Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am back with my trusty, battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart, and the last time I spoke on the Senate floor on this subject, I reviewed some recent warnings from the Economist magazine, from the Potsdam Institute, and from the consulting firm Deloitte that climate change is poised to cause tens of trillions of dollars in damage around the world--tens of trillions of dollars. Much of it, of course, right here in the United States. Well, not surprisingly, the insurance industry has concern about forecasts of damages in the tens of trillions. The Senate Budget Committee recently held a hearing examining insurance, property, and mortgage markets in Florida, a State that is on the leading edge of climate-related risks. Insurance, property, and mortgage markets are intertwined. To buy property, most people need a mortgage. To get a mortgage, you need insurance. In our hearing, Dr. Ishita Sen, a professor of finance at the Harvard Business School, told about the danger to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, our Federal mortgage giants. They require insurance from insurers that have a financial strength rating from a ratings agency, to assure that the mortgages they purchase are protected by reputable, financially solid insurers. Bad insurance increases their risk of homeowner default, as homeowners are way more likely to walk away from properties if their insurance company can't pay claims or won't pay quickly. Dr. Sen's research in Florida found several disturbing things. First, she found that larger, stronger insurers are exiting Florida and being replaced by smaller, less financially sound companies and by Citizens Property Insurance, the State-backed insurer of last resort. Second, she found that these smaller private insurance companies were all receiving their financial ratings, required by Fannie and Freddie, from the same ratings agency, known as Demotech. If you haven't heard of it, it is because it hasn't been around long. Third, she found that Demotech ratings appeared to systematically overestimate the financial strength of the rated insurers. Nineteen percent--nearly 1 in 5--of Demotech insurers in Florida became insolvent between 2009 and 2022. Fourth, she found that mortgage lenders were loading up those mortgages insured by Demotech-rated insurers to Fannie and Freddie, compared to properties with insurers using other rating agencies. What does that mean? It means Florida's mortgage risk is being transferred to the taxpayer and to pension funds for millions of Americans that commonly purchase mortgage-backed securities. All of this should ring a bell--a hell of a bell. Remember the 2008 financial crisis. It, too, began in the residential real estate and mortgage markets. It too had Florida as its epicenter. It too involved ratings agencies handing out inflated ratings. It too involved mortgage-backed securities, securitized by Fannie and Freddie and sold around the world. That 2008 financial crisis led to the great recession, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and much of their household wealth. Unemployment topped 10 percent. Five trillion dollars was piled on our national debt. So when we start seeing parallels to things that went awry back then, we should wake up and take them seriously. Dr. Sen said this about the climate risk we face: Not only do we need to harden our homes, but we need to harden our financial institutions, our banks, and our insurance companies in order to make them withstand really large climate shocks that are for sure coming their way. Well, when she talks about ``really large climate shocks that are for sure coming their way,'' that means they are for sure coming our way, because just like 2008, if this goes down, everyone suffers. At this point, we have dawdled on climate for far too long. We have let the fossil fuel industry for decades obstruct action on climate change. Now, with financial warnings in the trillions, the Deloitte report said: The global economy needs to execute a rapid, coordinated and sequenced energy and industrial transition. Well, I promised in my last ``Time to Wake Up'' speech that I would discuss how best to execute that rapid transition. So let me turn to that. I will begin by acknowledging that Democrats took the first serious legislative step on climate in 2022 with the Inflation Reduction Act, or the IRA. The IRA was modeled to reduce emissions by around 40 percent by 2030, compared to a 2005 baseline, which is great. But we need to reduce emissions not by 40 percent but by 50 percent by 2030, and to get to net zero emissions by 2050, if we are going to hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Even if we do that, the climate havoc we are already seeing will get worse. The climate havoc we are already seeing is at about 1.2 degrees Celsius. So what more do we need to find a pathway to climate safety? And how do we do it globally, knowing that the United States only now accounts for about 12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions? Well, for years now, my team and I have been in constant communication with economists and other climate modelers who specialize in predicting the effects of various emissions reduction policies. Study after study, group after group, expert after expert have said the same thing: An economywide carbon price will drive the deepest emissions reductions--which makes sense. The cost of a product's harms, under economic principles, should be reflected in the price of the product. When they are not, it is a subsidy. And fossil fuel floats on the fattest subsidy in human history, now clocked at over $700 billion a year in the United States alone. Put a price on that free pollution, and markets emerge to reduce emissions in the most efficient way, whether by fuel type, new technology, efficiency measures, or preventing or capturing emissions. Here is an example of how that works. This graph from 2021, before the passage of the IRA, examines emissions trajectories in a variety of policy scenarios. The green line here, at the top, is business as usual then, which assumed no new emissions-reducing policies, and, of course, had virtually no effect. Drop down to this orange line. It is a package of clean energy tax credits very similar to what was ultimately included in the IRA. As you can see, those tax credits result in substantial, though insufficient, emission reductions through 2030, which is here, and then they more or less flatline. The gray line below it here is a clean electricity standard, which would have incentivized cleaner electricity generation and penalized dirtier generation in the power sector. It does slightly better than the tax credits, but it also wanes in efficacy after 2030. Yellow line, just below it, is those tax credits, plus that clean electricity standard. It is a bit better, but it is still pretty impotent after 2030. Then you have this light-blue line, which represents a relatively modest carbon fee starting at around $15 per ton of emissions and remaining relatively low for the first 6 years and then ramping up in outyears to roughly $80 per ton. This model actually exempts unleaded gasoline. Yet even with that exemption, it drives dramatically deeper emissions reductions, particularly after 2030. Indeed, by 2040, it almost doubles the emissions reductions of the other two policies combined. And the lowest line, this dark-blue line, represents doing it all. And the anchor of that outcome is that modest carbon price, which is ultimately far more potent at driving emissions reductions than all other policies. Here is another study. This one was done this year after the IRA was passed, and it reaches similar conclusions. This top yellow line--which doesn't come close to our targets--represents what would happen if, as our Republican friends have threatened, the IRA were to be repealed and EPA's recently finalized emissions rules for powerplants, cars, and trucks were struck down or rescinded. As you can see, emissions very slowly trend down due, largely, to continued deployment of wind and solar--which are now the cheapest forms of energy--and to different States' decarbonization policies. This next line, which gets to our targets around 2040, represents a scenario in which the Inflation Reduction Act stays, but the EPA rules are voided or rescinded. Again, we don't hit our targets for 2030 until 2040, a very dangerous decade to miss. The next line, the red line, is essentially our new business as usual. It is the IRA and the EPA rules remaining in force, and there we hit our decarbonization targets around 2037, still off by 7 years. This light-green and light-blue line, which