? That is wrong. It is just plain wrong. I am going to continue to come to the floor on a regular basis to keep pointing this out. For some reason, this has become the issue in Washington that dare not be mentioned. Enough of that. It is time we started to mention it. It is time we started to force this issue, and it is time we started to do something about it because any other form of activity faced with these facts would be wildly irresponsible. Let me give the example I have used before. You are a parent. You have responsibility for the welfare and well-being of your child. Your child is showing symptoms. You don't know quite what is wrong, but you take her to the doctor and the doctor says: Something is wrong here. She needs treatment. Treatment is not going to be easy, it will not be cheap, but she needs it. You think: OK. That is bad news. I tell you what, I am going to be a responsible parent and I am going to go get a second opinion. So you go and get a second opinion and that doctor says the exact same thing: Your daughter is sick. She needs treatment. So you ask a couple more doctors who are friends. You get a third and fourth opinion. Let's say you are the most determined parent in the world and you go out and you get 99 second opinions. You contact 100 doctors about your daughter's condition, and 97 of them, 97 of those doctors say your daughter is sick and she needs to be taken care of and she needs this treatment. At that point you say: There is still doubt. There are these three other doctors who aren't so sure about this, so I am not going to do it. That is not something a responsible parent would do. I suspect in some circumstances that would be so irresponsible that it might land you in the child and family services office of your local government. That is exactly what we are being asked to do about climate change-- to ignore the 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate scientists who understand this is real, this is man-made, and the consequences are going to be ferocious for us because there is a 3-percent doubt. It gets even worse because so many of the scientists involved in the 3 percent are scientists for hire who have economic ties to the polluting industries. Some of them even go back to previous fights, such as those over whether cigarette smoking is good for you or whether lead paint is safe for children. These are scientists who have made a career of manufacturing doubt on behalf of the cigarette and tobacco industry, on behalf of the lead paint industry, and now on behalf of the big carbon polluters. In a nutshell, they are phonies, and we are being asked to believe them. I see the Senator from Florida is here, and I think my time at this point has probably expired. I appreciate the time to come before this body and share these views again. I will close by pointing out if there is one place we truly need to worry about climate change and about the effects of our carbon pollution, it is not just in our atmosphere, it is not just in the climate or in the weather, it is in the oceans. The oceans are undergoing historic changes as a result of the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. We are acidifying our oceans at a rate that is unprecedented. We are now out of a bandwidth that has lasted for 8,000 centuries--8,000 centuries. Our entire species has developed within a safe bandwidth of atmospheric carbon and of ocean acidity that we have now, for the first time, stepped out of and a long way out of. If we do not take this issue on in a responsible way, we are going to bear an even more bitter harvest. Exhibit 1 [From the ScienceDaily, June 6, 2012] Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters (By Anne Ju) The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think. That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes-- think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington, D.C., during February 2010. Cornell's Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a paper published in the June issue of the journal Oceanography. ``Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives,'' Greene said. ``But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces our weather patterns here.'' A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during summer, exposing darker ocean water to incoming sunlight. This causes increased absorption of solar radiation and excess summertime heating of the ocean--further accelerating the ice melt. The excess heat is released to the atmosphere, especially during the autumn, decreasing the temperature and atmospheric pressure gradients between the Arctic and middle latitudes. A diminished latitudinal pressure gradient is associated with a weakening of the winds associated with the polar vortex and jet stream. Since the polar vortex normally retains the cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic Circle, its weakening allows the cold air to invade lower latitudes. The recent observations present a new twist to the Arctic Oscillation--a natural pattern of climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Before humans began warming the planet, the Arctic's climate system naturally oscillated between conditions favorable and those unfavorable for invasions of cold Arctic air. ``What's happening now is that we are changing the climate system, especially in the Arctic, and that's increasing the odds for the negative AO conditions that favor cold air invasions and severe winter weather outbreaks,'' Greene said. ``It's something to think about given our recent history.'' This past winter, an extended cold snap descended on central and Eastern Europe in mid-January, with temperatures approaching minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit and snowdrifts reaching rooftops. And there were the record snowstorms fresh in the memories of residents from several eastern U.S. cities, such as Washington, New York and Philadelphia, as well as many other parts of the Eastern Seaboard during the previous two years. Greene and Monger did note that their paper is being published just after one of the warmest winters in the eastern U.S. on record. ``It's a great demonstration of the complexities of our climate system and how they influence our regional weather patterns,'' Greene said. In any particular region, many factors can have an influence, including the El Nino/La Nina cycle. This winter, La Nina in the Pacific shifted undulations in the jet stream so that while many parts of the Northern Hemisphere were hit by the severe winter weather patterns expected during a bout of negative AO conditions, much of the eastern United States basked in the warm tropical air that swung north with the jet stream. ``It turns out that while the eastern U.S. missed out on the cold and snow this winter, and experienced record- breaking warmth during March, many other parts of the Northern Hemisphere were not so fortunate,'' Greene said. Europe and Alaska experienced record-breaking winter storms, and the global average temperature during March 2012 was cooler than any other March since 1999. ``A lot of times people say, `Wait a second, which is it going to be--more snow or more warming?' Well, it depends on a lot of factors, and I guess this was a really good winter demonstrating that,'' Greene said. ``What we can expect, however, is the Arctic wildcard stacking the deck in favor of more severe winter outbreaks in the future.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That shows the original challenge to climate change theory, based on the incident of Snowmageddon, was like so much that is said to challenge climate change--phony, outright wrong, a misunderstanding of how it works, and misrepresenting what it shows. Scientists have recently published an article in Oceanography that demonstrates that link between climate change and severe winter weather in the northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes. I think that can be debunked as a phony claim against the facts of climate change that are surrounding us. Look around at what is happening now. We are seeing extreme weather on the other side. Last week, Eugene Robinson wrote a Washington Post column that was entitled ``Feeling the Heat.'' He wrote: Still don't believe in climate change? Then you're either deep in denial or delirious from the heat. He points out that the evidence is mounting in irresistible and ultimately irrefutable ways. To quote from his article: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the past winter was the fourth-warmest on record in the United States. To top that, Spring--which meteorologists define as the months of March, April and May--was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1895. Again, this spring--March, April, and May--was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1895. He continues: If you don't believe me or the scientists, ask a farmer whose planting seasons have gone awry. The Bloomberg news recently wrote a story entitled ``U.S. Corn Growers Farming in Hell as Midwest Heat Spreads.'' The story reported that corn crops are in the worst condition since 1988 and that 53 percent of the Midwest is experiencing moderate to extreme drought conditions. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, the Bloomberg article I have just referenced.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we were here two winters ago, in February, when Washington was hit by a snowstorm that achieved the nickname Snowmageddon. The city and, in fact, much of the mid-Atlantic was buried under feet of snow. It was the biggest snowstorm in 90 years for this area. People in Washington were struggling to get to work and school, and people went without power for days. This being Washington, some of our colleagues in the Senate seized on that opportunity to mock climate change and to suggest these winter snowstorms were inconsistent with the projections of what would happen from global warming and climate change. As an initial matter, that is a false comparison from the very get-go all by itself. Climate science models have predicted consistently that as polar icecaps and glaciers melt and more water enters the system, we can expect heavier precipitation events. One of the ways it has been described is that if you have a pot on the stove and you have the heat under it and it is simmering, when you turn up the heat, you get more activity in the pot. You add energy to a dynamic system like a pot of boiling water, and it creates more energy in the dynamic environment. In the same way, the extra energy coming in because of climate change, our carbon pollution in the atmosphere, is energizing our atmosphere and our weather, and we are getting weather extremes as a result. There was an article in Science Daily, headlined ``Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters.'' It says this: The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think. That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes-- think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington, DC, during February 2010. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am delighted to respond to the Senator in two ways. First, as the Senator so well pointed out, this is not a future threat or a prospective threat that we need to prepare ourselves against; this is an ongoing, current threat. There is a campaign of attacks into our national security infrastructure, into our intellectual property, and into our critical infrastructure, such as the power grids and the communications networks we count on in our daily lives for what we consider the American standard of living here at home. So time is not our friend. As one of the individuals I quoted said--I think Admiral McConnell-- the day to get this done was yesterday. So the sooner the better. We do need to form a consensus in this body, enough to move through the parliamentary obstacles that exist in this body, which allows us to go forward and will allow us to go forward in a way that does something serious about forcing the operators of our critical infrastructure to put in adequate cybersecurity protections. If they have to do it because they have incentives to do it, that is one way of getting there. If they have to do it because there are regulations that demand it, that is another way of getting there. There are different ways of getting there. And as the Senator from Connecticut and I have discussed--and we are actually working together on this--we are open to different ways to get there, but it should be agreed amongst us in the Senate that getting there, getting to the point where America's critical infrastructure is protected from cyber attack as reasonably well as we can should be the nonnegotiable goal. Anything short of that should be seen as failure. There is another thing I wanted to add. The Senator was very generous in his remarks and credentialing of a great number of Senators who have been working very hard. I would also like to single out Senator Coons, who has been very helpful in our efforts. I will stay on our side of the aisle at this point and add in particular Senator Mikulski. Barbara Mikulski serves on the Intelligence Committee. She is keenly aware of the cyber threat. She has taken deep dives into this issue in her role as a cardinal on the Appropriations Committee. She does the appropriations for many of the national security agencies and law enforcement agencies that are deeply involved in this. So when she speaks, she speaks with real authority and she speaks with real impact. Her participation in this effort is extraordinarily helpful, in addition to the efforts of the many Senators whom my colleague singled out as well. With that, I yield the floor. I see the Senator from Louisiana is here, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut.