Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is the 152nd time I have come to the floor for my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, warning about the perilous effects of climate change. I am going to continue this in the new Congress, continuing to present the latest and most compelling scientific evidence of the changes that are coming our way driven by carbon pollution. Nobody should take my word for it. I urge my colleagues to listen to their own home State's climatologists, their own home State's university researchers, their own home State's public health officials, and their own constituents who are out there fighting to protect their communities from the changes that are already happening right before their eyes. In Rhode Island, we have a lot of fishermen, just as Louisiana has, Mr. President. The president of the Rhode Island Commercial Fishermen's Association is Chris Brown. Just this past week, he was the subject of a New York Times article. ``Climate change is going to make it hard on some of those species that are not particularly fond of warm or warming waters,'' he told the Times. ``We used to come right here''--where he was on his boat, The Proud Mary--``and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10.'' But the whiting, the fish he was after, have moved north to cooler waters. The Times reports that two-thirds of marine species off the northeast coast have moved from their traditional ranges into deeper and cooler water. John Manderson is a biologist at NOAA's northeast fisheries science center, and he told the Times in that article that public policy needs to keep pace with the rapidly changing oceans, where species are shifting northward in response to warming 10 times as quickly as they do on the land. ``Our ideas of property rights and laws are purely land-based,'' he said, ``but the ocean is all about flux and turbulence and movement.'' In Rhode Island, fishermen are getting clobbered by that flux. Captain Dave Monti is a member of the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council. He wrote in the Providence Journal this week: I often think about the fish and how important it is to grow them to abundance so there are more fish for all to catch and eat. . . . In 2017 we need a fish-first agenda, or someday there may be no fish left to catch. Climate change, acidification, overfishing by world nations, and changing federal strategies could make it the worst of times for fish in 2017. . . . We need to make an effort to understand what is happening to the environment and the fish, and then take that second step of communicating it to others to affect policy. That is what I am being asked. The Providence Journal also recently wrote about how in Rhode Island the sea is moving higher and farther inland, as it is in Louisiana, which is the State losing ground fastest to the ocean of all the 50. They reported on StormTools, a program developed by Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council director Grover Fugate and University of Rhode Island emeritus professor of ocean engineering Malcolm Spaulding. StormTools provides 3D maps of the potential flooding damage along Rhode Island's coast. The Journal described the project as ``one of the most sophisticated models developed anywhere to project future damage from storm surges and sea level rise.'' And we are taking the results seriously. The Journal quoted William DePasquale, who is the director of planning in one of our cities, Warwick, RI. He said, ``When I saw some of those scenarios, my jaw hit the ground.'' That is what we are looking at, and Warwick is now using those maps to prepare for the future. The Providence Journal has also recently written about Matunuck Beach in South Kingstown. Town manager Stephen Alfred warns that if the sea takes out Matunuck Beach Road, 240 homes will be totally cut off, without a water supply or access to emergency services. The article features Kevin Finnegan, who owns the Ocean Mist, a renowned local establishment. The Journal said: The Ocean Mist has occupied the same spot under different names since Prohibition ended in 1933. But the ocean has moved. Where once beach bathers had to plan a trek across sand to reach the water from the Mist, waves now flood the supports holding up the tavern's deck. Finnegan and the town of North Kingstown are scrambling to build seawalls. Engineer Bill Ladd, who works for Finnegan and who the Providence Journal reports had his first beer at the Ocean Mist back when the drinking age was 18, estimates that the two walls may only buy Matunuck Beach 20 or 30 more years against the oncoming ocean. That is because, as The Independent--a local newspaper in the southern part of Rhode Island--reported in December, about 4 feet of Matunuck Beach is eroding every year. According to Director Fugate of the CRMC, that erosion will more than double by the end of the century. Rhode Island is not a big State. We cannot afford to have this much reclaimed by the ocean. The Independent article quotes North Kingstown Town Council president Kerry McKay, who says that climate change threatens the property values of his community's coastal homes, which is a significant portion of the town's revenue base. He said historical values ``will have to change'' as coastal concerns rise, and residents ``have to be more receptive'' to redoing building infrastructure, such as through elevating houses. He also said that homes ``may not be there'' in 20 years, resulting in a ``major revenue loss.'' Another Providence Journal article last week featured Tanner Steeves, a wildlife biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which has to tear up roads and parking lots along the Sakonnet River as the seas rise. The Journal writes: As the barrier beach just south of Sapowet Point has narrowed--losing nearly 100 feet since 1939--the salt marsh on the other side has become more susceptible to flooding. The Independent made Rhode Island's case for climate action in a December editorial. They said: The signs are clear, if not immediately visible to most. There are the well-documented, widely publicized shifts with global import, such as the loss of polar ice and the growing frequency of extreme weather events. Locally, there are changes in the ecology of Narragansett Bay, and locations at which the effects of a rising sea level--sometimes subtle, sometimes less so--may be plainly seen. . . . But we encourage all Rhode Islanders, from coastal communities and beyond, to remain attuned to the situation--in terms of both what the sea is telling us and what is being proposed to prepare for coming changes. The stakes are enormously high, and the broadest possible effort is required to meet the challenge. That is the message to me from Rhode Island. That is why I give these speeches. As I continue to push for honest debate on this issue in Congress, I also tour around the country to see folks on the ground in other States. I have now been to 15 States. In the closing months of 2016, I hit Texas and Pennsylvania. In Texas, I joined Representative Elliott Naishtat, the advocacy group Public Citizen Texas, and Texas environmental advocates at a public event in Austin to call out Congressman Lamar Smith, Republican chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, for his abuse of congressional power to harass public officials and climate scientists, including subpoenas demanding that States attorneys general divulge their investigative materials relating to their inquiries into ExxonMobil's potentially fraudulent climate misinformation. The committee is also harassing the Union of Concerned Scientists, 350.org, Greenpeace, and various university scientists because they are exposing Exxon for years of misleading the public on its understanding of climate change. Texans are taking notice. The San Antonio Express-News, which had previously always endorsed Congressman Smith for reelection, decided not to endorse him in this latest election cycle. The paper cited his ``bullying on the issue of climate change'' as behavior that ``should concern all Americans.'' I joined a panel discussion with leading scientists from Texas universities to discuss their research into climate change in Texas. The panel included Dr. John Anderson from Rice University, Dr. Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M University, Drs. Charles Jackson and Kerry Cook from the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Katherine Hayhoe from Texas Tech University. They had a unified voice on the dangers of climate change. Dr. Hayhoe said Texans are seeing changes all around them. We get hit by drought. We get hit by heat. We get hit by storms. We get hit by sea level rise. And we're starting to see those impacts today. . . . Texas is really at the forefront of this problem. Dr. Anderson of Rice agreed that the Texas climate is already changing. He said: Accelerated sea-level rise is real, not a prediction. Its causes are known--thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of glaciers and ice sheets--and it is causing unprecedented change along the Texas coast. Dr. Dessler from Texas A&M laid out what he called ``the fundamental and rock-solid aspects of climate science: humans are loading the atmosphere with carbon, this is warming the climate, and this future warming is a huge risk to our society and the environment. We should insist that our elected representatives rely on this sound science when formulating policy.'' I returned to Austin in November to speak to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. President David Dooley of the University of Rhode Island had invited me to join a panel that he moderated with, among others, Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State climatologist and professor at Texas A&M University. The bottom line was simple: Climate change is real, and the scientists at our universities will be increasingly forced to defend good science, academic freedom, and climate action. University leadership will have to defend their scientists against the onslaught of FOIA requests and personal attacks that are the modus operandi for climate deniers and against the phony science fronts propped up by the fossil fuel industry to spread calculated misinformation. The American scientific community faces a real threat from that operation. On to Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to spend a day traveling with my friend and colleague Bob Casey around southeastern Pennsylvania getting a firsthand look at the effects of climate change and hearing about the work Pennsylvanians are doing to address it. At the University of Pennsylvania's Morris Arboretum, leaders from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Community Asthma Prevention Program, Moms Clean Air Force, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other groups talked about kids with asthma and other conditions that worsen when temperatures and pollution levels are high. In Malvern, we toured the LEED platinum North American headquarters of Saint-Gobain, the world's largest building materials company. The company is demonstrating that green building materials and technologies can be married with stylish design to produce stunning results. With operations in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and around the globe, Saint- Gobain is developing innovative technologies to reduce pollution, generate clean energy, and improve air quality for millions of people. From there, we visited the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, which is the Nation's first urban wildlife refuge and Pennsylvania's largest freshwater tidal wetland. Lamar Gore, the refuge manager, showed us how the refuge is at risk from the saltwater pushed in by rising sea levels. The refuge is adjacent to the Philadelphia International Airport, along the Delaware River. As you can see from these graphics reproduced from the New York Times, at 5 feet of sea level rise, some of the city goes underwater and the refuge is in real trouble. Water encroaches upon the Philadelphia airport. At 12 feet of sea level rise, 6 percent of the city--including the refuge, airport, and parts of downtown Philly--is underwater. Projections that parts of Philadelphia will one day be uninhabitable due to sea level rise are one of the major drivers for forward-looking climate mitigation and adaptation policies of Philadelphia's Office of Sustainability. Senator Casey and I met with them too. Being in Pennsylvania gave me a chance to connect with Dr. Robert Brulle of Drexel University. He is the scholar who documented the intricate propaganda web of fossil fuel industry-funded climate denial, connecting over 100 organizations, from trade associations, to conservative think tanks, to plain old phony front groups. The purpose of this climate denial apparatus is, to quote Dr. Brulle, ``a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public's understanding of climate.'' I will wrap up with a special thank-you to one of the folks who helped organize my Texas trip: Tom Smith, who has been director of Public Citizen of Texas for more than 30 years. Known by his friends and colleagues as Smitty and known for his signature straw hat, over his career he has testified more than 1,000 times before the Texas Legislature and Congress--Mr. Uphill Struggle indeed. He was successful, though, and central in creating the Texas Emissions Reduction Program, which led to wide-scale deployment of solar and wind across Texas. A true environmental champion, Smitty retires this year. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a recent tribute from the Texas Tribune entitled: ``Analysis: `Smitty,' a Texas Lobbyist for the Small Fry, Retiring after 31 years.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. With that understanding, I suggest the absence of a quorum, with the time divided equally between the two sides.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be evenly divided between the two sides during the quorum call.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to comment and say a few words about the use of the budget reconciliation process to facilitate an effort to repeal but not replace ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. I serve on the Budget Committee. During the course of multiple hearings during the previous year before the election, we heard the most adamant stories from the Republican side about how dire our Nation's debt situation was, how dire our Nation's deficit was. Member after Member on the Republican side spoke as if the end of the Republic was at hand. Yet the policies from the Bush administration that kept driving that debt and that deficit they protect. They blamed President Obama for the effect of Bush policies that took place during President Obama's years, while defending those Bush policies the President had actually tried to correct. In many respects, their concern about the budget was a little ironic since they were defending the Bush policies that created this debt and deficit explosion in the first place. Nevertheless, be that as it may, you had this phalanx of Republican Senators in a state of very high animation about our debt and deficit. You would think that in this Congress, with control both over the House and the Senate and a Republican President-elect looming, they might use the budget reconciliation process to do something about the debt and the deficit. After all, there was a lot of big talk last year, and here is the budget reconciliation process. As we see, it is not being used to do anything about the debt or the deficit, it is being used to open an effort to repeal but not replace ObamaCare. The problem is, when you do that, you do some pretty bad things to the debt and to the deficit. Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, Medicare officials projected out-year costs for Medicare in 10-year increments. After the experience of the Affordable Care Act, they went back and they redid those projections, and they dropped the cost of Medicare dramatically. Those outyear costs, dramatically reduced, are an important, valuable step toward lower debt, balanced budgets, and less of a national annual deficit. Repealing ObamaCare will undo that. It was pretty clear from Budget Committee hearings that that reduction in anticipated Medicare costs in the outyears was related to the work that had been done in the Affordable Care Act as well as the changes in experience that we are seeing. That is one budget buster which shows that this reconciliation effort is going in the wrong direction. In Rhode Island, I watched this issue pretty closely because I want Rhode Island to be a leader in delivery system reform. I want ours to be one of the most efficient health care systems in the country, and I worked very hard over many years to put the pieces in place in Rhode Island to help make that come to pass. So I talked to people like Dr. Kurose, who runs one of our largest primary care practices, and Dr. Puerini, who runs another very big Rhode Island primary care practice, and I saw that both of them had taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act to