Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the publication Grist did an article recently about climate change with a bunch of images. I grabbed a few of those images, and I have added a few in this speech because they give a pretty good overview of the mess that we are in on climate change. Right now, the most devastating wildfires anyone can remember are ripping across Australia. Here, you see an iconic kangaroo going by a building up in flames. Those Australian fires have destroyed thousands of homes. They have killed an estimated 1 billion animals--get your head around 1 billion animals killed--and they have made a day of breathing the air in Sidney, Australia, the equivalent of smoking 37 cigarettes. In fact, I read in the news that in a tennis championship in Australia today, one of the competitors withdrew because the air was so bad that she couldn't finish her match. Why is this going on? According to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, Australia has warmed by about a full degree Celsius over the last century. That means a longer, hotter fire season, which loads the dice in favor of extreme winds and heat and bushfire, as they call it in Australia. Why did it warm in Australia? The cause could not be more clear. This is the measurement of carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, going back hundreds of thousands of years--100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, and 800,000 years. That is way back. There was no agriculture then, no wheel then, and, for sure, no Twitter--nothing. Over time, we have seen this steady range of atmospheric CO2 levels, running between about 180 and--here is the cresting out--just under 300 parts per million. So it is 800,000 years, all between 180 and 300 degrees. That is a 120-degree range. We are now out of that range by more than the entire range itself. We are out by more than 120. This chart goes up to 400 parts per million. We are literally off the chart right now at 410 parts per million. Of course, this is connected to heat. That is not news. The graphics here were compiled by Clayton Aldern and Emily Pontecorvo of Grist. So let me take this opportunity to thank them. This next chart shows the increase in carbon dioxide just in the last decade. This is from 2010 to 2019. If you took the previous graph, which is in here somewhere, this is just the tiniest little slice at the very edge of this--just 10 years out of 800,000. That is like one eighty-thousandths of that graph, that tiny little sliver. In that tiny little sliver, here is what has happened. It has gone from below 390 parts per million up to 410. We hit the magic 400 back in about 2013 for the first time right here with this dot. That was a big deal. The measurement came from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Never, ever, ever before in human history, over those hundreds of thousands of years, had we seen 400 parts per million, and in just the last decade, it shot up by all this. In fact, in the last 7 years, it shot up more than 10 parts per million. We know something about what happens as these CO2 levels go up. We know that the planet warms. That is not news. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. When Abraham Lincoln was riding around Washington in his top hat, scientists had already begun to write about and understand the link between greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and global warming. Heck, even Exxon scientists knew about this decades ago, and their scientists warned the company about this in reports that we now have. Of course, Exxon did the wickedest possible thing with that information, which was to bury it, deny it, and try to convince the public that the opposite was true. There is nothing new in any of this information. The science is totally established, and that level is unprecedented in humankind's history. As a result--guess what--things have started to go haywire. This chart shows the cost of annual billion-dollar disasters in the United States, the disasters that cost us $1 billion each. There is a very clear trendline that draws through this, and it is climbing upward. If you don't believe me, ask an insurance company, ask a reinsurance company. Now, bear in mind that these costs, the cost of natural disasters, are just one of the big economic threats from climate change. We have warnings about coastal property values crashing. Those come from Freddie Mac, of all places. We have warnings about the carbon bubble crashing. Those come from the Bank of England and many other sovereign banks. We have warnings about insurance markets and about the bond safety of coastal communities. In fact, those numbers--the numbers of the cost of natural disasters--are actually pretty tiny so far compared to what is projected. What is projected is an estimated tens of trillions of dollars by 2100. One way this plays out is in my home State. This is northern Narragansett Bay. Here is Providence, our capital city. Here is Warwick. Over here is Bristol. Everything that is blue on this map is land today. On these blue parts people have homes; people have businesses; the State has infrastructure; there is economic activity; and, my God, there are memories. Well, the blue disappears. The blue disappears. The blue disappears at 10 feet of sea level rise. That is what this measures. This comes off a program called STORMTOOLS run by the Coastal Resources Management Council, our Rhode Island CZMA agency. Our State officials, based on the latest information from NOAA and from our University of Rhode Island and from the Coastal Resources Management Council, are preparing for scenarios up to 9 feet of sea level rise in Rhode Island by the end of the century--not storm surge, just bathtub-level sea level rise. Add in storm surge, and you not only get over 9 feet; you get over the 10 feet that is displayed here in this graph. The damage to my State is going to be very serious. The very map of Rhode Island will change because of this. Now, some of my colleagues think this is all funny, that this is something we can just yuck it up about and mock the science and call people alarmists when they take this seriously. It is deadly serious. In fact, a 2017 report from the real estate database company Zillow identified over 4,800 homes in Rhode Island with a collective value at over $3 billion that would be underwater by 2100 using only a 6-foot bathtub sea level rise figure--$3 billion just in my small State. That doesn't count the value of the memories. If you have a house near the shore, you very likely have family memories. Some of these places in Rhode Island go back generations--even small, small houses. People have had them. Their grandfather had them. They have memories. All of that is at risk to be lost. So don't think I am not going to fight about this just because somebody else thinks this is funny. The reason that is happening is the oceans are warming. When you warm water, it expands, so it rises--in addition, of course, to all the trillions of gallons pouring off of Greenland and other land-based icecaps. Look at how the ocean has warmed. The red is the 3-month average. It has more variation in it. The black is the annual average. The blue is the 5-year average that smooths it out a little bit more. The ocean is absorbing intense amounts of heat. I will tell you how much heat the ocean is absorbing. If you took the Hiroshima atom bomb and you captured all of its energy as heat--it produced light; it produced a variety of other things--the rate at which the ocean is warming is the equivalent--I usually use--of between three and four Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonations per second in the ocean--per second. So, in the time of this speech, there will be dozens, probably 100, Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions' worth of heat that the oceans have to absorb. Today a new report came out that says that the number is actually five Hiroshima-sized explosions per second. As they measure it better, as they see it increase more, we are seeing that number. It is not just that they are warming. That would be bad enough. They are becoming more acid. They are becoming more acid because they absorb carbon dioxide at the surface. This is a chemical interface. This took away 90 percent of the extra heat that our fossil fuel emissions have caused, the absorption of the heat by the oceans. At the same time, while it was absorbing 90 percent of the heat, it was also absorbing 30 percent of the carbon dioxide. Imagine for a second if we were not an ocean planet. Imagine if we were a fully terrestrial planet and we didn't have the oceans to buffer this. You would have to add back that extra third of CO2, which would be a 50-percent increase on the lower base, and you would have to multiply by 10 the increase from heat. You put those two factors together--this is a very rough number, and the scientists on my staff would be mad at me for saying this, but maybe 15 times the result that we are seeing right now. We are experiencing a fraction of what we would face without the cooling and buffering oceans. Without our oceans, Australia wouldn't just be one location on fire; the whole planet would be a catastrophe. Those are the chances that we are taking. Why are we taking these chances? We are taking these chances because politicians don't dare say no to the crooked fossil fuel industry that profits from this mess. That is just the sickening political fact that we have to deal with here. That is steadily moving because the public is beginning to understand this. Notwithstanding a long and very, very expensive campaign of misleading propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, people are starting to catch on. These are the numbers--from 60 up to 72 percent--of people who believe that warming is happening. The number of people who are denying went from 20 percent down to 12 percent. Understanding is up. Denial is down. Ditto for that it is caused by us: 46 up to 59 percent, and 35 down to 30 percent denying. Understanding is up. Denial is down. So the other thing that is good that is happening behind these numbers is that Americans of a whole variety of persuasions actually favor the solutions that scientists and economists recommend to solve the climate change problem. Now, the fossil fuel industry, in its portfolio of lies, tells you that the remedies to solve climate change will be painful. That is just another fossil fuel lie, and Americans are catching on to that one too. An October 2019 Pew poll found that two-thirds of Americans want the Federal Government to do more to combat climate change. One thing that we are getting rid of in a hurry is coal. This represents the cumulative retirements of coal plants. Coal plants are phasing out, with 546 coal plants having closed in the United States since 2010, just in this last decade. In late 2019, Murray Energy became the eighth U.S. coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy. Coal plants anywhere are virtually unfinanceable. We have even seen operating, depreciated coal plants close because just operating that coal plant costs more than financing, building, and operating renewable energy facilities. That is good news for our safety and for our well- being. Here is our overall energy portfolio and where it has increased. Look at solar go. Ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. It is up about 1,000 percent. It is really, really rocking. The second biggest increase: wind. More are coming on as we begin to develop offshore wind. Fossil fuels still dominate. You can see this little inlay here--the transportation sector--but Americans are starting to buy more and more electric vehicles. Some really stunning new models are coming to the market. We are, of course, not doing anywhere near enough to encourage their adoption, which means we are likely to lose out, and we are doing this because rogue fossil fuel companies like Marathon Petroleum use political mischief to poke sticks in the wheels of vehicle fuel efficiency standards. What the fossil fuel industry likes to do is to blame China: Oh, we are not going to do anything because China has to go first. What they omit telling you is that, at the end of 2017, 40 percent of all the electric cars in the world were in China. In 2018, China manufactured nearly half of all electric vehicles worldwide. China dominates global markets for electric buses and for electric two-wheelers--scooters and so forth. You may recall that Exxon Corporation fabulously predicted to its shareholders--a prediction they have not yet corrected--that there would be zero electric buses by 2040. China is already operating 400,000. We are going to get run away from by China if we don't smarten up and compete. Here is more good news. The price of digging out and transporting and burning dirty fuels is high: nearly $110 for a megawatt hour of coal- fueled power. If you look, the most expensive are nuclear power plants; the next most expensive, coal; the next most expensive, solar thermal, which generates heat; the next most expensive, natural gas; and down here, the two cheapest by far are solar photovoltaic and wind. So we know where these markets are going, with just $40 per megawatt hour for solar photovoltaic compared to $110 for coal. Over the last decade, the average cost of solar dropped from $200 per megawatt hour to less than a quarter of that. The cost of wind power is down, and offshore wind is emerging. Battery storage now competes on price with gas-fired, peak-demand