Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 229, S. Res. 296.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and that any related statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following resolutions which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 326, S. Res. 327, S. Res. 328, S. Res. 329, and S. Res. 330.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Armed Services Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 303 and that the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 251 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Val Molaison, a fellow in Senator Tester's office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we expect to receive the conference report, which contains the continuing resolution, from the House tomorrow. Senators will be notified when votes are scheduled.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today I express my thanks and congratulations to a son and servant of my State of Rhode Island. Bruce Q. Morin, associate judge of the Rhode Island Workers' Compensation Court, has recently retired after a long career in public service. I first had the pleasure of getting to know Judge Morin in the early 1990s, when I was a policy adviser to then-Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun. At the time, the Rhode Island worker's compensation system was broken and on the verge of insolvency. Costs had risen to unbearable levels. Insurers were departing the Rhode Island system. The problem seemed politically intractable. And worst of all, the means of providing adequate support to injured workers in Rhode Island was in danger. Well, working together we completely overhauled the system. A central component of the overhaul was the creation of Rhode Island's Workers' Compensation Court, specifically designed to hear and decide all disputes between an injured employee and an employer relating to workers' compensation benefits. Governor Sundlun appointed Bruce Morin to the court in 1991, the year it was created, and he has dutifully and honorably served both the state of Rhode Island and the citizens who have come before his bench for 20 years. Today, the Rhode Island workers' compensation system stands as a national model. Rhode Island has been able to permanently reduce costs, stabilize the workers' compensation market, eliminate fraud, protect injured workers, and save Rhode Island businesses hundreds of millions of dollars. Rhode Island's system now has the lowest average medical cost per employee per year in the entire country. We owe a great measure of that success to Judge Morin, Chief Judge Healey, former Chief Judge Arrigan, and the rest of the court for implementation of the law in the best interests of the State of Rhode Island. From his days serving his country, both with the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Naval Reserve and as an instructor at the Naval Justice School in Newport; to his time as a member of the Rhode Island State senate; to his distinguished tenure on the Workers' Compensation Court, Bruce Morin has been a lifelong public servant. After a long and successful career in Rhode Island, I know Judge Morin is looking forward to an enjoyable retirement, more hours on the links, and more time to share with his two wonderful children Jeffrey and Amy. I congratulate him on his many accomplishments and wish him great luck and happiness in all his future endeavors.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it was fairly recently that this summer I came to the Senate floor to commend the Environmental Protection Agency for finalizing what we called the cross-State air pollution rule, which limits the out-of-State pollution that one State can dump into the wind currents that drop on other States. To my State, Rhode Island, this is particularly important. Nearly a decade after the EPA began working to address this problem of interstate air pollution, we finally had a path forward that is sensible and protective of public health. That was then, this is now. Today, Senator Paul of Kentucky proposes to halt this progress, to undo that rule through a Congressional Review Act resolution. That resolution would, one, void the cross-State air pollution rule and, two, bar EPA permanently from ever writing a ``substantially similar'' rule. This means that EPA could never use the Clean Air Act to create a cost-effective pollution trading program to address upwind pollution. Mr. President, this hits home in my State of Rhode Island. Rhode Island has the sixth highest rate of asthma in the country. More than 11 percent of the people in my State suffer from this chronic disease, and many of them are children. In 2009 there were 1,750 hospital discharges in Rhode Island for asthma cases. Those hospital stays cost about $8 million in direct medical costs, not to mention the costs of the medication or missed days of work and school. On a clear summer day in Rhode Island, driving along the sparkling Narragansett Bay, commuting into work, you will often hear the warning on drive-time radio: Today is a bad air day in Rhode Island. Infants, seniors, people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors today. On those days, people in those categories are forced to stay at home, missing work, school, and other important activities. Others even in good health are urged to avoid strenuous activities on these bad air days. These are real costs--costs paid in lives and reduced quality of life, in medical bills, public services strained responding to health risks, and in missed days of work and school--all from pollution in our air. We don't know everything about the causes and cures of asthma, but we do know one thing: air pollution triggers asthma attacks. We know air pollution is a preventable problem. Rhode Island has worked hard and made great strides to reduce air pollution. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their engines and to retrofit all State schoolbuses with diesel pollution controls. We require heavy-duty vehicles used in federally funded construction projects to install diesel pollution controls, adhere to the anti-idling law, and use only low-sulfur diesel. Our transit agency voluntarily retrofitted half of its bus fleet with diesel pollution control equipment. But Rhode Island cannot solve its air pollution problem on its own. In fact, Doug McVay, who is acting as chief of Rhode Island's Office of Air Resources, told me all of Rhode Island's major sources of air pollution--not just powerplants but any source that holds a major title 5 permit--emit less than 3,000 tons a year of nitrogen oxide, also called NOX, and sulfur dioxide, also called SO2. Let me repeat that. All major sources in Rhode Island taken together emit annually less than 3,000 tons of these two pollutants. Polluters that will be subject to the cross-State air pollution rule in other States have single units that emit more than that. Some of the larger coal-fired boilers may emit 10,000 to 12,000 tons of these pollutants every year, nearly four times the pollution emitted by all Rhode Island major sources combined. In Rhode Island, we are willing to pull our weight in achieving air pollution reductions. Indeed, we have done more than pull our own weight; we are pulling above our weight. But we need all States to be pulling their weight, too, to make the air safe to breathe in America from coast to coast. This year at my request the GAO completed a report about tall smokestacks at coal powerplants. The report found that in 1970, the year the Clean Air Act was enacted, there were two what they call tall stacks--smokestacks over 500 feet in the United States--two. By 1985 there were more than 180 tall stacks. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks were operating at 172 coal powerplants, representing 64 percent of the coal-generating capacity in our country. The industry literally smokestacked its way into compliance with the Clean Air Act. What do I mean by that? In the early days of the Clean Air Act, some States allowed sources of pollution to build tall smokestacks instead of installing pollution controls. The concept back then was that pollution sent high enough into the atmosphere would be sent far away from the source and would not contribute to air pollution problems--at least in that State. Well, it turns out this air pollution causes problems downwind in other States. As the GAO report put it, tall stacks generally disburse pollutants over greater distances than shorter stacks and provide pollutants greater time to react in the atmosphere to form ozone and particulate matter. For this antiquated practice, Rhode Island pays the price. Smokestacking, instead of scrubbing, is what is behind a lot of the ozone in Rhode Island that gives rise to those bad air days. The GAO found that more than half of the boilers attached to tall stacks at coal powerplants do not have a scrubber to control sulfur dioxide emissions--more than half, no scrubber, just a tall smokestack to pump it out to the downwind States. Nearly two-thirds of boilers connected to tall stacks do not have postcombustion controls for nitrogen oxide. So how does it get to Rhode Island? As GAO concluded, in the Mid- Atlantic U.S. the wind generally blows from west to east. Ozone can travel hundreds of miles with the help of high-speed winds known as the low-level jet. This phenomenon particularly occurs at night due to the ground cooling quicker than the upper atmosphere, which can allow the low-level jet to form and transport ozone and particulate matter with its high winds. This wind map shows that condition. These are all the midwestern powerplants, and this is the wind that carries them down here to, among other States, Rhode Island. Five States on this map--Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, and North Carolina--have been identified by EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. This electricity that comes from uncontrolled powerplants tied to these tall smokestacks might seem cheaper to consumers than a well- controlled powerplant, a powerplant that is scrubbed instead of smokestacking its pollution, but that is really not so. There are costs. The costs just got shifted. The lungs of children and seniors in Rhode Island and other downwind States pay for that cheap electricity, and, truth be told, the lungs of children and seniors in many of the upwind States are paying as well. The States upwind of Rhode Island are downwind of someone else. Ohio and Pennsylvania are upwind of Rhode Island, but they are downwind of other States. That is why EPA's regulatory impact analysis determined that instate and upwind pollution reductions from this rule will save approximately 3,209 lives in Ohio and 2,911 lives in Pennsylvania every year by 2014 and prevent hundreds of heart attacks, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations in those States. This rule opposed by Senator Paul will even save an estimated 1,705 lives in his home State of Kentucky every year by 2014. It is not just lives saved. EPA estimates that by 2014, the benefits from this rule will range between $110 billion and $280 billion. At the same time, EPA estimates that the rule will cost utilities $4.1 billion to comply in 2012 and another $.8 billion through 2014--a grand total of $4.9 billion against $110 billion to $280 billion in quantifiable benefits. At the lower end of the range, this rule generates a 22-to-1 ratio of benefits over costs. For every $1 in cost to the polluters who are creating this pollution, to clean it up, there is $22 in benefit to the rest of the country. That is a pretty good investment, and that is at the low end. At the high end, if it is $280 billion, we are talking about a 56-to- 1 ratio of benefits over costs. We have people from polluting States who, to save a buck for their polluters who are running it up smokestacks instead of scrubbing their pollution, to save the buck in putting the scrubber and quit smokestacking their pollution and dumping it on Rhode Island and other States, are willing to blow $56 in benefits to Americans across the country, even in their States. It doesn't make any sense. The cross-State air rule is good for public health. It is fair. There is no other way Rhode Island can affect these States. We have done everything we can to clean our air. We could stop everything, and we would still be a nonattainment clean air quality State because of what gets bombed in on us from other States. If we don't have EPA defending us, we have no defense at all from States that choose to export their pollution rather than clean it up. And it is very cost effective, better than 51 by the highest estimates. So that is why I will be voting against Senator Paul's resolution to void this rule. I urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here this evening to express my unwavering support for the men and women who have answered the call of duty in our military services, our Guard and Reserve, and for their family members whose love and steady support for them have carried our servicemembers through challenging times and difficult missions. In honor of Veterans Day, coming up the day after tomorrow, and Military Family Month, which we observe all month long this November, we need to reflect on the enormous contributions military families have made on behalf of all of us. Since September 11, the spouses, children and parents of our service men and women have been faced with huge demands. They have endured repeated deployments, and spent many holidays and birthdays and anniversaries apart from each other. We should do everything we can in our communities to help military families cope with the difficulties and stresses of these multiple deployments. I commend First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden for their commitment to our troops' families and for their work on initiatives to address the unique challenges military families face in this environment. I especially appreciate the First Lady's recent visit to Rhode Island. It provided a warm and welcome boost to military family members in my State, which has the second highest per capita National Guard deployment rate of all the States, as well as a significant active-duty presence at Naval Station Newport. With so many men and women leaving home to serve on multiple deployments, the strain on the family can be particularly difficult. Last month I had the privilege of meeting two extraordinary Rhode Island students, Kathleen Callahan, who goes by Katie, and Kaitlyn Hawley, who presented a powerful and compelling message to school superintendents and educators from across Rhode Island who came together to learn about how they can better respond to the needs of military families. These two impressive young ladies shared their personal stories and described the challenges their families faced while their parents were deployed. The event was part of a collaborative initiative to help military-connected children thrive in school through deployments. I was proud to share in this joint effort with the Rhode Island National Guard, with Governor Chaffee, with our Commissioner of Education, the Commanding Officer of Naval Station Newport, our Military Child Education Coalition, and my senior Senator, Jack Reed. Katie is the daughter of a National Guard member. She described how her father's deployment affected the roles in her family. Like most children of deployed servicemembers, Katie assumed additional responsibilities in caring for her younger sibling and helping her mother, whom she referred to as a superwoman. Together, they shouldered the burden of her father's absence and kept the family intact and sound. Katie described the feeling of--to use her words--silent suffering that can occur when military families feel isolated in civilian communities that may not completely understand what it is like when a loved one is deployed. Kaitlyn is the daughter of an active-duty member. She talked about her experience living in eight different States and attending seven different schools. Kaitlyn is a highly motivated student and she explained how she threw herself into her schoolwork during her father's deployment. However, she cautioned that for other students, the opposite can also occur. Some students may have a lot of difficulty focusing on their schoolwork when a parent is deployed half a world away. As Kaitlyn so well put it, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to coping with the stress of deployment. I am proud of Katie and Kaitlyn for their courage, their resilience, and their powerful articulation of a message that I hope everyone hears. We owe our military families an enduring debt of gratitude for everything they have done. We should do everything we can to ensure that no family feels isolated or left out or endures the silent suffering Katie described. I hope every American, as we approach Veterans Day, will actively support our military families, and do what we can to make our communities more welcoming and supportive in accommodating their needs. As Veterans Day approaches, let's celebrate our military families and recognize their extraordinary contributions. Let us thank not only our service men and women but also the spouses, children, and other family members who have shared in the sacrifice of military service. We should also remember the families of our civilian and intelligence servicemembers deployed in danger and away from their families around the world. In concluding, I wish to also express my strong support for the bipartisan legislation the Senate is considering to boost employment opportunities for veterans. Unemployment has been disproportionally high among veterans and we must act now. The last thing our returning service men and women need is to have to face an unemployment line. I urge my colleagues to swiftly pass this much needed legislation, which I am very proud to cosponsor. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was here last week in this Chamber to discuss a variety of areas in which the American people are not getting a straight deal compared to special interests and folks who have a lot of power for themselves and their industries in Washington. In that speech I proposed a number of concrete steps we could take to help restore the balance of power in our Nation between ordinary Americans on the one hand and the giant corporations and special interests that give themselves special deals and privileges that the American people do not share on the other hand. Today I am here to introduce legislation to take one of those steps; that is, to protect ordinary consumers from runaway interest rates on credit cards from Wall Street banks. This is something that has gone unchecked for far too long. In the last Congress we passed two pieces of banking legislation. We passed the Credit Card Act, which ended some of the worst tricks and traps hidden in credit card contracts, and we passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which restructured our system of financial regulation and created a new agency to protect consumers from hazardous mortgages and credit cards. Regrettably, one particularly bad practice was not addressed in either of those two pieces of legislation: the runaway credit card interest rates with which families are too often burdened. I will add it is not just families. I went through Olneyville in Providence about 2 weeks ago and spoke to a small business owner who was having tough times. His bank had pulled his line of credit, so he was having to fund his business off his credit card, and they had bumped up his credit card rate to--you guessed it--30 percent. The Empowering States' Right to Protect Consumers Act, which I am introducing today, would pick up where the Credit Card Act and Dodd- Frank left off by restoring to our 50 sovereign States the power which they have properly had through the vast bulk of the history of this Republic to protect their home State consumers with limits on credit card and other loan interest rates. This is not a new power to States. This is not a new principle or idea. This is the restoration of a historic States right which was just eliminated a few decades ago. When you and I were growing up, a credit card offer with a 20-percent or 30-percent interest rate might be something to bring to the attention of law enforcement. Such interest rates were illegal under most State laws. Today, in contrast, credit card companies routinely charge rates of 30 percent or more. We may not know, going through our credit card agreement, that is where we are going to end up. They may have a teaser rate up front that is a lower rate. But make one of those mistakes in that 20-page-long contract that is full of tricks and traps, and, pow, there we are at 30 percent. What happened between our childhood when a 30-percent interest rate was something to bring to the attention of law enforcement, and now, when ordinary families are bedeviled with 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards? Before 1978-- which is for the first 202 years of the American Republic--each State had the ability to enforce usury laws, interest rate limits to protect their citizens. Our economy grew and flourished during those two centuries, and lenders profited while complying with the laws in effect where they operated. Then came 1978 and a seemingly uneventful Supreme Court case. It was little noticed at the time. It was decided in Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corporation. The Supreme Court had to decide what State's law to apply when the bank was domiciled in one State but the customer lived in a different State. The Court looked at the word ``located'' in the National Bank Act of 1863, and it decided it meant the location of the bank and not the location of the customer. They did not get it right away, but it did not take long before some big banks spotted the opportunity. They could avoid interest rate restrictions by reorganizing as national banks and moving to States that had weak interest rate protections and comparatively weak consumer protections. The proverbial race to the bottom followed as a small handful of States eliminated interest rate caps and degraded consumer protection in order to attract lucrative credit card business and related tax revenue to their States. That is why the credit card divisions of major banks are based in just a few States and why consumers in other States are often denied protection from outrageous interest rates and fees, even though those outrageous interest rates and fees are against the law of the consumer's home State. My bill would reinstate the historic longstanding powers of States to set interest rate caps that protect their own citizens. Let me be clear about what this bill would not do. It would not prescribe or recommend any interest rate caps nor would it impose any other lending limitations. It is pure States rights. It would restore to the States the power they enjoyed for over 200 years from the founding of the Republic: the power to say enough, the power to say that 30 percent or 50 percent or whatever the State deems appropriate should be the limit on interest charged to their people. The current system is not only unfair to consumers, it is unfair to our local lenders and retailers who continue to be bound by the laws of the State in which they are located. This is a special privilege for big national banks that can move their offices to whatever State will give them the best deal in terms of lousy consumer protection and unlimited interest rates. A small local lender has to play by the rules of fair interest rates. Gigantic credit card companies can avoid having any rules at all. We need to level the playing field to eliminate this unfair and lucrative advantage for Wall Street banks against our local credit unions and other small lenders. When we pass this bill, States can dust off or reenact their usury statutes--most of which still limit interest rates to 18 percent or less--and once again begin protecting their consumers from excessive interest rates. This is the historic norm in our constitutional Republic. It is the 30-percent and over interest rates that are the recent anomaly that are the historic peculiarity. We should go back to the historic States rights norm, the way the Founding Fathers saw things under the doctrine of federalism and close this modern bureaucratic loophole that allows big Wall Street banks a special deal to gouge our constituents. As I close, I thank Senators Levin, Durbin, Begich, Franken, Reed of Rhode Island--most significantly my senior Senator--Sanders, and Merkley for their cosponsorship of this bill. In the past, similar legislation has garnered bipartisan support. It did so as an amendment to Dodd-Frank, and I hope my Republican colleagues will consider giving this bill a close look and join with us. This is purely an issue of restoring the balance of power to the States and to the people of those States as voters--federalism, something I know many Republicans support in other contexts. I ask all of my colleagues for their consideration and support.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was here last week in this Chamber to discuss a variety of areas in which the American people are not getting a straight deal compared to special interests and folks who have a lot of power for themselves and their industries in Washington. In that speech I proposed a number of concrete steps we could take to help restore the balance of power in our Nation between ordinary Americans on the one hand and the giant corporations and special interests that give themselves special deals and privileges that the American people do not share on the other hand. Today I am here to introduce legislation to take one of those steps; that is, to protect ordinary consumers from runaway interest rates on credit cards from Wall Street banks. This is something that has gone unchecked for far too long. In the last Congress we passed two pieces of banking legislation. We passed the Credit Card Act, which ended some of the worst tricks and traps hidden in credit card contracts, and we passed the Dodd-Frank Act, which restructured our system of financial regulation and created a new agency to protect consumers from hazardous mortgages and credit cards. Regrettably, one particularly bad practice was not addressed in either of those two pieces of legislation: the runaway credit card interest rates with which families are too often burdened. I will add it is not just families. I went through Olneyville in Providence about 2 weeks