Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak and that Senators Murkowski, Begich, and Wicker be allowed to join me in a colloquy as they come to the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, thank you very much. Pirate Fishing Mr. President, we are coming to the floor today because the four of us serve as the cochairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus. I know the Presiding Officer from Delaware has a keen interest in oceans issues as well, and we appreciate his support for the caucus. We have worked very hard in this caucus to find bipartisan common ground on issues that relate to the seas and to our oceans, and one of the areas we have worked on is the area that is described in the jargon as IUU fishing, which means illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The better word for it, the clearer word for it, the more accurate word for it is pirate fishing. These are fishermen around the world who go to sea and they fish above legal limits, they fish out of season, they fish for catches they are not allowed to catch, they fish in waters they are not allowed to fish in, and then they come to shore and market their illicit product. When they do that, they hurt legitimate fishermen and they hurt American fishermen in two ways. First of all, fish migrate around the globe. If they are knocked down, damaged, and caught illegally in other areas, then the American fishery for that same species is hurt. The second is that depresses the global price for fish. These people can flood the market with illegal fish. That drops the price through the law of supply and demand, and now our American fishermen--who are fishing lawfully, who are abiding by the catch limits, who are fishing in the right seasons and places--suffer a disadvantage in the pricing when their fish get to market. So this is an important issue for our States, and it is not for nothing that we are all coastal State Senators who are here to express our support for action on these treaties. In the United States, commercial fish landings are over $5 billion in revenue a year. Recreational anglers spend more than $25 billion a year. So this is big business, and pirate fishing is a big hit to our big business. Pirate fishing losses have been estimated at between $10 billion and $24 billion every year. When you consider that our whole recreational fishing industry is only roughly $26 billion--and this is a $24 billion raid, basically, on the international fisheries--it is important that we can do this. So there is a package of treaties that has come out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There are four of them. Three of them are traditional fishing treaties covering the South Pacific, the North Pacific, and the Northwest Atlantic fisheries. You can only imagine what the North Pacific fishery means for Alaskan fishermen and what the Northwest Atlantic fishery means for our northeastern fishermen. It is very important that we get these treaties cleared through the Senate. I am delighted that Chairman Menendez and his ranking member Senator Corker have passed these bills through the Foreign Relations Committee with very strong bipartisan support. I think we have a really good chance to get something done in a bipartisan fashion that is good for our industry and also the right thing to do. It is simply unfair when international pirate fishers are able to knock down the fisheries market internationally and take away product that we would otherwise catch. I see the senior Senator from Alaska has joined me on the floor. I just mentioned the North Pacific treaty, which I know has specific relevance to her State. We are in a parliamentary position where we have unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy--Senator Murkowski and I and Senator Wicker and Senator Begich as they arrive. So I now yield the floor to Senator Murkowski. Let me say how much I appreciate her leadership. She has been the cochair of the Oceans Caucus. It was significantly her initiative that we should focus on pirate fishing, and I applaud all the work she has done, together with Senator Wicker, who has now joined us. I yield to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Mississippi and the two Senators from Alaska for participating in this bipartisan effort. Let me conclude by reading something that Chris Lischewski, who is the CEO and President of Bumble Bee Foods, wrote to me: Everybody loves a tuna fish sandwich. And Bumble Bee has been in that industry for a long time. They are a proud American company. But tuna travel great distances. They are a fish, that if foreign pirates go after them and fish them illegally, and fish them unsustainably and knock that population down, that comes home to roost for good old Bumble Bee Foods. Here is what the CEO of that company said: IUU fishing is a multi-billion dollar industry that undermines our global conservation and sustainability efforts. By that he means his company. Illegal fishing penalizes legitimate fishermen and processors and it must be stopped. While the United States has done a good job at developing laws to detect and deter IUU fishing, other nations have not. We strongly support the agreement on Port State Measures to prevent, deter and eliminate the illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, because it creates an obligation for other nations to take action against IUU fishing. I yield the floor. If any of my colleague wish to speak, let me just say that they do so with my gratitude for this bipartisan moment in the Senate and in support of the jobs that the fishing industry provides for our constituents.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It appears that we will shortly be able to do that. This is a happy coincidence in which four Senators in bipartisan fashion have come to the floor to support action on four treaties that will help protect our fishing industry, and it turns out that at this moment the treaties have been cleared for ratification on both sides of the aisle. In a moment I will be able to take us through those parliamentary steps, but on behalf of all four of us, I should express my appreciation to Chairman Menendez and to his ranking member Senator Corker for the leadership they have shown in getting these treaties through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I know it was in a strongly bipartisan fashion. I think it was in a unanimously bipartisan fashion. The Presiding Officer is a member of that distinguished committee, and I want to express my appreciation to the Presiding Officer, Senator Coons of Delaware. It is good to be able to do these kinds of things in a bipartisan fashion. It reminds me a little bit of our friend Senator Enzi's 80/20 rule: We get 80 percent done in the Senate without incident, but then, of course, nobody notices. The other 20 percent we fight over, and the fight gets 80 percent of the attention. So it is a happy moment when we can do something good for our industry, good for our fisheries, do it in a bipartisan fashion, and do it smoothly.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, treaty document Nos. 112-4, 113-1, 113-2, 113-3, en bloc; that the treaties be considered as having advanced through the various parliamentary stages up to and including the presentation of the resolutions of ratification; that any committee declarations be agreed to as applicable; that any statements be printed in the Record as if read; further, that when the votes on the resolutions of ratification are taken, they be in the order reported, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask for a division vote on each of the resolutions of ratification.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Presiding Officer. If there is no further business regarding these treaties, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am on the floor for the 63rd consecutive week we have been in session to ask my colleagues to finally wake up to the threat of climate change. The evidence mounts of unprecedented and dangerous changes, from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to the recent warning from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The American people demand action in ever-greater numbers. Yet Congress continues to sleepwalk, lulled by special interest influence and polluter propaganda. The influence and propaganda are spread through an apparatus of denial. This apparatus is big and artfully constructed--phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound as if they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound as if they are truthful, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them. The whole thing is big and complicated enough that when we see its parts, we could be fooled into thinking it is not all connected. But it is just like the mythological Hydra: many heads, same beast. And this denial beast pollutes our democracy just as surely as its sponsors pollute our atmosphere and oceans. Some editorial pages spread the polluter party line so consistently that it appears they have gone over and actually joined the apparatus. The climate denial network controls the political arm of the multinational corporations, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Polluter-funded super PACs target officials who don't fall in line-- interestingly, often Republicans, in an effort to purify the party in a coal-fired crucible. The whole deniers' castle can look pretty daunting, but it is based on rejecting science and ignoring empirical evidence. That is a weak foundation. It won't stand. The castle is built on sand and its fall is inevitable. Remember from Apocrypha: ``But above all things Truth beareth away the victory.'' And it will. There are cracks in the foundation already. Some leading news sources have begun to put climate denial into their policy against printing misinformation and discredited theories. They just won't print that nonsense. Many executives recognize the significance of climate change and are distancing their companies from the policies and politics of climate denial. They don't want any part of that nonsense. Many local officials are doing all they can to protect their communities from the effects of climate change. They know climate denial is nonsense. It has been wrong that the climate change denial campaign has been so ignored by major media outlets. Media Matters found that all the major network Sunday TV talk shows in all of 2013 discussed climate change for a grand total, all combined, of 27 minutes. NBC News's ``Meet the Press'' mentioned climate change once. When several of the Sunday shows discussed climate change on February 16 of this year for a grand total of 46 minutes combined, it was more climate coverage than in the past 3 years. It has been wrong that polluters so often got their way on the editorial page. Whether through a desire to appear fair and balanced