Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 291, S. Res. 292, and S. Res. 293.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

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. Mr. President, I rise this evening, now for the 22nd time, to keep unmasking the far-right scheme to capture and control our Supreme Court. This scheme is funded by creepy rightwing billionaires who stay out of the limelight and let others--namely, Leonard Leo and his crew--operate their scheme. How are they benefiting from the scheme? It is hard to track which rightwing billionaires are involved--and that is by design--but thanks to intrepid reporting from ProPublica and others, we are learning more all the time. And every day it becomes harder for the billionaire- friendly Justices and their political allies to pretend, with a straight face, that all is kosher at the Court. I have previously described the noxious cocktail of this court capture scheme: creepy rightwing billionaires, phony front groups, amenable Justices, large sums of money, and secrecy. I don't know whether they take that shaken or stirred, but those seem to be the common ingredients. To chill that Court-capture cocktail, we can add one more ingredient: Alaskan glacier ice. But I will get back to that later. First, let's review the origin story of Justice Samuel Alito. It begins with the bipartisan Senate rejection of Judge Robert Bork, which infuriated Bork's far-right backers. On the Court were Justices Souter and Stevens--both Republican appointees--but they wouldn't help the billionaires, so the angry chant went out from the far right: No more Souters. No more Stevenses. Then President George W. Bush got an appointment and nominated his friend and trusted White House counsel, Harriet Miers. A Republican President nominates a personal friend and rock-ribbed conservative Republican--a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. And the attack on her comes from the right. The far-right billionaires won't have it. And their operative--the aforementioned Leonard Leo--oversaw the project of taking her down. And in her place came the ever-so-reliably billionaire-friendly Sam Alito. This switch--Miers for Alito--gave Leo immense cred with the billionaires, who have since made him a very rich man and helped him launch his armada of front groups, of which this array is just a selection. These three groups are the groups from which he takes revenue for himself and through which he manages these two groups, a coordinated 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). That is sort of the latest and greatest technique in dark money political manipulation, a conjoined 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4)--usually, common offices, common staff, common funders, common mail drop, all of that. Around this common core are what are called fictitious names. That is the name for it under Virginia law. So 85 Fund is also the Judicial Education Project under a fictitious name. It is also the Honest Elections Project under a fictitious name. It is also the Free to Learn under a fictitious name. Concord Fund is also Judicial Crisis Network under a fictitious name, Honest Elections Project Action under a fictitious name, and Free to Learn Action under a fictitious name. That is quite a lot of confusion, and it is designed to be confusing. Scroll on to 2021. By that time, I had been calling out obvious issues at the Supreme Court: published articles, delivered speeches, wrote law reviews, even wrote a book. Alito, speaking at the University of Notre Dame, bemoaned what he said were ``unprecedented efforts to intimidate the Court.'' He went on to say that the media was suggesting that ``a dangerous cabal is deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way in the middle of the night, hidden from public view.'' That, of course, referred to the sudden surge under Trump in the Court's use of its ``shadow docket'' to quickly change the law without hearing full public arguments. Alito's speech then was considered a pretty extraordinary airing of grievance by a Supreme Court Justice. In response, I wrote an op-ed explaining that Justice Alito had participated in a pattern of decisions, among them the shadow docket ruling leaving in place--pre-Dobbs--Texas's ``bounty-hunter'' anti- abortion law--a pattern of big wins for big rightwing donors with little regard for fact or precedent. I argued that Americans' perception that the Court lacks independence and the resulting drop in approval isn't some leftwing figment. The evidence showed a clear pattern: When big rightwing donor interests came before the Court, the Federalist Society Justices on the Court would regularly trample precedent and contort the facts and the law to deliver the donors' political victories--not a figment, a pattern. Then, of course, came the Dobbs case, which actually took away a constitutional right from women. For five decades, women had the right to choose when to have children. That constitutional right appeared safely protected in Supreme Court precedent. Then, from a list mysteriously prepared by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, President Trump appointed three Justices to the Court. Now, I say ``mysteriously'' because the Federalist Society, evidently, never had any formal proceedings to develop any list, but it offered no correction when Trump kept calling it his Federalist Society list. Well, the next thing you know, that constitutional right was taken away by Justices who, in their confirmation hearings, had told the American public and the Senate Judiciary Committee that Roe was settled law--settled, that is, until they had the votes to unsettle it and make up their own. As Justice Elena Kagan observed: If there is a new member of a court and all of a sudden everything is up for grabs, all of a sudden very fundamental principles of law are being overthrown, are being replaced, then people have a right to say: What's going on there? That doesn't seem very lawlike. And she was right. Years after he had assured us Roe was settled law, it was Justice Alito who wrote the decision in Dobbs. Alito's draft opinion infamously leaked well ahead of the decision, causing rampant speculation about who leaked the opinion and why. Chief Justice Roberts directed the Marshal to investigate, interviewing clerks and Court staff and even searching employees' personal phone records. But with the Justices, the Marshal undertook some other, also mysterious, iterative process, and the investigation proved inconclusive. Curiously, days before the opinion leaked, the Wall Street Journal editorial page had predicted the Dobbs decision, raising the suggestion that someone had a source in the Court. The editorial correctly predicted what Alito knew: that Alito would write the decision for the majority so long as Chief Justice Roberts couldn't pull another Justice to join a more moderate, middle-ground decision. Then, this past April, Justice Alito was featured in a highly sympathetic interview on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Alito spoke about his opinion's leak and said: I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that's different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody. Any major newspaper would have put an exclusive interview with a Supreme Court Justice on the front page, but it would then have been subject to fact-checking. This opinion piece looked like an article, but it appeared in the Journal's notoriously fast-and-loose-with-the- facts opinion section under a double byline. One was a Wall Street Journal editorial staffer, and the other was David Rivkin, a rightwing lawyer who represented the States challenging the EPA's Clean Power Plan before the Supreme Court. A quick detour about the Wall Street Journal editorial page's ties to the