Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, to follow the words of my distinguished colleague from Connecticut, not only are House Republicans--to use his phrase--playing into the hands of the Russians, they are actually playing by the playbook of the Russians. If you understand the Russian information warfare, the Gerasimov doctrine, the way in which Russians--and before them, Soviets--for years tried to poison the factual environment around them, and then you put that up against this scheme where you start with the selective release of classified material that the public can't get behind because the rest is classified, the false narrative that the ranking member has pointed out that that creates, the partisan and peculiar process for getting there, the ignoring of warnings from their own national security officials about how bad this is, the convenient whipping up of all of this in far-right media at the same time, the amplification of that actually by Russian bots and other sources, and the fact that this is all pointed, not coincidentally, at the agency and officials who are engaged in investigating the Trump White House and the Trump campaign, it is so appallingly obvious what the game is that is being played here. It is stunning to me, to follow on what Senator Blumenthal said, that we have heard nothing--at least I have heard nothing--perhaps the Senator from Connecticut can illuminate further, but I have heard nothing from our Director of National Intelligence, DNI Coats, and I have heard nothing from CIA Director Pompeo for--how long it has been? Since the very foundation of the FISA Court in the wake of Watergate, it has been an essential defense of our intelligence community that they don't want release of the FISA Court records. Now we have a partisan release that touches back to FISA applications that the Department of Justice has said is reckless. And where are they? It is astonishing that the custodians of those secrets appear to have absolutely no concern about this partisan and peculiar, selective release of classified information. I will echo another point Senator Blumenthal made. This just happens to be happening at a time when the sanctions we voted on by massive bipartisan majorities--I can stack the votes together, House and Senate. It was something like 515 to 5. It was an enormous, bipartisan vote to sanction the Russians for what they have been doing, and that just went live. The President could impose those sanctions now. Yet he has not. What is the explanation? The only people this President seems incapable of being tough on are Russians. It is a very unpleasant set of coincidences. At the same time, here we are with the Republican leadership in the House and the Republican leadership in the Senate and virtually every law enforcement and national security official who has come before us is saying: Hey, yeah, they did attack our last election in 2016, and they are going to attack our next election in 2018. We are warned that a hostile foreign power is going to attack our 2018 election. Where is the legislation to defend against that? Where is the markup of the legislation? Where is the effort to do what needs to be done to defend our democracy? Here we are just a few months out from the election. We are 9 months out. Do I have the math right? It is 9 months between here and there. Nothing. Why is it that whenever the Russians come up, it seems that the Republican Party has to go into complete stasis, just roll right over. I offer those thoughts to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Senator Blumenthal and I have come to the floor with a shared concern that the raiding parties are circling the Mueller investigation and preparing for an attack on that investigation. We see this with collateral attacks on individual members of law enforcement. We see this with efforts to discredit the FBI and the Department of Justice in general. We have seen it even with Presidential tweets seeking to discredit folks who might be witnesses before a grand jury, which would, with the right state of mind, actually amount to obstruction of justice itself. The first thing I want to say is that the Senate is entitled to a full and truthful explanation of why Deputy Director McCabe of the FBI left. We do not know the reason behind his sudden, abrupt departure. But we do know that Sally Yates was fired; we do know that Jim Comey was fired; we do know that Bob Mueller was not fired only because White House Counsel threw himself in front of that decision by President Trump and said: If you do that, I am out. So firings at the top of our Department of Justice are becoming an unpleasantly frequent thing, and they tend to relate to matters where investigations touch on the White House: Sally Yates and the Flynn investigation; Jim Comey and the obstruction of justice, Russia collusion investigation; and, of course, Bob Mueller leading that investigation. I think we are entitled to answers, and I call for a full and truthful explanation. The second thing going on is the more general attack on the FBI, the latest episode of which is this so-called Nunes memo, which has been described by Democratic House Members who have seen that memo and the underlying documents out of which it was selectively cherry-picked as profoundly misleading. It had the political purpose of spreading a false narrative--the political purpose of spreading a false narrative. This is like the information operations the Kremlin used to run against the free world if they had a political purpose of spreading a false narrative. They also said it has the purpose of undermining legitimate investigations. Guess which legitimate investigations they mean. This business of selectively cherry-picking things out of classified information to spread a false narrative has a very unpleasant echo for me because this is what the Bush administration was up to when it was trying to defend the torture program. They selectively declassified, for instance, that Abu Zubaydah had been the subject of what they called their enhanced interrogation techniques program and that he had produced important, actionable intelligence. What they did not declassify was that all the actionable intelligence he gave them had been provided before they started on the torture techniques. Then, once the pros from Dover came down--who didn't know anything about how to interrogate somebody but only knew how to do torture techniques--he clammed up, and that was the last actionable intelligence we got out of him. So deliberately misleading by selectively declassifying is an established technique, and it is one that is both shady and dangerous. The process by which this so-called Nunes report or memo came out smells. It is the first ever invocation of an obscure House rule allowing for the selective declassification of material. It happened on a purely partisan vote. Trump's own appointees to the Department of Justice have called efforts to release the memo ``extraordinarily reckless.'' Yet, on a purely partisan vote, using this previously never used rule, they are putting the selectively cherry-picked false narrative out into the public debate. Why are they steaming ahead with a report that Ranking Member Adam Schiff says ``contains significant errors of fact, mischaracterizations, and omits critical context and detail''? At the same time, they are pulling one more procedural stunt, which is to stall for at least a week a Democratic report that would rebut and expose the misleading character of the Republicans' document. The only conceivable purpose is to take the false narrative and give it a headstart of a week so that the poison gets out into our information system. Sure enough, they are pounding away at getting that information out. FOX News is already whipping it up, talking about how it is going to be a bombshell and explosive. The House Freedom Caucus has Trump revved up about the memo, urging him to support its release-- against the advice of his own law enforcement and national security officials. Over at Breitbart, FOX News, and throughout the rightwing echo chamber, hashtag ``Release the Memo'' became the rallying cry. Not only was it the rallying cry of Breitbart and FOX News--guess what. It was the rallying cry of our friends, the Russians. Hashtag ``Release the Memo'' remains the most used hashtag by social media accounts associated with Russian influence operations. Even the President's son, Don junior, got involved in the game, tweeting out that ``Democrats & deep state govt officials''--I guess by that he means the Trump appointees who said that releasing this report would be extraordinarily reckless--are behind some mischief and therefore, all caps, ``RELEASE THE MEMO.'' When you see a political steamroller like that happening, when you see bizarre, peculiar, and unprecedented procedures, when you see that it is entirely partisan and against the advice of our national security officials, it is hard to draw a good conclusion about what the heck is going on. Mr. President, I yield to my distinguished colleague from Connecticut.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for several minutes and then turn the floor over to the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, and then, thereafter, that we may be permitted to engage in a brief colloquy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am prepared to deliver remarks, but I see that the majority leader is on the floor, and I do not want to intrude on his desire to take the floor if he wishes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, tomorrow the Environment and Public Works Committee will have an opportunity to question Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt at an oversight hearing. Oversight of the executive branch is one of the Senate's great responsibilities. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership of this body has shown little interest in holding the Trump administration accountable, despite the fact that this administration is more ethically challenged, more riven by conflicts of interest, more captured by special interests, more defined by cronyism than any other. After a year of Pruitt at the helm of EPA--a tenure that has been marked by mass staff departures, a slowdown in enforcement actions, questionable travel and other personal spending, rolling back critical clean air and clean water protections, a purge of scientists, an influx of industry insiders, a smorgasbord of meetings with industry bigwigs, many of whom coincidentally also bankrolled his political career back in Oklahoma, an obsession with secrecy, and heaps and heaps and heaps of climate denial--Pruitt will finally be appearing before our committee. I urge my Republican colleagues on EPW to bring some good questions to tomorrow's hearing. Judging by Pruitt's first year, he is running dangerously amok. He has turned EPA into perhaps the swampiest Agency in a very swampy administration. Pruitt's record at EPA demands the sort of oversight this body used to exercise. If you don't believe this about Pruitt's record, just take a look at what some distinguished Republicans have to say. William Ruckelshaus, who under both Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ran the EPA, has criticized Pruitt's penchant for secrecy in this Washington Post op-ed contrasting it with his own more transparent management style. He said: We release[d] my full schedule and the publication of written communications on a daily basis . . . Scott Pruitt is taking the absolute opposite approach. Pruitt operates in secrecy. In an interview with HuffPost, former New Jersey Governor and chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, is also troubled by Pruitt's fixation with secrecy. I think this New York Times op-ed makes his opinion clear. He writes: [T]o satisfy his penchant for secrecy, [Pruitt] is installing--at a cost of nearly $25,000 to taxpayers--a secure phone booth in his Washington office to keep people, including staff members, in the dark. Imagine that. While demanding massive cuts to EPA's budget, Pruitt is spending thousands of dollars to build himself, like Maxwell Smart, a cone of silence. He doesn't run the CIA. He doesn't run the FBI. He doesn't even run the State Department. What possible purpose could this very expensive, secure phone booth have at the Environmental Protection Agency? Governor Kean believes Pruitt is doing this to keep his own staff members in the dark, which begs the question: What does Pruitt have to hide from his own staff? It