are very hard to distinguish, respectively increase the value of the IRA power sector clean energy tax credits by 50 percent and add a clean electricity standard. Both result in delays hitting our 2030 target until 2035. This purplish line here adds carbon pricing, similar to the one I just discussed, with repeal of the nonpower sector tax credits in the IRA. So even with repeal of some of the IRA clean energy tax credits, adding a modest carbon fee results in emissions reductions that are the best in class so far, hitting our 2030 targets as early as 2033. And the dark-green line, that just adds the carbon price. It nearly hits our 2030 target very close, and it drives, by 2040, an additional billion metric tons over the emissions reductions expected from the IRA and EPA's rules. And let me show you one more chart. This one here was from Brookings. This one here is from the Potsdam Institute. Together with the Washington Post, Potsdam Institute looked at over 1,200--one thousand two hundred--climate policy scenarios that have been run in recent years, and they found that of 1,200 policy scenarios that experts have run, there are only 11 left--only 11 left--that allow us to hit our 1.5 degrees Celsius target. And of those 11, every one requires a price on carbon pollution. So the upshot of all of this is that you simply cannot continue allowing polluters to pollute for free, not if you want to find a pathway to climate safety. All of those other pathways without a carbon price have been foreclosed by our dawdling and our indolence and the pressure from the fossil fuel industry to do nothing. One other point, as you can see, almost all of them overshoot. So if you want to get back to safe climate levels, you absolutely are going to need carbon capture technology and direct air capture to be specific because you are going to have to claw back excess emissions. At this point, it is not enough just to stop. Happily, a carbon price gives carbon capture a revenue proposition. So it will dramatically encourage that technology. Here is the other huge advantage of a carbon price: We can export it via carbon border adjustment. The European Union has just launched its carbon border adjustment mechanism called its CBAM--carbon border adjustment mechanism, CBAM--and it is about to be joined by the UK as well, and they will assess a carbon tariff on imported goods to the EU and the UK. Less carbon-intensive goods will pay a lower carbon levy; more carbon-intensive goods will pay a higher levy. And that levy creates a powerful global incentive for clean manufacturing wherever products are made for export to EU and UK markets. If we joined in, if the United States of America joined in and implemented a similar policy here at home, the downward pressure on global emissions--particularly Chinese emissions, which currently represent roughly a third of global emissions--would be even more powerful. A carbon border adjustment would be a big win for cleaner American manufacturing. On average, the Chinese economy is about three times more carbon- intensive than the U.S. economy. So if a domestically produced good paid a $1 carbon levy, the equivalent good imported from China would pay, on average, a $3 carbon levy, which would help to reshore to the United States steel, aluminum, and chemical production, and all the well-paid manufacturing jobs that they generate. Now, the fossil fuel industry, of course, complains that such a policy would harm consumers, the same consumers they happily gouge, but when it comes to remedy and climate, suddenly, they are interested in consumers. Well, A, these companies already make so much profit they could absorb the tariffs for their customers, and, B, we can spend tariff revenues in ways that boost consumers; for instance, return revenues earned from polluters to consumers as dividends, as Chairman Cantwell has proposed, for consumers to spend how they please. Indeed, I have got a bill that would do just that. One of the big lies of the fossil fuel industry is to pretend the costs their pollution foists on the American public don't exist. In fact, Americans are already paying for the polluters' pollution and for their obstruction of climate action. We pay in higher home and auto insurance premiums, now exploding through Florida; higher grocery bills; higher home prices due to lumber shortages; higher prices for goods tangled in climate-related supply chain snarls. Americans are already paying the climate pollution price. It is just a very dumb one that does nothing to reduce the pollution and shifts the burden of harm from polluters to everyday Americans. A carbon price would send a correct price signal into markets. It would reward innovators and innovation. It would rectify the fundamentally unfair situation of an industry passing the cost of its pollution onto ordinary Americans, and, as these various graphs all show, it would actually work at providing a pathway to global climate safety. Opportunities are coming. Next year, a large swath of the Trump tax cuts, which were disproportionately skewed toward large corporations and the very wealthy, will expire and good riddance. This gives us an opportunity to make the Tax Code more fair, to reduce income inequality, and to use revenues from big polluters to reinstate, for instance, the Child Tax Credit, to do good things. Taxing polluters could also help to improve the Nation's fiscal position. And another reconciliation bill is possible if voters take climate risk seriously and don't put fossil fuel flunkies in charge of their government. In short, carbon pricing makes sense from all angles. It is the single most effective policy at reducing carbon pollution and heading off the massive, looming tens of trillion-dollar financial risks that we see coming from climate change, as Dr. Sen said, ``that are for sure coming our way.'' It provides a tool to help us tackle global emissions that will also spur domestic manufacturing and jobs. It raises real revenue to help Americans shoulder the burden we carry as a result of decades of fossil fuel industry pollution, denial, and obstruction, and it could even help reduce the budget deficit. We have got no time left to waste. In the next Congress, you can be sure that I will do everything in my power to make sure that we finally embrace the winning policy that we should have implemented decades ago, back when we were first warned about the costs and dangers associated with carbon pollution. It is well past time to make fossil fuel polluters pay for the harms they cause, and it is well past time for Congress to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, first, let me thank the chairman of our committee for attempting to bring this bill to the floor and to get us on it. Even though the Republicans have objected to Supreme Court ethics, it is important for us to continue to make the effort because the American people understand that there is something gone very wrong at the Supreme Court. The objections that we just heard amounted to a long excursion through a great variety of topics: through abortion; through past FBI investigations; through allegations about a two-tiered system of justice; through wokeness; through things we all agree on, like separation of powers and an independent judiciary. I think it would be helpful to actually come into focus on what we are actually talking about here because most of what was said in opposition to this bill is completely irrelevant to what we are seeking to achieve. We all accept the doctrine of separation of powers. Senator Blumenthal, who is here, is an expert in the subject. He has argued more cases in the Supreme Court than any other Senator. To be clear, our bill does not make the Supreme Court subservient to Congress in any respect. The bill obliges the judicial branch of government to create its own ethics enforcement mechanism that will be run within the judicial branch of government by the judicial branch of government. There simply is not a separation of powers concern when the judicial branch of government runs an ethics program for the judicial branch of government that is administered within the judicial branch of government. It just ain't so. The existing state of affairs is that the ethics requirements that apply to the Justices of the Supreme Court, first, related to recusal and, second, related to disclosure of gifts are laws passed by Congress. And the enforcement, particularly of the disclosure requirements, is done by the Judicial Conference. The Judicial Conference is a body established by Congress. When Harlan Crow first started giving free yacht and jet travel secretly to Clarence Thomas, that question was taken up by the Judicial Conference a