Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for my 189th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech to discuss the Republican tax bill. Who knew? Folks watching today's debate from home are probably wondering what the tax bill has to do with climate change. That is a good question. They might also ask, as I do, why the tax bill includes massive giveaways to fossil fuel producers or what opening up precious wilderness to oil drilling has to do with tax reform. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said: ``We need a simpler tax code that puts more money back into the pockets of workers and families.'' Republicans, he said, want to create ``a fairer, more predictable system for taxpayers across the country.'' Their tax plan is none of those things. Its benefits are weighted heavily to big corporations, not workers and families. The corporate tax cuts are permanent, while the modest breaks for some workers disappear after a few years. What is fair or predictable about that? The chairman also said: I want a bipartisan process that renders a bipartisan result. . . . I think we need a vigorous and open debate in the Senate, which, in my view, should include a full process in committee and regular order on the Senate floor. We got none of that. Republicans have rammed this bill through, using every procedural and parliamentary trick at their disposal, as a purely partisan measure, in the dead of night, producing amendments in handwritten chicken scratch in the margins of the bill at the last minute. If we were to ask middle-class families their top priorities for fixing our tax system, I don't think very many would say: You know, we really need to let oil companies pump crude in an Alaskan wildlife refuge. But that is what they do. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1960 to preserve ``unique wildlife, wilderness, and recreational values.'' It now encompasses almost 20 million acres, with around 8-million acres designated as wilderness. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages the refuge, which is roadless, trailless, and represents the best of wild Alaska in a world where wilderness is increasingly scarce and vanishing far too fast. The Republican tax bill opens the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain to the oil drillers. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development does little to provide energy security. The oil-producing potential of the area is estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to be, at a maximum, around 12 billion barrels total of recoverable oil. In 2016, the United States consumed 7.2 billion barrels of petroleum products just in that year. So all of the oil we get from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which will take decades, represents fewer than 2 years of current consumption, and that is according to the most optimistic estimate. The budget resolution required that this venture raise $1 billion over 10 years. Republicans need that $1 billion to fund the big tax cuts they are giving out to the wealthy and to big corporations. When the numbers were finally crunched, though, drilling in that Arctic coastal plain couldn't produce those numbers. Did this reality dissuade my Republican colleagues? No. Instead, they have proposed to make up the difference by selling off 7 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the United States' emergency supply of crude oil, which actually does help guarantee our energy security. They want to sell reserve oil to fund those cuts for the wealthy and the big corporations. An auction last week of oil and gas leases in another part of Northern Alaska bodes ill for Republican hopes about drilling in the wilderness preserve. On 900 tracts of land offered up to oil and gas companies, the Bureau of Land Management fielded just seven bids--900 tracts of land, 7 bids. Why is that? For one thing, low prices for crude oil make the prospect of exploring undeveloped Alaskan wilderness less appealing. In general, current industry appetite for high-risk ``frontier'' exploration is very low, observed an energy analysis at Raymond James & Associates. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ``would suffer from much the same thing.'' A second problem is that oil companies are likely overstating their achievable existing reserves already. They will have to leave a lot in the ground of what they are now claiming as reserves. Buying more when you cannot sell what you already have is not a great strategy. Low-cost renewables and excess supply will further drive oil prices down and down if the laws of supply and demand hold true. This may be one reason the World Bank just announced in this new story, dated 2 days ago, that it will end its financial support for oil and gas exploration within the next 2 years. It is in response to the growing threat that is posed by climate change. That is where they are going. We are going the wrong way. The sad irony of Arctic drilling is that the American Arctic will feel the effects of burning fossil fuels most severely. The U.S. Global Change Research Program's ``Climate Science Special Report,'' authored by scientists and experts from top universities and across the Federal Government, found that while all regions of the United States will see significant warming by the end of the century, Alaska is expected to take the hardest hit--potentially over 12 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2100, which is under the high-emission scenario shown down here at the bottom right. The northern edge of Alaska, including the historic whale-hunting village of Utqiagvik--and please forgive me, the people of Utqiagvik, for mangling the village's pronunciation--could see temperature increases of 18 degrees Fahrenheit. This village, which is only about 300 miles west of the area in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge targeted for oil and gas development, is already seeing its coastlines overrun by rising seas, its permafrost melting beneath its buildings, and its beaches washing out to sea in strong winter storms as the protective shoreline sea ice forms later and later each year. Here is another news flash from Utqiagvik: 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a weather station in America's northernmost city of Utqiagvik has been collecting temperature data since the 1920s. Just recently, the average temperature went so off the chart at the weather station there that the instrumentation shut down the recording because the algorithm that monitored this figured that something must have gone wrong with the instrumentation because the numbers were so out of whack. The numbers were not out of whack. It was actually very real climate change that changed the environment and sent that signal that blew through the algorithm that the scientists had set up. But, in this building, in this room, the warnings from our best scientists about the consequences of our carbon emissions just don't count. The hyped economics about oil drilling don't count here. The weird budgetary jujitsu required to shoehorn this environmental hit into a tax bill doesn't matter here. What matters here is that the oil companies want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and so Republicans are making it happen. Republicans claim to be cleaning up the Tax Code, but their so-called tax reform leaves in place most of the oil and tax giveaways that have benefited that industry for decades. The Big Oil giants, like BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, have enjoyed nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past 10 years. Yes, let's rush to their assistance. Never mind the beleaguered American families, many of whom will see taxes go up from this bill. Let's rush to the defense of those companies with $1 trillion in profits over the past 10 years. They continue to benefit from multibillion-dollar tax subsidies. I am proud to have repeatedly cosponsored Senator Menendez's bill that would close the loopholes for the Big Oil giants, saving $22 billion for taxpayers and debt holders over the next decade. The Republican bill not only leaves most of the old loopholes in place, but it offers new giveaways to the oil and gas industries. A last-minute change scribbled in during the Senate vote-arama will allow traded oil and gas partnerships to use the so-called passthrough loophole that the Republicans claim is designed to help small businesses. While the Republican tax plan boosts the fossil fuel polluters with this new tax gift, it singles out renewable energy to undermine those jobs. The way this works is that, under the historic bipartisan agreement that many of us worked on in 2015, developers of new wind energy were given a period in which tax credits for projects for which construction begins by the end of 2019 would be protected. There was a bargain struck in this body. We came together, and we agreed on a bipartisan result. This tax bill breaks that deal and breaks that result for wind and for solar. For wind, it was until the end of 2019. For solar, it was through 2021. These tax credits have been vital to the growth of the renewable industry across the country. It has grown in red States and in blue States. In fact, the five States that get the largest percentage of their electricity from wind and that have all of those wind energy jobs are Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. Texas produces the most wind power of any State. The Republican tax bill is likely to upend the progress that we have made on renewables, disrupt ongoing projects, and ruin those jobs--all with clever provisions, the trick being to render those renewable tax credits that we bargained for practically valueless. Renewable developers don't usually turn a profit in the early years. So they don't have taxes against which to apply the tax credits. They sell the tax credits to others, and they use the revenue from selling the tax credits to support those wind and solar investments. The clever fossil fuel trick in the Senate bill--specifically, the corporate AMT and base erosion so-called provisions--would make these credits worthless to the businesses that have been buying them. With no buyers for the tax credits, funds for new wind and solar projects will dry up. There is even more nonsense in the House bill that takes direct aim at the wind and solar credits, including changing the rules on how projects would qualify for the credits, not just in the future but also retroactively. They go back to undo deals that have already been done. So $20 billion in projects have frozen up, developers say, just from the threat of these changes. Renewable energy industry organizations, including the American Wind Energy Association, the American Council on Renewable Energy, the American Conservation Coalition, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, the Conservative Energy Network, and Conservatives for Clean Energy, all warn that the tax bill will jeopardize growth and jobs in wind and solar projects. ``If these provisions are retained,'' the groups wrote to Senators, ``they will result in broad instability and uncertainty for businesses and investors across many sectors, including the clean energy sector.'' Gosh, I hope my Republican friends will listen to our wind and solar producers, particularly the ones in their home States. I hope they will listen to the people who are counting on the jobs of those $20 billion in projects that have now been put on the shelf. I hope they will listen to American taxpayers, who are sick of midnight-deal corporate welfare like this. If they do listen, they can scrap this terrible bill. They can sit down and work with Democrats. It would be a novelty, but we would welcome it. We could have a bipartisan tax bill that works for the middle class, for the economy, and for the environment, but with the oil and gas industry calling the shots around here, fat chance of that. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. On a sunny day.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to a great friend and Rhode Islander, former general treasurer Paul J. Tavares. Paul and I ran for statewide office together in 1998. Fortunately, both of us won. Paul's campaign motto was ``No tricks, no gimmicks, just a Treasurer who will do what is right.'' Paul had been a great State senator, and Rhode Islanders believed him--and he justified their faith. Paul chalked up a strong record of accomplishment in the treasurer's office. Among his most notable achievements was the CollegeBoundfund, Rhode Island's 529 college savings program, one of the strongest such programs in the Nation. We worked together on reforming a broken crime victims' fund. When he retired after two terms, Paul had kept his promise as treasurer to leave the office in better shape than he found it. In 2012, the Providence Housing Authority was in disarray and plagued by scandals. Providence's mayor, Angel Taveras, asked Paul to take over as interim executive director and clean up the mess. Paul promised he would. He quickly turned the agency around and ran it so well that city and housing authority officials convinced him to stay on. Paul recently told his colleagues in city government that it was time for him to go, and he will retire at the end of this year. In his public life, Paul has been appointed to the East Providence School Committee; elected to the East Providence City Council, the Rhode Island Senate, and the office of the general treasurer; and appointed executive director of the East Providence and Providence housing authorities. In addition, Paul has given himself tirelessly to fraternal and charitable service in Rhode Island and is a loving father and husband. Someone once said there are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. Paul made things happen, and his generosity and selflessness improved the lives of many Rhode Islanders. As Paul retires from public service--once again--I thank him for being part of my life and for doing so much for our Ocean State. Paul fulfilled his pledge: There were no tricks, no gimmicks; just a public servant who did what was right. More importantly, Paul lives his life the same way: no tricks, no gimmicks, just a man who does what is right. He never took himself too seriously, never let positions of power go to his head, and never forgot where he came from. He is an example to me of doing it right. Rhode Island is fortunate to have devoted, energetic, and generous citizens like Paul Tavares. Godspeed, my friend.