plants in many areas. Even with the massive subsidy that we all have to pay to prop up fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price anyway. If the price of wind, solar, battery storage, and other renewable technologies continues to drop, we could reach 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, and we will need to if we are going to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe zone. In fact, here is what you see. The power sector's emissions are declining. There is a lot of work left to do in transportation--what you might call room for improvement there. There is a lot of room for improvement in industry and a lot of room for improvement in buildings and other. So there is work to be done here. Of course, these other sectors don't have much of an incentive to solve their emissions problem because it is still free to pollute. We continue to violate the most basic market theory about externalities, and we let these fossil fuel polluters pollute for free. When we let them pollute for free, it takes away any incentive in these other sectors to fix that problem--and, of course, that is goal 1 for the fossil-fuel industry. With a $650 billion-per-year subsidy, they are throwing everything they have politically at trying to protect that phony, non-market-based, unfair subsidy. And even with it, they are still losing. We could be doing better in all these sectors if we put a proper market-based price on carbon. So far they have won, if you can call not preparing for a looming calamity to be winning. Here is a quick summary of the lessons of the 2010s. One, the science is clear--we have blown by 400 parts per million. We are now in unchartered territory for the human species. Two, climate change is a massive threat to our economy, particularly with the danger of crashes coming soon in coastal property values and carbon assets. I just read the letter from BlackRock to CEOs and investors. BlackRock is one of the biggest investment companies in the world. They have warned of what they called capital reallocation. That means things are going to shift--happening as markets anticipate climate hazard-- things like facing the danger of coastal property value crashes or carbon asset value crashes. Those crashes create capital reallocation. I love the way economists talk. All the agony behind that, and they call it capital reallocation. Wrecking the world economy, they call systemic risk. Three, Americans are getting that climate change is a big problem. It is a big change. It is a big change particularly with young Republicans, who totally get it. Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues in the Senate: Sit down with your own young staffers. Sit down with the young staffers in your own office and hear them out about climate change. You will see that there is a big generational divide. Four, coal is on the ropes. Experts predict huge stranded assets in gas and oil. Solar and other renewables are booming as they outcompete fossil fuel on costs alone. That is a genie even the crooked fossil fuel machine can't put back in the bottle. Of course, the fossil fuel industry is still up to no good, with its vast array of phony front groups so it does not look like it is them. They have names like the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute--a bunch of phony front groups filled with stables of paid liars emitting slimy rivers of dark money, polluting our politics as badly as their emissions pollute our planet. That hasn't stopped, and they should be held accountable. The 2020s are going to be tough, for sure. Australia is seeing the opening episode. I have an analogy that I will use as I close. I have spent time running rivers. I like running rivers. I like running rivers in inflatables. I like running rivers in kayaks. I have run rivers from the placid Rappahannock in Virginia to the mighty Colorado through our massive Grand Canyon and lots in between. One of the things about running a river that has big rapids is that the first thing you do is you look at the map and you learn where the big rapids are so you can stop, get safely to shore, and figure out whether you can navigate the rapids or whether you need to portage around them. Well, we had a map for where the rapids are on this. The scientists showed us. They told us. They warned us. But we ignored them. But not paying attention to what you are told on the science map is not your last chance. Going down the river, when you get closer, you can actually start to hear the falls, the rapids roaring up ahead of you. The wildfires, the flooding, the rising seas, the species relocating around the planet--if that is not a roaring for us to hear now from the planet about the dangers ahead, shame on us. It is enough for us to know that we are actually getting close to big trouble, and we still do nothing. Then there is a point on the river where it is your last chance. You have no choice as to whether you are going to miss the rapids or the falls ahead. You have ignored all the warnings. You have ignored the map. You haven't listened to the roar, and now you are close. Now you will have to paddle very hard to avoid the roaring rapids ahead. Nature's forces are pulling you inexorably toward the cataract. You will have to paddle for your life to avoid it. That is where I believe we are right now. I believe that as human kind, as a country, we have to paddle for our lives right now to avoid being sucked over the climate falls and into dangers that we don't want to see and that we don't want our children to have to see. Let's wake up here. Let's shake off the shackles of this crooked fossil fuel industry, and let's get paddling for our lives. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on to Save Our Seas 3.0.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to close this out. Again, I thank Senator Sullivan. I think there is reason to hope for a really good appropriations subcommittee hearing on this subject in the coming year. I think there is reason to hope for another Environmental and Public Works Committee full committee hearing on marine plastics. I expect those things will happen, and that will help us with our progress. One of the things I have come to admire about Senator Sullivan is that, as a colonel in the U.S. Marines, he sets himself a mission and then he goes about it with real vigor. One of the missions that he set himself was to make sure that the Trump administration followed up on what Save Our Seas 1.0 did. There were a lot of doors that were knocked on that had their hinges rattled by Senator Sullivan. There are a lot of administration officials who probably had to hold the phone an inch or so away from their ears because Senator Sullivan was trying to get their attention on this subject. Having seen him in action on Save Our Seas 1.0, I very much look forward to watching him in action on Save Our Seas 2.0 and to make sure that its legislative promise is fully realized in executive implementation. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor with a bunch of thank-yous after Thursday evening's happy news that Save Our Seas 2.0 passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent. I thank all of the Senate Members of our bipartisan Oceans Caucus. The Oceans Caucus has been a really good forum for getting these bills moving to a point at which they can pass by unanimous consent. I and Senator Murkowski, who is Senator Sullivan's colleague from Alaska, set it up years ago. It now has over 40 Members. It is very bipartisan, and it has had a really important role in moving bipartisan oceans legislation. So, Oceans Caucus, thank you. This bill, Save Our Seas 2.0, had to go through three committees. It had to go through Commerce, Foreign Relations, and Environment and Public Works. Let me start in reverse order because Senator Barrasso, the chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, is here on the Senate floor. I express my appreciation to him and my appreciation to our ranking member, Senator Carper, for having shepherded this through the committee with unanimous committee support, and that gave it a lot of momentum to go on to Foreign Relations and to Commerce. So, my friend Senator Barrasso, thank you, sir. I do appreciate it very much. I think this is a score, a good win. A good deed was done here. Foreign Relations was also very important, and Senator Menendez, our ranking member, is about to speak, so I will not steal his thunder. He has been an incredibly valuable part of this triumvirate, and I am extremely grateful to Senator Menendez. Also, on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senators Wicker and Cantwell were very helpful about making sure this got through Commerce and were helpful once it was on the floor. Most of all, though, my thanks go to Senator Sullivan, of Alaska. We started down this road quite some time ago. We tentatively got into the space of ocean plastic waste with a simple hearing in the Committee on Environment and Public Works. He had an essential role in making that happen because there was a turf conflict between our subcommittee and the EPW and the Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and Weather within the Commerce Committee. Now, if you are not from the Senate, you think that this is all crazy talk, but if you are in the Senate, it is a really serious problem to have to resolve. We had the very good fortune of having the chairman of the Fisheries Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee and the chairman of our subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee being the same individual, none other than Senator Dan Sullivan. So he went out and had a nice debate with himself and was able to negotiate a happy resolution of that turf dispute, and the hearing went forward. Without that, it never would have happened. So that was the opening bid. Then we got to 1.0, which, admittedly, was not a very big bill, but it was going to test the proposition: Was the Senate willing to legislate on marine plastic waste? Yes. We got a big, booming, 100-vote support for that in the Senate. Senator Sullivan was so happy with that outcome that we immediately went to work on crafting 2.0, which, as Senator Sullivan has pointed out, is not just a beachhead but is significant marine plastic waste legislation. It will push the administration to do a lot more, for more than half of the waste in the oceans comes from 5 Asian countries, and more than 80 percent of the waste in the oceans comes from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa. This is a solvable problem if we direct attention and resources and solutions to that problem, and I am really looking forward to following up on that. I am really looking forward to getting right to work on Save Our Seas 3.0 because we are not done here. There is a lot of plastic mess out there to clean up, and there is a lot of energy around getting even more done. So, Senator Sullivan, you have my great appreciation. I will close, if I may, with one unlikely thank-you. As Senator Sullivan mentioned, this reminded me that there are Senators who supported this who don't even have coasts. They are from those square end States in the middle of the country that don't have coasts. One of them who has been very important to this has been Senator Inhofe, of Oklahoma. Now, on climate change, Senator Inhofe and I are at each other's throats pretty much all of the time. We are always having fights about climate change. I call him a climate denier, and he calls me a climate alarmist. We go back and forth, fighting about climate change. Yet, on this, he has been an essential ally, and having his support has sent, I think, a terrific signal to the Senate that, hey, if Senator Whitehouse and Senator Inhofe can agree on this, there is room for me in there somewhere. And so a final thank you to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, but the biggest thank you, of course, is to Senator Sullivan, who really made this happen. With that, I yield to my colleague and friend Senator Menendez, who has been so important to this, so he can add his thoughts.