Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That letter is the voice of fact, of scientific analysis, and of reason. Up against it is the apparatus. The apparatus has the money. The apparatus has the slick messaging. The apparatus has the political clout. It has that parallel election spending muscle, it has the lobbying armada, and it has that array of outlets willing to print falsehoods about climate change and, for that matter, about fraud and the First Amendment. The scientists? Well, they have the expertise, the knowledge, and the facts. Whose side we choose to take says a lot about who we are. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the 143rd time now to urge Congress to wake up to the damage that carbon pollution is inflicting on our atmosphere and oceans and to make a record for when people look back at this time and at this place and wonder why Congress was so unresponsive in the face of all of the information. What are we up against that has prevented progress? What we are up against is a many-tentacled, industry-controlled apparatus that is deliberately polluting our discourse in this Nation with phony climate denial. That apparatus runs in parallel with a multi-hundred million dollar electioneering effort that tells politicians: If you don't buy what the apparatus is selling, you will be in political peril. As we look at the apparatus that is propagating this phony climate denial, there is a growing body of scholarship that helps us that is examining this apparatus, how it is funded, how it communicates, and how it propagates the denial message. It includes work by Harvard University's Naomi Oreskes, Michigan State's Aaron McCright, Oklahoma State's Riley Dunlap, Yale's Justin Farrell, and Drexel University's Robert Brulle, but it is not just them. There are a lot of academic folk working on this to the point where there are now more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles examining this climate denial apparatus itself. These scientists are doing serious and groundbreaking work. Dr. Brulle, for instance, has just been named the 2016 recipient of the American Sociological Association's Frederick Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award, the highest honor in American environmental sociology. Dr. Brulle has also won, along with Professor Dunlap, the American Sociological Association's Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award for their book ``Climate Change and Society.'' The work of all of these academic researchers maps out an intricate, interconnected propaganda web which encompasses over 100 organizations, including trade associations, conservative so-called think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, and plain old phony-baloney polluter front groups. A complex flow of cash, now often hidden by donors' trusts and other such identity-laundering operations, support this apparatus. The apparatus is, in the words of Professor Farrell, ``overtly producing and promoting skepticism and doubt about scientific consensus on climate change.'' The climate denial apparatus illuminated by their scholarship is part of the untold story behind our obstructed American climate change politics. This apparatus is huge. Phony-baloney front organizations are set up by the score to obscure industry's hand. Phony messaging is honed by public relations experts to sow doubt about the real scientific consensus. Stables of payrolled scientists are trotted out on call to perform. Professor Brulle likens it to a stage production. Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight--often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians--but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers, and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what is driving this movement, you have to look at what is going on behind the scenes. The whole apparatus is designed to be big and sophisticated enough that when you see its many parts, you can be fooled into thinking it is not all the same animal, but it is, just like the mythological Hydra-- many heads, same beast. The apparatus is huge because it has a lot to protect. The International Monetary Fund has pegged what it calls the effective subsidy to the fossil fuel industry every year in the United States alone at nearly $700 billion. That is a lot to protect. Here is one other measure. The Center for American Progress has tallied the carbon dioxide emissions from the power producers involved in the lawsuit to block implementation of President Obama's Clean Power Plan, either directly or through their trade groups. It turns out they have a lot of pollution to protect. The companies affiliated with that lawsuit were responsible for nearly 1.2 billion tons of carbon pollution in 2013. That is one-fifth of the entire carbon output in our entire country, and 1.2 billion tons makes these polluters, if they were their own country, the sixth biggest CO2 emitter in the world--more than Germany or Canada. Using the Office of Management and Budget's social cost of carbon, that is a polluter cost to the rest of us of $50 billion every year. When this crowd comes to the court, they come with very dirty hands and for very high stakes. Not only is this apparatus huge, it is also complex. It is organized into multiple levels. Rich Fink is the former President of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. He has outlined the model they use called the ``Structure of Social Change'' to structure what he called ``the distinct roles of universities, think tanks, and activist groups in the transformation of ideas into action.'' As a Koch-funded grantmaker out to pollute the public mind, the Koch Foundation realized that multiple levels were necessary for successful propaganda production. They went at it this way: The ``intellectual raw materials'' were to be produced by scholars funded at universities, giving the product some academic credibility. I think at this point, Koch funding reaches into as many as 300 college campuses to create this so-called intellectual raw material. Then think tanks and policy institutions mold these ideas and market them as ``needed solutions for real-world problems.'' I guess they are using the technique of ``think tank as disguised political weapon'' described by Jane Mayer in her terrific book ``Dark Money.'' Then comes what we would call ``astroturf''--citizen implementation groups ``build diverse coalitions of individual citizens and special interest groups needed to press for the implementation of policy change'' at the ground level. So the apparatus is organized not unlike a company would set up manufacturing, marketing, and sales. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Mr. Fink's ``The Structure of Social Change.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 20 minutes, although I don't think I will use it all.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, investigative books, journalists' reporting, and academic studies repeatedly compare the climate denial effort to the fraud scheme that was run by the tobacco industry to disguise the harms of smoking. When I was a U.S. attorney, the Justice Department pursued and ultimately won a civil lawsuit against tobacco companies for that fraud. When I was here in the Senate, I wrote an opinion piece about a possible DOJ investigation into the fossil fuel industry fraud on climate change. This gave me a new appreciation of the apparatus in action. In response came an eruption of dozens of rightwing editorials, most of which interestingly were virtually identical, with common misstatements of law and common omissions of facts. The eruption recurred some months later in response to me asking Attorney General Lynch about such an investigation when she was before us during a hearing of the Judiciary Committee. Virtually every author or outlet in these eruptions was a persistent climate denier. Common markers in the published pieces seemed to point to a central script. When multiple authors all say something that is true, that is not necessarily noteworthy, but when multiple authors are all repeating the same falsehoods, that is a telling fingerprint. I happened to notice this because unlike most people, I get my news clips so I saw all these articles as they emerged in this eruption that took place. The articles regularly