decade ago. Did the Justices complain that the Judicial Conference was investigating Justice Thomas and his disclosures? No, of course not, because the argument would make no sense. So to hear it here on the Senate floor is a bit disappointing. Right now, the Judicial Conference investigates and can sanction or refer for further investigation Justices of the Supreme Court. We are trying to fix three really simple problems: One is factfinding. Factfinding ought not to be an issue in dispute. Every member of government in the United States who is subject to any kind of supervision or ethics requirement--which is everybody--had a process whereby the actual facts are found of what went wrong. Hell, even the President of the United States had to sit for a factfinding interview about the documents in his garage. It is only nine people in the entirety of the U.S. Government who think that they have no obligation to do any factfinding. And that is pretty dangerous because we just saw Justice Alito offer facts, a description, about what went on behind his family flying MAGA battle flags over their houses that has been proven false by information that is incontestable. Police reports with dates show that he got the order of things wrong. COVID showed that it couldn't possibly have been a schoolbus stop. So you have erroneous facts offered by Supreme Court Justices with no method to review them. Or they completely ignore the facts. Justice Thomas has refused to ever say a word about what he knew about his wife's engagement in the insurrection while he was adjudicating the rights of those investigating the insurrection. There is nobody else in the world where somebody doesn't come in and say: Sir, we have a complaint about your conduct, and we are going to need to take a statement from you. This won't take long. I am going to ask you some questions. You will give your answers. At the end, we will ask you to review and sign your statement. Nothing difficult about that. Nothing against the separation of powers about that. Nothing that Chief Justice Roberts couldn't require right now about that. He could have Supreme Court staff attorneys conduct exactly that kind of work right now, as the chairman has repeatedly pointed out. Factfinding is a really basic elemental proposition of our American judicial process, and it applies everywhere. It makes no sense for the body ultimately responsible for policing proper judicial process in the United States to not allow itself to participate in that most elemental and fundamental task of there being actual factfinding. The second is a principle so old it is in Latin, for Pete's sake: ``Nemo iudex in causa sua''; no one should judge their own case. That is pretty easy to understand. And yet we let these Justices alone in the United States--nobody else--get to be the judges of their own ethics. And, obviously, they have failed to measure up. And the third issue is transparency, disclosure. We know perfectly well that the Justices have failed at their disclosure obligations, and they can't keep their stories straight about meeting their disclosure obligations. We just had Justice Thomas go back into his previous disclosures to correct them and tell the world and the Judicial Conference, which was reviewing this, that his failure to file was an accidental error. It was ``inadvertent.'' But earlier he had said about the same gift from the same billionaire: Oh, those don't have to be reported. That was personal hospitality from a dear friend. Well, which is it? Is it personal hospitality that doesn't have to be reported? Or is it something that you knew perfectly well you should have reported, and now you are going back and cleaning up an error that you are claiming is inadvertent? The disclosure mistakes are inexcusable on their face. Federal officials who commit far less in the way of disclosure mistakes have actually been prosecuted as felons, as misdemeanants, under the criminal law for those similar disclosure violations. So we need to get this right. All it requires is factfinding and an independent voice so it is not nemo iudex. You are not judging your own cause. Those are really basic principles. That is all we are trying to do. It would be done by judges within the judiciary. There is no separation of powers issue. That is a complete canard. And I will close by saying that the Judicial Conference has been helping us in all of this. The Judicial Conference has just blown up Justice Scalia's trick, which was to solicit through intermediaries free vacations from resort owners, and then when the resort owner invited him with a personal invitation, he would pretend that that was personal hospitality because it was a personal invitation, even if he had never met the resort owner. That is a preposterous reading of the personal hospitality exemption. And it is not just me saying that. The judges of the Judicial Conference said: You are right. That is preposterous. That is ridiculous. We are clarifying the rule that that is not acceptable. And he had done it 60 times. He was a vacation-taking fiend. My Lord. So the idea that you can trust a Supreme Court Justice, with no independent review, no factfinding, each the judge in his own cause, to follow the rules has been blown to smithereens by the conduct of the Supreme Court Justices themselves. As our chairman is fond of saying: This is a crisis in ethics at the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court itself has created. It is a crisis in ethics of the Supreme Court that Justice Roberts himself at the Judicial Conference can solve. But if they are not going to do it, we are going to do what we did before when we set up the Judicial Conference, when we set up the recusal laws, when we set up the disclosure laws. Set up the system, and let the judiciary enforce it. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, as the presiding officer knows, I have come regularly to the floor to discuss multiple aspects of the scheme run by a bunch of rightwing billionaires to capture and control the Supreme Court and how that has come to affect so many Americans' lives. Well, in case there were not enough ethics problems already at the Supreme Court after the billionaire gift program for certain Justices gave them luxurious, free, undisclosed travel gifts around the world, paid for homes for parents, education for dependents, and even an expensive motor coach that appears never to have had the principal repaid. Now we know that MAGA battle flags were flown over the Alito residences. We don't know all the facts of what happened. We do know that Alito's version of events differs from corroborated statements of other witnesses to those events, and for sure we know that people need to be able to trust that judges maintain the highest standards of impartiality, which includes avoiding even the appearance of bias. And say what you will about the excuses and the reasons for flying MAGA battle flags over the house of a Supreme Court Justice, you cannot say that those flags did not appear. You cannot say that they did not create an appearance that, to a reasonable person, would raise serious questions about whether that Justice flying MAGA battle flags over his home had a bias, particularly with respect to cases arising out of the January 6 MAGA insurrection. Whatever those fact differences are, they are important to try to get to the bottom of. And the problem is: It is hard to get those fact differences resolved because alone in the entire Federal Government-- alone--Supreme Court Justices are subject to no factfinding process. If the presiding officer or me or the minority leader or the majority leader were subject to ethics complaints here in the Senate, our Ethics Committee has the ability to investigate and to do factfinding, and even to take statements. It is true over in the House as well. Even the powerful Speaker of the House can be subject to sanction, can be subject to investigation, and to have to make statements. Heck, President Biden sat for an official interview about the documents in his garage. But the Justices--and only the nine Justices--are protected even from any factfinding, the most rudimentary foundation of legal process. And it is ironic because, in theory, the Supreme Court is supposed to defend the integrity of legal process in this country, and what they do is they exempt themselves from its most rudimentary pillar. Obviously, this is all part of a long string of problematic behavior that has come to the public's attention, none of which has received adequate factfinding over at the Court. So, for sure, these far-right Justices have demonstrated they need to be subject to an enforceable ethics code. You remember the routine