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, Moody's Investors Service is one of America's credit rating agencies. It is not an environmental organization. It doesn't have any activity in the debate over climate change. That is not what it does. What Moody's does is to analyze the ability of companies and government agencies that issue debt to meet those debt obligations. These Moody's ratings matter because they determine the interest rates that States, counties, municipalities, and companies must pay. There was some interesting news last week. Moody's declared it is time for cities, counties, and States along our coasts--Alaska is an example of a State with a lot of coast--to wake up to the growing risk of climate change. Moody's has adopted credit indicators ``to assess the exposure and overall susceptibility of U.S. States to the physical effects of climate change.'' The managing director said this: What we want people to realize is: If you're exposed, we know that. We're going to ask questions about what you're doing to mitigate that exposure. Moody's looked particularly at coasts and at the share of a State's economic activity generated by its coasts and coastal communities. It counts the amount of homes built on flood plains, and the risk of extreme weather damage in that State or community as a share of the State's economy. ``That is taken into your credit ratings,'' Moody's said. It makes sense, obviously. Communities that face rising seas that face heavier storms, that face increased flood damage will bear greater costs of mitigation and repair. If property values drop as a result, so does revenue. Moody's realizes that investors need to take that information into account in analyzing bonds. So it is going into the Moody's ratings. Think about that. The truth of climate science has gone beyond the warnings of scientists, which we ought to have heeded a long time ago. You have outstanding scientists at the University of Alaska who are studying ocean acidification, sea level changes, all of that--and we probably would have listened to those scientists but for the influence of the fossil fuel industry here. The truth of climate science has gone beyond the warnings of government agencies, national laboratories, and our military services--warnings which have been there for a long time and which we also ought to have heeded and probably would have but for the political influence of the fossil fuel industry. It has even gone beyond the warnings of our coastal States and communities and the coastal regulators, even beyond the warnings of the insurance and reinsurance industries--all of which we have refused to heed to placate the fossil fuel lobbyists--but now the financial referees who score credit risk are baking climate change risks into the assessment of coastal communities' credit-worthiness. Moody's is not going to assess this risk just in blue States. Coastal communities in every corner of the country--in blue States and red States, alike--are facing climate change risk to their citizens and their economies. Let's take a look at North Carolina. I visited North Carolina in 2014 to see the effects of climate change along our southeast coast. The problems I saw there bore a striking resemblance to what is happening in our shorefront towns in Rhode Island. The coastal folks who I met in North Carolina were every bit as concerned as coastal Rhode Islanders. I visited the marine science facility at Pivers Island, where scientists from Duke University, the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, East Carolina State, and NOAA are all studying sea level rise and other effects of climate change. I met with the North Carolina Coastal Federation at their coastal education center in Wilmington, where a bipartisan group was united in concern over the exposure of their coastal communities to rising seas and fiercer storms. I flew out over the Outer Banks to see where sea level rise is slowly swallowing and relocating them. The Outer Banks were formed millennia ago by the interaction of seas and sand. They are dynamic barriers that move with tides and storms. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, ``the Outer Banks, particularly the ocean side, have always been hazardous places for man.'' Nevertheless, they have become permanent homes to over 30,000 people, and they attract over $1 billion of tourist spending in that county. According to a recent comprehensive article by InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel, one beach near East Seagull Drive in Nags Head ``has been eroding at about six feet per year''--six feet per year. Rapid erosion threatens shorefront homes and brings the ocean ever closer to major roads and infrastructure. State engineers scramble to keep Outer Banks roads and bridges open and to rebuild them stronger and higher. This isn't just a North Carolina issue. This is a story familiar to many coastal communities. A Union of Concerned Scientists study reports that sea level rise is doubling the number of communities along the coast facing what the study calls ``chronic inundations and possible retreat'' in the next 20 years. GAO, which we depend on for a great many things here, recently reported that coastal areas face particularly high financial risks-- hence the Moody's decision--and that annual coastal property losses from sea level rise and increased storms would run into the billions of dollars every year in the short run, reaching over $50 billion every year by late century. Every year it will be over $50 billion in loss to coastal properties if we don't pay attention. GAO referenced a report that estimated a total of ``$5 trillion in economic costs to coastal property from climate change through 2100``-- $5 trillion in economic costs to our coastal communities. That is a story that Rhode Islanders see coming at us as well. Our barrier beach communities like Matunuck Beach and Green Hill in South Kingstown see rapid erosion. The top photo here from North Carolina shows one of the two remaining homes at East Seagull Drive in Nags Head, the site I talked about. You can see that there is an exposed septic tank where all the sand has been washed off of, and you can see that there is limited beach left. At high tide, that house is over water. On the bottom is a strikingly similar picture of houses in Green Hill, RI. This photo was taken after the April 2007 nor'easter that tore through New England. This family's septic tank is also exposed from the sand that has been removed all around it, and the pilings here are keeping the home above the water. By 2009, this home got repaired, but it had to be moved back from the seashore and up a dune bank. You can only move back so far from rising seas before you start bumping into people's property behind you. My predecessor, Senator John Chafee, who was once the chairman of our Environment and Public Works Committee, owned a family house in Matunuck, RI, where I remember swimming as a young man. The Chafee house is now completely gone, lost to rising seas. Rhode Island's coast took a real lashing in 2012's Superstorm Sandy. These images are from Matunuck, where Sandy's storm surge wiped away beaches and exposed shorefront houses to the raw power of the sea. The historic Browning Cottages up here were family homes for generations. Two of those historic homes had to be demolished. The third could be relocated inland. You can see from these shoreline maps the retreat of the shore to sea level rise and what it has done to these beachfront communities. Here in Nags Head, these little red squares are all where houses used to be that the sea moved in on, and they couldn't move backward. They had to be demolished and moved away. Only two remain--these two. As you can see by the old shorelines, not that long ago coastal homes had yards of beach in front of them that is now lost. Storms, as well as sea level rise, can change all of that. If you look at this Rhode Island map, you can see the steady loss of beach along this shore. But it tells two stories. Not only is it the story of the gradual loss of beach to rising seas, but it is also the story of the sudden devastation that a storm can wreak. This red line is how far the beach got pushed back in the hurricane of 1938. One big storm just scoured that beach clean. Now we are back behind that. Here is the 2014 line in blue. If you look at this site on Google right now, you can see that it has gone even further back. Along Matunuck and the coastline, this is an establishment called the Ocean Mist. You can have a great time in the Ocean Mist. It is a great place. Not very long ago, you could walk out the front of the Ocean Mist and down onto the beach, and you could walk dozens of yards across beach where people play volleyball and took the sun and hung out before they got to the sea. This is the Ocean Mist today. It has had to be propped up on pilings as the sea comes underneath it. North Carolina and the Federal Government are having to spend millions of dollar replenishing the Outer Banks' beaches. The State now has to renourish more than 100 miles of beach compared to just a dozen miles it worried about a few decades ago. Western Carolina University has tallied up more than $300 million spent by the State on beach nourishment from 2007 to 2016. Another $64 million is expected to be spent by local government near Nags Head this year and $48 million more in 2018. Nationwide, we spend about $3.1 billion on beach nourishment. EcoRI reports that Rhode Island lost about 90,000 cubic yards of beach sand just from Superstorm Sandy. Over $3 million of Federal funding had to be used to help rebuild those Matunuck beaches after the storm. Beach nourishment, seawalls, bulkheads, and rock armaments--you name it--are all temporary stopgaps that must eventually yield to rising seas. As this happens, there will be a constant drain out of local treasuries as communities have to spend more and more to keep up with the rising seas, and there will be a gradual loss of revenue into local treasuries as valuable oceanfront properties that pay local property taxes are lost. That is why Moody's is starting to score this issue in coastal communities. One solution that coastal communities can come up with is to ignore this. In 2010, North Carolina's Coastal Resource Commission Science Panel on coastal hazards recommended that a sea level rise of 1 meter-- 39 inches--be adopted as the amount of anticipated rise by 2100. That was back in 2010. Since then, data compiled and analyzed by NOAA shows that that number was way too low, that the worst case potential for sea level rise on those shores is about twice that--2 meters of sea level rise. Here is what the Raleigh News & Observer reported: The State ``adopted a 30-year forecast that figures the rise at 8 inches.'' The odds of that coming true are virtually nil. Ask Moody's how credible that estimate is in face of the evidence. Moody's is going to be going there and looking at this stuff, and they are not going to buy phony-baloney assertions that you are only going to see 8 inches of sea level rise when NOAA is predicting 2 meters. They are going to be rated on not being ready because they are not responding to the obvious science. Climate denial works in politics because of the massive political influence of the fossil fuel industry, but it really is not going to matter to Moody's assessors. In Rhode Island, our Coastal Resources Management Council is now planning for a worst case scenario of 9 to 12 vertical feet of sea level rise along our shores by the end of the century--9 to 12 vertical feet. Colleagues may want me to laugh that off and say: No, it is too inconvenient to talk about that; it really ticks off our fossil fuel friends. I will never, ever ignore this. I can't ignore this, and we as a body should not ignore this. No amount of beach nourishment will protect Rhode Island from that. At 10 feet, we will lose 36 square miles of extremely valuable shorefront land--people's homes, people's businesses, the marinas and fishing piers that people depend on. That is 36 square miles lost because we can't say no to the fossil fuel industry around here. We must act on climate change now to give coastal States any chance to avoid these worst case scenarios. We have to help coastal communities plan for the changes we can't avoid. A recent report from Texas A&M and Rice University researchers highlights what they called--get this--the ``growing disconnect between the 100-year FEMA floodplain and the location of actual flood losses'' and, again, the ``growing consensus over the inability of the FEMA- derived floodplains to capture actual loss.'' On average, about a quarter of insured flood losses occur outside the map's flood plains, and in some cases, more than 50 percent of flood losses occur outside of what the maps said would be flooded areas. With bad mapping, we are leaving local communities at a terrible handicap. We go back to that GAO report quantifying those coastal risks. It notes: ``Given the potential magnitude of climate change and the lead time needed to adapt, preparing for these impacts now may reduce the need for more costly steps in the decades to come.'' But it also points out that ``the Federal Government does not have governmentwide strategic planning efforts in place to manage what it called ``significant climate risks before they become Federal fiscal exposures.'' The Federal Government does not have governmentwide strategic planning efforts in place. We have to give local communities better support. Bad maps and no planning is not support. Our coastal homes, our coastal economies, and our coastal heritage are all at stake, and bad maps and no planning aren't meeting those responsibilities. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in this season of Thanksgiving, let me say that I am thankful, as I rise for my 187th ``Time to Wake Up'' address, for the spirit of commitment and innovation that this great Nation devotes to tackling the challenge of climate change, even with this President. The United States now is alone in the world as the only Nation not committed to the historic Paris Agreement, but at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Germany, I saw firsthand that Americans are still committed to climate action. Corporate leaders like Mars, Microsoft, Facebook, and Walmart were there to discuss the role American corporations can take on climate change. American Governors, mayors, universities, and many other corporations all brought the same message to Bonn; that notwithstanding the corrupted Trump administration, America is still in. Senators Cardin, Markey, Schatz, Merkley, and I sent the message that most of our constituents and the majority of the American people believe that climate change is a serious threat to our country and the planet and that American action and leadership is necessary. An entire day was dedicated to the changes we are seeing in the world's oceans. This is where the industry liars and climate deniers get stumped. The oceans bear the brunt of our carbon pollution. Sea levels are rising, waters are warming, and seas are acidifying. These undeniable measurements have no answer from the climate denial apparatus, so the denial apparatus just chooses to ignore the oceans, but we can't ignore the oceans, certainly not in coastal States. The reality of ocean climate change hits home along our coasts: Warming waters move our fisheries around, sea level rise erodes our shores, and we must prepare for more frequent and intense hurricanes and storms. The Trump administration is more or less completely crooked on this subject, but even they had to throw in the towel and release without amendment the recent U.S. ``Climate Science Special Report.'' They had no scientific rebuttal--none--to the dozen Federal Agencies and Departments that assembled the latest and best understanding of the effects of climate change on the United States. They couldn't rebut it. They chose to ignore it. Will that report affect this administration's industry-paid climate policies? Of course not. Those policies are bought and paid for. But it is worth looking at the ``Climate Science Special Report.'' This report gave special attention to storms. The report says: For Atlantic-- That is, the ocean off my home State of Rhode Island-- and eastern North Pacific-- That is, the ocean off our western coast-- and eastern North Pacific typhoons, increases are projected in precipitation rates and intensity. The frequency of the most intense of these storms is projected to increase. The report continues: Assuming storm characteristics do not change, sea level rise will increase the frequency and extent of extreme flooding associated with coastal storms, such as hurricanes and nor'easters. Extreme flooding matters quite a lot in Rhode Island. The report continues: A projected increase in the intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic could increase the probability of extreme flooding along most of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast states beyond what would be projected based solely on relative sea level rise. It is going to happen just from projected sea level rise. This means that extreme flooding could exceed those predictions because of storm activity. Humans are driving these changes, the report says, not the alternative explanation for these changes offered by the climate deniers. Oh, wait; that is right. They have no alternative explanation. They have nothing. They have nothing but industry-funded denial. There is no alternative explanation to what the scientists say, which is actually consistent with the finding of the ``Climate Science Special Report'' that there is ``no convincing alternative explanation.'' That is not the only report. Last year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report titled ``Effects of Climate Change and Coastal Development on U.S. Hurricane Damage: Implications for the Federal Budget.'' That report projected that by 2075, annual damage from hurricanes will increase by $120 billion as coastal populations increase, sea levels rise, and U.S. landfalls of strong hurricanes become more frequent. That is the prediction. Of that increase, around 45 percent can already be clearly attributed to climate change. In a presentation from early November, CBO summarized: Expected damage from hurricanes will grow more quickly than