confused civil law with criminal law, suggesting that I wanted to ``slap the cuffs'' on people or ``prosecute'' people when the tobacco case was a civil case, and in a civil case there are no handcuffs. The articles almost always overlooked the fact that the government won the tobacco fraud lawsuit and won it big. The pieces usually said my target was something other than the big industry protagonist. My targets were described as ``climate dissidents'' or ``independent thought'' or ``scientists'' and ``the scientific method'' or even just ``people who just disagree with me.'' Nothing like that transpired in the tobacco fraud case, obviously. Time and time again, the articles wrongly asserted that any investigation into potential fraud by this climate denial apparatus would be a violation of the First Amendment. This was a particularly telling marker because it is actually settled law--including from the tobacco case itself--that fraud is not protected under the First Amendment. So the legal arguments were utterly false, but nevertheless the apparatus was prolific. They cranked out over 100 articles in all in those two eruptions. Now the State attorneys general who have stepped up to investigate whether the fossil fuel industry and its front groups engaged in a fraud have faced a similar backlash. First came the editorial barrage, often from the same outlets and authors as mine and usually with the same false arguments. Then, Republicans on the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sent the attorneys general letters with a barrage of demands to discourage and disrupt their inquiries. A group of Republican State attorneys general even issued a letter decrying the efforts of their investigating colleagues. All of them insisted the First Amendment should prevent any investigation. In one ironic example, the Koch-backed front group Americans for Prosperity rode to the rescue of the Koch-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the climate denial mouthpieces under investigation. The Koch-backed front group Americans for Prosperity announced it was joining a coalition of 47 other groups to support what it called ``a fight for free speech,'' but according to realkochfacts.org, 43 of the 47 groups in that so-called coalition also have ties to the Kochs, and 28 of them are directly funded by the Kochs and their family foundations. Welcome to the apparatus. The Koch brothers' puppet groups claim to stand united against what Americans for Prosperity described as ``an affront to the First Amendment rights of all Americans,'' but scroll back, and the tobacco companies and their front groups and Republican allies made exactly the same argument against the Department of Justice's civil racketeering lawsuit--the one the Department of Justice won. Big Tobacco's appeal in court argued that, quoting the appeal, ``the First Amendment would not permit Congress to enact a law that so criminalized one side of an ongoing legislative and public debate because the industry's opinions differed from the government or `consensus' view.'' How did they do? They lost. They lost because the case was about fraud, not differences of opinion. Courts can tell the difference between fraud and differences of opinion. They do it all the time. Fraud has specific legal requirements. The courts in the tobacco case held firmly that the Constitution holds no protection for fraud--zero-- and the tobacco industry had to stop the fraud. Now the fossil fuel industry says it is different from the tobacco industry while it uses the very same argument as the tobacco schemers. To really appreciate how bogus the First Amendment argument is, think through what it would mean if fraudulent corporate speech were protected by the First Amendment. Out would go State and Federal laws protecting us from deceitful misrepresentations about products. Consumer protection offices around the country would shrivel or shut their doors, and it would be open season on the American consumer. That is a dark world to envision, but it is the world that results if corporate lies about the safety of their products or industrial processes are placed beyond the reach of the law. I say lies because you have to be lying for it to be fraud. This begs the question of whether there is really a difference of opinion about climate change among scientists. Last week, 31 leading national scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and 28 others sent Members of Congress a no-nonsense message that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses serious risks to society, and that we need to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They told us this: Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter from the 39 scientific organizations.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was delighted to let Senator Graham celebrate an achievement by his home State university. I was pleased to yield him the time. Climate Change Mr. President, I am here, as the Presiding Officer knows, for the 142nd time to urge Congress to wake up to the threat of climate change. We are asleep at the wheel in Congress, heading toward climate catastrophe. Of course, outside this Chamber there is broad support for responsible climate action from the American people and from every major scientific society. Indeed, 31 of them just sent us a letter this week, reminding us to get off our duffs and pay attention to the science. Virtually every one of our home State universities, our National Laboratories, NASA, NOAA, and the military, national security, and intelligence leadership of our country--if they are all wrong, that is one heck of a hoax. Frustratingly, Congress is still fogged in by a decades-long, purposeful campaign of deliberate misinformation from the fossil fuel industry and its allies. And since Citizens United, that misinformation campaign is backed up by unprecedented special interest political artillery. Outside the fossil fuel industry, there is of course broad support for action on climate change across corporate America. Leading businesses and executives vocally supported President Obama on the Paris Agreement. Many are committed to getting onto a sustainable energy path. More than 150 major American firms signed the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Many are pushing their commitment outside of their corporate walls through their supply chains, but against these Americans corporate efforts on climate stand two major forces that claim to represent American business: the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Wall Street Journal editorial page claims to speak for the business community, small business owners, and industry titans alike, but it is way off base from the business community's commitment to addressing climate change. Its editorial page is constantly wrong about climate change, from misstating the science of climate change, to misstating the costs versus benefits of climate action, to misstating the law when carrying the industry's water to oppose civil investigations into whether the industry climate denial scheme amounts to fraud. It is not new. The Journal has a well-worn playbook for defending polluting industries. Look at its commentaries over time on acid rain, on the ozone layer, and of course now on climate change. It is always wrong, and worse, there is a pattern, a formula: Deny the science, question the motives of those calling for change, exaggerate the costs of taking action, and, above all, protect the polluting industry. I have said all of this before, but now there is a study that quantifies it. Climate Nexus's recent analysis of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page shows ``a consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.'' The analysis finds the opinion section has ``done its readers a disservice by consistently ignoring or ridiculing the scientific consensus on the reality and urgency of climate change.'' The editorial page's bias, which is out of sync with virtually every single major scientific body, ``cannot help but hinder its readers' ability to make accurate assessments of the risk climate change poses to their businesses.'' Specifically, Climate Nexus's analysis found that of 201 editorials relating to climate science or policy dating back to 1997, not one explicitly acknowledges