Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, at the Senator's desire, he may add any of those whom he wishes, and we will consider that going forward. Unless and until he does that, we are in a position that unless we are helping all of them, we will help none of them. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I simply note that the Senator seems to be making precisely the argument that he is denying that he has made. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me go on the record to say how much I disagree with my colleague's view of this; the notion that we can't help anyone until we can help everyone is simply not the way the world works. The notion that we can't help anyone until we have solved whatever financial problems he sees in Social Security, again, means we will help no one. I do believe Lou Gehrig's disease is a sufficiently distinct illness, with an inevitable fatality, and the slow loss of function for the individuals involved as the disease takes away, one by one, their various abilities to stand, to speak, and eat. I think it does set it apart. If the Senator has other illnesses he thinks are equally cruel and equally lethal that he would like to add to the list, then I think we should consider that. The notion that we can't help fellow Americans with this disease because we haven't solved other problems is one I categorically reject. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for a few moments; that at the conclusion of my remarks, my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Cotton, be recognized; and that at the conclusion of his remarks, I be recognized again for a unanimous consent request.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the things that marks service as a U.S. Senator is the chance to meet really remarkable individuals, and among the remarkable individuals I have had the chance to meet in my time in the Senate, there are few, if any, who are more impressive or memorable than those who have been diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Competing with them for being impressive and noteworthy are the friends and family and advocates who become their support system and their caregivers. It is not just those with the diagnosis, but it is also the family, friends, and caregivers who face incredible bravery. I remember someone once saying that a special kind of courage is maintaining good morale in the face of terrible circumstances, and few circumstances are more terrible than a diagnosis of ALS amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. We know how it ends. We know it is always fatal. There is no treatment. There is no cure. There is nothing to halt or reverse the effects of ALS. Those of us who have ALS patients visit us watch the decline as they move from people who can walk to people who need a wheelchair, to people who need an increasingly complex wheelchair. For all this suffering and for all the certainty of how it ends, we still make ALS patients and their family members wait 5 months before they can begin to receive the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they earned by contributing into Social Security. The logic, I am told, of this 5-month waiting period is that it allows temporary conditions to abate, but ALS is not a temporary condition. It does not abate. It does not reverse. Sadly, some ALS patients lose their fight with the disease before even receiving benefits. I have been working with Senator Cotton to pursue bipartisan legislation to eliminate this 5-month waiting period for ALS. Chairman Hatch, in one of his final acts as chairman of the Finance Committee, expressed his approval of this and his desire to help me bring it forward, and Ranking Member Wyden on the Finance Committee has helped get it to the floor so we can have this opportunity to pass it by unanimous consent. I hope very much that as a simple act of humanity, we can step aside from bureaucratic considerations and allow this small population of Americans who face the extraordinary blow of this diagnosis to move immediately to the benefits they signed up for by contributing to Social Security. With that, I would yield the floor to Senator Cotton of Arkansas.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 379, a bill to eliminate the 5-month waiting period for disability insurance benefits under such title for individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, as we come into this Christmas season.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am honored to join the senior Senator from Oregon in support of this important resolution. As I think everybody on this floor has observed, there is a rot in our American democracy, and there is a shadow over the Halls of Congress. The rot is dark money, and the shadow is special interest influence empowered by that dark money. A lot of this goes back to the extraordinarily misguided decision of the U.S. Supreme Court--or, I should say, five Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court--in Citizens United, which took the astonishing position that the integrity of our elections should receive a value of zero in their calculus and their solicitude should be exclusively for the wealthiest forces that bring their power to bear on American democracy, because, after all, if what you are doing is unleashing the power of special interests to spend millions of dollars, by definition, you are only powering up the group that has millions of dollars to spend and a reason to spend it. That is, perhaps, the segment of the American population entitled to the least solicitude in our great American debate. Yet it was the exclusive interest of the five Republican appointees on the Court. It was an evil balancing of priorities but, sadly, part of a long tradition--going back to the Bellotti decision--of Republican appointees to the Supreme Court expanding the role and influence of corporations and special interests. In their foolishness, the five Republican judges who gave us the Citizens United decision claimed that the spending they unleashed was going to be transparent--not so. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to append to my remarks at the end with an article pointing out that secret political spending in elections in the United States of America is on track to hit a $1 billion milestone. Not only is the secret spending a menace, but once you allow unlimited spending--particularly, if you allow unlimited secret spending--there is another dark problem, which is that if you are a big special interest that is able to spend unlimited money, and perhaps secret unlimited money against a candidate, what else have you been given the power to do? You have been given the power to go to that candidate and say: We are coming after you unless you do what I tell you. It opens threats and promises that are always going to be secret. So even were there not these evil channels for dark money to pollute and influence our democracy, Citizens United would still be misguided with respect to the darkness of the threats and promises that it empowered. Of course, when you remove accountability for the advertising and the sleazy campaigns that this supports, you get a lot more negative advertising. That is why one of the consequences of all of this has been described as a tsunami of slime. Whether you want to rid dark money channels, whether you want to diminish secret threats, or whether you want to combat the tsunami of slime, there is every reason to take a stand against what has become of our democracy. If you think this is just an academic pursuit, take a look at the climate change dispute. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, when I was a new Senator, we did bipartisan work on climate change every one of those years. We had bipartisan hearings. We had bipartisan bills. I think we had four of them in the Senate. Along comes Citizens United in January of 2010. From that moment forward, bipartisanship was dead because the fossil fuel industry that asked for the Citizens United decision and that got the Citizens United decision from the five Republican appointees was instantly ready to bring that new power to bear. They went to the Republican Party, and they said: Anybody who crosses us on climate is dead. They took representatives like Bob Inglis and put him out of his job to demonstrate their seriousness. From that moment, from the day the Citizens United decision was announced, there has not been a serious piece of climate legislation that any Republican has been willing to sign onto. If you doubt the effects of dark money, take a look at where we are on climate change. In this weird way, the pollution of our democracy is directly connected to the pollution of our atmosphere and oceans. And, of course, once you open a channel for a dark money influence-- an American dark money influence; ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers, Big Pharma, you name it--when you open a dark money channel for that influence to wreak its power, you can't control who comes through it. Dark is dark. And there is every reason now to believe that foreigners are taking advantage of our dark money channels to exert influence in our elections. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks an op-ed in Politico entitled ``Foreign Dark Money is Threatening American Democracy,'' written by former Vice President Biden. Today's Congressional Review Act measure is a small step. It won't provide much public disclosure; it will only require that companies and entities that are using these dark money channels continue to report to the IRS. So there is not going to be an enormous difference made here, but there is an enormous difference in which side this body will choose to be on in this vote today on Senator Tester's resolution. It is a very simple and a very stark choice. We can choose, one by one. Each one of us will make this choice today. We can choose to be on the side of dark money. We can choose to decide to be on the side of special interest influence, we can choose to decide to be on the side of whispered threats--I will tell you that dark money and special interest influence and whispered threats have a disgraceful force in this building right now, thanks to Citizens United and the dark money channels that it empowered--or we can choose to be on the side of America as a city on a hill. Why do we call America a city on a hill? Because everyone can see it. And a city on a hill does not do its business through the dark money sewers that run under the city; it does its business in the plain marketplace and open spaces of that city, and that is what we should be for. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a report on this issue by a terrific bipartisan group, called ``Issue One,'' as a third appendant to my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor to the distinguished Senator from Michigan.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, while the distinguished senior Senator from Texas, deputy leader, is still on the floor, let me thank him for his kind remarks and express a word of appreciation for his patience through the long process of getting to a conclusion that we appear now to have finally reached on bringing criminal sentencing reform to a vote on the Senate floor. This is at least the third Congress in which the Cornyn-Whitehouse bill to improve the preparation of Federal prisoners for release, when they are going to be released, has been with us, and it has been a long process. I think the bill we are going to go to is, in majority, our original bill. For a long time, it has been the engine that I think all sides have seen as the means to solve the sentencing piece, which was much more difficult. Over and over again, our efforts to move our bill have been held up in order to try to make a package, which is a pretty strong sign that our bill is a pretty good thing to get on board with. I want to thank Senator Cornyn for his patience through all of this. Then I want to say a quick appreciation to Representative Collins and Representative Jeffries, whose bill on the House side was basically started like ours, and then they were able to negotiate what Senator Cornyn and I both agree were improvements--so that we adopted our bill to incorporate the improvements from the House side. Other than that, we are about where we began with the sentencing improvements that have been added, and it has been a long trip, but I am indebted and appreciative of my colleague in all of this, Senator Cornyn, for having kept the faith through these many years and many Congresses in getting to this point. Thank you, sir. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the senior Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, be recognized at the conclusion of my remarks, if he is on the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week, Nations of the world are gathering in Katowice, Poland, to review--and we hope amplify--their commitments to reduce carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement and to discuss how they will report and verify reductions in carbon pollution. The United States of America is technically present in Poland in the form of a small delegation, but American leadership in Poland is decidedly absent. Why? It is pretty simple. The Government of the United States of America has fallen under the political control of the industry most responsible for this mess. American leadership was essential to forging the global consensus on carbon emissions in the original Paris Agreement. I know because I was there in Paris in 2015 as Secretary Kerry and the U.S. negotiating team worked to seal the landmark pact. What a pathetic difference a few years make. In 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would become the only country in the world to turn its back on this global agreement. The United States abdicates its leadership, just as the scientific warnings of the dangers of climate change grow clearer and grimmer. In October, came a new report from the world's scientists working through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Just last month, our own Federal Government released its own sobering news about the worsening risks climate change poses to our Nation and our economy. Our National Climate Assessment warned of hundreds of billions of dollars in losses we can anticipate due to climate change if we don't act to curtail carbon emissions. Trump responded first by describing his own--and I will quote him on this--``very high levels of intelligence.'' Then he went on to simply deny all the science. He said: I don't see it. Well, guess what. Pope Paul V didn't see it when Galileo demonstrated the Earth revolved around the Sun, but that didn't change the astrophysics. The climate science--laid out in black and white by Trump's own government agencies--is that our planet is heating up due to our use of fossil fuels. The science is even more incontrovertible than when Donald Trump said that climate science was incontrovertible back in 2009. Saying that he now doesn't see it is the very definition of climate denial. So many people who are engaged in climate denial actually know better but, for a variety of motives, will not act, will not admit it. As to the President's not seeing it, ``willful blindness'' would be another term. This takeover of our government by fossil fuel forces is having very real consequences in U.S. emissions numbers. After years of decline, U.S. carbon emissions rose in 2018, increasing by 2.5 percent. This, of course, coincides with the Trump administration's efforts on behalf of its industry benefactors to delay, repeal, and weaken rules limiting carbon emissions from powerplants, from oil and gas wells, from industrial facilities, even from vehicles. Of course all of these industries share a measure of the blame for not cleaning up their own mess on their own, and you can add to that their culpability for pushing the Trump administration to weaken the safety regulations that, in some cases, the industry had actually agreed to. The auto industry had actually agreed to the CAFE standards and then fought to undo them through its trade group so that they could keep their own hands clean. Chinese carbon emissions increased in 2018, as did Indian emissions. Among major economies, only the European Union saw its emissions decline in 2018. This is why international summits like Poland are so important. The world urgently needs to correct course, and we can best do so if countries together do their part to reduce emissions. According to the IPCC, to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we need to cut carbon emissions to 50 percent below 2010 levels by 2030, which is just 11 years from now. We have to be 50 percent below our emissions in 2010, 11 years from now, in 2030, and we have to hit net zero emissions--carbon removed for all carbon added--by 2050. That is not that far away. The IPCC report calls pricing carbon the central policy that will allow us to hold the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less. This is not some fantasy of the environmental community. Some of the world's biggest investors--$32 trillion worth of investment represented by these groups--stood