Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I agree with my friend from West Virginia that we must address climate change in a way that protects jobs in all sectors and ensures grid stability. Fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas are indeed going to be an important part of America's energy mix for decades. So we need to invest, as Senator Manchin has suggested, in reducing the carbon pollution we generate from these sources. We also need to adapt our power infrastructure to withstand the effects of climate change. Extreme weather has become the main cause of blackouts in the United States. The President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Department of Energy counted 679 widespread outages between 2003 and 2012 due to severe weather. Fifty-eight percent of power outages since 2002 and 87 percent of outages affecting 50,000 or more customers were caused by severe weather such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, and blizzards. The average annual cost of power outages caused by severe weather is between $18 billion and $33 billion per year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration compiled data that is plotted on this chart showing that weather-related power outages are already on the rise since just the early nineties. Addressing climate change is also important to grid stability. We also should expand and modernize our electric grid. A smarter grid will make it easier to respond to and recover from extreme weather events, will boost efficiency within the system, will help lower utility bills, and will bring more renewable energy online. In both our States, Senator Manchin and I realize it is in America's interest to be leaders in the research, development, and deployment of energy efficiency tools; in cleaner fossil fuel research; and in renewable energy technologies--particularly ones we can export. I know Senator Manchin has some of these technologies being rolled out in his State.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Efficiency is something we take seriously in Rhode Island as well. In 2013 the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranked Rhode Island as the sixth most energy efficient State in the country. The Energy Information Administration in 2011 ranked Rhode Island the lowest in energy consumption--which, as the Presiding Officer from the small State of Delaware can understand, we have a bit of an unfair advantage--but we were also the sixth lowest in total energy costs per capita. We do our part to save energy, avoid emissions, lower costs, and reduce the demand and stress on the electric grid. Rhode Island and eight other States participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative--we call it ``Reggi''--which caps carbon emissions and sells permits to emit greenhouse gases to powerplants. One of the ways Rhode Island has been able to drive down our energy consumption and our utility bills is by investing the money generated through RGGI into energy efficiency. Rhode Island invests over 91 percent of its RGGI proceeds in energy efficiency projects and improvements, helping residents save money on their utility bills and making small businesses more competitive. Rhode Island is also poised to gain scores of jobs from the development of offshore wind. I think we have the advantage on West Virginia in offshore wind. Our private developer of offshore wind, Deepwater Wind, has received its first major environmental permit to begin deployment in the Block Island wind farm area. The price of wind energy has decreased over 90 percent since the early 1980s and is now competitive in the energy markets. I am working to make wind energy more a part of our energy portfolio. At the Federal level, our energy policy must use the best science available to improve the way we use fossil fuels, and our Tax Code should help address climate change while leveling the playing field for various energy sources. I believe carbon-driven climate change hurts our economy, damages our infrastructure, and harms public health. Yet those costs are not factored into the cost of fossil fuels. That means the cost of the pollution has been borne by the public. I believe we should adopt a carbon fee to correct this market failure and return all its revenue to the American people--what Republican supporters of a carbon fee call revenue neutral. On a smaller scale, Congress can also extend the renewable energy tax credits and other measures that are supported by Members on both sides of the aisle, helping renewable energy in West Virginia and a bipartisan array of States.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Manchin have such time as he needs to conclude his colloquy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I agree with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia that the Department of Energy's advanced fossil projects loan guarantee program has not yet lived up to, at this time, its potential. I will work with him to push the administration to accelerate its use. I wish to close my share of this colloquy by noting something very basic; that is, that America has long stood before the world as an exceptional country and deservedly so. America proved the case for popular sovereignty with no need of kings or crowns. America took our balanced market capitalism and rose to international economic dominance. America has long been the vanguard of civil and human rights for our people and around the globe. When American military power must be used, we don't conquer and rule. We come home. This exceptional nature confers upon us a responsibility to lead, to be an example, to be, as President Reagan said, ``a shining city on a hill.'' Our generation will be judged by whether we were responsible about climate change, whether we listened, and whether we led. Senator Manchin and I are both committed to the idea that American innovation can create the clean energy technologies of the future, so that when it comes to addressing the biggest problems facing our world, the United States should be out front, and we are committed to working together to find responsible solutions to the climate crisis. We also realize we have different perspectives on what those solutions should look like. I live in a State that is harmed by carbon pollution, and Senator Manchin is from a State that sees economic benefit from coal. We believe we could both learn more about those different perspectives. So I am committing to travel with Senator Manchin to West Virginia to see the coal plants that power many parts of our country and meet the people there working to curb pollution and improve efficiency, and I invite Senator Manchin to Rhode Island to see how climate change is taking its toll on our shorelines and marine industries. America is still a beacon to the world because ultimately we have the ability to work through disagreements to common ground on a shared platform of fact. With the commitment of serious leaders such as Senator Manchin, I am confident we can move forward to an energy future that preserves the economy and quality of life in West Virginia, in Rhode Island, and for all Americans.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is an anomaly. It is a historical anomaly that the present-day Republican party finds itself in this position where they will only come to the floor to attack and try to discredit the EPA. The only time they come to talk about the EPA is to oppose what the EPA is doing. They will never come to the floor and admit climate change is real and we should do something about it. They will never do that. The position that is articulated most frequently on this floor is the position that climate change is a hoax. Even young Republicans think that idea is preposterous, but that is as far as we get in trying to have a conversation on that issue. The other side has just gone dark on dealing with climate change. They simply won't discuss it or they send out as their champions the people who claim it is not real. That makes things a little bit awkward. And always--always--where there are two sides of the ledger, they look just at the one side. They look just at the polluters' side. They look just at the upland farmers and their nitrogen and their phosphorus, and they won't look at what that means to our coastal bays and coasts and harbors. They look only at the money that a polluter has to spend to clean up their powerplant, and they don't look at the savings to the rest of the public from that cleaned- up powerplant. Senator Cardin mentioned the savings from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. I can be specific about the Clean Air Act savings. It is $30 in value to all regular American families for every $1 the polluters had to spend to clean up their act. So for every $1 spent by polluters to clean up their act, it paid $30 in benefit to the American public. Yet they will only look at the $1. They never talk about the rest. They have blinders on that oblige them only to consider the point of view of the polluters. I never hear anything else. I urge and I challenge my colleagues to get out of that trap. The American people are not with you on this. You are wrong on the science. This general attack on the environment at this stage in our history will stain the party's brand if it is not corrected. They have got to come back and join the debate on a platform of fact and in a context of willingness to look at both sides of the ledger. Madam President, I see colleagues on the floor who I am sure seek time, so I will 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. President, I come to the floor to make an objection, if necessary, to an effort to submarine the President's climate change initiative, which two-thirds of all Americans support and which a huge number of major name-brand American corporations supported and which is supported by those whom we trust to lead our national defense and our national security interests. But something about this building, something about this place makes it a place where the polluting interests have wildly disproportionate sway, so we keep seeing these attacks on environmental regulations. So it is actually kind of fortunate timing that I am here because it gives me a chance, for the 71st time, to try to wake this body up to the harm carbon pollution is causing to our oceans, to our economy, to our wildlife, and to our health. I traveled recently to New Hampshire. I have been traveling around the country, going to States that are facing the carbon predicament and seeing how they are doing it. I can tell my colleagues that Granite Staters are facing up to the daunting challenges of climate change. Rhode Islanders understand that New Hampshire's challenges are like our own. We see similar threats in our own State. At the Newport, RI, tide gauge, right at our naval station, sea level is up almost 10 inches since the 1930s. In the winter, we are three to four degrees warmer in Narragansett Bay. The recent ``National Climate Assessment'' report concludes that Rhode Island will see even more rising sea level, warmer temperatures, and extreme weather. New Hampshire showed that there is plenty of Yankee good sense up there as well. The people of New Hampshire get it, and they are taking steps to tackle climate change. Let me first say that no one pretended it isn't real. The first line of defense on the other side of the aisle is that climate change isn't real. No one I spoke to in New Hampshire is pretending it isn't real. University of New Hampshire expert Cameron Wake told me that New Hampshire is ``getting wetter and getting warmer,'' and they pointed out that it is happening fast. The ``National Climate Assessment'' shows that due to climate change, the Northeast already has seen 70 percent more extreme precipitation in recent years--dramatic downpours that increase the risk of flooding. This University of New Hampshire data shows an even more severe problem for New Hampshire. Dr. Wake told me that he and his University of New Hampshire colleagues have collected data from southern New Hampshire on what they call ``extreme precipitation events''--what we might call a rain burst, where over 4 inches of rain falls in just 48 hours. The data show these rain bursts have increased 4 to 10 times since 1960, and they will only grow more frequent through the rest of the century, Wake and his University of New Hampshire colleagues report. That brings us to the warmer part of the wetter-and-warmer equation. The University of New Hampshire's recent studies show the State's temperature has increased by twice the global average, happening in large part due to what Dr. Wake calls ``snow dynamics'': Warmer temperatures during New Hampshire's winter mean less snow. Less snow exposes more dark ground underneath. The dark ground absorbs more heat, and it warms faster than if it were covered in reflective snow--what scientists call high albedo snow. So the ground then warms the air--and on goes the cycle. At Plymouth State University, the Appalachian Mountain Club has data which show temperature increases in Pinkham Notch in New Hampshire's White Mountains. The average increase in temperature has climbed over 75 years. Then, if we look at the average over 50 years, we see that the line has steepened and it is accelerating, and if we look at the line for the last 25 years, it has steepened again and the increase is accelerating further. So New Hampshire's temperatures aren't just rising, they are rising faster. What do these temperatures mean for Granite Staters? Well, big changes to their winter industries, such as skiing. Six years ago Ben Wilcox, who is the general manager of the ski resort Mount Cranmore in North Conway, NH, was using 40 to 50 snow guns to cover his ski mountain. Now he is using 150. In the last 5 years, Wilcox reports, ski mountains in his region have invested in over 1,700 new top-of-the-line snow guns, capable of making three to four times the amount of snow of previous models, so they can offset the snowpack loss from the shorter winters. That makes them lucky. But when people down the mountain don't see snow, they don't think about skiing, so they don't go. Stefan Hausmann is the owner of Zimmermann's Ski and Snowboard Shop in Nashua, NH. He told me his business sees this in fewer new skiers and snowboarders buying their equipment at his store. He is still selling the higher end skis to established skiers at a pretty good clip, but he is selling less equipment to beginners. Those lower end customers just aren't coming in the door, says Hausmann. Of course, New Hampshire's winter tourism industry goes far beyond skiing. The New Hampshire Department of Travel and Economic Development says 34 million visitors travel to the Granite State and spend roughly $4.6 billion. This makes tourism the State's second largest industry, and climate change hits a lot of it. For instance, snowmobilers and Nordic skiers come to New Hampshire's backcountry for more than 7,000 miles of trails. If you are a ski mountain, you can crank snow out onto your busy ski slopes. It is not so easy when you are talking about snowmobile trails or Nordic skiing trails. So the ski business of trail skiing and the snowmobile business is taking a hit. The Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, based in North Woodstock, NH, has found that snow cover has decreased by 22 days since I was born in 1955, and the frozen lakes included in those trail systems that snowmobilers and Nordic skiers use are covered in ice less of the year--33 less days on Mirror Lake just since 1967, for example. As one Granite Stater told me, this hit not just the trails but the hotels, restaurants, snowmobile shops, and outdoor outfitters who depend on that market. Of course, it is not just sports. Jamey French of Portsmouth, the CEO and president of Northland Forest Products, told me how climate change is affecting two of New Hampshire's most valuable hardwoods--the sugar maple and the yellow birch. Sugar maples, of course, support New Hampshire's maple sugar industry, but they also draw leaf peepers who travel to view the spectacular foliage that blankets the New Hampshire landscape in the autumn. As New Hampshire and neighboring States get warmer, the trees' geographic range moves north. Scientists predict that future warming will exacerbate this trend, meaning more production of maple syrup in Canada and less in the United States--bad news for New Hampshire's maple sugar houses. As for the yellow Birch, Mr. French points out that in the 1940s and 1950s, most of the furniture in New England was made out of yellow birch, and yellow birch remains a valuable hardwood, drawing good prices for New Hampshire's timber business. French fears the consequences for his industry if yellow birch and sugar maples are pushed northwards and out by warmer-weather trees. ``Will there be a wood product industry?'' he asks. ``Will there be a maple sugar industry in a climate-changed New England? There is going to be a lot less of one,'' he concludes. New Hampshire biologist Eric Orrf is witnessing one of the most dramatic changes. He studies the moose--an animal that is bred to survive harsh northern winters. But what Orrf sees is a catastrophic decline in moose population mostly due to the success of moose ticks. This is going to get a little bit gross, so forgive me. Moose ticks breed more easily and they survive longer in milder winters. Orrf explains--these are his words: What happens when we have an early spring, when winter ticks fall off on bare ground, is they thrive. They lay their eggs. They are successful at reproducing. Then, in the fall, in November, when the baby moose ticks are hanging together, if there is no snow, then by the thousands, tens of thousands, they get on the calves. Now for these calves, they'd literally have to resupply their blood supply two times over to survive the winter. They suck them dry. I think one tick is pretty revolting. The idea of tens of thousands of ticks on a moose calf, sucking the blood out of the calf so fast that it can't keep up, is a truly grisly thought. They literally ``suck them dry,'' according to Orrf. Jim O'Brien of the New Hampshire Audubon Society told me how climate change is affecting the State's bird. New Hampshire's State bird is the purple finch. It is the official bird of New Hampshire. It is a cold- weather bird with a range up to Canada. He said this: The purple finch is at the southern end of its range, and, in all likelihood, our state bird isn't going to be found in the State of New Hampshire anymore. So while we dawdle and delay in Congress thanks to the influence of big polluters, there is work to be done out there. Thankfully, States across the country, knowing the risks of doing nothing and knowing the costs of doing nothing, are starting to act. I have been to the Southeast coast. I have been to the Midwest. I have seen wind parks in Iowa with 500 wind turbines generating more than a quarter of the State's electricity. I went South. I saw Republican mayors and county officials in the Southeast putting climate and energy policy at the center of their government's plans. I saw it again in New Hampshire, Granite Staters who understand the risks all too well. The University of New Hampshire recently released two--not one but two--comprehensive reports about climate change, one for northern New Hampshire and one for southern New Hampshire. I have them with me. New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan has played a pivotal role in making sure this work gets done and in developing and operating New England's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which we call ``Reggi,'' which is already at work reducing our region's carbon pollution and providing a model for how other States can succeed under the powerplant regulations. We are already seeing our States--our laboratories of democracy-- taking sensible steps down the path to reducing carbon emissions. The EPA rule for carbon pollution from powerplants will encourage that State role. Just this morning the Wall Street Journal and NBC News released polling saying two-thirds of Americans support President Obama's new climate rule, and more than half say the United States should go for it and deal with global warming even if it means higher electricity bills for them. People in America get it. It is only this building that is isolated by polluter influence. It is time for Congress to wake up, and we will if the American people will give us a good shake. It is time to wake up. I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the efforts of Senator McCain and Senator Sanders to get the VA health care bill through the Senate. However, I was somewhat disappointed with how abrupt and abbreviated the amendment process was; to wit, there was none. As a result, I think some very good amendments never had a chance to be considered. One of those amendments was mine, and I would like to discuss it briefly because I think it is something the Senate should pursue. I will note that everybody I spoke to about it--Republicans and Democrats alike--liked the amendment and thought it made sense. So I will describe it. A little background: Some time ago, as we entered the computer age, we figured out that there were better ways to maintain health records than in cardboard file folders stuffed away in file drawers. One of the leaders in solving that problem--lost information buried in file folders--was the Veterans' Administration. They developed one of the best electronic health records in the country. For years they were leaders in the technology of electronic health records. To this day, the VA electronic health record system is one of which they can be proud. It has one flaw, and that flaw is that it is limited to Veterans' Administration medical facilities and Veterans' Administration medical providers. If a veteran in Rhode Island is walking through Providence and trying to cross the plaza in Kennedy Square and gets hit by a vehicle and rushed to the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room, the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room has no access to that veteran's electronic health record. At the same time a number of States have really stepped up not only to have electronic health records but to have a hub that exchanges the information in an electronic health record. So when you go to get an MRI or go to see a specialist or are taken to an emergency room or have a lab test, the results of that encounter are loaded automatically into your electronic health record. That can only work if you have the whole system pulling together, and some States are doing that. Now you have the difficult situation where there are States that are building an information network for health records and the Veterans' Administration, which has one of the best electronic health records in the country, is not participating in that local effort to tie the medical system together for the benefit of local folks. That is an oversight that needs to be corrected, and my amendment would encourage and support the Veterans' Administration in taking its electronic health records and connecting them to the information exchanges that are growing. In Rhode Island it is called Current Care. It is run by the Rhode Island Quality Institute. It does a phenomenal job. We are reaching out to veterans to do it voluntarily, but it has been a real chore to work with the Veterans' Administration to move this along. It has taken an enormous amount of time despite the goodwill of the people involved. There has not been much in the way of resources available. We have had to go to private and nonprofit and charitable sources to try to fund this. That doesn't make sense. This bill is particularly important--where we are providing more out- of-network access for veterans and more ability for veterans to go to doctors that will not be in the electronic health network record-- because it would allow the very good electronic health record of the Veterans' Administration to connect with these emerging electronic health records information networks. It is simply leaving veterans behind to leave them out under these circumstances. I hope I will have a chance to move this legislation on some other vehicle, but I have to say, as important as this bill was, it was disappointing that a piece of legislation as simple as mine--an amendment that would have enjoyed extraordinary bipartisan support and probably would have been agreed to on a voice vote--never had a chance to see the light of day because, as I said, of the abbreviation and abruptness, to put it mildly, of the amendment process. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday while the Presiding Officer was in the chair on the 242nd anniversary of the burning and sinking of the Gaspee by Rhode Island patriots. I am here today to mark the 60th anniversary of a different event which also occurred on the same day--June 9--60 years ago. It was a pivotal moment in the history of the Senate and, indeed, of the country. It was the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings and the exchange between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy that changed this city and the world. Six decades ago, America's national mood was marked by anxiety over the looming threat of communism. The victory of World War II had given way to the gripping tension of the Cold War. Communist power was on the rise in Eastern Europe and in China. American forces were at war in Korea. Here in Congress the House Committee on Un-American Activities worked to sniff out Communist subversion within our borders, including the infamous Hollywood black list. One man in the Senate set out to exploit the fears of that time, and he came to symbolize the fearmongering of that fretful era. Joseph McCarthy was a relatively unknown junior Senator from Wisconsin when, in February of 1950, he delivered a speech accusing Secretary of State Dean Acheson of harboring 205 known members of the American Communist Party within the State Department. The charge was questionable and ill-supported. But the brazen accusation struck a nerve with an anxious American public, and Senator McCarthy rocketed to fame. Thus began a chilling crusade to flush out Communist subversion--real or contrived--from every corner of American society. McCarthy's anticommunist witch hunt seemingly knew no bounds, as he launched investigations or often just allegations of disloyalty on the part of private citizens, public employees, entire government agencies, as well as the broadcasting and defense industries, universities--even the United Nations. In 1953, the Republican Party gained a majority in the Senate, and McCarthy ascended to the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. From those chairmanships, he dragged hundreds of witnesses before scores of hearings, publicly shaming and berating his targets. His fiery rhetoric and his remorseless mendacity intimidated critics and challengers. His accusations carried the power to destroy reputations, careers, and lives. The effect of McCarthyism on 20th century American society was toxic. Prudent citizens shied from civic engagement. Meaningful political dissent withered. Criticism of American foreign policy evaporated. Even college campuses, our cradles of intellectual curiosity, were cowed by McCarthyism. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called it ``the black silence of fear.'' Intimidated colleagues in this Chamber gave Joe McCarthy broad leeway to abuse Congress's constitutional powers of investigation and oversight. Harvard Law Dean Erwin Griswold described Chairman McCarthy's role as ``judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one.'' This was the regime 60 years ago, in 1954, when U.S. Army officials accused McCarthy of exerting improper pressure to win preferential treatment for a subcommittee aide serving as an Army private. McCarthy countered that the Army accusation was retaliation for his investigations of them. The stage was set. The countercharges would be adjudicated, of course, in McCarthy's Subcommittee on Investigations. The so-called Army-McCarthy hearings, held in a packed, smoke-filled Russell caucus room, would last 36 days and be aired on live broadcast television. Twenty million Americans tuned in during gavel-to-gavel coverage of our Nation's first great TV political spectacle--the precursor to the Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra hearings, and the Thomas-Hill hearings. Special counsel to the Army in those hearings was an avuncular Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch of the law firm then called Hale & Dorr. Here, in Washington, Joseph Welch was a nobody. He had no office, he had no position, he had no clout. But he was a good lawyer with a dry wit and unflappable demeanor. He also had a sense of fairness--a sense of fairness that was soon to become famously provoked by McCarthy's bullying. And he had that greatest virtue--courage--the virtue that makes all other virtues possible. On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch challenged Senator McCarthy's aide, Roy Cohn, to actually produce McCarthy's supposed secret list of subversives working at defense facilities. Since there likely was no such list, McCarthy needed a distraction. So he lit into an accusatory attack in a traditional McCarthyite way on a lawyer in Welch's firm, a young lawyer--indeed, an associate within the firm, Fred Fisher, a young man who was not even in the hearing room to defend himself-- accusing him of various Communist associations and inclinations. Welch responded: Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Had Senator McCarthy been a smarter man, he would have sensed the warning in those words. But he didn't. He pressed his attack and refused to let up on young Fred Fisher. Welch angrily cut Senator McCarthy short. Let us not assassinate the lad any further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Thirty words. If you count them, it is just 30 words. But with those 30 words, suddenly something happened, something changed. The emperor suddenly had no clothes. There had been such an avalanche of words from McCarthy over the years--of lies, of accusations, of hyperbole. And these 30 words--these few short sentences--stopped all of that roughshod hypocrisy in its tracks. Welch declared an end to McCarthy's questioning, and the gallery of onlookers, on behalf of a nation, burst into applause. The black-and- white footage shows McCarthy asking Roy Cohn, ``What happened?'' What happened was that a spell was broken. The web of fear woven by McCarthy over Washington, DC, began unraveling. Near the end of the hearing, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri faced McCarthy down. After an angry exchange, he rose and walked out to come here to vote. As Chairman Karl Mundt of South Dakota gaveled the hearing into recess, Joe McCarthy kept on railing about Communist conspiracies. As he railed on, Senators, reporters, and members of the gathered audience steadily filed out of the room, leaving him shouting. The spell was broken. Six months later the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. Four years later, he was dead at the age of 48. Historians agree he drank himself to death. His fall from grace and demise were nearly as rapid as his rise was meteoric, consistent with the ancient principle: Climb ugly; fall hard. Very often--indeed, too often--political outcomes in Washington are determined by the political weight and the wealth of contesting forces vying for power. It is brute force against brute force. It makes us wonder, is that all there is to this? Is this just an arena of combat, where huge special interests lean against each other trying to shove each other around, each for their own greed and benefit? This incident 60 years ago is an eternal lesson of what a difference one person can make. A regular American, a nobody in Washington, good at his craft, good in his character, and in the right place at the right time, a man who knew what was right, broke the fever of virulent political frenzy that had captured Washington; one private lawyer's sincere, direct outrage at a cruel attack on his young associate, a few words from a Boston lawyer who had just had enough turned the tide of history. May we never forget in this world of vast and often corrupt political forces the power of one person to make a difference. I yield the floor. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 10, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to vote on confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 734, as provided under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I now ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I understand that S. 2450, introduced earlier today by Senators Sanders, McCain, and others, is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, under the previous order, there will be one vote at 10 a.m., two votes at noon, followed by a recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly caucus meetings, and then three additional votes at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, with the concurrence of the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 523; that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on the nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Under the unanimous consent request, the floor reverts to me, but the distinguished Member from California, my chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has joined us, and I will yield for the Senator from California.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the hope for this evening was that by extending a formal invitation to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, somebody would come to the floor who was not just outright denying that climate change is happening. For a while Senator Inhofe's was focused on the economics of various types of regulation during his remarks. At that point I thought maybe we could have a conversation about the best way to solve the climate change problem, but toward the end of his remarks, he got back to denying that it is happening at all, which makes a tough place to begin negotiations. There are plenty of other Republican Senators in this body, many of whom have worked on this issue in the past. I don't know whether it is a coincidence, but the level of activity by Republican Senators on climate change collapsed shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. As many of my Republican friends have pointed out to me on the floor, there have been times when the big, dark, anonymous election money that has been thrown around since that decision has been made has been spent against Republicans more than against Democrats. We hope that as we resolve that issue, some of our friends find a way back to the positions they have held in the past, back to campaigning nationally on climate issues, supporting bipartisan climate legislation, supporting a carbon fee, and voting for a cap-and-trade bill. That is where they had been before Citizens United, and we had hoped to bring them back. But the champion sent by the Republican side to represent their point of view tonight was Senator Inhofe, who has written a book that said this is all just a big hoax. In that sense it was disappointing. I have heard these arguments before, and as we go down the list, I think it is worth taking a moment to knock them aside. One of my personal favorites is that the EPA is doing this after the issue was repeatedly blocked in Congress. Well, yes, it has been blocked in Congress by coal and oil and polluter interests. So the interests that have blocked a highway don't get to complain when traffic has to take a detour. We would be delighted to work on serious climate legislation in this body. We would be delighted to have it here. For a lot of reasons, we would get a better result if we addressed climate change legislation here rather than through the EPA rule. This is where the conversation should take place, but when oil and coal and polluting industries take the position that this is not real and force the Republican Party into that position--that climate change is not real--then we are obviously not going to have a very meaningful discussion about solving a problem, and that is what forces it go to the EPA. It is a little rich for those who have shut down this forum for solving this problem to complain when it gets solved in another and less efficient way. They don't very well get to do that. The high cost of the solution is--I think Senator Inhofe said--$300 to $400 billion and that it is not disputed. Well, yes, it is totally disputed. It is absolutely disputed. In fact, it is not even true. The best way to solve this problem is with a revenue-neutral carbon fee. What does revenue neutral mean? Revenue neutral means that for every dollar that comes in from the carbon pollution fee that the polluters have to pay, it goes right back out to the American people and straight back into the economy; 100 cents on the dollar goes back to the American people. That is what I would like to see. It can be done through tax deductions. A conservative organization, the American Enterprise Institute, has coauthored a report with the Brookings Institution on what they call a carbon tax. I call it a carbon pollution fee, because when we are giving all the money straight back to the American people, it is not truly a tax. It is not general revenue to the government. The money goes straight back out. When we do that, I think there is a case to be made that that actually propels the economy. Investing in innovation, supporting and creating different types of energy that we can build in America is inevitably going to be better for our economy than having to use fossil fuels, clean up after the pollution, and deal with the foreign countries that traffic in fossil fuels. It would all lead to a better circumstance for our country. The Senator from Oklahoma also said this is the product of what he called the radical environmental movement. One group that speaks very strongly on climate change is NASA. Right now NASA is driving around a Rover on the surface of Mars. They built a Rover that is about the size of an SUV, launched it into space, landed it successfully on the planet Mars, and they are now driving it around. Do you think these people know what they are talking about? Do you think NASA is a radical environmentalist movement? Really? That is a conspiracy theory that has run amok if you think NASA is part of a radical environmentalist movement. How about our military? ``National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change'' by the CNA Military Advisory Board. The CNA Corporation is a corporation largely comprised of retired military who are kept on in that role to advise the military on emerging issues. It is sort of a think tank for the U.S. military that has been there through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. This report, ``National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change,'' was done by this military advisory board with some very interesting people. How about BG Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., the former dean at the U.S. Military Academy. Do you think the dean from West Point is part of a radical environmental movement? How about Lee Gunn, a former inspector general of the Department of the Navy. He doesn't seem like a very radical environmentalist to me. ADM Skip Bowman, former Director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program; Gen. James Conway, former Commandant of the Marine Corps--now there are some radical leftwing environmentalists for you, the U.S. Marines. This is so far beyond that. Organizations such as Walmart, Coke and Pepsi, Ford and GM, UPS and FedEx, Target, Nike, VF Corporation, one of the biggest apparel manufacturers in the country located in North Carolina--all are totally on board with this. The military is totally on board with this. NASA is totally on board with this, as is the National Science Foundation and every major scientific organization in the country--every single one. So let's not pretend this is a fringe group of radical environmentalists trying to foist an idea on the country. This is a fringe residue of oil and coal and polluting interests trying to prevent the end of a long holiday they have had from any responsibility for all the harm their carbon pollution has caused. Let me tell you firsthand there is harm happening in my home State of Rhode Island, and it is not deniable. The deniers will never talk about the oceans. They will never talk about the oceans. They will talk about distant