or a willful effort to help polluters, newspapers still publish editorials or letters to the editor that dispute consensus science, disparage scientists or journalists who report the truth about climate change, and exaggerate the costs of taking action to stop it. Often, their authors have direct ties to coal and oil interests, and rarely is the connection disclosed. As we can see from this chart, some papers do it more than others. The denier champ is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, with eight denier letters in the first 10 months of 2013. That is one every 5 weeks. I think they have actually joined the denier apparatus and are now a part of the scheme, but they are on the wrong side of history. On the right side is the Los Angeles Times, whose editorial page last year released a note from editor Paul Thornton announcing they would no longer print climate denial letters. Thornton's note read: I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying ``there's no sign humans have caused climate change'' is not stating an opinion; it's asserting a factual inaccuracy. Reddit is one of the Internet's most popular social and news Web sites, ``the front page of the Internet.'' According to the Pew Research Center, 1 in every 17 American adults uses Reddit. Reddit science has 4 million subscribers. That is about twice the circulation of the New York Times. Reddit Science has banned posts on climate denial because, as its moderator, Dr. Nathan Allen, explained, ``We require submissions to [Reddit Science] to be related to recent publications in reputable peer-reviewed journals, which effectively excludes any climate denial.'' The L.A. Times and Reddit Science are not alone in seeing that the climate denier castle is built on lies. More and more American corporations are responding to the facts, understanding that they are ultimately responsible to their shareholders and customers. Major utilities--for example, PG&E, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Exelon--all quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after a chamber official called for putting climate science on trial like the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The chamber may have been infiltrated and captured by the polluters, but major corporations get it: Coke and Pepsi, UPS and FedEx, GM and Ford, Google and Apple, Walmart--we can go on and on. The denier castle is crumbling. Many of the businesses getting serious about reducing carbon pollution are actually based in States that are represented in Congress by Members who won't take the problem seriously at all. Coca-Cola, headquartered in Georgia, says: We recognize climate change is a critical challenge facing our planet, with potential impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health and agriculture. . . . Beyond the effects on the communities we serve, we view climate change as a potential business risk, understanding that it could likely have direct and indirect effects on our business. Texas- and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin states: From 2007 through 2011, Lockheed Martin reduced its absolute carbon emissions by 30 percent, and continues to focus on carbon emission reductions by championing energy conservation and efficiency measures in our facilities. Sprint, the mobile carrier headquartered in Kansas, gets it. We understand that climate change is a critical issue and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an important goal. Because Sprint is a large corporation with thousands of locations, millions of customers and billions of dollars in operating costs, we have many opportunities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The denier castle is crumbling at the local level too. Scores of locally elected officials are fighting to slow climate change and protect their residents, even if in Congress their Congressman won't listen. One of those local leaders is Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, whom I met on my recent trip to Iowa. Iowans are taking climate change seriously, and Mayor Cownie is one of over 1,000 mayors represented on this map all across the country who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Their pledge is to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets in their own cities and press their State governments and the Federal Government to enact meaningful greenhouse gas reduction policies. Seventy-eight current and former mayors from Florida have signed on. With over 1,000 miles of coastline, Florida is at serious risk from sea-level rise. According to the World Resources Institute, of all the people and all the housing in America threatened by sea-level rise, 40 percent is in Florida. Thirty-one former and current mayors from Texas have also signed on to the climate agreement. Texans are waking up to the threat of climate change. A recent poll showed that roughly 55 percent of Texans say the United States should reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of whether other countries do the same. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, our former Republican colleague from this Chamber, understands the benefits of cleaner energy. He fought to keep in Kansas his State's renewable portfolio standard, which encourages utilities to ramp up generation of renewable electricity. The standard has already helped create thousands of Kansas jobs. Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky, a coal-producing State, has taken a commonsense stance on climate change that defends the well-being of his State. He said: [W]e have to acknowledge our commitment to address greenhouse gas emissions, while stressing the need for a rational, flexible regulatory approach. I have to say I agree with him. I stand ready and many of us stand ready on this side to work with coal-State colleagues to ease their transition away from a polluting fossil fuel economy. When we think of what the costs are going to be to all of us of failing to address this problem, the cost of easing the transition for those who will suffer from it is easily worth undertaking. But to do any of that, we first have to break through the barricade of lies built around Congress in Washington. We can't keep pretending this isn't real. That is why once a week for over 60 weeks I have come to the floor to press this point. It is real. It is happening. It is not going to go away if we ignore it. There is one thing and one thing only that prevents our action, and that one thing is the politics of the Republican Party. There is one thing and one thing only that makes this the politics of the Republican Party, and that one thing is the special influence of the polluters. But against the relentless facts and science, against Mother Nature's relentless truth, that castle is built on sand and will fall. But above all things, truth beareth away victory. For the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our future, for the sake of our honor, it is time for us to wake up. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise on behalf of my colleagues, Senators Harkin, Alexander, Casey and Isakson to submit the following statement for the Record. On October 30, 2013, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously reported the Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2013, S. 1557, out of Committee. On November 12, 2013, the Senate passed S. 1557 by unanimous consent. This legislation is the product of years of bipartisan negotiation, a process which resulted in broad Senate support for the Act. The list of original Senate cosponsors for S. 1557 demonstrates this point. This list includes Senators Casey, Isakson, Harkin, Alexander, Blumenthal, Blunt, Brown, Kirk, Murphy, Reed, Roberts, Warren, and Whitehouse. Prior to the enactment of the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education, CHGME, Payment Program, there was significant disparity in federal graduate medical education, GME, support between adult teaching hospitals and children's teaching hospitals. In 1998, children's hospitals received less than 0.5 percent of the level of federal GME support that adult teaching hospitals received. In the 2001 final rule for the CHGME Payment Program, the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, wrote, ``The intent of the CHGME Act is to create parity in GME payments among all hospitals providing GME. It is clear that primarily two factors cause this disparity in children's hospitals: (1) low Medicare utilization; and (2) Prospective Payment System (PPS)- exempt status.'' The CHGME Payment Program has made considerable progress in achieving parity in GME payments, increasing the number of pediatric training positions at participating children's hospitals. However, a small number of freestanding children's teaching hospitals remain ineligible for the program. In 2003, Senate Committee on Appropriations noted the following: It has come to the Committee's attention that a limited number of freestanding perinatal hospitals and children's psychiatric hospitals have been excluded from participation in this program despite the fact that these teaching institutions are not eligible for Graduate Medical Education funding under Medicare. The Committee expects [the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)] to explore the appropriateness of including these hospitals in the Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Program and to offer recommendations that might allow for their inclusion. Senate Report 108-81. HRSA responded in a 2004 report to Congress which concluded that addressing this eligibility issue would require Congress to amend the statue governing the CHGME Payment Program. S. 1557 addresses this long-standing issue. The reauthorization legislation authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, to make available up to 25 percent of CHGME appropriations that exceed $245 million for ``qualified hospitals'' that: (1) have a Medicare payment agreement and are excluded from Medicare inpatient hospital prospective payment system; (2) have inpatients that are predominantly individuals under 18 years of age; (3) have an approved medical residency training program; and (4) are not otherwise eligible to receive payments from the CHGME Payment Program or the Medicare program. The total amount the Secretary can make available for these purposes in any fiscal year is limited to $7 million, thus ensuring that adequate resources remain available for the children's hospitals that currently participate in the program. The Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act provides the Secretary with the necessary authority to address the disparity in GME payment facing certain children's teaching hospitals. These changes are in keeping with the intent of the CHGME Payment Program. As such, these hospitals should have the opportunity to apply for support through the CHGME Payment Program in order to sustain and build their teaching programs, and ultimately increase the supply of much-needed pediatricians and pediatric specialists. We urge the Secretary to weigh these benefits in using the new authority under S. 1557 should funding be available.