Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent for a closing minute.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me take a moment to commend the leadership of our minority leader on this issue. He has made it a priority in the caucus. He has seen its effects at home in Nevada, and he is an outstanding voice in this area. I am very grateful to him. I also thank and recognize my chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer, and no one is more forceful than she on the need that we have to address climate change and the carbon pollution we are emitting that is causing this. Mr. President, we are here just after the 6-month anniversary of an interesting statement that was made by the Republican chairman of the energy committee, the Senator from Alaska. Six months ago--January 22, to be exact--she said: What I am hoping that we can do now is get beyond the discussion as to whether climate change is real and talk about what do we do. That was January 22 on the Senate floor, 6 months ago. What have we seen from the majority party in the 6 months since their energy chairman said that we need to get to this question, we need to concede climate change is real, and that we need to address what to do? We have seen exactly nothing--that is to say nothing but complaints: Oh, the President's Clean Power Plan is no good. Oh, we should have massive resistance to the President's Clean Power Plan. Oh, we should defund the EPA. These are the thoughts the Republican majority brings as we face this question. So it is worth looking at some of the folks who are very clear that climate change is a real problem. Here is one--NASA, our scientists from NASA. They couldn't be clearer about the importance of climate change and about the role of carbon pollution. How smart are NASA scientists? They are driving a rover around on the surface of Mars, folks. They just shot a spacecraft by Pluto close enough to take pictures of it and send back data. What does the Republican majority have to say about NASA's position on climate change? That they are in on a hoax. They basically accuse NASA scientists of being dishonest, even though they are the ones who put our country on the surface of Mars and who put an American vehicle close enough to Pluto to take pictures of it. Look at Walmart. Just a moment ago, the junior Senator from Arkansas was presiding. Walmart joined with a dozen other companies yesterday at the White House to say climate change is real. These aren't leftwing companies. This was Walmart. This was Alcoa. This was GM. This was Coke. This was Pepsi. This was UPS. We have to start taking this seriously. But is there anything out of the State of Arkansas--Walmart's home State--on climate? Nope. Not a single thing. There was recently an article in Forbes magazine titled ``Climate Change Will Cause Increased Flooding in Coastal Cities.'' The picture is a satellite picture of the State of Florida. The little caption under the picture says: ``Flooding from climate change is threatening much of the coastline, including major cities in Florida.'' Yet we have two Presidential candidates from Florida on the Republican side, and what do they have to say about climate change? Nothing--nothing other than ``I don't know, I am not a scientist'' and all the usual dodges. Pope Francis wrote an encyclical--an extraordinarily important article in the Catholic faith--about the reality and the effect of climate change. What do our Catholic Republican Senators have to say about that? Nothing. We are not going to listen to him; he is not a scientist. Well, actually, technically he is. He is a trained chemist. But that is the line--not a scientist. What could possibly explain these strange anomalies? The biggest corporation in Arkansas knows climate change is a problem, and there is nothing from the Senators from Arkansas. The coastline of Florida is under immediate threat, according to Forbes magazine, the capitalist tool, and the Presidential candidates from Florida can't say a single thing about it. The Pope is calling on us----

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The last thing I will mention is that there is a common thread that links all of this, and it is money. The Koch brothers are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into this election. One of their organizations--one--said that it was going to spend $889 million in this election and that anybody who crossed them on climate change would be at ``a severe disadvantage.'' Nice little campaign you got here; I would hate to put it at a severe disadvantage with my $900 million. So what we have is secret money and we have threats related to it that are obliterating what had been a good Republican response on climate change and on other environmental issues. We need to move on. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In the past, have we not worked into the early week or weeks of August before taking the so-called August recess?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator from Illinois has just said the House is planning to bug out this week before the Friday deadline when the highway trust fund collapses for the August recess. May I ask the Senator from Illinois, through the Chair, the following question: Is it even August? Isn't it July 28 today?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, let me thank the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from Oklahoma for their efforts on the floor today. I think this continued progress toward a bipartisan 6-year deal to make sure our highways and bridges are funded and repaired is a very important piece of the work. I wish to join the Senator from Illinois in saluting the efforts of my ranking member, Senator Boxer, who has worked so hard through the Environment and Public Works Committee to get to a place where we now have a Senate bipartisan compromise for a 6-year bill, with 3 years fully funded, and the prospect for all of our State departments of transportation to be able to take on big projects, knowing that funding is out there. We are taking up this conversation while our own American Society of Civil Engineers gives our American roads the grade of a D. I don't know about the Presiding Officer, but if my kids came home with a D, I would not be amused and pleased about that. So when our own engineers tell us our roads are a D and our Federal highway program has limped along, 2 months, 6 months--these tiny, little steps forward--and now we have a chance to put a serious slug of money on the table so our departments of transportation can do the work our roads so desperately need, why not go forward with that? Across this country, Americans pay more than $500 a year in car repairs as a result of our terrible roads--so $500 out of their pockets getting their wheels realigned or their tires repaired because they have been banged by potholes and bad roads hurting their vehicles. There is a real pocketbook consequence for Americans if we fail to act. We have a bipartisan compromise. We should push it forward. What the House is doing is not helpful. I hope, as the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, my chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee said, they come up with a better judgment than they have expressed so far. I think that under these circumstances, bugging out and starting the August recess before this problem is solved--indeed, before it is even August--is a pretty serious misjudgment. So let's hope we can keep after this. We do have strong support for getting this done. Whether it is the American Association of General Contractors, whether it is the National Association of Manufacturers, whether it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are a lot of organizations that customarily support the Republican side that want to get this done. I hope they will be having conversations with Speaker Boehner and with Majority Leader McCarthy to ask them to have better judgment about what to do in this circumstance, other than to bug out for an August recess before it is even August and leave Americans high and dry without a bipartisan 6-year bill that is being fashioned in the Senate right now. Again, I wish to express my appreciation to my Ranking Member Barbara Boxer, who has worked so hard to bring us to this point and our chairman, Senator Inhofe. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And Friday is when the funding for our highways comes to an end. It appears to be the intention of the House to have gotten out of Dodge by then in order to, I guess, dodge any consequence for not having met us on bipartisan terms with a bipartisan 6-year bill.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in poll after poll, the American people have told this Congress that it is time to wake up to the ever- growing threat from carbon pollution. Two-thirds of Americans support the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan to cut emissions from powerplants and invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy. Even a majority of Republicans support action to reduce carbon pollution. But we do nothing. So here I am again, for the 108th time, for a speech of which the Presiding Officer has become something of a frequent flyer, to urge that we listen to our constituents and do the job that we were sent here to do. Sadly, Congress is stuck in the grip of the big polluters and their unlimited, unreported campaign spending. After the dreadful Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2010, two things happened. One, corporate political spending poured into secretive unaccountable groups that now wield untold influence in our elections. Two, Republicans-- particularly Republican voices in Congress--fell silent on carbon pollution and climate change. It was a stopper. So despite the wishes of the American people and despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, the majority in the Senate has no plan whatsoever to address the catastrophic changes we see in our oceans and our atmosphere, in our farms and our forests. Many of the Republican candidates for President, for fear of offending their fossil fuel billionaire donors, ignore not only the clear tide of public opinion and not only the warnings of our scientific and national security officials but ignore the climate disruptions in their own home States. They ignore the homegrown climate research of their own State's scientists and universities. Earlier this year I came to the floor with my colleague and friend, Senator Baldwin of Wisconsin, to consider the effects of carbon pollution in her Badger State. Senator Baldwin is a fierce defender of Wisconsin families and businesses and is fighting to protect Wisconsin's climate, from the Great Lakes to the legendary dairy farms. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, on the other hand, has gone another way. He has gone right down the fossil fuel industry rabbit hole. He pulled the plug on scientific and environmental functions in State government and he attacks environmental programs in the Federal Government. Let's look at the facts in Wisconsin. According to the scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, weather stations around Wisconsin measure that average temperatures in Wisconsin increased by about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit between 1950 and 2006. During the same period, Wisconsin got wetter as well as warmer. Annual average precipitation in Wisconsin increased by almost 3 inches--again, measured. As more and more carbon pollution piles up in the atmosphere, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimate and project that by midcentury Wisconsin could warm by 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. By the end of the century, the climate in Wisconsin may look more like that of present-day Missouri or Oklahoma, raising the prospect of dramatic shifts in the Wisconsin economy and way of life. These changes would not be kind to Wisconsin's iconic badger. The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Landscape Conservation Cooperative lists the Wisconsin badger as one of the region's species at risk from climate change. It has no apparent effect on Governor Walker, however. There was the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts. The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts was formed in 2007 by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. The scientists and public officials in this program are studying how climate change will affect Wisconsin's wildlife, water resources, and public health, and important Wisconsin industries such as forestry, agriculture, and shipping and tourism on the Great Lakes. Climate change threatens pillars of the Wisconsin economy. The initiative's agricultural working group reports that higher summer temperatures and increasing drought will create significant stress on livestock, even touching Wisconsin's famed cheese industry. Victor Cabrera, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dairy Science Department, says that this heat stress interferes with both fertility and milk production. Dairy cows could give as much as 10 percent less milk. Professor Cabrera in Wisconsin is not alone. He is not alone. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that by 2030 climate change will cost the U.S. dairy sector between $79 million and $199 million per year in lost production. Does Governor Walker care? Apparently not, but the University of Wisconsin does. So it is leading a USDA-funded effort to identify practices that minimize greenhouse gases from milk production and make dairies more resilient to Wisconsin's changing climate. Some Wisconsin dairy farmers, for instance, are burning excess methane in enormous manure digesters to generate their own renewable electricity. It is not just the farmers. Wisconsin has sportsmen. Wisconsin's sportsmen treasure Wisconsin's 10,000 miles of trout streams--some of the best trout fishing in the country. Trout Unlimited found that fishing in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin and parts of Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa adds over $1 billion per year to the surrounding economy. But the cold-water fish such as the brook trout are highly sensitive to temperature increases in streams. Under the worst cases analyzed by the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, ``brook trout are projected to be completely lost from Wisconsin streams.'' Even the best case scenarios see losses of as much as 44 percent of the Wisconsin brookies' current range by midcentury. That is Wisconsin's own Department of Natural Resources. Other cold water species such as the brown trout are not much better off than the brookies. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is not alone. It is not alone. The American Fly Fishing Trade Association said this in a recent public statement: Climate change is no longer a potential threat; it demands our attention now. . . . We call on our elected officials to put partisan politics aside and work quickly to enact federal policy to address the threats presented by global climate change. On to Wisconsin's loggers, Wisconsin has a significant logging industry, and the loggers are having trouble getting to the timber when hard, frozen winter ground becomes too thawed and too soggy to hold up logging equipment. According to a study out of the University of Wisconsin, that frozen period for loggers to work has decreased by 2 to 3 weeks since 1948, shortening the working window for loggers before their gear bogs down. In every corner of the State, Wisconsin's own scientists are seeing dramatic climate changes. Wisconsin's businesses and communities are already taking a hard hit. How does their Governor respond? You can probably see this coming: ``I am not a scientist''--the classic denier dodge. Governor Walker, we know you are not a scientist, but it is OK because you have some of the top scientists right there at your own University of Wisconsin. You have teams of scientists working for you at your State agencies right in Wisconsin. But do we expect that Scott Walker will listen to a scientist? No. No. He has a different plan--to eliminate more than 60 positions at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, including dozens of scientific staff. That is one way to not have to listen to them. Whom does Scott Walker listen to? Well, the Koch Brothers political network has said it plans on spending $900 million in the 2016 election cycle--$900 million. The President of one of the biggest Koch Brothers- backed organizations, Tim Phillips of a group called Americans for Prosperity, has threatened publicly that any Republican candidate in the 2016 Presidential campaign who supported climate action ``would be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process.'' So they are going to throw $900 million at the election, and they have a ``severe disadvantage'' threat floating around. Nice little campaign you got here; be a shame if it was severely disadvantaged. Well, it did not take Governor Walker long to sign that same Americans for Prosperity organization's no climate tax pledge--what do you know--vowing to oppose any legislation on climate change without an equivalent amount of tax cuts. It is amazing what waving around $900 million will do. Whom else does Scott Walker listen to? Well, the majority leader recently called on all Governors to rebel against the EPA's Clean Power Plan. So far, only six took up the majority leader's call. One of them is--guess who--Scott Walker. In December he wrote to the EPA that their plan would be ``a blow to Wisconsin residents and business owners.'' In January he announced that he was planning to sue the Agency instead. Maybe Governor Walker would think differently if he listened to Wisconsin's business owners. Lori Compas, executive director of the Wisconsin Business Alliance, endorsed the EPA's Clean Power Plan proposal as a boon, a benefit to the Wisconsin economy. Here is what she said: Encouraging renewable energy development will result in business growth, job creation, cleaner air, and a quicker path to energy independence. That is what she wrote. I will continue. She said: Our society does not have to decide whether our policies should favor jobs or the environment. We should look for opportunities for us to promote jobs and the environment and the Clean Power Plan is a great way to do that. That is the Wisconsin Business Alliance speaking. Those Wisconsin businesses are not alone. They are not alone. Yesterday 13 of the largest corporations in America joined in President Obama's American Business Act on Climate Pledge, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable energy sources, and promote sustainable practices across their respective markets and up their supply chains. These are some pretty big-time nameplate Americans companies: Alcoa, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, PepsiCo, UPS, and Walmart. That is a pretty broad spectrum of America's corporate hierarchy. Is it the Republican majority's position that they are all also in on the hoax? The Republican majority has accused NASA's scientists, whose just flew a craft by Pluto and who are driving a rover around on the surface of Mars, of being in on a hoax; that climate change is a hoax and that NASA scientists are in on it. Is Walmart in on the hoax too? Do the Senators from Arkansas want to go home and tell the Walmart executives that they are in on a hoax? Do the Senators from Georgia want to go home and tell the CEO of Coca-Cola that they are in on a hoax? I don't think so. It is an untenable argument. We have to move on. These leaders of American commerce declare, in a voice that Republicans should listen to: We recognize that delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters and the health of the global environment. That is quite a crowd who signed off on that statement. More will come because other companies, such as VF Industries and Mars and Unilever, agree with them. Our good Earth is sending us a clear message. The message our good Earth is sending us is that carbon pollution is driving unprecedented change. It is showing the change happening in the Earth around us. Voters too are sending us a clear message. They are speaking up to say that climate change is a problem and they want their leaders to take action and that it is time we got our heads out of the sand. Unfortunately, there is a problem. The big polluters have a powerful political megaphone. They do not hesitate to use it. They back it up with big, dark money campaign spending that is distorting our democracy in disgraceful ways. The result is that, like so many Republican candidates for the Presidency, Scott Walker of Wisconsin has no plan, will not listen to his home State scientists at his home State university, and ignores what his loggers and trout fishermen and businesses are all seeing and saying. But, oh my, does he listen to the big polluters. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 20 minutes.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am joined by the chair and ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to discuss one of my amendments, Whitehouse No. 2185, to the Every Child Achieves Act, which would establish an Innovation Schools Demonstration Authority. I thank them for their leadership on this important legislation and join them today to discuss the purpose of the amendment. Teachers and school leaders possess a unique understanding of the students and communities they serve. My amendment is intended to help schools address these unique needs through increased autonomy from local, State, and Federal regulations. In Rhode Island I have heard from school leaders who would like to extend the school day for struggling students, take ownership over school budgeting and financing or manage their school's human resources but are unable to do so because existing rules and regulations get in the way. The prospects of moving bureaucratic approaches at all three levels of government can be daunting, but this measure is designed to clear a path. Several States are already experimenting with increased school autonomy. In Massachusetts, where State law allows for innovation status, schools are already benefiting from regulatory flexibility. In Revere, MA, the Paul Revere Elementary School uses regulatory flexibility around staffing, budgeting, scheduling, and curriculum to operate a school model that emphasizes staff collaboration and differentiated instruction. In Falmouth, MA, the Lawrence School is using regulatory flexibility to improve its governance and decisionmaking structure in a way that emphasizes faculty input and satisfaction. In addition to Massachusetts, States as diverse as Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, and West Virginia have established State laws that promote innovation through autonomy. The Innovation Schools Demonstration Authority builds on these efforts by establishing a fast-track process to give public schools relief from the local, State, and Federal regulations that can be barriers to school-based innovation. The program is designed to serve existing public schools, specifically those where teachers, parents, administrators, and members of the community are working together to implement new, evidence-based models of teaching, learning, and school administration. When these existing schools are selected for innovation school designation, they will be able to obtain expedited relief from regulations that would otherwise prevent them from implementing their school vision. A key element of this program is that the whole school community wants to participate. Innovation schools must demonstrate support from administrators, parents, and at least two-thirds of the current teaching staff. They are encouraged to form advisory boards to bring community expertise from businesses, higher education, and community groups, among others, into school planning, operations, and oversight. And, importantly, innovation schools will remain part of their local education authority, serving as laboratories for experimentation, the benefits of which can serve as a model for other schools in the district.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Ranking Member Murray and Chairman Alexander for their support. I hope this measure will meet all of our expectations and create great examples of innovative, student-centered public schools.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as the Presiding Officer knows, as he has suffered through a considerable number of them, this is the 107th time I have come to the floor to urge my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. All over the United States, State by State by State, we are already seeing the real effects of carbon pollution. We see it in our atmosphere, we see it in our oceans, and we see it in our weather, in habitats, and in species. The American people see it. Two-thirds of Americans, including half of Republicans, favor government action to reduce global warming, and two-thirds, including half of Republicans, would be more likely to vote for a candidate who campaigns on fighting climate change. Polling from the Florida Atlantic University shows that more than 73 percent of U.S. Hispanics--a pretty key voting block--think global warming is a serious problem. Sixty-two percent of Republican Hispanics are concerned about this. And I have said this before: If you ask Republican voters under the age of 35, they will tell us that climate denial is ``out of touch,'' ``ignorant,'' or ``crazy.'' Those are the words they selected in the poll--not my words. So we might expect Presidential hopefuls to incorporate climate action into their campaign platforms. We might expect the Republican candidates to address this problem in an honest and straightforward manner. But we would be wrong. What have we seen from the Presidential hopefuls? These candidates avoid any serious talk of climate change even as their own home States face climate and ocean disruptions. So in the weeks ahead, I will take a look at the Presidential candidates on climate change and what is up in their home States. Today I will look at Florida, home to 20 million Americans, including two of the top Republican Presidential candidates. A swing State with 29 electoral votes, Florida is a major political prize. Florida is also ground zero for climate change. With over 1,200 miles of coastline, Florida is uniquely vulnerable, for instance, to sea level rise. So what do Florida's two Presidential candidates have to say about climate change? Well, it seems they are not sure. ``I don't think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted,'' says former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. ``[T]here's never been a moment where the climate is not changing,'' says Florida's junior Senator. ``The question is: what percentage of that . . . is due to human activity?'' Scientists tell us that warming is ``unequivocal''--that is a strong word for scientists to use, unequivocal--and that human activity is the dominant cause of the changes we have seen--indeed, the only plausibly valid explanation. Both Presidential hopefuls from Florida have invoked the now classic denial line ``I am not a scientist.'' Well, good thing, then, that we are not elected to be scientists. We are elected to listen to them. And if these two Floridians were listening to their own best scientists, they would learn a lot. In fact, 42 scientists from Florida colleges and universities wrote an open letter to Florida State officials. ``It is crucial for policymakers to understand,'' they wrote, ``that human activity is affecting the composition of the atmosphere which will lead to adverse effects on human economies, health and well being''--not so convoluted after all. The letter continued: The problem of climate change is not a hypothetical. Thousands of scientists have studied the issue from a variety of angles and disciplines over many decades. Those of us signing this statement have spent hundreds of years combined studying this problem, not from any partisan political perspective, but as scientists--seekers of evidence and explanations. As a result, we feel uniquely qualified to assist policymakers in finding solutions to adapt and mitigate so we can protect the people of this state and their enterprises and property. So it is OK if we are not scientists. The scientists are there to help. They have offered to, and they understand this. While my Senate colleague from Florida is unsure about his own home State climate science, he seems quite certain about the economics of policies to curb carbon pollution, such as cap and trade. ``I can tell you with certainty,'' he has said, ``it would have a devastating impact on our economy.'' I would suggest that the Senator from Florida take a closer look at the facts because his position on these two issues boils down to wrong and wronger. I know this because my home State is one of nine Northeastern States that require utilities to buy carbon emissions allowances. We are actually doing it. The proceeds are directed back into the regional economy through things such as energy efficiency investments and renewable energy projects. And we have the results. The results are in. Just from 2012 to 2014, the program generated $1.3 billion in economic benefits for New England, and it saved consumers over $400 million in energy costs. This climate solution was a boost to the economy, and it cut carbon dioxide emissions in the region by a quarter. The Republican candidates from Florida are running against the facts and they are running against the opinions of experts and local leaders in their own home State. In a June 19 editorial, the Sun Sentinel praised Pope Francis's recent encyclical on climate change and its call to swift action, because of the threat climate change poses to South Florida. The editors wrote that ``the Pope's declaration puts pressure on [the candidates] . . . because they are Floridians . . . and because they aspire to be national leaders.'' The editors continue: ``Candidates who aspire to be inclusive, effective leaders cannot see . . . science through a political lens.'' That is the Sun Sentinel. Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami explained Pope Francis's message to the Miami Herald. ``What the Pope is saying is, `Let's talk about this,' '' the archbishop said. ``And that requires--whether you're a Democrat or Republican or left or right--it requires that you transcend your particular interest or ideological lens and look at the issue from the common good.'' For Florida, that common good is imperiled by climate change. South Florida has seen almost 1 foot of sea level rise in the last 100 years. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact is a bipartisan coalition--Republicans and Democrats--of four South Florida counties. Those four South Florida counties predict that the waters around southeast Florida could surge up to another 2 feet in less than 50 years. Our children will live to see that. I visited Florida on my climate tour last year. I heard firsthand about the threats climate change poses to the Sunshine State from Glenn Landers, senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Everglades Division. Engineer Landers has worked on water resources and restoration projects in Florida for nearly 20 years. This is the map he used to show me what just 2 feet of sea level rise means for South Florida. What it means for South Florida is there is a lot less of South Florida above water. Florida is home to some of the country's top universities and research institutions. The Florida Climate Institute is a network of scientists and research programs from eight universities, including the University of Florida, Florida State, and the University of Miami. The Florida Climate Institute is dedicated to ``climate research in service of society.'' These are some of Florida's brightest minds. Recognizing businesses' and communities' need for useful data and solutions that are based on Florida's unique characteristics, the Florida Climate Institute publishes research to help improve understanding of the increasing climate variability in Florida. If Florida's leaders respond responsibly to the changing climate, writes the group, ``Florida is well positioned to become a center of excellence for climate change research and education and a test bed for innovations in climate adaptation.'' Well, responsible officials in Florida are already taking action. My friend the senior Senator from Florida took the Senate commerce committee to Miami Beach town hall to examine the dangers posed by rising seas. The Miami Herald said this about Senator Nelson's efforts to raise awareness about the threat to his State: South Florida owes [Senator] Nelson its thanks for shining a bright light on this issue. Everyone from local residents to elected officials should follow his lead, turning awareness of this major environmental issue into action. It is critical to saving our region. In Fort Lauderdale, Mayor Jack Seiler is working with NOAA and State and Broward County officials and the South Florida Regional Planning Council to protect his city from flooding and climate change. Yet on climate change, Florida's own Presidential candidates have got nothing. Zero. No plan. Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine showed me the huge pumps his city has installed to pump out the floodwaters that come in on high tides from the rising seas and with storms. Each pump can move 14,000 gallons of water per minute. Imagine that. But Florida's Presidential candidates have no plan. The mayor of Monroe County, Sylvia Murphy, a Republican, has put climate and energy policy at the heart of her 20-year growth plan for the county. Why? Her county covers all of the Florida Keys and some of the Everglades. She is going to lose a lot of it if we don't get ahead of this, and she also sees what is happening to her reefs offshore. Yet, despite the overwhelming consensus of scientists in their own State, Florida's Republican Presidential candidates have got nothing. The junior Senator from Florida even suggested that we should wait for China to take action before we address this problem. The junior Senator from Florida, on foreign policy, has spoken often about the need for American leadership on issues of global importance, saying, for instance, that America must ``continue to hold this torch'' of peace and liberty. Earlier this year, Jeb Bush echoed that sentiment, saying, ``American leadership projected consistently and grounded in principle has been a benefit to the world.'' Well, fine words, but where is their leadership on climate change? They got nothing. It is our responsibility as a great nation to set an example for others to follow, not to sit back and wait for others to act. Failing to act on climate change would both dim our own national torch and give other nations an excuse for delay. Failure, with the stakes this high, becomes an argument for our enemies against our very model of government. As Pope Francis said, ``The world will not forget this failure of conscience and responsibility.'' We will own that. The question is why Republican Presidential candidates refuse to engage on climate change. They ignore their own home State universities. They ignore their own home State mayors, local officials. They ignore their own home State engineers. Why? Why, when the evidence is so plain? Why the pretense that climate solutions are bad for the economy when actual experience proves that is not true? Why the pretense? Why can't they credibly speak about America's responsibility to lead? Why would they have us ignore one of the most pressing national and global issues of our time? All I can hope, for their sake and for ours, is that they soon wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Senator from Maine is about to speak I believe on the Older Americans Act. While she is here on the floor, I wish to take a moment to express my personal appreciation to her and to Chairman Alexander for an issue that arose during the course of the Older Americans Act. I have a very strong concern that older Americans, particularly as they approach the end of their lives, are not getting their wishes honored. In fact, very often nobody even knows what their wishes are about how they would like to be treated at the end of their lives. Do they want to be at home? Do they not particularly care about using all the medical apparatuses available to them? Do they want to be in the hospital and have everybody take every available measure? That should be their choice. It should be an informed choice and a choice that we should honor. I sought language within the Older Americans Act to try to empower that. There were difficulties with it, and those difficulties were resolved by the willingness of Chairman Alexander to ask Chairman Collins to hold a hearing on this subject in the Select Committee on Aging and for all of the chairmen and ranking members on the two committees to send a letter to the Government Accountability Office to lay out the case and put a factual brief before us for that hearing. This would not have happened without the courtesy of Senator Collins. This is an aging committee thing that she has been willing to do to resolve an issue that actually started in the HELP Committee. It was very gracious of her. She has been a leader on these end-of-life issues for a long time. I didn't want to miss this chance to express my appreciation. I yield the floor.

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, as folks around here know by now, I come to the floor once a week to say as clearly as I can that it is time to wake up to the mounting hazard of climate change. Today is the 106th consecutive time. Why do I do it? Why do I care so much? Because I know the harm we are causing through carbon pollution spells trouble for my home State of Rhode Island. I see it already. We are the Ocean State. Here is a recent headline from the Washington Post: ``Human impact on the oceans is growing--and climate change is the biggest culprit.'' But I don't have to read the Washington Post to know that. With the changes from carbon pollution, our Rhode Island fishermen see strange catches coming up in their nets. Our homeowners and business owners along the coast see rising sea levels, worsening erosion, and extreme weather. It is no longer rare for extreme weather to claw people's homes into the sea. Sandy took several. Rhode Islanders get all of this. But unless and until the men and women in this Chamber decide to heed the warnings of all of our best scientists--not to mention America's insurance companies, faith leaders, our military leaders, virtually every big American company not associated with the fossil fuel industry, and, of course, the American public--Rhode Island and all States will continue to risk even worse effects. For the fossil fuel industry, we are the best Congress money can buy. For everyone else, we are a disaster. Last year I went to New Hampshire to talk with people about the changes they see there. I met climate scientist Dr. Cameron Wake of the University of New Hampshire. He showed me a detailed analysis on climate change in New Hampshire--what scientists have already measured and what projections indicate the future may hold. We had a good talk and after my visit he ran for me a similar analysis of climate change in Rhode Island. This is what he found. This chart shows measurements of the average annual maximum temperature for three weather-monitoring stations in Rhode Island. Block Island is in blue, Kingston is in red, and Providence is in orange. It measures the highest daily temperature for each day, averaged over the whole year from 1895 to 2012. Let me remind everyone that these are measurements. This is not theory. These are measurements. This is climate change on the march in Rhode Island. What does it show? Warming. The trend is indisputable. Dr. Wake's analysis shows that the average annual maximum temperature has increased at a rate of 3.6 Fahrenheit per century in Block Island, 2.8 degrees per century in Kingston, and 3.1 degrees per century in Providence. Dr. Wake then looked to the future of Rhode Island. This chart shows the same thing we were looking at on the last chart--the average annual maximum temperature. But while that one just looks backward, this one looks forward. It shows two scenarios: business as usual in red or reduced carbon emissions in blue. It shows us, in effect, the difference that cutting back on carbon pollution could make for future generations of Rhode Islanders. If we do nothing to curb our carbon pollution here, the annual average goes up toward 68 degrees, some years close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit by year's end. Remember the last chart, which ended around here in 2010? The historical record there ended at around 60 degrees. Carry on this flood of carbon pollution and here is where you end, around 8 degrees warmer on average. Between 1980 and 2010, the average annual maximum temperature of Washington, DC, was 68 degrees. That is the 8-degree difference. The difference that this flood of carbon pollution portends is Providence feeling