climate theory all day long, but when we go to the sea, the sea does not bear false witness. The sea level is rising, and we measure that with essentially a yardstick nailed to the end of a pier. A tide gauge is not a complex instrument, and off the Naval War College in Newport, RI, the seas are up 10 inches since the 1930s. Why is that? We have known since President Lincoln was President that when we add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it warms the planet. That is not a hypothesis. That science has been established since Abraham Lincoln in his stovepipe hat drove around Washington in a carriage. We know billions of tons of carbon dioxide have gone up there. We know further that virtually all the heat has gone into the oceans. Unless somebody wants to deny the law of thermal expansion--and I have not heard anybody willing to deny that yet--when we warm up the ocean, guess what. It expands and rises. We in Rhode Island have seen seas 10 inches higher thrown at our shores by a big storm or hurricane. It makes a big difference. I challenge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to give me just 5 minutes of their time and go to Google and look up the images of the hurricane of 1938. Look at the pictures of what happened in my State when the sea level was 10 inches lower. Senator Inhofe mentioned the U.S. Chamber of Commerce study. I am a little surprised he did that because he is not the first Republican to mention the U.S. Chamber of Commerce study. Speaker Boehner mentioned the U.S. Chamber of Commerce study too. He earned a false from PolitiFact for referencing that study. The Washington Post gave it four Pinocchios. You know Pinocchio, his nose would grow longer when he would not tell the truth. So that was a strange place to go. He said there has been no temperature increase. He said: ``It didn't happen.'' It did happen. It absolutely did happen. It happened in the oceans where more than 90 percent of the heat goes. It happened in the oceans, and it can be measured with thermometers. It is not complicated. If you go to Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, you will see that the mean winter water temperature is 3 to 4 degrees warmer, and it has a real effect on Rhode Islanders. Men used to go out on boats with trawls and catch winter flounder in Narragansett Bay, and it was a cash crop. It was a fishery that fed their families. It has crashed 90 percent, and a significant part of that is because the bay is no longer hospitable to winter flounder when it is 3 to 4 degrees warmer. It simply doesn't work. The public is with us, and we will get this done. Tonight we have seen what we are up against. Not one Republican in this building would come tonight at our invitation and say one word about climate change being real--not one Republican, not one word. So that is what we are up against. But they have lost the American public, and so the fall of the denial castle is inevitable. It is built on sand, and the sand is eroding. It is eroding. Even among young Republican voters--self-identified Republican voters under the age of 35--the hypothesis offered by the deniers that climate change is not real is viewed as--and these are the words from the poll, not my words--``ignorant, out of touch, or crazy.'' I submit that a party whose own voters under the age of 35 view that party's position of denying climate change as ``ignorant, out of touch, or crazy'' is a party that needs a new position on climate change. They are not even selling their own young voters, and they are certainly not selling the general public, which wants the President to do something about this in enormous numbers--70 and 80 percent, depending on whether one is looking at Democrats, Independents or the full population. I will close with two specifics because we often have these debates sort of at the IPCC versus the Sierra Club level. I have been going around to different States, and I have been looking at what is going on State by State. I have been to seven States already. I wish to mention two tonight. I just got back from New Hampshire, the most recent trip. What is going on in New Hampshire? New Hampshire, as many people know, has a big ski industry. It is a winter holiday destination, a winter vacation and tourism destination, and skiing is a big part of that. I met with the guy who runs the Cranmore ski mountain. They have, I want to say, tripled, or thereabouts, the number of snowmaking guns they have on their slopes. They have gotten better at it. They have made it more efficient so they make more snow. So as there is less snowpack in the mountains, they are able to get around it by making more snow. But the reality of this is proven by the fact that they have to go out there and make more snow. As a New Hampshire official said, that is fine for the slopes. They can get out there, and they can roar those guns all night long and make snow on those mountain slopes. But if a person is a Nordic skier, they have to go out on trails, and there is no economic way to blow snow onto trails. If a person is a snowmobile enthusiast, they go out on snow trails, and there is no economic way to blow snow onto snowmobile trails. They are seeing a dramatic falling off in Nordic and snowmobile tourism as a result and of the availability of that important market for them. They talked about two animals. I will start with the moose. It is a pretty iconic species for New Hampshire, I was told. There are moose tours. Who knew? People go up to New Hampshire to look at moose. Moose touring is a multimillion-dollar industry. I learned something new on that trip. That industry is suffering from a couple of things. First of all, sometimes they do the moose tours on snowmobiles--no snow, no snowmobile moose tours. But worse--indeed, eerily, horrifyingly, creepily--the moose are dying off because they are being overwhelmed by ticks. Now, picking a tick off my dog is enough to give me the heebie- jeebies, and if I find one myself, it is a little creepy. We are not talking about one tick on these moose. We are not talking about 100 ticks. We are not even talking about 1,000 ticks on these moose. We are talking about 50,000 to 100,000 ticks per moose--so much that they can't keep themselves healthy. The blood is being sucked out of them by tens of thousands of ticks. So the expert in that area who spoke to me said the reaction from the mothers is to just have one calf instead of two. That keeps the population from growing, and the calves basically starve. They die of anemia. They can't feed themselves. They can't keep a blood system running that feeds themselves and the thousands of ticks. These things grow to be the size of a blueberry or a grape. It is really appalling. This is an emblematic mammal of New Hampshire, and this is what is befalling it. What do the New Hampshire folks say is causing it? The retreat of the snow. The ticks, when they are falling and breeding and laying their eggs--whatever the heck they do to reproduce; I am no tick expert. But they do it on Earth now, whereas when they fell on snow, boom, that was it. So the explosion in the tick population and the disgusting infestation on those poor animals is directly related to the retreat of the snow. The last point on New Hampshire, the State bird is evidently the purple finch. The purple finch has a very particular kind of habitat. Because of the way the climate is changing, that habitat is shrinking, and one of the bird experts I spoke to said they are looking at the prospect of the purple finch being a species that New Hampshire folks have to go to Canada to find. It is their State bird, but they have to go to Canada to find it. The other State I will close with is Florida. Florida is ground zero for climate change. In Florida, great cities are flooding at high tide. The systems that used to drain water out of the cities in a rain storm are now flooding salt water into the cities because of sea level rise at high tides. I have met with former mayors and county commissioners who have shown me pictures of people riding their bicycle hub deep through water, on a bright sunny day. It is not raining; it is salt water. It has come up. One picture was of a yard where the homeowner had hammered a sign into the yard, ``No wake zone,'' so that cars driving by on the flooded road wouldn't create a wake and wash more salt water into their yard. Some weren't so lucky, and the water was right through the front door and into the house. The Republican mayor of Monroe County has made climate change a priority. She has instructed her county government to do a climate change report, looking particularly at sea level rise--the Republican mayor of Monroe County. Yet, what do we hear from the Republican side here? Not a peep. Not a peep. She said something else that is interesting. I will close with this. I asked her how the coral reefs were doing. A lot of people go to Florida to snorkel and to scuba dive and to see the wonders of the world under the sea. I said: Mayor, how are your reefs doing? I have heard a lot about what acidification and warming temperatures are doing to reefs. She said: They are still beautiful. Then she paused and said: Unless you were here 10 or 20 years ago. Ten or 20 years, and we see that change. What is happening to the reefs is really catastrophic. My friends on the other side never want to talk about this. They want to talk about climate modeling. We don't need a model to go to the end of the dock at Fort Pulaski and see how much the sea level has risen. We measure it. It is simple. It is the same thing at the Naval War College. We measure it. It is simple. We don't need complex computer models to go to Narragansett Bay and see it is nearly four degrees warmer mean water temperature and all the changes that happen as a result. We use a thermometer. It is not complicated. And the acidification of the oceans that is affecting the coral reefs and so many other creatures--it wiped out the northwest oyster spat. People grow oysters in the Pacific Northwest, and the sea water that came in was so acidic, it dissolved the shells of the baby oysters and wiped out a huge percentage of their crop. That we measure with the same kind of litmus tests kids do with their aquariums. It is not complicated. But they always want to talk about where it can be confusing. They never want to confront the problem. We are going to find ways to continue to insist on confronting this problem. They may not be here tonight, but as the old saying goes, you can run, but you can't hide. There are too many of my colleagues who have been helpful and good on this issue before--as I said, before Citizens United. If we look at the Republican Senate activity on climate change before Citizens United and after, it is like looking at a heart attack. We see steady activity until Citizens United, and then it is a flat line. Citizens United, dark money, polluter money has done as much damage polluting our democracy as they have done polluting our planet. But we are going to continue to do something about it, and the American public not only is with us, they are going to insist on it. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That sets the frame for what we are doing. We have had four Democratic Senators speak. We will be joined, I believe, by Chairman Boxer and perhaps others later on in the evening. Pursuant to the unanimous consent we have agreed to, I yield to the Senator from Oklahoma for his remarks and will seek recognition pursuant to the unanimous consent at the conclusion of his remarks. Pursuant to that understanding, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I thank Senator Sanders of Vermont, Senator Markey of Massachusetts, and Senator Heinrich of New Mexico for their remarks. I look forward to the remarks of Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. Viewers may wonder what we are doing here. As some will recall, several weeks ago a number of Democratic Senators--I think we ended up being 31 in total--participated in an all-night event to raise the awareness of and the discussion of climate change in this body. At that time only one of our Republican colleagues appeared to join the discussion, and that was the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma, who is here again this evening. We heard some rumblings that some of our colleagues didn't feel they were included or wished they would have had the opportunity to participate. So taking them up on that offer, a number of us sent a letter on May 30 that says, in part: Dear Colleague . . . We would welcome an opportunity to engage with our Republican colleagues in a discussion of how to address the problems of climate change. Indeed, we think our Republican colleagues could have a lot to offer if they wished to join us in exploring solutions. Republican colleagues have co-authored bipartisan climate legislation, voted for the comprehensive Waxman/Markey climate legislation in the House, spoken out in favor of a carbon fee, and campaigned for national office on climate action. Republican senators represent states with great coastal cities inundated by rising tides, states with farmlands swept by unprecedented floods and droughts, states with forests lost to encroaching pine beetles and wildfires unprecedented in season and intensity, states with disappearing glaciers and reduced snowpack, and states with dying coral reefs and shifting habitats and fisheries. Republican senators represent home-state corporations with international brand names, corporations that urge action on climate. Republican senators represent great universities that contribute to the scientific understanding of climate change and how human activities are changing it. We look forward to the opportunity to discuss climate change and how to respond to it with Republican senators. I ask unanimous consent the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am so glad to have you here because a recurring tradition on the Senate floor is about to take place, and it is always particularly good for a Senator from Rhode Island to have a Senator from Massachusetts presiding while I talk about this. Today I am here to recognize and celebrate one of the earliest acts of defiance against the British Crown in our great American struggle for independence. Most Americans remember the Boston Tea Party as one of the major events building up to the American Revolution. We learned the story of spirited Bostonians--and when I say ``spirited,'' I mean that in several senses; I gather that spirits had been served to those Bostonians before they embarked on this adventure--clambering onto the decks of the East India Company's ships and dumping bales of tea into Boston Harbor as a protest of British ``taxation without representation,'' which was a fine and worthy stunt, and I am certainly not here to defend taxation without representation. However, there is a milestone on the path to revolution that is frequently overlooked, and it is the story of 60 brave Rhode Islanders who challenged British rule more than a year before that Tea Party in Boston, and they did a little bit more than throw tea bags overboard. So every year I honor those little known Rhode Island heroes who risked their lives in defiance of oppression 1 dark night more than 240 years ago. In the years before the Revolutionary War, as tensions with the American Colonies grew, King George III stationed revenue cutters, armed customs patrol vessels, along the American coast. They were there to prevent smuggling, to enforce the payment of taxes, and to impose the authority of the Crown. One of the most notorious of these ships was the HMS Gaspee. Its captain, Lieutenant William Duddingston, was known for destroying fishing vessels, seizing cargo, and flagging down ships only to harass, humiliate, and interrogate the colonials. Outraged by this egregious abuse of power, the merchants and shipmasters of Rhode Island flooded civil and military officials with complaints about the Gaspee, exhausting every diplomatic and legal means to stir the British Crown to regulate Duddingston's conduct. Not only did British officials ignore the Rhode Islanders' concerns; they responded with open hostility. The commander of the local British fleet, ADM John Montagu, warned that anyone who dared