that fossil fuels cause climate change. Of the 279 op-eds published since 1995, 40 reflect mainstream climate science, a paltry 14 percent. And of 122 columns published since 1997, just 4 accept as fact that fossil fuels cause climate change or endorse a policy to reduce emissions--out of 122 columns, 4. It is laughable. Between April 2015 and May 2016, when global heat records were falling with regularity, the Journal published 100 climate-related op- eds, columns, and editorials. Only 4 op-eds provided information reflecting mainstream climate science, and 96 pieces in the Journal's opinion section failed to acknowledge the link between human activity and climate change. Even ExxonMobil and Charles Koch admit that link. Last January, for example, the page called recent extreme weather ``business as usual,'' while clinging to the bogus ``hiatus'' argument that global temperature increases had halted. The Climate Nexus report illuminates a series of advertisements that have been placed--where? On the Wall Street Journal editorial page, calling attention to this preposterous bias. The first one reads: ``Exxon's CEO Says Fossil Fuels Are Raising Temperatures and Sea Levels. Why won't the Wall Street Journal?'' The copy below goes on to say ExxonMobil has called for a carbon price, and they have. The CEOs of BP, Shell, Total, Statoil, BG Group and ENI call climate change ``a critical challenge for our world'' and have also called for a price on carbon. It is time for the editorial board of the WSJ to become part of the solution on climate change. The next one says: ``Carbon Dioxide Traps Heat on Earth.'' It goes on to say: This isn't controversial. The head of Exxon Mobil and most major oil companies agree, along with every scientific academy in the world. Again, a fact. The next one: ``The Earth Has Warmed. And We Did It.'' It goes on to say: [W]e've known for more than a century that adding more heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from fossil fuels would warm the planet. And we have known that. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. So it's not surprising that the planet keeps getting warmer (although you may not have seen this fact on this page). And, of course, ``Despite what you may have heard, there has been no `pause.' '' All of that is solid, clear science. The next ad: ``What Goes Up Doesn't Come Down. CO2 Emissions Stay in the Atmosphere for Centuries.'' And they do one other thing that this advertisement mentions as well: The CO2 emissions, when they are in the atmosphere above the oceans, react chemically with the oceans. This is a reaction that you can replicate in a high school chemistry lab. This is not debatable, negotiable science. This is known, established science. It says oceans are acidifying as a result, and they are. We measure that, and we are measuring the fastest increase in acidification in the ocean in 50 million years. The one that follows: ``Your Assets are at Risk. Beware the Carbon Bubble.'' If you thought the housing bubble and crash of 2008 were bad, consider the carbon bubble: A ticking time-bomb for fossil fuel company investors. This is why so many conservative economists want to put a ``price'' on carbon to speed the clean energy transition while allowing the markets to cushion and adjust. Of course that is true. Every single conservative or Republican who has fought the climate change problem through to the solution has come to the same solution, which is a revenue-neutral price on carbon. Here we go, the most recent ad: ``The Free Market Solution to Climate Change.'' The CEOs of oil giants Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, Total, Eni, and BG Group have all called for carbon pricing. So have the leaders of [many countries around the world]. Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins calls a revenue-neutral carbon tax ``our first-best policy, rewarding innovations by which humans would satisfy their energy needs while releasing less carbon into the atmosphere.'' Those are the advertisements that have been put on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Unfortunately, it takes people paying for space on the Wall Street Journal editorial page to get the truth about climate change told on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. These are straightforward, broadly accepted statements of the science of climate change. So if the Wall Street Journal editorial page isn't acknowledging the views of credentialed experts, whom is it representing? Back to the Climate Nexus report, and I quote: [T]he Wall Street Journal consistently highlights voices of those with vested interests in fossil fuels . . . presenting only the dismissive side of the climate discussion. . . . [T]hat undermines a reader's ability to effectively evaluate climate risk, objectively assess potential solutions, and balance the two. The report calls the short shrift given to climate change ``a failure of journalistic responsibility.'' Look at its commentary on acid rain, on the ozone layer, and on climate change--always the same, always wrong. You have to wonder what service the Wall Street Journal editorial page is providing to its readership, since its record seems to rule out truth or balance or factuality. Maybe the short answer is that the service the Wall Street Journal editorial page is providing isn't a service to its readership. Let's turn to the other miscreant. You might wonder as well what service the U.S. Chamber of Commerce provides to its members who have responsible climate change policies. The U.S. Chamber is the largest lobbying organization in the country, and its power in Congress is fully dedicated to stopping any serious climate legislation. Everybody here sees the Chamber's hostility to climate legislation everywhere. My and Senator Warren's offices recently took a look at the lobbying positions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce compared with the positions of its own board members. With Senators Boxer, Sanders, Brown, Merkley, Blumenthal, and Markey, we released a report on our findings. Not one of the 108 Chamber board members we contacted would endorse the U.S. Chamber's lobbying on climate change--not one. Our investigation found that roughly half of the companies represented on the Chamber's board actually have strong pro-climate action positions, which contrast sharply with the Chamber's lobbying activities. We also found the Chamber's decisionmaking about these policies to be awfully murky. The Chamber describes its board as its ``principal governing and policymaking body,'' but not one Chamber board member asserted that they were fully aware of and able to provide their input and views to the Chamber regarding its actions on climate. There was no sign of a board vote or any formal input. One company indicated it was ``not advised of any campaigns'' and was ``not aware of any processes'' to lobby against climate action by the Chamber of Commerce. Another company reported that ``the issues raised . . . have not been discussed during the short time [it has] been a member of the organization.'' The Chamber has aggressively lobbied for climate policies that are directly at odds with science, public health, public opinion, and--with the results of this recent research, it turns out--with most of its own board members. Again, the question comes, whom are they serving? The Center for Responsive Politics--a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group that tracks money spent on elections and lobbying--found that in 2015 alone, the Chamber spent roughly $85 million on lobbying efforts. That is more than twice the amount spent by the second highest lobbying spending organization. Think for a moment of the progress we could make here if the Chamber's lobbying muscle actually aligned with the positions of the businesses the U.S. Chamber of Commerce purports to represent. We don't see that. Instead, we see the bullying menace of the fossil fuel industry holding sway in these Halls. It appears to have captured the Chamber. It appears to control the Wall Street Journal editorial page. On the other side, there is virtually zero corporate lobbying effort for a good bipartisan climate bill. The result here is not surprising. Indeed, it is quite predictable when all the artillery is on one side of a fight--all the artillery on the side of the fossil fuel industry. The result is that Members of Congress who know better are afraid to act. Too many good companies are AWOL on climate change in Congress. Too many have farmed out their lobbying to groups like the Chamber of Commerce that actually oppose their corporate climate policies. Too many will not speak up or answer back when the Wall Street Journal editorial page purports to speak for them but emits only polluter nonsense. Duty calls. Duty matters. It is time for private sector leaders to step up and tell Congress that those twin appendages of the fossil fuel industry do not represent corporate America on climate change. There is a change that could not come too soon. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the 141st time to urge my colleagues to wake up, in this case more specifically to the political influence, particularly the dark money, that perpetuates the climate blockade in Congress. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States to write his famous ``Democracy in America.'' De Touqueville described our American style of government as ``quite exceptional.'' He wrote about it with affection and with fascination. He may have been the first American exceptionalist. As the son and grandson of Foreign Service officers, I can personally attest to the importance of America as a paragon of government across the globe, as an aspirational model of self-governance, and as a country that others count on that comes to help, not to loot or conquer. The roots of our American exceptionalism are found in the three simple words that introduce our Constitution: ``We the People.'' The notion that the government belongs to the people seems unremarkable now, but in its day, it was literally revolutionary. Today, this proposition is under threat from few very well-heeled special interests and their shadowy front groups, all powered up by the Supreme Court's disastrous 5-to-4 Citizens United decision. In that decision, the Court's conservative bloc overturned long-standing laws of Congress, rejected the common sense of the American people, and gave wildly outsized influence over our elections to a little stable of Big Money interests, creating what one newspaper in Kentucky has aptly called a ``tsunami of slime.'' The evidence is in. The evidence is found in our elections, where the tsunami of outside cash has wiped out previous campaign spending records and created whole new campaign spending categories that never existed before, like dark money. And the evidence is found in this Chamber, where before Citizens United we had a thriving bipartisan debate on climate change. Now we have exactly the silence the polluters want from the Republican side. It wasn't very long after de Tocqueville published his famous book on American democracy that the physicist John Tyndall wrote about excess heat trapped by the buildup of certain gases in the atmosphere. He wrote: [T]o account for different amounts of heat being preserved to the earth at different times, a slight change in [the atmosphere's] variable constituents would suffice for this. Such changes in fact may have produced all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal. Those ``variable constituents'' to which Tyndall referred included carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor; he was writing about what we now call the greenhouse effect. We have understood this greenhouse effect for a century and a half. Abraham Lincoln was President when this was published. It is nothing new or controversial in real science, as I think every single one of our major State universities would attest, and it is starting to have a pretty pronounced effect. NOAA just reported that the Earth passed what they call ``another unfortunate milestone.'' Carbon dioxide concentrations passed 400 ppm at the South Pole last month. That was a first in 4 million years. NOAA also announced that the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for May 2016 was the highest for any May in the NOAA global temperature record. This marks the 13th consecutive such month, breaking its monthly global temperature record--the longest streak in NOAA's 137 years of keeping records. We understand what is going on. So why is Congress stuck, asleep at the wheel? Why? Because since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, the big fossil fuel polluters and their network of front groups--a well-documented crowd now in academic literature and in journalism--have poured money and threats into our politics. Just one group, the Koch brothers-backed front group Americans for Prosperity, openly proclaimed that if Republicans support a carbon tax or climate regulations, they would ``be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process.'' It would mean their ``political peril.'' The threat is plain. It is funded by the very deep pockets and the highly motivated schemes of the fossil fuel industry, enabled by Citizens United, and much of it is largely hidden from public disclosure. Candidates get it; it is the public that doesn't see what is going on behind the scenes. Every election since Citizens United has broken spending records, and this year is on track to do it again. Super PACs, anonymous so-called social welfare 501(c)(4) groups, and other outside groups have so far spent nearly $400 million in this election, and we are still nearly 5 months from election day. Politico has reported that donations to super PACs are expected to exceed $1 billion this election cycle. Gee, for $1 billion, what could they possibly want? We know where this money will go. It will fund an onslaught of the ugly, noxious, negative campaign ads that Americans hate. They hate the negative messages smearing the ad's targets. But they also hate another message. They hate the message that this smear was paid for by some shadowy group that they know perfectly well has no role in their State or in their life and that they usually have never heard of but has suddenly commandeered their TV screen to deliver the smear attack. That secondary payload, which has delivered negative ad after negative ad, is piling up, and its message to the American viewer is clear: This has gotten weird. This has gotten out of hand, and you don't count. Not surprisingly, Americans are becoming more and more disillusioned with our politics. According to a Bloomberg poll, 72 percent of Americans report being fed up with politics and politicians, and 59 percent feel the ``political system is broken.'' According to a recent Rasmussen poll, three-quarters of voters believe the wealthiest individuals and companies have too much influence over elections, and 8 in 10 agree that wealthy special interest groups have too much power and influence. They are not wrong. That Citizens United decision has even helped make Americans feel by a ratio of 9 to 1 that an ordinary American will not get a fair shot against a corporation in the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a dirty circle. The strength of America lies in its people. Stoking distrust and contempt for our political system breeds cynicism, and that cynicism gives special interests more influence in their age- old battle to loot the public. That failure also jeopardizes the exceptionalism that has made America an example for good throughout the world--fat chance that we are an example for good on climate change when the fossil fuel industry has done what it has with its campaign spending. It is a mess, and to clean it up a group of us have assembled a ``we the people'' suite of legislation. The ``we the people'' legislation is a collection of straightforward reforms designed to loosen the grip of big money on our elections, reduce the influence that wealthy special interests have over our government--often behind the scenes--and return America's democracy to its true owners, the American people. How do we do this? Well, first, we bring transparency back to our elections with an updated DISCLOSE Act, a bill I have introduced in the last three Congresses. DISCLOSE would require every organization spending money in elections, including super PACs and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups, to promptly disclose donors who give $10,000 or more during an election cycle and to get the spending information online within 24 hours. It would