sounds like a question my Republican colleagues on EPW should ask him tomorrow. Pruitt's wasteful spending isn't just limited to his cone of silence. As Governor Kean points out, Pruitt has used private jets costing taxpayers another $58,000. His princely habits have even prompted questions from Senator Grassley. So I ask my EPW Republican colleagues: If Senator Grassley is troubled by Pruitt's wasteful spending of taxpayers' money on personal luxuries, shouldn't you ask him about it at tomorrow's hearing? Pruitt's penchant for secrecy goes well beyond the expensive cone of silence that was designed to keep his own staff in the dark. It also extends to his schedule, where he tries to keep the American people in the dark. Unlike Ruckelshaus and previous EPA Administrators, Pruitt will not even disclose whom he is meeting or when he is traveling. As Governor Kean notes, our only idea of the folks he is meeting comes from the Freedom of Information Act. Once EPA finally released the first few months of Pruitt's calendars in response to a FOIA request, that is when we learned he was meeting with scores of industry fat cats and almost no environmental groups. As for his travels, we only find out about them after the fact, which of course prevents the press from covering Pruitt, say, when he jets off to Morocco to lobby for American natural gas producers. One of my Republican colleagues on EPW might want to ask Pruitt why he is jetting around the world playing Commerce Secretary for the fossil fuel industry when he should be working here at home in America to protect people's health and their environment. What does Governor Kean have to say about Pruitt's industry ties? ``He has elevated cronyism to new heights.'' Those are Governor's Kean's words, not mine. In an interview with HuffPost just this past Friday, Mr. Ruckelshaus echoed this concern that Pruitt cares more about his political ties than protecting the environment. ``He's just like Trump,'' Ruckelshaus said. ``He's got an ideological approach to it, an approach that affects the large contributors in his party in Oklahoma.'' Here again, Republican colleagues on EPW might want to ask Pruitt about his close ties with industry and whether he is working for the fossil fuel interests that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his political activities back in Oklahoma or working for the American people. Governor Kean goes on to say that Pruitt ``built his political career by attacking clean-air and clean-water rules'' and that he is ``blocking scientific input,'' which brings us to science. Science, of course, gives society its headlights to look ahead and see oncoming hazards. Without science, if we ignore it or block it, as Governor Kean says Pruitt is doing, the decisions we make are simply uninformed and irrational, and Governor Kean and I aren't the only ones who think this. Yet another high-profile Republican, the former New Jersey Governor and George W. Bush EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, agrees. Pruitt claims he will pursue so-called ``red team/blue team'' exercises instead of the long-established gold standard peer review process for rigorously evaluating science. Governor Whitman sees right through that. [D]ecisions must be based on reliable science. The red team begins with his politically preferred conclusion that climate change isn't a problem, and it will seek evidence to justify that position. That's the opposite of how science works. Pruitt doesn't want to follow the scientific method, at least not when it comes to climate science or any other science, for that matter, that his industry backers object to. He wants to fabricate a case for his industry backers' politically preferred hypothesis. This isn't science. This is a counterfeit of science. As Governor Whitman writes, ``True science follows the evidence. . . . Government bases policy on those results. This applies to liberals and conservatives alike,'' or at least that is the way it used to be before Scott Pruitt turned the keys over to polluting industries. So, EPW Republicans, there is another question for you to ask Pruitt tomorrow: How does he justify throwing out the real scientists and the real science in order to arrive so predictably at the fossil fuel industry's preferred conclusions? Governor Whitman calls Pruitt's climate denial scheming ``a waste of the government's time, energy, and resources, and a slap in the face to fiscal responsibility and responsible governance.'' It is, in her words, ``shameful,'' ``unjustifiable,'' and a ``wild goose chase.'' It sounds like more great questions for EPW Republicans to ask Pruitt tomorrow: How does he justify spending taxpayers' money on his backers' climate denial schemes. This question is particularly relevant in light of Pruitt's campaign to radically cut EPA's budget and staff. Under his tenure, EPA staff has been reduced to the lowest level in more than 30 years. EPW Republicans, take note because here is another question you can ask Pruitt tomorrow: How can he justify spending taxpayer money on frivolities like his Maxwell Smart cone of silence or personal luxuries like exorbitant private travel or crazy climate denial schemes all while demanding drastic cuts to the people who do the real work of protecting the public at his Agency? In an interview, Governor Whitman said she ``would like to see [EPA's] budget have enough in it to ensure we are enforcing the regulations we have in place,'' a fairly conservative notion. As she notes, EPA enforcement actions are slowing down ``in some instances fairly dramatically because they've cut the budget for the number of enforcement agents.'' You can't do cleanups or police polluters without money and people, both of which Pruitt is looking to cut. Simply put, Pruitt's so-called back-to-basics campaign is a smokescreen to hide his attempts to gut the Agency he is supposed to lead because it will make his industry backers happy. Once again, I ask my EPW Republican colleagues: Will you confront Pruitt about his sham promises to get back to basics while he is really just cutting staff and resources and reducing enforcement? Governor Kean speaks for many Americans when he writes, ``For the sake of our children's health, it's time for Scott Pruitt to go.'' When you are hearing that from the Republican side, it is worth listening. Pruitt's tenure at the EPA has been an unmitigated disaster for public health, for the environment, and for the future of the planet we call home. Its only value is if you have some peculiar connoisseur interest in government corruption to watch all the many ways in which industry can work its will within its supposed regulator. Tomorrow, those of us who sit on the Environment and Public Works Committee have an important opportunity to put the Senate's oversight authority to good use and expose how badly Pruitt is in the pocket of the polluters he is supposed to police. I sincerely hope that my Republican colleagues on EPW will seize the opportunity. You can be sure that my Democratic colleagues and I will. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I begin today by adding a Rhode Island voice to the chorus of coastal communities around the country standing against President Trump's reckless and unwelcome choice to try to allow oil and gas drilling off of nearly all U.S. coasts. The Rhode Island ocean economy is worth over $2 billion and employs more than 40,000 people. For whatever potential gain of fossil fuel corporations, offshore drilling introduces all sorts of hazards to our fishing industry and people who work in tourism and recreation along Narragansett Bay. Remember how devastating the 2010 BP oilspill was in the Gulf of Mexico? This graphic depicts what a spill that size would look like off of New England. The administration has tossed aside a 5-year plan that underwent multiple revisions and involved multiple agencies over multiple years taking into account the input of stakeholders and literally millions of comments from the public. The final plan that had been developed after all that effort allowed for only 10 lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and one sale in the Cook Inlet program area off the Alaska coast. There were no lease sales allowed in the Pacific or Atlantic. Why? Because everybody hates it. In ruling out drilling off our Atlantic coast, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management cited ``strong local opposition, conflicts with other ocean uses, . . . current market dynamics, . . . [and] careful consideration of the comments received from Governors of affected states.'' None of that has changed, and the Trump administration ought to listen to those coastal voices, not just the occasional Republican Governor of a coastal State seeking a political boost. Rhode Island, the Ocean State, has come out strongly opposed to this proposal. Our Governor, Gina Raimondo, said the administration's plan is ``endangering the health of nearly all coastal waters in our country, including our 400 miles of coastline in Rhode Island, so that rich oil companies can get richer.'' Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin vowed to ``continue to fight this latest move by the Trump administration to give the oil and gas industry carte blanche to destroy our environment.'' Rhode Island is a leader in offshore wind development. It was the first in the Nation to have steel in the water, first in the Nation to have electrons flowing to the grid. We also have vibrant fisheries and a longstanding fishing economy. We depend on our coastal economy for that, for tourism, and for many other things. Also, we are especially susceptible to sea level rise and other consequences of climate change. We are not about to go back in time and endanger our coast with the extraction of more dirty fuels. Here in Washington, I led a bipartisan group of New England Senators seeking legislation to bar offshore drilling along our New England coast. My Rhode Island colleague, Representative David Cicilline, introduced the companion legislation in the House of Representatives. The Trump administration will not be following through on its rash plan if New England's bipartisan Members of Congress have anything to say about it. The value of healthy oceans and coasts is tangible and immediate for us. The larger backdrop to this conversation about offshore drilling is that our oceans are steadily getting sicker, even without the threat of additional oilspills. The oceans have absorbed approximately 30 percent of the excess carbon dioxide that we have added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began. That is changing the ocean's chemistry dramatically. The oceans have already absorbed roughly 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by those greenhouse gases. We would not be living the way we have gotten used to through our development as a species if it weren't for the ocean absorbing so much of that excess heat. We owe the oceans a lot, but as a result of that excess carbon dioxide and excess heat, our oceans are warming, and because they are warming, they are rising and, as well, of course, they are growing more acidic, putting marine life, coastal communities, and ocean economies all in jeopardy. Oceans face another emerging problem, which is deoxygenation. Oceans need oxygen, and fish and other creatures that live in the ocean need oxygen, and we are finding that there is less and less. Low-oxygen zones in the ocean are nothing new. Dead zones or areas where oxygen levels drop too low for marine life to survive occur naturally, but dead zones are worsening. They are worsening near the coasts where agricultural runoff spurs rapid blooms of phytoplankton. When the phytoplankton die, their decomposition consumes large amounts of oxygen from the water, and fish and other marine animals suffocate. We saw this just a few years ago in Narragansett Bay's Greenwich Bay area. Now, the Gulf of Mexico routinely sees dead zones as nitrogen-rich waters flow from farms in the heartland, down the Mississippi River, and into the gulf. Last year's gulf dead zone reached record levels. NOAA, which measures these things, estimated the dead zone to be the size of New Jersey--the largest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA assessed that the cause was unusually heavy rains in the Midwest associated with climate change that washed large amounts of fertilizer into the river and down to the gulf. NOAA is not alone. Last year's Climate Science Special Report, the scientific