ago and spoke to a small business owner who was having tough times. His bank had pulled his line of credit, so he was having to fund his business off his credit card, and they had bumped up his credit card rate to--you guessed it--30 percent. The Empowering States' Right to Protect Consumers Act, which I am introducing today, would pick up where the Credit Card Act and Dodd- Frank left off by restoring to our 50 sovereign States the power which they have properly had through the vast bulk of the history of this Republic to protect their home State consumers with limits on credit card and other loan interest rates. This is not a new power to States. This is not a new principle or idea. This is the restoration of a historic States right which was just eliminated a few decades ago. When you and I were growing up, a credit card offer with a 20-percent or 30-percent interest rate might be something to bring to the attention of law enforcement. Such interest rates were illegal under most State laws. Today, in contrast, credit card companies routinely charge rates of 30 percent or more. We may not know, going through our credit card agreement, that is where we are going to end up. They may have a teaser rate up front that is a lower rate. But make one of those mistakes in that 20-page-long contract that is full of tricks and traps, and, pow, there we are at 30 percent. What happened between our childhood when a 30-percent interest rate was something to bring to the attention of law enforcement, and now, when ordinary families are bedeviled with 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards? Before 1978-- which is for the first 202 years of the American Republic--each State had the ability to enforce usury laws, interest rate limits to protect their citizens. Our economy grew and flourished during those two centuries, and lenders profited while complying with the laws in effect where they operated. Then came 1978 and a seemingly uneventful Supreme Court case. It was little noticed at the time. It was decided in Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corporation. The Supreme Court had to decide what State's law to apply when the bank was domiciled in one State but the customer lived in a different State. The Court looked at the word ``located'' in the National Bank Act of 1863, and it decided it meant the location of the bank and not the location of the customer. They did not get it right away, but it did not take long before some big banks spotted the opportunity. They could avoid interest rate restrictions by reorganizing as national banks and moving to States that had weak interest rate protections and comparatively weak consumer protections. The proverbial race to the bottom followed as a small handful of States eliminated interest rate caps and degraded consumer protection in order to attract lucrative credit card business and related tax revenue to their States. That is why the credit card divisions of major banks are based in just a few States and why consumers in other States are often denied protection from outrageous interest rates and fees, even though those outrageous interest rates and fees are against the law of the consumer's home State. My bill would reinstate the historic longstanding powers of States to set interest rate caps that protect their own citizens. Let me be clear about what this bill would not do. It would not prescribe or recommend any interest rate caps nor would it impose any other lending limitations. It is pure States rights. It would restore to the States the power they enjoyed for over 200 years from the founding of the Republic: the power to say enough, the power to say that 30 percent or 50 percent or whatever the State deems appropriate should be the limit on interest charged to their people. The current system is not only unfair to consumers, it is unfair to our local lenders and retailers who continue to be bound by the laws of the State in which they are located. This is a special privilege for big national banks that can move their offices to whatever State will give them the best deal in terms of lousy consumer protection and unlimited interest rates. A small local lender has to play by the rules of fair interest rates. Gigantic credit card companies can avoid having any rules at all. We need to level the playing field to eliminate this unfair and lucrative advantage for Wall Street banks against our local credit unions and other small lenders. When we pass this bill, States can dust off or reenact their usury statutes--most of which still limit interest rates to 18 percent or less--and once again begin protecting their consumers from excessive interest rates. This is the historic norm in our constitutional Republic. It is the 30-percent and over interest rates that are the recent anomaly that are the historic peculiarity. We should go back to the historic States rights norm, the way the Founding Fathers saw things under the doctrine of federalism and close this modern bureaucratic loophole that allows big Wall Street banks a special deal to gouge our constituents. As I close, I thank Senators Levin, Durbin, Begich, Franken, Reed of Rhode Island--most significantly my senior Senator--Sanders, and Merkley for their cosponsorship of this bill. In the past, similar legislation has garnered bipartisan support. It did so as an amendment to Dodd-Frank, and I hope my Republican colleagues will consider giving this bill a close look and join with us. This is purely an issue of restoring the balance of power to the States and to the people of those States as voters--federalism, something I know many Republicans support in other contexts. I ask all of my colleagues for their consideration and support.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the chair and yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are going through one of the most difficult and painful periods in American history, and millions of Americans are wondering what is happening to our country. Behind the curtain of spin, propaganda, and political attacks, here is what I believe is happening. The rules of the economic game in this country are increasingly being rigged to provide unfair advantage to the wealthy and well-connected and to take unfair advantage of regular folks and families. America has always promised a straight deal, and that straight deal, for many Americans, is getting harder and harder to find. Let me say I am relentlessly proud to be an American. I grew up in the foreign service of this country, surrounded by families who put public service and pride in this country ahead of their comfort, their convenience, even their safety and their family's safety. I am absolutely convinced of American exceptionalism. I have seen it, and I have lived it. That is why I am so upset to see our country in the shape it is in today. Our Founding Fathers changed the world when they set in place our finely balanced system of government, illuminated by the clear and guaranteed rights of the American people. We are squandering that inheritance. Our government is not working, our rights are being undermined, and it is the American people who are paying the price. They are paying the price because too often they are not getting a straight deal anymore. Let's look at some of the places where the deal is rigged, where special interest gets special deals, and where the regular American family doesn't get a straight deal. Big multistate banks are allowed to charge middle-class families 30 percent credit card interest rates that are likely illegal under the State laws where that family lives. Senators in this Chamber who are ardent States rights federalists in every other circumstance have no complaint when their State law is overruled and overborne by the big banks. Students with college loans-- who now carry $1 trillion of debt--and families with home mortgages are denied the privileges every corporate borrower gets to seek, bankruptcy protection against their debt when they are in over their heads. Our individual tax system allows the wealthiest and highest income Americans to pay lower tax rates than middle-class wage earners pay or even hide their income in offshore tax havens and pay no tax at all. The corporate tax system allows international corporations to route their profits through foreign countries and through tax shelters to pay little or no tax in this country. When you drill down to cases, GE, General Electric, on billions of dollars in profit, paid little or no Federal income tax. When you pull up to look system-wide, even though corporations are richer than ever, American people now contribute $5 for every $1 corporations contribute to sustaining our country's revenues. It used to be 1 to 1. For every $1 corporations contributed, the American people contributed $1. There was an even sharing of our Nation's revenue needs. But for 75 