make themselves accountable care organizations, ACOs, and they have used the powers and they have used the shared savings under those programs to change the way they deliver medicine. What they show is that their price, their annual cost of service per patient, is actually going down. They are delivering care more efficiently and they are getting to illnesses earlier. They are not just churning the wheel of bill and pay, bill and pay, bill and pay; they are actually managing their patients' health. We hit this wonderful sweet spot where the patients are healthier and the patients are way happier because they are getting better service, and the cost per patient in these practices is coming down. So if that is taken away, we reverse that effect. It is plausible to think that those costs will start going back up again. Why would we want to undo a method that has helped local practices improve the quality of care, reduce the cost of care, and serve their patients better? The ACO program is part of the Affordable Care Act. The last thing is that around here, we try to defend Medicare. One of the achievements of the Affordable Care Act was that it extended the solvency of Medicare out to 2028. Undo this bill and there will be a direct hit on Medicare's solvency. It will come roaring back. So when you put what the Republican Senators on the Budget Committee said with such vehemence and alarm about the debt and the deficit beside the use to which they have put the reconciliation process, which was designed to be used to reduce the debt and the deficit, and you look at how that actually plays out through the health care system--increasing the costs of what would have been accountable care organizations, if that gets undone; lifting back up, presumably, Medicare costs that in the outyears were reduced because of this; and shrinking the time that Medicare stands as solvent--if that is not a hit on Medicare, I don't know what is. The other piece in this process that bears on this is that during the period that these very dramatic concerns were being expressed about the debt and the deficit, the same party that was enunciating those concerns and those threats to our American society and solvency was defending all of the loopholes in the Tax Code. We tried and tried to find a loophole that our Republican friends would be willing to let go of, and we couldn't find a single one that I recall. Even President Trump is interested in trying to get rid of the carried interest loophole that lets hedge fund billionaires pay lower tax rates than brick masons, but could we get an agreement on that from our colleagues on the other side? No. They wouldn't touch it. I hope that as we go forward, we can find a way to bring tax expenditures lined up with appropriated expenditures under the purview of the committee, but so far we have been unable to do that despite repeated bipartisan testimony that a tax expenditure is just the same as an appropriated expenditure in so far as it affects the debt and deficit--no difference--bipartisan testimony, clear on the record. The difference is that behind a great many of these lucrative tax loopholes that are baked into the Tax Code and that survive year after year after year is a special interest, whether it is somebody trying to depreciate their private jet more rapidly than an airline can depreciate passenger aircraft, whether it is the carried interest loophole that puts, very likely, the billionaire getting out of his limousine in front of his New York apartment in a lower tax rate than the guy holding the umbrella over his head, the doorman. How fair is that? But that is the status of the tax law. We couldn't get anybody to budge on that because there are obviously big, powerful interests who don't want to see that messed with. Why should they pay taxes like ordinary people when they are superwealthy immortals who can buy themselves politicians? So the ironies of the party that declaimed about debt and deficit with such vehemence through so many hearings, with so much blame on President Obama even though it was carried-forward Bush policies they were defending that were driving so much of that debt--to have that group of people now come and use the reconciliation process designed and intended to address the debt and the deficit instead to try to repeal but not replace ObamaCare in ways that I think can be very fairly projected to raise Medicare costs, reduce Medicare solvency, and undo a good deal of the savings that doctors and taxpayers have shared from hard-working practices like Rhode Island Primary Care Physicians and Coastal Medical in Rhode Island, which have relied on the ACO provisions in the Affordable Care Act to get those savings--who wants to undo that? It makes no sense, and least of all, it makes no budget sense because those outyear health care costs will come home into the budget in those outyears. Of course, you compound that with the fact that no tax loophole is to be touched. No tax loophole can be addressed. No revenue can be generated by closing the carried interest loophole, closing the private jet deduction, closing the tax benefits for the fossil fuel industry, which is making more money than any industry has in history and hardly needs the support of the poor American taxpayer. But, no, big special interests have big tax breaks, and they are going to be protected at all costs. That is really where we are on this. I understand we used reconciliation to move ObamaCare. It did, in fact, do the job of reducing the deficit, I believe. Undoing it goes in the opposite direction, but there is a certain ``what is good for the goose is good for the gander'' equivalence about using that to undo what we did. I get that. But if we are really serious about addressing the debt and deficit, then we shouldn't be using the reconciliation process, which is designed to reduce them both, to attack a health care program whose effect has been to reduce them both. That is where we stand right now. In the months ahead, I hope we will be able to look at tax expenditures. More money goes out the back door through tax expenditures than gets spent on some of our biggest programs. It is a huge loophole, and within it are a lot of very unattractive special interest special provisions--loopholes in the worst sense of the word. We don't want to touch them because nobody dares to touch the special interests behind them. So that is where we are. I hope we can make real progress on the debt and the deficit and stop defending private jet reductions, stop defending fossil fuel subsidies, stop defending billionaire special tax breaks, and actually put the debt and the deficit that America faces first rather than having conversations about that being window dressing until you get a Republican President, and then you go completely haywire, using the reconciliation process to undo health care laws, raise Medicare costs, and undo the ACO program that has been so effective in my State. I see the junior Senator from Utah is presiding, and I know that Utah and Intermountain have some of the best health care work being done on delivery system reform, and it would surprise me very much if the leaders at Intermountain in Utah were excited about undoing the delivery system reform provisions of Obamacare. The Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare Services, the ACO provisions, the provisions for shared savings between doctors and the taxpayer when savings accrue because of better practices, the changes toward better models of payment--I would be very surprised if they were very enthusiastic about undoing those. But, as I said, this is where we are, and I will close my remarks, and I hope that soon, once this exercise is over, we can actually get serious about closing loopholes and reducing the debt and reducing the deficit--the nominal cause of the Republicans on the Budget Committee. 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 would like to associate myself with all of the comments made by Senator Reed. With 90 judicial vacancies in our Article III courts and 32 judicial emergencies, there is no excuse for failing to confirm nominees who have been reported to the Senate floor. Mary McElroy has undergone the nomination and committee processes with grace and dignity. These processes are intense and time-consuming. She, her husband, Bob, and their two children, have put their lives on hold in order for her to accept this responsibility as a public servant. Mary and the 20 other district court nominees awaiting a floor vote--many of whom have waited for over than a year--should be confirmed immediately.