like steamy, sweltering, Washington, DC. But if we take action to dial back our pollution, the warming is about half as much and less severe. This is not the only measure of what carbon pollution will bring to Rhode Island. Winter temperatures going up mean fewer snow-covered days. Extreme precipitation will likely increase, and as the average annual maximum temperature increases, there will also be more very hot days in the summer. This chart shows the increase in the number of days with a maximum temperature above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot days such as that are common here in sweltering Washington, but historically Rhode Island might see maybe three 90-degree days a year. People come from all over to our cool, beautiful shores to swim in our cool, beautiful Atlantic. This chart shows that even in the best case, Rhode Island can expect to see 18 such sweltering 90-degree days per year and, in the worst case, that number could rise to over 50 90-degree days every year, with the mercury soaring over 95 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 of those days. Well, if you want to sit inside watching TV, cranking up your air conditioner, that may be fine, but Rhode Islanders like to go outside. We enjoy the beach, and we enjoy the bay. We are not looking forward to what these temperature consequences mean for our health. Earlier this year, the Rhode Island Department of Health produced an in-depth report on heat and health in Rhode Island, concluding this: ``The destabilizing effects of climate change on our environment are among the most significant potential health threats faced by individuals and Rhode Island communities today.'' That is the official word of the Rhode Island Health Department. So don't expect me to ignore this issue here because it is uncomfortable for someone. Rising temperatures and extreme heat cause serious human health effects, such as dehydration, heat exhaustion. Hospitalizations result and even death. The department of health projected that the calculated temperature increases in Rhode Island will result in almost 400 additional emergency room visits in the year 2022 alone and nearly 1,400 more in 2084. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health just published a study showing that death rates among seniors in New England increased when summer temperatures rose significantly. The risk, they believe, comes not only from the hotter temperatures but also from variability in temperatures as climate change makes the weather weirder and more unpredictable. There is a documentary series, ``Years of Living Dangerously,'' which looked at how this works, as has the Rhode Island Department of Health, working with Brown University. Both found that a pronounced increase in emergency room visits and deaths as temperatures rise was statistically related to heat. In many cases, it was not specifically indicated in the chart as related to heat. This suggests that heat-related deaths and illness may be underdiagnosed if you just look at medical charts. So this is a significant health issue that we face. Then there are the storms. Climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in Rhode Island, such as Hurricane Sandy, to the tune of $2 billion to $6 billion in Rhode Island, according to one report. In a State of 1 million people, that is a lot of damage. The heavy rains that brought on our floods in 2010 will become more frequent as well. This is what our health director wrote: ``In Rhode Island, where our economy, culture, and identity are all so closely tied to the ocean and to Narragansett Bay, the effects of climate change will be particularly acute.'' Again, that is the official word of our health department. Climate change threatens our water systems as temperatures increase and as we see more intense rain events. Stormwater and sewer overflows can contaminate Rhode Island coastal waters. Warmer waters can foster bacterial growth that can be harmful. Swimming in or consuming polluted water obviously can cause illness. Then there is vibrio. The world-renowned shellfish of Narragansett Bay are becoming susceptible to a group of marine bacteria known as vibrio. If vibrio gets into seafood, it can be very unpleasant. Symptoms can be especially severe in people with compromised immune systems. Rhode Island health officials now have to work with the State's shellfish industry, with the University of Rhode Island, and others to monitor water quality and shellfish growing and harvesting conditions to protect this important resource. These are just a few of the health threats laid out in the report. The department of health is just one of many agencies and organizations in our State that have had to put climate action and clean energy at the heart of their work as we in Congress pretend this problem does not exist. Dozens of the most dedicated and innovative minds in our State recently came to Washington for my sixth annual Rhode Island Energy and Environmental Leaders Day. Our attendees represent some of the best work being done in Rhode Island to stave off the devastating effects of climate change. Janet Coit, our director of environmental management chairs the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council, created by our Governor to coordinate State agencies to address threats from climate change, threats to the State's environment, the State's economy, and the State's people. The council was established by the Resilient Rhode Island Act, passed by our general assembly in 2014. That law also set specific greenhouse gas reduction targets and incorporates consideration of climate change effects into the powers and duties of all State agencies. The bill's author, Representative Art Handy, also came down and joined us for the Rhode Island Energy and Environmental Leaders Day, along with his colleague Representative Carlos Tobon, a member of the Rhode Island House Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources. Dennis Nixon was there. He heads Rhode Island Sea Grant at the University of Rhode Island School of Oceanography. Sea Grant works with the Rhode Island government agencies and coastal communities to support climate resiliency and to protect vibrant waterfronts. Marion Gold, our commissioner of the office of energy resources, was there. She has advanced incentives for large and small renewable energy development in our State, and she has helped Rhode Island become the third most energy-efficient State in the Nation. Recently, we saw this report: ``Study shows Northeast states benefit from carbon cap program.'' We are a part of RGGI. Marion Gold helps supervise that. It has created jobs, it has saved money. It is proving that solving the carbon pollution problem is not actually a burden on the economy. It is a boost to the economy. One of the special breakout sessions at the Energy and Environmental Leaders Day focused on corporate sustainability efforts to spur innovation, save money, and reduce emissions. Representatives from Microsoft, Mars--the company--FedEx, and Schneider Electric shared their sustainability success stories. For these companies, efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions are more than good intentions; they are good business. Another breakout session looked at faith perspectives on environmental stewardship. Rev. Anita Schell of Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light came. She works with local faith-based institutions to raise awareness about climate change and about safeguarding the poor of the world, who are least responsible for and most vulnerable to climate change. As Pope Francis gives his voice to this moral calling, these faith perspectives were especially welcome. Dozens of other smart, hard-working Rhode Islanders attended--too many to mention them all. But I am always proud of the important work going on in Rhode Island to combat climate change. It is my inspiration to continue fighting for responsible action in Washington. As our senior Senator Jack Reed told the group, ``Rhode Island is one of the leaders in the country in smart policies . . . and it's is the result of the culmination of lots of individual activities.'' Rhode Island gets it, and we are pulling together in one direction. Our homes, our shores, and our way of life are at stake. We need every State in the Nation to join us to take this issue seriously, and we need every Senator to pay attention. It is truly time to wake up. I ask my colleagues here today, if this were you, if something this threatening were happening to your State, would you really expect me to stand down because it was uncomfortable for big powerful industries and big aggressive donors? You would not. You would go to war to protect Utah and to protect Iowa from a threat such as this. So forgive me if I am impatient, but this is serious in our Ocean State. If your department of health projected these kinds of threats for your home State people, you would be up in arms. So forgive me for being a little bit up in arms. I will close with this. Look at this picture. Do you know what that is? That is a picture of Pluto. That is a picture of the dwarf planet Pluto. Do you know how we got that? We got that off of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. It made it to Pluto after crossing the solar system for 9\1/2\ years. It traveled 3 billion miles from Earth and came within 8,000 miles of the surface of Pluto. It was traveling at more than 31,000 miles per hour, and it took 3 minutes to cross the face of Pluto, where it took innumerable images and samples for our scientists. Let me quote one of the lead scientists, whose name is Bowman, who managed 1 hour of sleep in her office Monday night. She said: I have to pinch myself. Look what we accomplished. It's truly amazing humankind can go out and explore these worlds, and see Pluto revealed just before our eyes. It's just fantastic. And it really is. These are American scientists who are able to run an American craft 3 billion miles to cross within 8,000 miles of Pluto traveling 31,000 miles an hour. When those scientists from NASA tell us that climate change is real, what do we have to say to them? We say that they are part of a hoax. Really? Is that going to be the position of Members in this body-- that the people driving a rover around on the surface of Mars and the people who flew this New Horizons craft by Pluto don't know what they are talking about when they say that climate change is real? We have people trying to unfund their satellites so that we don't have the information to prove what is happening on climate change. Is that responsible with respect to NASA? A day of reckoning is going to come on this, and we had better start getting this right. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to join Chairman Murkowski in expressing my satisfaction and pleasure with this bill we are on and join her in commending the leadership of Ranking Member Patty Murray and Chairman Lamar Alexander. As a result of their work, we have a significant piece of legislation before us. It received bipartisan support in the committee, and I think the secret of their success was that they knew how to let Senators be Senators and work on a bill, really on the merits of it, without a lot of partisan gunslinging. As a result, the legislation before us creates a tremendous improvement in K-2 education over the failed No Child Left Behind Act. The process that led to this was bipartisan, substantive, and thorough. They really listened to a wide array of viewpoints. The result is this strong bipartisan proposal. As one of my senior colleagues on the committee said, this is what happens when you have committee leaders who really know what they are doing. By now, most Americans--certainly my constituents--are familiar with the failures of No Child Left Behind. It overemphasized a peculiar form of testing, a form of testing in which the student took the test but wasn't graded on it. The subject of the test really was the performance of the school itself. Schools became frantic to heap up student performance to protect themselves. As a result, there was a lot of drama in the schools around these tests. If you did not do well, that pitched you into a narrow, one-size-fits-all approach to fixing the low-performing school. That combination served neither students nor communities well. The Every Child Achieves Act is based on a very simple idea that I think has broad support in the Senate: Less classroom time spent on this frantic test preparation for the high-stakes exams means more time actually learning. The Every Child Achieves Act allows States to take a whole range of factors into account to gauge how students are doing and how the schools are doing, not just one test. I call that the data dashboard. It can include things such as graduation rates, college performance rates afterwards, how many students are taking AP classes and SAT tests, incidents of violence or bullying, and even working conditions for teachers. It is something we have worked on in Rhode Island through something called the InfoWorks Program. It is a commonsense way of understanding school and student performance without creating this massive distraction and drama. Less emphasis on this peculiar high-stakes testing regime means more time for teachers to teach a more balanced, well-rounded curriculum, giving attention to important subjects such as history and the arts, which, because they weren't covered under these high-pressure standardized tests, fell out of the curriculum. So what parents ought to see after we pass this bill is a much richer curriculum for their kids and one that some kids simply need in order to stay interested in school. If arts are your passion as a child and if that has fallen out because of this testing regime, you really have been hurt. If history and the stories of what happened in the olden days are what really gets you excited about education and if that gets squeezed out so you can do the math and the reading test better, you really have been hurt as a student. So that has changed. I am glad we have language in this bill that supports civics and American history education so that beyond reading and math--the tested subjects-- students who graduate from public education have a real understanding of what it means to be an American citizen. It means something to be an American citizen. They need to understand the trajectory of this country so that they can fill that role as American citizens better. The bill supports school libraries, which is an issue my senior Senator, Jack Reed, has long championed and which I was proud to support in committee. It includes an initiative I supported that was led by Senator Mikulski to provide support for gifted and talented students, particularly those who are in high-poverty schools. It can be hard to keep a high-ability child engaged and motivated if they are not challenged. I believe Senator Mikulski's language will be a big help to these kids, their teachers, and their parents. When a school does fall short, the Every Child Achieves Act rejects the overly punitive interventions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead, it allows communities, parents, and teachers to work together to improve their school in ways that make sense for the students and give them the tools to succeed. In my experience, I have learned that the greatest unmet area--at least in Rhode Island--is in middle schools. When I talk to people from other States, they see the same thing. Those middle grades are a tipping point in the lives of many students, especially those at risk of dropping out. When I was Rhode Island's attorney general, I saw hundreds of juvenile cases that had a common thread, which was catastrophic levels of middle school truancy. In order to get a better handle on what was happening in the middle schools, I adopted one--the Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School in Providence. We worked hard to create a real relationship between the police department and the school. We helped get truant kids back in classrooms. We began a mentoring program between students and the attorneys in my office. We brought in community groups to start afterschool programs. We did a lot of different things. Those years of working with middle school stakeholders helped me realize how much the middle grades bear on a child's future. It is an age when the child is beginning to make his or her own decisions, which can be dangerously bad ones at that time. But they can still be influenced by positive adults and by enriching experiences in their lives. Many students who fail in high school showed the warning signs in middle school. We need to be reaching back into middle school to help them stay on track. That is why I am so glad to have partnered with our friend Senator Baldwin on a measure that requires States to identify and support students at risk of dropping out in middle school and not wait until they are in serious trouble in high school. I am also proud that the bill includes key elements of the Community Partnerships in Education Act, the House version of which was championed by my House colleague Congressman David Cicilline. The outstanding success in Rhode Island of the Providence After School Alliance shows that schools and their students can thrive with help from strong community partners focused on sustainable and coordinated afterschool learning opportunities. PASA is really a model. Community-based afterschool has long been underappreciated, and I am glad it is on an even basis in this bill with school-based afterschool. The Every Child Achieves Act also makes progress in educating students who have become involved in the criminal justice system. As with the juvenile justice reauthorization that I am working on with Chairman Grassley in the Judiciary Committee, this bill tries to break the cycle of troubled kids who enter the juvenile justice system, who get marginalized, who fall further behind in their education, leading to more trouble and ultimately to crime. This phenomenon is referred to as the school-to-prison-pipeline, and it is tragic and it needs to end. I have also seen and heard how Federal, State, and local regulations can get in the way of innovative reforms. Over the last 2 years, I have worked closely with Rhode Island educators, who have told me time and time again that they could achieve much better results if not for the layers of professional education bureaucracy stifling innovation at multiple levels. I am working to include an amendment to establish an innovation schools demonstration, giving teachers, parents, and school leaders, who have a unique understanding of the students and communities they serve, the flexibility to turn those ideas into action. In Rhode Island, I have heard from school leaders who would like to extend the school day for struggling students, reboot their curriculum, take ownership over their school's budgeting and financing, or better manage their school's human resources. But they can't because existing rules and regulations get in the way. They are often daunting because if you try to get after the local regulations, you still have the State regulations. If you try to go after the local and the State regulations, you still have the Federal regulations. So they give up. My amendment establishes a fast-track process to give public schools relief from barriers to school-level innovation--relief from local, State, and Federal regulations. Here is what Victor Capellan, superintendent of the Central Falls, RI, School District, told me: ``As a leader, having more flexibility to design the learning around the needs of my students and teachers and within the local context that exists--and not based on old and fixed conditions--makes all the sense in the world to me.'' Overall, the Every Child Achieves Act returns more decisionmaking authority to public schools, gives them tools to help every student succeed, and promotes greater flexibility in achieving high standards. As I prepared at home for this bill, I worked with a lot of Rhode Islanders to learn what was needed. I am grateful to the groups who gave me so much time. Many of us met over and over to work through these issues and lay the foundation, particularly for the middle school part of the bill and for the innovation schools part of the bill. There was a lot of good Rhode Island work that went into those, and I appreciate it. I believe this bill responds to the needs and concerns of the many Rhode Island teachers, reformers, students, school administrators, and union officials I worked with. I am proud to support it. I will close by saying one last