rightwing ecosystem: Rightwing bizarro-land likes to ape the legitimate world. In the legitimate world, there is a Pulitzer Prize, so rightwing bizarro-land has its own Bradley Prize, which--guess what--has provided hefty prize money to several Wall Street Journal editorial page writers, a million dollars cash in all. This editorial piece quotes Alito saying: We are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances. And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us. In the piece, Justice Alito declined to talk about the Clarence Thomas ethics problems reported by ProPublica: extravagant vacations worth as much as $500,000, paid for by rightwing billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow and not disclosed. That report was later followed by an additional ProPublica story detailing the billionaire's purchase of properties from Justice Thomas and his family members, also not properly disclosed, and payments for years of tuition for the Justice's grandnephew whom the Thomases were raising, also not disclosed. Justice Alito's silence on the Thomas bombshell became all the more notable when, 2 months later, ProPublica published another bombshell-- this one about Justice Alito--same cocktail ingredients. In this case, a rightwing billionaire, an amenable Justice, undisclosed private jet travel, an exotic vacation--all very expensive, all secret. Justice Alito's private jet travel to this all-expenses-paid Alaskan fishing vacation was paid for by a hedge fund billionaire, Paul Singer, who contributed over $80 million to Republican political organizations and whose Elliott Management group is one of the largest donors to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This is a politically involved rightwing billionaire. Later, the billionaire's firm had business before the Court and, in that case, won billions of dollars--no disclosure by Alito, no recusal. Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals, had this to say: If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case? And if you weren't good friends, what were you doing accepting this? But wait. There is more. The tab for Alito's stay at the salmon lodge in Alaska was covered by a different billionaire. If you are keeping score, we are now up to three billionaires. This one is named Robert Arkley, and he funded the launch of Leonard Leo's advocacy group the Judicial Crisis Network, also heavily engaged in rightwing political influence focused on the Court. Leo, the operative behind the current rightwing Supreme Court supermajority, not only organized Alito's trip, he gallivanted off to Alaska with the Justice and the billionaires. By my count, after yet another story about Justice Thomas, we are now up to six rightwing billionaires attending to the care and feeding of two Justices: Thomas and Alito. And there are all sorts of links among them and with the ubiquitous Leonard Leo. So many Justices, so many billionaires, so many gifts. But there is even more. Alito was not the first Justice to stay at this particular lodge. Justice Scalia also took a private jet to the lodge, courtesy of billionaire Arkley, and also did not disclose the gift. In one memorable bit of color from that ProPublica story, Scalia was described as mixing martinis made with ice chipped off of a glacier. There. You thought I had forgotten that, but I didn't. The evening before the Alito billionaire travel story ran, the Wall Street Journal comes back into the picture again. Alito tried to preempt ProPublica's reporting by taking to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In the op-ed, Alito argued that he didn't need to disclose the private jet travel under Federal law because the private jet should be considered a ``facility'' and that his seat on the private jet would have otherwise been empty so it was free and there was no gift. I won't go into how laughable these arguments are. That is a separate case. What is important is that these arguments were printed on the Wall Street Journal editorial page without investigation or comment by the page, taken at face value. Oh, and, by the way, the cost of that charter--the private jet travel would have cost over $100,000 each way. In that Wall Street Journal editorial page piece from the spring, Alito had said about the Court's collapsing approval: Well, yeah, what do you expect when you're--day in and day out--``They're illegitimate. They're engaging in all sorts of unethical conduct. They're doing this, they're doing that''? Justice Alito's complaining has it completely backward. The problem is not that Americans are pointing out the ethical lapses at the Supreme Court. The problem is the ethical lapses at the Supreme Court. The Roberts Court Justices' behavior is crashing public trust in the institution--and justifiably--first, with preposterous judicial behavior that no other judge would indulge; second, with outrageous violations of quite clear rules and procedures judges are supposed to follow about reporting those gifts; third, with preposterous excuses for the bad behavior and the reporting violations; and fourth, with no process to ever even try to get to the truth to establish the facts. It is a mess. Ideally, the Justices would start fixing that mess on their own. The Court and the Judicial Conference, which Roberts chairs, have the ability to fix this, but so far, they won't. I suspect there is a lot more to be found out about this mess, and they don't want those further disclosures so they would just as soon pull a rug over the whole thing, but that won't work. Congress also has the ability to write ethics rules for the Justices. Remember, Congress created the judges' financial disclosure requirements in the Ethics in Government Act. And Congress created the judicial recusal law, which the Justices are also required to follow. And Congress created the Judicial Conference, which administers financial disclosure and code of conduct matters. Clearly, the article I legislative branch can legislate in this area. Clearly, we can oversee Agencies that we have created and laws that we have passed, and indeed we have for decades. In the coming days, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up my Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. This is a very important step forward in this process, and I thank Chairman Durbin for his leadership. This bill would put basic ethics guardrails and transparency measures in place to help ensure the American people that they can get a fair shot at the Supreme Court, even if they don't have a private jet. Today, in the Court that dark money built, the honor system has flagrantly failed. We need to legislate; we need to investigate; and we need to fix this mess for the American people. To be continued, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, and now for the wrapup.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I always consider it good fortune when I come to deliver remarks on the Senate floor and get to follow Senator Sullivan's Alaskan of the Week speeches. His discussion of his constituent Elverda reminds me of a very, very dear person in my life, Florence Kerins Murray, born just a little bit ahead of Elverda--1916--but like Elverda, served in the U.S. military. She was a WAC--Women's Army Corps--lieutenant colonel and then broke, essentially, every glass ceiling you could break in Rhode Island politics and in the Rhode Island judiciary, becoming a very respected Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice. So I will take the liberty of joining my colleague Senator Sullivan in wishing his constituent a happy birthday, but I also wanted to share the memory of a very dear Rhode Islander who I think would have gotten along very well--I would like to be a witness, a fly on the wall, to the conversation between Florence and Elverda.