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his wonderful remarks. We had a similar event in Rhode Island with veterans of the Battle of the Bulge who recounted their stories and who were celebrated by our State leaders, our adjutant general, and a crowd of admirers. It was a wonderful moment and a wonderful memory. So I thank him for calling it up on the Senate floor. Climate Change Mr. President, here we are in 2020, and I am still coming to the floor to try to wake this Chamber up to the perils of climate change-- pathetic. Why do I have to be doing another one of these speeches? Why don't we heed the warnings of our foremost scientists, of our military, of top financial institutions--heck, of our own home State universities? What does it take to get our attention around here? Why is the fossil fuel industry's unlimited dark money still flooding our politics? Why are the biggest lobbying forces in Washington, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rated as America's worst climate obstructors? Where are those trade group members who claim to support climate action when their own groups are leading the obstruction? What is going on? Who around here is so cynical as to still take fossil fuel money and block climate action? In 2020, how is that a legitimate deal? Who hasn't noticed the world spinning toward climate catastrophe--the forests burning, the seas rising, the ocean water acidifying, the glaciers melting? How can you miss that? To the liars, the deniers, the connivers, and the stooges, I predict 2020 is going to be a bad year for you. The sand beneath your castle of lies is eroding fast. Now, 2019 was a tough year for you, and 2020 will be worse. We are going to bring down your castle of lies. The fossil fuel industry campaign of obstruction hides behind an armada of phony front groups. In 2020, we will out you and your fossil fuel funding, too. To big oil companies that pretend to want progress, while still using that climate denial and obstruction apparatus to attack the very progress you claim to want, we will out that truth. We will expose your two-facedness. The fossil fuel industry spoons up the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The International Monetary Fund estimates their global subsidy in the trillions of dollars every year--globally. In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry was subsidized to the tune of $650 billion in 2015--the last year the IMF has calculated. We will out that massive subsidy and their dark money schemes to protect it. The fossil fuel industry's biggest schemers against climate action in Congress are the big corporate trade associations. The worst two are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The watchdog InfluenceMap outed NAM and the chamber in a virtual tie as the two most obstructive forces on climate change in America. That is some prize. The chamber works its evil in legislation, through regulatory action, in courts, in elections, even fighting State-level progress on carbon pollution. The chamber funded the phony debunked report that President Trump used to disparage the Paris Agreement. The chamber stooged for the fossil fuel industry for years and got away with it, but 2019 saw an end to that. My colleagues and I took to social media, to op-ed pages, and to the Senate floor to out the chamber for its disgraceful record on climate change. We pushed on chamber members to demand change within the organization. We countered the chamber with amicus briefs, laying out its dirty history, when its evil little head popped up in climate lawsuits. Senator Warren and I lodged a complaint with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate over the chamber's refusal to disclose who is behind its lobbying activities--disclosures, by the way, required by law. Senators even got hashtag ``ChamberofCarbon'' trending on Twitter, and I made a little yearend visit to the chamber to make, for no charge, a little correction to their sign out front, so that it says ``Welcome to the U.S. Chamber of Carbon.'' So we have been after them. By year's end, there were signs of discomfort over at the chamber. Up popped a post on its website that said that on climate ``inaction is not an option.'' Hell, for years, inaction had been their purpose. Now they say it is not an option. The chamber formed a new internal climate change working group. The ``Chamber of Carbon'' even quietly posted that it reversed itself on the Paris Agreement and now was for staying in--OK, baby steps but in the right direction. I think the chamber and NAM became America's two worst climate obstructors because they were paid with fossil fuel dark money, and in 2020 I intend to find that out. If the chamber is still taking fossil fuel money, it is hard to take those baby steps very seriously. They are probably just PR to placate the chamber members who are embarrassed that their organization got caught and outed as a top climate obstructor. For that prize, by the way, chamber members have a lot to be embarrassed about. Allstate, MetLife, IBM, FedEx, Bayer, Ford Motor, United Airlines, Delta, American--they all funded and directed a top climate obstructor. Really? Really? Did they know it? Did they know the chamber--their own organization--was secretly getting fossil fuel money to become a top climate obstructer? If they did know, by God, they have got some explaining to do. If they did not know, what standard of governance makes it OK for a board member to not even know who is funding your organization? So, look out, board members. We are not letting that go either. The year 2020 is when we intend to get to the bottom of all of this nasty mess. The real test for the chamber--not baby steps--will be whether it puts its back into passing a real comprehensive climate bill. Will the chamber stop scheming with climate denial organizations? Will the chamber stop opposing climate action candidates? Those are the tests. This, by the way, is not a PR test. It is not a PR test of how little you can get away with. This is a science test. It is a science test of how we keep our planet below 1.5 degrees Celsius, global warming. If we fail the science test, how well we did on the PR test is going to look pretty silly. Help us meet that 1.5 degrees Celsius. We will be talking, gladly. I look forward to working with you. Until then, expect the pressure on you to rise in 2020. We called out one other miscreant in 2019: Marathon Petroleum. This gasoline refiner orchestrated the Trump attack on fuel economy standards for automobiles. As I laid out in testimony in a House Oversight Subcommittee hearing last year, Marathon pressured Members of Congress, Governors, and the Trump administration. The corrupt Trump administration was only too eager to oblige, issuing an error-riddled proposal to freeze the fuel economy standards. The Trump administration went after California's authority under the Clean Air Act to set fuel standards. Trump's DOJ cooked up a bogus antitrust investigation, I believe, to punish the automakers that had worked with California to hammer out a separate deal on fuel economy standards that defeated Marathon's scheme. It looks like the Trump administration also pressured automakers to support the administration's legal battle with California, and 2020 is the year I hope we expose all this. In 2019, investors started noticing Marathon's bad behavior on climate. In fact, in September, 200 investors with $6.5 trillion in assets under management sent a letter to 47 U.S. companies, including Marathon, to urge those companies to align their lobbying with the Paris Agreement 2 degrees Celsius climate goal and to warn that their lobbying against that goal is an investment risk. Well, the four biggest shareholders in Marathon are BlackRock, JPMorgan, State Street, and Vanguard. They claim to care about climate. We will see, in 2020, if they keep condoning all this Marathon misbehavior. Happily, there are some things the crooked fossil fuel industry apparatus can't stop. Even with its massive subsidy for fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price. New green energy technologies are powering up, like offshore wind and battery storage. Electric vehicles are driving cost down and performance up for consumers. Old coal plants are closing--546 since 2010. New coal plants are unfinanceable, and 2019 saw Murray Energy become the eighth coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy and the biggest drop in coal consumption ever. Another trend the industry couldn't stop was economists, central bankers, Wall Street, real estate professionals, and asset managers waking up to the crash risks that climate change poses to the global economy. It is not just that it is wrecking our atmosphere and oceans and climate. Our economy stands on those pillars, and at some point there will be economic crashes. Climate crash warnings used to be scarce. Now they are everywhere. Freddie Mac warns that rising sea levels will prompt a crash in coastal property values worse than the housing crash that caused the 2008 financial crisis. First Street Foundation found that rising seas have already resulted in $16 billion in lost property values in coastal homes from Maine to Mississippi. Moody's warns that climate risk will trigger downgrades in coastal communities' bond ratings. BlackRock estimated that, by the end of the century, climate change will cause coastal communities annual losses that could average up to 15 percent of local GDP--average up to 15 percent of local GDP--with the hardest hit communities hit far worse. Look out, Florida. By the way, Louisiana is not too far from Florida. The Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Canada, and the European Central Bank--backed by top-tier, peer-reviewed economic papers--are all warning of systemic economic risk--``systemic economic risk'' is economist-speak for risk to the entire economy--from stranded fossil fuel assets, the so-called carbon asset bubble. On top of that, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission here in the United States has launched a climate risk review. Even the Trump Fed is starting to echo those warnings with reports out of local Federal Reserve banks. It is not just big institutions that are grasping the risks of climate change. I visited Louisiana, Wyoming, and Colorado last year to hear about climate change and see what red- and purple-State Americans are doing about it. The answer is: plenty. In Louisiana, sea level rise and subsidence are megathreats. I met a hunter and fisherman whose personal efforts to restore marshland have allowed his local delta wetlands to rebound from mismanagement. A scientist with the National Wildlife Federation counted over 30 species of birds just while we were standing around waiting to board the boat. The sights and sounds of a healthy marsh were an encouraging reminder of nature's ability to find a way to not only survive but to flourish if we give her a chance. In Wyoming--well, don't get me wrong--climate change isn't always a popular subject. The State is basically run by the fossil fuel industry, but there I met a younger generation that really gets it. I will not forget the determination of leading winter sports athletes in Jackson fighting to preserve their winters; nor, in Lander, the impassioned argument for climate action from a young outdoor instructor from NOLS, National Outdoor Leadership School; nor, out at their campsite, the fire-lit, passionate faces of Central Wyoming College students on their way up to take glacier measurements, who well understand the stakes of climate change for their future and the future of the State they love. Typically, these climate road trips that I do land me in States where the fight for climate change may need a little, say, boost. The opposite was true in Colorado. It is a State on a major climate winning streak: a State of good climate bills passed during the last legislative session; their biggest public utility transitioning to renewable energy, building impressive renewable energy and electric vehicle infrastructure; and leading research institutes bringing new renewable energy technologies to the marketplace. The year 2019 also showed polling that showed climate action was becoming a top issue for American voters everywhere. A big part is young voters--and especially young Republicans. More than three-fourths of all millennials and a majority of millennial Republicans agree on the need for climate action. Last year, a Republican former Member of Congress wrote about climate change: My party will never earn the votes of millennials unless it gets serious about finding solutions. It is not just younger voters. Americans of all ages and political stripes favor many of the solutions that scientists and economists say are needed to tackle climate change. An October 2019 Pew poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe the Federal Government needs to do more to combat climate change. The same poll showed 77 percent of Americans believe the United States ought to prioritize developing alternative energy over fossil fuels. So the decades-long fossil fuel campaign of obstruction and lies and denial will not be tolerated much longer. In New England, in the springtime, a moment comes when the roof of your house warms up enough to send the snow sliding down off the roof in a big whumpf. The snow may have piled up slowly, over weeks and months, but it comes down all at once in a whumpf. The fossil fuel industry and its network of front groups and trade associations have spent years piling up their crooked apparatus of climate obstruction. Increasingly, their evil behavior is facing blowback from the public and from regulators and from investors. Alarm bells are ringing ever louder from all quarters about the economic risks. Renewable energy and other green technologies are ever more cost competitive. Awareness of climate change dangers is ever growing among the American people. These are all signs that the thaw, the whumpf, is near, and 2020 could be the moment. I know things in Washington can seem hopeless, but 2019 gave me some reasons to hope. For 2020, well, it is game on to tear down the crooked castle of climate denial and solve this problem while still we can. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank Chairman Enzi. I am delighted to join Senator Enzi on the floor today to talk about our bill. An enormous amount of work has gone into preparing for it, including, I want to say, more than a dozen hearings that Chairman Enzi led in the Budget Committee to build the factual predicate for the work we were doing. I will, as the Chairman has mentioned, also drop a word of appreciation to Chairman Womack and Chairman Lowey, who ran the Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, which gave us a chance to work through some more of these issues. The fundamental problem we are trying to address is that, in the Senate, no committee actually looks at the deficit, the debt, and the borrowing in any kind of a comprehensive way. In theory, the Budget Committee is supposed to, but in practice, the Budget Committee has become two things: one, a vehicle for the majority to drive a political budget limited to appropriated spending through, with no bipartisan compromise. We have seen over and over how that has ended up. It has never been of any use. Even if you get it done, you break through the budget by getting to 60 votes, and we do most things around here by getting to 60 votes. It is a fence that is basically a line painted on the ground. It is a fence with no fence to it. Moreover, we do reconciliation. That is usually a way to bust around the budget. Both parties have used it. The Republicans have used it for the so-called tax reform. We used it for one segment of the Affordable Care Act. That is what the Budget Committee is boiled down to--a partisan proposal on appropriations that means nothing and a vehicle for getting around the 60-vote filibuster on a regular basis through reconciliation. That is it. There is no serious look that is taken at the debt or at the deficit. What does this bill do? It does some things for which there is very broad agreement. First of all, it was pretty much unanimous that the way you look at debt is in terms of a debt-to-GDP ratio, and this takes us down that path. Second, you have to do the arithmetic correct. You don't get to a proper debt-to-GDP ratio unless you look at the things that add up to the deficit, which are appropriated spending, healthcare spending, revenues, and tax spending. For one quick word on tax spending, for 2018 the latest report I saw was that we spent $1.4 trillion going out the back door of the Tax Code. That is more than we spend on Social Security. That is more than we spend on Medicare and Medicaid combined. That is more than defense and nondefense discretionary spending combined. You can't not look at tax spending and still have your math right. We address those. We provide a reasonable timeframe to get to a debt-to-GDP target and some warnings about whether or not you are on that glide slope. There was pretty much unanimous consent agreement among all of our witnesses in the committee and in the select committee that that was the logical way to address debt and deficit. There are also some sidebar things that are important that we get rid of here, such as, we move to biennial budgeting, which I think has broad bipartisan support. We deal with what I call ``the bear trap in the bedroom''--the debt ceiling--which is a very dangerous thing if you should ever step on it and trigger it. To disarm that bear trap is very valuable to our efforts, and we do that. Vote-arama is one of the most undistinguished, useless, humiliating, and embarrassing spectacles that the Senate presents. We solved, I believe, vote-arama. So that is a pretty good package of good, useful reforms to get going in the right direction. There is a very significant concern, mostly on my side of the aisle, about the special reconciliation process. In this bill you alternate between regular reconciliation and a special reconciliation process, and then, in the next biennial cycle, back to regular reconciliation and then special reconciliation. There is concern that the special reconciliation process might be used to jam things we don't like through--things like cuts to Medicare, things like very one-sided spending cuts that don't address the problem of tax spending. We need to work to solve that. I pledge to Chairman Enzi that I will put my best efforts to try to come up with a way where we can get through that problem and move on to passing this bill, which I think will be very significant and very valuable once we iron out what I think is probably, actually, the last real gasp that we have in terms of objection to it. I will also add that the bipartisan pathway that we have been working on for when the two parties can come together and agree to those things is in there. If we really want to do this in a bipartisan pathway, that is in this bill. I appreciate very much that Chairman Enzi included that in the bill. That provision passed the bicameral select committee unanimously--Republicans, Democrats, House Members, Senators, unanimously. That is a pretty good base to work off of. I will close by quoting a phrase that I have heard usually from business folks from time to time. That is that in business, ``debt doesn't matter, until it does.'' But then it is the only thing that matters. At the moment, with interest rates where they are and with the world situation the way it is, one can make the case that debt doesn't matter. But when the day comes that it does matter, when interest rates pop up and the cost of servicing our debt begins to squeeze out other priorities, it gets very hard to go back and try to solve that problem then. This is the kind of problem you have to head off in advance. So to the extent we can solve in a sensible way dealing with our debt and deficit during the calm period when debt doesn't matter, we will position ourselves to avoid the calamity that can come when it is the only thing that matters. I pledge to use my best efforts to try to bring my side into agreement on this bill and to try to find a measure that solves our concern about what I think is really the only point of significant disagreement in this bill, which is what is behind the special reconciliation process, what mischief that might be got up to. I think if we can defang this, we can move forward. Again, much appreciation to Chairman Enzi for his extraordinary leadership in the budget committee on this subject. I am determined to try to get this done in this Congress while he is with us to see it through. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, we are rapidly running out of time to protect our future and that of our children and grandchildren from worsening climate upheaval. America ought to be taking every measure available to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from legislative action to legal action, to diplomatic action, to regulatory action, which is going to be a theme of this talk tonight. We are not doing those things, and, frankly, it is because of corruption, plain and simple. Regulatory action, that means enforcing the laws on the books. We have a Clean Air Act that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to stop dangerous pollutants from fouling our air. The EPA has found that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and the Supreme Court has upheld that finding. That means we ought to be regulating methane. Methane is among the most potent of greenhouse gases. When released into the atmosphere, it traps about 30 times more heat than its chemical cousin, carbon dioxide. Oil and gas extraction releases massive methane pollution. In fact, a growing body of research suggests methane pollution from natural gas extraction may completely offset the climate gains of switching from coal to natural gas. To fulfill its duties under the Clean Air Act, as a matter of law, EPA needs to prevent methane pollution. It is the law; it is not optional. But the corrupt Trump EPA won't fight methane pollution. This corrupt EPA is run by the fossil fuel industry, which could not care less about methane emissions. Within weeks of Scott Pruitt taking control of the Agency, the corrupted EPA withdrew its request that oil and gas companies even report methane emissions. The industry knew a true report on methane leakage would damage their case for natural gas as a less dangerous air pollutant, so they went to a line of attack, taken directly from the Big Tobacco playbook: Silence the science. The fewer facts the EPA has, the less action it needs to take under law--the corrupt Trump EPA deliberately made itself ignorant and stopped the reporting so it could avoid its duty. Step 2 came in March 2017 with the corrupt Trump effort to roll back existing greenhouse gas regulations, including methane regulations. Trump's Executive order reads like a fossil fuel lobbyist's dream, probably because fossil fuel lobbyists wrote it. He called on the EPA to ``review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources and appropriately suspend, revise, or rescind those that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources.'' Regulations to limit methane pollution were among those that Trump's Executive order singled out, saying, ``As soon as practical, suspend, revise, or rescind [them].'' Step 3 was to write a do-nothing replacement. After lots of dawdling, Trump's corrupt EPA decided to draft a fake rule, a rule they could point to if challenged in court for doing nothing, but a rule that would conveniently do nothing to limit methane emissions. The fake rule exempts a huge chunk of oil and gas production from regulation, leaving the industry with an effective blank check to pollute as much methane as it likes. As I speak, the corrupt Trump EPA is preparing to issue its final rule, and the corrupted fossil fuel industry is poised to grab everything it wanted. The final rule is one that industry stooges could have written themselves because, well, it looks like they did write it themselves. They bought that privilege the old-fashioned way, by buying it. Even before Trump took office, the fossil fuel industry began showering him with money. Trump raised a record amount for his inauguration--nearly doubling the previous record--and Hess, Chevron, BP, Citgo, ExxonMobil, Consol Energy, Continental Resources, Murray Energy, and Valero all made six- or seven-figure donations. The oil and gas and mining sector was the second largest source of donations, providing more than $10 million to Trump's inaugural committee. That money still flows as the 2020 election ramps up. Fossil fuel companies are among the largest donors to the political group supporting Trump's reelection. A pipeline company is the largest single donor to the Trump victory political action committee, more than $700,000 as of this November. The oil, gas, and mining industries account for more than $5 million to the Trump Victory PAC. Fossil fuel executives are some of the largest individual donors to the Trump Victory PAC. One executive alone gave $360,000. These known donations likely represent the tip of a big dark iceberg. Dark-money political organizations accept unlimited donations and provide no disclosure, and Super PACs accept unlimited donations with little disclosure. So the bottom line is we cannot tell exactly how much fossil fuel money is flowing to groups supporting Trump, but it is a lot. When you consider the $650 billion annual subsidiary the fossil fuel polluters enjoy, they have every reason to buy control over government from a corrupt Trump administration. Money isn't the only way the fossil fuel industry exerts control. Oklahoma oil king and Scott Pruitt patron Harold Hamm set up a Trump leadership council to advise Trump. The fossil fuel industry was the heart of the council, with coal giants Alliance Resource Partners and Murray Energy, oil services company Baker Hughes, and natural gas company Devon Energy all active members. Of course, there was the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade association recently identified as America's worst climate obstructer. With all these obstructers and polluters on board, the fossil fuel friendly council fed Trump a steady diet of talking points about slashing regulations and achieving ``complete American energy independence.'' These fossil fuel industry talking points became the Executive order I mentioned earlier, an order to kill any environmental protection that ``unduly burdens the development of domestic energy resources.'' Do you want to know who the winners were from that Executive order? Check the list of attendees at the signing ceremony: fossil fuel executives and fossil fuel industry trade association executives, come to celebrate the freedom to pollute that their influence and money had bought them. Chevron has recently been identified as one of the companies that has done the most to damage our oceans. They are one of the top ocean- wrecking companies on the planet. In February of 2017, Chevron wrote to the corrupt Pruitt with a list of deregulatory proposals the company wanted to see implemented at the EPA. Included was a request to ``refocus methane regulations, particularly those that impact existing sources, to encourage voluntary approaches.'' For sure, you can trust one of the world's worst ocean polluters with voluntary approaches. The corrupt Trump EPA was stocked with fossil fuel industry cronies ready to implement whatever the industry wanted. Pruitt rose to political power on a wave of fossil fuel money and demonstrated a willingness to sell his office by putting fossil fuel industry asks verbatim onto his official letterhead. Andrew Wheeler, Pruitt's successor as Administrator, had been a leading lobbyist for the coal industry. The head of the EPA Air Office, Bill Wehrum, rose to prominence by helping build and run an array of trade associations and front groups for--guess what--the fossil fuel industry. Beyond Pruitt and Wheeler and Wehrum, the EPA's political leadership crawled with fossil fuel flunkies, like the one who left to set up the fossil-fuel dark energy group Energy 45 to help promote fossil fuel energy policies; or the lawyer-lobbyist for energy interests Dominion Energy, Koch Industries, and TransCanada overseeing Air Office compliance, of all things. It has been an infestation. It is easy for the fossil fuel industry to spend big money to