they have been on? First it was: Don't bother us. This is nobody's concern. And then it was: Oh, all right. We have this ethics statements that we are going to put out about our ethics. And that wasn't good enough. So it was then: OK. OK. We will do an ethics code. But it is like: We will play by the rules of baseball, except for that part about umpires. So we will have an ethics code. We will play by the rules of baseball, but we will get to call our own balls and strikes, and we will get to call ourselves safe on base every time, and there will be no dispute because there is no factfinding to be done. We also know that the Justices won't talk to us about their messes, about this problem. Justice Roberts just declined a meeting with the chairs of the Judiciary Committee and the Court's Subcommittee. Alito sent us a letter expanding on his challenged version of events, but his correspondence is not subject to the veracity discipline of any sanction for falsehoods and omissions. Again, and making matters worse, Alito's story conflicts with the accounts of other people involved, and the Supreme Court, uniquely in all of government, has no mechanism for getting to the truth. So if the Court won't create one, then we need to. And my Supreme Court ethics bill would do just that. Every investigator knows that you have to take a proper statement to get to the truth. The Supreme Court itself took statements from employees when it was investigating the Alito-Dobbs draft opinion leak. But no matter what the circumstances, no matter how bad it gets, no factfinding process applies to the nine Justices--just them. Everybody else in the government is subject to some factfinding process--not them. That can be fixed. Nowhere is the Supreme Court forbidden to have an inbox for ethics complaints. Nowhere is the Supreme Court forbidden to hire clerical staff to sort out nutty from legitimate ethics complaints. Nowhere is the Court forbidden to hire staff attorneys to look into the legitimate ethics complaints and do a little investigating. Nowhere is the Court forbidden to allow the staff attorneys to interview Justices to help determine what the facts are. ``I am sorry, sir. This should take less than an hour, but I need to go through the events in this complaint and get your statement of what the facts are here.'' That is not hard. And nowhere is the Court forbidden from allowing, for instance, a panel of senior respected Federal chief judges who administer the ethics code in their own circuits to compare what the Justices did, what the factfinding investigation revealed, with what those chief judges would allow in their circuits and then make that comparison public. None of that offends the separation of powers. It would be all run within the judicial branch. And even without any actual disciplinary punishment, the rebuke of a Supreme Court Justice being told that their conduct wouldn't fly in other Federal courts would be a powerful corrective and deterrent. There is an old saying that the best way to show one stick is crooked is to lay a straight stick down next to it. A panel of senior and respected Chief Judges could provide that straight stick. Even on an advisory basis, the straight stick would be valuable. And we are going to continue working both on the Judiciary and Finance Committees to get to the bottom of the mischief at the Court. 252nd Anniversary of the ``Gaspee'' Raid Madam President, now, if I may, I would like to change the topic to my favorite annual presentation here in the Senate, and that is to commemorate the anniversary of the burning of the Gaspee. The Gaspee was a revenue cutter of the Royal Navy that was operating in Rhode Island waters, annoying and harassing the shipowners and the crews who were engaged in maritime trade. And they got so fed up that, one day, a trading ship called the Hannah was working her way up Narragansett Bay, and the Gaspee came along and instructed the Hannah that it should pull up and allow itself to be inspected, boarded, and potentially seized by Her Majesty's government. They were doing a lot of that, by the way. It might have come back to bite them. There was a ship called the Fortune, which was owned by a Rhode Islander. It was seized, taken up to Boston, and sold. And, at the time, one of the owners was not all that involved in the activities that led to the Revolution, but he got a little bit motivated when his boat got seized and his cargo seized and all of his goods were taken and the value shipped back to the King. He was Nathanael Greene. He ended up becoming Washington's aide-de-camp. He ended up running the southern campaign for George Washington. And the British general who was trying to manage the American Revolution wrote back to his wife: That damn Greene is more dangerous than Washington. So it can be provoking to have your ship seized. Anyway, there is the Hannah sailing up the bay. Here comes the Gaspee in hot pursuit. The Hannah has a wily captain who knows the waters quite well and sails the Hannah over shallows, where a river comes into the bay and leaves a sandy trail along the bottom. And so the Hannah shoots over the shallows, and along comes the rather bigger, more lumbering Gaspee and grinds into the sandbar. And it is stuck. And the tide is falling. So it is going to be there for a while. So up goes the Hannah to Providence and reports on how they tricked the Gaspee into grounding itself on the sandbar. And, that night, drums are beat on the streets of Providence. Refreshments are served. And a gang of worthy Rhode Islanders decide to go down and fix the Gaspee, once and for all. And six or seven longboats rowed down that night, under cover of darkness, with muffled oars, and they approached the Gaspee. They told its captain to surrender or they would board it and sack it. Captain Dudingston said he was not going to do that. There was an exchange of gunfire, and the captain of the ship, whose actual rank was lieutenant--Lieutenant Dudingston--was shot in that exchange. He survived his wounds. He was taken ashore by the Rhode Islanders, provided medical care, and ended up retiring back to his native Scotland, all well. But that moment was probably the first blood drawn in the conflict that ultimately became the American Revolution. So they did, in fact, take over the boat. They swarmed up the sides of it. They captured the crew. They took them all ashore. And then they went back out, and they lit the boat on fire. Here is a rendition of what the Gaspee looked like burning, stuck on the sandbar. Of course, when the fire got to the powder magazine--boom. It went off like a bomb. We are still trying to find pieces of the Gaspee there, but it got blown to such smithereens that nobody has yet been able to find anything, despite some fairly diligent efforts. We love the Gaspee in Rhode Island. Here is a new license plate commemorating ``Gaspee Days,'' showing the Gaspee all on fire, getting ready to blow up. And here is what is interesting about it. I did an interview with the Washington Post. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the interview appended at the end of my remarks here. This is from that article. Pretty much everybody here--I suspect all of the pages who are here on the floor--know exactly what the Boston Tea Party is. Massachusetts has seen to it, over many, many years, that everybody knows what the Boston Tea Party was. Well, as the story relates, 18 months before colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor, Rhode Islanders attacked and destroyed a British Navy ship off the coast near Providence, furious with what they saw as the Crown's overreach--18 months before. You know, in Rhode Island, we sometimes have a little chip on our shoulder about being overlooked by our bigger northern neighbor--our northern suburbs, some might say. But, you know, when you actually blow up the damn boat and that is lost to history, but then up in Massachusetts, more than a year later, they push tea bags off the boat into the harbor and they get the credit for the great revolutionary activity, I want to come to the floor and do my very best to make that correction to history. And one of the things that is nice is that people are starting to write more and more about this. I will close by referencing ``The Burning of His Majesty's Schooner Gaspee,'' a history of the event surrounding that incident, by Steven Park. And then in Nick Bunker's book, ``An Empire on the Edge,'' he has an entire chapter inside, ``The dark affair, the Gaspee incident,'' that describes what was done. And our Secretary of State's office put together this presentation on the Gaspee affair. It was titled ``Gaspee: The Spark that Ignited the American Revolution.'' So I am here to commend the Rhode Islanders who struck that spark 18 months before those Massachusetts worthies drank their share of whatever they needed to do to actually get on a boat and push tea bags into the harbor--pretty brave. Nothing against them doing that, but--I mean, seriously--we captured the boat, we shot the captain, and then we blew the damn boat up. I think that merits mention in American history.