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, for many years, the Judiciary Committee and the Senate have been well served by the distinguished service of Ayo Griffin. Ayo is a talented lawyer and a principled public servant, respected and admired by his peers, who has ably guided some of my most significant legislative initiatives. Ayo's career has always demonstrated what Victor Hugo called ``conscience in the service of justice.'' By the time Ayo joined my Judiciary Committee staff in 2011, he had already taken on difficult work conducting foreign corruption investigations in private practice. He had volunteered with human rights litigation and anticorruption training in Cambodia. In the important tradition of making legal aid available to all people, even unpopular defendants, he had represented pro bono detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detention center in Cuba. Here in the Senate, Ayo took on legislation to improve our prisons and strengthen law enforcement, to prevent domestic violence and sexual assault, to reform our immigration regime, to curb gun violence, and to undo the damage done to our campaign finance system by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. In the wake of the flood of secret money unleashed by Citizens United, Ayo helped me craft the DISCLOSE Act to require groups spending large amounts to influence our elections to identify their donors and to prevent corporations and other wealthy interests from using shell corporations to funnel secret money to super PACs. Ayo worked closely with good governance advocates, campaign finance experts, and our colleagues here in Congress to build a strong coalition behind the legislation. When Republicans blocked the legislation from proceeding in 2012, Ayo helped me coordinate a midnight vigil, with the bill's Democratic sponsors holding the Senate floor into the morning hours until we secured a vote on the measure. In the end, the DISCLOSE Act twice won support from a majority of Senators in votes before this body. Ayo's contribution to that effort not only channeled a groundswell of popular support, but shone a bright light on an issue at the very heart of our democracy. Today Ayo is facing a much different challenge. Some time ago, he was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, requiring intensive therapy. He has tackled his treatment with signature determination, working intently with his specialists and therapists to stay ahead of the disease. His wife, Mary Dewhurst, has shown great love and courage through this trying time and is Ayo's steadfast partner in every winding step of their journey. ``You must work very hard,'' Maurice Ravel once wrote to a fellow composer, ``because someone who is gifted must work harder than someone who is not.'' I am grateful for both the ample gifts and hard work of Ayo Griffin. I thank Ayo for his faithful service. My entire staff and I offer our unending support. And I wish him and Mary health and much happiness in their days to come.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is fitting that Joe Biden ascended from Senator to Vice President--or as the office is known around here, President of the Senate. Joe was elected to the Senate as a very young man. We have heard Joe talk about how hard it was after losing his wife, Neilia, and baby daughter, Naomi, in an automobile accident, just weeks before he was to be sworn in, to come to Washington and assume his duties. He credits his older colleagues like Mike Mansfield, Ted Kennedy, Danny Inouye, Hubert Humphrey, Fritz Hollings, and Rhode Island's Claiborne Pell, who opened his Washington home to the young Senator, with convincing him to stick it out, just for a few months. Well, he did more than stick it out. He dove in. The Senate saved his life, he has said, in that time of grief. And in return, he gave his life to the Senate, serving the people of Delaware for more than three decades. Joe Biden presided over Supreme Court nomination hearings as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He shepherded the assault weapons ban and the Violence Against Women Act. He served also as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, facing down dictators and championing nuclear nonproliferation. He is, of course, recognized in Senate lore as a particularly strong speaker and debater. From his familiar perch in the back row of the Chamber, Joe would hold forth on the merits of legislative proposals and the positions of his colleagues. If the Chamber was empty of Senators, he would even turn and deliver his speeches to the captive audience in the staff gallery behind him. But Joe can always be counted on for telling it like it is. Not long ago, he was in my home State of Rhode Island to tout needed infrastructure projects. Now, Rhode Island has one of the highest rates of structurally deficient bridges in the Nation, and my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and I have worked hard to bring Federal resources to bear in addressing that need. But Joe put it no uncertain terms. Standing under the East Shore Expressway Bridge on Warren Avenue in East Providence, the Vice President cried, ``For 10 years you've had Lincoln logs holding the damn thing up! No, I mean go look at it. The press went and looked at it. If everybody in Rhode Island watched the news tonight and saw that, they'd try to go around the damn bridge!'' Whatever his style or accomplishments, Joe will always pin his success in the Senate on the personal relationships he forged so deeply and so sincerely, with ideological allies and strange bedfellows alike. ``Every good thing I have seen happen here, every bold step taken in the 36-plus years I have been here, came not from the application of pressure by interest groups, but through the maturation of personal relationships,'' he said in his 2009 farewell speech. ``Pressure groups can and are strong and important advocates. But they're not often vehicles for compromise. A personal relationship is what allows you to go after someone hammer and tong on one issue and still find common ground on the next.'' That is why Joe Biden was uniquely well suited for the one job in this country with one constitutional foot in the executive branch and the other in the legislative. He was at the center of a number of high- stakes compromises between the White House, Congress, and the two parties. And every once in a while, he still got to vote. ``Except for the title `father,' '' he said, ``there is no title, including `vice president,' that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.'' Joe Biden is a great father to Hunter and Ashley, and to Beau, whose passing last year was felt by the entire Senate family. He served honorably as Vice President. But he will always be the pride of the Senate. I thank him for his faithful service and for his enduring example. And I wish him and Jill great happiness in the adventures to come.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today for my 151st ``Time to Wake Up'' speech on climate change. I have covered many topics during these speeches--from pulling back the veil on the fossil fuel industry's web of denial to sharing my visits to States from New Hampshire to Florida to Utah to see the effects of climate change there firsthand. But one recurring theme of my speeches and in the scientific literature has been the warning that the effects of climate change will hit home first and hardest along our coasts. The oceans have soaked up more than 90 percent of the excess heat that has been trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses. That is a lot of heat. The Associated Press has compared the ocean heat we have added since 1997 to a, ``Hiroshima-style bomb being exploded every second in the ocean for 75 straight years.'' That excess energy is warming our oceans at alarming rates, and by the principle of thermal expansion, we know that when water warms it expands. That, coupled with the melting ice sheets, is driving up sea levels worldwide. For my Ocean State that is a big deal. Warming and rising seas carry real consequences for coastal economies. New England is being hit particularly hard on this front. The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other part of the ocean in the world. Narragansett Bay, in my home state of Rhode Island, has already seen a nearly 4-degree Fahrenheit increase in winter water temperatures since the 1960s. Since measurements started in 1930, sea level is up nearly 10 inches at the tide gauge at Naval Station Newport. Now, 10 inches may not sound like an enormous amount, but if you do a little mathematics and take that 10 inches and you multiply it by the 147 square miles that Narragansett Bay occupies, that adds nearly 100 million cubic meters of water offshore--throw weight for when the next storm comes. Now, we don't model storm surge very well yet. But there is a lot of potential harm for Rhode Island. If you look not just at Narragansett Bay but at Rhode Island State waters, it is more than 500 million cubic meters, which is more than 500 million metric tons of potential storm surge. Earlier this year, researchers published in Nature an updated estimate of global sea level rise. With new estimates of how melting Antarctic sea ice will contribute to sea level rise, the scientists were able to paint a more accurate picture of what lies ahead. It is not good news. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously estimated sea level rise to reach between 1.7 and 3.2 feet by 2100. The new study doubles that estimate, putting global sea level rise over 6 feet by the end of this century. To complicate matters more, as Antarctica loses ice and consequently mass, it will actually also affect the gravitational pull of the Antarctic on the oceans. With Antarctica's gravitational pull reduced, other continents will proportionately carry more gravitational clout, drawing even more ocean water away from the South Pole to their coasts. Ben Strauss, the director of Climate Central's sea level rise program, recently told the Washington Post: [T]he 22nd century would be the century of hell. There would really be an unthinkable level of sea rise. It would erase many major cities and some nations from the map. A study published in the ``Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' last month looked at the effects of rising seas on more than 100 coastal cities around the world. The study predicts that we will hit 2 degrees Celsius of average global warming, which scientists say brings catastrophic and irreversible climate effects, sometime between 2040 and 2050. When that happens, over 90 percent of the world's coastal areas will experience almost 8 inches of further sea level rise. On the Atlantic coast of the United States, it is estimated to be more than 15 inches. If we continue emissions unabated and hit 5 degrees Celsius warming by 2100, New York City could see over 3\1/2\ feet of seawater swamping its streets. The year 2040 is not that far away. If you buy a house on the coast today, 2040 would fall well within your typical 30-year mortgage. As you might imagine, the real estate business is starting to take notice. Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, has looked at how 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 100 million U.S. homes in its database. Around 1 in 50 homes in the United States, or just under 2 million properties, would find their ground floors underwater by 2100. Thirty-six U.S. cities would be considered completely lost, and another 300 cities would lose at least half of their homes. Florida fared the worst in the study, losing more than 12 percent of the State's housing to sea level rise. Hawaii is not far behind, with over 9 percent of its homes expected to go underwater. Though New Jersey's overall housing situation fares somewhat better, with a loss expected at just over 7 percent, the value of those homes well exceeds any other State. New Jersey alone accounts for over 10 percent of the $882,000,000,000 worth of potentially underwater properties. Miami Beach would be the hardest hit city, losing over 37,000 homes, worth over $33 billion. Those numbers just count residential properties, not expected losses to commercial or public properties. The insurance industry uses the term ``100-year flood'' to describe a flood that has a 1-percent chance of occurring in a given year. According to a 2013 study commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the area in the United States susceptible to 100-year floods will grow by 45 percent by the end of the century. Our Government Accountability Office says Federal flood insurance premiums are not keeping pace with that growing risk. From 2002 through 2013 already, taxpayers bailed out insured properties to the tune of $18 to $25 billion. Government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac is preparing itself for broad losses from climate-driven flooding. ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually,'' says its Web site, ``but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and the Great Recession.'' Let me say that again: ``They are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.'' Some of the effects of climate change, it says, may not even by insurable. Unlike the 2008 housing crash, owners of homes that are subsumed by rising seas would have little expectation of their home's value ever recovering. Therefore, they would have little incentive to make their mortgage payments, which would add to steep losses for lenders and insurers. We don't, of course, have to wait until 2100 to see the effects of sea level rise on coastal cities like Miami, Charleston, Norfolk, or Newport, RI. So-called sunny day flooding is increasing in coastal communities. As sea levels rise, regular high tides can be all that is needed to flood streets, sidewalks and basements. NOAA estimates that non-storm-related nuisance flooding, just from tides and sea level rise, has increased somewhere between 300 to 925 percent along the United States' three coastlines since the 1960s. This past October's King Tides--the year's highest tides--brought around 2 feet of water to Boston's waterfront. Last month's Super Moon pulled water into the streets of Charleston and the parking lots of New Hampshire. This wayward octopus--I don't know if you can see it clearly, but there is a fairly good-sized octopus here--ended up swimming through a Miami parking garage. These extreme high tides give a preview of what may be the new normal in this century. Higher seas plus stronger storms forebode real catastrophe for coastal communities. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 is the worst in Rhode Island's history. A storm surge of 12 to 15 feet hit Narragansett Bay, engulfing downtown Providence. You can see old photographs of the streetcars with just their roofs showing over the water. If that storm hit again today, it would have a big head start, riding to shore on 10 more inches of sea with that potentially 500 million metric tons of water available for storm surge. Again, we don't know how much of it becomes storm surge, but it certainly raises the potential. This picture is from historic Newport after Superstorm Sandy gave us a glancing blow in Rhode Island in 2012. It brought a storm surge of over 9 feet to Providence, and over 4 feet to the south coast of the State. This is downtown Newport and Seamen's Church Institute right here, and somebody is kayaking through downtown. According to the most recent report from the National Ocean Economics Program, more than 134 million people lived in U.S. coastal zone counties in 2014. Those counties accounted for nearly half of the total U.S. GDP and more than 40 percent of total U.S. employment. In my State of Rhode Island, the coastal economy accounts for $55 billion of the State's GDP and employed over 400,000 people in 2014. This productivity is at risk if those communities and their businesses cannot protect themselves from the consequences of our changing environment. A lot of places are taking this threat seriously. Although partisans in the State government make the phrase ``climate change'' a taboo in Florida, local policymakers, particularly in South Florida, are making climate change adaptation a priority, forming a regional bipartisan compact on climate resiliency, hiring resiliency and sustainability staff, building seawalls, installing pumps, updating building codes, and in Miami Beach's case--just in that one city-- making $400 million in storm water management upgrades. In New Hampshire, the Coastal Risks and Hazards Commission has advised cities to prepare infrastructure and buildings for rising seas. Louisiana rewrote its Coastal Master Plan to accept the dark predictions of land loss and sea level rise facing that lowland State and to include around 200 projects designed to protect Southern Louisiana's marshes and limit the effects of storm surge. In Alaska, Native villages are seeking financial support to relocate their traditional coastal homesteads to higher ground. In Rhode Island, under the leadership of Grover Fugate at our