backbone for the Federal Government's Fourth National Climate Assessment, discussed the growing issue of climate change- driven ocean deoxygenation. The report did not mince words. ``Global ocean deoxygenation is a direct effect of warming.'' As water warms, it loses its capacity to absorb gases like oxygen, and warmer water circulates less, meaning there is less mixing of water and oxygen between the surface and deeper waters. The report attributes 85 percent of global oxygen loss to this stratification, as it is known, of the water. Worldwide, ocean oxygen levels have declined. According to the Climate Science Special Report, the North Pacific, North Atlantic, Southern Ocean, subtropical South Pacific, and South Indian Oceans are all expected to experience further deoxygenation. Oxygen may drop off as much as 17 percent in the North Pacific by 2100 if we don't rein in carbon emissions. Not surprisingly, fish and other marine wildlife try to steer clear of dead zones. If they are not able to breathe in these low-oxygen waters, they can die. Dr. Callum Roberts, a researcher at the University of York, has also warned that large and fast-moving fish that use more oxygen, like tunas, billfish, sharks, and fish like this unbelievably beautiful marlin, are being relegated to shrinking high- oxygen areas causing them to change how they hunt. A 2010 paper in Deep-Sea Research estimated that from 1960 to 2008, the areas in the ocean where oxygen levels are too low to support fish and other big ocean organisms have grown by over 1.7 million square miles--an added 1.7 million square miles with oxygen levels too low for God's beautiful creatures like this one. One example of this phenomenon comes to us from former NOAA researcher Dr. Eric Prince, who noticed that blue marlin, a fish which is actually well known for its diving capabilities, would not leave the top hundred feet of ocean off of Costa Rica and Guatemala. Elsewhere, in the ocean, marlin regularly go half a mile down to hunt. The reason for constraining themselves to that top 100 feet of ocean? ``A deep, gigantic and expanding swath of water that contained too little oxygen.'' A 2011 study in Nature Climate Change estimated that over 50 years the surface ocean habitat in the tropical Northeast Atlantic used by tunas and billfish, like the blue marlin, has shrunk by 15 percent due to deoxygenation. A study published earlier this month in the prestigious journal Science warned that though there may be a short-term fishing surge due to the crowding of fishing species into surface waters--they are easier to find because there is less oxygenated water that they are in--``[i]n the longer term, these conditions are unsustainable and may result in ecosystem collapses, which ultimately will cause societal and economic harm.'' This portends devastating effects. The World Health Organization says around 1 billion people rely on fish as their main source of protein. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 10 to 12 percent of the world's population base their livelihoods on fisheries or aquaculture. Bringing it closer to home, commercial fish landings for Rhode Island for 2016 totaled 82.5 million pounds and were valued at nearly $94 million. In 2014, the New England ocean economy was valued at over $17 billion and employed nearly a quarter of a million people. All of that is at risk as we pull out the cornerstones of our ocean ecosystem. Here is where it actually gets a little weird. Oxygen depletion could actually spur a boom in nitrogen-breathing microorganisms--tiny microbes that breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen. They might then demand enough valuable nitrogen that they crowd out other ocean species that also need nitrogen, and these nitrogen species exhale nitrous oxide, which is a greenhouse gas which creates another possible climate change feedback loop. As a recent Washington Post story put it, our growing understanding of ocean deoxygenation ``underscores once again that some of the most profound consequences of climate change are occurring in the oceans, rather than on land.'' As Dr. Denise Breitburg, the lead author of the recent Science paper said, ``Of course, declining oxygen isn't happening in isolation. . . . Warming itself threatens marine food webs, as does acidification caused by increased carbon dioxide in the water. But the threats are worse when combined.'' That is what we are seeing--deoxygenation, warming, acidification combined. We recklessly ignore the warnings that the oceans are screaming at us. Scientists are seeing numbers and conditions in the oceans they have never seen before. We ignore also the high tides that now regularly flood downtowns of major cities as sea levels rise. We ignore fish species moving northward and offshore in search of cooler waters away from traditional fisheries. We ignore the oyster spat dissolving in acidic seawater before they can grow to maturity. We ignore coral reefs turning white and dying in warm, acidic seas. We ignore the record strength of warm-water-fueled 2017 hurricanes that killed people, destroyed homes, and caused billions of dollars in damage. I wonder how long can we ignore the cries from our oceans? Truly, it is time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate very much the Senator's words of goodwill, and it aligns very well with the note of optimism that I want to open on after last night's vote. Last night's vote provoked the first real conversations--the first real, bipartisan conversations about this continuing resolution that I have seen. People all around the country watching C-SPAN saw right there on the Senate floor the Senators pooling about each other, the conversations, the back-and-forth, the intermediaries going in between the leaders. They saw live what the Senate should have been doing for weeks, which is to work in a bipartisan fashion toward a compromise. When starting at 20 minutes to midnight, it is hard to work it all the way through. My strong hope is that the energy and the spirit of bipartisanship that was evident right down here in the well last night persists through this weekend and as long as necessary to get a bipartisan deal accomplished. We have the weekend to do it, we probably even have Monday to do it, and we should get about our business. We can also be optimistic that the measures that the Democrats want to include are bipartisan. We are not trying to jam one-side-only poison pills through; we are trying to get attention to long overdue matters where there is a bipartisan solution. There is something of a backstory to where we are right now, so I want to mention it. I have obviously considerable sympathy for Majority Leader McConnell's predicament with a President who takes opposite positions within hours. How does one negotiate with that? ``Give me a bipartisan deal and I will take the heat,'' the President said. He has since blown up anything bipartisan that came anywhere near him. Majority Leader McConnell is reduced to saying: I don't know what the President will sign, and I can't act until I know. Well, I think last night shows that we actually can begin to act here in the Senate even if the President can't get his signals straight about where he wants us to come. I can't help but remember Senator Graham's description in our Judiciary Committee of President Trump's reversal on the Durbin-Graham proposal. He described it in 2 hours--he described the 10 o'clock Trump and the 12 o'clock Trump, and within 2 hours, he completely reversed his position. Senator Graham said ``I want that guy back'' about the 10 o'clock Trump. It is very hard to negotiate with someone who doesn't know what his position is, so I do have sympathy, and I hope the White House sits down and has a negotiation with itself so that it can decide what it wants. The other problem over at the White House is that the President has surrounded himself with extremists, and that means that nobody knows how to negotiate. And the advice he is getting doesn't serve him. You really don't do deals--I think virtually anybody in politics knows this--by bringing in the most extreme elements to shout at each other; you do deals by bringing in people who have good faith and a common interest in solving the problem together. If all you have around you are extremists, you have dramatically crippled and shrunk your own capabilities--unless, of course, what you wanted all along is what the extremists want: ``a good shutdown.'' There is another backstory going on that I want to discuss. This is a fight over maybe a dozen legislative issues, but it is also a fight over the institution of the Senate and how far we will let the Senate degrade into a partisan dead zone. In the oceans, we see more and more dead zones where there isn't enough oxygen to support life, so there aren't fish and there isn't the mixing and the turbulence that are necessary for the mixing of life and oxygen. The Senate seems to be slowly turning into that dead zone. We know what works around here because the majority leader has a long history of fighting to get it, to make sure that the minority has amendments and to try to block things that are exclusively partisan. Indeed, at various times, he has encouraged his caucus to avoid joining Democrats on any bills, so that they are partisan, so that he can block them. So we have lived the experience of the majority leader's interest in amendments and in opposition to purely partisan legislation. We have also heard it, and in the majority leader's own words, he has called for a Senate ``which honors and respects all the members and allows everybody to participate and offer their ideas, regardless of party.'' He went on to say: ``That's something that the majority leader can do and I intend to do it.'' How do you do that? Well, he went on to say in another interview that the way to do that is ``to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in some way in the passage'' of the legislation. To be specific, he said, ``bills should come to the floor, be thoroughly debated, and include a robust amendment process''--a robust amendment process. He went on: ``The answer is to let [the Senate] debate; to let the Senate work its will. And that means bringing bills to the floor. It means having a free and open amendment process.'' He also said: ``We want to engage members from both parties in the legislative process, to get our democracy working again the way it was designed.'' With that background, let's look at Trump year 1. The opener legislatively in the year was the partisan budget reconciliation bill, a purely partisan measure whose only purpose was to open the door to further purely partisan measures under the budget reconciliation process. So we opened with that partisan process. Having opened that door, sure enough, we went on to partisan ObamaCare repeal, which failed, and they tried again, over and over, but always partisan, whatever the effort. Then we went back to partisan budget reconciliation 2 to tee up a partisan opening for a partisan tax bill. Then, of course, we had the partisan tax bill. There was one briefly shining light on the national defense authorization. Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Reed in the Armed Services Committee led a robust, bipartisan amendment process that brought the committee together and brought forward a bill that I think everybody in the Senate could be proud of, but when it got to the floor, here on the Senate floor, not one Democrat was allowed a floor vote on any amendment. So the grand total for the year for the U.S. Senate, setting aside the budget and vote-arama amendments, which, in my view, don't count-- that whole process is a joke. That simply tees up a reconciliation measure that allows further partisanship. So set those aside because they don't count. In real legislation, how many amendments has the minority been able to get on the floor? The grand total all year long, ever since Trump was elected last year, to this year, is a grand total of zero. Zero Democratic amendments considered on the Senate floor since Trump--not one. Compare that to all the things I just read that the Senate majority leader promised on amendments--that bills should come to the floor, be thoroughly debated, and include a robust amendment process; that the answer is to let folks debate, to let the Senate work its will, and that means bringing bills to the floor, and it means having a free and open amendment process. To paraphrase Senator Graham, I want that guy back. When the leader shuts down the amendment process, it is not just the minority party that suffers. Republicans also, under Trump, have gotten virtually zero floor amendments voted on all year long. That leaves the Senate exclusively with partisan ram jobs, which is what we have seen a lot of, and UCs--unanimous consent agreements-- things so noncontroversial that they can avoid the dead zone of the McConnell Senate floor and be agreed to by everyone and passed into law. That is a worthy process, but it is not a process that is going to yield a solution to the big controversies we need to resolve here in this world's greatest deliberative body. This problem of no open process and no amendments is a problem for all of us. When we get all tangled up in leadership chess games, all Senators lose their ability to represent their States. Power gets concentrated in the leader. I remember Senator Sessions, on the floor over there--I was actually in the Presiding Officer's chair on some of the occasions when Senator Sessions was animatedly discussing his concern and irritation with what the masters of the universe were doing in secret rooms that he did not have access to. This is a bipartisan frustration. We all become cogs in the majority leader's leadership chess match, and we all have common cause in going back to a place where the leader helps the Senate work its will, not where leaders impose their will on the Senate. The Senate is broken. Over and over again that has been said on the Senate floor, and by no one more articulately than by Senator Durbin. The longer you have been around--Senators Durbin and Alexander particularly--when you remember what it was like, it is much more apparent how broken it is. And for whose benefit? For big donors, so they can call the shots through the leadership? For the leadership thrill of being a bigger player in DC's ``Game of Thrones''? This ought not just be a Democratic revolt against the mess we are in. Republican Senators are often just as neutered as their minority colleagues when all power moves to the majority leader. Zero amendments--not a single minority amendment in the entire year on real legislation--ought to be a symptom that concerns everyone. And I don't know what Republicans got--two, maybe three amendments in an entire year? How many Republican Senators are there who have never had an amendment of theirs called up and voted on on the Senate floor? Let me add one additional point against this looming specter of a shutdown. Speaker Ryan sent over a bill last night that we voted on last night that he knew was going to fail. I am a junior Senator here, and I had last night's vote predicted exactly. With all the powers of the Speaker of the House, with his direct line to his fellow Republican, the majority leader, is it plausible to think that what happened last night in the Senate was any kind of a surprise to the Speaker of the House? Of course not. We know from Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi that there was not even consultation with Democrats about the contents of the CR last night--no negotiations, nothing, a partisan ram job that the Speaker had to know would fail when he sent it over. Imagine the cynicism. Imagine the cynicism, with the shutdown of the government looming, of sending to the Senate a partisan bill you know will fail, teeing up a shutdown just so you can tee up a blame war about the shutdown you knowingly provoked. That is ``House of Cards'' cynical stuff. Let me wrap up by saying that the Senate balance is about as close as it could be. Moreover, Democrats in the Senate represent 40 million more Americans than our Republican colleagues do. When the Senate majority is microscopic and you represent a minority of the American people, dictating terms to the Senate minority as if this were the Soviet Duma is not justifiable, and it is destroying the Senate. We on our side have been rolled and we have been rolled and we have been rolled, and there is no end in sight. The Senate of the United States has been turned into a dead zone--the McConnell-partisan dead zone. Those strategies amass power into the leader's hands, away from Republican and Democratic Senators alike, but that breaks all the promises the majority leader made about amendments and regular order, and that is destroying this institution--this institution that we love. You simply cannot have both bipartisanship and utter dominion by the majority leader at the same time. That just can't coexist; it is impossible. You cannot have an open amendment process and utter dominion by the majority leader at the same time. If the majority leader insists on being, to use Senator Sessions' phrase, the ``master of the universe,'' what does that leave for everyone else? Well, we have seen what it leaves on our side: zero amendments, zero consultation, no input, no bipartisanship ever. Why should the great affairs of government be worked out in private meetings of two or five or eight? Those rooms may not be smoke-filled any longer, but the atmosphere is just as unhealthy without the smoke. The atmosphere is just as unhealthy when so much gets done in the dark, and so many Senators, who are not the master of the universe, are reduced to begging and pleading to their leader to have favors slipped into the backroom deal. That is not the way the Senate should work. Smoke or no smoke, that is not healthy, but too many Senators, too many Members have never even breathed the fresh air of a healthy Senate. Like the pit ponies of the old coal mines, they trudge and they haul in darkness, trudging and hauling in the darkness so long they don't know what daylight looks like, but Senators like Dick Durbin and Lamar Alexander, who remember what daylight looks like, are here to remind us how healthy a process that should be. Remember, in a Senate in which the minority party--the barely minority party, I should add--is not for an entire year able to get even one amendment voted on, on one piece of meaningful legislation, in a Senate like that, everybody loses or maybe I should say virtually everybody loses. Unanimous consent, partisan ram job, or nothing is no way to govern and no way to run a Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me first thank my friend from Oklahoma. We often disagree; indeed, we often violently disagree on matters of environmental issues. But we have been teammates--indeed, close teammates on the chemical safety legislation, which has been passed into law; on water resources bills, which have been passed into law; and on the last highway bill, which was passed into law. The lesson I take from that is, in the Senate, we can disagree, and we can disagree violently, but where we agree, push the throttles forward and get it done.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, now, for the 193rd time, I will give my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, and as I do so, we are coming up on President Trump's anniversary in office. Unfortunately, this occasion does not offer the American people much to celebrate. Behind the persistent tweets and the dog whistles, the Trump Presidency has been a spectacle of special interests and self-dealing. Billionaire donors have endless access installing their operatives and pursuing their special interest goals throughout the executive branch. They are literally writing the rules in an unambiguous effort to enrich themselves evermore at the expense of everyone else. Fossil fuel barons are the new American dark money emperors. Carl Icahn, early on, got himself installed as a special adviser to the President on regulatory reform and began pushing for a change to the renewable fuel standard that would net one of his companies, CVR Energy, hundreds of millions of dollars. Icahn's insider campaign came to an end in August of last year right around the time a New Yorker article outlined the potential legal claims that could arise from his murky status and self-dealing. Federal investigators have since opened a probe into Icahn's time at the White House. Then came Murray Energy Corporation CEO and big Trump donor Bob Murray with his policy wish list for Trump officials. He called it his action plan. Murray had donated $300,000 to the President's inauguration, and he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to political action committees affiliated with the EPA Administrator and fossil fuel operative, Scott Pruitt. In a ``Frontline'' documentary, Bob Murray bragged about giving the administration this action plan and that the first page was already done. Well, I was curious to see the Bob Murray action plan for the Trump administration, so I joined Senator Carper, our ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and asked the White House for a copy of the Bob Murray action plan. The White House ignored our request and to this date has never responded. I guess the White House was busy organizing Trump's nominee for second in command at the EPA: a lobbyist for, guess who--Bob Murray and Murray Energy. During the Murray Energy lobbyist's EPA confirmation hearing, he claimed he did not have the Bob Murray action plan. He admitted he had seen the Bob Murray action plan at a meeting between Bob Murray and Energy Secretary Rick Perry last March, but he could not recall details of what was in the action plan or what was discussed in the meeting. Lobbyists for energy companies who get one-on-one meetings with the Secretary of Energy often little note nor long remember what went on at the meeting. Anyway, I asked the Department of Energy whether they had a copy of the elusive Bob Murray action plan. Shortly after my request, and before we heard anything from the Department of Energy, the magazine In These Times released photos of that March meeting that the Murray lobbyist had mentioned between Secretary Perry and Bob Murray. This photo shows Bob Murray and Secretary Perry. It looks like Bob Murray received a pretty cozy reception from the Energy Secretary. This gentleman, I believe, is another lobbyist for Bob Murray and Murray Energy. After they got through the hugging, they got down to business. There is the Secretary, there is the CEO Bob Murray, there is his other lobbyist, and this is the Bob Murray lobbyist who is now teed up to be the No. 2 at EPA. Right there in the picture is the Bob Murray action plan. This is a closeup of it, and the Presiding Officer can't see from there and nobody on the camera can see, but if you look right here, it talks about power grid reliability in the cover letter signed by Bob Murray, which may have cooked up, since this was a meeting with Secretary Perry, Secretary Perry's power grid reliability proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which included huge subsidies to coal plants. So we have a coal company CEO bringing his action plan in to Secretary Perry on whose cover letter it talks about power grid reliability, and before you know it, Secretary Perry is proposing a power grid reliability project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that just happens to give the coal industry enormous subsidies. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well, with this photographic evidence in hand, I renewed my request that the Energy Department produce this Bob Murray action plan. They were no longer able to pretend they didn't have it because they had a picture of it, with the Secretary, on his desk. They nevertheless continued to stonewall me, saying they would provide me the document after responding to FOIA requests from the public. So, memo to my Senate colleagues, when in the exercise of your oversight authority and the oversight authority of Congress and the Senate you request documents from the Trump administration, you might want to consider putting in a parallel FOIA request as that may be the only way you get a response. Despite the administration's best efforts to stonewall the Bob Murray action plan, however, my office was able to obtain a copy from an independent source. This version is addressed to Vice President Pence. The New York Times has now published the Bob Murray action plan. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article they wrote, ``How a Coal Baron's Wish List Became President Trump's To-Do List,'' and the Bob Murray action plan that was the subject of that story at the conclusion of my remarks. The article details demands made by Murray that have already been checked off by the President and the administration, including the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the installation of mining industry operatives at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and even, believe it or not, the appointment of a fossil fuel-friendly U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Several more of Bob Murray's action plan requests are underway. At the Mine Safety and Health Administration, now led by a former coal mine executive, Murray Energy and trade associations are working to undo Obama-era rules to protect miners. The 2010 coal mine dust rule is also on the chopping block. Over at EPA, Bob Murray's political money beneficiary, Scott Pruitt, has begun a review of the Agency's 2015 ozone standards. Let me just drop in, as a Senator from Rhode Island, we have had days when you drive into work and the skies are clear and the weather is nice and the radio says: Little children, infants and elderly folks and people who have a breathing difficulty should stay indoors in the air- conditioning. They should not go outdoors and enjoy the beautiful day. Why? Because of ozone which is being bombarded in on Rhode Island from--guess what--coal plants in the Midwest. We are in the downstream receiving end of ozone, which is the product of those coal plant emissions. So, obviously, loosening the ozone standards is good for coal companies. On a new topic, EPA continues to cut and to drive away its staff--all items on Bob Murray's action plan. Since it appears that Bob Murray has tailored his action plan for individual agencies, I have sent additional requests last week to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, all of which are named in the Bob Murray action plan to see what specific action plans they have from Bob Murray. The fossil fuel industry may be able to boss Cabinet Secretaries around and may be able to bring the majority party in Congress smartly to heel, but, fortunately, there are still some venues where their demands run smack up against the rule of law. In our courts and in administrative proceedings, decisions must have substantial support in the evidence, and lying and misleading can be exposed and even punished--unlike in Congress, where lying and misleading have been sickeningly successful fossil fuel tactics for decades. Last week, the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--even one stuffed with Trump appointees--rejected Secretary Perry's proposed power grid reliability rule to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. The FERC Commissioners found that the proposal failed to meet ``clear and fundamental'' legal requirements, like that the result will be ``just and reasonable'' under the Federal Power Act. As an aside here, the theory of the coal industry was that their units provide more reliability than renewables. Well, tell that to Iowa's electric grid operators, which have baked Iowa's abundant wind energy not just into their flow but into their reliability modeling. Tell that to New England's ISO, which has allowed renewables into its capacity auctions to be paid, for meeting baseload capacity requirements. And, of course, tell that to anyone who has had to deal with scheduled and unscheduled outages at coal plants. When I went on one of my climate visits to, in this case, Tennessee, I heard about a coal plant that had to be shut down because climate change had warmed the river and shrunk the flow so that the river used to cool the plant was no longer adequate to cool the plant, and they had to go into an unscheduled outage. Wind and solar are very reliable, and the ISOs have baked the algorithms that quantify their reliability into their grid reliability planning. The ``coal is reliable and renewables aren't'' argument may pass muster on talk shows, but in the real world of grid operators, it is nonsense. FERC, as a rule-of-law agency, is required to face that fact. America's courts also stand in the way of the Bob Murray action plan agenda. Murray, for instance, has demanded that the EPA overturn its 2009 endangerment finding--the administrative finding that greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide and methane and so forth, threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. That is their finding, that those greenhouse gas emissions threaten the health and welfare of current and future generations. That is why it is called an endangerment finding, because of the danger to the public. Well, good luck challenging that determination in a court of law. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has already upheld the endangerment finding back in 2012. Even the fossil fuel flunky running the EPA now knows better than to challenge that endangerment finding. If he thought he could, he would in a heartbeat, but he is clever enough to know that an avalanche of climate evidence would fall in on his head if he tried. Witnesses from virtually every leading State university in the industry, from Alaska to Oklahoma to Georgia to Maine; expert scientists from our National Laboratories, from Idaho to Tennessee; our national security agencies and our military; America's government watchdog agencies, like the GAO and the GSA; and even the Trump administration's own recent climate report, all, would pile on the conclusive evidence of climate change. And on the other side would be what? Pathetic Kathleen Hartnett White, who gave one of the worst performances in Senate history at her confirmation hearings? The secretly fossil-fuel-funded Willie Soon? Some coal company lobbyist? Or perhaps the Heartland Institute, with its proud history of comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber? It would be a rout. It would be a rout, and even Pruitt knows it. The reason it would be a rout is because of the rule of law--the rule of law requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, the rule of law specter of judicial review, and the rule of law sanctions that courts impose for false evidence. Certainly, Bob Murray and his surrounding crowd of bad-acting fossil fuel billionaires know how to throw their political weight around. We see everywhere the phony science denial apparatus they have created. We see their false and toxic messages even in outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page. We see their lobbying front groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, continuing adamantly to oppose any serious climate legislation despite the contrary position of companies on their board of directors. American elections stink with their dark money and promises and threats. Their flunkies have now been moved into positions of authority in government, and the Trump's administration eagerness to carry out industry marching orders is humiliatingly servile. Ultimately, the polluters' drive to put profit first above the health and safety of Americans will face strict scrutiny in the truth-based arena of Federal courts. Ultimately, it will also face the harsh test of time, as the fact that they knew and the fact that they lied becomes ever more obvious and ever more odious. Ultimately, the American voter will have her say about whether this great Republic should be under the dominion and control of the fossil fuel industry or free to address the problem of climate change as a rational world leader must.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for approximately 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Trump administration has come up with a name for its energy policy. The energy policy amounts to, basically, a big, fat cascade of gifts and special favors for oil, gas, and coal companies, which, in turn, make big political contributions. Trump officials call the policy ``energy dominance.'' More accurately, its name would probably be ``fossil fuel industry political dominance'' or one might actually call it ``ignorance dominance'' since the administration willfully ignores scientific understanding, basic economics, market theory, and even the warnings of our national security community. The situation is not pretty from an environmental point of view. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is busily trying to roll back rules that limit, for instance, emissions of methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. He is considering walking back fuel efficiency standards that save drivers money at the pump. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord and was promptly ignored by every other nation on Earth. Last month, on the Interior Secretary's recommendation, Trump took big areas of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, in Utah, away from the public and opened them, instead, to big mining and oil and gas interests. Zinke has even proposed to open almost all U.S. coastlines to drilling by oil and gas companies. That includes drilling in protected areas in the Arctic, drilling up and down the Atlantic coast, expanded drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and drilling along the Pacific coastline. The plan even includes Georges Bank and other crucial fishing grounds for New England. This drilling scheme is likely dead on arrival. Republican Governors in New Jersey, Maryland, and Florida have all denounced the plan, as have Florida's Democratic and Republican Senators. It even runs into objections from the Pentagon. When President Obama considered opening the southern Atlantic coast to drilling 2 years ago, the Defense Department told the Obama administration that offshore energy development could interfere with military readiness and missile testing. Given the dominance of fossil fuel political interests in this administration, the whole Trump energy dominance scheme, of course, neglects the warnings of our national security experts about climate change--climate change as an accelerant of global instability and conflict and climate change as a direct hazard to military installations and infrastructure, from the Naval Station Norfolk to faraway facilities like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. In 2008, the National Intelligence Council reported more than 30 U.S. military installations facing risk from rising sea levels. A vulnerability assessment directed by the ``2010 Quadrennial Defense Review'' found that at around 3 feet of sea level rise, 128 military installations are at risk. Naturally, many of those belong to the Navy--indeed, 56 out of those 128. It is a significant share of the Navy's global footprint, totaling around $100 billion in value. In 2011, the National Academy of Sciences report, ``National Security Implications of Climate Change for U.S. Naval Forces,'' recommended the continued review of how sea level rise and changes in storm frequency and intensity would affect coastal installations. The National Defense Authorization Act, which we just passed, directs the Department of Defense to study how climate change will affect our most vulnerable military bases over the next 20 years, including ``the effects of rising sea tides, increased flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, thawing permafrost,'' as well as how climate change may drive new requirements for combatant commanders. The law includes a sense of Congress statement that ``climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.'' That is a sense-of-Congress statement that has passed this Republican-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House and was signed into law by this administration. Thank you to the author of this language, my friend and fellow Rhode Islander, Congressman Jim Langevin. Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office has engaged. The independent oversight agency issued a report titled, ``Climate Change Adaptation: DoD Needs to Better Incorporate Adaptation into Planning and Collaboration at Overseas Installations.'' I think that title gives away the punch line. Surveying our bases and installations across the world, GAO found that weather and climate change pose operational and budgetary risks to infrastructure. GAO recommended that DOD's climate planning efforts be expanded and increased; specifically, that the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force require defense installations to ``systematically track the costs associated with extreme weather events and climate change'' and that DOD better coordinate addressing climate change risks across different DOD installations. This picture in the GAO report shows an unnamed military facility in the Pacific that has at times been cut off by flooding from access points to its munitions storage complex. If you have a military facility that can't get access to its munitions storage, you have a problem. This is the picture of the flooded entryway, and this is the picture of the similar entryway under normal circumstances, able to be traveled. A 2014 typhoon caused flash flooding here that trapped and imperiled American personnel. The point is, when climate change effects inhibit military base operations, defense preparedness requires climate preparedness. Naval Station Norfolk, the largest Navy base in the world, is a poster child for the devastation that awaits our coastal military bases if we continue to pump out the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving sea level rise. A tide gauge operated at the base since 1927 has shown nearly 15 inches of vertical sea level rise so far. In the broader Hampton Roads metro area, home not only to the Navy but also to facilities of the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, NASA, and NOAA, high tides are already regularly forcing seawater back through storm drains and flooding roadways. DOD's own environmental research program, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, used Norfolk as its case study for sea level rise and extreme storm risks to coastal DOD installations. The study found a ``tipping point'' of about a half meter, 1.6 feet, of sea level rise, at which point ``the probabilities of damage to infrastructure and losses in mission performance increased dramatically.'' This is mapping of the flood hazard around Naval Station Norfolk. This tipping point at which the mission performance losses increase dramatically is only a few decades away. Retired RADM David Titley, a former oceanographer and navigator of the Navy and leader of its Climate Change Task Force, said Norfolk has about 10 to 15 years to get serious about sea level rise in the region before ``we're really cutting it close.'' In 2017, CAPT Dean Vanderley, who leads infrastructure engineering at the Norfolk Naval base, admitted that sea level rise is ``something where I don't know that we've fully defined the problem. And we have definitely not fully defined the solution.'' Retired CAPT Joe Bouchard, a former base commander, told InsideClimate News that Naval Station Norfolk would need significant improvements to nearly every piece of infrastructure, from electrical and drainage systems to pier improvements, not to mention a seawall. He estimated this work could cost more than $1 billion and take as long as a decade to complete. That is just one base with $1 billion and a decade's worth of work. The DOD has identified over 128 bases that would be at significant risk with 3 feet of sea level rise. I think NOAA's current estimate is for 6 feet of global sea rise by the end of the century. Even though our President is clueless about the basics of climate change, his Secretary of Defense understands and acknowledges the risks. In response to congressional questioning last year, Secretary Mattis said, ``Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. . . . It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.'' Well, for political reasons, the White House can't acknowledge the problem so the recently published ``National Security Strategy'' totally disregards all of these recommendations. It will not even mention the forbidden words. We know these words are forbidden in the Trump administration because over and over again the memos leak out about people being told don't say the words ``climate change.'' Instead, with all these warnings from GAO, from senior military officials, from the National Intelligence Council, from a decade of Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and the testimony of Secretary Mattis-- instead of listening to that, Trump parrots climate change denial talking points that come from the phony fossil fuel front groups. It is pathetic. Calling this deliberate ignorance ``energy dominance'' may be a fine fossil fuel flourish, but it is completely disconnected from actual safety, security, and military readiness--and don't get me started on what the fossil fuel industry's systematic corruption of our democracy means for America's fabled status as that ``city on a hill.'' I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, 2018 is going to be an election year. In just 10 months, Americans will go to the polls to exercise their franchise, believing in the integrity of our democratic process. I am here today to discuss a threat to the integrity of that process, which is getting little attention here in Congress--nothing near what it deserves. We really ought to be acting with some expedition to safeguard our elections this November. Yet, instead, the effort is one of chasing down partisan investigative rabbit holes. What ought to be our job? Well, national security, intelligence, election, and law enforcement officials, many of them testifying before us here in Congress, have made what our job is very clear. We must counter Russia's well-established election interference playbook. Russia will hack. Russia will bully. Russia will propagandize. Perhaps more insidiously, Russia will seek to corrupt, particularly by exploiting cracks in our incorporation and campaign finance laws. We are warned: Russia will seek to interfere in 2018's election. I ask unanimous consent that an article entitled ``CIA's Pompeo says Russia and others trying to undermine U.S. elections'' be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. To quote the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Heather Conley, testifying before Congress last spring, corruption is the ``lubricant'' for Moscow's election interference, so ``the battle of Western democracies to defeat corruption'' must be seen as ``a matter of national security.'' Testifying before our Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, agreed, saying of Russia's 2016 election meddling: I believe [the Russians] are now emboldened to continue such activities in the future, both here and around world, and to do so even more intensely. If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system, this episode is it. I hope the American people recognize the severity of this threat and that we collectively counter it before it further erodes the fabric of our democracy. How to counter it? Well, there are two important solutions that witnesses have identified in recent testimony before the Judiciary and other committees here in the Senate. First, guard against the use of phony shell corporations as facilitators of corruption. Ms. Conley, as I said, wrote that corruption is the ``lubricant'' with which the Russians operate their interference schemes. She and her colleagues warn that to fight the corruption that gives Russia this channel of influence--and I quote her here--``enhancing transparency and the effectiveness of the Western democratic tools, instruments, and institutions is critical.'' One central way to cut off this channel of improper influence would be to require companies to disclose who their real owner is so that Russian influence can no longer hide behind anonymous American shell companies. Another would be to crack down on the dark money that is flooding into American elections. It is illegal for foreign nationals to spend money or participate at all in American elections. Yet, post-Citizens United, the same dark money avenues that allow domestic election interference--for instance, that the Koch brothers use to manipulate American elections--are right out there to be used by Vladimir Putin. If they can hide their identity behind 501(c)(4)s and other dark money channels, so can operatives for the Russians. Instead of taking up these important measures or even ensuring a thorough investigation into the 2016 election meddling, we are--to paraphrase the legendary Senator Sam Ervin of Watergate fame--chasing rabbits when we should be on a bear hunt. Let's look at a few rabbits that have distracted us from the task at hand. Remember, when Michael Flynn, the President's former National Security Adviser, illicitly communicated with the Russian Ambassador about sanctions during the transition. Then in the White House, he lied to the FBI about it, which concerned the Justice Department so badly that the Acting Attorney General warned the White House Counsel personally, after which she was fired, but the President then waited 18 days until all of this had become public in the media to ask for Michael Flynn's resignation. Out of all of that, the topic for many Republicans was the alleged leaks of classified information that allowed the story to come to light--not the story itself of problems at the highest level of our national security establishment. Off people went after the ``leaks'' rabbit. Republicans then pivoted to talking about the ``unmasking''--remember that word; we heard a lot of it around here--of identities in intelligence reporting and the purported misconduct of Obama administration officials. Trump even publicly suggested that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have committed a crime. So off people went after the ``unmasking'' rabbit. Next, the President accused President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, an allegation so outrageous that even congressional Republicans have refused to stand by it, but my, what a bright and shiny rabbit it was for the weeks that it was still a distraction. By the spring and summer, Republicans were railing against purported conflicts of interest by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a distinguished career public servant. I ask unanimous consent that this article, ``FBI ruled McCabe had no conflict of interest in Clinton probe,'' be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. So off everybody went after the ``McCabe's wife'' rabbit. After President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey to impede the Russia investigation and then told the Russian Foreign Minister and NBC that was why he had done it, the President launched another leak rabbit: a coordinated effort with his lawyers, congressional Republicans, and the rightwing media to suggest that Comey had leaked classified information by sharing with a friend his own contemporaneous notes of conversations with Trump. Just last week, the President again suggested on Twitter that Comey should be charged with a crime--another bite at the ``leaks'' rabbit. In early July, we learned of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russian lawyer and operative Natalia Veselnitskaya and senior Trump campaign leaders seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton. Republicans tried to distract attention from that mess by suggesting that Veselnitskaya was in the country on a visa issued by Obama administration officials, with some rightwing media--aided by some congressional Republicans--even whipping on the ``visa'' rabbit by suggesting there was a setup orchestrated by the Obama administration against the Trump campaign. Then came the ``Fusion'' rabbit. Because Fusion GPS had worked on separate projects--one with Christopher Steele and a separate one with Natalia Veselnitskaya--some Republicans began suggesting either that Russia had been Fusion's client for the Steele dossier or that Steele was the unwitting victim of a Russian disinformation campaign. Then there is the ``Uranium One'' rabbit, which began when a rightwing author suggested, without evidence, that Hillary Clinton may have been responsible for a Russian state company acquiring uranium mines in the United States. This rabbit remains a topic of investigation in Congress and in rightwing media. Then there are the attacks on Bob Mueller, which, like rabbits, multiply by the hour. As the special counsel's investigation started heating up over the late summer and fall, the rightwing began investigating the investigation--alleged conflicts of interest, history of campaign donations, inappropriate text messages, questions about spouses' employment. But the big one was that the FBI was corruptly involved in the procurement of the Steele dossier and that this had launched the ``witch hunt.'' This, of course, is a very shiny rabbit. However, a week ago, reporting by the New York Times confirmed that the FBI did not begin its investigation into Donald Trump's connections to Russia because of the so-called Steele dossier. This should not come as a surprise. We have already been told that U.S. allies warned American national security officials about Russian interference in our 2016 elections. In response to a question from Ranking Member Feinstein at our Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee hearing