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And with that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I submit to the Senate a budget scorekeeping report. The report, which covers fiscal year 2024, was prepared and submitted as a letter by the Congressional Budget Office pursuant to section 308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. This information assists the Senate Budget Committee in determining if budgetary points of order lie against pending legislation. CBO's report shows the effect on spending and revenues of congressional action through April 15, 2024. Between CBO's last report on December 13, 2023, and April 15, 2024, Congress passed eight pieces of legislation with effects on direct spending or revenue. These include two appropriations bills passed in March, P.L. 118-42 and P.L. 118-47, that completed the fiscal year 2024 appropriations cycle in line with the bipartisan agreement enacted last summer. CBO's report included three tables, tables 1, 2, and 3. Tables 1 and 2 show that current budgetary levels are within allowable amounts for budget authority and outlays. The allowable levels include an adjustment for the Senate-passed national security supplemental, P.L. 118-50, which had not yet been enacted into law when the table was prepared. These tables also show that revenue is below the allowable amount, due to the rescissions of IRS mandatory funding in the last appropriation bill, P.L. 118-47, which reduces revenue and increases the deficit. Table 3 shows the Senate's Pay-As-You-Go scorecard, which reflects $36.4 billion of net deficit increase, entirely due to IRS funding rescissions. The Democratic staff of the Budget Committee prepared three addendum tables to supplement CBO's report, tables A, B, and C. Table A compares the mandatory spending of each authorizing committee against the enforceable allocations under section 302 of the Congressional Budget Act. It shows that 11 of the 16 authorizing committees are compliant with their allocations, either because no legislation with significant budgetary costs was enacted, the legislation was deficit-neutral and qualified for an allocation adjustment that was subsequently filed, or the legislation reduced spending. Table B updates CBO's table 1, the Senate current level report for spending and revenues, to reflect the enactment of P.L. 118-50, the national security supplemental, which was passed by the House and Senate and was signed into law by the President after CBO prepared its report. Table C updates CBO's table 3, updating the Senate Pay-As-You-Go scorecard to reflect six bills that have passed by the House and Senate since the release of CBO's report, five of which have been signed into law by the President. I ask unanimous consent that CBO's letter, accompanying tables, and the addendum be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I submit to the Senate the budget for fiscal year 2025. Last summer, Congress agreed to a 2-year budget deal as part of negotiations surrounding the debt limit. That was the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, or the FRA. It included a provision to serve in place of a formal budget resolution for both fiscal years 2024 and 2025. I am submitting the necessary budgetary levels to implement that agreement today. In the Budget Committee, my Republican colleagues have suggested that we should be debating a budget resolution. So I will take this moment to remind them that we already have one in place from that agreement. I don't see our committee wasting precious time on something that has already been decided, when we could and, indeed, should be preparing for the future. When at least $10 trillion of our national debt stems from two exogenous shocks to the economy--namely, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID pandemic--it would be folly for the Budget Committee not to focus on future shocks to our economy, which is why the Budget Committee has been focused on threats to our Nation's long-term fiscal outlook and on proposing solutions--like how climate change poses systemic risks to our economy, like how tax cuts for the wealthy are driving up deficits, like how making the wealthy pay their fair share would protect Social Security and Medicare essentially forever, like how we can cut healthcare costs with zero cuts to benefits if we pursue commonsense reforms to healthcare delivery systems. When it comes to the economy-wide risks from climate change, we have heard from economists, central bankers, financial experts, insurance and mortgage industry leaders, and many others who are ringing the alarm bells. In the Budget Committee, we have heard testimony about rising seas making large swaths of coastline less and less habitable and less and less insurable. I am sure the Presiding Officer is seeing that in his home State of Georgia. As the decades unspool ahead of us, more and more coastal communities will be at risk, eventually rendering an estimated trillions of dollars in real estate virtually worthless. We have heard similar testimony about property becoming uninsurable in wildfire-risk areas. We are already seeing insurers flee communities on the frontlines of climate change. We have seen premiums skyrocketing in response to increased climate-related damages. Things will likely get uglier. So the committee launched investigations into the climate change- fueled insurance crisis. We are working with Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on an investigation into the fossil fuel disinformation campaign in order to better understand how it stalled political progress on climate action and imperiled our economy. What our joint investigation revealed is that Big Oil knew the environmental and economic harms of its products but deceived the American public so as to keep producing and selling ever more oil and gas. We learned that Big Oil and its trade associations continue to oppose climate policies, including ones that they publicly claim to support. Unfortunately, our series of hearings on climate costs and the fossil fuel industry's role in perpetuating the climate crisis has been largely met with derision or mockery or just trying to change the subject by many of my Republican colleagues. As I said at the last hearing on this subject, you can have your opinion now, but history will judge. While acknowledging that revenue is a subject within the purview of the Budget Committee, Republican response to our hearings on raising revenue has not evinced much substantive interest. There is not much outrage, for instance, that big corporations pay lower tax rates than plumbers. The Budget Committee has held seven hearings, with more planned, examining how tax cuts for the wealthy and for big corporations and the resulting tax gap have been actually primary drivers of our deficit. We have learned that the Bush and Trump tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt and, in fact, are the main reason the debt as a share of the economy is increasing. According to CBO, extending the Trump tax cuts, which Republicans appear to want to do, would cost another $4.6 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t''--mostly for billionaires and big corporations. You can see where the priorities lie. We have heard testimony that by closing loopholes, making the wealthy and large corporations pay a fairer share, and cracking down on wealthy tax cheats, we can protect Social Security and Medicare forever, invest in an economy that works for everyone, and reduce our deficit--like my Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act, which would shore up these twin pillars of retirement security essentially forever without raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000. What have Republicans proposed? Well, not much. They spent decades trying to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and then they rose to their feet in acclamation, in last year's State of the Union Address, to assure the American public that they would not cut benefits. Well, if that is the case, then the only solution left is more revenue. So it would be nice if they were willing to discuss how to make the wealthy pay their fair share and protect these programs into the future. Another big driver of Federal spending is healthcare. The