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are here to point out that there are an awful lot of Americans who are winning because of the Affordable Care Act--whether it is a mom with kids who have gotten out of college but couldn't get health care on their own who can now stay on mom and dad's policy. That is one less thing for her to worry about--her 22- or 23-year-old children; that is a pretty big win. Olive, who has been in touch with me, is a Rhode Islander from Woonsocket. She used to go into the doughnut hole every year because her husband has Alzheimer's and needs expensive medication. She saved $2,400 in the first year alone. That is a significant benefit for Olive. We have people who are trapped in their jobs because they couldn't get away. They were chained to their jobs because of the need of insurance. Alana, from Warwick, was one such person. She was working at one of our universities. She liked her job, but she really wanted to be a Web entrepreneur. She was tied to her job by employer-supplied health care. She went to HealthSource Rhode Island back in December and found a plan that worked for her. The plan's premium was so low she told me it sent her ``over the moon.'' She has become the proud owner of her own Rhode Island small business because she had the confidence she could go forward. Stories such as Alana's abound not just in Rhode Island but across the country. When I first came into our Rhode Island health exchange, the first person I saw who was ahead of me in line had boxes of Dunkin' Donuts and two big boxes of coffee. They had been there earlier in the afternoon, and the people who worked there were able to help them sign up for health insurance for the first time for their family. They were so thrilled they brought in doughnuts and coffee as a thank-you. That is the story we see. I have to say that we have to look at what the problem was with health care. This is where we should be working together. Look at where the costs are going; that is health care costs. In 1960, $27 billion, and $2.7 trillion in 2011. This was out of control. This was not going to be sustainable. Something absolutely, positively has to be done to get health care under control. The unsung part of the Affordable Care Act is the part that begins the change in our delivery system reform so we can make our system affordable. Do we do it by taking things away from people? No. We do it by making the system better. How do we know that will work? Here is a graph of all the major countries that are various kinds of competitors with us: Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, and basically the rest of the major industrial nations. If you plot their life expectancy in years and their population against how much they spend per capita on health care, you get a pretty solid grouping through here, and you get a pretty clear curve that can be drawn through that. Well, here is the U.S.A. We are way more per capita than the most expensive country--better than $2,000 per person more per capita than the other most expensive countries in the world. Look at us for life expectancy. We come in around Chile and the Czech Republic, and we are below all of our competitors. There is huge room for improvement--better health care at lower costs that will extend our lives and reduce the costs. If we just move back into this pack, we would save $1 trillion a year in health care in this country--not just the government, but across the country. It would help businesses, it would help taxpayers, and it would help everybody. There are different ways to do it. Here is one little example. This is people who are readmitted after they have gone into the hospital. What was happening was that after people got out of the hospital and went back to their nursing home or back to their house, their discharge plan was not very good. Their doctor may not have even known they were getting out, and they didn't know what to do with their medications. So what happens? Two weeks or a month later, they are back in the hospital again. We decided to do something about it in the Affordable Care Act. This is the readmission rate. It was rocking along around 19 percent, and then along comes our bill in 2011, and it starts to drop. It starts to drop pretty dramatically. If we can keep that up, we save the money of all of those readmissions. You don't pay for a readmission that never happens. It is an absolute economic savings. Plus, the family doesn't have to worry about grandma going back into the hospital again and picking up a hospital-acquired infection or some other cost like that. I thank the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, for organizing us on the floor today. I want to summarize that there is a great human interest story to tell about the Affordable Care Act that is helping families not only in Rhode Island but across the country; and moreover, it is a great tool for us as I hope we can work together to improve our delivery system of health care so we are delivering better health care to Americans for a lower cost. We know we can do it. For crying out loud, if Greece and these other countries can do it, then by God so can the United