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 ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m., Thursday, July 13; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that following the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Kotagal nomination; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Thursday'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. Madam President, I have 11 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:

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question about how long he plans to speak, just for the convenience of others?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor to support my colleague and friend Senator Cortez Masto in her efforts to bring this legislation not only to the floor but to passage. This has been a long, long trail of broken promises and false assertions. It began with the broken promises and false assertions of judicial nominees who came before the Judiciary Committee to assure us that the protections of Roe v. Wade were a precedent and that they would respect precedent. Of course, that all evaporated. We then heard the argument that this was ``States' rights.'' My friend from Utah may not like the phrase, but it is one that his side has used over and over and over again. Call it States' rights or call it federalism, the notion was that all we were doing was opening this up to States. But you heard right here on the Senate floor that the notion that every pregnancy is subject to the control of the government from the moment of conception. That does not allow for a differentiation between one State and another. And now that the States' rights assertion has been proven false, now that it is clear that there are many Members not only of Congress but of State legislatures who want a nationwide ban on women's ability to make these reproductive choices, it becomes clearer and clearer why this particular bill is so important. It is only a matter of time until we see those bills being voted on in legislatures, trying to criminalize a citizen of one State if they go to another State to get this kind of care or trying to create a nationwide abortion ban. However you call it, it will intrude on the ability of women to go and seek this care. And what we are seeing already is women with troubled pregnancies, for whom there is an indicated treatment, unable to get the treatment that medical science knows is the right treatment, whether it is twins, one of whom isn't viable, or a woman's ability to have further pregnancies if this one is not terminated, or the ability of a woman to simply be treated for sepsis, for instance, before it turns to life-threatening and not have to wait and look at the watch and let her get sicker and sicker, knowing that the end is the same, in any event, but putting her life and health at risk in order to allow the will of a bunch of State legislators to turn up in the examination room or the treatment room with her and her family and her doctor. For all of these reasons--because the proponents of a nationwide abortion ban, because the proponents of undoing Roe v. Wade, have simply been incredible for too long--we simply have to assume the worst. And this bill is an important and sensible way to make sure that if the Presiding Officer's State or my State want to allow that freedom for women, that women can come there and get the care that they need-- very often, in a troubled pregnancy, for their own or their future children's or the siblings' well-being. So for all those reasons, I wish we had the chance to vote on this and look forward to future chances. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, P.L. 118-5, which Congress passed earlier this month, resolved a manufactured default crisis and avoided an economic catastrophe. In addition, the bipartisan bill provided a congressional budget for 2024. Specifically, the legislation instructs the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget to file enforceable budgetary levels in the Senate consistent with current law. Today, I submit the required filing. Section 121 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 requires the chairman to file a spending allocation for the Committee on Appropriations for 2024; spending allocations for other committees for 2024, 2024 through 2028, and 2024 through 2033; an aggregate spending level for 2024; aggregate revenue levels for 2024, 2024 through 2028, and 2024 through 2033; and aggregate levels of Social Security revenues and outlays for 2024, 2024 through 2028, and 2024 through 2033. Section 121 also requires the chairman to include a list of accounts eligible for advance appropriations. The amounts included in this filing are consistent with the Congressional Budget Office's May 2023 baseline, adjusted for the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, including the discretionary spending limits established by that act. Because the legislation does not include budget enforcement for fiscal year 2023, it will not be possible to submit reports required by section 308(b) of the Congressional Budget Act until fiscal year 2024. In addition, section 121 allows the deficit-neutral reserve fund in section 3003 of S. Con. Res. 14--117th Congress--to be updated by 2 fiscal years. Pursuant to that authority, that reserve fund shall be considered updated and available for use for legislation which does not increase the deficit for the time period of fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2033. For purposes of enforcing the Senate's pay-as-you-go rule, which is found in section 4106 of the fiscal year 2018 congressional budget resolution, I am resetting the Senate's scorecard to zero for all fiscal years. Section 111 of the act requires my counterpart, the chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, to file similar enforceable budgetary levels in the House of Representatives consistent with the discretionary limits in the act. That filing will help both Houses uphold the bipartisan agreement. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying tables be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, every year, I come to the Senate floor around the anniversary of June 9 of 1772 to educate our pages--and anyone else listening--about an event that took place that night in Rhode Island as the United States moved towards its revolutionary conflict with Great Britain. And the lead-up to this was that Rhode Island was a shipping and a trading State; and Newport, in particular, was an extremely wealthy and active trading community. And the British government very much wanted to tax all of that trading, and the Rhode Islanders very much wanted not to be taxed. And so there was considerable back-and-forth between the colonists in Rhode Island and what was then the mother country. And when the obstreperousness of the Rhode Islanders reached a certain point, a new ship and a new captain were detailed to Rhode Island to do a better job of collecting taxes from the shipping traffic. The captain was named Dudingston--Lieutenant Dudingston--of her majesty's royal Navy. And he came in with a rather very poor attitude about Rhode Island and behaved quite badly. He seized ships without much provocation. He would grab them and send them off to be sold for salvage. He would steal cargoes out of ships. He made himself extremely unpopular to a point that the chief justice of Rhode Island said: Excuse me, you don't get to do this. Under Rhode Island law, under our colonial charter, if you want to operate Rhode Island waters, you actually have to declare yourself and show your commission to our Governor. And the rather undiplomatic response of Lieutenant Dudingston was, if anybody tries to interfere with my operations, I will hang them. So things were not all that great between Lieutenant Dudingston and Rhode Island. And his ship, which is this one, was called the Gaspee, as in the Gaspe Peninsula up in Canada. She was an armed revenue cutter of fairly good size. And it was her job to basically pull over ships, search their cargoes, seize their cargoes, demand taxes, if necessary, seize the vessel. One of his early seizures was a boat called the Fortune, which was owned by Nathanael Greene, who had not been particularly active in revolutionary matters until he had his fortune seized by Lieutenant Dudingston. And after that, he became quite active in revolutionary matters to the point of becoming, essentially, the adjutant for George Washington and then being sent by George Washington down to run the southern campaign of the revolution where the commanding British general in the Revolutionary War said: That damn Greene is more dangerous than Washington, because he was so successful running the southern campaign, much of it provoked by this Lieutenant Dudingston and his seizure of Greene's boat, the Fortune. On this occasion, June 9, 1772, a boat called the Hannah, captained by Benjamin Lindsey, was sailing up Narragansett Bay to deliver cargo to Providence. And the Gaspee approached and signaled the Hannah to heave to, to be boarded and searched. And the Hannah refused. Captain Lindsey kept sailing. So the Gaspee gave chase, and the two boats sailed, one after the other, with occasional gunfire from the decks of the Gaspee north towards Providence. Before you get to Providence, there is a point that sticks out. And where the river flows in, there is a sand berm that sticks out into the bay. And Captain Lindsey, who knew the waters of Narragansett Bay very well, sailed over this sandy shallows off of what was called Namquit Point and kept going on his merry way up to Providence. The Gaspee was a bigger vessel. It drew more water, and it ran into the sand berm in a falling tide. It was stuck. It was trapped. It was helpless. The Hannah kept going up. Captain Lindsey went up to Providence. When he got to the Port of Providence, he rounded up John Brown, who later became heavily involved in setting up Brown University, and another Rhode Island worthy named Abraham Whipple, who continued to have an interesting naval career. Brown and Whipple and others went to Sabin's Tavern, and people beat drums in the street to get attention. People gathered, and a crowd assembled. After suitable refreshment, they filled in a number of long boats--five or six long boats. And that night, in the dark, with muffled oars, they rowed back down to the stranded Gaspee. There they challenged Lieutenant Dudingston to surrender his vessel, and, when he refused, they rowed to the vessel and, from multiple sides, boarded it. During the altercation, Lieutenant Dudingston was shot. I am pleased to report that he was not killed. He recovered from his wounds, retired, ultimately, from naval service, and went back to Scotland and raised many children. But the injury that he received, I believe, was actually the first blood spilled in what became the Revolutionary conflict between the Colonies and Great Britain. So after they had seized the vessel, the Rhode Islanders bound up the crew and rowed them ashore. There is a pub right up the street, right now, from where they were rowed ashore, with a little monument you can see that recognizes the evening that they rode ashore, June 9, 1772. Then they went back out to the stranded Gaspee and set her afire. Now, the Gaspee had cannons, and cannons use powder, and powder is kept in a magazine. So when the fire got to the powder magazine, this happened. The Gaspee was blown to smithereens, and that was the end of her predatory behavior in Rhode Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. Now, by way of point of contrast, up in Massachusetts, more than a year later, a number of Massachusetts colonists went onboard a British ship, and they pushed tea bags off of the boat and into Boston Harbor, which, I am sure, was a very brave and wonderful thing to do. But from Rhode Island's perspective, we outsmarted the British, we got the boat stuck, we seized the boat, we captured the entire crew, and then we blew it up, more than a year before the tea bag incident in Boston Harbor. I think we are entitled to some credit for that. But Massachusetts produced Adamses who became Presidents. They produced Harvard, which wrote histories. And the story of the Boston Tea Party is now known to--do you guys know the story? Yes, every page head nods. They know the Boston Tea Party story. I don't know what Rhode Island has to do to get out of the shadow of the Boston Tea Party, but we blew the damn boat up and I think that is pretty good. The final of the story is that King George was furious about this. He took this as an enormous insult to his kingdom, to his crown, and to himself. And so he decreed that all of the insurgents who had rowed down in those boats were to be caught and were to be hanged. And a bounty was put for information leading to the identification of the Rhode Islanders who participated in the Gaspee raid. I will say with some pride that no credible testimony ever emerged. The trials never took place. The nooses hung empty. And Rhode Island-- against all of that pressure and with the allure of these bribes and bounties from the King--refused to give up their secrets. So it is a very strong story in many regards. And we now have created a brandnew license plate. It is not out on cars yet, I don't believe. This one says ``SAMPLE.'' But there is the Rhode Island license plate with the ``Gaspee Days 1772'' logo and the exploding Gaspee on it. I can't wait to get one and to drive it up to Massachusetts and park it near Boston Harbor and have some tea. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, with all due respect to my colleague, I strongly urge a ``no'' vote. This amendment would create catastrophic damage throughout the Federal economy, with spending cuts as much as 37 percent by 2028, putting Federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, border security, and transportation into extremely difficult circumstances. This is not the America that Americans expect, and we should not allow this vote to pass. Vote on Amendment No. 107