United States continues to spend more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than any other peer OECD country, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Actuary estimates healthcare will grow to 20 percent GDP by 2031. For all that spending, the average life expectancy in America is lower than that of many peer countries with far more efficient healthcare systems. So the Budget Committee is tackling this too. We held a series of hearings on reducing inefficiencies in healthcare that increase costs for patients, families, and the Federal Government. In just our most recent hearing, we heard how administrative burdens--the billing, reporting, and all the nonclinical work incidental to the actual delivery of healthcare--are responsible for over half a trillion dollars in healthcare spending every year. And here, I am happy to report that there have been bipartisan glimmers of hope. There has been bipartisan agreement on the source of these problems, and I have begun conversations with Ranking Member Grassley about what legislation we might be able to work on together in this space. I can only wish that my Republican colleagues were similarly willing to have serious conversations on climate risk and on revenue opportunities. As our hearings have made clear, if you care about American debt deficits, you have to care about climate change, about unrigging our Tax Code, and about addressing wasteful spending in healthcare. And with that, section 122 of the FRA requires that I submit the levels that will be used to enforce the second year of the spending agreement. This submission sets the spending level for appropriations for 2025 at the spending caps in law and allows the Appropriations Committee to begin its work. It also sets mandatory spending and revenue levels for 10 years at current law levels. I am also updating the reserve fund in the FRA to be available for legislation that doesn't increase the deficit between 2025 and 2034. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these accompanying tables be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will momentarily yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 578, 457, 607, 608, 609, 610, and 611; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 686, submitted earlier today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 15; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the O'Donnell nomination, postcloture; further, that all time be considered expired at 11:30 a.m. and that following the cloture vote on the Bulsara nomination, the Senate recess until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; further, that if cloture has been invoked on the Bulsara nomination, at 2:15 p.m., the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination; that the cloture motion with respect to the Aframe nomination ripen at 1:45 p.m. on Thursday, May 16; that upon disposition of the Bulsara nomination, the Senate execute the order of May 7, 2024, with respect to the Schulte nomination; further, that upon disposition of the Schulte nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 387, S.J. Res. 57; that at 6 p.m., the joint resolution be considered read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the joint resolution; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am back with my trusty battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart here to talk about the climate warnings that now predict climate-related damage in the trillions of dollars-- trillions of dollars. A full third of our national debt already comes from economic shocks like COVID and the 2008 mortgage meltdown. I have been using the Budget Committee to spotlight warnings that the next big economic shock will be caused by climate change. Climate change is not just about polar bears or green jobs. It is about economic storm warnings to which we had better start paying attention. Today, I will talk about three. The most recent comes from the Potsdam Institute. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have the report summary printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The institute warns that ``global annual damages are estimated to be at 38 trillion dollars, with a likely range of 19-59 trillion dollars in 2050.'' Thirty-eight trillion dollars is the midpoint in a range that could go as high as $59 trillion. That is pretty bad. But it gets worse. This is not a complete accounting of the expected damages. It does not fully account for damage from weather extremes, things like storm and wildfire damage. To quote the Potsdam report about its damage predictions, ``accounting for other weather extremes such as storms or wildfires could further raise'' these predictions. And even that is not the end of it. It gets worse still. The Potsdam economic estimates leave out damages that are hard to monetize but, nonetheless, can be very real to real people. Again, quoting from the report, ``that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity.'' If your grandfather taught you to fish in a certain place and you can't pass that on to your granddaughter because the fish aren't there or because the creek isn't there, that is a real and genuine harm, but they can't monetize it. So they don't even count it. I am sorry to report that it gets even worse. The Potsdam global damage estimates are based on existing levels of fossil fuel pollution. Back to the report: These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately--if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century. Well, with an entire industry and an entire political party, dedicated here in Congress to make sure that we do not cut down our emissions drastically or immediately, this damage estimate is virtually certain to be worse in the out years. In sum, economic damages could be as high as $59 trillion annually in 2050, plus whatever added damages come from storm and wildfire, plus whatever added damages come that are hard to monetize, plus whatever economic damages come from failing to reduce emissions drastically and immediately. How do these damages hit us? Here is the report: These damages mainly result from rising temperatures but also from changes in rainfall and temperature variability. Those factors lead to ``income reductions . . . for the majority of regions, including North America . . . caused by the impact of climate change on . . . agricultural yields, labor productivity or infrastructure.'' The result: Climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, [including] the United States. That is report one: ``massive economic damages'' to the United States. Let's move on to report two, the cover article from a recent issue of the Economist magazine, titled ``The Next Housing Disaster.'' From the Economist's opening paragraph: About a tenth of the world's residential property by value is under threat from global warming--including many houses that are nowhere near the coast. From tornados battering Midwestern American suburbs to tennis-ball-size hailstones smashing the roofs of Italian villas, the severe weather brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions is shaking the foundations of the world's most important asset class. Going on, the article says: The potential costs . . . are enormous. By one estimate, climate change and the fight against it could wipe out 9 percent of the value of the world's housing by 2050--which amounts to $25 trillion. We have had testimony in the Budget Committee about how this works. There is the potential direct cost of damage from wildfires or major storms. Hurricane Ian cost Florida more than $100 billion, and it was just a category 4 storm at landfall, below the maximum category 5 strength. Some scientists believe we will actually need category 6 in the future for storms that are made even more powerful due to ever-warming seas. There is the related risk of insurance coverage failing to pay claims after such a major disaster, leaving homeowners stranded economically in ruined homes. Then, there is the broader risk of insurance collapse, even without a single devastating storm. How does that work? Again, from Budget Committee testimony: First, unprecedented, unpredictable wildfire or flooding risks drive up insurance costs. We are already seeing that happen. Then, continued unpredictability and worsening risk make properties in certain areas uninsurable. We are beginning to see that. You can't get a policy for any amount of money. Without insurance, then, it is near impossible to get a mortgage. And by the way, a 30-year mortgage doesn't look just at today's conditions; it looks out 30 years. So a mortgage crisis follows the insurance problem. And when properties can't get a