years now it has been steadily sliding, and now it is 5 to 1 against ordinary Americans and in favor of corporations. The wealthy elite who make their fortunes in the marketplace don't protect and honor the marketplace. They try to rig the game, even when it puts the marketplace itself at risk. When that requires everybody else to come to their rescue, they show no shame and little gratitude and go right back to work gaming the system. Those who have become CEOs extract from their company's ridiculous amounts of compensation. CEO pay is up in my lifetime from 40 times the average wage of the employee to 400 times the average wage. These CEOs even extract princely compensation when they fail. The big polluters have one party denying science entirely, denying the plain evidence of carbon pollution all around us and spinning the phony theory that the cost of controlling pollution is a burden on the economy when it is actually a huge net gain for our country. A party that used to proudly carry the banner of conservation and environmental protection is now reduced to serving corporate spin masters with phony fabrications, and it is the middle-class families who pay the price. The appointees of one party on the Supreme Court, by a bare 5-to-4 majority, are willing to overturn precedent and flout the rules of judicial decisionmaking to decrease something novel and remarkable: that corporations are people and money is speech and, therefore, our precious constitutional rights to free speech, as American people, give corporations a right to spend as much money as they please, even anonymously, in American elections. International corporations with no loyalty to any flag or nation but with virtually unlimited money may now drown out the voices of regular people, regular families in our American democracy. CEOs get to use the corporate megaphone amplified by the corporate treasury to drown out their employees' voices. Just one big corporation with just 5 percent of one-quarter's profits could match the entire political spending of both Presidential campaigns in the last election. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights established the jury not once but three separate times as an important institution of freedom in our system of democracy. DeTocqueville--one of the great historians and commentators on the American system of government--called the American jury ``one of the forms of the sovereignty of the people.'' Big corporations go to court all the time and fight it out before a jury when they want to. Yet over and over again, a middle-class family, in contracts, cannot negotiate or control, in fine print they probably never even read, their credit card company, their cell phone company, the companies they do business with, quietly take away their right to go against them before an American jury. Over and over again those same Supreme Court Justices who decided a corporation was a person have let them down. They have to go, instead, to something called arbitration instead of a constitutional American jury. To give an idea of how arbitration works, for a long time the biggest arbitration company in the country was a racket rigged to rule against the consumer. It had to be shut down by legal actions by our State attorneys general. Add it all up, all those different areas that I mentioned, and there have been a lot of changes since my childhood. There are a lot of changes in how our country runs, and it is all in the same direction--special deals and special tax rates and special rules that help big corporations and people who are as wealthy as big corporations and leave out regular people who don't have masses of money, money, money; rules that allow corporations to intrude into our public discourse in this democracy and drown out people's voices through mighty corporate megaphones amplified by money, money, money; lies and nonsense cooked up in corporate spin factories being treated as fact obtaining acceptability by how often the lies are repeated thanks to money, money, money. Under all of that money, what is drowning is the sense we are all in this together as Americans. One of the things America actually stands for in this world is that we are fair with each other. We get a straight deal, and we give each other a straight deal. That is one of the ways we, as Americans, set an example in this world, an example of being fair. There are plenty of countries in the world whose internal political and economic systems amount to a racket, a racket rigged for the benefit of the rich and powerful where farmers and workers and ordinary families get screwed and the wealthy skim all the cream. Some of these countries are so bad we call them kleptocracies. The world is full of that. It has been the pride and joy of America that we are not like that. It has been our message to the world that it doesn't have to be like that. But now it is looking more and more like we actually are becoming just like that. What can we do about it? What can we do to make sure Americans are getting a straight deal in all of this? I propose these actions: No. 1, big banks should have to follow the State laws just like local banks do and just like you and I do. No more going to South Dakota and marketing from their credit cards 30 percent interest rates that violate the laws of the home State. No. 2, if big corporations can restructure all their debts in bankruptcy court, so should students and families be able to. No second-class citizenship for those who borrowed college loans and home mortgages. No. 3, amend the Constitution to make it clear that corporations are not people--never were, never could be. The Good Lord just did not make it that way. We need to make it crystal clear that corporations can't spend money in American elections anonymously or through phony shell organizations. If big oil wants to influence American elections, Americans should know it is big oil. No. 4: Straighten out our tax systems and, until we do, put in a minimum tax for ultra-high income earners that is at least at the rate that ordinary American taxpaying families pay. While we are at it, put in a minimum corporate tax rate that is at least half of what average corporations pay. No corporation that is making millions or billions of dollars should get away with paying nothing in income tax. No. 5: Shut down the offshore tax havens and charge companies a CEO pay surtax on CEO compensation that is more than 100 times their average worker's compensation. No. 6: Make polluters pay the actual costs of their pollution. Why should a polluting company be able to push onto all of the rest of us the costs of their pollution? Why should American families bear that polluting corporation's costs? Economics tells us that should be part of the company's cost of doing business. No. 7: No more corporate tax deductions for offshoring American jobs, and no more favoring of offshore corporate income derived from what used to be American jobs. No. 8: Take out of those take-it-or-leave-it consumer contracts the provisions that take away in the fine print the American right to go before an American jury, as the Constitution and Bill of Rights promises whenever a citizen has a grievance or has been harmed. None of these eight things I have mentioned asks anything of anyone that isn't fair, and most of them simply ask that ordinary Americans get the same deal, or at least no worse of a deal, than special Americans get and big corporations get. This all does no more than put people on the same level, or at least under the same rules, as the rich and powerful. When someone is getting a better deal than you because of who they are, you are not getting a straight deal. When someone is taking advantage of you because you are small and easy to take advantage of, you are not getting a straight deal. When the rules of the game are rigged to help the winners win and to make you a loser, you are not getting a straight deal. It is time we started giving the people of America a straight deal around here. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if we pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act, we will immediately invest $50 billion into our transportation infrastructure and generate hundreds of thousands of good jobs and establish a national infrastructure bank which will generate even more good jobs. We need these jobs during the current period of high unemployment, and upgrading our crumbling infrastructure will spur long-term job growth in addition to the immediate employment benefits. So I strongly support this bill and I hope our colleagues can be brought around as well. The Rebuild America Jobs Act is one piece of the larger American Jobs Act which, when Leader Reid brought it to the floor, all 47 Senate Republicans chose to filibuster instead of allowing us to begin debating and, if they wished, improving the jobs legislation. That filibuster blocked President Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes for every single American worker, and it blocked his plan to offer business owners generous tax breaks to hire new workers and grow their businesses. Economists estimated that the American Jobs Act would create nearly 2 million jobs--1.9 million jobs. Perhaps for that reason, many pieces of the bill have received wide bipartisan support in the past. Indeed, just last December, similar job-creating provisions were included in the Job Creation and Tax Cuts Act, which received 81 votes in the Senate. The jobs bill that Republicans blockaded was fully paid for through a 5.6-percent surtax on income in excess of $1 million. In other words, the only tax increase in the bill is a provision that pays for job creation in this country by having millionaires and billionaires who continue to enjoy the record low tax rates brought on by the Bush tax cuts pay a little more and only on their income over $1 million. There is no increase on the first million. A recent study by Citizens for Tax Justice showed that the surcharge would only apply to the richest one-fifth of 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers, leaving the taxes of more than 99 percent of all Americans-- if my math is right, 99.8 percent of all Americans--unchanged. The Rebuild America Jobs Act, which is one piece of the full jobs bill, is paid for with a much smaller 0.7-percent surtax on income above $1 million. Having one-fifth of 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans pay less than 1 percent more in income taxes, and only on income above $1 million of income, hardly seems unreasonable to support hundreds of thousands of jobs for middle-class families in this economic climate. As we try again and again to advance jobs legislation in the Senate, the supercommittee we established in the Budget Control Act is at work on recommendations to cut the deficit. Getting the most fortunate and well-compensated Americans to start paying a fair share in taxes ought to be a logical component of any deficit reduction plan--at least under a theory that we should have a progressive Federal tax system. That is a tax system in which we pay higher rates of tax the more money we earn. In theory, we have a progressive Federal tax system, but, in fact, do we? We are often told that the wealthiest Americans are already shouldering too great a share of our tax burden. Earlier this year, one of the candidates, a leading candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, told NBC that ``the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all taxes into the Federal Government.'' That sounds like a lot--the top 1 percent pay 40 percent of all taxes. Let's look at some data to see if the theory proves correct. The Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two very respected organizations, estimate that the total share of Federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers is, in fact, 22.7 percent--not 40 percent. Remember that for a moment, 22.7 percent is the amount of Federal taxes the top 1 percent of income earners pay. If we take a look at the long-term trends in income and taxation, it is revealing. According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2006, the total effective Federal tax rate for the top 1 percent of households fell. The tax rate went down almost 6 points, from 37 percent to 31.2 percent. Over the same period, that group, the top 1 percent, went from earning 10 percent of the Nation's income to 22.8 percent. The amount of the Nation's income that the richest 1 percent earn in this country climbed over that period from 10 to nearly 23 percent. They claimed an additional 13 percent of the Nation's income. Go back to the number. The Urban Institute and Brookings Institution estimate that the total share of Federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers is 22.7 percent, but the share of income the top 1 percent takes is 22.8 percent. That is not a progressive tax system. They may be paying a lot in taxes, but it is proportionate almost exactly to what they are taking out of the economy in income. The relative burden of the extremely wealthy in this country is going steadily down, not up, and it has just crossed to the point where it is no longer progressive. There is a tale of two buildings that may help explain why. This is the first of the two buildings. This is the Helmsley Building in New York City. It is on Park Avenue. It is a lovely, wonderful place--a great building. Not surprisingly, some very successful and well- compensated people live there. It is also a big building. It is so big it has its own ZIP Code. Because it has its own ZIP Code and because the Internal Revenue Service calculates and provides information about income by ZIP Code, we can learn quite a lot about the occupants of this wonderful building. What we know from the latest IRS information that I have been able to find is that the very well-compensated and successful individuals and corporations that call this building home actually paid a 14.7-percent tax rate in 2007. That rate is lower than the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us is what the average New York City janitor or doorman or security guard pays. So at least in this building the fabulously successful and well-compensated occupants of the building who live in those wonderful apartments on Park Avenue are paying a significantly lower tax rate in real life than the actual men and women who are their janitors, who are their doormen, who are their security guards. It is not just some fluke about the Helmsley Building. We all remember Leona Helmsley saying it is the little people who pay taxes. There is no ghost of Leona Helmsley making that true in this building; it is true across the board. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service publishes a report consolidating the tax returns of the highest income 400 Americans and they publish that data. They do not get around to it very quickly, but in May they published the most recent data on the top 400 taxpayers in America for 2008. In 2008, the top 400 earners took home an average of $270 million each. They earned more than one- quarter of a billion dollars each that year, which is wonderful. That is the kind of country we are. One can make a real fortune here. But where it gets a little sketchy is that, on average, those 400 extremely highly compensated Americans actually paid into the Treasury of the United States at an average Federal tax rate of just 18.2 percent on adjusted gross income--18.2 percent. We have spent time on the Senate floor debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent. That is not what they pay. The top 400 income earners, the $\1/4\ billion-a-year crowd, pay actually, on average, just 18.2 percent. This means the 400 highest earning individuals in the Nation, in 2008, just like the occupants of this Helmsley Building, were paying rates lower than or equivalent to what regular working families pay. If we went back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and pulled out the information for the Helmsley Building but about the janitors, the doormen and about the security guards and we look to see who else in America is paying an 18.2-percent tax rate--if a person is a single filer they are paying an 18.2-percent tax rate in this country if they make $39,350 a year. Where I come from in Rhode Island, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that is about what a truck driver makes--$40,200 is what a truck driver makes; $39,350 is what it takes to put a person in the income bracket where they are paying the same tax rate into our Treasury as the 400 members of the $\1/4\ billion-a-year club. The choice is very clear. Instead of moving forward on a jobs plan that independent economists agree will create millions of American jobs in the near term, we are facing an opposition that is fighting to make sure people making $\1/4\ billion a year pay lower Federal tax rates than regular working, middle-class American families. That is the story of the first building, the Helmsley Plaza. This is a different building. This is the Ugland building. It is called Ugland House. It doesn't look like much, but it is near the lovely aquamarine beaches of the Cayman Islands. What is interesting about this little building is that 18,000 corporations claim they are doing business here. That is not a very big building. The notion that 18,000 corporations are doing business out of this building--that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ``small business.'' But there is no real business going on here. The business that is going on here is funny business, under the Tax Code.