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, it is a very happy coincidence for me that I get to follow my friend Senator Schatz on this topic to oppose the solar tariff Congressional Review Act effort that has been mounted on the floor because I could not agree more with him that this particular episode playing out here on the floor of the Senate today is part of a larger scheme. We begin with the fact that across the United States, the solar industry employs a quarter of a million workers. It is a big deal. These are well-paying jobs in an industry that saves families money on their electric bills and decreases our carbon footprint--decreases our carbon footprint. So, of course, fossil fuel forces oppose it, and that is what we are stuck with now. This fossil fuel attack, through this CRA, if successful, would lead to more than a billion dollars in retroactive duties on American solar companies. It would cost us 30,000 jobs. It would cost us $4.2 billion in domestic investment. It would lead to the cancellation of 4 gigawatts of solar projects. And it would create an increase of 42 million metric tons of CO2. So, of course, the fossil fuel industry is against all of that. It is for the duties. It is against the jobs. It is against the investment. It is against the solar projects. And it couldn't care less about CO2. The problem that we have here is that we are in a race against time to solve the climate problem before it gets out of hand. In this town and in this building, one of the most dangerous things that we face is groupthink. The current groupthink is that climate change is a manageable problem; it won't get out of control. I don't believe that to be true. I think climate change is extremely dangerous--dangerous to our economy, dangerous to our ecosystems, and dangerous to our well-being. We are having hearings in the Budget Committee that showcase some of those dangers--the danger of a coastal property values crash that is going to be worse than the 2008 mortgage meltdown; the danger of a similar property values crash in the West, where wildfire risk will have the same effect on properties; the danger of an insurance meltdown because nature won't let insurance companies predict things any longer safely, so they can't ensure them any longer because they can't predict, and you have a retraction of the insurance market and all of what that means. Last of all, we have got a huge carbon bubble that we have been repeatedly warned is going to pop. And when it does, U.S. fossil fuel assets will be stranded, their value will go to near zero, and there will be an enormous global economic dislocation. These are ideas that have been put forward by huge insurance company executives, by Freddie Mac, by people who study the risk in wildfire areas, by the major sovereign banks of the world. Serious grownups are warning of these risks. Up against those serious grownups, we have the creepy front groups of the fossil fuel industry denial machine continuing to put poison and nonsense into our ecosystem, into our mental and political ecosystem. That has to stop. Groupthink is dangerous enough. More dangerous, there is a subgroup in the House and in the Senate that has stopped thinking entirely and is just taking marching orders from the fossil fuel industry. The conflict of interest could not be more apparent. It is obvious and plain on its face. Yet the money is there. The political dark money pours in, so they line up and follow them right off the cliff like lemmings. That is even more dangerous than groupthink. Last, this is not the only game that is being played by our fossil fuel industry folks. One of the other things that we are going to have to continue to work on, and what the SEC is working on right now, is what is called ESG requirements put out by corporations. ESG is environment, social, and governance. What this is, is corporate America deciding that it is really important to its stockholders to make sure they are good citizens and that the likeliest measures of bad citizenship will be bad environmental practice, bad social practice, and bad governance. And so they intend to clean that up. There are experts who have looked at ``e'' and ``s'' and ``g'' to figure out what the best ways are for corporate America to avoid those risks. Well, all these warnings about what is happening with fossil fuel and with climate change that scientists have known about forever, they are now so real and so immediate that they are within the zone where a fiduciary--a corporation with an obligation to its shareholders, a bank with an obligation to its customers--has to take the climate danger into account. If you are writing 30-year mortgages, you have got to look out 30 years; and within 30 years, climate looks like it is going to be a nightmare. So this risk is now real. It is on the fiduciary horizon. The fossil fuel industry can't stand it, so they are trying to break the rules of the market. They are trying to undo ESG. They want the government to intervene in what corporations are doing to protect their shareholders and tell them the truth about market risk consistent with their fiduciary obligations. They want to break every step in that chain to protect their continued ability to pollute. So watch this ESG nonsense. The anti-ESG, so-called woke corporatism, is a fake. It is a Broadway theatrical production, minus being on Broadway and being in a theater. But it has actors paid for by the fossil fuel industry. It has script writers who are telling them what to say. It has directors and producers who are driving the show behind the scenes. It is an operation. It is a fake. It is a piece of political theater, and we have to be willing to push back against that, because you can't take these kind of chances with the climate risks that we are now facing. By the way, this objection to ESG, it is never about the ``g.'' It is never about the ``s.'' It is always about the ``e,'' the environmental piece. And within the environmental piece, it is always about carbon emissions. That is a telltale as to who is behind the anti-ESG political operation that is ongoing in America right now. I hope we have a strong vote to knock this down. I am delighted that President Biden is going to veto this. This would be self-harm if we were to allow this to happen to our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam 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 ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 12 noon on Thursday, April 27; 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 following the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 3, S.J. Res. 4; that the cloture motions filed during yesterday's session ripen at 12:30 p.m.