mortgage, the only buyers for the property are cash buyers. Buyer demand crashes, and your property values crash along with that. This is how the chief economist of Freddie Mac predicted, years ago, a coastal property values crash that he said could hit the American economy as hard as the 2008 mortgage meltdown and subsequent global economic crisis: first, insurance crisis; second, mortgage crisis; third, coastal property value crisis. And unlike the mortgage meltdown of 2008, when property values could recover and did recover from an economic shock, properties that are predictably going to be underwater physically or repeatedly burn down during the 30-year period of a mortgage, they won't recover their value. This is not a temporary market panic that crashes and then rebounds to something near normal. In this kind of crash, the unpredictable conditions and the underlying risk that caused it just get worse--for decades, if we get serious, finally, about fossil fuel emissions, and for centuries or forever if we don't. We are playing near the edge of an economic precipice. Back to The Economist: The $25 trillion bill will pose problems around the world. But doing nothing today will only make tomorrow more painful. This is what is called a systemic shock. It does not stay confined to the affected homeowners and industries. To quote The Economist here: The impending bill is so huge, in fact, that it will have grim implications not just for personal prosperity, but also for the financial system. I continue here: If the size of the risk suddenly sinks in, and borrowers and lenders alike realize the collateral underpinning so many transactions is not worth as much as they thought, a wave of repricing will reverberate through financial markets. The punch line: Climate change, in short, could prompt the next global property crash. Now, The Economist article is a prediction just as to property markets. For report three in this speech, let's go to Deloitte's research arm, which looks at broader economic trajectories: A, if we do respond effectively to climate change and, B, if we don't. The stakes are huge. Deloitte is a corporate consulting firm; it is not a Green New Dealer. And Deloitte estimates that the global cost of doing nothing on climate will be around $180 trillion in economic damage by 2070--$178 trillion to be exact. To quote the Deloitte report: If we allow climate change to go unchecked, it will ravage our global economy. Ravage our global economy. But the Deloitte report goes on to say that if we act responsibly and enact policies that limit warming to 1.7 degrees Celsius, we can save ourselves from that ravaging and actually grow the global economy by over $40 trillion--$43 trillion to be exact. So the swing in our economic future, based on what we do on climate, is over $220 trillion, the difference between a negative $178 trillion bad climate outcome if we keep shirking and dawdling, and a positive $43 trillion good climate outcome if we shape up. And to be clear, that $220 trillion, that is adjusted to present value. Dialing down to the United States, the report predicts: For the United States, the damages to 2070 are projected to reach $14.5 trillion, a lifetime loss of nearly $70,000 for each working American. On the upside, a responsible climate path could add $885 billion in economic benefit for the United States for a swing of over $15.3 trillion, again, net present value, depending on which path we choose. The Deloitte report warns: [W]e have squandered the chance to decarbonize at our leisure. Given the costs associated with each tenth of a degree of temperature increase, every month of delay brings greater risks and forestalls the eventual economic gains. They continue: The global economy needs to execute a rapid, coordinated, and sequenced energy and industrial transition. This is not the speech to lay out how we do that; that speech will come later, so stand by. This speech is simply to highlight that there are now multiple damages assessments out there looking at the climate threat and assessing that threat into the tens of trillions of dollars. There is much that we don't know, but the common level, moving into the tens of trillions ought to be a wake-up call for all of us. There are some things that we do know. We do know that getting serious about these warnings will require breaking the filthy political hold of the fossil fuel industry on Congress. It will require exposing and defeating fossil fuel's dark money influence and disinformation armada. And it will require learning to deal with the facts as they are, not as a deeply, ill-motivated industry would have us wrongly believe. Wow, is it ever time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 665, which is at the desk.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1042, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that if the Senate receives a message from the House that it has passed H.R. 7791 and if the text is identical to S. 4057, that H.R. 7791 be considered as having been read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 290, S. 2116.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today for the 31st time in my series on the special interest scheme that captured the U.S. Supreme Court. There is an old adage that the best way to show that one stick is crooked is to set a straight stick down next to it. So, today, we are going to look at some sticks. Supreme Court Justices are caught over and over receiving enormous gifts, often from people very interested in Court proceedings, and refusing even to report the gifts as the law requires. The disciplinary process for these Justices is virtually nonexistent. Not even basic factfinding takes place. So let's compare the Court's dereliction about its own conduct with the straight stick of how other Federal officials are treated when they don't report gifts, but let's start with a recap of the history. After the first round of gifts of yacht and jet travel from billionaire Harlan Crow to Justice Clarence Thomas, the Judicial Conference, which is the administrative body which oversees the judicial branch of government, investigated the matter, and that investigation buried the situation rather than get to the bottom of it to the point even of applying the wrong legal process. The law requires the Conference, if there is a reasonable chance that the failures to disclose were willful, to refer the determination of willfulness to the Attorney General. There is good reason for that. One, the Attorney General has real investigative resources. Two, judicial clubbiness and mutual back-scratching is less likely. Three--three--the Attorney General can determine whether other crimes, like tax and false statement violations, are also implicated. But, back then, the Judicial Conference did not make the referral nor did they issue any public report providing any real explanation for that decision. On that transparency score, zero. Recently, the Judicial Conference, to its great credit, blew up what I call the Scalia trick, which is, one, arranging free secret vacations with resort owners and, two, pretending the generous, free hospitality he received was personal hospitality under the disclosure laws because he had been extended a personal invitation. Well, obviously, that is not what they mean in the disclosure laws by ``personal hospitality.'' It is supposed to cover things where you know people or it is your in-laws or it is your college roommate--where there is a true, longstanding personal relationship, not somebody you don't know extending you a personal invitation. So stopping that nonsense was good, but here is the transparency part: The Conference described what they did in that decision as a clarification--a clarification--which was also good because it acknowledged that was the rule all along. They weren't making a new rule; they were clarifying what had been the rule all along. But then along comes Clarence Thomas, who is usually completely silent on his many ethics failings--completely silent. On this occasion, he instantly launched lawyers to say he would comply with what they called the new rule. The trick to that stunt was the claim that this was a new rule. Claiming it was a new rule meant that he would only have to comply going forward, not go back and clean up years of false financial filings. So I have asked the Judicial Conference to clarify what it meant by ``clarification.'' So far, I have received no answer. So, as of now, years of Thomas and Alito misfilings remain uncorrected, but it is still going on. So, on that, the transparency score is pending. The Judicial Conference is also reviewing the more recent round of Harlan Crow-to-Clarence Thomas mega