up in Poland to say: We need to fix this problem or there will be economic catastrophe ahead. They also said that a price on carbon and an end to the subsidy that the fossil fuel industry enjoys and is at the heart of its political intervention, which has prevented us from taking on climate change, needs to go. You have to add a price on carbon, and you have to get rid of the fossil fuel subsidies. That is their prescription for avoiding economic catastrophe. Well, maybe they don't know what they are talking about, but $32 trillion worth of money thinks that they know what they are talking about because they put their money in the hands of these people to make wise investments for the future. A lot of people have bet their savings and resources behind these groups that are now saying: No price on carbon, no end of the fossil fuel subsidies, watch out--watch out for catastrophe. On an ideological level, if you are sincere about market capitalism, where the costs of a product need to be in the price of the product for the market to work, this is pretty obvious stuff. The only reason this gets difficult is if you are a fake free marketeer who is really fronting for the fossil fuel industry. But if you are not a fake on market economics when it is the industry that funds your party involved, it is pretty straightforward stuff. It is basic economic market principles. You put the public harm externalities of a product--those costs--into the price of the product for the market to work--econ 101. It shows the priorities around here when market capitalism and the principles of free market economics are so readily thrown under the bus by our friends once they cross the interests of big, big donor industries. The good news is that many governments--from cities, States, and provinces to countries and regions--are already pricing carbon. This chart shows all of the various governments that have set a price on carbon, either through emissions trading--those are the green ones--or through a carbon price, a carbon fee--the various purple ones--and some do both, which is where they are mixed. The carbon fee involved will vary. Sweden, for example, charges almost $140 per ton of carbon emitted, covering nearly 50 percent of the Nation's emissions. The Canadian Province of British Columbia enacted a carbon fee in 2008, which has risen over time to its current price of $35 per ton. In the 4 years following the British Columbia carbon fee, fossil fuel use decreased by 17 percent in the Province, compared to increasing by 1 percent in the rest of Canada. So it works at decreasing emissions, and British Columbia's economy grew faster than that of any other Canadian province. Why would it not? One hundred percent of the revenues raised from British Columbia's carbon fee are returned to taxpayers in the form of other tax cuts. And it is popular; 70 percent of British Colombians support the policy. So what about the United States? Well, California has put a price on carbon via an emissions trading system, as have the nine Northeastern States, including Rhode Island, that are members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. For the moment, the prices in California and the RGGI are still relatively low--around 5 bucks for us in Rhode Island for RGGI. Senator Schatz and I have introduced our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act again to assess a carbon fee starting at 50 bucks per metric ton of emissions in 2019. It is the midrange of the Office of Management and Budget's 2016 estimates of what they call the social cost of carbon. The social cost of carbon is the name for the long-term damage that is done by carbon pollution, which the fossil fuel industry is fighting so hard to be a public subsidy rather than to be put into the price of their product. Our market-based proposal is an appeal to true conservative Republican colleagues. As one Republican former legislator said: It is not just an olive branch; it is an olive limb that we have offered. But the fossil fuel industry keeps a stranglehold on the Republican Party, preventing climate action--even climate action using market principles. Axios just did this chart. I saw it today and had it reproduced for the floor. This is the number of times climate change was mentioned in Congress in press releases, floor statements, and online by Members of Congress. This is how often the Democrats have mentioned it from 2013 to 2018. I am afraid I am probably a measurable piece of those blue columns. But if you look over here, this is how often Republicans have mentioned climate change. Their best year was 678 mentions. For all Republicans in Congress, in all of their press releases, floor statements, and online communications, the grand total is 678 mentions--I mean, seriously--and it has gone down as it has gotten worse because I think it is difficult to talk about if you are a Republican. Everybody is looking around at the wildfires; everybody is looking around at the sea level rise coming up; everybody is looking at the storms; everybody is looking around at the science now, not only warning of climate change but being able to connect specific weather events to climate change, most recently, the massive heat wave that wiped out so much of the Great Barrier Reef. So here is how often Republicans talk about it, and here is how often Democrats do. We should probably do better. But, anyway, that is where we are. If that doesn't show the effect of the industry squelching debate and driving Republicans into alignment with their industry welfare, then I don't know what could express that much more clearly. So I wanted to show that, and this is unlikely to change as long as millions of fossil fuel industry dollars slosh around Washington, protecting this corrupting industry from having to account, as economics would suggest, for the actual economic cost of its pollution. America is called the indispensable Nation, and American leadership is indispensable if we are to achieve a global response to this global challenge. But American leadership is sorely lacking because the dark money and sleazy operatives of the fossil fuel industry today control the Trump administration and swaths of the Republican Party. There used to be a guy in this body who said ``Country First.'' We could use a little of that now in this tragic, climate-denying Trump sleaze-fest. I yield the floor, and per the previous order I think Senator Menendez is here, to be recognized momentarily. I saw him come to the floor a moment ago.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Senator Feinstein, the fires have affected us-- nothing like what you describe. Our State has not burned. Our State is not like California today, still smoldering from such a massive fire. We don't have the devastation of the photograph that you just showed us, but it has sure affected our air quality. All the way across the continent, the fires we have had in California, Oregon, and Canada have affected the Atlantic States as far south as North Carolina. As you know, these fires lost tremendous amounts of what they call fine particulates into the atmosphere, and those fine particulates exacerbate asthma and other respiratory conditions, increase the risk of diseases like lung cancer. In a nutshell, bad air equals bad health, and we are getting bad air from these fires. Of course, forest fires aren't the only way that climate change degrades Rhode Island's air quality. You just make the air warmer, which global warming is doing, and hotter temperatures help to form more ozone. Ozone, as we know, is dangerous for children and the elderly and anybody with a respiratory condition. One in ten Rhode Islanders has asthma. Our air quality receives a grade of C from the American Lung Association, largely from forces out of our control--out-of-State sources and ozone coming in from upwind States. This is not just an inconvenience. Across the country, air pollution, much of it made worse by climate change, causes a staggering 200,000 premature deaths each year. Why should Rhode Islanders have to put up with that just to protect polluters? Of course, those aren't the only ways that climate change affects human health. Temperature extremes worsen health. There have been studies both in Rhode Island and in Senator Feinstein's State that show that as temperatures rise, there are more deaths, often not associated in the coroner's report with heat but clearly statistically following the heat. ER visits in Rhode Island skyrocket when daily temperatures pass 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and the National Climate Assessment, based on a study of Rhode Island hospitals, predicts that the number of ER visits will increase from these conditions by 400 per year by 2050 and up to an additional 1,500 a year by 2095. Of course, the list of health consequences goes on: disease-carrying insects, such as ticks and mosquitoes; noxious algal blooms, as the Senator from California mentioned, that produce water-borne toxins and pathogens; longer pollen seasons ramping up people's allergies. Why should Rhode Islanders or Californians have to put up with these conditions just to protect polluters? Of course, it is not just the doctors who are worried; economists are starting to paint some very grim pictures. Freddie Mac, our great housing corporation, warns of a coastal property values crash that will rival the 2008 mortgage meltdown. I quote them: The economic losses and social disruption [ . . . ] are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession. The Bank of England and numerous academic economists warn of a ``carbon bubble''--a separate economic risk that poses what they call a systemic risk to the global economy. Of course, the National Climate Assessment details grim economic consequences that climate change will have for our U.S. economy. Of course, it doesn't have to be bad economic news. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz testified that ``retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. . . . [C]limate policies, if well designed and implemented, are consistent with growth, development, and poverty reduction. The transition to a low-carbon economy is potentially a powerful, attractive, and sustainable growth story, marked by higher resilience, more innovation, more liveable cities, robust agriculture, and stronger ecosystems.'' Why would we not want that? That is the advice of a Nobel Prize- winning economist. A 2018 report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate estimates that this green energy transition may increase global economic growth by $26 trillion through 2030 and create 65 million low- carbon jobs. Growth will come not just from those new jobs but also from lower energy costs. As Stiglitz points out, transitioning to renewables can reduce costs. To quote him, ``Many energy efficiency technologies actually have a negative cost to implement.'' Renewable energy, electric cars, battery storage, carbon capture, energy efficiency, low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels--these are technologies of the future, promising millions of great jobs. The question is whether these will be American technologies and American jobs or whether China, Germany, Japan, or other countries will win the transition to a low-carbon economy. Why should America lose that competition just to protect polluters? Senator Feinstein can eloquently tell us how innovation is California's bread and butter, so let me inquire of the distinguished chairman/ranking member. What kind of exciting developments are you seeing in California?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator. Senator Feinstein may remember, I came here in 2007. I was sworn in in January of 2007. In 2007 and in 2008 and in 2009, just what we would expect to be happening on an issue like this was actually happening in the Senate. By my recollection, we had four bipartisan climate bills, we had bipartisan climate hearings, and we had constant bipartisan climate conversations. This was an issue which was being taken seriously by this body through 2009, then in 2010 something happened, and all of that bipartisan work came to a screeching, dead halt. What happened was that the Supreme Court--five Republican Justices on the Supreme Court--issued a decision called Citizens United, which told big industries, big special interests like the fossil fuel industry: You can now spend as much money as you want in politics. There are no limits on what you can spend. That industry took off like a gunshot, like a runner from the start with that decision--I suspect they anticipated it--and instantly shut down all bipartisanship on climate change by virtue of the political spending and threats that Citizens United allowed them to do. If we could do it before Citizens United, we ought to be able to do it still now that we have a better understanding of what the threats are. This is a very real proposition to get something done, and I thank the Senator for her leadership over many years on this and many causes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator. Of course, California's massive economy is a vitally important part of the innovation that is going to help solve this problem if we can get the political will and the economic alignments to do this. Rhode Island, of course, has its own small innovation story. We are the first State to get offshore wind, steel in the water, and electrons on the grid. We are very proud of the company that did it. Indeed, the market has responded quite favorably. They have been bought for half a billion dollars by a larger company. That is great progress for Rhode Island. We are a leader in the composites industry. One of our composites companies, TPI Composites, is manufacturing wind blades for wind towers that spin turbines and generate electricity. We also got our first electric buses in Providence, and the electric bus bodies were built by the same group in Warren, RI, to be light, clean, and efficient. In 10 years, TPI has manufactured more than 10,000 wind blades and is gearing up to provide more than 3,350 bus bodies. So things are moving. Our university is following on. It received $19 million in funding from the National Science Foundation for ``developing a new research infrastructure to assess, predict and respond to the effects of climate variability on coastal ecosystems.'' We have to bring innovation to bear on the changes that are coming, and we have to bring innovation to bear to protect against the changes that will be devastating if we don't act responsibly. I hope that we as a body in the Senate take the message from what is happening around us--your fires, Louisiana's floods, Rhode Island's sea level rise, and predictions for turning ourselves into an archipelago-- and begin to take this seriously, or we could just keep protecting the polluters.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Exciting developments in innovation are you seeing in California.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am both pleased and honored that my distinguished friend Senator Feinstein is joining me today to discuss how climate change is affecting our country, from the East to the West, from one of the biggest States to the smallest one. Of course, we are small in size, but we are long on coastline. As the Presiding Officer will understand, as coastal States, Rhode Island, California, and the coastal States along the South Atlantic coasts are on the frontlines of climate change. Sea levels are already rising, and as they do, Rhode Island's coastal communities are having to spend more and more money on resiliency projects to protect their roads, their bridges, their beaches, their water treatment plants, their harbors, and other infrastructure. A 2000 study by our DEM found that 7 of 19 water treatment facilities in Rhode Island are expected to be overwashed by floodwaters driven by climate change. Frankly, just figuring out what this risk looks like is hard for coastal municipalities, so our State's Coastal Resources Management Council developed a project called STORMTOOLS, which allows Rhode Islanders to see how sea level rise is expected to affect their homes, their businesses, their beaches, and their parks. This is a STORMTOOLS-generated map of Upper Narragansett Bay. The blue color you see here is all land. People have homes and businesses and facilities there. All of this blue is now land, but it is land that gets covered by 10 feet of sea level rise. Ten feet of sea level rise is within STORMTOOLS' business-as-usual scenario in which we continue to burn fossil fuels unabated. As you can see, some of Rhode Island's peninsulas get cut off to become islands, some of our islands disappear or fracture. Rhode Island becomes an archipelago. I hope my colleagues on the other side can appreciate that changes like this to my State are things I have to respond to. A recent New York Times article suggested we may have to retreat from the coasts in order to protect ourselves from rising waters and more powerful storms. Why should Rhode Islanders have to retreat from our coasts just to protect polluters? It makes no sense. It is fundamentally unjust. Many of us not only live near the sea but work and sail and fish on it, so climate change threatens Rhode Islanders' lifestyles, our livelihoods, and our lives. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated for the United States that by 2100, nearly 2.5 million residential and commercial properties, collectively valued at $1.07 trillion today, will be at risk of chronic flooding, and that is just from sea level rise alone. Storm surge and rain-driven flooding amplify that risk. Drill down to Rhode Island, and Zillow, the real estate firm, has estimated that over 5,300 homes worth almost $3 billion will be lost if the sea level rises just 6 feet. And that is just homes that are already there. People are still building in Rhode Island's coastal areas, so there are more new homes every day. Why should Rhode Islanders have to face this risk? Why should 5,300 people have to risk losing their homes just to protect polluters? It is not right. Rising water isn't the only way in which climate change is affecting the oceans off our coasts. Warming oceans are disrupting our traditional fishing grounds and driving valuable species like lobster out of Rhode Island waters altogether. The just-released National Climate Assessment warns of falling catches. Last week I met with charter boat captains and recreational fishing enthusiasts from Rhode Island and nearby New England. They, like their peers in Louisiana, are facing changes in the size, geographic range, and number of fish that they catch. Our commercial fishermen tell the same story. They are worried that their kids and grandkids will not be able to experience the traditions and lifestyles they cherish or pursue the same career on the water. Why should Rhode Island have to lose this heritage just to protect polluters? Senator Feinstein has seen similar changes in California, and I welcome her remarks. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Feinstein and I be allowed to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Of course.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is a true statement. The scientists of the world have more or less reached consensus that that 2 degrees Centigrade increase is one we do not want to go beyond because it could set in force further consequences that would accelerate the problem--for instance, large amounts of frozen Arctic methane or undersea methane letting loose. We already see lakes that bubble in Canada and Russia from methane melting up through them. They are methane bubbles, not air bubbles. If that accelerates, there can be a feedback loop in which the input we have done releases more greenhouse gases, which, in turn, makes more greenhouse gases and more temperature and more greenhouse gases and up you go. Of course, a lot of that goes into the oceans, and nobody knows better than Florida what that is doing along your coasts to people's property. So you don't have to wait to hit 2 degrees Centigrade. Right now the safe opinion is that 1.5 degrees Centigrade is all we can afford. The risk that you are wrong is enough to justify trying to stop at 1.5 degrees Centigrade. Why not be safe when you are dealing with our planet? Even well before then, in your State, we are seeing what is going on and we are seeing the daytime flooding. You and I have been walking around in boots on sunny days as the tide comes washing in where it has never been before--these king tides. We have groups like Freddie Mac--which is not exactly a leftwing, green organization--warning that because of this, there is a significant chance of there being a coastal property value crash along our coasts as that danger of sea level rise backs into the insurance and the mortgage that you need to be able to buy a house. If you can't insure your house or can't mortgage your house--let me put it another way; if the next person to buy your house can't get insurance or a mortgage, good luck getting a good price on your house. That is it. They predicted it could be as bad as the 2008 mortgage meltdown. It is happening now, and we think that 1.5 to 2 degrees Centigrade that scientists say is a tipping point, with 2 degrees as a clear point of no return where these knock-on consequences will begin to move us out of control--we can't stop it at that point.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Florida. He has been a particularly dear friend in our years here together. We sat next to each other on the Intelligence Committee, and I was able to see in that classified session his extraordinary skill as an examiner and cross-examiner of witnesses. He usually began by saying ``I am just a country lawyer from Florida,'' and everybody on the Intelligence Committee knew when they heard that, it was time to pay attention because something really good was about to happen. This country lawyer knew how to get to the bottom of things in a hurry. His work to protect his home State has been nothing less than inspiring to me, and I appreciate it. If there is one thing we can say is hopeful in all of this mess--on the other side of this building, there are going to be gavels that go into the hands of a party that is not controlled by the fossil fuel industry, and there are going to be inquiries and subpoenas and questions and witnesses, and a lot of what I am talking about is going to become very apparent to the American people. The coverup of the role of the fossil fuel industry and putting people like McNamee into these positions is going to be exposed. I yield.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is a very true statement, and I would add that there are very few transcendent moments that take place here in the temple of mammon, where big special interests throw their weight around, but one of them that I have been privileged to be here for was the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson, talking about his time in space in a NASA spaceship and looking down on this Earth, not seeing red States or blue States, not seeing sectarian differences or differences among countries, not seeing national boundaries, but seeing us as the small globe spinning through the void that we are. It is a moment I will never forget. When you look at that and think of that message that he brought and think that we are busily doing everything we can to ruin the balance of the systems upon which we depend because we will not say no to the biggest and most muscling and remorseless industry that probably has ever stalked the halls of this building, it is such a national tragedy that this would happen in the United States of America. The whole world will suffer for our failing. The finger will end up pointing at us because the story will come out--and it is coming out already--about fossil fuel money and influence and their threats and hidden money and the front groups and the whole piece of stinking machinery in which they operate. So the contrast between the Senator's transcendent view of the globe from space and the foul politics of this industry that we experience here every day is one of the great discrepancies that is hard for me to take into my heart.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today to express my extremely grave concerns about the person we have just begun to move to a vote to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He would be Commissioner McNamee if we were to confirm him. This is in an administration that has distinguished itself with terrible energy appointments--conceivably the worst. It is too important to our country to have an independent and reality-based Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to allow an industry plant like Mr. McNamee--who will never be independent, who will always have his thumb on the scale for the vested interests--get onto the Federal Regulatory Commission. In addition to the bad decisions he will make because he will be trying to throw decisions for the fossil fuel industry, he will also create an enormous amount of litigation because people who come before a Federal administrative agency are entitled to an honest look at their claims, and if the regulatory agency is incapable of giving them that honest look, that is grounds for appeal. McNamee is a walking failure of any honest look at any question in which the fossil fuel industry--and specifically the coal industry--has an interest. Sadly, his position isn't just a question of a personal failing; he comes out of a system, and I am going to take some time to describe the system he comes out of. No one less than our late friend Senator John McCain was once asked in an interview: Why has it taken so long for Congress to address climate change? Katie Couric was the interviewer. She asked: Why has it taken so