corrupt the EPA because the corruption payback is so big; the dirty methane work alone is estimated to save oil and gas companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry, announced a new seven-figure ad campaign called ``We're on it.'' ``We're on it.'' These ads--on the Internet, TV, and billboards--they are all over the Washington, DC, airport. They are designed to fool the public and to fool policymakers that the oil industry is ``on its'' methane emissions problem. Of course, they are not. Of course, they are lying. It is what they do. Science tells us that methane emissions are far higher than the estimates out of the corrupt Trump EPA. The investigative journalism group Unearthed found that leading oil companies are emitting unprecedented methane pollution. In just three producing basins, in just 1 year, oil companies emitted methane equivalent to the annual emissions of 10 coal-fired power plants or 8 million cars. There is a recent New York Times article that you can link to showing infrared imagery--it is really impressive to see, actually, if you click through to it--infrared imagery of methane billowing out of what they call super-emitter fossil fuel facilities. A recent article described one methane blowout in Ohio leaking as much ``methane than the entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year.'' ``We are on it.'' Yeah, they are ``on it.'' What they are on is a binge of lying about emissions, corrupting our politics, and blocking climate action. These massive polluting industries have a long track record of climate denial and deceit. It is how they roll. A top climate obstructer, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pays for a phony study, claiming the Paris agreement would cost jobs and economic growth, and Trump pulls out a pass. Oil companies lobby to gut auto fuel efficiency standards, and Pruitt and Wheeler gut the standards. The natural gas industry objects to rules limiting methane emission. The corrupt Trump EPA rolls them back. Just now, on the Senate floor, we are looking at a tax extenders package that wipes out the tax extenders for solar going forward, wind going forward. They gave us 1 year looking backwards. Great, thanks a bunch. Electric vehicles, storage, and batteries, all of that had been in a tentative agreement. The fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration kiboshed all of it. ``On it,'' indeed. Will Attorney General Barr look into any of this? Of course not. In the corrupt Trump administration, fossil fuel money and influence puts that industry above the law. They can pollute and corrupt more or less at will. We cannot afford this self-dealing from polluters any longer. This is flat-out wrong. Indeed, it is flat-out crooked. It is not only time to wake up, Madam President, it is time to clean up. This behavior is a disgrace. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak about the success of the Affordable Care Act in Rhode Island. It has been very well managed in Rhode Island, and it has made a very big difference in many, many lives. The marketplace plan that the Affordable Care Act set up in Rhode Island is called Health Source Rhode Island. It has been well run, and it has been successful. For 2019, it has 34,533 people getting health insurance through the plan. We also expanded Medicaid, as the Affordable Care Act allowed. Under the Medicaid expansion, 72,000 Rhode Islanders got coverage that they didn't have before. So if you put those two together, that is 106,000- plus Rhode Islanders who got the benefit, the comfort, and the confidence of coverage for healthcare as a result of this bill. It is 10 percent of our population, and it has driven our uninsured numbers way, way down, into low single digits, which has been a very big win for us. I will also say that we have taken very good advantage of the accountable care organization provisions of the Affordable Care Act, with two of the best performing ACOs in the country as two of our lead primary care provider groups: Coastal Medical and Primary Care Partners. They are showing just terrific results, as they are changing the way they deliver care. They can do so because we have changed the way they can be reimbursed for care. That Rhode Island snapshot is part of a larger story of success. Eleven and a half million Americans around the country have enrolled in ACA marketplace insurance in 2019. There are 11.8 million Medicare beneficiaries who have saved a total of $26.8 billion on prescription drug costs. That is over $2,200 per senior. That is something to celebrate. Unfortunately, it is still at risk in the courts. President Trump and this Republican administration are still trying to knock it down. If they succeed, 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions will be at risk of losing healthcare coverage protections. One hundred and fifty-six million Americans with private or employer- sponsored insurance will lose the consumer protections in the ACA for preventive care, disallowing lifetime or annual limits and closing waiting periods to enroll--things that have really made a difference in people's lives. These are big numbers, and they add to a tremendous story of success, but behind the numbers are faces. Every one of those 34,533 Rhode Islanders who signed up and got health coverage through Health Source Rhode Island has their own story. Today it is my privilege to come to the floor of the U.S. Senate to tell the story of Bridget from Tiverton, RI. I can't tell it better than she does, so I will simply read her story. She says: For the majority of my life, I have suffered from chronic pain. Though I am only in my 20's, I have suffered from acute arthritis in my left hip due to multiple surgeries to correct complications from a hip displasia surgery for almost 15+ years. I was told for years that I was not a candidate for hip replacement as I was still growing, so when I was finally developed enough and found a surgeon willing to perform the hip replacement surgery, my life felt like it was actually mine again. Last year, I finally was approved for a hip replacement. It has been a year since that day, and I thank God every day that I was able to receive the help I need. Without the hip replacement, I would still be living in bed and confined to a wheelchair or crutches. Without my coverage, the preventive care that ensured my health would not backpedal would have been gone. I cannot stress enough how terrifying the thought of losing the opportunity of living my life was. I would not wish this endeavor on anyone, especially a child without coverage, as I have been in their situation. Since my surgery, I have been able to hold my first full time job, I have been able to consider going back to college, I have lived pain free for the first time in practically my whole life. No one should have to struggle with chronic issues or be discriminated against because of pre-existing conditions. Every day I grow stronger, and my voice, for those who are not as strong as I am now, grows louder. I will fight for my right to health care and for others who deserve the treatment they need for the rest of my life. Bridget, congratulations. Thank you. God bless you. Let us make sure we do not let this administration tear down the millions of stories like Bridget's that they seek to undo with this reckless litigation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise again to call this Chamber to wake up to the threat of climate change, and in this particular case, to say about the Paris agreement and to say in chorus with literally millions of Americans, we are still in. In truth, America is still in the Paris agreement. When you look at the States that are still in and will honor their commitments, when you look at the cities that are still in and will honor their commitments, when you look at the companies and the universities that are still in, it is the vast majority of the entire American economy. Despite President Trump's fossil fuel nonsense, we really are still in. Last week, I traveled to Madrid with Speaker Pelosi and the delegation of House committee chairs and climate leaders for the U.N. Conference of the Parties--what is called the COP--to support the Paris agreement climate goals. The mood in Spain was optimistic. There was a somber confidence. The Trump administration, of course, has begun the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord. That is an abandonment from our American tradition of international leadership and adherence to higher ideals. It is abandonment of our own national security imperatives and economy well-being. This abandonment demeans the Nation that has from John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan called itself a ``city on a hill.'' Our military well understands the national security imperative. Back in 2013, Admiral Samuel Locklear, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, warned that upheaval related to climate change ``is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment''--``the most likely thing.'' He added, ``You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level . . . If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.'' That command is still concerned about it. Preparing for these risks was a centerpiece of a recent Indo-Pacific Command briefing I attended at their headquarters in Hawaii. To understand the threat to our economy, we need only ask our government-backed mortgage institution, Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac predicts that rising sea levels will prompt a crash in coastal property values, greater than the housing crash that caused the 2008 financial crisis. That warning by Freddie Mac is echoed by the biggest, most important financial institutions in the world, both in the United States in the Federal Reserve system and abroad. The Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Canada, and European Central Bank, are all warning of ``systemic'' economic risks from climate change. ``Systemic,'' that is central banker speak for something that poses a risk to the entire economy, perhaps from stranded fossil fuel assets when the market for fossil fuel dries up, perhaps from a coastal property value crash when flood risk becomes uninsurable and properties unmortgageable. Against this national security imperative and this economic threat, the Trump administration leaving the Paris climate accord is a historically dumb and destructive move, particularly from a guy-- Trump--who one decade ago called climate change ``scientifically irrefutable,'' that is a quote. ``Scientifically irrefutable and its consequences catastrophic and irreversible,'' that is a quote as well. The Pelosi delegation--here we are at the COP25--included powerful House chairmen, like Chairman Pallone and Chairman Grijalva, Chairman Johnson and Chairman Castor and, of course, the most senior and influential Democrat in America, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi's presence at the COP resounded not only because of her clout and standing, but because it signaled the broad, true consensus of the United States of America in favor of climate action. At the State level, at the city level, across the public, and in much of corporate America, we are indeed still in. Indeed, at the Madrid conference right now, as I give this speech, are representatives for thousands of American businesses, investors managing trillions of dollars, hundreds of American municipalities and counties, top American colleges and universities, dozens of American faith groups, America's largest healthcare organizations, and 20 American States and Tribes. Again, all told, it is the vast bulk of the American economy, and it still is. America, unfortunately, at least in Congress, has to fight our way through a persistent blockade paid for by the fossil fuel industry. Don't believe their happy talk about acting on climate. There is a slogan that one of their trade groups has come up with. You see it at National Airport. You see it on billboards. It is popping up everywhere. The slogan is: ``We are on it.'' No, they are not. They are not even close to on it. In fact, they are the opposite. They are on the wrong side. They are funding false science denial and ridiculous amounts of simple political obstruction. They are paying for that. The statements from their lips do not match the expenditure of their funds. The expenditure of their funds is still dedicated to their political apparatus of denial and obstruction. Ultimately, however, we will prevail. The America that the international community knows and counts on--the America of leadership, the America of progress, the America of confidence, the America of clean and green energy and innovation--that America will be back and will prevail. ``Our commitment to take action on the climate crisis is ironclad,'' said Speaker Pelosi in Madrid. It is. Soon enough, that commitment will topple the castle of fossil-fuel-funded climate denial and obstruction that surrounds us today here in Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today because I missed an important occasion in the Senate. We had a celebration recently of one of our more beloved Members, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. There wasn't much that could keep me away from that, but there was no Senator going to Madrid to the conference of the parties to consider the Paris Climate Agreement. Speaker Pelosi asked me to come on her House delegation so that it was bicameral. As I think most people in this body know, I am pretty animated on that subject and couldn't say no. There are not many other things that could have kept me away. I want to come now and make up a little bit for being absent that day and express my gratitude for Johnny's friendship to me over the years. I had the pleasure of going with him to the D-day anniversary on a codel that he led with his usual graciousness and patriotism. He was kind enough to join quite early on the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus I started and has been a very helpful part of that endeavor. We have worked together on ways to improve healthcare planning for people who are in the late stage of illness to make sure that they get the care that they want and don't get a lot of care that they don't want and so that they have a chance to have their dignity and desire to be at home respected. We have long been adherent of a biennial budget, and I am delighted that the bipartisan bill that Senator Enzi and I have put together will create a biennial budget. I am not sure we will be able to get that done before Senator Isakson leaves, but one way or the other, his interest in biennial budgeting will live on, I hope, successfully when we pass that. We had a parity question about children's mental health hospitals that weren't getting counted and, therefore, weren't getting access to funding for the medical interns who come, and Johnny helped me fix that. It helped, I am sure, hospitals in Georgia, but it was particularly helpful to me for our Children's Hospital in Rhode Island. We have a lot of Rhode Islanders who were killed in the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, and there has been litigation against Iran for its responsibility for those deaths. It is not easy to collect a judgment on a foreign government, and Johnny has been very helpful to me in our joint efforts on Iran terror victims' judgments, helping us let the lawyers collect against assets of the Government of Iran. Then, we regularly have done National Mentoring Month resolutions together. But for all the things we have done together, that is not what I am going to miss about Senator Johnny Isakson. He is just one of the most decent, kind, good people who I have come across anywhere in my life and, certainly, one of the most decent and kind Members of the Senate. With my very sincere apologies, Johnny, for missing the correct day, I hope you will understand how much it mattered to me to be elsewhere and why I had to be there. I come to the floor now, belatedly, to wish you all my very best with great affection and great respect. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the soon-to-be-pending nomination be called up.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, atmospheric carbon dioxide just hit new records in our atmosphere, the highest in the history of humankind, and I rise for the 260th time to call this Chamber to wake up. As we venture further into uncharted dangerous climate change, the National Council for Science and the Environment issued this report, ``Climate Science Research in the United States and U.S. Territories.'' This report surveys climate research papers from public universities across all of our 50 States--every single one of them--to highlight the breadth and the depth of climate science coming out of our State universities and to showcase the climate science centers and institutes that they host. Some colleagues pay no attention to the threat of climate change, but their home State universities sure do. Ten thousand peer-reviewed research papers published out of 80 universities from 2014 through 2018, that is, on average, 185 peer-reviewed articles published on climate change in each State. The report says this: ``In every State, public universities invest in scholarship and education to advance fields such as climate modeling, climate impacts, adaptation, and more. Increasingly, they go on, climate science has been integrated into course work on sustainability, energy, engineering, architecture, business, and even political science.'' One wonders what is the hold the fossil fuel industry has over the Republican Party that causes colleagues to ignore the research from their own home state universities? The report continues: ``Climate scientists are studying a wide diversity of topics. They measure carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. They are studying carbon and the impacts of a changing carbon cycle. They are studying impacts of climate change on the Nation's food security, crop yields, heat-stress, health impacts, soil erosion; on water resources, including water quality, balance, river basins, drought, precipitation, mountain snowpack; on impacts to critical infrastructure, such as sea level rise on coasts and on subtropical islands, to the impact of permafrost thaw on sub-Arctic rivers.'' ``Finally, researchers are also studying the social science of climate change, including changing attitudes, polarization, opinions, beliefs, and their impacts on framing in the media and on decision- making.'' Region by region in every State, the report shows our State universities tracking climate change's consequences in fine detail. Quoting from the report, in the Midwest, ``Agriculture is a major focal area for climate-related research . . . [with] more occurrences of the word `agriculture' in climate-related papers from the Midwest between the 2014 and 2018 than in any other region.'' In the Southwest, ``A key focus of scientific research in the Southwest region is on the impact to people and ecosystems from heat, drought, wildfires, and flooding.'' In the Southeast, ``The impacts of climate change in the Southeast are becoming most visible through the increase of flooding, temporal and geographic shifts that affect human health, and growing risks of wildfires.'' In the Southern Great Plains States, ``Scientists in the Southern Great Plains are studying climate impact on food systems, sea level rise, as well as impacts to unique ecosystems in this region, such as a tall grass prairie in Oklahoma.'' Across all of these regions, red and purple State universities are churning out climate research. In fact, conservative States' universities are home to some of the most prolific climate science departments and institutions. I wish they were listened to by our Members here. Texas A&M University, the alma mater of climate-change-denying former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, produced 256 papers--256 papers--covering topics like shifting summer monsoons in the Lone Star State, local surface temperature increases, atmospheric changes, and climate adaptation strategies. North Carolina State University produced 223 climate papers examining climate change and atmospheric chemistry, surface ozone, regional water research and precipitation, and it is home to the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, which helps coastal North Carolina grapple with rising sea levels, erosion, and flooding. Go to Idaho. Researchers from Boise State and the University of Idaho issued 164 climate science papers covering threats like wildfires, bark beetles, shifting precipitation, rising temperatures, and disruption to ecosystems in National Parks like Yellowstone. Idaho also has two academic centers focused on climate change, the Hazard and Climate Resiliency Consortium and the Center for Resilient Communities. For the staff at these two centers, it is all climate, all the time. For the Idaho delegation, it is never climate, ever. Let's look at what is happening in the home State universities of Republican Senators on our Environment and Public Works Committee. Here is what they will find in their university backyards. The University of Wyoming produced 124 climate change papers on wildfires, endangered species, Yellowstone National Park, and other climate topics--124. The university is home to both the State climatology office and an atmospheric science department, which does modeling and empirical climate research. Its faculty are working on subjects like--quoting here the report here--``the role of climate and variability on vegetation and fire. Using moderate climate analogs to understand past environmental disturbances. Developing Web-based animated maps of climate, and development of 3D climate visualization tools to enhance learning approaches in the classroom.'' I wonder if our Wyoming delegation has visualized that. The University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University published 183 climate change papers on things like Southern Plains grasslands, rising temperatures, soil respiration, and much more. OU is home to the Oklahoma University Climate Science Center and the Department of the Interior's South Central Adaptation Science Center. Here is what the dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences said: ``On the increasing strength of Earth sciences we can now state that global warming is `unequivocal.''' He said: ``The fact that the planet's warming, and the fact that CO2's a greenhouse gas, and the fact that it's increasing in the atmosphere, and that it increases in the atmosphere due to humans--about those things, there's no debate.'' I am not sure the Oklahoma delegation here has taken that in yet. West Virginia and Marshall Universities have turned out dozens of climate change papers on precipitation, drought, tree growth, and much more. The West Virginia Mountaineers have a Mountain Hydrology Laboratory, which reports on climate change's ``important implications for management of fresh water resources,'' which include that ``the highlands region in the central Appalachian Mountains is expected to wet up'' as warmer air carrying more moisture leads to what they call ``intensification of the water cycle''--what you and I would call worse flooding. The laboratory warns that ``the implications of this intensification are immense.'' The University of Arkansas contributed 51 papers and hosts the University of Arkansas Resiliency Center. Arkansas researchers warned of the need to reduce greenhouse gases, particularly including carbon dioxide and methane because these gases' ``absorption of solar radiation is responsible for the greenhouse effect.'' The university describes the greenhouse effect thus: ``These gases are trapped and held in the Earth's atmosphere, gradually increasing the temperature of the Earth's surface and air in the lower atmosphere.'' A University of Arkansas scientist predicts ``that the spread of plant species in nearly half of the world's land areas could be affected by global warming by the end of the century.'' Yet what do we hear from Arkansas about climate change? Alaska actually gets its own regional chapter in this report. In Alaska, ``Researchers at public institutions . . . are studying changes in the marine environment and the impacts to the valuable marine resources Alaskan communities depend on.'' There are papers on thawing permafrost and its effects on water quality, infrastructure, and habitat for fish and wildlife. There is research on what rapid ocean acidification, rising sea levels, and shifting fish stocks mean for Alaska's coastal communities. And there is research into challenges facing Alaska's indigenous people fighting to protect their ancient way of life in a rapidly changing landscape. Alaska is home to not one, not two, but three climate institutes: the Alaska Climate Research Center, the Alaska Climate Adaptation/Resource Center, and the Ocean Acidification Research Center. Alaskan researchers have written papers titled ``Permafrost is warming at a global scale'' and ``Climate Change and Future Wildfire in the Western United States.'' The Alaska researchers don't mince words. I quote: ``Projections of warming suggest that considerable change will occur to key snow parameters, possibly contributing to extensive infrastructure damage from thawing permafrost, an increased frequency of rain-on-snow events and reduced soil recharge in the spring due to shallow end-of- winter snowpack.'' It is not hard to understand, but where is the action? In the Dakotas, North Dakota State and the University of North Dakota are studying the effects of climate change on the Great Plains, the Mississippi River, land use and adaptation, and public policy. They are also home to North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Center, the Global Institute of Food Security and International Agriculture, and the Center for Regional Climate Studies. South Dakota State has issued dozens of studies on climate change, including what it will mean for the State's groundwater supply, maize and wheat crops, and precipitation levels. Heading south, the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State are studying what climate change will mean for sediment flows, droughts, watersheds, and water quality. They are looking at what climate change will mean for Mississippi's vitally important rice crop--a crop that supports hundreds of rice farms in the State. And they do good coastal climate work with the Sea Grant Program. Auburn, the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, and the University of Alabama-Huntsville produced 140 climate papers that are in the council's study here. You would never know that from the Alabama delegation. Auburn has an International Center for Climate and Global Change Research, and the University of Alabama does climate change research at its Earth System Science Center. All by itself, Iowa State is responsible for 117 papers on climate change: on agriculture--corn, grazing lands, yields; on weather-- precipitation, droughts, temperature; and even on beliefs and behavior related to climate change. Last but certainly not least among EPW Republican States is Indiana, home to two world-class universities that are doing extremely impressive work on climate change. Indiana University and Purdue combine for 289 papers. They are also home to the Center for the Study of Global Change at Indiana University and Purdue's Climate Change Research Center. I hope it goes without saying that universities that study climate change and publish scientific papers on climate change also teach climate change in their coursework. Maybe we should spend a week here in the Senate getting a refresher on the home State climate change science. It might do us some good. But we don't. We waste week after week here as the danger looms, the warnings pile up, and the research keeps coming about climate change in our home States. We will be the most clearly warned body in history of disaster ahead. Yet we still sit here doing nothing. Never has a political body been more clearly warned of a more present looming disaster than this one--yet still nothing. The council's report on State university climate research has these web diagrams, which show how climate change research focuses more on climate effects as they begin to manifest themselves in the States and not just predictions and science any longer. Now it is measurement of actual events. But the diagrams also show the various areas of research about which these research papers are being published. Here is the web diagram for the topics that are addressed in climate science research in the southwestern universities. The 12 universities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah in the study show real-time effects of climate change, like drought and wildfire, and point to direct links between tree mortality, drought, and climate. We in this country depend on the Southwest for more than half of our specialty crops--vegetables, fruits, and nuts--so we have to pay attention when drought threatens all of those. Here is another topic web for the Southeast highlighting what the universities' research has been on sea level rise, ocean acidification, adaptation, and management. Here is a slightly different web. This web is not a web of science and inquiry. No, this is the web of front groups and dark money organizations that the fossil fuel industry has supported, created, and used for decades to sow false doubt about all of this science--all of this science from all of our 50 States. Their job is to lie about this science, and they have done it well. They have used this same web to deploy political muscle and propaganda to block action here in Congress. That is why, with all of this research being done in all of these States, nothing is happening on this floor. Nothing has happened since Citizens United gave the fossil fuel industry the equivalent of howitzers, whereas before then, they just had muskets. I say to the Presiding Officer, I remember how bipartisan it was here. You weren't here then. Between 2007, when I was sworn in--all of 2007, 2008, and 2009, we had five different bipartisan climate bills popping up around on the Senate floor. There were five of them, all strong, serious bills--not little nibbly things to make people feel better; real bills. In January 2010 comes Citizens United, and the fossil fuel industry gets its brandnew hardware, its political howitzers, and they go straight to the other side of the aisle and say: Anybody who crosses us is dead. Bipartisanship died that year on climate change, and it is only beginning--only beginning--to resurge now. But the decade we lost will cost us a lot, and it makes the urgency of what we have to do now all the more important. This web of denial, paid for by the fossil fuel industry, has stymied Congress for a decade. I hope I don't need to remind anyone here that the fossil fuel industry has a conflict of interest as to this question. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund has quantified it as a $650 billion-a-year conflict of interest. For $650 billion in conflict of interest, you can pay for a lot of nonsense organizations that are phony front groups to put out your poison and your political propaganda and your political pressure. It is time, at last, for Senators to pay attention to the trusted science actually happening in their own home State universities and not to this corrupt web of denial that has been propped up by the conflicted fossil fuel industry. This web of denial has done nothing but lied over and over again. They are provably wrong over and over again. The things they say are false over and over again. Yet the industry behind them still controls the U.S. Senate, and we can't budge, despite the rest of the world moving on dealing with this issue. Let me close with an anniversary that we marked this week. Ten years ago this Friday, a full-page ad ran in the New York Times--a full-page ad pointing out that the science of climate change was already by then--10 years ago--to use the words in the advertisement, ``irrefutable,'' ``scientifically irrefutable.'' The science is scientifically irrefutable. And it goes on to say that the consequences of climate change would be ``catastrophic and irreversible.'' Wow. The science is irrefutable; the consequences, catastrophic and irreversible? Who could have signed this ad? I will tell you who signed this ad. Donald J. Trump and his children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump--oh, and the Trump Organization, right there. This is what the Trumps had to say about this 10 years ago, Friday. I conclude by saying to my colleagues, the science is there for you to see. You don't have to go far. Just go to your home State university. It is right there waiting for you. For the truth of climate change, just turn to the researchers teaching your students in your State's own universities. They can tell you, just as Donald Trump and his family did 10 years ago, that what we face is irrefutable and that its consequences will be catastrophic and irreversible if we keep monkeying around and failing to act. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, for this 259th climate speech, I am going to return to the theme of corruption. Before diving into the how, let's start with the why because the scale and the remorselessness of the scheme of corruption the fossil fuel industry has run is hard to comprehend without understanding why. Here is the why. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. I will say that again. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The IMF--International Monetary Fund--estimates that the global subsidy for fossil fuel is in the trillions of dollars every year. That is globally. In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry got a $650 billion--that is with a ``b''--subsidy in 2015, according to the most recent report from the IMF. That is about $2,000 out of the pocket of every man, woman, and child in the United States. Here is that IMF report. Look it up. Read it and weep. Stop for a minute and understand this subsidy. Some of it is favorable tax deals and other direct subsidies that pour public taxpayer money into the pockets of this polluting industry. In recent years, that has been estimated at around $20 billion annually. The vast bulk of this $650 billion is something else. It is people getting hurt. It is the cost of people suffering economic harms. It is the cost of your home burned in a wildfire or swept away in a storm by rising seas. It is the cost of farms withered from unprecedented droughts or crops drowned in unprecedented flooding. It is the cost of fisheries that are lost or moved away as oceans warm and acidify. It is the lost day of work with your kid in the emergency room waiting out a climate-related asthma attack on the ER's nebulizer. It is the cost of tick-borne and mosquito-borne illnesses that didn't used to be where you live. It is the cost to dive tours of tourists seeing dead, white, bleached coral reefs instead of vibrant undersea gardens and the cost to snowmobile moose tours of going through mud instead of snow and when you see moose, seeing emaciated moose calves with thousands of ticks slowly killing them. It is the cost of American military deployments to conflicts caused by resource scarcity or climate migration. It is the cost of relocating Naval Station Norfolk when the community around it floods out. It is the cost of Glacier Park with no glacier. It is the cost of trout streams with no trout. It is the cost of millions of acres of healthy forests killed off by pine beetle infestation. It is the cost to Phoenix of staffing up emergency services when it is not safe to work outside because it is too hot and lost airline flights out of the airport when the tarmac melts. It is the myriad costs of basic operating systems of the natural world gone haywire because of climate change. All this pain, all this loss, all this suffering has a bloodless economic name: externalities. Externalities are the social costs that are imposed on others by the use of a product. Pollution, of course, is the obvious example. In economic theory, those social costs should be baked into the price of a product. That is why courts and companies and countries around the world apply a social cost of carbon calculation. But destroying the basic operating systems of the planet is a high- priced externality--by the IMF report, $650 billion in 2015 just in the United States. And because it is hard to calculate a price for so much of this harm, that is a lowball estimate. For instance, we can estimate the loss to the dive shop of the coral reef off the coast dying, but is that really the full cost of the dead reef? There is a lot more. So the externality is probably well over $650 billion. By comparison, let's look at the five major oil companies' earnings. The five major oil companies earned somewhat more than $80 billion in profits last year all around the world, all right? Global profits are $80 billion versus $650 billion in destruction and harm they caused just in the United States. So make those oil companies follow the rules of market economics. Make them put the cost of the harm of their product into the price of their product--$80 billion versus $650 billion--and guess what: Their business is in a $570-plus billion hole. That is why the fossil fuel industry is so corrupt. It knows it needs to break the laws of market economics in order to survive, and it knows it needs political help to do that. Fortunately for the fossil fuel industry, up against that $650 billion subsidy, politicians come cheap. They could put $650 million into politics every single year, and it would earn them a 1,000-to-1 return on that expenditure protecting the $650 billion subsidy. So that is the why of fossil fuel corruption: It pays. It pays hugely. It is as simple as that. They are corrupt because it pays. Now let's look at the how. By the way, they have some expertise in this area. These companies operate in the most crooked countries in the world, so they know how to work crooked deals and politics. But what happened here in the United States? Well, I saw it happen. The big change came when five Republican Supreme Court Justices gave this industry and other mega industries big new political artillery. It came in the disgraceful Citizens United decision that let unlimited special interest money into our elections. I will tell you, there is no special interest more unlimited than fossil fuel. Fossil fuel front groups were all over that Supreme Court case, by the way, signaling to the five Republicans on the Court what they wanted them to do, and sure enough, they did it. Of course, it does take some fun out of spending unlimited money in politics if people can tell who you are. In theory, we were supposed to know. To get to the outcome the fossil fuel industry wanted, the five Republican Justices had to pretend, as a legal matter, that all this political spending--all this unlimited political spending they were authorizing--was going to be transparent, that we would know who was behind it. Well, that transparency was not going to work very well for Exxon or Koch Industries or Marathon Petroleum, so they cooked up all sorts of schemes to hide behind. Tax-deductible 501(c)(4)s appeared that can hide their donors. Trade groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce got taken over and co-opted. Disposable shell corporations turned up behind political donations. An enterprise called Donors Trust was established, whose sole purpose is to launder the identity of big donors. By the way--back to Citizens United--those five Republican Justices would have to be idiots not to see this apparatus of phony front groups out there mocking their assurances of transparency--assurances that were at the heart of the Citizens United decision--but those Justices have studiously ignored this flagrantly obvious flaw and have made zero effort to clean up their unlimited-spending, dark-money mess. I was taught as a kid that you are supposed to clean up the messes you made. That is not a message that got through to the ``Roberts Five.'' We have addressed this flotilla of propped-up, dark-money front groups in the Senate before. We call it the web of denial. Academics who study these groups have documented well over 100 of them in the last decade. That sounds like a lot--100 front groups--but remember, there is $650 billion a year riding on this. And it is a really big help if you can pretend you are, say, Americans