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was very pleased to be here for the remarks of my colleagues and friends, and I would just respond by saying that we are all for growth. We are all for growth of the American economy. I think, on this side, we are just a little bit less sure that you grow the economy by growing the share of the economy that goes to the superrich and to big corporations or that you grow the economy by growing benefits to corporations that move jobs from America overseas, and I am pretty confident that on our side we don't believe the solution to the deficit is a tax bill that raises the deficit.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here to respond to the nomination of Steven Bradbury for a senior legal position in the U.S. Department of Transportation. I have had some experience with Mr. Bradbury, and in my experience, he is disqualified from serving in a legal government position of trust, such as he has been nominated for. The Bush administration pursued a policy of detainee mistreatment that since has been acknowledged to include torture of detainees. The process that got the United States of America into a place where it was torturing detainees was a legal process that was full of mistakes and failures by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice-- by Mr. Bybee, by Mr. Yoo, and, following them, by Mr. Bradbury. Let's start with just a word on the Office of Legal Counsel. Within the Department of Justice, the Office of Legal Counsel is seen as being the best of the best. The Department of Justice prides itself on attracting, training, and perfecting the skills of the best lawyers in America. As a U.S. Attorney, I had the privilege of serving with a lot of absolutely spectacularly skilled lawyers and trial advocates just in the small Rhode Island U.S. attorney's office and working with others from the Department of Justice, and I have a very, very high opinion of Department of Justice lawyers and Department of Justice lawyering. But even within the expectation that the Department of Justice lawyering will be first rate, the Office of Legal Counsel is supposed to be a cut above. These are people who go into that office with the possibility that they will become U.S. Supreme Court Justices. These are people who come out of clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court--one of the highest academic achievements a law student can have--and end up joining the Office of Legal Counsel. The Office of Legal Counsel ought to be held to a very high standard. What happened when the Office of Legal Counsel was asked to take a look at the CIA torture program in the Bush administration was that it fell down or rolled over in virtually every respect. The factual investigation into what the CIA was actually doing was weak and ineffectual. The legal investigation into the past, into precedents, was--as I said in previous speeches at the time--fire-the-associate quality legal work. It is particularly bad coming from the Office of Legal Counsel because the Office of Legal Counsel is supposed to be the best of the best. It is hard to say that these guys failed having tried their best. They just weren't smart enough to figure it out. They just weren't working hard enough. They just didn't know enough about legal research or scholarship. So, you know, nice try but you blew it, but no harm in it because we don't expect much of you to begin with. That is certainly not the case with OLC. The array of memos that the OLC wrote--the Bybee, Yoo, and Bradbury memos--were calamitous failures of historical and legal research. For one thing, they failed to recognize and report that there had been prosecutions of Japanese military officers after World War II for torturing American soldiers. One of the techniques of torture for which those Japanese soldiers were prosecuted and convicted as torturers, as war criminals, was the use of the waterboard. You may be able to say that there were some different justifications. You may be able to say that there were some different circumstances, but to not even mention that, to not even do the research to find out that had taken place is a pretty bad legal failing. One of the reasons was that they kept it so close hold that they didn't let military lawyers know what they were doing. One could argue that there is consciousness of guilt there, that they didn't want other lawyers to know what they were doing because they knew that what they were doing was shoddy legal work and they didn't want to be caught out in it. In fact, ultimately, a lot of those opinions were withdrawn. The fact of the matter is that it was a failure to properly inform the President of the United States about this history of our country actually prosecuting Japanese soldiers for the type of conduct that the Department of Justice was approving that the CIA engage in. It wasn't just prosecutions of Japanese soldiers by American military tribunals. There were also prosecutions of American soldiers in the Philippines by courts-marshal for torture. Guess what. The conduct involved was waterboarding. Again, perhaps you can say that there were some differences, that there were some distinctions, but the fact is, in memo after memo-- including the wrapup memo that Bradbury wrote--that was not discussed. It was not disclosed, and it was not discussed. You may say: Well, you know, it is asking an awful lot of the Office of Legal Counsel to go and look at history, to go and look at the practice of our military in prosecuting adversary officers or in prosecuting our own soldiers. After all, we are just the Department of Justice. That is the Department of Defense. What could we possibly learn from that? Well, obviously, that would be wrong and, obviously, that would be a mistake, particularly when you look across that boundary to military law and see these examples right on point that they did not bother to discuss or disclose. Then, it gets better still. The OLC memos failed to disclose prosecutions by the Department of Justice for waterboarding. This is not some case that never got reported someplace, that was just a trial, and you would have to look deep into your own records to try to find out what took place--perhaps, without a reported decision, just a verdict from the jury. This was a case that was extensively documented with writings by the trial court judge, a U.S. district judge in the State of Texas, that went up on appeal to the circuit court of appeals, and the U.S. circuit court of appeals wrote a decision on appeal of the district court's decision. What were the facts? The facts were that there was a local sheriff. His last name was Lee. So the case was named United States v. Lee. Mr. Lee had gone into the business of waterboarding prisoners--strapping them in a chair, tipping them back, and pouring water over their faces to give the illusion of drowning. The court's decision over and over describes this conduct as torture. If you use legal search tools and look for the words ``water'' and ``torture,'' United States v. Lee comes up, and it is a circuit court of appeals decision. How could they miss it? There are only two explanations that I can come up with. One is that they really did a shoddy job of workmanship, that they didn't bother to do basic legal research. That is why I have described this in the past as fire-the-associate quality work. If you haven't done the basic legal research to determine what the cases are on point on the question of whether the use of water on bound prisoners is torture, you haven't done much of a good job. The problem is that scenario is actually the best case scenario. The best case scenario is that they did such slipshod work at the Office of Legal Counsel that they didn't find a U.S. circuit court of appeals decision on point to the question upon which the OLC was advising the President of the United States. That is the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that they did find it and decided not to talk about it in their memos because you can read United States v. Lee and put it against those OLC memos, and I think any rational reader will find them impossible to correlate. There is a real possibility that the Office of Legal Counsel decided that, because Cheney had decided on this torture program and because they were embarked on this torture program, they were going to have to deliver the legal opinion that allowed it to continue. If it meant ignoring a case that proved their opinion wrong, they were going to ignore the case, and they were going to go ahead with the opinion. As you can imagine, that is considerably worse than simply not finding the case. We have never had a very good description of how this all came out. There was an OPR report from the Department of Justice that heaped condemnation on the various players here, but ultimately this question of what the obligation is of an OLC lawyer to fairly disclose what the relevant case law is in writing an OLC opinion was never reached. It was never reached because, at the end of this long and arduous process, the Department of Justice made, I think, a terrible decision. There is a rule of professional conduct that is called the rule of candor to the tribunal. If you are a lawyer and you are going before a judge, you have an obligation to state the law fairly and accurately to the judge. If you are not being truthful to the judge about what the law is, that is a violation of professional conduct for which lawyers can be sanctioned. It applies to lawyers across the board. A hard- working lawyer with six or seven files under his arms, piling into a State district court to maybe run through three or four cases in that day before a busy judge, has the obligation of candor, and it includes an obligation to do adequate research, to actually have looked up the case law and to disclose it to the judge so that you are not misleading the court about the state of the law. That applies to lawyers across the country. The busiest, most distracted local lawyer and just a guy with a practice, maybe in a strip mall, who buzzes into court with a bunch of files under his arms--that lawyer is under that same obligation. Yet the Office of Legal Counsel--this high temple of lawyering, this ``best of the best'' of the Department of Justice--made the decision that those lawyers, in their providing advice to the President of the United States, did not have the same obligation of candor that an ordinary, day-to-day, working lawyer in a local courthouse had to that local judge. I believe that rule has since been reversed, and it is very good that it has been reversed because I think the President of the United States is entitled to at least the level of candor from these ``best of the best'' lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel that a local judge is from the hard-working, overburdened, day-to-day lawyers who appear in front of him or her. That is not what the President got, not from this Office of Legal Counsel, not from Steve Bradbury. Again, I don't know that we will ever know because that decision by the Department put to an end the investigation of the question of whether this failure amounted to professional malpractice by the OLC lawyers, but the options aren't great. These lawyers either did not do the work to discover the military tribunals, the courts-martial, and the Texas criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice, or, worse yet, they did discover those things and deliberately withheld that information so that they could give the opinion they thought they were supposed to give. It is about the worst thing a lawyer in that position could do, and until that is cleared up, I could not possibly support the nomination of Steven Bradbury to any position of trust in the Government of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to a great Rhode Islander, LTC Michael Manning of the Rhode Island National Guard. My office, along with the rest of the Rhode Island congressional delegation, has worked closely with Lieutenant Colonel Manning for several years in his capacity as the Rhode Island National Guard legislative liaison. Throughout this time, he has been of great assistance to my office and has served in this position with great honor, dedication, and effectiveness. This Saturday, November 18, the Rhode Island National Guard Recruiting and Retention Battalion change of command ceremony will take place at Camp Fogarty in East Greenwich, RI. The incoming commander will be Lieutenant Colonel Manning. This ceremony represents the formal transfer of authority and responsibility of the Recruiting and Retention Battalion. The event will include a passing of the unit colors from one officer to another, symbolizing continued leadership, trust, and allegiance to the soldiers in the unit. Lieutenant Colonel Manning is a distinguished military graduate of Providence College's ROTC class of 1997. His first assignment was with 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, forward deployed to the Republic of Germany. In June 1999, he deployed to Kosovo in support of Operation Joint Guardian II. While in Kosovo, Lieutenant Colonel Manning was reassigned to E Troop, 4th U.S. Cavalry as a brigade reconnaissance troop leader for Task Force Falcon. In February 2002, after joining the Rhode Island Army National Guard, he was appointed commander of the 173rd Infantry Detachment Long Range Surveillance. The 173rd LRS was mobilized in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III from July 2004 through November 2005. Lieutenant Colonel Manning deployed with Special Operations Detachment Global in support of Operation Enduring Freedom Caribbean and Central America in 2008 through 2009, assigned to Special Operations Command South. While there, he served as the deputy chief for the Regional Engagement Branch, responsible for the Caribbean and Central America. In 2010, he graduated with distinction from the College of Naval Command and Staff at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI, with a master of arts in national security and strategic studies. In 2013, Lieutenant Colonel Manning mobilized and deployed once again with the Special Operations Detachment Global, where he served in the capacity of senior special operations to the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Lieutenant Colonel Manning has also served as an assistant professor of military science at Providence College, State Partnership Program coordinator, legislative liaison, operations officer for Special Operations Detachment Global, and is currently the secretary of the general staff. He is a special operations support qualified officer, senior instructor of design at the Joint Special Operations University, and recipient of numerous awards and decorations, including the Bronze Star with oakleaf cluster, Combat Infantryman's Badge, and the coveted Ranger Tab. I thank and congratulate Lieutenant Colonel Manning for his many sacrifices and achievements. In addition, I thank and congratulate his wife, Meg, his sons Michael and Jack, and his daughter Shannon for their many sacrifices and their support of the colonel. Rhode Island is fortunate to have such a committed, energetic, and selfless citizen and family. Godspeed, my friends.