gifts, and it is to be hoped that the judges now on the Judicial Conference will do a better job of following the law than their predecessors did; that they will make a proper referral to the Attorney General and that they will let the facts be properly investigated. There is no sign of that yet, just that the investigation is ongoing. So the transparency score on that is also pending. The danger in all of these decisions about judicial disclosure failings is the judges may see the whole mess as just a problem in a judicial bubble, their own little concern that is really no one else's business. But it is far more serious than that, as I am about to show. However, if there is nothing to compare their own behavior to, nothing to compare their own stick to, they might not notice its crooks and its bends. Let me go back to one of the reasons for referral to the Attorney General: He is positioned to determine if criminal laws were also violated along with disclosure laws. There is every reason to believe that Justices who failed to report big emoluments on their judicial disclosures also failed to make required tax disclosures. I recently saw an article pointing out that even Academy Award gift bags create tax consequences. It was reported ``the Academy decided to end its practice of handing out gift bags, citing the upfront tax burden they placed on stars.'' Well, if gift bags for stars create tax consequences, so must big gifts to Justices. And if Hollywood stars are expected to understand that, well so should Supreme Court Justices. If Justices didn't make the required tax filings, they broke the law. And if they did make the required tax filings but still not the required judicial disclosure filings, that signals potential willfulness. It is the Attorney General's job to determine, but if it is determined that the misfiling was willful, that brings its own penalties and consequences. A large body of law about false statements also applies here, based on criminal laws, like 18 United States Code section 1001, a felony offense. Who knows, proper investigation may show that even fraud and bribery statutes apply, at least with respect to the billionaires who so generously lavish these Justices who keep handing them favorable decisions. Remember, for instance, the $25,000 payment via the Court-fixer Leonard Leo to Thomas's spouse, Ginni Thomas, specifying ``no mention of Ginni, of course.'' This is serious. By shrouding in clubby secrecy judicial colleagues' violation of judicial disclosure laws, judges may also be covering up crimes--a problem reaching well beyond internal business of the judiciary. Plus, covering up crimes is just a bad look for judges. So to the straight stick, let's look at how other recipients of unreported gifts in other government offices have been treated when the unreported gifts come to light. If it is the judiciary's position that Justices are subject to a lower standard of accountability than ordinary executive and legislative branch officials, well, I would like to hear them say that outright. But if the standard for Justices is not lower, then these cases are very relevant comparisons. To keep it simple, today, let's just compare cases involving nondisclosure of free gifts of vacations, event tickets, lodging and travel, like those gifts which Thomas and/or Alito received from wealthy donors. In 2016, the government accepted a guilty plea from the Resident Agent in Charge of a Mexico DEA field office. The DEA agent had failed to disclose gifts of private air travel provided to him between his duty station in Mexico and his home in Texas--trips which he claimed were ``for personal'' purposes. He didn't pay fair market value for the flights; although, he did occasionally pay fuel costs. For his failure to disclose these gifts, the DEA agent pleaded guilty to a section 1001 false statements criminal violation, a felony, and was sentenced to 2 years of probation and 100 hours of community service. That same year, the government accepted a guilty plea from the director of a Veterans Affairs hospital for her failure to disclose gifts she received totaling a bit more than $21,000, including domestic and international airline tickets, concert tickets worth $730, a check for $5,000, resort spa services, a gift card, and the registration fee for a marathon. She, too, pleaded guilty to a section 1001 false statement violation, a felony, and was sentenced to 2 years of probation. The government prosecuted an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for failing to disclose gifts he received from the president of a company representing clients trying to secure HUD contracts. The gifts included luxury box tickets to a Washington Redskins football game. That official pleaded guilty to a section 1018 false statements by a public official violation and was sentenced to 12 months of probation, 60 hours of community service, and a $500 fine. The Jack Abramoff scandal produced a plea agreement with former Congressman Robert Ney for failing to properly disclose gifts he received from Abramoff and others. The gifts involved a trip to Scotland, worth more than $160,000, including all-expense-paid and reduced-price commercial and private jet travel; luxury accommodations in Scotland and London; and free golf, meals, drinks, and transportation. His other undisclosed or underreported gifts included an all-expense-paid 3-night trip to New Orleans to gamble and vacation worth about $7,200; and a 2-night vacation at a resort in Lake George, NY, with lodging, boat rental, a chartered car, meals, drinks, and golf worth more than $3,500. Ney admitted to taking official actions to benefit Abramoff and others in connection with these gifts. He pleaded guilty to a section 1001 false statement violation and to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, make false statements, and violate a lobbying ban. Ney was sentenced to 30 months in prison, 2 years of supervised release, a $6,000 fine, and 1,200 hours of community service. In the Abramoff scandal, the government also prosecuted the chief of staff for the Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration for failing to disclose gifts he received from Abramoff and others representing a client with business before the Labor Department. The unreported gifts included luxury box tickets to a Georgetown University basketball game, luxury suite tickets to a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game, tickets to a Baltimore Orioles baseball game, and tickets to a Washington Capitals hockey game. The official pleaded guilty to a section 1018 false statements by a public official violation and was sentenced to 36 months of probation and a $500 fine. The government also prosecuted a Department of the Interior employee who had failed to disclose gifts from Abramoff. The gifts included tickets to a Washington Redskins game and to a Simon and Garfunkel concert. According to a summary of the case by the Office of Government Affairs, the employee and Abramoff had developed a personal friendship. When Abramoff began giving this employee and his family sporting and concert tickets, the employee sometimes offered to pay for the items, but Abramoff said the tickets were for unused seats and that he wanted to give them to his friend--precisely like Alito's claims of empty private jet seats and personal friendship. The Department of the Interior employee pleaded guilty to a section 1018 false statements by a public official violation and was sentenced to 2 years of probation and a $1,000 fine. So what conclusion can you draw from those cases? The conclusion you draw from those cases is that over and over, in the real world of proper government disclosure and accountability, government officials are prosecuted for failing to disclose gifts far lower in value than what Supreme Court Justices have received. In that real world, they plead guilty to felony criminal charges, and they receive criminal sentences. As felons, they lose various legal privilege. And this is just for failing to disclose. These cases did not involve tax crimes. The cases against these ordinary government officials, even a Member of Congress, provide a comparable--a comparable--against which undisclosed gifts to Justices of the Supreme Court should be measured. What we see shows that equivalent acts in the other branches are prosecuted as crimes, but at the Supreme Court, they are covered up behind a wall of judicial omerta. We can't even get the basic facts. That is no way to run a judicial branch. The judicial branch should be the straightest of sticks. To be continued.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I have four requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: