Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I be allowed to call up my amendment, Whitehouse amendment No. 148.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I just wish to speak briefly to this amendment, which I hope might help answer the mystery as to why the first order of business of the new majority in the Senate is S. 1, a bill that allows a foreign corporation to run a pipeline across our country, seizing American farms and ranches along the way. That would not ordinarily seem to be our country's first and highest order of business given all of the issues that we face. We have seen news reports just today that the legendary Koch brothers are gearing up to spend $900 million in the coming election. We have seen news reports that compare their political operation to the Republican National Committee's political operation--favorably to the Koch brothers as having a bigger political operation. We know that since Citizens United there has been a torrent of corporate money poured into our elections, and a great deal of it has come from the fossil fuel industry. We know also that beside that torrent of disclosed money has been another torrent of dark money that has poured into our elections. We don't know quite where that has come from, but there are plenty of reasons to suspect and to suggest that money has also come from the fossil fuel industry. So we have a situation right now where I think reasonable people could look at the facts and draw a sensible inference that the Republican Party has been acquired by the fossil fuel industry as its political subsidiary. If that were the case, then that might be an explanation of why S. 1 does this extraordinary service to a foreign corporation at peril to all of the American farms and ranches and families whose land would be taken from them in order to give this foreign corporation this great boon. This amendment would require that companies that will make more than $1 million off of the Keystone Pipeline should meet the disclosure obligations that we have voted on before in the Senate. These are disclosure obligations that Republican Senators have often supported in the past. Indeed, until 2010 and until the Citizens United decision actually showed where the money was coming from and to whom it was going, one of the most ardent and eloquent advocates for disclosure was none other than the distinguished Senator from Kentucky who is now our majority leader. So it would not seem to be out of place to ask for a little bit of disclosure, a little bit of transparency, about where the political contributions went from the corporations that are going to make so much money from this, whether it is more than $1 million made off the pipeline or whether it is opening up the tar sands and having tar sands leases. So I hope we will have a chance to vote on this, and if we are in favor of transparency and disclosure and voters understanding what is going on around here, this ought to be an amendment we ought to be able to support. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I simply wish to make my amendment pending, and at a convenient time I would like to do that. There was a bit of an aura of good feeling on the floor when the distinguished chairman of the energy committee and distinguished Senator from North Dakota were discussing an orderly approach for getting the amendments pending. Since then, we have heard a good deal about frustration and anger and a bad mood, so I am not sure--maybe a little time to revert to that previous aura might not be in order, but I am only seeking to get my amendment pending.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I first inquire of the distinguished bill manager whether I may take a moment to seek to call up an amendment or whether they have present business they need to attend to on the floor?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Happily.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Rather than face an objection to my unanimous consent request, I will defer it until the chairman and her ranking member have a chance to go through that process, and I will come back at an appropriate time. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am honored to congratulate Mr. Vincent Petrarca of West Warwick, RI, a proud American veteran and beloved family man, on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Vin enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 18 and served in the Pacific Fleet. He was a crewmember of the destroyer USS Newcomb when, in April 1945, that ship encountered heavy air bombardment from Japanese forces off the west coast of Okinawa. Although struck multiple times by kamikaze attackers and sustaining heavy casualties, the Newcomb drove off or shot down several aircraft. ``Nelson's accolade to his sailors, `They fought as one man, and that man a hero,''' wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison, ``could well be applied to her crew,'' which earned the Navy Unit Commendation. Vin married Jeanne Lesniak, and their union, now in its 62nd year, has been blessed with 7 children, 12 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. Vin remains active, continuing a formidable amateur golf career. His tournament victories span a half-century, from the 1962 West Warwick Country Club Championship to the 2012 Rhode Island Father/ Daughter State Championship. On behalf of the State of Rhode Island and the Senate of the United States, I congratulate Vincent Petrarca on 90 remarkable years, and wish him health and happiness in the years to come.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up my amendment No. 28.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute to defend my amendment.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is a measure that will allow a needed beam of daylight to be shown on the politics behind this bill we are on. As everybody knows, it is a little bit unusual to some that the opening measure of the new Republican majority would be a project that advantages a foreign oil company. This measure would require the disclosure of political donations made by companies that stand to earn more than $1 million from this project. This is the kind of information the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly said citizens are entitled to know in order to make appropriate decisions, and in our democracy we should put our citizens first. I will speak further about this amendment on a later occasion, and I yield the floor at this time.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In the time remaining, I recognize and thank the cosponsors on my side of the aisle, Senator Sanders, Senator Manchin, and Senator Leahy. Senator Inhofe and I are not alone on this bill.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Colleagues, I almost hate to use my minute because I am so eager to hear what will be said during the minute when our energy chairman will follow me, but I am hoping that after many years of darkness and blockade, this vote will be a first little beam of light through the wall that will allow us to at least start having an honest conversation about what carbon pollution is doing to our climate and to our oceans. This is a matter of vital consequence to my home State, the Ocean State, my home, Rhode Island, and to many of yours as well. I hope this is a place where we can get together and have a strong, positive vote that sends a signal that this Senate, at this time in history, is ready to deal with reality.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Indeed, in my remarks earlier, I referred to this pipeline as possibly an economic zombie at the current oil prices. I have not seen a single report that this pipeline can be built and operated properly at oil prices where they are right now. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Indeed, I would say the breakpoint for that study was at $75 per barrel, and it was at that point that the environmental impact became very real from this harmful tar sands fuel. Not only are we not just under $75 per barrel, we have hit as low as below $50 per barrel. So I just want to make sure, as long as we are voting on this language very shortly, that it is clear in the Record of the Senate that the environmental impact statement was hinged on that the ``expected oil prices'' were north of $75 per barrel; that they are now well below that, around $50 per barrel. And, indeed, I would add that the Canadian Research Institute has said the tar sands can't be properly extracted at prices less than $85 per barrel. So that puts in context what we will be voting on that I thought should be in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I inquire of the Senator--we will be shortly voting on a number of measures. One is a side-by-side to the Schatz amendment which includes a quotation from an environmental impact statement, and the quotation is as follows: . . . approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States based on expected oil prices, oil-sands supply costs, transport costs, and supply-demand scenarios. Does the Senator recall when the EIS was written and what the oil prices were that were expected at the time this document was prepared?

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am on the floor to say a few words about my amendment No. 29, which we will be voting on shortly after 3 o'clock, I am told. That is the simple amendment that says it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax. It is, perhaps, a telling coincidence that we are having this conversation on the floor of the Senate now on the fifth anniversary of the Citizens United decision, because before Citizens United came along, there was actually a pretty robust conversation between Democrats and Republicans about carbon pollution, climate change, and what needed to be done about it. For instance, Senator John McCain ran for President on a robust platform of addressing the carbon that causes climate change. Senator Collins worked with the current energy ranking member, Senator Cantwell, on a very robust climate bill that would have put a cap on carbon pollution and paid a dividend back to the American people. Senator Mark Kirk voted for Waxman-Markey when that bill was on the floor of the House, the famous cap-and-trade bill. Senator Flake wrote an article in his home State paper expressing the value and merit of a carbon fee when it is offset by reductions in other taxes as a way to help workers and address the pollution problem. Over and over again there were these joint actions all the way back to when I first came to the EPW Committee and Senator John Warner of Virginia was its then ranking member. He wrote Warner-Lieberman with our colleague, then Senator Lieberman. Then came Citizens United. Then came the massive influx of polluter money into our political system, much of it dark money. At about the spring of 2010--and Citizens United was decided in January of 2010-- that was the end of the conversation. So here we are today. We are just now reaching agreement on several votes by which I believe our