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The companies doing business here are not real companies; they are phony-baloney shell corporations that are designed to hide assets and to play games with the tax system. This income never even makes it into the 18.2 percent of the Helmsley Building. This gets hidden away completely. When our tax system is rigged so it permits billionaires to pay lower tax rates than truck drivers and allows the wealthiest to avoid taxes by hiding assets in phony offshore corporations, something is not right. With multitrillion dollar budget deficits threatening our Nation's prosperity, we have to do something to make our tax system more fair for regular Americans. I have been working on legislation which would ensure that millionaires and billionaires pay an effective tax rate at least as high as is paid by middle-class families. This would require all taxpayers with income over $1 million a year, indexed to inflation, to pay at least a 25-percent rate. A 25-percent rate is the marginal rate middle-class taxpayers currently pay on income, from about $34,000 of income to about $84,000 of income, depending on the size of the family and the deductions they get. It seems fair to me to ask people at the highest end of the income spectrum to pay at least the tax rate middle- class families in the $34,000-to-$84,000 range actually pay. It simply doesn't make sense to have the wealthiest abusing these tax gimmicks to pay lower tax rates than middle-class families. So whether it is Leader Reid's surtax or my proposal, I hope we can act to ensure that the most successful Americans actually pay their fair share of our national tax burden to restore our Nation to its economic strength. I thank my distinguished colleague from Michigan for her courtesy. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask consent for 3 more minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak about what is currently an unpopular topic in this town. It has become no longer politically correct in certain circles in Washington to speak about climate change or carbon pollution or how carbon pollution is causing our climate to change. This is a peculiar condition of Washington. If you go out into, say, our military and intelligence communities, they understand and are planning for the effects of carbon pollution on climate change. They see it as a national security risk. If you go out into our nonpolluting business and financial communities, they see this as a real and important problem. And, of course, it goes without saying our scientific community is all over this concern. But as I said, Washington is a peculiar place, and here it is getting very little traction. Here in Washington we feel the dark hand of the polluters tapping so many shoulders. And where there is power and money behind that dark hand, therefore, a lot of attention is paid to that little tap on the shoulder. What we overlook is that nature--God's Earth--is also tapping us all on the shoulder, with messages we ignore at our peril. We ignore the messages of nature--of God's Earth--and we ignore the laws of nature--of God's Earth--at our very grave peril. There is a wave of very justifiable economic frustration that has swept through our Capitol. The problem is that some of the special interests--the polluters--have insinuated themselves into that wave, sort of like parasites that creep into the body of a host animal, and from there they are working terrible mischief. They are propagating two big lies. One is that environmental regulations are a burden to the economy and we need to lift those burdens to spur our economic recovery. The second is the jury is still out on climate changes caused by carbon pollution, so we don't need to worry about it or even take precautions. Both are, frankly, outright false. Environmental regulation is well established to be good for the economy. It may add costs to you if you are a polluter, but polluters usually exaggerate about that. For instance, before the 1990 acid rain rules went into effect, Peabody Coal estimated that compliance would cost $3.9 billion. The Edison Electric Institute chimed in and estimated that compliance would cost $4 to $5 billion. Well, in fact, the Energy Information Administration calculated the program actually cost $836 million, about one-sixth of the Edison Electric Institute estimate. When polluters were required to phase out the chemicals they were emitting that were literally burning a hole through our Earth's atmosphere, they warned that it would create ``severe economic and social disruption'' due to ``shutdowns of refrigeration equipment in supermarkets, office buildings, hotels, and hospitals.'' Well, in fact, the phaseout happened 4 years to 6 years faster than predicted; it cost 30 percent less than predicted; and the American refrigeration industry innovated and created new export markets for its environmentally friendly products. Anyway, the real point is we are not just in this Chamber to represent the polluters. We are supposed to be here to represent all Americans, and Americans benefit from environmental regulation big time. Over the lifetime of the Clean Air Act, for instance, for every $1 it costs to add pollution controls, Americans have received about $30 in health and other benefits. By the way, installing those pollution controls created jobs because they went to manufacturers to build the controls and to Americans to install them. But setting that aside, a 30-to-1 benefit ratio to keep our air clean sounds like a mighty wise investment to me. That 30-to-1 ratio doesn't even count the intangible benefits--intangible but very real benefits--of clear air and clean water, the benefits of the heart and the soul, the benefits to a grandfather of taking his granddaughter to the fishing hole and still finding fish there or of the city kid being able to go to a beach and have it clean enough to swim there or the benefit to a mom who is spared the burden of worry, of sitting next to her asthmatic baby on the emergency room albuterol inhaler waiting for his infant lungs to clear. Well, unfortunately, polluters rule in certain circles in Washington, and they emit propaganda as well as pollution, and they have been emitting too much of both lately. Their other big lie the jury is still out on is whether human-made carbon pollution causes dangerous climate change and oceanic change. Virtually all of our most prestigious scientific and academic institutions have stated that climate change is happening and that human activities are the driving cause of this change. Many of us in Congress received a letter from those institutions in October 2009. Let me quote from that letter. Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities 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. Let me repeat that last quote. Contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. This letter was signed by the heads of the following organizations: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Agronomy, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Statistical Association, the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, the Botanical Society of America, the Crop Science Society of America, the Ecological Society of America, the Natural Science Collections Alliance, the Organization of Biological Field Stations, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Society of Systematic Biologists, the Soil Science Society of America, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. These are highly esteemed scientific organizations. They are the real deal. They don't think the jury is still out. They recognize that, in fact, the verdict is in, and it is time to act. More than 97 percent of the climate scientists most actively publishing accept that the verdict is actually in on carbon pollution causing climate and oceanic changes--97 percent. Think of that. Imagine if your child were sick and the doctor said she needed treatment, and out of prudence you went and got a second opinion. Then you went around and you actually got 99 second opinions. When you were done, you found that 97 out of 100 expert doctors agreed your child was sick and needed treatment. Imagine further that of the three who disagreed, some took money from the insurance company that would have to pay for your child's treatment. Imagine further that none of those three could say they were sure your child was OK, just that they weren't sure what her illness was or that she needed treatment, that there was some doubt. On those facts, name one decent father or mother who wouldn't start treatment for their child. No decent parent would turn away from the considered judgment of 97 percent of 100 doctors just because they weren't all absolutely certain. How solid is the science behind this? Rock solid. The fact that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs heat from the Sun was discovered at the time of the Civil War. This is not new stuff. In 1863 