prevent super PACs from acting as de facto extensions of a candidate's campaign, and it would reform the Federal Election Commission to break the partisan deadlock that cripples enforcement of existing campaign finance laws. Second, we undo the Court's dreadful Citizens United decision. Citizens United was wrong in treating corporations as if they were people. It was wrong that corporate money will not corrupt. It was wrong not seeing that whatever special interests are allowed to do politically, they can threaten and promise to do, and those threats and promises are corrupting. Finally, it overlooked that a small class of special interests can actually make a bundle buying influence. The fossil fuel industry, for instance, even when it spends $750 million in one election, is still making a bundle protecting the massive subsidies that support fossil fuel in this country. According to the IMF, that number is about $700 billion every year in effective subsidies. So ``we the people'' includes Senator Udall's constitutional amendment to give Congress the power to once again pass commonsense measures regulating presently unlimited corporate cash in our elections. Finally, ``we the people'' includes proposals championed by Senators Bennet and Baldwin to stop the spinning, revolving door that so often makes officials beholden to corporate special interests. It was not long after Alexis de Tocqueville described our unique American democracy and it was about the same time John Tyndall described the basic science of the greenhouse effect that President Lincoln reminded a war-weary nation of the point of all that bloodshed--that ``government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.'' Allowing special interests to secretly buy elections and influence government officials gives away an American patrimony that was dearly bought. Make no mistake, without Citizens United, and without the maligned and dishonorable use of its weaponry by the fossil fuel industry, we would have had by now a bipartisan solution to climate change. A faction on the Court that unleashed that new political weaponry, an industry that took shameful and remorseless advantage of it, and a party that has willingly subordinated itself to that influence to keep the money flowing all share the blame for where we are today. We need to clean this up. The polluters don't just pollute our planet; they are polluting our very democracy. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have a motion to instruct conferees at the desk, which I ask the clerk to report.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Colleagues, this motion to instruct has bipartisan support from the authors of CARA. It reflects the bipartisan work that was done on CARA, and we hope that this motion to instruct will get a strong bipartisan vote. This motion supports the bipartisan Senate work on the CARA bill that passed this body 94 to 1. It supports the bipartisan language worked out between Senator Blunt and Senator McCaskill on the Missouri county prescription drug management program issue. It supports a focus on the rural communities for which opioid has been a plague, which is a bipartisan concern. It supports the passed bipartisan version of the veterans opioids measure from the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. And it supports the Senate HELP Committee's passed bipartisan version of the bipartisan TREAT Act. If we can pull together as a Senate, we can have a really great bill. Please send the conferees a strong bipartisan vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There is no model for it.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the Senator will yield for a question, does the Senator recall that years ago there was an effort to prevent armor- piercing ammunition from being sold? Because our police officers who wear body protection for protection against armed assailants were very concerned that selling people armor-piercing ammunition would make them more effective at killing police officers. Whereas, it would make no difference in hunting deer or elk or anything else. They customarily, as I understand it, don't wear armor, but police officers do. Police officers have to go into dangerous situations with armed individuals. Therefore, there was considerable pressure to protect our law enforcement officers to try to put limits on the amount of armor- piercing ammunition that people could buy. My recollection--if the Senator would confirm it, that would be my question--is that at the time, the NRA opposed any limit on armor- piercing ammunition and opposed the law enforcement forces, the local police chiefs and police officers who come to these crisis situations and their desire to be safe and their desire to be able to tell their families: It is going to be OK, honey. I have protective armor. It is going to help make me safe, and there is an armor-piercing ammunition that people are allowed to shoot at me; that they took all that away, and this was an argument that they made and they succeeded, and right now armor-piercing ammunition is available as a result of NRA lobbying.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. To the point the Senator just made--if he will yield for one final question. When the government would have to go into court within 72 hours in order to try to interrupt the sale, presumably that would give the person on the terrorist watch list all sorts of notice about the government's investigative activities and an opportunity in court to do further inquiry into the government's investigative activities and in fact allow somebody who is on the terrorist watch list to have a window into the government investigation that he or she might be the subject of; is that not the way that would play out? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The other question I want to ask is that in response to our effort to put people who are on the terrorist watch list into a category where they are not able to go and buy firearms in order to commit the acts of terror for which they are on the watch list, our friends on the other side of the aisle have suddenly come up with a new piece of legislation they say is designed to address this problem. My question is, Do we know if this piece of legislation has ever been seen before? Do we know if it has been brought up in committee and given any kind of a review? Have they built a track record of interest and concern about this issue and built a legislative record to support their bill or does this appear to be something they whipped out of their pocket at the last minute to try to fend off the sensible provisions we have long fought for to keep people on the terror watch list from being able to go out and buy high-powered firearms?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I have some statistics here that I find a little surprising, and I would love to ask my colleague for his explanation of them. The statistics that I have are that 76 percent of gun owners and 71 percent of National Rifle Association members support prohibiting people on the terror watch lists from purchasing guns. Yet despite the fact that 76 percent of gun owners support putting people on the terror watch list--on the list that doesn't allow them to buy firearms--and despite the fact that 71 percent of NRA members support putting terror watch list folks onto the ban list for buying firearms, nevertheless the NRA has repeatedly opposed and attempted to block legislation that attempts to close the terrorist watch list gap. Does the Senator have an explanation or a thought about why it is that when three-quarters of gun owners and nearly three-quarters of NRA members take one position, the organization is taking a completely different position from what their members support and from what gun owners support across America?