thing. There are many issues we deal with where we experience a lot of confrontation. Often we come into a situation thinking we know what the confrontation is. Before we even get to it, we anticipate the confrontation. What I learned from sitting down and spending real time with teachers who are in teachers unions, with reformers who are determined to make schools better and able to innovate, administrators who work in public schools and the administrators who work in charter schools, you put them all together and they agree on so much of what is in this bill. If you treat people involved in this system with the respect they deserve individually, and if you listen to them, the agreement is far greater than the disagreement. I will close where I began. What Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray did was to create a process where we could be Senators, and as a Senator I was able to bring those voices from Rhode Island into this process in a meaningful way. My ability to bring that voice in a meaningful way empowered me to be able to bring those voices together back in Rhode Island and find the kind of agreement that has enabled these successes, so I am very grateful to them as well. With that comment, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am not sure what the intentions are of the chairman of the energy committee. As chairman, I would be delighted to yield to her if she is going to take some time on the floor, and I would need about 10 minutes for my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am happy to yield. I thought we went back and forth from side to side ordinarily, but I am very happy to yield. I have a chairman who is a very busy person.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, there has been some conversation on the floor. We are working out the order of proceeding. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Wicker and Senator Shaheen be recognized first for a colloquy, followed by remarks by Senator Brown, followed by remarks by myself, followed by remarks by Senator Baldwin.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to recognize a historic milestone: the 20th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam. This occasion has some personal significance for me and my family. My father served as Deputy Ambassador to Vietnam; in effect, the chief operating officer of that conflict. I lived with him in that country for several months during the Vietnam war. If he were alive today, he would be proud of the work both countries have done to reconcile our past. It took immense courage on both sides to look beyond the scars of that war and envision a future in which our two countries could become partners and friends. No one embodies this courage more than our friend John McCain, who played a major role in establishing diplomatic relations between our two countries, and Secretary of State John Kerry, then a Senator, who was his Democratic partner. Given Senator McCain's experience as a prisoner in Vietnam, his subsequent efforts to strengthen the peace and forgiveness between our two Nations are an enduring inspiration, the power of which I was privileged to see firsthand when I traveled with Senator McCain to Hanoi in 2012 and 2014. Senator McCain said 20 years ago, ``I believe it is my duty to encourage this country to build from the losses and the hopes of our tragic war in Vietnam a better peace for both the American and the Vietnamese people.'' Today, the American and the Vietnamese people can be proud of the progress made to forge a lasting peace and friendship. Two years ago, President Obama and Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang launched the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership, opening a new phase of bilateral relations between our nations based on mutual respect and common interests. I met recently with Nguyen Phu Trong, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam to discuss our shared interests and opportunities for closer collaboration on a range of issues, including regional stability, economic cooperation, and the lingering human and environmental consequences of that war. I had the honor of meeting with General Secretary Trong while traveling to Vietnam with Senator McCain last summer. I am pleased he has made this historic visit to the United States. I am hopeful Vietnam will bring our interests and values into closer alignment, particularly on human rights, the rights of civil society, transparency, and good governance issues. To that end, I look forward to working together to achieve closer ties. As the United States and Vietnam continue to deepen our relationship, we should continue to address the legacies of that war, particularly the health effects and environmental contamination associated with Agent Orange and other herbicides. Here at home, we take our commitment to caring for our veterans very seriously. Although the war has ended, many American veterans and their families still battle a range of health problems and serious diseases associated with their service in Vietnam. We must ensure that veterans get the care they need to combat the long-term health problems related to exposure to Agent Orange. Those contamination and health problems are also serious in Vietnam. I am grateful for Senator Leahy's leadership on the Appropriations Committee, which has enabled the United States to pursue remediation projects to clean up the dioxin contamination at Da Nang International Airport and other hot spots and to support related health and disability programs. I urge all of us that we continue to support these initiatives which strengthen our bilateral relationship. Considerable work remains. According to initial assessments of Bien Hoa Air Base, the contamination there is more severe and cleanup is expected to be more complex and costly than at Da Nang. In addition, health-related problems and disabilities persist in areas sprayed with Agent Orange or otherwise contaminated by dioxin. In 2008, actor, advocate, and long-time friend Dick Hughes brought this issue closely to my attention and he has shared with me compelling stories about Vietnamese families who have been affected by diseases and disabilities related to Agent Orange exposure. Some of the suffering ascribed to Agent Orange has been harrowing and heartbreaking. Dick has years of experience working on humanitarian issues in Vietnam and is a compelling witness to that suffering. We first met when I was a teenager in Saigon and Dick had established a program called the Shoeshine Boys Project, to care for homeless children who had been orphaned or left alone during the war. He brought them together and sent them on the streets with shoeshine boxes as a way of making a living and finding something they could do and provided them care and a home when they came home at nightfall. Over 8 years, that project helped thousands of children in cities all across Vietnam. Dick attributes the success of that project to close partnerships forged with local communities and the project's management by Vietnamese citizens. When Dick returned to the United States, he continued to advocate for postwar humanitarian causes and he started a foundation to raise awareness about the effects of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese population. Dick remains a trusted friend and tireless advocate to the Vietnamese people. As our two countries work together on a new and more engaged future, we should expand our efforts to improve the health and well-being of the Vietnamese people. We can learn from Dick's experience about the power of partnership and the value of local leadership, and together we can continue to repair the damage--physical, psychological, and political--of the path we share. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Andrew Bronstein, an education fellow in my office, and Ethan Arenson, a Judiciary Committee detailee from the Department of Justice, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is the 105th time I have come to the Senate floor to urge my colleagues to wake up to the reality of climate change. I know the Presiding Officer is a veteran of several of these speeches. For far too long, far too many of us in this Chamber have simply dismissed the evidence of climate change. They have ignored the sober warnings of scientists, generals, of doctors, of economists, even of big company CEOs that these risks are real. The warnings are clear: If we continue on our present path, we will leave our children and grandchildren with a world very different from our own and not for the better. By denying the science, dismissing the risks or simply by their silence, Senate Republicans have effectively pledged allegiance to the fossil fuel companies--companies that make a lot of money polluting the atmosphere with carbon emissions and that spend big on politics. Outside this Chamber, however, the American people want action. Americans overwhelmingly favor limits on greenhouse gases and getting more electricity from renewables. It is happening across the country. It is definitely true in Rhode Island, my home State, but it is not just Rhode Islanders. Over this past recess, I went to Tennessee. I found that people in the Volunteer State see the effects, they see the risks, and they see the opportunities that come with climate change. In Knoxville, I met with Mayor Madeline Rogero, and I heard about the great work she is doing. Knoxville is making their infrastructure more resilient to flooding and storms and working to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, partnering with local utilities and citizens groups. Greenhouse gas emissions from the city's operations were down 12 percent in 2014, compared to 2005. Their goal is to make it to 20 percent. Mayor Rogero told me about the risks climate change poses in Eastern Tennessee: changes in the Smoky Mountains parks nearby, programs like Round It Up that help people with utility bills getting hammered by earlier, hotter summer weather. She told me Knoxville wasn't alone. Even little Ducktown, TN, built a 28-kilowatt solar array. I visited Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is researching how climate change will affect Tennessee and the United States and the rest of the world. Let me tell you, they are not doubting climate change