on May 8, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed that ``Britain's intelligence service''--Britain's intelligence service--``first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious interactions between Trump advisers and Russian intelligence agents,'' and the Brits passed that information on to U.S. intelligence agencies. Clapper confirmed that in ``the spring of 2016, multiple European allies passed on additional information to the United States about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.'' Clapper said that these reports were accurate and that ``the specifics are quite sensitive.'' Now we have learned that Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pled guilty last year to lying to the FBI, apparently told a senior Australian official in the spring of 2016 that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. This is something he said he had been told by an intermediary for the Russians. When hacked emails started showing up that summer, Australia's Government became sufficiently concerned to let U.S. officials know about what they had learned from Papadopoulos. So you have the British intelligence community warnings, the European intelligence community warnings, the Australian warnings, and Carter Page's travels to Russia. You have the attribution of the DNC hack, the intrusion into those emails, to Russian hackers. You have the leaking of the stolen emails. You have abundant evidence out of all of that for the FBI that the Trump campaign's links to Russia required further investigation. It would have been a complete failure of their duty to not have looked further based on all of that evidence. That is not to say that Christopher Steele and his work are not taken seriously by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. U.S. security agencies have relied on Steele's analysis long before any dossier appeared. Steele is a leading Russia expert. Beginning in 1990, as an undercover officer in Moscow, he watched the Soviet Union unravel. He observed Russia's current leaders ascend through the Russian security services during the 1990s and 2000s. He rose to a senior position on MI6's Russia desk in London. Since leaving MI6, his reports on Russia and Ukraine have been shared widely within the U.S. Government as credible reporting. A U.S. official told the Guardian that Steele's reports were ``consistently reliable, meticulous, and well-informed.'' But you would never know this from listening to congressional Republicans. They have been repeating, in chorus with the White House and conservative media, the disproven claim that the Russians somehow commissioned the Steele dossier or that Steele somehow got suckered by the Russians or that some deep-state FBI set up the whole thing to pressure Trump. They have pushed to discredit Steele. They have pushed to discredit Fusion. As one example, rewind to the Judiciary Committee's hearing on the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, last July. On the morning of the second day of that hearing, the President tweeted: ``One of the things that has been lost in the politics of this situation is that the Russians collected and spread negative information about then candidate Trump.'' This is Trump tweeting about himself. His tweet came shortly after a segment on FOX News centered on the same question. Other rightwing outlets parroted the same message. That same day, Republicans in Congress spun out the same premise that Russians paid for the dossier and that the dossier was, to use their word, the ``genesis'' of the FBI's inquiry. I hope we have made it clear that this was not the genesis. While the FARA hearing was still going on, that same day, the gop.gov website published this post: [W]e now know a Russian backed, Democrat connected research firm, with a history of smearing individuals and pitching fake information to reporters, was hired by opponents of President Trump to compile a ``dossier'' of supposed Trump ties to Russia. The information that was compiled was taken seriously by the highest level of our intelligence community along with our media, despite obvious signs that the firm behind it was tied to Russia. As a reminder, this phony ``dossier'' helped spark the investigation now led by Special Counsel Mueller. That is the rabbit we are chasing now. The uniformity of the rightwing message that day with the White House was telling, but the message--the content of it--is simply not true. In fact, at that hearing, the witness denied any knowledge of any link between Russians and the clients of the Steele dossier. In the months that followed, Fusion GPS's founder, Glenn Simpson, spent over 20 hours speaking with congressional investigators, including investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee. I ask unanimous consent that his op-ed be printed in the Record as a third and final item at the conclusion of my remarks. During these interviews, he specifically told Democratic and Republican staff alike that the dossier was taken seriously by the FBI because it corroborated reports the Bureau had already received from other sources--remember the British, the European, the Australian we have talked about--and a source inside the Trump campaign. From the Time's recent reporting, we can conclude that that source was George Papadopoulos. This has all been known for months, but the narrative about Fusion GPS and the FBI grinds on, unhinged from fact. The revelation about George Papadopoulos and the Australian Government should serve as a clarifying moment about the rightwing effort to undermine Bob Mueller's investigation of the ties of the Trump campaign and his Presidency to Russia. The FBI investigation did not begin because of opposition research. It did not begin because researchers or journalists or American national security officials fell victim to Russian disinformation. It did not begin because of fake news or because Democrats needed an explanation for losing an election. It began when multiple allies, friends of the United States, warned us that the Russian Government was interfering in our democratic process-- something many of them knew about from Russia's interference in their own democratic process. We still do not know to what extent that interference may have been facilitated or even simply known to members of the Trump campaign or other Trump associates. We still have done nothing to prevent further interference in our elections in 2018. The special counsel's investigation and the investigations going on in Congress must be allowed to continue until all of the facts are known. Here in the Senate, we should stop looking for new distractions, stop chasing rabbits, and start thinking about how we are going to protect our future elections--our 2018 election--against a repeat performance, which we have been warned about, by the Russians or another foreign adversary, for that matter. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies warns in its report, ``The Kremlin Playbook,'' we must fight the avenues for corruption that give Russia influence. We must ``enhanc[e] transparency'' in government and build ``resilience against Russian influence'' in our elections and elsewhere in American society. I will conclude by saying that the best measure of our success in Congress will be an America defended against foreign election interference in time to protect our 2018 elections. If we have not achieved that, we have failed at our duty. I do not see us presently on a path to meet that goal. We are less than a year out from election day. We have work to do. Enough with the rabbits.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I now yield, per the pending agreement, to my distinguished friend from Connecticut.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I believe that my distinguished colleague and friend, Senator Blumenthal, will be joining me on the floor. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for such time as I may require and, at the conclusion of my remarks, that Senator Blumenthal be recognized to make his remarks on the same subject.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask to speak for 3 minutes on behalf of my departing friend.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, Senator Franken will shortly go on to his next chapter, which I hope will be wonderful for him and for Franni and for their family. I hope and believe that he leaves us with everyone's good will here in the Senate. He certainly leaves with mine. Al Franken has been an unusually good Senator, in part because he has such a good staff. He has also, to me, been an unusually good friend, particularly in this hard town where you are supposed to buy a dog if you want a friend. We served together on the HELP and Judiciary Committees, where he did great committee work. He stood out particularly for his talent on Judiciary without even being a lawyer. I will miss him. The Senate will come to miss him, too, I expect. He was a lot of things that one would want in a Senator: principled, innovative, hard-working, supersmart, bipartisan, generous, caring. Things will be different around here without him. It will be quieter on the floor without his big, bursting laugh. We will miss his presence on personal privacy issues, on monopoly power issues, on forced mandatory arbitration, and in championing LGBT kids, where he has real passion and expertise. Senate hearing witnesses who have been up to no good will breathe a lot easier knowing they won't have to face Al Franken's pointed questioning. The Senate Secret Santa, a Franken legacy, will probably continue. Selfishly, I will miss Franni's amazing homemade pies. As my friend departs, I am left at this difficult moment with this thought: I have been fortunate in the Senate to have had a colleague to whom it is so hard to say good-bye. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleagues here in support of these kids who are known as Dreamers or DACA kids, who came in under the statute or under President Obama's program and who have lived here for many years in this country, passed all the requirements, and met all the standards. These are good kids. There is absolutely no reason for them to be the target of the kind of anxiety and fear that they are being put through to score political points. It really doesn't make sense. By definition, these kids came to the United States of America under the age of 16. You can't even enforce a contract against a minor in this country. They do not have the legal capacity in most places to buy a sofa. Yet we are holding them to account for decisions that their parents made when they were small children. One of the Rhode Islanders who will be affected by this came to the United States when she was 8 years old. Think of the kind of decisions that your 8- year-old kids make or that you were making when you were 8 years old. This is a very successful young lady who is now at the Brown medical school. She is going to make enormous contributions to our country. Tossing her out or putting her in peril makes no sense whatsoever, particularly when the problems started when she was brought to this country by her parents when she was 8 years old. Another Rhode Islander who contacted me came to the country when she was 7 years old. She is now a teacher in a middle school in Central Falls, RI. Central Falls is a community that is emerging from bankruptcy. It has got its feet back under it now. It has a wonderful, exciting young mayor. Spirits are up, and things are going well. But it is not easy to be a middle-school teacher anywhere, and to be a middle- school teacher in a small city that has just come out of bankruptcy is not easy. This is a valuable person to Rhode Island. Losing her adds no value to anyone. Another person who contacted me came to the United States at 10 months old. At 10 months old, they barely even knew where they were. He came from Portugal at 10 months old. Now he has a college degree in computer science. He is ready to make his contribution to our country. He has done everything right and has played by the rules, and we are loading him up with all this anxiety and peril because of a decision his parents made when he was 10 months old. You can't go out, as I said, and buy a sofa on the installment plan at 8 years old. Yet we are trying to penalize these kids. It makes no sense at all. It doesn't even make economic sense. The studies I have seen show that disrupting the lives of these 800,000 Dreamer kids--90 percent of whom are in the workforce--would reduce the U.S. GDP by $460 billion over the next decade. They are making a serious contribution here. In Rhode Island, the delta is about $200 million in annual State GDP between having the Dream Act pass and losing the DACA kids. We would stand to gain as much as $150 million in annual GDP if the Dream Act passes, and ending DACA will result in an annual loss of $60 million to our GDP. So just in my small State, there is $200 million in economic result annually from solving this problem in a way that is humane and consistent with the way we treat children in virtually every other element of the law. Sadly, a lot of this is twisted up in the continued fight over immigration, which the Senate really tried to solve. I am on the Judiciary Committee. Senator Durbin was on the Judiciary Committee at the time. Under Chairman Leahy's leadership, we went through hundreds of amendments and we took dozens of votes. Some 90 amendments were incorporated into the bill. It came out of the Judiciary Committee by a bipartisan vote of 13 to 5. It came on to the Senate floor, where there were amendments. There actually was some regular order. Hundreds of amendments were considered, and the final bill passed on June 27 by 68 to 32. Then our bipartisan Senate bill went over to the House, where the Speaker of the House refused even to bring it up--no hearing, no vote, nothing. They just froze it out. So there is a long history of why we are here today, but the price should not be paid by these kids, not when the original problem was something that was done when they were children--10 months old. President Lincoln talked about ``the better angels of our nature.'' Let's show these kids the better angels of our nature. Let's do something decent, something bipartisan, something that is right, and let's do it soon. 