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the Senator will yield for another question, it is my understanding that this position the NRA takes against any and every, even very reasonable, gun safety measure--and very likely, I suspect, for the reasons the Senator has identified as a marketing ploy on behalf of the big industry that pays them to do this. But it is my understanding that applies to a variety of other issues as well. The issue I want to ask about is the issue of high-capacity magazines. Now, I am a gun owner myself. I belong to a gun club in Rhode Island. In order to get access to the range, I had to have a safety briefing by the gun club saying what I could and could not do on the range, saying what the range rules are. One of the range rules that was imparted to me in the safety briefing is that they don't allow high-capacity magazines on the range. They don't allow them for safety reasons. I doubt this is the only one. If you have gun clubs around the country that will not allow high-capacity magazines on the range for safety reasons at the range itself, and yet here is the NRA wildly opposing any effort to limit any high-capacity magazine restriction of any kind, does that follow as part of that same argument? Is the industry as determined not only to sell more and more guns to a smaller number of people by creating fear that some imaginary black helicopter is going to come and take their guns away but also restricting the limits on high-capacity magazines?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for one more question? I see my senior Senator Jack Reed on the floor. I am sure he wants to engage in a question-and-answer with Senator Murphy. Before that, may I ask one additional question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We have some obligations that we ought to meet and that the American people would support us in meeting, and my question is, Do those obligations include not only strengthening our gun laws to make sure that certain individuals who should not purchase firearms are legally prevented from purchasing firearms--for instance, people convicted of violent hate crimes? I think Americans agree that is not a class of people whose defense of their right to purchase firearms we should be rushing to defend. Those who are suspected terrorists on the no-fly list, on the terrorist watch list--that seems to be a very reasonable group of people to take out of the list of folks who are allowed to purchase firearms. But if we just do those two things and we don't beef up the background checks, so that even if we do create a law that protects people who have committed violent hate crimes from being able to buy a firearm and even if we do pass a law that prevents people from the terrorist watch list or the no-fly list from being able to buy a firearm--even if those laws are in place, is it not true that if all they have to do is go online to buy a gun, if all they have to do is go to a gun show to buy a gun, then we have failed in our responsibility to protect the American people?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am delighted to be here. And before I ask my question, I just want to thank my colleague for what he is doing. I guess my first question would be, How are you doing? You have been on the floor for quite a while now, and I really appreciate it, but how do you feel?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That problem applies to a convicted felon who can right now get around the conviction and go and buy a gun through either of those loopholes--online or from a gun show. It applies to a domestic violence abuser who is ordinarily prohibited but can easily get around it by going to a gun show or buying a gun online. It applies to someone who has been determined by a court to be dangerously mentally ill. So right now we have a system, as I understand it, where if you have been determined by a court to be dangerously mentally ill, if you go to a gun shop and go through the regular procedure, then your purchase of the gun will be interrupted. But all you have to do is go to a gun show or go online, and you get around the restriction. Isn't that the state of play right now, even for convicted felons, domestic violence abusers, and people who have been adjudicated to be seriously mentally ill?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in a Chamber where the debate on climate change has become woefully one-sided and in a Congress where House Republicans just voted unanimously to oppose the only climate solution Republicans have come to, I want to use my 140th climate speech to remind us of a time when global warming concerns came from both sides of the aisle. Nearly 30 years ago this week, a Republican chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, who also served twice as Governor of my State and as Secretary of the Navy, convened a 2-day, 5-panel hearing on ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change. It was June, 1986, and Senator John Chafee, a Republican of Rhode Island, gave opening remarks warning of ``the buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth to unprecedented levels. Such a warming could, within the next 50 to 75 years, produce enormous changes in a climate that has remained fairly stable for thousands of years.'' ``[T]here is a very real possibility,'' Senator Chafee went on to say, ``that man--through ignorance or indifference, or both--is irreversibly altering the ability of our atmosphere to perform basic life support functions for the planet.'' Last weekend, the Washington Post wrote an article recalling this historic hearing, entitled ``30 years ago scientists warned Congress on global warming. What they said sounds eerily familiar.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record that article at the conclusion of my remarks. Imagine, by the way, a Republican-controlled Senate that would even have a Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. How things have changed. The present Republican Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee is the author of ``The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.'' The contrast is stark between what Senate Republicans and their hearing witnesses were saying 30 years ago and what the polluter-funded GOP is saying today. Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee declared: This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling. The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we have a problem; a serious problem. According to our current EPW Committee chairman, ``Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear rather than science.'' The depth and sophistication of climate science has done nothing but increase since the Chafee hearings, and the damage from climate change is not just a projection; it has started to occur. Scientists are now able to connect the dots. Australian researchers, for example, have determined that the ocean warming that led to widespread and devastating coral bleaching, killing off a significant chunk of the Great Barrier Reef in March, was made 175 times more likely by human- caused climate change. As one researcher put it, ``this is the smoking gun.'' Sadly, as the scientific consensus about the causes and consequences of human-driven climate change has strengthened over 30 years, the GOP's trust in science has eroded. They don't appear to even believe the science in their home State universities. All you have to do is go look at your own home State universities' positions on climate and how they are presented. It is right there. But when one looks at how that party is funded and how it has now become virtually the political wing of the fossil fuel industry, one can understand this sad state of affairs. Three decades ago, Republican Senator Chafee said: Scientists have characterized our treatment of the greenhouse effect as a global experiment. It strikes me as a form of planetary Russian roulette. He went on to say: By not making policy choices today, by sticking to a ``wait and see'' approach, . . . [b]y allowing these gases to continue to build in the atmosphere, this generation may be committing all of us to severe economic and environmental disruption without ever having decided that the value of ``business as usual'' is worth the risks. Those who believe that these are problems to be dealt with by future generations are misleading themselves. Man's activities to date may have already committed us to some level of temperature change. Even with 30 more years of solid science buttressing it, many in the present-day GOP deny that basic understanding and ignore even the home State mainstream climate science that underpins it. A few--a very few-- Republicans in Congress are now so bold as to accept mainstream, established science as it is taught in their home State universities, as is accepted by all our national science agencies and laboratories, and as it is warned of by our military and intelligence services, which is a nice step. But none will yet act on that understanding. Even that tiny cohort behaves in the face of this known risk--a risk the party recognized 30 years ago--as if it is enough to accept the science and do nothing. All 14 of the House Members who sponsored the House Resolution on climate change--all 14 of them--just voted with ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers against a carbon fee. When the whip comes down. Thirty years ago, the Chafee hearing witnesses included the long-time director of NASA's Goddard Center, Dr. James Hansen; Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton; Dr. Robert Watson; and then-Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. Dr. Hansen, now one of the leading advocates for immediate and decisive climate action within the science community, educated the subcommittee on the theory underpinning global climate models. Dr. Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, talked about the need for immediate--30 years ago--climate action. Uncertainty, he told the Senators, was no excuse for inaction. Dr. Watson, who would go on to chair the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1997 and 2002 said: ``It is not wise to experiment on the planet Earth by allowing the concentration of these trace gases to increase without full understanding the consequences.'' Senator Gore agreed with these scientists, testifying that ``there is no longer any significant difference of opinion within the scientific community about the fact that the greenhouse effect is real and is already occurring.'' The current GOP chair of our EPW Committee has mocked Dr. Hansen and the IPCC and Vice President Gore, reserving a particular disdain for Vice President Gore, who he says is ``drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions,'' and ``desperately trying to keep global warming alarmism alive today.'' Thirty years ago, the tone of the GOP was much different. Where Republicans today mock the prudential rule, Senator Chafee actually advocated for prudence in environmental policy. He said this: The path that society is following today is much like driving a car toward the edge of a cliff. We have a choice. We can go ahead, take no action and drive off the edge-- figuring that, since the car will not hit the bottom of the canyon until our generation is already long gone, the problem of coping with what we have made inevitable, is for future generations to deal with. We can hope that they will learn how to adapt. On the other hand, we can put the brakes on now, before the car gets any closer to the edge of the cliff and before we reach a point where momentum will take us over the edge, with or without application of the brakes. Present-day Republicans just want to turn up the radio to the tune of ``Drill, Baby, Drill'' and jam the accelerator to the floor. Our current EPW chair has even said: ``CO2 does not cause catastrophic disasters--actually it would be beneficial to our environment and our economy.'' Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee knew there was much yet to learn about climate change. Scientists will agree on the margins that there still is more to learn. But Senator Chafee said then that we have to face up to it anyway. I quote him again. We don't have all the perfect scientific evidence. There may be gaps here and there. . . . Nonetheless, I think we have got to face up to it. We can't wait for every shred of evidence to come in and be absolutely perfect; I think we ought to start . . . to try and do something about [greenhouse gases], and certainly, to increase the public's awareness of the problem and the feeling, as you say, that it is not hopeless. . . . We can do something.'' Six and one-half years ago, the United States was preparing to join the gathering of nations in Copenhagen for the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference. When that happened, business leaders took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for passage of U.S. climate legislation, for investment in the clean energy economy, and for leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against climate change. ``[W]e must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.'' ``Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.'' Well, interestingly, one of the signatories of that advertisement was none other than Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President of The Trump Organization. It is also signed by Eric F. Trump and Ivanka Trump. Even the 2009 version of the man who is now the Republican Party's presumptive nominee understood and put his name to the need to act on climate change. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of that advertisement be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. Mr. President, what does this individual, now the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, want to do? He is proposing to roll back President Obama's Clean Power Plan and cancel the landmark Paris climate agreement. The same guy who signed this advertisement has since labeled decades of research by thousands of honest and honorable climate scientists as a ``hoax,'' a ``con job,'' and ``BS,'' to use a more polite form of his expression, all the while on his business side he wants a seawall to protect his golf resort from ``global warming and its effects.'' What do actual climate scientists think of the energy policies of the Republican nominee-to-be? Well, in reference to canceling the Paris Agreement and undoing the Clean Power Plan, Dr. Paul Higgins, who is the director of the American Meteorological Society's Policy Program remarked: Undoing these efforts would mean that future emissions of carbon dioxide would be larger and future atmospheric concentrations would be higher. Higher CO2 concentrations would mean larger changes in climate and faster rates of change. Larger and faster changes in climate, in turn, pose greater risk to society. Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said: ``[My] quick reaction is that [his] comments show incredible ignorance with regard to the science and global affairs.'' Incredible ignorance, that is the party standard. Dr. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University--a State that has a GOP Member in the Senate--put it bluntly when he said, ``[I]t is not an overstatement to say that [these] climate change views''--of this man--``and policy proposals constitute an existential threat to this planet.'' Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University--that famous liberal, leftwing university, Texas Tech University--has spoken of the potential economic cost of inaction. She said: As the impacts grow ever more evident, severe, and costly, what was obvious to the 195 nations who met in Paris will become obvious to every human on this planet: doing something about climate change is far cheaper than not. A quick aside on Dr. Hayhoe's comment, when this becomes ``obvious to every human on this planet,'' what will then be the legacy of the Republican Party? Not a proud one. Indeed, it will be a legacy to run from. The fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, front groups, and many in the GOP have spent the 30 years since the Chafee hearings obstructing responsible climate action despite better scientific understanding and growing public support for climate action. The fossil fuel industry has particular blame. They have erected a multi-tentacled, climate-denial apparatus that has deliberately caused that obstruction, and there are plenty of scientists looking at that now. Citizens United is what gave that industry the unprecedented political weaponry that it has used to accomplish that end. The GOP- Citizens United-fossil fuel industry nexus will earn history's condemnation. Let's just hope it is not too late. The Washington Post article asked Dr. Oppenheimer to reflect on the intervening 30 years. Dr. Oppenheimer said: This hearing helped bring the concern together, and essentially painted a picture that things are kind of spinning out of control, that science is trying to tell us something, that the world seems to be changing even faster than our scientific