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it has been a sorry spectacle for Americans to witness what the polluting industries are doing, with the full connivance of the Trump administration, to the Environmental Protection Agency--an Agency that enjoys broad popularity among the American people but is obviously a thorn in the side of big polluters who make very big campaign contributions and therefore have inordinately big influence here in Congress. The creep show parade of nominees to the offices responsible for protecting the public's health at EPA is nothing short of astounding. It is an array of cranks, charlatans, hacks, lobbyists, and toadies in really unprecedented measure in the history of our country. It seems that at this point the key and only credential for appointment to the Environmental Protection Agency is that you are reliably pro-industry and reliably anti-public health. We are facing a nomination for one of these characters, whose name is William Wehrum. He was previously nominated to the EPA Office of Air and Radiation in 2006, but even back then, his record was such a scandal that the White House withdrew his nomination. Now, that was 2006. That was before Citizens United. That was before the flood of political power to the big polluting industries. Now, on this new political field, he is back, he is just as bad, and there is no hint that the Trump administration has any intention of withdrawing his nomination. He has a real problem dealing with environmental issues, and I think it relates to his record. In recent years, Mr. Wehrum has represented industry in 39 Federal appellate cases opposing cleaner air protection. He is 39 to 0 in terms of taking the side of industry against clean air protections, and 31 of those cases involved lawsuits against EPA. So he will now be defending and judging cases of the type that he brought against the EPA on behalf of industry. Again, not one of those cases argued for better clean air protections. Many of them questioned air toxic standards that had been established by EPA. Some of the lawsuits were against rules that had to be rewritten by the Obama administration when EPA failed to follow the Clean Air Act, when a rule was thrown out by the courts for failing to be true to the law. So this is not a great moment for the integrity of government in this particular case. When we asked Mr. Wehrum questions--for instance, I asked him about carbon dioxide's role in the observable effects of climate change, and he replied: ``The degree to which manmade [greenhouse gas] emissions are contributing to climate change has not been conclusively determined.'' That entire sentence hangs on one word: ``conclusively.'' So if 999 scientists said that this is indeed conclusive but you had 1 outlier--1 against 999--then you could argue that the degree to which manmade greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change has not been conclusively determined. But in the world in which Mr. Wehrum is going to be making decisions, that is not a relevant standard. That is a standard that comes from the climate-denial talking points; it is not a standard that arises from the law or from the way administrative agencies are required to review scientific evidence. The distinguished Presiding Officer was an attorney general and knows very well that the standard for getting scientific evidence admitted in a court proceeding is whether it is accurate to a reasonable degree of certainty. There is no standard that it has to be conclusive; that is an imaginary prop of the fossil fuel industry to be able to address the fact that it is virtually unanimous science against them and there are only a few payroll scientists floating around to keep it from being conclusive. To a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, are manmade greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change? Without a doubt. Indeed, NOAA and EPA have concluded that ``carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.'' That is it. And rules at an administrative agency have to pass the test of being based on substantial evidence, as the Presiding Officer knows, and not being arbitrary or capricious. In any rational world, it would be arbitrary and capricious to deny the vast weight of science because it is not 100 percent conclusive. Nobody makes decisions on that basis in real life. This, right in this individual's testimony, is a direct echo of fossil fuel industry talking points, fossil fuel industry propaganda, and it is a preview of coming attractions as to whose message he will be mouthing in a position of public responsibility. Similarly, I asked him about ozone. One of the goals of the Clean Air Act itself is to set standards for how much ozone there can be in the air. This makes a big difference to Rhode Island because Rhode Island is a downwind State from most of the industrial and powerplant emissions through the Ohio Valley, in the Midwest, and through West Virginia. We actually have ozone alert days in Rhode Island--ozone alert days, when you drive in in the morning and the drive-time radio is warning you that this is not a good day to be outside. It looks sunny. Ozone is transparent. It looks fine. It is usually warm because ozone is propagated in warm air. So on a warm, sunny day, you are driving in, it looks as if everything is fine, and you are warned that the elderly, small children, and people who have breathing difficulties or disabilities should stay indoors. That is the price Rhode Islanders are asked to pay for this ozone pollution we have to live with--stay indoors. Ozone standards have been in place at EPA for 45 years. For 45 years, EPA has regulated ozone. What did Wehrum answer when I asked him about ozone? ``I am not familiar with the current science on the health effects of ozone, so I cannot comment on your question as to the appropriate level of the standard.'' Really? He wants to run this office--the office which has been handling ozone regulation for 45 years--and he is not familiar with the current science on the health effects of ozone? I think he is quite familiar with the current science on ozone, and in this position, he is going to be looking for ways to get around that science to help the ozone-emitting clients of his private practice. I asked him about the endangerment finding. The background of the endangerment finding is this: In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that carbon pollution was, in fact, a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. They decided that in the Supreme Court, and that is now the law of the land. Then, pursuant to that Supreme Court determination, the EPA had to take a look at whether it is a dangerous pollutant. And they did. Their determination as to whether it is a dangerous pollutant is called an endangerment finding. Sure enough, EPA found that carbon dioxide being emitted by these fossil fuel plants is, in fact, a danger to present and future Americans, to this generation and to generations to come. Mr. Pruitt, who is one of the slyer rascals around out there, said in the Environment and Public Works Committee that he would not contest or seek to review the endangerment finding. There is an obvious reason why somebody who is completely in tow to the fossil fuel industry would not wish to revisit the endangerment finding; that is, because you would drop an avalanche of scientific fact on your own head. You would be obliged to put the phony little scrapes of climate denial that the fossil fuel industry funds and propagates through a whole bunch of front groups up against the real science that is agreed to by essentially every legitimate scientific organization in America, that is taught at every American State university in all 50 of our States, that has formed the basis of our Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review pointing out that climate change is a catalyst of conflict and a national security risk, and that is recognized and tracked by the National Laboratories of the United States that we fund. Up against the phony-baloney nonsense that is propagated by the fossil fuel industry, that is a rout. Of course, the last thing the fossil fuel industry wants is a fair contest in a fair and factual forum between the real science and their phony science denial. So, of course, Pruitt doesn't want to kick that fight off, and, therefore, he is now stuck with the endangerment finding. I asked Mr. Wehrum about the endangerment finding, since it is a finding related to greenhouse gases, which are subject to the Clean Air Act, which would be his responsibility in this position at EPA. He said: I currently do not have a view on the endangerment finding. I bet he had a view when he was being paid by the Rubber Manufacturers Association to consider emissions of carbon dioxide; I bet he had a view when he was being paid by the American Forest & Paper Association; and I am pretty sure he had a view when he was being paid by the American Petroleum Institute. So this new, sudden absence of a view seems improbable in the extreme. It looks like the best thing he can say to not have to admit the real science, knowing perfectly well that if he actually tried to deny it, that same avalanche of real science would fall around his head. In some respects, it is tragic that we are now in a situation in which an agency of the U.S. Government has been handed over to the polluters lock, stock, and barrel. They have been given absolute sway to drive an industry agenda through the Agency that is supposed to be protecting us. In the balance of Pruitt and all of his little minions in this creep show array of appointees, all you can expect from them is the industry point of view, as close as they can deliver it, without stepping on any of the factual or legal traps that will snap shut on them if they go a little bit too far and actually step into a forum like a courtroom or a contested proceeding where they are obliged to be under oath, where there is a prospect of discovery, and where you have to meet the proper standards for administrative rulemaking, such as based on ``substantial evidence'' or not ``arbitrary and capricious.'' There have been two recent descriptions that have come out that put the climate change problem into perspective. The first is the ``U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report,'' which is part of the ``National Climate Assessment'' that Congress mandated some years ago. The best scientists from 13 different agencies got together, and over many, many months they put together a comprehensive review of the science and of what is going on. The opening sentence is: ``The climate of the United States is strongly connected to the changing global climate.'' A little sidebar on that--what is happening on climate change in the United States is strongly connected to the change in global climate. When you dump carbon emissions into the atmosphere, it is not just our atmosphere; it is everybody's atmosphere. When China or Russia or India dump carbon emissions into the atmosphere, they are not just hurting their atmosphere; they are hurting our common atmosphere of the planet. A little trick that Administrator Pruitt has developed is--in calculating the harms of climate change--to look only at U.S. emissions and look only at U.S. effects. If you have an international problem, as our scientists say, strongly connected to the change in global climate, what happens when you look only at the American effects and look only at the American emissions? What that means is that when you are scoring the harm of climate change, you are cutting it down to a mere fraction of what actually exists. You are cutting out the harm that other nations cause to us with their emissions, scrubbing it right off the books, and you are scrubbing off the harm that our emissions do to other nations, scrubbing it right off the books. It doesn't change the harm, of course; it just tweaks the accounting with a piece of rhetorical trickery to help the fossil fuel industry not have to be accountable for the actual harm it causes. That is what we have learned to expect from the EPA--nothing about the actual harm that climate change causes but accounting trickery to try to dial the number down so that a huge majority fraction of the harm never even gets counted. ``This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely''--which is the highest level of scientific certainty--``that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid- 20th century.'' It goes on. It is not only that the evidence entirely shows ``that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause,'' but when you look at what the alternatives might be, here is what the next sentence says: ``For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.'' Not only is there an avalanche of evidence supporting the determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing the climate change we have observed, but when you look to see, well, maybe there is another explanation, there is none, zero. It does not exist. Why not? Because it has never been real--the phony science on the other side. It has always been propaganda. That is why it is featured on talk shows instead of peer-reviewed scientific publications. That is why it comes through phony industry front groups like the George C. Marshall Institute rather than real scientific organizations. We have known that for a long time. I see that another speaker has come to the floor. Let me conclude with the recent statement, just in the last few days, of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. One of the strongest voices for addressing climate change has been Pope Francis. Pope Francis not only sees it as a real problem for our planet and for our care of God's creation, but he also sees it as a justice issue, as a moral issue. The wealthier societies are degrading the quality of life in poorer societies, shifting costs and harm to them, which they are much more vulnerable to than we are, in a cocoon of wealth and air conditioning and supermarkets and all of that. He has been a remarkable voice for this. One of the things he did was to set up this panel to take a look at climate change and what it means for the planet. The document is called ``Declaration of the Health of People, Health of Planet and Our Responsibility Climate Change, Air Pollution and Health Workshop.'' Here is its opening statement, which it calls the ``Statement of the Problem.'' ``With unchecked climate change and air pollution, the very fabric of life on Earth, including that of humans, is at grave risk.'' If you align the science that comes through the ``National Climate Assessment'' and align the universities of our great country, the national labs of our great country, the military experts in this area in our great country, and now this international body pulled together by Pope Francis, they all come to the same place. It is just here in Congress, where the fossil fuel industry, through massive amounts of political spending, has shut down responsible conversation about this problem that there is any window for climate denial to creep back in-- and, of course, the ability of this administration, in tow to the fossil fuel industry, to stick climate-denying fossil fuel operatives into positions of public responsibility. This is a disgrace. The fact that this body cannot stand up to them, cannot find patently conflicted, patently unqualified nominations to be beyond the pale for us is a terrible testament as to how the power of the fossil fuel industry has corrupted our ability to perform our function in the Senate. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, our EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, has a little problem. You see, the Supreme Court has ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Therefore, under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, which Pruitt leads, is legally obligated to regulate greenhouse gases. They must do this as a matter of law. Moreover, the EPA has determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations, and Scott Pruitt has said he will not contest that endangerment finding. He is stuck with it. Why? Because he knows it is a contest he would lose by a landslide. The climate denial nonsense he espouses has never passed peer review, it is not real science, and it would get buried in any forum where facts and truth matter. That is also likely why the White House released the Climate Science Special Report, part of the National Climate Assessment we mandated by law without significant alteration. Scientists had prudently disclosed what they sent to the White House so everyone could compare what went into the White House with what came back out of the White House. That put the White House in a box, and caught in that box, the White House went ahead and released the report without alteration. The Climate Science Special Report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action. It warns of a worst-case scenario, where seas could rise as high as 8 feet by the year 2100, which is the scenario our home State planners are looking at for Rhode Island and which I know has occasioned dire forecasts for the Presiding Officer's home State of Florida. The report details a wide array of climate-related damage already unfolding across the United States. Here is what the report says: ``It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.'' The document reports: ``For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.'' No convincing alternative explanation. Well, we actually knew that because climate denial has all along been bogus, phony propaganda created by the fossil fuel industry and pushed out through its array of phony front groups. Nobody but the ignorant would seriously believe their nonsense, least of all in Congress, except for the fact that the propaganda is backed up by ferocious political artillery and an implacable fossil fuel industry position to deny, deny, deny as the ship goes down. This will be a disgrace whose odor will last a long time as history looks back and recounts a Congress so subservient to the fossil fuel industry that it would ignore unanimous real science and go instead with the flagrant, self-serving falsehoods of the industry with the world's biggest conflict of interest--an obvious plain conflict of interest. It is a sickening display of what our Founding Fathers would plainly describe as corruption, and we are supposed to act as if things are normal around here. Things are not normal around here--not since Citizens United, for sure. Things are also not normal at EPA. That Agency of the U.S. Government has been corrupted. There is no straighter way to say it. The EPA now answers not to the public interest but to the special interest of the fossil fuel industry through its new Administrator, Scott Pruitt, whose entire history is one long exercise in subservience to the fossil fuel industry. If he is not bad enough, check out the creepy coterie of fossil fuel lackeys he is surrounding himself with. It is another disgrace, but given the fossil fuel's control over Congress, the legislative branch is compliant and complicit in the industry takeover, and this body has yet to utter a peep of dissent as our national EPA sinks into banana republic status. Last week, I talked about the phony tricks Pruitt is using to undo the Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan is an annoyance to certain folks in the fossil fuel industry that has long underwritten Pruitt's political ambitions. So for their sake, something had to be done. Well, given the Climate Science Special Report that the White House just released, they couldn't really mess with the science--at least not without it blowing up in their faces--so they reverted to some tricks. One trick was to recount the cost-benefit calculations of climate change and count only domestic effects of an international danger. Now, the Climate Science Special Report the White House just released says: ``The climate of the United States is strongly connected to the changing global climate.'' Nevertheless, Pruitt made the decision to count only the domestic effects of domestic emissions. That trick neatly wipes a major fraction of the harm the fossil fuel industry is causing right off the books. It doesn't affect the actual harm, just the accounting of the harm. In my example, it wiped two-thirds of the harm off the books in a neat feat of accounting trickery. Of course, that still leaves one-third of the harm to account for so they took another whack at that, and their trick there was to juice the discount rate. In years to come, prompt action now on climate change would prevent things like sea level rise washing over our coastal infrastructure, unprecedented wildfire seasons burning our forests, and disruptions in agricultural yields from drought and flood extremes. The Clean Power Plan would achieve between $14 billion and $34 billion in future health benefits, also, like prevented illnesses and deaths, but all those things happen in the future, which brings in this matter of the discount rate. The discount rate discounts the present value of things that happen in the future based on a percentage. Here is a simple example. If you assume a discount rate of 5 percent, that means anything 1 year from now is worth 5 percent less than it would be right now. So $10,000 of something in 10 years would be worth $6,000 today. If you assume a discount rate of 10 percent, that means $10,000 of something in 10 years is only worth $4,000 today. You can jiggle the discount rate to lower the present value. The higher the discount rate, the lower the present value of future harms. A report this year from the National Academies of Science confirms this: ``The rate at which future benefits and costs are discounted can significantly alter the estimated present value of the net benefits of that rule.'' Now, the George W. Bush administration recognized that ``[s]pecial ethical considerations arise when comparing benefits and costs across generations.'' The Bush administration guidance urged lower discount rates when a rule is expected to harm future generations. I will quote them again. ``If your rule will have important intergenerational benefits or costs, you might consider a further sensitivity analysis using a lower but positive discount rate,'' wrote the Office of Personnel Management at the time. That describes exactly what we face with climate change. Our carbon pollution today will hurt generations far off in the future as, for instance, temperatures and sea levels inexorably rise decade after decade and properties and land are lost to the sea. In 2015, the Federal Government settled on a 3-percent discount rate to estimate the out-year costs of carbon pollution to society. That was the recommendation of leading economists, the top researchers from top universities putting forward credible analysis from the scientific community. In our new, industry-friendly Pruitt analysis, they jacked that rate from 3 percent up to 7 percent. They more than double it. There is little actual analysis. They just picked a higher rate and what a payoff for Pruitt's fossil fuel friends. At 7 percent, future harms, injuries, and losses count for far less. Indeed, with this trick, Pruitt wiped away nearly $18 billion in predicted harm from carbon pollution. Remember, again, nothing changes in the real world. The harm to future generations is unchanged. That is a given in either scenario, but like that domestic-harm-only trick, this is an accounting trick to help the fossil fuel industry dodge accountability for its pollution. It doesn't change the situation on the field; it just changes the score on the scoreboard. Contrast the Pruitt fossil fuel-friendly nonsense with real, peer- reviewed science. In real, peer-reviewed science, we can now calculate not only the harm of carbon pollution but how much individual fossil fuel companies have contributed to that harm. A peer-reviewed study in the scientific journal Climatic Change tells us that a few major fossil fuel producers are responsible for as much as half of the recorded global surface temperature increase, and the study demonstrates a method for attributing their corporate share of the harm to Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Devon Energy, among about 50, investor-owned carbon producers. You can take the emissions data from that climatic change study and factor in well- established social cost of carbon estimates and approximate individual corporations' responsibility for climate damages. Those companies ought to be taking a hard look at what they are reporting to their shareholders about this because they are under strong legal obligations to report out-year risks to their shareholders. The National Climate Assessment Climate Science Special Report that we first talked about was developed by dozens of leading scientists, from 13 different Federal agencies, detailing the extent of climate change driven by manmade greenhouse gas emissions and the urgent need to address it. That report is as solid as it gets. The report is stark. Temperatures are climbing. Seas are rising. Ocean waters are becoming more acidic. Fires are more frequent and more severe, and fire seasons are longer. Storms are stronger and more frequent, as we have seen particularly menacing coastal America. Downwind States like Rhode Island cope with air that carries more particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, and other lung-constricting pollution. Fishermen haul in foreign catches full of fish their fathers and grandfathers would hardly recognize. Woodsmen harvest in distressed and changing forests. Farmers till land subject to extremes of both more frequent drought and more severe flood. The inescapable science is compiled by the top experts from throughout the Federal Government and is concurred in, I believe, by every single State university in this country, which not only understand climate change, but they teach climate change. There is every single National Lab in this country--the Labs we fund and trust-- the armed services, and our national intelligence assessments. It is virtually impossible to find anyone not on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry who disputes this. It shows that climate change touches every corner of the country already, not later. Up against that study, up against that unanimity of legitimate science, Pruitt puts a bunch of accounting tricks cooked up for him, I believe, by a conflicted and corrupting industry. We cannot let fossil fuel hacks like Pruitt and his merry crew prevent America from responding to the reality around us. This week it has been reported that Nicaragua and Syria have joined the Paris climate agreement. They were the two outliers. That was the company the United States was in with President Trump's decision to remove us from the Paris climate agreement--Nicaragua, Syria, and the United States of America. That is some company. Now, even Nicaragua and, just today, Syria have joined. At some point our national reputation is put at hazard. Our national reputation is put on the line when we can't do what is obviously right because we can't tell one greedy industry: You have had enough--no more. It is time we treated this issue honestly. When we can't do that, don't tell me history will forget. It seriously is time to wake up. This is corruption in plain view. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Janus decision coming up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which Senator Brown has just spoken about, is one that merits the attention of people who are concerned about the country and the Court. I wish to make two points in my remarks. The first has to do with the very difficult to explain--or at least very difficult to comfortably explain--pattern of 5-to-4 decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the five consist entirely of Republican appointees. The Supreme Court makes a lot of decisions, of course. But there is something that is particularly interesting about the 5-to-4 decisions, where the five Republican appointees line up and roll the other appointees. When we start looking at those decisions, there are some really significant patterns that emerge. The first pattern goes to issues in which the court is treading into the world of politics. Bear in mind that when Sandra Day O'Connor left the Court, it lost its only member who had ever run for office. What Justice O'Connor left behind was the first Court in the history of the United States that had exactly zero experience with elections and politics. There has never been as ignorant and green a Court in the history of the United States when it comes to politics; yet there has rarely been a Court so flagrantly eager to jump into politics and make very consequential decisions. When we look at the 5-to-4 decisions--which I think are probably the bulk of those--each one aligns with the political interests of the Republican Party--each one. It is not one or two or even three. It goes on and on and on. The oldest one in the series is probably Vieth v. Jubelirer, which was the decision in which the five Republicans said: This whole gerrymandering thing is just too difficult for us. We are going to declare open season. There is going to be no judicial remedy. We can't figure out one, so we don't have one. It is not just me who is saying that. The ABA section on election law said in its volume: Look, basically, it is game over for court review of gerrymandering. What immediately happened after that was the Republican Party went to work with that green-light signal and did the REDMAP project, which created massive, bulk gerrymandering through the battleground States. This was not an easy plan because, in some cases, they had to spend millions of dollars to win one or two State