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. For the information of the Senate, there will be two rollcall votes starting at approximately 12:30 p.m.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am glad today to stand with my colleague to support S.J. Res. 4, affirming the validity of the Equal Rights Amendment. We have heard from Senator Cardin and Senator Murkowski why it is so important for Congress to pass this resolution and enshrine protections against sex-based discrimination in our Constitution. The ERA would bolster efforts to ensure equality in the fields of workforce and pay, pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment and violence, reproductive autonomy, and protections for LGBTQ individuals. Although we have indeed made strides in each of these areas, we know how fragile these gains can be without the durability of a constitutional amendment. Take, for example, the current Supreme Court's approach to the Constitution. As the Dobbs decision makes clear, a majority of the current Court believes that the meaning of equality under the equal protection clause was frozen in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. Well, in the hundred years after 1868, the Supreme Court has adopted and permitted all sorts of State laws that excluded women from jury service, that excluded women from admission to the bar as lawyers, that excluded women even from employment as bartenders, and allowed all of those laws under the 14th Amendment. This business now of the Supreme Court, looking back at history and tradition, is a backward look to bad history and regrettable tradition. So with the Supreme Court, it is particularly important that we not rely on its interpretation of the 14th Amendment alone to guarantee equal rights. Congress needs to stand up and act, and we have the power to do so. Congress has broad authority over the amendment process. If Congress has the power to impose a time limit, Congress has the power to extend or remove that time limit. I join my colleagues to urge swift passage of this resolution. As one witness at the Senate Judiciary Committee on the ERA eloquently put it, gender equality is not a zero-sum game, and ``we are all uplifted when everyone's rights are protected.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am back now for the 288th time with my trusty, battered ``Time to Wake Up'' poster to call attention to the climate crisis. Over the 10-plus years that I have been doing these speeches, I have shown how climate change affects our ecosystems, industries, economy, public health, kids, workers, our elderly. I have even conducted a science experiment right here on the Senate floor, to the dismay of the Senate staff. One near constant in these speeches has been the oily, often covert hand of the fossil fuel industry lurking behind the opposition to climate action through its campaign of climate denial, delay, and obstruction. From the late 1980s, when Congress first became aware of climate change, through the period after the 2010 Citizens United decision when special interests could anonymously pour unlimited money into elections, the fossil fuel industry has blocked every serious climate bill in Congress until the Inflation Reduction Act. Key to this obstruction was the strategic insight that they only needed to capture one political party to strangle legislative action. So the fossil fuel industry captured the Republican Party and has prevented climate action for over three decades, except when we were able to use the extraordinary process of reconciliation. That was just last year. Democrats had control of the House and Senate and passed the Inflation Reduction Act via budget reconciliation. Congress finally acted on climate. There is lots more that Congress still needs to do on climate, but the IRA was a big, meaningful bill that powered up tax incentives for clean energy and put a price on oil and gas methane emissions. In the 10-plus years I have been documenting the fossil fuel industry's hold over the Republican Party, I have provided lots of concrete examples, from election spending to phony front groups by the flotilla, to polluter lackeys installed at the Trump EPA. But nothing tops the debt limit proposal Speaker McCarthy released last week, the ``Default on America Act,'' which the House just passed. MAGA House Republicans like to claim to care about debt and deficits--except, of course, in 2017, when they passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations that added trillions to the debt and except when the debt increased by more than $7 trillion under President Trump. They are a fountain of fiscal hypocrisy. So no surprise that the McCarthy package has little to do with reducing debt and deficits and everything to do with providing goodies to big Republican donors, in particular the fossil fuel industry. Before I get into all the oily, corrupt deals for big polluters, a few words about the rest of the proposal. McCarthy calling this monstrosity the Limit, Save, Grow Act would make George Orwell blush. In reality, McCarthy's plan would result in unlimited carbon pollution, massive losses to the Federal Government and American families and businesses, and very likely crashes in whole sectors of the economy--some limit, save, and growth. First, it would rescind the extra funding we provided to the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats. This would add $120 billion to the deficit. For them, ``limit, save, and grow'' means limit IRS enforcement, save their big donors money paying their taxes, and grow their own campaign contributions. Federal programs would face indiscriminate cuts of up to 33 percent across research, science, housing, addiction treatment, national parks, transportation, law enforcement, border security, drug enforcement, and criminal prosecutions. If you want to defund the police, Speaker McCarthy is your new poster boy. The public hates all that stuff, so why pursue stuff that the public hates? Why threaten to set off the U.S. default handgrenade to get this done? Who wins? Creepy billionaires who hate the Federal Government and fund Kevin McCarthy--chief among them, the fossil fuel industry. For his big fossil fuel industry donors, McCarthy delivers four huge giveaways. First, they take away the clean energy tax credits we passed in the IRA. Second, they let fossil fuel interests leak polluting methane emissions with no pollution fee. Third, they prop up dying fossil fuel infrastructure with so-called permitting reform targeted to help only fossil fuel. And fourth, they make it harder to protect against water and air pollution. This oily wish list is not about debt or deficits, and it is not about growing the economy as it risks serious economic downturns. It is about taking care of the industry whose