long, Senator? Here was John McCain's answer: Special interests. It is the special interests. It is the utility companies and the petroleum companies and other special interests. They are the ones that have blocked progress in the Congress of the United States and the administration. That is a little straight talk. The way these industries work is kind of interesting. They figured out pretty early on that if they are a big power company or a big coal company or any big fossil fuel polluter and they come forward into a debate and make their argument as ExxonMobil, as Koch Industries, as Murray coal, people will immediately discount what they are saying because people will understand that the companies have a massive conflict of interest, that they have the massive conflict of interest of wishing to continue to pollute for free. So they have set up this whole array of front groups to disguise that it is truly the fossil fuel industry whose hands are pulling our strings. We came to the floor some time ago--a considerable number of the Democratic Senators--to point out this coordinated, phony, false-front, fossil-fuel-funded operation, and we made the phony front group so mad that they actually sent a letter disputing that they were a coordinated group of phony fronts by putting all their phony names together on a single letterhead, arguing that they weren't coordinated together in a letter in which they most obviously were coordinated together. That is how upset they were when the mischief they are up to was pointed out. This was groups like Americans for Tax Reform; ALEC; Cascade Policy Institute; CFACT; Competitive Enterprise Institute; I love this name-- the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which has nothing to do with Ben Franklin and even less to do with public integrity; Georgia Public Policy Foundation; Heritage Foundation; the notorious Heartland Institute, which distinguished itself by putting up billboards equating climate scientists to the Unabomber--classy group, that Heartland; the so-called James Madison Institute, which has nothing to do with James Madison. These groups love to steal the names of historic figures to try to give themselves a little bit of initial credence. There is also a John Locke Foundation--historians will know how important John Locke was to the founding of this country; the MacIver Institute; Kansas Policy Institute; Montana Policy Institute; NPRI; PRI; Pelican Institute; Rio Grande Foundation; Virginia Institute; and, of course, a Yankee Institute for Public Policy. This whole piece of public relations and propaganda machinery is an ongoing disgrace, and there are some folks who have been looking at it pretty hard recently and saying some pretty rough stuff about it. I would like to start with two recent articles by Paul Krugman. He is no fool. He won a Noble Prize for economics. He begins by noting what everybody who studies this already knows: Climate change poses a major threat to the nation, and some of its adverse effects are already being felt. He goes on to say: There are almost no good-faith climate change deniers. I think he is accurate about that. I think there are almost no good- faith climate change deniers because, to use his phrase, ``denying science for profit'' has become such a constant activity, as shown by this whole array of phony, fossil-fuel-funded organizations. He goes on to describe some of the history. ``Climate denial''--I am quoting here--``actually follows in the footsteps of . . . the long campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking.'' I have given several speeches about this on the Senate floor. The apparatus that the tobacco companies used to confuse the public about the dangers of tobacco morphed into a bigger, more cleverly hidden, and better funded apparatus but basically started with the same route that the fossil fuel industry took to confuse the public about the dangers of its product in the same way that the tobacco industry tried to confuse the public about the dangers of its product. The tobacco scheme was so fraudulent that they were actually found liable for fraud in Federal court--not just at the trial court level but upheld at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He goes on to say: Every one of the handful of well-known scientists who have expressed climate skepticism has received large sums of money from these companies or from dark money conduits like Donors Trust. And, of course, it also flows through those phony front groups whom I described who wrote back to us to deny that they were coordinated phony front groups. ``Climate denial is rooted in greed,'' Paul Krugman continues, because it is paid for by the fossil fuel industry. Then he comes back the very next week with a second article, still on the same theme, bewailing the fact that the Republican Party has ``committed itself to denying the facts on climate change; that it is now ``completely dominated by climate deniers'' and ``hostile to science in general.'' He describes the importance of climate denial and the weaponized fake news and the relentless propaganda as being--to use his words, ``Climate denial, you might say, was the crucible in which the essential elements of Trumpism were formed.'' Denying facts, repeating lies incessantly, manipulating the public debate, delivering weaponized fake news through unreliable sites, and poisoning the public debate with nonsense is how I would generally describe what he was describing. He says: Conspiracy theorizing has long been standard practice among climate deniers. And these are the organizations that propagate those conspiracy theories. He goes on: Most prominent climate deniers are basically paid to take that position, receiving large amounts of money from fossil- fuel companies. He says: If we fail to meet the challenge of climate change, with catastrophic results. . . . it will be a disaster brought on by corruption, willful ignorance, conspiracy theorizing and intimidation. And this question of corruption isn't just coming from the left. There is a free market think tank called Niskanen Center, and Will Wilkinson from that institute just wrote a piece about what he called the ``spiraling crisis of American corruption,'' which includes the ``failure to require financial transparency of those who would . . . fix our fates.'' All of these groups hide who their donors are. There is no financial transparency because they are fronts for the fossil fuel industry, and if they reported all the money they got from them, their purpose as front groups evaporates. Creating, Will Wilkinson continues, ``a class of rich and powerful miscreants who profit by gnawing away at the rule of law.'' God forbid we should have real hearings on climate change, that there should be legislative rule of law. God forbid that we should get honest decisions out of EPA based on the science under rule of law. No. None of that. All of that goes under the wind so that rich and powerful miscreants of the fossil fuel industry can get their way. Their pooled wealth, Wilkinson continues, can be deployed to keep them in the money, and that is what is going on, creating--and I think this is a really pointed phrase--in our country ``a doom loop of corruption, distrust and institutional degeneration.'' What our friend Senator McCain said was the mischief of the special interests in stopping climate action--this is how it is done--through secret money, dark money, front groups, phony propaganda, all backed up with fossil fuel industry political muscle. It is sickening, and this guy McNamee comes smack out of one of these groups--the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Texas Public Policy Foundation has received more than $3\1/2\ million from Koch-related foundations--this is Koch Industries, not Coke the drink; I don't want to disparage the wrong Coke--Koch Industries and Koch brothers-related foundations between 1998 and 2017--$3\1/2\ million. It also received about $1.5 million from Donors Trust. Donors Trust is an entity that has no business purpose. It is set up to identity-launder donations. So if you don't want somebody to know that ExxonMobil is funding you, ExxonMobil gives the money to Donors Trust, and Donors Trust gives the money to exactly who ExxonMobil told them to because it is donor directed, and now you can report: Guess what. I got my money from Donors Trust, not ExxonMobil. No business purpose. It simply sells transparency out, brings obscurity in, and is a dark money conduit for big special interests. It really is a disgrace. This guy comes out of this world. By the way, there was $100,000 from ExxonMobil