for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity instead of ExxonMobil or the Kochs or Marathon Petroleum. People tend to get the joke when the ad says: Brought to you by ExxonMobil. So they have the motive and the means to spend millions of political dollars and to do so from hiding. How much do they spend? Well, that is hard to tell because the whole purpose is to hide. Responsible watchdogs won't even venture a guess as to how much dark money is sloshing through the political system, but total dark money spending on Federal elections has been at least $700 million since the Citizens United decision, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The lion's share of that dark money is probably from fossil fuels because, first, nobody else has the same corrupt motive on the scale of fossil fuel. Plus, when you look at the spending, it is usually groups who can be connected to fossil fuel. And for most, the activity is climate denial and obstruction, so it is fossil fuel work being done. So it is pretty easy to conclude who is likely behind all this. For colleagues who weren't here before 2010, let me tell you, things were different then. In 2007, 2008, and 2009--those were my first 3 years here--there were lots of bipartisan climate bills kicking around the Senate, real ones that would have headed off the crisis into which we are rocketing right now. Heck, in 2008, the Republican nominee for President ran on a strong climate platform. After the Citizens United decision in January of 2010, all of that was snuffed out. An oily curtain of denial fell around the Republican Party as the fossil fuel industry brought its new political weapons to bear. The before and after comparison is as plain as day, and it cost us a decade of inaction when time was of the essence. It has been a high cost except, of course, for the fossil fuel industry, whose lying and denying, whose front groups and dark money, whose political obstruction and threats still remain fully dedicated to protecting that $650 billion subsidy. Do the math just for a second. At $650 billion a year, from January 2010 until now, Citizens United let the fossil fuel industry protect nearly $6 trillion in subsidy--$6 trillion in losses to our constituents, $6 trillion that this industry dodged in the laws of market economics to foist on everyone else--and you wonder why they worked so hard to take over the courts. The fossil fuels' denial operation and obstruction operation is likely the biggest and most corrupt scheme in human history. I can't think of one that is worse, and it is still operating today--right now--as I stand here and speak. Its oily tides pollute our public debate with deliberate falsehoods and nonsense, grease our press to steer away from this subject, slosh slimily through the hallways of this very building, and grip the Supreme Court in a web of oily, dark money influence. We have become like the people who have lived in the shadows for so long and have forgotten what sunlight, what free debate, what laws based on facts can look like. The fossil fuel industry has polluted our American democracy on as massive a scale as it has polluted our atmosphere and oceans. For those in our history who gave up their lives--who died in the service of our democracy--who are looking down on us now, that pollution of the democracy they died defending must be a bitter spectacle. As a boy, there was an ominous hymn that we often sang in chapel about how ``once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.'' ``Truth,'' the hymn went on, is ``forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,'' but ``though the cause of Evil prosper, yet `tis Truth alone is strong.'' Now is our moment to decide: Do we finally bring down fossil fuels' false Babylon of corruption or, in the strife of truth with falsehood, do we keep protecting the evil side? I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that unless there is objection, the 1:45 p.m. vote be held now.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak on the confirmation of Steven Menashi to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. We have grown accustomed to the violations of norms around here, kind of a dumbing down of the institution. So by all of those standards, I would ordinarily be opposing Mr. Menashi. We have disposed of the blue slip convention for Circuit Court nominees. I just warn my colleagues, again, that there is a price to be paid for that. The blue slip for Circuit Court nominees is the thing that connects a Circuit Court nominee to a particular State so that an Arkansas judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals or the Rhode Island judge on our Circuit Court of Appeals or the Montana judge on their Circuit Court of Appeals only is the Arkansas judge or the Rhode Island judge or the Montana judge because we honor that blue slip. In another Presidency, when the shoe is on the other foot, I don't want to hear any of my colleagues who have thrown this Circuit Court blue slip out complain when somebody who is not even from their State gets appointed to the so-called State seat on the Circuit Court. In addition, we have dealt with a lot of unqualified candidates. I think this administration has set the record for ABA-designated unqualified candidates. This guy has never tried a case, never taken a deposition. He effectively has not practiced law. When he has tried to practice law, it has been a disaster. He has been the counsel for the Department of Education and managed to have various programs that he advised on all thrown out in court and his Secretary held in contempt-- so not a guy who, when you get a mere legal decision, comes up with a real winning record. Moreover, he refused, extremely arrogantly, to answer really basic questions, even to the point of frustrating Republican members of the committee when he was a witness before us, and has refused to answer related questions for the record as well. So, for all of those reasons, this is a pretty undesirable candidate for the Federal bench, but it gets way, way worse. If you look at what Mr. Menashi has said over the years, it is quite an astonishing window into his mind. With respect to affirmative action, he has compared universities--I am quoting him here--he has compared universities cataloging students according to race on college applications and official documents, which you obviously do as part of any affirmative action program, he has compared that to the Nuremberg laws. If you look at the issue of sexual violence, he has made fun of Take Back the Night marches and described women who are active and concerned about sexual violence as--his words here--``campus gynocentrics''-- maybe he pronounced it gynocentrics, I do not know--campus gynocentrics. When you are talking about sexual violence, that is not just a normal word to use. When you are talking about affirmative action, reference to Nazi Nuremberg laws is just not normal. He has argued that gun regulations are ``pointless''--I am quoting him here--``pointless and self-defeating because guns reduce crime.'' Really? Ask the victims of the firearms massacres happening at such a horrifying rate in this country how guns reduce crime. With respect to the rights that have been enshrined in our Constitution and recognized in Roe v. Wade, giving women the right, to some degree, of self-determination about when to have children, he described the rights codified in Roe v. Wade--I quote him here--as ``radical abortion rights advocated by campus feminists.'' Good luck, on an issue related to a woman's right to choose, getting a fair hearing from this character once he is enrobed. He mocked the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, which he said incessantly exploited the slaying of Matthew Shepard for both financial and political benefit. We engage in some pretty acid rhetoric around here, but about a young man who was murdered about being gay, that is just appalling. If you are in his court on an issue in which the rights of LGBT folks are involved, there is almost no way that you could believe that a judge that has thought or said anything as vile as that could ever give you a fair hearing. With respect to the question of diversity, which many of us consider to be one of America's greatest traits, social scientists, he said, have found that greater ethnic heterogeneity, i.e., social diversity, is associated with lower social trust. Ethnically heterogenetic societies exhibit less political and civic engagement, less effective government institutions, and fewer public goods. First of all, I don't think that is true. I don't think that stands to scrutiny. But, second of all, it is just kind of a creepy thing to be saying, that we would be a better country if we marshaled ourselves together into our ethnic enclaves, which ``provide the groundwork for social trust and political solidarity''--not in my world, not in Rhode Island. That is not the way we work. I don't think that is the way America works. So whether you are looking at diversity, whether you are looking at gay rights, whether you are looking at a woman's right to choose, whether you are looking at safe regulation of guns, whether you are looking at sexual violence against women, whether you are looking at affirmative action in colleges, you can find something truly creepy that this individual has said. That, on top of all the other disqualifying factors, makes him perhaps the worst candidate that Donald Trump has tried to put on the Federal bench--by the way, that is in a crop of doozies. The problem here is that people are going to come into these courts and they are going to have a feeling that no American litigant should have and that is that I have got a judge who is predisposed against me, that it doesn't matter what my cause is. It matters who I am. And, sadly, I don't think this is the bug in these Trump judicial appointments; I think this is the feature. I think it is the intention of the dark money fueled apparatus that has got this assembly line of unusual and peculiar judges cranked on to our courts to actually make sure that our courts are more likely to rule for certain people than others, that they are more likely to rule for polluters, that they are more likely to rule for gun companies, that they are more likely to rule for dark money political operators. There are essentially, at this point, with this nominee to a Circuit Court of Appeals, no standards left--no standards left. I can't imagine anybody much worse. It is a sad day. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am not going to be that long. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to half an hour as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today is my 258th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, and I want to use this occasion to take us back to our oceans. Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I note that this will be the last ``Time to Wake Up'' speech during which Adena Leibman will be with me. She has been closely involved in all of my office's oceans work. She has, indeed, led it. She came to my office as a Knauss fellow. We loved Dean Knauss in Rhode Island. He was the dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. In working with Senator Pell, he helped to launch NOAA, helped to start the Sea Grant Program, and was extremely significant in the ocean work of our government. So one being a Knauss fellow--one of the Knauss legacies-- is a really big deal and is a particularly big deal in Rhode Island. Adena has been coordinating the oceans work now for 4 years and has also been coordinating our appropriations work. In the time that Adena has been working on this, the bipartisan Oceans Caucus, which Senator Murkowski and I established, has grown to 40 Members. It is very bipartisan. It is very effective. We set it up as a working caucus, and it is working. Adena helped us get the Coastal Resilience Fund passed into law. It is now producing tens of millions of dollars in grants for coastal communities that need the support as sea levels rise. She helped to get the Save Our Seas Act passed. That was a unanimous effort. Dan Sullivan, of Alaska, was a remarkable partner in all of that. The participants in that included leaders from landlocked States. Senator Inhofe was a real leader on that bill. We had such a good time with it that we are now working on Save Our Seas 2.0, which today came through the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee after having passed the Foreign Relations Committee unanimously and the Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously. We are hoping that soon we will be able to organize the floor consideration of it and, perhaps, pass it by unanimous consent in the way we did with the Save Our Seas Act. The work of all of that progress in those committees and the negotiating of Save Our Seas 2.0 was led by Adena. Lastly, this week, I started going around to collect cosponsors for Senator Murkowski's and my BLUE GLOBE Act, which is the ocean data monitoring bill that we have worked on and are now ready to launch. An enormous amount of preparatory work goes into getting that ready-- getting supporters lined up and doing all of the work of cross- referencing the different points of view--and getting a bill that we also hope stands a good chance of passing this body by unanimous consent. So I give the speech with gratitude to Adena for her work.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Lucia Simonelli, an AAAS fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.