States of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am now here for the 62nd weekly effort to have my colleagues wake up to the threats of climate change. Congress continues to remain sound asleep, I suspect anesthetized by the narcotic drip of polluter money into our veins. But the signs of change around us continue. These are the Mau Loa monthly carbon dioxide concentrations. We have just passed, again, 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is the second year in a row this has happened. This year it happened 2 months earlier than last year. So why does it matter that we are at 400 parts per million? What does that mean to anybody? We have actually gone back and measured where the carbon concentration in the atmosphere has been going way back. We can measure back in ancient ice so we know that for at least 800,000 years, our carbon concentration is between 170 and 300 parts per million. That is a long run for a species that has only been homo sapien for about 250,000 years. That has been a long and hospitable window, during which our species has developed from very primitive hunter-gatherers into the complex people that we are now. So when you take something like that, the carbon concentration, and you bust out of a range that has sheltered us for 800,000 years, that is not nothing. It is particularly not nothing when you know that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature of the Earth. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. This is not something that is debatable. This is not new news. This is established science for 150-plus years. We also know--because you can replicate it in the laboratory--that when you put higher concentrations of carbon in the air over seawater, it acidifies the seawater. If you doubt any of that, you can go out and measure that it is actually happening--the known provable theories, the known principles, I should say. In fact, laws of science are actually manifest in sea level rise from the warming oceans, in warming ocean temperatures, in increased acidification. These are measurements. As this continues, we continue to do nothing about it, but we let the big polluters continue to spew carbon pollution into our atmosphere. Some of us in Congress are tired of waiting for folks to wake up. This month 31 Senators from every part of the country held the Senate floor through the night to sharpen this Chamber's focus on the threats of climate change. I thank Senator Schatz of Hawaii for leading us through this wake-up call, and to Senator Boxer for her leadership of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, and to the Presiding Officer, the senior Senator from Massachusetts, for her enthusiastic participation and support in that effort. The American people tuned in, tweeting over 54,000 times at the hashtag up4climate in the 24-hour period of this effort. Also, Americans added more than 200,000 signatures to online petitions urging Congress to get with it and do something about this climate problem. The public knows it is a problem and has been pushing us to act now for years. I have heard it from Rhode Island fishermen who now have to chase their catch further offshore into cooler waters because our coastal waters have warmed. The Presiding Officer has heard it from her Massachusetts fishermen as well. I have heard it from homeowners in South Kingston, RI, whose houses are falling into the ocean as the sea level rises and they encroach further inland into what had for generations been family homes. Rhode Island does its part to try to address climate change. We are participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and we are everywhere readying our coastlines for worse storms and higher seas. But the Ocean State cannot do this alone. The health, the safety, the prosperity of the people I represent in Rhode Island's communities depend on national action. We need a national groundswell of citizens and elected officials from every State. So last week I went to Iowa to share with that State Rhode Island's climate change stories and to listen to Iowans tell me their climate change stories and how it is affecting their communities. I was invited to Iowa by Senator Rob Hogg, who is a passionate defender of the Iowan environment and way of life and a very knowledgeable expert on climate change. I want to thank him and I also want to thank the Iowa legislature, particularly house minority leader Mark Smith and senate majority leader Michael Gronstal for their warm welcome. I also want to thank my colleague Senator Harkin and his staff for their assistance in planning and coordinating my visit. Farming is not a big deal in Rhode Island. We are not known as an agricultural State. We have farms and we love them. But it is not quite the same as Iowa. Farming is the cornerstone of Iowa's economy. Disruption of agricultural productivity is one of the great climate risks in Iowa. The recent National Climate Assessment draft finds this: In the long term, combined stresses associated with climate change are expected to decrease agricultural productivity, especially without significant advances in genetic and agronomic technology. But we do not have to wait for the long term. Iowans are already being hit by extreme weather. In 2013, just last year, 155 science faculty and research staff from 36 Iowa colleges and universities--home State Iowa teachers from their colleges and universities, 155 of them-- signed the Iowa