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. Mr. President, I am here now for the 190th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech to talk about an issue that falls at the intersection of climate change and jobs and consumer power and protection. You would think that a policy that simultaneously reduces the carbon emissions responsible for climate change and boosts American industrial competitiveness and puts thousands of dollars back into the pockets of American consumers would be pretty universally popular. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. The corporate average fuel economy standards, known as the CAFE standards, set a minimum threshold for the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks that are sold in the United States. In 2011, the major automakers here in America--Ford, GM, and the others--enthusiastically endorsed voluntary new fuel efficiency standards which would gradually increase the fuel economy for their cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon on average by 2025. Think about that for a second. In 2011, average fuel economy for these vehicles was stuck below 30 miles per gallon. The CAFE standards hadn't budged in years, and as a result, our automakers had stopped innovating to make cars more fuel efficient. They didn't have to make them more fuel efficient. And when gas prices soared in the mid-2000s, it was consumers who were on the hook. Today, thanks to the voluntary agreement that was reached by the automakers, the CAFE standard is presently over 40 miles per gallon for cars and over 30 miles per gallon for light trucks. Consumers have already saved $42 billion at the pump because of those increased fuel economy standards. Consumers who purchase a new car in 2025, on average, will save about $8,000 on gas over the lifetime of that car because of those new fuel economy standards. Of course, it is not just the consumers who win under the new CAFE standards; the environment also wins. Already the American auto fleet's increased average fuel economy has resulted in 195 million fewer metric tons of carbon emissions, and, of course, with the carbon emissions come all the rest of the pollution out of a car's tailpipe, so it is a big environmental benefit. Over the life of the CAFE standards program, total carbon emissions reductions should total 6 billion metric tons. This is huge because transportation is now the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and carbon emissions from cars and light trucks account for almost one-sixth of the Nation's total. If we are to be successful in keeping the average global temperature increase under 2 degrees Celsius--the upper bound, beyond which scientists tell us the consequences of climate change will likely be irreversible--then we have to significantly reduce our auto emissions. That is the target of the Paris climate agreement, which is represented here in this graph, from business as usual here, to all of the carbon emissions savings and efficiencies necessary to reach our Paris goal right here. Of all of this--power sector, industrial sector, efficiencies, home sector--all of it--this gold wedge right here represents the piece of it that we achieve by meeting these CAFE standards. So it is pretty important to meet those standards if we are going to hit the Paris climate goals, and it is pretty important to hit the Paris climate goals if we don't want to condemn our children and grandchildren to a very hazardous future. Here is what is strange. The exact same set of industry players who voluntarily signed onto and supported the stronger fuel efficiency standards just 4 years ago through their trade association are now working hand in hand with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt--when something bad is happening for the environment, you can almost always find him around--to weaken them, to undo what they voluntarily agreed to and promised the American people. Following the election of Donald Trump, the Auto Alliance--the trade group that represents automakers like Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Volvo--claimed that the very same standards the automakers had voluntarily supported just a few years before now reflect what they call an ``extraordinary and premature rush to judgment.'' Shortly after Pruitt came into office, the Auto Alliance asked him to revisit the standard. By the way, just before I gave this speech, I googled ``Auto Alliance.'' I went to their website, and I hit the search engine on it. I typed in ``climate change'' and hit ``search.'' Those words ``climate change'' do not appear on the Auto Alliance's website, to give you an idea how seriously they take this problem, at least at the trade association level. So the Auto Alliance, when Pruitt came in, asked him to revisit this CAFE standard that their member companies had all agreed to. Pruitt, who, as Oklahoma's attorney general, had been notoriously compliant to industry, gladly complied. The Auto Alliance has a long history as the trailing edge of the automotive industry, opposing seat belts, opposing air bags, and opposing catalytic converters. Now, in the polluter-friendly Trump administration, it sees a tempting chance to sell more gas-guzzlers. But is that smart? Over the long term, does this risk actually consign American automakers to global irrelevance? We sell these cars in an international market, so let's look at what that international market is moving to. Countries around the world have realized that the future of the automobile lies not with the gasoline- powered internal combustion engine but with alternative sources of power--electricity or hydrogen fuel cells, for instance. By the way, I just got a Chevrolet Bolt, the all-electric car. Not only is that good for the environment, it is a wonderful car to drive. It is a fun car to drive. It is great vehicle. China, the world's largest car market, recently announced that by 2025, 20 percent of new cars sold there must run on alternative fuels, and it is on its way to an eventual total ban of the sale of gasoline and diesel-powered cars. That is where the biggest car market in the world is headed. The European Union is the world's third largest car market. The Netherlands has announced that starting in 2030, all cars sold must be emissions-free. Belgium is considering a similar measure. France and the United Kingdom will ban sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered cars starting in 2040. Norway, while not a member of the EU, is very much part of that European economy. They are even more ambitious. By 2025--just over 7 years from now--all new cars sold in Norway must be emissions-free. Moving on to Japan, the world's fourth largest car market--Japan now has more electric charging stations than it has gas stations. India is the fifth largest car market. It has announced that by 2030, all new cars sold there must be electric or hybrid vehicles. So with the entire world moving toward cleaner, newer technology and innovative vehicles, why does this automotive lobby group--the Auto Alliance--suddenly want to renege on the promise its members made to the American people to raise and abide by those CAFE standards? We should hope that our business leaders would be honorable enough to keep their word. That is a fairly basic proposition. But if the future of the industry lies with ever more fuel-efficient cars--hybrids, electric cars, fuel cell cars--why would the auto industry in America be furiously lobbying the Trump administration to go backward? Breaking your word to go backward doesn't seem to make sense, even from a business point of view. Electric vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles represent the future of the auto industry. China and other countries get this. The Chinese are trying to poach our electrical engineers to develop their automotive industry so that it can one day beat ours. Meanwhile, executives at our automakers are scheming with Pruitt to head back to the past, to get out of the promise that they made to build more innovative, fuel-efficient cars. Investing in the technologies of the future will help ensure that the electric vehicle revolution, which is on our doorstep, doesn't leave America behind, doesn't leave American innovators behind, doesn't leave American workers behind, and doesn't leave American automakers behind. A midterm review of these CAFE standards found that the automakers already have the technology to meet the new standard and that the new standard will save money for their customers. It is to the benefit of their customers to keep going with the CAFE standards they agreed to. An independent analysis by the nonprofit organization CERES found that the CAFE standards provide automakers and their suppliers the certainty they need to increase investment in the cleaner technologies that are necessary for the long-term health of the industry, and with that certainty that leads to increased investment, the increased investment leads to jobs. This ought to be a no-brainer. A policy that protects consumers and the environment while promoting innovation and making American companies more competitive for the global market should be something we can all agree on. But there is also a simpler, more old-fashioned principle at stake here: Keep your word. Ford, GM, and the others told the American public that they would compete for car buyers' business by delivering quality, energy- efficient vehicles. That is what they told the American public, and they said it voluntarily. This wasn't forced down their throats through a regulatory proceeding; this was a voluntary agreement that they signed up for and were enthusiastic about at the time. They should keep their word. Why is that asking too much of American corporate leadership? Keep your word. How basic a principle is that? They should stop their trade association lobbying to water down the CAFE standards promises that they made. It is a recurring problem around here, as many of us have noticed, that the trade association is usually on the trailing edge of the industry; it is like the worst voice of the industry. That is surely the case here, where the trade association for our American automakers is trying to get them to set it up so they will break their word to the American people about a promise that they made--a very simple one, which the technology is already there to achieve. Even if you don't care one whit about climate change, even if you laugh that off, even if you go down the Trump road that it is a Chinese hoax, we still ought to be honoring those CAFE standards for American jobs, for American ingenuity, and for American innovation. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. On a sunny day.