also, because they don't hide all their money, which goes into the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The last contribution from the Texas Public Policy Foundation to the Trump's nominee pool was a woman named Kathleen Hartnett White, who did such a horrendous job in the Environment and Public Works Committee, showed such ignorance of environmental matters, and had no clue that carbon dioxide actually reacts chemically with water and is acidifying the oceans--that is science you can do in a high school lab. It is incredibly simple. I have done it here on the Senate floor with one of those bubbler stones for an aquarium and my own breath and our glass of water. To not know that carbon dioxide acidifies the ocean is appallingly ignorant. She also didn't know how much climate change and the warming atmosphere was warming the oceans. Well, it is more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases that have gone into the oceans. The oceans are warming at such a rate that if you took the explosive power of a nuclear weapon--the Hiroshima nuclear bomb--and converted 100 percent of that energy into heat, you would have to be setting off multiple bombs per second in our oceans to match how fast climate change is warming our oceans. You can measure that with thermometers. This is not complicated. It was too much for her. She couldn't figure it out. When oceans warm, they rise, because oceans expand. Warm water expands as it warms. This is basic physics--no clue. This you can measure essentially with yardsticks. You can measure it at the tide gauges that NOAA and the Navy have run in some cases for a century. This is the world he comes out of. This is the infiltration of the fossil fuel front groups and Koch Industries into what used to be legitimate institutions of government. What really kills me is that McNamee, at one point talking about climate science, said: There's an organized propaganda campaign. . . . The problem is, it's taken hold . . . and there is a lot of money behind this. Well, he is describing something very accurately, but it is not the scientists all across this country, in every one of our home State universities, working on studying and teaching climate science. This is called projection. It is the rhetorical device where you take the sin that you are most obviously guilty of and immediately accuse your adversary of it, so that when you are caught, it looks like it is a tie of mutual criticisms. As Paul Krugman said in one of his pieces, ``Projection much?'' Indeed. I will close by talking about this guy's effort to prop up coal through these completely bogus power protection plans that have come out of the Department of Energy on his watch and that he has defended here. Even the Trump appointees to FERC threw these dumb things out. They were so bad, totally violating the Federal Power Act. But he was for them. He has said that if you don't preserve coal, you risk resilience and security on the grid. That is a question that FERC is going to be looking at. He ought to recuse himself on this. He has refused to recuse himself on this, but I will tell you there are people who say that it is actually working the other way. Here is an article: ``Powering into the Future: Renewable Energy & Grid Reliability.'' In addition, renewable energy can strengthen the grid. . . . contributing to capacity and resource adequacy, maintaining local voltage and frequency performance, minimizing grid disturbances, providing grid balancing services, and creating a more flexible and diverse generation fleet. Do you think they are going to get a fair chance in front of this guy when they come to FERC? Here is another headline: ``Renewable microgrids can enhance grid resilience.'' Here is another one: Against ``physical risk and cyber-attacks . . . the electric grid have made renewable energy sources more attractive.'' They are more attractive when you measure for protecting against physical risk and cyber attacks. They ``can add a layer of protection from physical damage to the grid.'' It is not coal. Here is a report out of Texas suggesting that the State's power production can be made more reliable by the addition of solar and wind renewables. Here is an article, headlined: ``Solar energy is better than coal for national security infrastructure--says Department of Energy.'' I would love to know how McNamee let this get by him. This is his Department of Energy telling the truth because nobody seems to notice. ``Deloitte: The case for renewables has never been stronger''--in part because ``wind and solar power are now viewed as a solution to grid balancing,'' says Deloitte, ``while placing downward pressure on electricity prices.'' Solar and wind are ``placing downward pressure'' on solar and wind prices, and they ``have also demonstrated an ability to strengthen grid resilience and reliability and provide essential grid services.'' So give me a break about this ``coal needs to defend the grid'' nonsense. That was cooked up probably by these phony-baloney front groups as an excuse to continue to sell their polluting product. The Deloitte report itself, in the executive summary says: ``[U]tilities are beginning to demonstrate how distributed, renewable generation in a microgrid setting can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional [transmission and distribution]'' alternatives and protect the grid that way and ``that [independently owned utilities] are exploring opportunities to enhance resilience through strategic renewable integration.'' Integrating renewables strategically improves grid resilience. Here is the clincher: ``Various [independently owned utilities]'' will need ``regulatory license to innovate.'' ``Whether those reforms will drive innovation fast enough to keep consumers' lights on during future catastrophic weather events'' is yet to be determined. So here they are saying that getting renewables will help to keep people's lights on, but how are they ever going to get a fair hearing from this guy who pretends, based on phony-baloney front group information, that it takes coal grants to keep the grid secure when all these reports show that just plain isn't true? It is nonsense. The worst of all and the closer for him was that he was on the 2009 transition team for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli when he was elected attorney general of Virginia. I am really honored that our departing Senator from Florida happens to be here on the floor today, because he and I are both graduates of the University of Virginia. There was a scientist at the University of Virginia named Michael Mann. He was a climate scientist. He is the guy who did what became known as the hockey stick graph, which showed carbon emissions and then boom, up it goes--like the blade of a hockey stick--at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. So how did the fossil fuel industry react to that? Did they engage him in scientific debate? No, they tried to get him fired. They sent their front groups out to attack his emails to try to get into his emails so they could mock him and set their trolls to work on him. Our university, the University of Virginia, had to fight Attorney General Cuccinelli and take him all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court where his bogus effort to harass and intimidate a climate scientist was finally, once and for all, thrown out by the Supreme Court of the State of Virginia. It was one of the lowest points in rule of law in the history of this country when an attorney general is using his powers of office to flack for an industry that supported him to try to damage the reputation and career of a climate scientist because the science was not showing what the industry wanted. Their solution was to go after the scientist and try to ruin his reputation. It was a disgrace, and this guy was on his transition team. Give me a break. If we can't do better than this, we should all be ashamed of ourselves. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, this evening, the leader or someone standing in for the leader is going to come and close out the floor with a number of unanimous consents. One of them will be a unanimous consent to push consideration of the National Flood Insurance Program-- to reauthorize it--a week down the road. I will not object to that unanimous consent request, but I do want to speak to the predicament of the National Flood Insurance Program. For coastal States, this is a very big deal, and this is a program that is now completely out of step with the conditions that coastal States see before them, so we have to get this fixed. The liability of the National Flood Insurance Program ran up to $30 billion after Hurricane Harvey. It borrowed $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury. That is its borrowing limit. It basically maxed itself out. In October, Congress forgave $16 billion. We moved that from a liability of the National Flood Insurance Program to a liability of the United States, in effect putting it on our national credit card. That allowed NFIP to pay out claims for Harvey, Irma, and Maria. At this point, that leaves the program $20 billion in debt. We are not sure, completely, because claims are still being processed from the 2018 hurricane season, but CRS says as of September, the NFIP has only $9.9 billion of remaining borrowing authority. CRS also points out that repetitive loss and severe repetitive loss properties over the history of NFIP have totaled about 30 percent of all claims--a grand total of around $17 billion--which is almost a perfect match with the $16 billion we had to forgive. If you look at the properties NFIP now insures, the repetitive loss and severe repetitive loss properties are about 2 percent by number, but they account for about 16 percent of all claims. So it is a pretty big piece of our National Flood Insurance Program liability. It is about $9 billion. We can keep going forward and funding these repetitive losses time after time after time after time, but there are some real problems with doing that. One is that back in the old days, before sea levels were rising, when you expected the weather on the coast to revert to status quo after a big storm, they made then what seemed a sensible rule that you had to rebuild just what was there. We weren't going to fund improvements and modifications with Uncle Sam's dollars on a flooded house. You had to rebuild what was there. The problem is, maps are changing, sea levels are rising, storm vulnerabilities are pushing inland, and to rebuild in place now no longer makes sense. You have to at least be able to rebuild higher and out of the way of storm surge or you have to be able to relocate. To rebuild every couple of years and get wiped out by a new storm really makes no sense, but the NFIP encouraged people to do just that because it is hard to get paid out to relocate. The relocation rules of the National Flood Insurance Program has to be triggered by a State or municipality doing its own buyout. If you are, let's say, a small Rhode Island municipality, you have a pretty strong interest in not doing a major buyout of flooded properties because as soon as that happens, they are torn down--it takes a long time to get there just for one thing, these are slow processes--but the property gets torn down, the property goes to public space, and the town loses tax revenue from the ownership of that property. So it is a shot to the municipal budget to go down that road, and it is not a decision made by the homeowner. The homeowner is stuck waiting for the municipality in the State to make that decision. So the NFIP program--we have to get it stood up again, we have to get it reauthorized, and we have to allow flexibility consistent with rising seas so homes can be lifted if necessary. If it makes no sense to rebuild in that place because it is just going to be washed out again, we have to help make sure this program allows homeowners the choice to simply take their final payout and go elsewhere rather than in order to stay in the program we have to rebuild and rebuild and rebuild a house the taxpayers continue to have to pay for. For anybody who complains that there is a subsidy in here for coastal homeowners, let me say, the $16 billion in forgiveness--this big, one- time forgiveness that we did--must be compared to $44 billion in crop subsidies from the years 2015 through 2017. If we are going to help inland Midwestern and other farmers with $44 billion in crop subsidies, there is no reason to deny coastal homeowners some protection as well. We can help a lot if we can change these rules in a sensible way. The States that are being hit are getting hit pretty hard. Florida, it has been estimated by the Union of Concerned Scientists, has the most homes and property values at risk from sea level rise--64,000 homes may see flooding every other week by 2045. Those are going to be a lot of claims on national flood insurance. Half of those claims are in South Florida, so those counties and municipalities are going to take a heck of a hit. In Georgia, king tide flooding regularly floods St. Mary's, Brunswick, and lower portions of Savannah, according to an article in Atlanta magazine. The road out to Tybee Island flooded a record 23 times in 2015, and it is expected that with just 1 foot of sea level rise, it will be underwater 100 times annually--again creating enormous risk. (Mr. KENNEDY assumed the Chair.) It is terrific to see the Senator from Louisiana taking the President's chair right now because the fourth National Climate Assessment highlights Louisiana as facing some of the highest land loss rates in the world. ``Between 1932 and 2016, Louisiana lost more than 2,000 square miles of land.'' I am not even going to talk about what 2,000 square miles means in my small State of Rhode Island, but it is a big deal, and it is due in part to high rates of relative sea level rise. Getting the National Flood Insurance Program right--getting it reauthorized and adapting it for people who are going to be swept off of their lands by sea level rise--is very important. I do want to commend Senator Kennedy for his persistence and leadership in trying to solve this problem. North Carolina--according to an article published by the Weather Channel, one beach near East Seagull Drive in Nags Head ``has been eroding at about six feet [back] per year.'' If a beach is eroding at 6 feet per year, a lot of homes are going to be wiped out. We have to get the Flood Insurance Program adapted to that. North Carolina itself has predicted a rise of 1 meter of sea level rise by 2100. Data compiled and analyzed by NOAA shows the worst-case potential twice that at 2 meters. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, flood events in Charleston, SC, have been increasing, and by 2045, Charleston, SC, is projected to face nearly 180 tidal floods per year--there are going to be a lot of properties making claims against this program--180 tidal floods per year compared to 11 in 2014. This is getting worse, and it is getting worse fast. In Texas, Rice University and Texas A&M compared flood damage from the storms that hit Houston between 1999 to 2009, and they found that FEMA's flood risk maps only captured about 25 percent of the actual damage. So if you are a municipality, in addition to the problems that you have trying to deal with protecting your tax base and of having people flee valuable coastal property as sea levels rise, you also have the problem that when you look to the Federal Government to figure out what your risk is and which are the problem areas, the FEMA maps are wrong. The FEMA maps are misleading. We saw this firsthand in Rhode Island as well. We had to do a lot of State-level work to get correct mapping so that our coastal municipalities could have a true assessment of their risk. Those homeowners need to know those facts. Homeowners who are now relying on FEMA maps are being misled. We have to fix that problem as we fix the NFIP problem. More than half of the homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey were not listed in any flood risk areas, so they didn't have flood insurance. That is another problem. Not only is there going to be a big load of new claims on the National Flood Insurance Program because of sea level rise, not only are we going to have to adapt the way claimants can make their claim so they can raise their homes to survive the next storm or clear out because they can't survive the next storm, but we are also going to have to deal with this problem of homes that aren't covered by flood insurance because FEMA's maps are wrong, and homeowners are then left stuck without insurance. For a lot of reasons, my patience is wearing out with this continued kicking down the road of the NFIP program. I have been working on this--I hope in a constructive way--and I intend to continue working on it--I hope in a constructive way--but, again, my patience is wearing out with our inability to agree and make these changes. I yield the floor with, again, my compliments to the Senator from Louisiana, who has been a very constructive and very ardent proponent of finding a solution. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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