Coastal Resources Management Council and in cooperation with the leading experts at the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Sea Grant, and Rhode Island Geological Survey, we are well aware of what climate change, sea level rise, and storm surge mean for our coastal communities. STORMTOOLS, a free public online tool developed through this collaboration, is providing our city planners and concerned citizens with a visualization of the effects of various levels of sea level rise and storm surge on their properties. The Coastal Risk Environmental Index, which is shown here, will add even more specificity to the models working in STORMTOOLS. Users can actually navigate Google Earth to see what flood damage from sea level rise and storm surge will look like on a building-by-building basis. The city of Warwick, RI, featured here, is already using its maps in its future planning and emergency planning. The rising tide calls for increased investment in coastal resiliency around the country. Senators Merkley, Menendez, and I asked the Government Accountability Office to review the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's support for coastal States' resilience efforts. Among its findings, the GAO report said that the Regional Coastal Resilience Grants Program ``received 132 qualified applications requesting a total of $105 million during its first application period in fiscal year 2015.'' Well, guess how much money was available to meet that $105 million approved or qualified need. Only $4.5 million. NOAA was able to support less than 5 percent of the coastal States' demand. Climate change doesn't care whether you believe the science or the propaganda and nonsense pumped out by the fossil fuel lobby--shoreside homes' basements will flood either way. It is not a matter of belief, it is a matter of physics. For all the denial and diversion, you will notice that the fossil fuel industry's web of denial groups don't talk much about the effects we are seeing in our oceans and along our coasts. Their business is denial and, through calculated misinformation, creating phony doubt. That is their mission. If that is your mission, it is hard to deny water levels that are measured essentially on a glorified yardstick at tide gauges. It is hard to deny measurements from a Ph test that high schoolers do in their science classes. It is hard to deny readings from thermometers. Here in the Senate, our choice is clear: We can take action or continue to sleepwalk through history. But we should remember Pope Francis's warning. Pope Francis said: ``God always forgives, we men forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives. If you give her a slap, she will give you one.'' And we have a big slap coming. If we do nothing, what will we tell the millions of Americans who live by the sea and rely on it for their livelihoods? What should we tell them when they can't get insured for the next hurricane or when their mortgages are underwater in a literal sense? If we refuse to help our own citizens, who then will help the millions of others in developing countries around the world suffering the same fate and looking to our country for leadership? We have a moral obligation to pluck our heads from the sand and get to work. The oceans warn; it is time we woke up and listened. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, with the permission of my distinguished chairman, who has worked very hard on this bill and whose efforts I appreciate very much, I wanted to add, very briefly, that I hope very much and look forward to working with my colleagues to assure that the second tranche of the opioid funding is aligned with the CARA bill, or the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which we just passed in such bipartisan fashion a few months ago. We have not achieved that alignment yet, and I hope that we do very soon. I appreciate the terrific efforts of my chairman. With that, I yield. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, South Kingstown Police Chief Vincent Vespia, Jr., has dedicated his career to protecting and serving the people of Rhode Island. He retired this month after nearly 60 years of exceptional service. The State's longest serving police chief began his career in 1959 as a trooper with the Rhode Island State police. Chief Vespia would eventually go on to become a State police organized crime investigator. His work helped bring down New England's top organized crime family. There are many stories about Vin Vespia. One of the most famous was when he crashed through a second floor window of a Federal Hill crap game from a bucket of a cherry picker, brandishing a machine gun at the surprised dice players. As Pulitzer Prize winning author Mike Stanton wrote in his book ``The Prince of Providence,'' ``Vespia was a kick-ass cop who had grown up on the Hill, playing in the street with some of the wise guys he now pursued.'' As a young trooper, Vespia had busted a former playmate with a truckload of stolen furs. ``How can you arrest me?'' the man asked. ``We played kick the can together.'' Replied Vespia: ``You went one way, I went another.'' After retiring from the State police, Vin was appointed chief of the South Kingstown Police Department in 1981. He would spend the next 35 years of his career building an effective, professional force with strong ties to the community. He created new leadership programs within the department's detective bureau and oversaw the construction of an innovative public safety facility with state-of-the-art information technology. Chief Vespia will be remembered for his leadership and fairness. Those he led describe him as dedicated, rational, and respectable. He has been called ``probably the most admired law enforcement officer in Rhode Island.'' I was honored to have worked with him when I was attorney general and am proud to call him my friend. Chief Vespia's 57 years of commitment and service to the people of Rhode Island represent the very best in law enforcement. I commend him and his family for the sacrifices they have made. On behalf of those he has served throughout the years, I offer my thanks. I wish Vin and Judith-Ann, his wife of 40 years, a happy retirement and the best of luck in all future endeavors.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I thank Chairman Grassley. The chairman and I have been working on this bill since 2014. What we heard from juvenile justice practitioners around the country is that a lot of the policies which had been in place for dealing with juvenile offenders were stale and ineffective and that there were better ways to do business than were currently being supported by this grant. So we have worked for years to get this program, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, reauthorized. I see Senator Cotton on the floor, and he can speak for himself, but I think the crux of today's concerns are that the JJDPA would phase out over time--over 3 years, in fact--the ability for States to take its money. You don't have to take the money, but if you take the money, you have to phase out locking up young people--kids--for status offenses, for offenses for which an adult could not be locked up. It is simply not good practice. That is one of the reasons the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has supported this bill--they know it is bad practice. Indeed, the members of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges from the State of Arkansas support this measure. The bill the chairman referred to that passed the House by such an astonishingly strong vote was voted for by every Member of the Arkansas delegation in the House of Representatives, and the senior Senator from the State of Arkansas supports this bill. We hope the junior Senator from Arkansas would be willing to take the legendary advice of Ben Franklin that perhaps we should doubt, each of us, a little bit of our own infallibility and give us a chance to let this bill go forward. If Arkansas doesn't like this, there is a provision that the House put in that allows any State to declare itself outside of the provision under a self-declared hardship provision. That is an indefinite. That is not a 3-year phase-in; that is indefinite. So if the Arkansas courts really want to lock up juveniles for status offenses that no adult could be locked up for, all they have to do is declare under that provision. They may or may not want to do that. The fact that every other member of Arkansas' delegation in Congress appears to support this and that the family court members from the council appear to support it suggests that may not be the case. In any event, we would like the ability to go forward. We are prepared to move this bill right now. I would be delighted to join the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in his motion for unanimous consent that the bill be adopted. I would add for the record that these law enforcement leaders in Arkansas have expressed their support for the bill: Chief Alcon of the Mayflower Police Department; Chief Benton of the Ward Police Department; Chief Coffman of the Judsonia Police Department; Chief Harvey of the Lowell Police Department; Chief Kizer of the Bryant Police Department; Chief Lane of the Benton Police Department; Chief Reid of the Glenwood Police Department; Chief Sims of the Dardanelle Police Department; and Sheriff Sims of the Lafayette County Sheriff's Office. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, the Senator withholds.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, let me also take a moment to add to my climate remarks my appreciation to Dr. Gifford Wong, who is here with me on the floor today. He has been helpful in my office as a trained expert scientist and has helped with many of these speeches. He is leaving us this week after working as a fellow on my staff for over a year. I am proud to have had him serve in my office, and I wish him well. This is his last climate speech with me. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I started my weekly series of speeches about the dangers of climate change in the spring of 2012. My trusty ``Time to Wake Up'' sign is getting a little battered, showing some wear and tear, but I am still determined to get us to act on climate before it is too late. The Senator from New Hampshire clearly knows what is going on in her State. It is long past time to wake up to the industry-controlled campaign of calculated misinformation on the dangers of carbon pollution. Opponents of climate action relish operating in the dark. Their slimiest work to undermine science and deny the harmful effects of carbon pollution on human health, natural systems, and the economy is done by hidden hands through front groups. If anything is to change, we first need to acknowledge peer-reviewed science, the expert assessments of our military and national security leaders, and the business case for climate action that iconic American companies are making. But if anything is really going to change, we need to shine a light on the sophisticated scheme of science denial being foisted on the American people. President Theodore Roosevelt once said: ``Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.'' We in Congress have the chance to do this worthy work, but big special interests don't want that to happen. So Congress keeps drifting toward climate catastrophe, and I keep delivering my weekly remarks-- today for the 150th time. Thankfully, I am not a lone voice. Many colleagues have been speaking out, particularly our ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Boxer, and one of our Democratic Party's Presidential contenders, Senator Sanders. Senator Markey has been speaking on climate longer than I have even been in the Senate. Senators Schumer, Nelson, Blumenthal, Schatz, King, Baldwin, Brown, and Coons have each joined me to speak of the effects of carbon pollution on their home States and economies. Our Democratic leader, Senator Reid, has pressed the Senate to face up to this challenge, and 18 fellow Democratic colleagues, including climate champs Merkley, Warren, Markey, and Schumer joined me in calling out the industry-controlled many-tentacled apparatus deliberately polluting our American discourse with climate science denial. The climate science that deniers tried to undermine dates back to the 1800s, predating Henry Ford's first production Model T, predating Thomas Edison's first light bulb demonstration, and predating the first commercial oil well in the United States. It was 1824, around the time that President Monroe added the South Portico to the White House, that French scientist Joseph Fourier explained that the Earth's temperature would be much lower if the planet lacked an atmosphere, providing one of the first descriptions of the greenhouse effect. In 1861, the year President Lincoln took office, Irish physicist John Tyndall described the trace components of the atmosphere that were responsible for the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor. In 1896, the year Utah joined the Union, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius published the first calculation of global warming due to the addition of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere at that time was 295 parts per million. Today it is 400 parts per million and rising--indeed, rising at a pace not seen for 66 million years. Scientific research continues to demonstrate planetary warming and the many changes that come with it. I am from the Ocean State, and we can particularly look at the oceans to see the devastating effects of climate change. Of course, the great, corrupt denial machine the fossil fuel industry supports rarely talks about oceans. But, remember, that machine doesn't care about evidence. It just wants to create phony doubt. But there is not much room for doubt in measurements of warming, rising, and acidifying seas, which are measured with everyday thermometers--with yardsticks, essentially-- and pH tests. So faced with all that measurement, they just don't go there. But the changes happening in the oceans are real. Our unfettered burning of fossil fuels has made our oceans warmer. The oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the heat trapped in our atmosphere by our carbon pollution--the heat equivalent to several Hiroshima-style atomic bombs being set off in the sea every second for the last 20 years. One result of all this heat is the calamity now taking place in the world's coral reefs, the incubators of the sea. Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral ecosystem on Earth. Severe bleaching has hit between 60 and 100 percent of corals on the Great Barrier Reef, according to Dr. Terry Hughes of James Cook University in Queensland. Research led by Dr. Andrew King at the University of Melbourne determined that the ocean warming that led to widespread and devastating coral destruction was made 175 times more likely by human-caused climate change. As one researcher put it, climate change ``is the smoking gun.'' We are not just warming the oceans. The oceans actually absorb carbon dioxide itself, as well as heat. Because carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid when it dissolves in sea water, the seas are acidifying at the fastest rate in 50 million years. On America's northwest coast, oyster hatcheries have already experienced significant losses when their new hatches were unable to grow their shells in the acidified sea water. Off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, 50 percent of tiny sea snails called pteropods--these creatures right here--were measured to have ``severe shell damage,'' mostly from acidified seas. A NOAA study released just last week detailed for the first time the extent to which that damage was caused by human carbon pollution. If this species collapses, the bottom falls out of the oceanic food chain. In Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay's mean winter water temperature is up nearly 4 degrees Farenheit. Our Rhode Island lobster fishery is crashing, and our winter flounder fishery is practically gone. I know that the New Hampshire fishery is equally stressed. With real alarm, Rhode Island's clammers, lobstermen, fish farmers, and shellfish growers are all watching the damage acidified seas are doing. This is the cost of climate change in the oceans. We are approaching a point of no return. The U.N. Environment Programme's Emissions Gap Report, released earlier this month, warned that unless reductions in carbon pollution from the energy sector are taken swiftly, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius and avoid widespread catastrophes. The report says that the next 3 years are ``likely the last chance'' to limit global warming to safe limits in this century--likely the last chance to make a difference. But Republicans in this Senate want to do nothing about it. Once upon a time, Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for action on climate. Senator McCain ran for President on a strong climate change platform and was the lead cosponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, which would have created a market-based