legislative seats, so they could then control the State legislature, so they could then change the districts consistent with the bulk gerrymandering scheme. The result is what happened in States like Senator Brown's, where, when he was reelected, he was on the ballot with President Obama, who was also reelected, and the majority of the votes cast in his State for Members of Congress were cast for Democrats, but against that background, many more Republicans than Democrats actually went to Congress in that election. A similar thing happened in Pennsylvania. My recollection is that on the same set of facts, Senator Casey, a Democrat, was reelected; President Obama, a Democrat, was reelected; a majority of Pennsylvania votes were cast for Democratic Members of Congress; the delegation was 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats. Somebody is messing around, and it was a 5-to-4 Republican Supreme Court that opened that can of worms and unleashed REDMAP on the political landscape. They have a chance to review that now. Senator McCain has written a bipartisan brief asking them to wake up and smell the coffee about what has gone wrong here. We will see if they do or not, but, clearly, that was a decision that benefited the Republican Party's polls, and, clearly, it was 5 to 4. Then you go to the Voting Rights Act cases. There were two of them. In the first one, Bartlett v. Strickland, the five Republican members teed up a new standard, which they mentioned, but they didn't really act on it. Then, when it came to the home run pitch, Shelby County v. Holder, they created this new theory about which very conservative judges, like Posner, said that, basically, it stands on thin air. It has no basis whatsoever in any real legal theory. They knocked out the part of the Voting Rights Act that requires States with a wretched history of abuse of minorities and Democratic voters at the polls to get preclearance from the Department of Justice or from a court before they can change their State laws to scare people or keep people away from the polls. With that knocked out, guess what. All these legislatures across the South went straight to work. They passed law after law after law to deny people access to the polls, and over and over again, the courts that reviewed those and the appellate courts that reviewed the district court decisions found that the laws had been intentionally discriminatory, that the legislature had intended to keep people away from the polls, that they had intended to discriminate against Democrat and minority voters, and that they had chosen to do that deliberately. Of course, you can go back after all that litigation and clean it up and try to get the laws stricken and all of that. But in the meantime, you have had election after election in which the effect at the polls was had. They couldn't have been more wrong about the notion that if you lifted the preclearance requirement, everybody was going to be fine. Those were just the bad old days; it was a whole new America; racism didn't exist; efforts by one party to keep the other parties away from the polls weren't anything to worry about. Move along, move along; nothing to see here, folks. They were just plain dead wrong. They had absolutely no clue, and they have been proven dead wrong since. But, again, both of those cases were 5 to 4, all Republicans together. Then, of course, the big whammy came when the big special interests that so often are the core backers of the Republican Party decided that they felt really constrained by having to live under campaign finance limits. They wanted to be able to spend unlimited money in elections. Well, that is fine. It reminds me a little bit of the story of the French philosopher who touted the majesty and equality of the French law, which forbid both rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges and begging for bread. Well, guess who actually sleeps under bridges and begs for bread. It is not rich and poor. And guess who can take advantage of a rule that you can spend unlimited money in politics. Only those who meet two conditions: One, they have unlimited money to spend, and, two, they have a good reason to spend it. In other words, really big special interests. The Court's decision, presuming that this spending was going to be either independent or transparent, has been turned into a mockery by events since. They obviously did not know what they were talking about. Facts have borne out that they did not know what they were talking about. They were completely dead wrong. Interestingly, since then, despite the presumption of their decision having been cut completely out from underneath it, the Court has shown no interest in a correction. They have shown no interest in correcting their error. They seem completely happy, the 5 to 4--the five Republican appointees--completely happy to have the landscape of American politics polluted with this money. There again, it wasn't just one decision. It was a bunch of them. Citizens United was the big one; Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock another; McCutcheon v. FEC yet another; Davis v. FEC yet another; Arizona Free Enterprise Club's FreedomClub PAC v. Bennett yet another-- all 5 to 4, all the Republicans lining up, all throwing out precedent or laws that had stood for 100 years. So Janus fits right into this pattern of 5-to-4 decisions. Indeed, it is actually a little bit worse because something weird happened early on when one of those 5 to 4--the Republican five Justices on the Supreme Court--signaled to the corporate supporters of this ideology that he was interested in taking a whack at unions in a particular way. There is a pet peeve of the union-busting rightwing and the corporate sector, which was a decision from 1977 called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. That decision allows unions to collect some dues from nonmembers on the grounds that their work for their members has benefit to other members. So you break out their wages work, which helps everybody, from their political work, which you can disaggregate from, and it allows you to collect certain dues--not complete dues, but certain dues--from nonunion members. What Abood did was to help unions keep revenues from the service that they give to nonmembers who benefit from their work. Without that rule, employees would be encouraged to be free riders and just get the benefit of what the union is doing without making any contribution to support it whatsoever. Of course, if that were to happen, the balance of power between corporations and unions would shift further toward corporations. The story is told quite well in the New York Times by a reporter named Adam Liptak, who is a Supreme Court reporter. I will read his story. In making a minor adjustment to how public unions must issue notifications about their political spending, Justice Alito digressed to raise questions about the constitutionality of requiring workers who are not members of public unions to pay fees for the unions' work on their behalf. . . . Justice Sonia Sotomayor saw what was going on. ``To cast serious doubt on longstanding precedence,'' she wrote in a concurrence, ``is a step we historically take only with the greatest caution and reticence. To do so, as the majority does, on our own invitation and without adversarial presentation is both unfair and unwise.'' Michael A. Carvin, a leading conservative lawyer, also saw what was going on. He and the Center for Individual Rights, a libertarian group, promptly filed the challenge Justice Alito had sketched out. I would say that he had invited. Indeed, Mr. Carvin asked the lower courts to rule against his clients, a Christian education group and 10 California teachers, so they could high-tail it to the Supreme Court. Let me interrupt my reading of the story for a second and make the point that this lawyer wanted to lose his case in the lower courts. It is rare for lawyers to go into a court wanting to lose. You have to have kind of a weird motive to take a case into court that you want to lose. The obvious motive here is that Mr. Carvin had heard the signal from Justice Alito that he was willing to rule his way if he would just bring the right case. So it didn't matter whether he won or lost. Losing is actually quicker. It gets you right up to the Supreme Court. He is not interested in litigating the matter truly on the merits; he is only interested in getting as quickly as possible to the Supreme Court. Why? Because he knew that 5 to 4, he would get the right decision. When you are a lawyer, the most sickening feeling you can have is to go into court with the belief that the judges you are going to argue before are prejudged against you. The confidence that Carvin must have had to want to lose a case deliberately below so that he could hightail it at high speed up to a court that he knew was going to rule his way because they told him they would--that is not American justice in the way it should be delivered. As it turned out, they took up the case. It was called Friedrichs. It was going to be 5 to 4, just as expected, and then Justice Scalia unexpectedly passed away. If you read about how the press took that, it was very clear that the fix had been in on this case. ``Corporate America had high hopes,'' the Journal said, because ``the Supreme Court appeared poised to deliver long- sought conservative victories.'' Since when should a court be poised to deliver long-sought conservative victories, not fair, dispassionate adjudication? But that is the reporting of the friendly Wall Street Journal. And those long- sought conservative victories were going to take the form of `` `body blow[s] that business had sought against consumer and worker plaintiffs.' The cases `had been carefully developed by activists to capitalize on the court's rightward tilt.' '' Come on. This is not adjudication any longer; it is just the exercise of political power. And these 5-to-4 partisan decisions by the Supreme Court are degrading the reputation of the Supreme Court, they are degrading the integrity of the Supreme Court, and they are degrading the role of the judiciary in our vaunted scheme of constitutional government in the United States of America. With that, I yield to my distinguished colleague from Oregon.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today for the 184th time to ask us to at least wake up to our duty as a Congress to enact prudent policies to address the effects of climate change. The Presiding Officer is well aware of what Alaska faces from ocean acidification and ocean melting and sea level rise and all of that. For the generations who will look back at this, I have tried in these speeches to chronicle the political tricks and bullying that have put Congress--the Congress of the United States--in tow to a massively conflicted special interest, such that we are incapacitated on this vital subject. The shamelessness of the fossil fuel industry and the spinelessness of Congress under its sway will provide a long lesson in modern-day corruption and political failure. The Trump administration has been particularly loathsome, threatening the emissions standards for cars and trucks, pressing for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, disbanding science advisory committees, lifting the moratorium on Federal coal leasing, trying to expand offshore drilling, and open national marine monuments and sanctuaries to energy companies. The Environmental Protection Agency is working to eliminate rules on the leaking and flaring of methane and has rescinded requirements for reporting methane emissions. The President has announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. One particular target of this corrupted administration is the Clean Power Plan, the 2015 EPA rule to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from American powerplants--a rule that many utilities and States supported. But it is the industry's bottom-dwellers who have the President's ear, and they want to undo even this flexible framework for meeting emissions-reduction targets. When EPA balanced the costs and benefits of the Clean Power Plan originally, it offset things, like between $14 billion and $34 billion in health benefits in the form of preventive illnesses and deaths, against the costs of industry compliance. The net benefits of the Clean Power Plan came out to between $26 billion and $45 billion every year. So with its official proposal to rescind the Clean Power Plan, EPA administrator and fossil fuel operative Scott Pruitt had to cook the books to wipe out this public benefit. Here is how he did it. There were two tricks. One derives from the fact that harms, injuries, and losses caused by carbon pollution can take place many years after the pollution is emitted. In financial matters, future costs and benefits are balanced against present costs and benefits, using what is called a discount rate. It is more valuable to receive $1 million now than $1 million 20 years from now. That is the theory. But even the George W. Bush administration recognized for healthcare rulemaking that ``[s]pecial ethical considerations arise when comparing benefits and costs across generations,'' and they urged care about using a discount rate when a rule is expected to harm future generations. In 2015, the United States settled on a 3-percent discount rate to estimate the out-year costs of carbon pollution to society. Scott Pruitt jacked that up to a 7-percent discount rate so out-year harms, injuries, and losses would count for less. Mind you, our children and grandchildren will still suffer the exact same costs at 3 percent or at 7 percent. It is just that present-day polluters--Scott Pruitt's masters--get a way-big discount. Pruitt's second trick is only to count the carbon pollution harm within our borders. You might say: That is OK; we are Americans, after all. But it is worth taking a look at what this rule does if all countries were to use it because there is a trick hidden in the middle of it. The fact is that we are harmed by other countries' carbon emissions, and they in turn are harmed by our carbon emissions. On the flip side, we harm other countries with our emissions, and they harm us with theirs. There is a total amount of global emissions, and there is a total amount of global harm. If you call the total global emissions X and the total global harm Y, what happens when every country follows the Pruitt method of only pricing local emissions and local harms? For purposes of illustration, let's say there are three countries in the world, and each emits one-third of the total carbon pollution and suffers one-third of the global harm from the collective global emissions. If each country only counts its own emissions and the harms only to its own country, guess what happens. All that cross-border harm never gets counted. It never gets counted. It disappears off the balance sheet. It vanishes into this trick of calculation. If you are the tool of the fossil fuel industry, how rewarding it must be to implement a trick that just vanishes so much of the fossil fuel industry's harm to the world. In this hypothetical, how much harm simply vanishes? Two-thirds of it does. Two thirds of the harm simply vanishes, never to be accounted for--not in the real world. Nothing has changed in the real world. In this three-country hypothetical, the total emissions is still X and the total harm is still Y. None of that has changed. This Pruitt trick of accounting just wiped two-thirds of the harm off the books. A happy day for polluters, and a happy, happy day for the polluters' tool, for there will no doubt be rewards for implementing this trick. Those fossil fuel industry bottom-dwellers no doubt think that this is pretty cute and that this is pretty clever stuff, indeed. There are high-fives in the corporate boardrooms that they have a tool in office who will pull such a trick of magical, vanishing carbon pollution harms. But the problem with these crooked little schemes is that the whole world is actually watching. Anybody can do the analysis that I just did and show that this is nothing more than a trick, and sooner or later, consequences do come home to roost. Out in the real world, the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati is buying up land in Fiji so it can evacuate its people there when rising seas engulf its islands and eliminate the nation. It is on its way to becoming a modern-day Atlantis, lost forever to the waves. You can replicate that risk along the shores of Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia and the Maldives. You can add in the risk of lost fisheries that left a country's EEZ for cooler waters. If you think that is just a hypothetical, ask Connecticut and Rhode Island lobstermen about their catch. Add in the expansion of the world's desert areas in the Sahel and elsewhere that forces farmers' crops and shepherds' flocks away from their historic homes. Add unprecedented storms powered up over warming seas. As bad as things have been in Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico, we are rich enough to rebuild, to throw billions of dollars at the problem, and we are. Other places do not have those resources. Without the help, imagine that suffering. To those who will suffer in the future, what do we say? On that day of reckoning, on that judgment day, what do we tell all those people who suffered? Ha-ha-ha, do we say? We came up with this little trick that wiped most of your suffering off our books. We used a discount rate that discounted your suffering to virtually zero. Is that the kind of America we want to be? Remember the saying: The power of America's example is more important than any example of our power. Some example we would be, some city on a hill, if that was the way we behaved. The natural world does not care about self-serving or ideological arguments. The natural world is governed by immutable laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Scott Pruitt's polluter-friendly mathematics just doesn't add up. As Michael Greenstone, an economist at the University of Chicago who helped develop the social cost of carbon, put it, Pruitt's plan was not evidence-based policymaking. This was policy-based evidence making. There is enormous pressure in the Trump administration to get rid of the social cost of carbon. What is bizarre about the Trump administration is that they don't try to get rid of the social cost of carbon by getting rid of its social costs, by lowering carbon emissions, by addressing the harms that it causes. They try to get rid of the social cost of carbon by getting rid of the scoring mechanism that counts all of that. It is like saying: My team is winning because I tore down the scoreboard. Well, no, the world is getting clobbered out there by carbon pollution and the climate change that causes it, and tearing down the scoreboard doesn't help change the game on the field. You cannot just cook the books and reduce the social cost of carbon. For one thing, the social cost of carbon analysis is too well established in the honest world. Courts have instructed Federal agencies to factor the social cost of carbon into their regulations. States are using the social cost of carbon in their policymaking. Most major corporations, even ExxonMobil, factor a social cost of carbon into their own planning and accounting. The social cost of carbon pollution is at the heart of the International Monetary Fund calculation, for which the fossil fuel industry gets an annual subsidy in the United States of $700 billion a year. Even to protect a multihundred-billion-dollar annual subsidy, Scott Pruitt can't just wish the social cost of carbon away and just can't stop counting it. Courts will take notice. They may take notice that these stunts are arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. They may take note that Pruitt has massive conflicts of interest with his fossil fuel funders. They will surely note that the Supreme Court has said greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that EPA is legally obligated to regulate them. They will surely note that the EPA itself has determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations, a determination that the DC Circuit resoundingly upheld. But we are not in an ordinary situation. Pruitt has a long history of doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry. In the recent Frontline documentary, ``War on the EPA,'' Bob Murray of Murray Energy, a strong Pruitt supporter, bragged about giving this administration a three-page action plan on environmental regulations and bragged that the first page was already done. That is the world we live in now, where the regulated industry brags that it controls its regulator, gives it direction, and that its work is already being done. Courts that look at any rule proposed by Scott Pruitt must recognize that there is a near zero chance that he is operating in good faith. Our Nation's environmental regulator went in captured and has stayed captured by our Nation's biggest polluters. Scott Pruitt is not their regulator; he is their instrument. That is a conflict of interest. I recently hosted my eighth annual Rhode Island Energy Environment and Oceans Day, bringing together members of our business community from the public sector, from government, and academia, to hear directly from experts about the latest environmental news and initiatives. I was very excited to be joined by excellent keynote speakers, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has done such magnificent work on oceans particularly but on climate change generally, leading us into the Paris climate agreement. Also, there was former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern, who has labored in these vineyards so many years, and ocean advocate and Oceana board member Sam Waterston. They were all great, but one phrase stood out. Sam Waterston called on us to tackle today's ocean and environmental problems with what he called a ``battle-ready kind of optimism''--a ``battle-ready kind of optimism.'' So let us go forward with a ``battle-ready kind of optimism'' to clean the polluter swamp at EPA, to clean our Earth's atmosphere and oceans of unbridled carbon emissions, and to clear the reputation of our beloved country of the obloquy it is rapidly earning at the hands of a corrupting industry. 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, it is nice to see the distinguished Senator in the chair presiding. I am not sure, in my 183 ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, I have yet had the pleasure of speaking while the Senator was presiding. I am here to once again call for us to wake up to the corporate capture of Congress and this administration--the capture of governance by the fossil fuel industry that keeps us from honestly addressing climate change. There is a saying that ``personnel is policy.'' Well, the Trump personnel for positions at the Environmental Protection Agency reflect a policy to undo the public welfare mission of the Agency and align it with the special interests of the fossil fuel industry. There is a word for that. It is called corruption, at least as the Founding Fathers knew the meaning of that term. It starts at the top. Trump named Scott Pruitt head of the EPA. Pruitt has a long record of dark money fundraising and long, cozy relationships with Big Energy industry political donors. In effect, he is a tentacle of the fossil fuel climate denial operation, wiggling and wriggling in the Administrator's chair, near his new $25,000 ``cone of silence'' secret communications booth that he built so no one would hear him checking in with his masters. Results are as expected. The New York Times has reported: ``How Rollbacks at Scott Pruitt's EPA are a Boon to Oil and Gas.'' No surprise. In the 4 months that followed his appointment, Pruitt moved to undo, delay, or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules benefiting his fossil fuel friends. This regulatory rollback, larger in scope than any over so short a time in the Agency's near-half century history, went straight into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry. Longtime Pruitt benefactor Devon Energy is cashing in dividends on its investment in Scott Pruitt's political career, as Pruitt is working to eliminate rules on the leaking and flaring of methane, and has rescinded requirements for reporting methane emissions. Devon, as you may recall, is that company whose letter to the EPA Pruitt put on his own Oklahoma attorney general letterhead to mask Devon's hand and submit their work as his own official work as attorney general of his State. So this hand-in-glove relationship between Devon as the hand and Pruitt as the glove goes back a long way. The EPA has career scientists and legal experts who bring decades of experience in environmental law and science to the EPA who are all being cut out as the Administrator takes drastic steps to undo environmental protections. Just this week, EPA scientists were yanked from a conference in Rhode Island where they were going to talk about climate change. The matter of climate change on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island is pretty significant. This is the day's Providence Journal, our leading newspaper in Rhode Island. Headline: ``Will climate change negate Bay cleanup?'' It has a big map of Narragansett Bay with all the facilities at risk of being flooded and overwhelmed. It is front page news. It is a matter of extreme importance in Rhode Island, and EPA yanked out its scientists. They weren't allowed to come down and talk at an event where they were going to talk about climate change. It is not just yanking the scientists. Here is a New York Times article by Lisa Friedman from October 20. Headline: ``EPA scrubs a climate website of `climate change.' '' An EPA website has been scrubbed of scores of links. ``About 15 mentions of the words climate change have been removed from the main page alone. . . .'' It is not just at EPA. Here is today's exclusive headline: ``The Interior Department scrubs climate change from its strategic plan.'' I mean, they act as if this is the Soviet Union and the government is allowed to tell scientists what they can say and not say and put phony propaganda onto official websites and keep scientists from going to meetings because they might actually tell the truth about climate change. I am the son and grandson of Foreign Service officers. I grew up serving in countries that did that, where the government could tell the scientist: No, you don't say that. No, you don't go there. No, this is the party line. I never thought that would happen in the United States of America--and here we are. To aid Pruitt in his fossil fuel industry crusade, our President has nominated a parade of fossil fuel lackeys, lobbyists, and operatives whose main qualification seems to be allegiance to their corporate clients and benefactors. It is not just the fossil fuel industry that gets their hacks planted in government offices. Do you remember in the ``Cat in the Hat,'' where they had Thing One and Thing Two running around? Let's look at Hack One and Hack Two, who just cleared committee today in the Pruitt ``EPA for Sale'' roster. Hack One is a toxicologist who consults for major chemical corporations and has spent the better part of his professional life fighting regulation of potentially toxic compounds in consumer goods. His name is Michael Dourson. President Trump nominated him to run the EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. A lobbying group for sellers of pesticides, fungicides, and rodenticides called Dourson ``a perfect fit'' for the job--the perfect industry hack for that job, more like. Hack Two is William Wehrum, nominated to run the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. Wehrum is a lobbyist who has represented a host of major industrial and energy corporations, and the Rubber Manufacturers Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, and the American Petroleum Institute. President George W. Bush actually nominated this guy to the same post in 2006, but the White House withdrew his nomination because it was so controversial. Well, that was 2006. That was before Citizens United. That was before that decision amped up industry power to the point where it can now ram through conflicted and objectionable candidates with--as happened this morning--unanimous Republican support. Not one Republican Senator on the committee would voice an objection. When Senators asked questions for the record in the Environment and Public Works Committee nomination hearing on Wehrum and Dourson, these captured nominees played dumb about the central issues and programs they will oversee if confirmed. For instance, I asked Dourson if he agreed that ``the tobacco industry manipulated and obfuscated scientific research into the dangers of smoking for decades.'' Dourson, who conducted scientific studies designed, reviewed, and paid for by the tobacco industry and whose name is all over, in hundreds of places, the discovery records of the tobacco industry's denial operation, replied: ``I do not have firsthand knowledge to comment.'' I ``do not have firsthand knowledge to comment''? This is the President's selection to run the office that protects Americans from dangerous chemicals who doesn't know the tobacco industry's history of falsifying science? Please. He worked for them. He was part of it. Remember that the tobacco industry was taken to court by the U.S. Department of Justice--back when the Department of Justice would take an industry to court--and the Department of Justice won a judgment declaring that tobacco had engaged in a fraud conspiracy to deny tobacco's harms. Dourson sees no evil. He knows nothing. I asked him whether he believes that hydrofluorocarbons are greenhouse gases and about the global warming potential of methane. His response: I am not sufficiently familiar with the definition of greenhouse gases and do not have the expertise to answer these questions. He is not familiar with the definition of greenhouse gases? This is basic high school science. Every one of us has a home State university that teaches this stuff. This has been science for more than 100 years. On to Hack Two, Bill Wehrum. When I asked Wehrum about carbon dioxide's role in the observable effects of climate change, he replied: ``The degree to which manmade greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change has not been conclusively determined.'' This claim just doesn't match the scientific record. The EPA--the very Agency to which Mr. Wehrum is nominated, along with NOAA--states that ``carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.'' This consensus is held by published climate scientists, by scientific agencies and societies, by all of our National Laboratories, and by universities in America and around the globe. As I said, every one of us in this room--I haven't found an exception yet, and I have looked, but I expect every Senator has a home State university that doesn't just know this to be true, but it teaches it in its curriculum. But Hack Two sees no evil. He knows nothing. Wehrum's disregard for well-established science provides a