understanding of the problem, and worst of all, our political leaders are way behind the eight ball. I knew Senator Chafee. He was a family friend. He may have been my father's best friend. He was an optimist and a pragmatist. He used to say: Given half a chance, nature will rebound and overcome tremendous setbacks, but we must--at the very least--give it that half a chance. He also knew nature's tolerance is not unlimited. At those groundbreaking hearings, Senator Chafee warned: It seems that the problems man creates for our planet are never ending. But we have found solutions for prior difficulties, and we will for these as well. What is required is for all of us to do a better job of anticipating and responding to today's new environmental warnings before they become tomorrow's environmental tragedies. With those words, I close and yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come here, as I do every year in the Senate, to commemorate the anniversary of a brave blow that Rhode Island struck for liberty and justice--the Gaspee Affair of 1772. On the night of June 9, and into the morning of June 10, 1772, in the waters of Rhode Island, a band of American patriots pushed back against their British overlords and drew the first blood of the struggle that would become the American Revolution. American schoolchildren, the pages here in this room, and all of us no doubt learned in their history books of the Boston revelers who painted their faces and pushed tea into Boston harbor. But those same history books often omit the tale of the Gaspee, a bloodier saga, which occurred more than a year earlier. As tensions with the American colonies grew, King George III stationed revenue cutters, armed customs patrol vessels, along the American coastline to prevent smuggling, enforce the payment of taxes, and impose the authority of the Crown. One of the most notorious of these ships was the HMS Gaspee, stationed in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. The Gaspee and its captain, Lieutenant William Dudingston, were known for destroying fishing vessels, unjustly seizing cargo, and flagging down ships that had properly passed customs inspection in Newport only to interrogate and humiliate the colonials. ``The British armed forces had come to regard almost every local merchant as a smuggler and a cheat,'' wrote author Nick Bunker about that era. Rhode Islanders chafed at this egregious disruption of their liberty at sea, for ``out of all colonies, Rhode Island was the one where the ocean entered most deeply into the lives of the people.'' Something was bound to give. The spark was lit on June 9, 1772, when the Gaspee attempted to stop the Hannah, a swift Rhode Island trading sloop that ran routes to New York through Long Island Sound, bound that afternoon for Providence from Newport. When the Gaspee sought to hail and board the Hannah, the Hannah's captain, Benjamin Lindsey, ignored Lieutenant Dudingston's commands. As the Gaspee gave chase, Captain Lindsey veered north toward Pawtuxet Cove, toward the shallows off Namquid Point--known today as Gaspee Point--knowing that the tide was low and falling and that the Hannah drew less water than the Gaspee. The Hannah shot over the shallows off the point, but the larger Gaspee ran dead into a sandbar and stuck fast in a falling tide. Captain Lindsey wasted no time in reporting the Gaspee's predicament to his fellow Rhode Islanders, who rallied at the sound of a beating drum to Sabin's Tavern in Providence. They resolved to end once and for all the Gaspee's menace in Rhode Island waters. That night, the men shoved off from Fenner's Wharf, paddling eight longboats quietly down Narragansett Bay, under a moonless sky, toward the stranded Gaspee. As told by LCDR Benjamin F. Armstrong in Naval History Magazine, they were led by Captain Lindsey and Abraham Whipple, a merchant captain who had served as a privateer in the French and Indian War and who would go on to command a Continental Navy squadron in the Revolution. Armstrong describes the excursion as ``an increasingly rowdy group of Rhode Islanders who were ready to strike out at the oppressive work of the Royal Navy.'' Beware, increasingly rowdy groups of Rhode Islanders will be our lesson. The boats silently surrounded the Gaspee, then shouted for Lieutenant Dudingston to surrender the ship. Surprised and enraged, Dudingston refused. Armstrong recounts the fierce, if brief, fight that ensued: Dudingston shouted down the hatch, calling for his crew to hurry on deck whether they had clothes on or not, and then ran to the starboard bow, where the first of the raiding boats were coming alongside the ship. He swung at the attackers with his sword, pushing the first attempted boarder back into the boat. Then a musket shot rang out. The ball tore through the lieutenant's left arm, breaking it, and into his groin. He fell back on the deck as the raiders swarmed over the sides of the ship. Swinging axe handles and wooden staves, the raiders beat the British seamen back down the hatchway and kept them below decks. Dudingston struggled aft and collapsed in his own blood at the companionway to his cabin at the stern of the ship. The struggle was over. One of the Rhode Islanders, a physician named John Mawney, tended to Dudingston's wounds. The patriots commandeered the Gaspee, loaded the British crew onto the longboats and took them ashore, and then set combustibles along the length of the Gaspee. They set her ablaze, and watched from a hillside onshore as the ship burned. When the fire reached the ship's magazine, this is what ensued. The Gaspee was no more. You can be sure that the British authorities immediately called for the heads of the American saboteurs. An inquiry was launched and a lavish reward was posted. But even though virtually all of Rhode Island knew about the attack, investigators were able to find no witnesses willing to name names. The entire colony seemed afflicted with a terrible case of amnesia. William Staple's ``Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee'' describes this distinct cloudiness of Rhode Island memories. James Sabin said: ``I could give no information relative to the assembling, arming, training or leading on the people concerned in destroying the schooner Gaspee.'' Stephen Gulley said: ``As to my own knowledge, I know nothing about it.'' John Cole said he ``saw several people collected together, but did not know any of them.'' William Thayer was asked: ``Do you know anything?'' He said a simple ``No.'' D. Hitchcock said: ``We met at Mr. Sabin's, by ourselves, and about 8 o'clock, I went to the door, or, finally, kitchen, and saw a number of people in the street, but paid no attention to them.'' Arthur Fenner said: ``I am a man of seventy-four years of age, and very infirmed, and at the time said schooner was taken and plundered, I was in my bed.'' Completely frustrated by the Rhode Islanders' stonewalling, the British commissioners dropped the inquiry, finding it ``totally impossible at present to make a report, not having all the evidence we have reason to expect.'' Nick Bunker wrote, ``The British had never seen anything quite like the Gaspee affair. . . . Like the Boston Tea Party, their attack on the ship amounted to a gesture of absolute denial: A complete rejection of the empire's right to rule.'' Rhode Islanders had grown accustomed to and fiercely protective of a level of personal freedom unique in that time. ``Even by American standards,'' says Bunker, Rhode Island ``was an extreme case of popular government.'' As Frederic D. Schwarz noted in American Heritage magazine, one of the exasperated British investigators even scorned the Rhode Island Colony as ``a downright democracy.'' This Rhode Island independence streak was well known to the British imperialist. But the burning of the Gaspee foretold greater struggles to come. In the words of Commander Armstrong: [British officers] were beginning to realize there was something more dangerous out on the water and in American harbors. Alongside the salt air and the smell of wet canvas was the scent of treason. A revolution began on the sandbar of Namquid Point--in the spot that bears the name Gaspee on today's charts of the Narragansett. Oh, and Boston: Nice job a year later with the tea bags. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?