at Oak Ridge. They are planning for it. They are modeling warming up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit in the vast boreal forest regions of the Northern Hemisphere. They are concerned about the phony science being propagated by the fossil fuel industry front groups--what I have called the parallel science designed to look like science without actually being peer- reviewed or meeting the standards--and they are saddened to see the public taken in and Congress stalled. They have a brilliant animation of industrial-era carbon emissions climate. If I could use a monitor instead of this piece of cardboard I would show it to you, but I can't. So you will have to find it. You can go to my website where I have a link: whitehouse.senate.gov/climatechange. One employee at Oak Ridge, a Tennessean who had grown up nearby, told me about the recent trouble with fire ants. The fire ant is an invasive species from South America that can deliver a nasty sting. She said growing up she had never seen them--not a worry. Now she has to worry about a swarm of them getting on her children. Normally, cold nights and winter freezes limit the range of the fire ant. But this invasive species has moved north into Tennessee with the warming temperatures. For those colleagues who believe the only values that matter are those that can be monetized, the USDA estimates that U.S. losses to the invasive fire ant are almost $6 billion a year. Fire ants aren't the only invasive pests that benefit from warmer nights and winters. The threat of the invading emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorned beetle means that campers visiting Tennessee can't bring their own firewood into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park anymore. As of March 1, only heat-treated firewood is allowed, certified by the USDA or the State. Climate change threatens the Great Smoky Mountains with much more than invasive species. The national park may lose up to 17 percent of the mammals that presently live there as climate change shifts their habitat and changes the composition of the forest. The Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency says that ``Tennessee's wildlife and natural resources face a serious threat from climate change.'' The agency did a comprehensive assessment of the potential effects climate change would have on the State's wildlife. These are some of its key findings: Tennessee's forests are expected to undergo changes in forest growth and composition. . . . [S]ome high elevation forest types will be dramatically impacted or lost entirely; brook trout populations are expected to decline; migratory songbirds may alter their ranges, with some species disappearing from Tennessee altogether; and larger floods and longer droughts could cause increased erosion, reduced water supply, and the spread of invasive species. Meeting with local environmental leaders and advocates at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, I learned that air quality is another significant problem for the Volunteer State, especially in Eastern Tennessee. Here is a map I got from them showing the counties that still get a D or an F for air quality: Sullivan County, D; Knox County, D; Loudon County, D; Jefferson County, D; Sevier County, F; Blount County, F; Hamilton County, which has Chattanooga in it, F; Cannon County, D; Wilson County, F; Williamson County, F; Shelby County, F. If you fix the carbon pollution from the coal plants, you will fix a lot of these air quality problems, too, and these air quality problems in the famous Great Smoky Mountains. They were smoky enough, I guess, to begin with. This is not helping. I also learned of the threats posed by flooding from storms. In May 2010, a massive storm rolled over Tennessee and caused $1.5 billion damage in Nashville alone. FEMA declared disaster areas in 30 counties and more than 60,000 families received Federal aid. Precipitation has measurably increased in parts of Tennessee during the last century, and as climate change continues, heavy rains and extreme weather are expected to increase. For fishermen, in addition to the warming of the stream water, streams that are blown out by extreme rains are bad for trout fishing. In Tennessee I also saw great hope for climate action. Mayor Rogero is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to design a climate change sustainability plan for Knoxville and the area around it, including the lab campus. The laboratory is also a leading research center for advanced nuclear technology, including small modular reactors that could help unlock low-carbon energy with reduced risk of accidents or proliferation. Tennessee is ripe with wind and solar potential, and the famous Tennessee Valley Authority, after a slow start, is getting around to renewables investments and supporting distributed generation. The TVA has learned from things such as having to derate powerplants on the Tennessee River because the river grew too warm to cool the thermal load of the plant and seeing giant demand sways from 12,000 to 35,000 megawatts. I met with University of Tennessee professors who are helping the TVA make the move. The University of Tennessee has entire programs on climate change. They are not denying it. They have professors such as Dean Rivkin at the College of Law, Mary English at the Howard Baker Center, and John Nolt, recently the head of the faculty senate, who has written on the moral importance of counting climate casualties. By the way, Professor Nolt cites studies showing global deaths from the consequences of climate change every year in the range of 140,000, 300,000 and 400,000. But why should we care? Private companies get it in Tennessee. I heard a lot about Wampler's Farm Sausage, headquartered in Lenoir City, which has invested in solar and biomass energy production to cut down on energy bills and provide stability to its business. For them it is about business and the environment. The company sees consumer demand ahead for sustainably produced products. In the words of company president Ted Wampler, Jr., ``being green is going to sell sausage.'' I had a nice dinner with lovely people from the Knoxville Garden Club. Some had come to Congress for the annual garden club trip to urge Congress to take action. They see in their garden the changes that are reflected in the USDA plant hardiness zone for Knoxville shifting in their very lifetimes. A highlight of the trip was the annual meeting of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. I was invited by the executive director, Tom Saddler, and joined a panel with Dr. Cameron Wake from the University of New Hampshire, Hal Herring from Field & Stream magazine, and Todd Tanner, the president of Conservation Hawks. I urge anybody who is listening to this to take 10 minutes and look at the fly fishing clip ``Cold Waters'' on the Conservation Hawk's Web site. It is called co2ldwaters.org, but the trick is there is a ``2'' in the middle. The Web site is co2ldwaters.org. One thing was crystal clear from our panel and from the discussion that followed, and that is this: Real outdoorsmen don't deny climate change. If you don't believe me, believe legendary outdoorsman Yvon Chouinard. Look at the clip at co2ldwaters.org. If we in this Chamber could wake up and stop denying this problem, we could do a lot to help. Real legislative action, such as a price on carbon, could unlock energy innovation and it could make the fat-cat, politician-buying polluters actually compete fair and square on a level playing field with clean energy. Of course they would rather not. They would rather pollute the world and rig the politics to rig the competition so they can keep polluting for free. If you think from my comments that I am mad about the disgraceful political conduct of the oil and coal barons, well, you are right; I am. It is sickening. It is a disgrace. And no, it is not good enough to say just enough good things about climate change to get through a cocktail party at Davos, while you keep your corporate money flowing to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and other denial front groups to stop progress at all costs. You can't have it both ways. I will know the Big Oil CEOs are serious when they publicly tell the Wall Street Journal editorial page that it is OK to knock off the climate denial. What I would like is to take their high-priced lobbyists, to take their slippery lawyers, to take their paid-for bogus scientists and put them all up in the high country for a week with Yvon Chouinard or someone like him who really loves and knows the country they are wrecking. It just might be good for their souls. Senator Schatz and I have a bill to level the energy playing field by levying a carbon fee on fossil fuel emissions. In our bill every nickel collected goes back to the American people, and most of it goes back through cutting taxes. When it is time for Republicans to break free of this filthy grip the fossil fuel industry has, we will be there. We will be there, and we will be waiting. Take a look at our bill. It would be a win-win-win for the American people, and it aligns with what so many Republicans outside of Congress are saying about the correct solution to the climate problem. I hope my Republican colleagues, particularly my friends from Tennessee, take a close look at it. Both Senators from Tennessee recognize human-caused climate change. The senior Senator, our friend who has just done such a masterful job of bringing this elementary and secondary education bill to the floor and steering it so far through this process, is a renowned champion of clean energy research and of electric vehicles. Tennessee's junior Senator said in 2009, when cap-and-trade ideas were swirling: I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100 percent of which would be returned to the American people. So there's no net dollars that would come out of the American people's pockets. Gentlemen, that is our bill. I am open to this discussion any time, but let's please not wait too long. As they know at Oak Ridge, as they know in the mayor's offices in Knoxville and Ducktown, as they know at the University of Tennessee, and as the rangers know up in the Great Smoky Mountains, time's a wasting, and we need to wake up. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.