the Irish scientist John Tyndall determined that carbon dioxide and water vapor trapped more heat in the atmosphere as their concentrations increased. A 1955 textbook, ``Our Astonishing Atmosphere,'' notes that nearly a century ago the scientist, John Tyndall, suggested that a fall in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could allow the Earth to cool, whereas a rise in carbon dioxide would make it warmer. In the early 1900s, a century ago, it became clear that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might account for significant increases and decreases in the Earth's average annual temperatures and that carbon dioxide released from manmade sources, anthropogenic sources--primarily by the burning of coal--would contribute to those atmospheric changes. This is not new stuff. These are well-established scientific principles. Let me look for a moment at the book I talked about, ``Our Astonishing Atmosphere,'' published in 1955--the year I was born, more than half a century ago--for the ``Science for Every Man Series.'' Let me read: Although the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere remains at a concentration of 0.03 percent all over the world, the amount in the air has not always been the same. There have been periods in the world's history when the air became charged with more carbon dioxide than it now carries. There have also been periods when the concentration has fallen unusually low. The effects of these changes have been profound. They are believed to have influenced the climate of the earth by controlling the amount of energy that is lost by the earth into space. Nearly a century ago, the British scientist John Tyndall suggested that a fall in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could allow the earth to cool whereas a rise in the carbon dioxide would make it warmer. With the help of its carbon dioxide, the atmosphere acts like a greenhouse that traps the heat of the sun. Radiations reaching the atmosphere as sunshine can penetrate to the surface of the earth. Here, they are absorbed, providing the world with warmth. But the earth itself radiating energy outwards in the form of long- wave heat rays. If these could penetrate the air as the sunshine does, they could carry off much of the heat provided by the sun. Carbon dioxide in the air helps to stop the escape of heat radiations. It acts like a blanket to keep the world warm. And the more carbon dioxide the air contains, the more efficiently does it smother the escape of the earth's heat. Fluctuation in the carbon dioxide of the air has helped to bring about major climate changes experienced by the world in the past. This is 1955. This is ``Our Astonishing Atmosphere,'' out of the ``Science for Every Man Series.'' This is not something that was just invented. Let's look at the facts that we actually observe in our changing planet. Over the last 800,000 years--8,000 centuries--until very recently the atmosphere has stayed within a bandwidth of between 170 parts per million and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. That is not theory, that is measurement. Scientists measure historic carbon dioxide concentrations by, for example, locating trapped bubbles in the ice of ancient glaciers. So we know, over time--and over long periods of time--what the range has been. What else do we know? We know since the industrial revolution, we-- humankind--have been burning carbon-rich fuels in measurable and ever- increasing amounts. We know we release up to 7 to 8 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year. A gigaton, by the way, is 1 billion metric tons. So if you are going to release 7 to 8 billion metric tons a year into the atmosphere, predictably that increases carbon concentration in our atmosphere. ``Put more in and find more there'' is not a complex scientific theory. It is not a difficult proposition. And 7 to 8 billion metric tons a year into the atmosphere is a very big thing in the historical sweep. So we now measure carbon concentrations climbing in the Earth's atmosphere. Again, this is a measurement, not a theory. The present concentration exceeds 390 parts per million. So 800,000 years and a bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per million, and now we are over 390. This increase has a trajectory. Plotting trajectories is nothing new either. It is something scientists, businesspeople, and our military service people do every day. The trajectory for our carbon pollution predicts that 688 parts per million will be in the atmosphere in the year 2095 and 1,097 parts per million in the year 2195. These are carbon concentrations not outside of the bounds of 800,000 years but outside of the bounds of millions of years. As Tyndall determined at the time of the Civil War, increasing carbon concentrations will absorb more of the Sun's heat and raise global temperatures. Let me end by reviewing the scale of the peril that we are facing if we fail to act. Over the last 800,000 years, as I said, it has been 170 to 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Since the start of the industrial revolution, that concentration is now up to 390 parts per million. If we continue on the trajectory that we find ourselves, our grandchildren will see carbon concentrations in the atmosphere top 700 parts per million by the end of the century, twice the bandwidth top that we have lived in for 8,000 centuries. To put that in perspective, mankind has engaged in agriculture for about 10,000 years. It is not clear we had yet mastered fire 800,000 years ago. The entire development of human civilization has taken place in that 800,000 years, and within that 170 to 300 parts per million bandwidth. If we go back, we are back into geologic time. In April of this year, a group of scientific experts came together at the University of Oxford to discuss the current state of our oceans. The workshop report stated: Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of the oceans and are now causing increasing hypoxia. Acidification is obvious--the ocean is becoming more acid; hypoxia means low oxygen levels. Studies of the Earth's past indicate that these are the three symptoms . . . associated with each of the previous five mass extinctions on Earth. We experienced two mass ocean extinctions 55 and 251 million years ago. The rates of carbon entering the atmosphere in the lead-up to these extinctions are estimated to have been 2.2 and 1 to 2 gigatons of carbon per year respectively, over several thousand years. As the group of Oxford scientists noted: Both these estimates are dwarfed in comparison to today's emissions. As I said earlier, those are 7 to 8 gigatons per year. The workshop participants concluded with this quote: Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. The laws of physics and the laws of chemistry and the laws of science these are laws of nature. These are laws of God's Earth. We can repeal some laws around here but we can't repeal those. Senators are used to our opinions mattering a lot around here, but these laws are not affected by our opinions. These laws do not care who peddles influence, how many lobbyists you have or how big your corporate bankroll is. Those considerations, so important in this town, do not matter at all to the laws of nature. As regards these laws of nature, because we can neither repeal nor influence them, we bear a duty, a duty of stewardship to see and respond to the facts that are before our faces according to nature's laws. We bear a duty to shun the siren song of well-paying polluters. We bear a duty to make the right decisions for our children and grandchildren and for our God-given Earth. Right now I must come before the Chamber and remind this body that we are failing in that duty. The men and women in this Chamber are indeed catastrophically failing in that duty. We are earning the scorn and condemnation of history--not this week, perhaps, and not next week. The spin doctors can see to that. But ultimately and assuredly, the harsh judgment that it is history's power to inflict on wrong will fall upon us. The Supreme Being who gave us this Earth and its abundance created a world not just of abundance but of consequence and that Supreme Being gave us reason to allow us to plan for and foresee the various consequences that those laws of nature impose. It is magical thinking to imagine that somehow we will be spared the plain and foreseeable consequences of our failure of duty. There is no wizard's hat and wand with which to wish this away. These laws of nature are known; the Earth's message to us is clear; our failure is blameworthy; its consequences are profound; and the costs will be very high. I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his indulgence for the extra time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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