Republican colleagues will, for the first time since Citizens United--some of them, at least--acknowledge that climate change is real. Indeed, we just heard my friend Senator Graham come to the floor and speak--right there--saying that climate change is real, that humans had a significant role in causing it, and it was something we ought to pay attention to. This is new. Today, after 5 years of more or less silence. I have spoken on this floor, as everybody knows, a great deal on this subject, and nobody has ever come from the other side of the aisle to respond to me, except for the now-chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, to maintain his view that climate change is actually a hoax that is perpetrated by the scientific community in order to get grants and funding. So it has been a long drought. It has been a long, long drought. Frankly, it has been a drought that does not reflect the best traditions of this body. This body has taken on big issues in the past. It took on civil rights. It tried to hold this country together over the issue of slavery. This body has been significant in the history of the United States at important junctions, and here we are at this important junction where our energy policy needs to change and half of the body basically was mute. Today that seems to have changed. That, to me, is very significant. I look forward to a vote on my amendment. As I said, it is very simple. Climate change is real and not a hoax. I hope that is something we can agree on as a body. If we do, then it becomes a predicate for beginning to advance an important conversation. I am not going to agree with all of my Republican colleagues about their views on how to respond to this problem, and I don't expect my Republican colleagues to agree with all of my views on how we should respond to this problem. But the dark days of denying that there actually is a problem may very well have seen their first little break of dawn right now. If that is so, that is exciting news because, as many Republicans have noted--Republicans such as Secretary Schultz, Republicans such as Secretary Paulson, Republicans such as Ronald Reagan's economic adviser, the economist Arthur Laffer--there are smart, conservative ways to address this problem. I continue to think that the idea that Senator Flake signed off on all those years ago is still the right one to do: Raise a fee by putting a price on carbon that reflects the economic fact that it creates harm for so many other folks, the so-called externalities, what the economists would say. The costs that burning carbon causes to fishermen, to foresters, to homeowners, to people who live near the sea, those costs--build them into the price of the product. That is economics 101. Then take every single dollar that we raise and lower working people's taxes. I am completely comfortable with that notion. That is one that has been over and over again brought up in the context of Republican and conservative discussions, including a very good recent paper jointly authored by a writer from the American Enterprise Institute. I see the deputy minority leader on the floor. I had the pleasure of traveling with him and with our ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and other colleagues to Cuba. When we spent time with Cuban officials, Cuban religious leaders, Cuban--just regular folks on the street, over and over again we heard the same phrases coming at us, that it was a time of hope and it was a time of promise. If there is going to be a time of hope and a time of promise in Cuba, let's hope it can be a time of hope and a time of promise in this body on climate change. It starts with admitting that you have a problem, just like in so many other areas of human life. So I hope that, frankly, every Member of the Senate will vote for my amendment. We appreciate the opportunity to work with the new majority on ways that we can address this telling problem. I will close by saying this. I am never going away on this subject. It is too important to my home State of Rhode Island. There is no Senator in this body who, if they had an issue as important to their home State as this issue is to Rhode Island, I would not expect and respect to fight all the way through to the bitter end for the interests of their State. My fishermen are not finding the fish where they have been for generations. People who have built homes on the shore are losing them into the sea in big storms. These are real consequences, and we--I promise you one way or the other--are going to do something about it. I hope this is the dawn of that new day. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the DISCLOSE Act of 2015. Simply put, this bill would end the massive undisclosed spending in elections that is undermining public faith in our democracy, creating what one newspaper called ``a tsunami of slime.'' Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's disastrous 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. With that feat of judicial activism, which will likely go down with Lochner v. New York as one of the Supreme Court's worst decisions, the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court overturned the laws of Congress protecting our elections' integrity, thwarted the will of the American people, and allowed unlimited anonymous corporate money to flood into our elections. Worse still, even though the justices decided 8-1 that laws promoting disclosure of outside spending were necessary and appropriate, everything that has happened since has shown a concerted effort to prevent and frustrate disclosure. So the billionaires and corporations spending tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars on elections can continue to do so with no public knowledge and no accountability. The Citizens United decision hangs on a series of irretrievably flawed assertions. Among them is the premise that unlimited corporate expenditures would be fine because there would be a regime of ``effective disclosure'' that would ``provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.'' However, following Citizens United, that regime of ``effective disclosure'' has completely broken down, with billionaires and corporations spending unlimited secret money in elections. In the 2014 elections, the most expensive midterm elections in our history, with over $3.6 billion spent, the Washington Post reported that at least 31 percent of all independent spending was spent by groups that are not required to disclose their donors. And that doesn't even count spending on so-called ``issue ads,'' which is also not reported. The first line of defense for campaign finance laws is supposed to be the Federal Election Commission. However, 5 years after the fact, the FEC just held a public meeting to consider rules to implement the Court's decision in Citizens United, and incredibly, the commissioners did not even consider rules to require disclosure. That has left the problem largely to the Internal Revenue Service, because so many of the offending organizations are non-profits. And they mangled this. First, they failed to investigate big non-profit groups spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections making what appeared to be illegal, material false statements about election spending on these IRS forms. Then the IRS singled out organizations for scrutiny based on words in their names suggesting that they were politically active. Recently, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed new rules to require disclosure by 501(c)(4) groups. Along with fifteen of my colleagues, I commended the effort to ensure disclosure by these non-profits. However, the IRS withdrew the proposed rules, and the latest reporting says that new rules won't be ready for the 2016 elections, another failure of disclosure. The DISCLOSE Act would put some transparency into the ``tsunami of slime.'' The bill, which is unchanged from the version introduced last Congress, would require organizations spending money in elections-- including super PACS and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups--to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle. The bill includes robust transfer provisions to prevent political operatives from using complex webs of entities to game the system and hide donor identities. This is not a new idea. Many Republicans, including several in the Senate, used to support disclosure. Senator Alexander has said, ``I support campaign finance reform, but to me that means individual contributions, free speech, and full disclosure.'' ``I don't like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable,'' said Senator Sessions. ``To the extent we can, I tend to favor disclosure.'' Or as Senator Cornyn put it, ``I think the system needs more transparency, so people can more easily reach their own conclusions.'' Senator McConnell once summed it up nicely: ``Virtually everybody in the Senate is in favor of enhanced disclosure, greater disclosure. That's really hardly a controversial subject.'' And he was right--until Citizens United. Suddenly Republicans are fighting to keep the American people in the dark to protect their wealthy funders. The high disclosure threshold and other provisions in the bill protect membership organizations from having to disclose their member lists, and from having to disclose any donor who does not wish his or her contribution to be used for political purposes. Our campaign finance system is broken. Immediate action is required to fix it. Americans of all political stripes are disgusted by the influence of unlimited, anonymous corporate cash in our elections, and by campaigns that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidates have in their pockets. Passing this law would remove the dark cloud of unlimited, anonymous money from our elections, and would prove to the American people that Congress is committed to fairness, equality, and the fundamental principle of a government ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' As Republican former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter has said, the DISCLOSE Act is ``appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored, clearly constitutional and desperately needed.'' I thank our 35 cosponsors of this bill so far, and Representative Van Hollen for introducing in the House, and I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act of 2015. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week marks a somewhat dark milestone, which is the 5-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's, in my view, reprehensible decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This was some fete of activism by the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court. It overturned the laws of Congress, it overturned the will of the American people, and it gave wildly outside influence over our elections to corporations and big-money interests, creating what one newspaper in Kentucky called a ``tsunami of slime.'' Well, 5 years on and the evidence is in. The evidence is in our elections, where this dam burst of outside cash that has wiped out previous campaign spending records, and the evidence is in this Chamber, where we once had a thriving bipartisan conversation on climate change, and instead of that we have now been reduced to this Keystone XL Pipeline bill--a show of force from the fossil fuel industry and virtual silence from the other side of the aisle on climate change. I will say that today marked an unusually bright spot in that darkness when 98 out of 99 Senators voting voted that climate change was real and not a hoax and when we came so close to an amendment that stated that climate change was real and caused by human activity that the sponsor of the amendment had to vote against his own amendment in order to keep the number under 60 because there were enough votes at one stage in the vote count for that bill to have passed even the filibuster threshold. So that made it an interesting day today. But normally we are in blockade. The purpose of the effort that we have been on has been to fast-track the Keystone XL Pipeline--a tar sands pipeline that may, at the present oil price, be an economic zombie, basically a dead pipeline walking. Canadian authorities say that the tar sands can't be extracted profitably at under $85 a barrel. The report from the State Department said that the break price where they could take it out by train as an alternative to the pipeline was at $75 per barrel, and the price today is around $50 per barrel. So we really don't know whether this pipeline has an economic future. What we do know is that if it were to operate, it would pass enough tar sands through it to unleash additional carbon pollution equal to 6 million added cars on the road each year for 50 years. If we take a look at this conversation here, other than the votes we forced today, the effect of Citizens United on our politics is pretty plain to see. Citizens United has not expanded debate in the Senate; it has crushed debate in the Senate. Why? Because since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, the big fossil fuel polluters and their network of associated interests have become among the biggest spenders--relying heavily, by the way, on undisclosed, untraceable dark money. According to the Center for American Progress, oil, gas, and coal companies and electric utilities alone reported spending more than $84 million on the 2014 elections. And that is just what they reported. The industry's undisclosed spending in that election through groups not required to disclose their donors or on so-called issue ads that don't need to be disclosed--the total is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, money talks, and in politics it talks plenty loud, and $100 million has a lot to say. One example is Americans for Prosperity--a Koch brothers' venture-- disclosed election spending of $6.4 million to the FEC for last year's midterm elections, but that group's own officials have boasted that the real number is as much as $130 million--$130 million in just one election by just one group. It is that kind of extravagant spending which has bought the Koch brothers a vast political network, with employees in critical States, with voter bases tied into our consumer data, with advertising and media-buying specialists. Indeed, that sophisticated Koch brothers electioneering capacity has now been reported in the general media to rival or exceed that of the Republican National Committee. Think about that. A few very wealthy individuals in the fossil fuel business--huge polluters--are now such big players in our politics that they rival our national parties. It is small wonder that it is hard to have an honest conversation about carbon pollution in the Senate. Most of it is hidden. The Washington Post has reported that at least 31 percent of all independent spending in the 2014 elections--which were, by the way, the most expensive midterm elections in American history. At least 31 percent of that was spent by groups not required to disclose their donors. The Washington Post also noted that the 31 percent doesn't even include those issue ads. They are also not disclosed. So we don't know fully how bad the influence of the fossil fuel polluters is, but we sure know it is bad. Interestingly, the same Supreme Court that decided Citizens United as a part of that decision decided by a margin of 8 to 1 that disclosure of outside spending was necessary and appropriate. The majority said this, and I will quote the decision: Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable . . . These intervening 5 years have seen a concerted effort to prevent and frustrate disclosure. Dark money spending by so-called independent groups with no disclosure requirements has more than doubled since 2010. Ludicrous factfinding by the Court's five conservative activists concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections. It is laughable on its face, but that laughable conclusion also overlooks a very clear fact: limitless, untraceable political money doesn't even have to be spent to corrupt our democracy. It can corrupt through the threat of spending or through the promise of spending. What Citizens United gave corporations and their political instruments the power to do, it also gave them the power to threaten or promise to do, and we in the public will never see those backroom corporate threats and promises or the deals that result. The candidate will know, the special interests will know, but the public will be the ones left in the dark. Some lobby groups are a little bolder. The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity openly promised to wipe out candidates who support curbs on carbon pollution. The group's president said if the Republicans support a carbon tax or climate regulations, they would ``be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process. . . . We would absolutely make that a crucial issue.'' The threat is plain. Step out of line and here come the attack ads and the primary challengers--all funded by the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, enabled by Citizens United and largely protected from disclosure, so the public cannot see what is going on. The effect of Citizens United has been particularly clear in the Senate. There once was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on climate change. Senator McCain ran for President on an active, robust program of addressing climate change. Senator Collins did a bipartisan bill on climate change. Senator Kirk voted in the House for the Waxman- Markey cap-and-trade bill. Senator Flake wrote articles supporting a carbon fee as long as the taxes were reduced elsewhere to offset the increased revenue from the carbon fee and on and on. My first exposure to this was the Warner-Lieberman bill and the Warner was Republican Senator John Warner. That has been a while. Since 2010, the year Citizens United was decided, this honest debate about how we address this problem for the benefit of the American people has flat-lined. Since 2010 the climate evidence has only become stronger. NASA and NOAA just officially declared 2014 the hottest year ever recorded--ever--easily breaking the previous records, the agencies say. But as the climate alarm bells grow louder, as the Earth sends her signals to us through our scientists' measurements about what has happened to the oceans, measuring the acidification of the oceans, about what is happening in our atmosphere, measuring the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere--as all that information has advanced, there has been just silence in this building since then. Instead of talking about what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans, instead, No. 1, the first agenda of the new majority: We are talking about letting polluters pump more tar sands crude, one of the most toxic fossil fuels on the planet, out onto the global market. Citizens United did not enhance speech in our democracy. Instead it allowed wealthy special interests to suppress and silence real debate. So I have filed an amendment to the Keystone bill to see what corporate influence pervades this effort. My amendment would require any company that stands to make over $1 billion from the pipeline or from the development of the tar sands to disclose its campaign spending over $10,000 from the last election cycle and going forward. The public needs to be able to connect the dots. I am also reintroducing the general disclosure act, called the DISCLOSE Act, to require all groups spending on elections to report their large expenditures and their high-dollar donors. The Supreme Court has said we cannot keep corporate interests from meddling in our popular elections. They are people, too, now. So now that the corporations are people, too, let's at least show the voters who it is who is trying to sway their votes. It is a pretty simple idea. It is what the Supreme Court Justices themselves prescribed, and it is an idea that Republicans over and over and over have supported in the past. The fact we must face in the Senate is that polluter money has polluted our democracy, just as their carbon pollution has polluted our atmosphere and oceans. So it is time to disclose. On climate change where we have an overwhelming scientific consensus, where we have the American people, majorities of Democrats and Republicans, supporting strong congressional action on climate, where we have American businesses small and large that see the folly of ignoring the looming risk, and where we have the national security community, our Armed Forces actively preparing to face the threat climate change poses to American safety and international stability--here, by the way, just as an example, is the Department of the Army's high-level climate change vulnerability assessment. I don't think they are kidding us and I don't think they are part of a hoax. Mr. President, I thank you for your patience this evening and I will conclude with the remark that I ordinarily conclude these speeches with: It is time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I first wish to thank the distinguished chairman of the energy committee and her ranking member for allowing this process to go forward to the point where I am able to call up this amendment. It is a convention here when amendments are called up to ask unanimous consent that the reading be dispensed with, but in this amendment, the effective language is only eight words: ``Climate change is real and not a hoax.'' So I went ahead and allowed the clerical staff to read the whole operative text of this amendment. This is an extremely simple amendment. We are here in this remarkable body in which so much history has taken place and in which so many great achievements have been fought through, many of them with powerful interests and strong arguments on opposite sides. And through that conflict, here in this body, we have been able to generate some of the great compromises and some of the great resolutions that have defined the course of the history of this country. So what a wonderful place this is to have the opportunity to serve. Now, in this great deliberative body, called by many the greatest deliberative body, we have a great issue before us--perhaps as many say, the issue of our time--and that is what our carbon pollution--the excess carbon that we burn when we burn fossil fuels--is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans. There is no factual debate about what it is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans. It is crystal clear, and the consequences are crystal clear as well. If my colleagues don't believe me, fine, go ask the U.S. military. Ask Admiral Locklear. Ask the Secretary of the Navy. Ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If my colleagues don't want to believe in the military, ask our religious leaders. Ask the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. If my colleagues only believe what corporations tell us, ask some of our biggest and most successful American corporations. Ask Walmart. Ask Coca-Cola. Ask Nike, ask Apple, ask Google. Go on through the corporate heraldry, and virtually every American corporation that is not actively involved in the fossil fuel industry will tell us this is a real and serious problem. And many of them are dedicating an enormous amount of internal effort to try to solve it within their corporate boundaries. Again, Walmart and Coca-Cola come right to the head of the list. Of course, we don't have to ask our scientists any longer. They are pretty clear. They use words such as ``unequivocal'' and ``undeniable'' at every single scientific society that represents the major elements of the profession in this country. Every single one has made this a priority. If people just want to go out to farmers, foresters, and fishermen, they are already seeing the changes around them. So here we are in this great deliberative body with this extraordinarily important issue that we have to face, and what do we see? Silence, virtually dead silence, because one side of this body won't even discuss the question. Many refuse to believe that climate change even exists, and for those who do, the political perils of using that phrase have now become so great that there is no serious conversation back and forth about climate change. In the first week we debated the Keystone Pipeline, which the environmental impact statement said will have a dramatic effect on climate change--the equivalent of 6 million added cars on our highways for 50 years, not to mention the petcoke and the byproducts, and just the carbon effect of it--no mention. The only time it was mentioned was when our distinguished energy committee chairman mentioned the testimony of a witness in her committee. She was good enough to make sure that climate change was raised in her committee, and she mentioned that there had been a witness who in turn mentioned climate change. But there was no direct mention in all of the debate that we heard in that week about climate change. It is the word that cannot be said. That is wrong. We cannot ignore this problem. It is too real for my fishermen in Rhode Island. It is to real for the people who are living near coasts and are seeing beaches they used to be able to play on eaten away. It is too real for the people whose homes have fallen into the sea. It is too real for us not to discuss it. Now, it is not going to be easy, and we have to start somewhere. So this is a start. I am going to ask my colleagues to vote on such a simple question: Is climate change real or is it a hoax? Both points of view have been expressed in this body. Where do we come down? Let's actually find out if there are people on the Republican side of the aisle who are willing to say climate change is real. My moose up in New Hampshire, one could say, are suffering unprecedented infestations of ticks because there is no snow for them to fall off and die, and the moose are getting overwhelmed. We could say that in the University of Oklahoma, the leading dean is an IPCC member and led the establishment of Climate Central. One could go to the Carolina coasts and hear from the coastal agencies about sea level rise. One could go to Arizona and hear about the desertification and the drought. We can go all over the place and find these things, and they are real. We have to have this conversation. It has to begin with as simple a proposition as this. Then, I hope if we can build off this if we can find a few Republican Senators who will say publicly that climate change is real. We can then go on to if it is real, let's have a conversation about what we do about it, because recklessly continuing to dump megatons of carbon into the atmosphere every year is not a solution. And I don't want to be a part of a generation of which our kids and our grandchildren look back and ask: Where were they? Why could they not address this question? There they were in this great deliberative body. There they were with this great issue of our time. Why would they not even discuss it? So I hope this amendment gets the conversation under way. It is one I look forward to. I think there are very sensible ways to solve this problem, including ways that have been supported by everyone from Republican Secretaries of the Treasury to the lead economist for Ronald Reagan, the famous Mr. Laffer. There are ways we can make these adjustments. But we have to have the conversation, and I hope this begins it. With that, I yield the floor. Again, I thank the distinguished chairman of the energy committee for her courtesy in allowing us to proceed.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment so that I may call up my amendment No. 29.