grim preview of what we can expect from him if confirmed. His predictable dodging falls in lockstep with Administrator Pruitt, who has stated he does ``not agree that [carbon dioxide] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.'' That puts him in a very small circle of people, every one of whom I think is connected by money to the fossil fuel industry. I asked Mr. Wehrum what he believes is a healthy standard for ozone. Now, bear in mind that one of the goals of the Clean Air Act is to set national ambient air quality standards for ozone, that the office to which he is nominated oversees this ozone standard, and that the EPA has had ozone standards in place since 1971, more than 45 years. In response to my question, Wehrum answered: ``I am not familiar with the current science on the health effects of ozone, so I cannot comment on your question as to the appropriate level of the standard.'' Really? I asked Wehrum whether he agreed with EPA's 2009 finding that the current and projected concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. I asked if he would commit not to narrow or weaken the EPA's endangerment finding. Wehrum wrote back that he had not read the endangerment finding or the record prepared in support of the finding; therefore, he said: ``I currently do not have a view.'' I currently do not have a view? That is funny. I bet he had a view when he was being paid by the Rubber Manufacturers Association, the American Forest & Paper Association, and the American Petroleum Institute. I guess it was the miraculous, evaporating view. Maybe these ``see no evil'' nominees, Dourson and Wehrum, don't know the basics of the problems they would confront. Maybe they just don't know, but let's not be fooled here. Polluters have paid these nominees well for their services over the years. They were expert enough to be hired by industry groups as lobbyists and consultants. We know where their allegiances lie. We know who has been paying them. We know whom they will serve. A preview of coming attractions, coming up before the EPW soon is Andrew Wheeler, Trump's nominee for the EPA's second in command. Wheeler was a top lobbyist for the coal mining behemoth, Murray Energy. Not only did this company support Trump's campaign and provide $300,000 to help pay for his inauguration, Murray Energy has also donated to Pruitt-affiliated political action committees to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can't wait to hear his answers on the role of coal in climate change, childhood asthma, and mercury poisoning. The sad part of all of this is, the polluting interests that own these nominees also throw their weight around in Congress. So good luck getting an honest look at this mess through congressional oversight. Over and over, appalling nominees get through confirmation with no Republican dissent, more ``see no evil.'' It is just wrong. For now, the American public will pay the price of dismantling these regulatory safeguards. They will pay the price in poisonings and carcinogenic exposures, in rising seas and raging wildfires, in childhood asthma and northbound tropical diseases. Mark my words, one day there will be a reckoning for all of this. When captured EPA officials put payback to their donors first and clean air and public health a way distant second, it stinks. It is crooked by any reasonable definition of the term. It is corrupt in exactly the way the Founding Fathers understood corruption. The fossil fuel industry will one day be held to account for this binge of corruption and manipulation. ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Arch Coal, Murray Coal, Peabody Coal, you own this just as the Republican Party does. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was just going to ask whether my colleague would yield for a question. My distinguished colleague from Connecticut is an extraordinarily experienced and able lawyer. He was U.S. attorney in Connecticut; for a long time, he was his State's attorney general, and I think he has argued more before the U.S. Supreme Court than perhaps anybody in modern history now in the Senate. One of his passions and one of the things he focused on in law enforcement was consumer protection, bringing to justice big entities that had done wrong to consumers. My question for him, if I may ask one, would be, are there circumstances--do you have experience of circumstances in which very big and powerful entities, corporations, or industries engaged in misconduct, even fraud, in which the individual harm to each of the consumers was not very big--a bogus $30 fee, a bogus $100 surcharge, something like that--but multiplied by thousands or tens of thousands of customers, it became an enormously lucrative fraud for the institution involved? Is that a situation that happens in real life, in your view, I ask my distinguished colleague?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I may ask if the Senator will yield for another question.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. As I understand from the Senator's response to my last question, if you force the victims of low-dollar but multi-victim fraud to have arbitration as their only remedy, you are way less likely to get consumers asserting their rights, and ultimately you may have low-dollar, multi-consumer frauds that remain very remunerative for the crooked outfit conducting the massive fraud. I get the Senator's point that the incentives are such that it is very hard for an individual consumer to be willing to pursue that claim. If there is no way to aggregate themselves together into a class action, then there is really no way to pursue that claim. But my second question goes to a further point, which is that the power of a court in a matter like that includes the power not just to award damages but to provide other relief: to direct the company to quit the fraud, to give orders to people to clean up their act, to promise never to do it again, and so forth. I am not aware of any arbitration panel that has ever been given that authority or has ever used their limited power as arbiters or arbitrators to try to influence the behavior of the corporation. Is there not also a significant difference between an individual consumer being forced to go to an often stacked arbitration panel to pursue a claim that is so small, it is not worth their money, and the simple power to provide the real remedy the public seeks, as the Senator so wisely said, to protect the next consumer? It is not just about the people who got their pockets picked, who paid their unreasonable fee, who got defrauded; it is about stopping it so the future consumer is protected. I am not familiar with arbitration panels having that power.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In conclusion, is it fair to say that the measure we are about to vote on will indisputably have the effect of shifting enormous power from consumers to corporations that engage in high-volume but low- dollar fraud?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about the battle between the jury system and a system in which regular Americans are forced into arbitration, which has a terrible record. I can remember years ago, when I was attorney general, the attorneys general shut down one of the arbitration systems because it was so corrupted and was throwing decisions to big corporate interests, and you cannot really understand that unless you understand the importance of the role of the jury in our country. For centuries, the jury has served as a last sanctuary within our constitutional structure for people who seek justice and fair treatment under the law. It was designed for a specific purpose. When Big Interests control our executive officials, as the Founding Fathers knew they could, when lobbyists have the legislatures tied in knots, as our Founding Fathers knew they could, and when media outlets steer public opinion against individuals, as our Founding Fathers saw that they could, the hard, square corners of the jury box stand firm against that tide of influence and money. There is a lot of history here. It was the earliest American settlers who brought the jury to our country as precious cargo from England. The Virginia Colony established the jury in 1624, roughly a year before the Dutch even settled the island of Manhattan. Early Americans created juries in 1628 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1677 in the Colony of West New Jersey, and in 1682 in Pennsylvania. Indeed, in our Declaration of Independence, our colonists put forward a list of grievances and admonished King George III for--and I quote them in the Declaration of Independence--``depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.'' When the original Constitution was silent on the jury, Americans sounded the alarm, and the Seventh Amendment was sent to the States in the Bill of Rights. Alexander Hamilton, a famous Revolutionary-era Founder, stated in Federalist No. 83: ``The friends and adversaries in the plan of the convention, if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or, if there is any difference between them, it consists in this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government.'' Going on to the mid-19th century, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his famous ``Democracy in America,'' he observed that the jury should be understood in America as a ``political institution'' and ``one form of the sovereignty of the people.'' What did he mean? How does the jury protect the sovereignty of the people? Well, in two ways, as Sir William Blackstone explained. Sir William Blackstone was probably the most cited source in those early days of the founding of our Republic and in the early days of the development of our laws. Sir William Blackstone explained that trial by jury ``preserves in the hands of the people that share which they ought to have in the administration of public justice, and prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy citizens.'' Those are two separate thoughts. First, the civil jury devolves a share of government power--power which they ought to have--directly to the people. But second and uniquely, in a Constitution otherwise devoted to protecting the individual against the power of the State, the civil jury is designed to protect the individual against other individuals--more specifically, against other more powerful and wealthy individuals. Even former Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed about this era that ``the Founders of our Nation considered the right of trial by jury in civil cases an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign.'' That is at heart what this fight is about. Remember Blackstone's words: The jury ``prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy'' citizens. That means the jury is intended to be a thorn in the side of the powerful and wealthy. It is intended to make the powerful and wealthy stand equal--annoyingly equal to them--before the law with everyone else. The jury is intended to be the little branch of government that the wealthy and powerful can't get to, can't fix, can't control. That is why jury panels are new every time. If you had a permanent panel of the same jurors over and over, the powerful and wealthy would tend to influence the institution. The jury stands against all that tide of influence. That is what it is there for. That is how it was designed. Who is more powerful and wealthy today than mighty corporations and big special interests? And guess what--big corporations and special interests hate the jury. The small institution has big enemies. It would astound the Founding Fathers to see how far we have fallen from the popular affection and loyalty for the jury trial in 1776. Juries are indeed about dispute resolution and about making sure that everybody can get a fair shake and that powerful and wealthy interests can't put the fix in, but more than that, the civil jury helps check power. The American system of government is built on the premise that divided government and separated powers--checks and balances--will best protect individual liberty. The civil jury distributes authority of the State directly to citizens, giving them direct power to resolve disputes--sometimes very important disputes--and it gives them this power in a way that makes it very hard for special interests to control. Well, if we look around today, the influence of wealth and power suffuses the legislative and executive branches. Corporate lobbying and corporate and billionaire election spending are at unprecedented levels. In our political debate, dark money dollars drown out the voices of average citizens in what has been called ``a tsunami of slime,'' and all that money is not spent for nothing. Powerful interests love a game that is rigged in their favor--always have, always will. It is a tale as old as time. Well, rigging the game doesn't go over well in the jury box. Special interests may seek special influence with legislators and regulators all of the time. It is their constant activity, licensed and regulated by lobbying and campaign finance laws. Their every waking moment is devoted to tampering with the legislative and executive branches, but tampering with a jury is a crime, and it is a crime for a reason. In a world where so many feel powerless, juries give regular citizens real authority. In a world of fractious partisanship, juries make citizens work together and decide together. And in a world in which injustices pile up against barricades of well-kept indifference, a jury can blow the status quo to smithereens. This is the vital constitutional role of the civil jury. This is what mandatory arbitration is designed to attack--to remove the access of regular citizens to this institution of our government which was so important to our Founding Fathers because it is an institution that the wealthy and powerful cannot control. They can control mandatory arbitration. Over and over again, it has been shown to be subject to corporate favoritism and control. There is a reason that the big and powerful special interests want to get rid of access to a jury and want to force people into mandatory arbitration. They are not doing it for the sake of having their adversaries and opponents get better access to justice; they are doing it to shut off access to the civil jury. They want everybody forced into rigged games. We ought to be fighting to preserve and enhance the civil jury as an element of the uniquely American system of self-government. Our forefathers fought and bled and died to create and preserve this system of government in which the civil jury has a vital role. From Alexander Hamilton to Alexis de Tocqueville, to William Blackstone, to William Rehnquist--you can go on and on in our history with people who have pointed out the vital role of our jury. Squelching it is the task of the wealthy and powerful, mighty corporations that seek to squelch it and force everybody into corporate-friendly, mandatory arbitration. We should think on this question in the long view--not who gets the immediate benefit of not having to face trained lawyers, not having to face people in an open forum, not having to be before a free and independent jury. We should think of the message of our Founding Fathers, who put the need for a civil jury right into the Declaration of Independence, who demanded it as part of our Bill of Rights, and who saw it as an essential element of our liberty. With that, I yield. I see my distinguished colleague from Maryland.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And not infrequent in class action cases?