dark money funds their party. Look at the clean energy tax credits which McCarthy claims are wasteful spending. It now appears that those tax credits will incentivize more investment than expected. So what is McCarthy's argument? There will be too much investment? Seriously? Already, in less than a year, the IRA's clean energy tax credits have encouraged over 100 projects that will create north of 100,000 jobs. With time, the IRA could easily create over a million jobs--high-paying manufacturing jobs, the kind we should want. Many projects are in districts in the South and Midwest represented by Republicans. Indeed, many House Republicans have cheered the very IRA-catalyzed projects they are now trying to torpedo. Seriously. Back home, they celebrate the jobs for their constituents. Here in DC, they vote to eliminate the very tax credits that created them--all to serve fossil fuel polluters. Here are some of my favorite House Republican quotes celebrating IRA- catalyzed investments in Republican home districts. This is the largest investment in the State of Georgia's history-- One said-- one that will diversify and expand our economy while providing strong job opportunities for Georgians today and for generations to come. And then a ``no'' vote against the IRA. I'm thrilled that Honda has once again committed to Ohio and our workers with today's announcement of a $3.5 billion investment in EV production and a new battery plant within Ohio's 15th Congressional District. I look forward to working Honda and LG Energy Solution to bring 2,200 new jobs to the Buckeye State. And then voted to wipe out the program. I am thrilled to welcome ENTEK to Terre Haute and to the Hoosier state. As the only American company to own and produce ``wet-process'' lithium-ion battery separator materials, ENTEK is going to help to pave the way for electric vehicle production in Indiana and reduce American manufacturers' reliance on imported products. Their operation in Terre Haute will create hundreds of new jobs. And then voted to strip out the tax credits behind them. I am honored to stand with other state and federal leaders during this groundbreaking event as the first solar energy microgrid-powered industrial site project was unveiled in Jackson County. I know this important project will . . . stimulate economic growth that will create new jobs in West Virginia. And then voted against the tax credits. Where are the common themes here? Well, clean energy investments grow the economy and create jobs. These investments will help America compete against imports from overseas. Usually, Republicans can't stop talking about how we need to reduce our dependence on Chinese imports and build up our own manufacturing industry--until their fossil fuel overlords tell them otherwise. Then they vote against the credits that encourage domestic manufacturing of the clean energy technologies that will dominate the economy of tomorrow. What a terrible bet. Republicans can't beat China with the energy and technologies of the last century. No amount of fossil fuel-funded obstruction here at home is going to stop the clean energy revolution happening in the rest of the world. In Europe last year, more than 12 percent of cars sold were fully electric, up from less than 2 percent just back in 2019. Europe is investing massively in wind and solar and green hydrogen, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated just how dangerous dependence on fossil fuels can be. In China last year, 22 percent of cars sold were fully electric, towards the goal of 40 percent of all cars sold fully electric in 2030. China is, by far, the largest installer of wind and solar power, with ambitions to dominate the clean energy technologies of tomorrow. In most places, renewable energy is now the cheapest form of energy-- far cheaper than fossil fuel. So the rest of the world is going all-in on wind, solar, batteries, green hydrogen, and other clean technologies for their low-cost energy. And that savings doesn't even count the trillions of dollars of value from avoiding the costs and harms of fossil fuel pollution. The future is clean tech. And there are fortunes to be made. Many of these clean energy technologies were developed right here by our scientists and engineers at our companies and national labs. But the fossil fuel industry wants America to lose our technological leadership and all the business opportunities that flow from it. Remember limit, save, grow? If you want that for real: limit pollution, save clean energy jobs, and grow the economy. The fossil fuel industry behind this is the most subsidized industry on the planet. It lives off public money and political influence. It gets to pollute for free. Just today in the Budget Committee, we heard testimony that fossil fuel combustion, by warming the planet and polluting the air, costs America over $800 billion per year in health costs. The International Monetary Fund puts the effective subsidy in the U.S. for fossil fuels at almost $700 billion per year. If fossil fuel-funded Republicans want to talk about picking winners and losers, bring it on. Their fossil fuel donors enjoy the biggest subsidy in world history. If fossil-fuel-funded Republicans want to talk about free markets, bring it on. Market economics 101 teaches that the cost of your pollution should be in the price of your product. But fossil-fuel- funded Republicans protect free polluting for fossil fuel. It is not just costs that fossil fuels impose on the rest of us. It is risks--economic risks associated with climate change. Central bankers, economists, insurance CEOs, financial experts, and other witnesses--serious grownups whose judgments are fiduciary--have come to the Budget Committee to warn of systemic risks to the economy, including a collapse in coastal property values and a carbon bubble resulting from stranded fossil fuel assets. Now, ``systemic risks'' sounds pretty mild. It is not. It is when catastrophe spreads from one troubled sector across the entire economy, much as the 2008 meltdown in the mortgage market spread across the country to become the financial crisis and Great Recession, which, by the way, resulted in an additional $5 trillion in government debt. Disaster avoidance is debt reduction. The stakes are huge. The consulting firm Deloitte estimates that the global cost of doing nothing on climate is around $180 trillion in economic damage--$180 trillion. But they go on to say that if we act responsibly and limit warming to 1.7 degrees Celsius, we can save ourselves from that and actually grow the global economy by $40 trillion. So you want limit, save, and grow? In this case, if you do it right by limiting pollution and saving clean energy jobs and growing the economy, the swing is $220 trillion between a bad climate outcome and a responsible climate outcome. But the corrupt fossil fuel industry says ``jump,'' and Kevin McCarthy