attempt acts of resistance or retaliation against the Gaspee would be taken into custody and hanged as a pirate, which brings us to June 9, 1772, 242 years ago. Rhode Island ship captain Benjamin Lindsey was en route to Providence from Newport, in his ship the Hannah, when he was accosted and ordered to yield for inspection by the Gaspee. Captain Lindsey ignored the Gaspee's command and raced away up Narragansett Bay--despite warning shots fired by the Gaspee. As the Gaspee gave chase, Captain Lindsey knew a little something about Narragansett Bay and he knew a little something about the Hannah. He knew that she was lighter and drew less water than the Gaspee. So he sped north toward Pawtuxet Cove, toward the shallow waters off Namquid Point. His Hannah shot over the shallows there, but the heavier Gaspee grounded and stuck firm. The British ship and her crew were caught stranded in a falling tide, and it would be many hours before a rising tide could free the hulking Gaspee. Presented with that irresistible opportunity, Captain Lindsey continued on his course to Providence and there enlisted the help of John Brown, a respected merchant from one of the most prominent Providence families. The two men rallied a group of Rhode Island patriots at Sabin's Tavern, in what is now the east side of Providence. So perhaps something the Bostonians at the Tea Party and the Rhode Islanders at the Gaspee had in common was spirits. Together, the group resolved to put an end to the Gaspee's threat to Rhode Island waters. That night, the men, led by Captain Lindsey and Abraham Whipple-- later to become a commander in the Revolutionary navy--embarked in eight longboats quietly down Narragansett Bay. They encircled the Gaspee, and they called on Lieutenant Duddingston to surrender his ship. Duddingston refused and ordered his men to fire upon anyone who tried to board. Undeterred, the Rhode Islanders forced their way onto the Gaspee's deck--in a hail of oaths and sword clashes and musketfire--and Lieutenant Duddingston fell with a musket ball in the midst of the struggle. Right there in the waters of Warwick, RI, the very first blood in the conflict that was to become the American Revolution was drawn. As the patriots commandeered the ship, Brown ordered one of his Rhode Islanders, a physician named John Mawney, to head to the ship's captain's cabin and tend to Duddingston's wound--a humane gesture in their moment of victory to help a man who had threatened to open fire on them only moments before. Brown and Whipple took the captive English crew back to shore and then returned to the Gaspee to rid Narragansett Bay of her despised presence once and for all. They set her afire. The blaze spread through the ship, and ultimately to the ship's powder magazine, which went off with an explosion like fireworks, the blast echoing through the night across the bay, the flash lighting the sea up like daylight, and fragments of the ship splashing down into the water all around. The site of this audacious act is now named Gaspee Point in honor of these brave Rhode Islanders. So I come again here to share this story and to commemorate this night so many years ago--June 9, 1772--and the names of Benjamin Lindsey, John Brown, and Abraham Whipple, and those men not known to history who fought beside them that night. The Gaspee Affair, as it was called, generated furor in the British Government, which appointed a royal commission of inquiry based in Newport to gather evidence for indictment. The indicted men were then to be sent to England for trial. Well, not so fast. Rhode Island's colonial charter guaranteed its citizens the right to a trial in the vicinity in which the crime was alleged to have occurred. And beyond that, these Rhode Islanders presumed they were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen in their mother country. Some went so far to say that this proposal to try them overseas violated ancient rights outlined in the Magna Carta. This breach of the rights that colonists believed were enshrined in the British Constitution created continent-wide uproar. Young members of Virginia's House of Burgesses, such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, yearning to protest, pushed the body to create a committee of correspondence to gather information from around the Colonies concerning the British Parliament's actions, while also urging other Colonies to do the same. By December 1773, 11 Colonies had set up committees of correspondence. These committees played a vital role in enflaming discontent. They were the first permanent modes of communication among the Thirteen Colonies and allowed abuses by Parliament to be quickly known throughout the Colonies. John Allen, a little-known visiting minister in the Second Baptist Church in Boston, gave a sermon on the Gaspee Affair. It went the revolutionary equivalent of viral--widely published. In this sermon, Allen rejected the proposition that Parliament had a right to tax and enforce laws like the ones implicated in the Gaspee Affair on Americans without the consent of their colonial representatives--a position that would come to define colonial discontent and reverberates to this day through the slogan ``no taxation without representation.'' Allen concluded his sermon with the provoking and revolutionary question whether the British King had a right to rule over America in the first place. Reverend Allen asserted there was no parliamentary right to reign as in Britain, nor a right by conquest, as the American colonists had only signed compacts with the Crown for protection of their religious and civil rights. Allen espoused Enlightenment ideals of social compacts and political rights, stating that if the British Government enacted laws that were oppressive to the rights of American colonists, as it had with the creation of a commission of inquiry intending to send the Gaspee raiders to England for trial, then it lost its right to rule over them. The sermon was published eight separate times in three different colonial cities and spread widely through the Colonies. Through that, the Gaspee Affair sparked in the minds of Americans ideas about parliamentary abuses and the King's right to rule that would seed a spirit of discontent and eventually boil over into revolution. The sermon, along with fiery editorials published in the wake of the affair, inspired colonial leaders to speak openly about the British Government's abuses, instigating conflict that would culminate in the battles of Lexington and Concord. The Gaspee Affair galvanized colonial discontent and led to greater unity among the Thirteen Colonies. After Rhode Islanders defiantly set fire to the Gaspee, the American Colonies came together for a common cause for the first time in their history, a formative step in the birth of our new Nation. I know these events, and the patriots whose efforts allowed for their success, are not forgotten in my home State. Over the years, I have enjoyed marching in the annual Gaspee Days Parade through Warwick, RI, as every year we recall the courage and zeal of these men who fired the first shots that drew the first blood in that great contest for the freedoms we enjoy today. They set a precedent for future patriots to follow, including those in Boston who more than 1 year later would have their tea party. But do not forget, as my home State prepares once again to celebrate the anniversary of the Gaspee incident, Massachusetts colonists threw tea bags off the deck of their British ship. We blew ours up and shot its captain more than 1 year earlier. We are little in Rhode Island, but as Lieutenant Duddingston discovered, we pack a punch.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is not an objection at this point, but I think it is our understanding that the Senator from Oklahoma will speak for 20 to 30 minutes but that the time would revert to me at the conclusion of his remarks after 20 to 30 minutes. If that is an acceptable amendment to the unanimous consent request, then I will agree to it.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Perfect.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would gladly withhold.