emissions cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from the biggest U.S. sources. At the time Senator McCain said: While we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse gases is not healthy for the environment. As many of the top scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start to reduce these emissions, the better off we will be in the future. Other Republicans got behind cap-and-trade proposals. Senator Carper's Clean Air Planning Act at one time or another counted Senators Alexander, Graham, and Collins among its supporters. Senator Collins later coauthored her own important cap-and-trade bill with Senator Cantwell. Senator Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House. Senator Flake, then representing Arizona in the House, was an original cosponsor of the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act to reduce payroll taxes for employers and employees in exchange for equal revenue from a carbon tax. So what happened? Why did this steady heartbeat of Republican climate action suddenly flatline in 2010? Something happened in 2010. What happened was the Supreme Court's disgraceful 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where, in a nutshell, the Court ruled that corporations are people and money is speech, and so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections. When Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money and allowed it to cast its bullying shadow over Congress, Republicans walked back from any major climate legislation. Rather than freeing up open debate, Citizens United effectively ended any honest debate in Congress on the climate crisis. Unlimited corporate spending in politics can, indeed, corrupt--and not just through floods of anonymous attack advertisements. It can corrupt secretly and, more dangerously, through the mere threat of that spending, through private threats and promises. Sometimes, the fossil fuel industry threat to politicians who don't toe their line is not so subtle. The Koch brothers-backed political juggernaut Americans for Prosperity has openly promised to punish candidates who support curbs on carbon pollution and has openly taken credit for the ``political peril''--to use their words--that organization created for Republicans on climate change. Since 2010, the fossil fuel industry strategy has been to crush Republican opposition to prohibit Republicans from working with Democrats on climate change so that the industry can disguise what is basically old-fashioned special-interest pleading as a partisan issue in America's culture wars. I don't know if you remember the alien in the movie ``Men in Black'' who climbed into the skin and clothing of the unfortunate farmer. That is what the fossil fuel industry has done to the Republican Party since Citizens United. The industry has a lot at stake. The International Monetary Fund has reported the American subsidy for the U.S. fossil fuel industry at nearly $700 billion a year--that is billion with a ``b''--and every year. I ask you, how much trouble would an industry go to to protect a $700 billion-per-year subsidy? A growing body of scholarship is examining the science denial apparatus protecting the fossil fuel industry--how it is funded, how it communicates, and how it propagates the denial message. That research includes work by Harvard's Naomi Oreskes, Michigan State's Aaron McCright, Oklahoma State's Riley Dunlap, Yale's Justin Farrell, Drexel's Robert Brulle, and others. Industrial powers fighting to obscure the harms their products cause isn't new. They operate from a well-worn playbook that was used for industrial contaminants and health hazards such as DDT, CFCs, and, of course, particularly tobacco. It is the ultimate special interest lobbying. President-Elect Trump campaigned on a pledge of draining the swamp of big special interests controlling Washington. Yet leading the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency for the Trump administration is Myron Ebell, the poster child of industry-backed climate denial. Mr. Ebell is the director of energy and environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate front group that has specialized in undermining tobacco, climate, and other science. CEI received millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, the Koch family, coal companies Murray and Massey, and the identity-laundering groups Donors Trust and Donors Capital. CEI and Myron Ebell are the quintessential DC swamp creatures. Politico reports that Ebell was a veteran of the tobacco regulation wars. Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Defense Fund credits Ebell with ``taking the tobacco playbook and applying it to climate change.'' And on climate, Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Niskanen Center says Ebell was ``involved in marshaling allies, building a skeptic movement and enforcing that political orthodoxy as best he could in the Republican Party.'' Ebell criticizes scientists for working outside their degreed fields, but it turns out he isn't even a scientist himself. After college, he studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history at Cambridge. He has even criticized Pope Francis's encyclical on climate change, calling it ``scientifically ill-informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.'' That is rich right there--an outspoken climate contrarian whose organization receives fossil fuel money calling Pope Francis morally obtuse. Well, the President-elect mocked Republican politicians when they went groveling before the Koch brothers at their ``beg-a-thon,'' as the President-elect called it, but now he is busy filling his staff with Koch operatives. Donald Trump may have won the Presidency, but with operatives like Myron Ebell, the Koch brothers are moving in to run the Presidency. The new President, however, will hear from our military, he will hear from our National Labs, and he will hear from NASA, which, with a rover driving around on Mars right now, may actually know a little science, that this is deadly serious. I encourage President-Elect Trump to listen to the voices of reason and expertise, not to the swamp things. Don't, Mr. President-Elect, be taken in by industry lobbyists and front groups scratching and clawing to protect a $700 billion conflict of interest. Consider, Mr. President-elect, listening to your children, who joined you just 7 years ago in saying climate science was ``irrefutable'' and portends ``catastrophic and irreversible'' consequences. That is what you and they said just 7 years ago. Madam President, let's assume something. Let's assume that all our National Labs, NASA and NOAA, our military leaders, our home State universities across our 50 States, hundreds of major American companies, and the more than 190 different nations that signed the Paris climate agreement are all actually not deluded about climate change, that they are not part of a hoax. If that is so, if these trained expert scientists who don't labor under a $700 billion-per-year conflict of interest are telling the truth, then the fossil fuel industry's science denial operation is a fraud. As a fraud, it is a particularly evil one because in order to achieve its goal, the industry has to drag down the Government of the United States or at least the Congress of the United States to its level. The fossil fuel industry maintains a science denial operation and a political influence operation designed and intended to willfully sabotage the proper operation of a branch of the Government of the United States. We ought to all have a problem when a powerful special interest is willing to damage our American experiment in democracy just to achieve its selfish ends. As a Senator, John F. Kennedy once said this: Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. Solutions to climate change need be neither Republican nor Democratic. They do need to be based on sound science and healthy and open debate. And we will be a stronger and more respected country if they are American solutions, if we are leading the world, not tailing along behind other countries. For a country like ours that claims to stand as an example--as a city on a hill, we call it--a country that benefits from the power of our example around the world, this horrible example of out-of-control special interest influence will have lasting consequences. We have a role to play in this world, we Americans, and it is time we got about it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes in morning business.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Chair.