and MAGA Republicans say ``how high?'' Here is a ``how high": They eliminate the fee on wasteful methane emissions that I worked to include in the IRA. The methane pollution fee will raise $6 billion against the deficit and save even more from avoided climate and air pollution damage. But the rotten House plan was never about cutting debt and deficits, always about delivering for the fossil fuel overlords. So out goes the methane program. Methane traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, at least in the short run, and it creates air pollution that sickens people across the country. This is a satellite image of a methane plume. You can actually detect methane plumes from space now, which is why charging a fee for polluting makes so much sense, because you can find the polluter quite easily. This one is being released from an oil well. Now, the operator of this oil well could capture this methane and sell it. It is natural gas. But, instead, oil companies like this just release it. Pure waste. Pure pollution. Putting a price on methane emissions will dramatically reduce this pollution and raise budget balancing revenues. But McCarthy doesn't care; the industry funds his caucus. So out goes the budget-balancing, pollution-preventing methane fee. Next in the fossil fuel-funded parade of horribles is a permitting reform stuffed with giveaways to--you guessed it--the fossil fuel industry. What the hell does permitting reform have to do with the debt limit, you might ask? Well, good question. Does building in more fossil fuel even make sense? The world is moving off fossil fuels. Peak oil will occur, and demand will begin to decline. Once demand begins to decline, the oil cartel will collapse in a rush for the exits, causing serious economic turbulence as fossil fuel assets are stranded, particularly in high production cost countries like the United States of America. This is the global production cost curve for oil. As you can see, Persian Gulf oil is far cheaper to produce than U.S. oil. Here we are. So when there is a rush for the exits, and instead of cheating the world with cartel pricing, they go to cost-plus pricing, and we are out of business in the U.S. fossil fuel industry, and American fossil fuel infrastructure becomes hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of useless, stranded assets. But fossil fuel says ``jump,'' and House Republicans say ``how high?'' Last in this fossil fuel wish list is a provision to make it next to impossible for EPA to promulgate regulations limiting air and water pollution. Again, deregulating polluters has nothing to do with the debt limit, but the fossil fuel industry wants it. So it is in. In just the last few months, we have seen what Republican deregulation means for American families and businesses. We saw it in East Palestine, OH, when a train derailment resulted in a major spill of toxic chemicals. We saw it in Northern California when Silicon Valley Bank went belly-up. Both of these events could have been prevented with better regulations. Both harmed American families and businesses. Protecting Americans from air and water pollution with good regulations always pays because the costs associated with air and water pollution are enormous. But fossil fuel does a lot of air and water pollution. So here is another fact giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. If you ever needed proof that the Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry, McCarthy's debt limit package is that proof. Amazingly, almost 280 pages out of a 320-page bill are devoted to fossil fuel industry giveaways. Here are 320 pages; 280 of these pages are blue. The remaining 40 are white. So this is a visual image of how much of the ``Default on America'' bill is devoted to making nice for the fossil fuel industry versus everything else. It is like a bunch of delivery boys for the fossil fuel industry over there. This bill isn't about debt and deficits. It is not about limiting or saving or growing. It is about serving fossil fuel--the source of the money that keeps them in power. Period. Oil and gas extraction represents only about 5 percent of our GDP. Farming, manufacturing, food and beverage, insurance, finance, restaurants, retail, housing, healthcare--all representing a larger share of GDP. Clean energy actually now accounts for more employment than the fossil fuel industry. But for subsidies, nothing compares to fossil fuel. So for political influence, to protect those massive subsidies, nothing compares to fossil fuel. There is actually a bug--an insect--that infiltrates another bug and takes over the other bug's nervous system. And from inside the other bug, it drives it around. It is kind of a creepy, natural development. It happens in the insect world. And it looks like it happened on the other side of the building, because what the fossil fuel industry has done is to take over the Republican Party and now just drive it around. So fossil fuel money makes the McCarthy package serve its Big Oil master. It is a deeply sad and dangerous state of affairs when one of America's two main political parties abandons all pretense of responsible governance just to service its prime political benefactor. That is what Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are doing. That is this bill. They threaten default, propose terrible cuts, deny climate warnings, and are willing to kneecap the American economy, all in service to the fossil fuel industry and its dark money. It is time to fix our democracy so that it functions honestly and this nonsense stops. It is time to wake up.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions, introduced earlier today: S. Res. 176, S. Res. 177, and S. Res. 178.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the President of the Senate be authorized to appoint a committee on the part of the Senate to join with a like committee on the part of the House of Representatives to escort His Excellency Yoon Suk Yeol, President of the Republic of Korea, into the House Chamber for the joint meeting on Thursday, April 27, 2023.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I further ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, April 19; 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 following the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 28, S. 870; further, at 11:30 a.m., the Senate vote on the Paul and Hagerty amendments as provided under the previous order; that following the disposition of the Hagerty amendment, Senator Tuberville or his designee be recognized to make a motion to proceed to Calendar No. 35, S.J. Res. 10; that the time until 4:15 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and with the final 15 minutes equally divided in the same form; that the Senate recess from 3 p.m. until 4 p.m. to allow for the all-Senators briefing, with the time counting equally to both sides.