Climate Statement, concerning the losses that farmers across the State are already experiencing due to climate change. I ask unanimous consent that the Iowa Climate Statement be printed in the Record following my statement. Iowa has had 20 Presidential Disaster Declarations since 1990 due to flooding. Damage has been more than $20 billion. Although no one particular flood can be directly connected to climate change, we know that carbon pollution loads the dice for the extreme downpours that provoke these floods in Iowa and in the Midwest. I call it the Barry Bonds rule. You do not know which home run was caused by the steroids, but you know for sure he was hitting extra home runs because of the steroids and you can measure that. In 1993 in Iowa, a flood exceeding once-in-500-year flood levels hit Des Moines. Ted Corrigan of Des Moines Water Works told me during my visit that the city's infrastructure was overwhelmed, leaving Des Moines without clean water for more than 2 weeks. The Des Moines Register reports that Iowa has endured at least 10 so- called 500-year floods since 1993--10 500-year floods since 1993. That includes the big 2008 flood that cost $10 billion statewide in Iowa. Doug Newman, the executive vice president at the Cedar Rapids Economic Alliance, told me what it was like to live through that unprecedented flood. Doug explained that in Cedar Rapids, flood levels had never, for as long as they have measured it, exceeded 21 feet. This flood maxed out at 31 feet, 10 feet above the all time previous ever recorded record. A thousand businesses were flooded. One-fifth of them were lost. More than 1,000 people lost their jobs. So it was tough. But what I saw was Iowans taking action--from college students to business leaders, from activists of the Iowa Citizens Climate Lobby to the conservationists to the Izaak Walton League. Iowans are preparing for the effects of climate change, and they want to see Federal action. Like Rhode Islanders, they are tired of trying to carry this themselves. Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie is one of over 1,000 mayors represented on this map all across the country who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own cities and to press their State governments and the Federal Government--us--to enact meaningful greenhouse gas reductions. I visited with TPI Composites. TPI Composites has a development and manufacturing facility in my home State, in Warren, RI. They are part of our composites cluster in Rhode Island. But they are also a leading Iowa manufacturer of wind turbine blades. In 10 years, TPI has manufactured more than 10,000 wind turbine blades. So when the Maytag headquarters closed, leaving as many as 4,000 workers jobless in Newton, IA, this helped the town get back on its feet. If we allow the production tax credit or the PTC to lapse, loss of that tax incentive for wind energy producers will jeopardize the business that TPI has built. So the Iowa State Senate unanimously passed a resolution in January supporting the extension of the production tax credit--unanimously, bipartisan. There is bipartisan support for the extension of both the production tax credit and the investment tax credit, and we should get that done in this Congress. I also heard in Iowa from Warren McKenna, the manager at the Farmer Electric Cooperative in Kalona, IA. Kalona is a town of about 2,400 people. It has Iowa's first community solar garden, with 25 kilowatts of capacity. For the co-op's 800 owner-members, that 25 kilowatts of energy helps reduce their monthly bills. And for members who have their own solar panels, they also get paid for the energy they add into the co-op's system. And this year, off of those successes, the co-op is breaking ground on an 800,000-kilowatt solar installation, taking advantage of a State solar tax credit that was passed by a Democratic senate and a Republican house and signed into law by a Republican Governor. This body could learn a thing or two from the Iowa State legislature. It shows what can happen when the polluter money doesn't have a Democratic institution locked down the way Congress has been. I also visited BioProcess Algae. This is a Rhode Island-based company. The CEO, Timmy Burns, is right here--a Quidnick Islander like myself. They design, build, and operate commercial-scale algae bioreactors. The commercial demonstration project shown here is located down in the southwest corner of Iowa in Shenandoah. BioProcess Algae uses the wastewater and the waste heat and the carbon dioxide emissions from the nearby ethanol refinery to grow algae. The algae can then be used for animal feed, can be used for biofuels, and, while it is growing, it eats up the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted to pollute the atmosphere. Here in Shenandoah, American ingenuity is turning carbon pollution into economic opportunity. I also visited this wind turbine. This is the base of a wind turbine. This is the stairway up into where you can go inside to serve it. You can see it is pretty big. There is the arc of the round steel base, and it towers up hundreds of feet. I think the blade diameter was 160 meters. It is a pretty serious-sized wind turbine. It is located in one of five wind parks which have a combined 500 wind turbines that are operated by a company called MidAmerican Energy. Thanks to pioneering companies such as MidAmerican, and to the State tax incentives that encourage these projects, more than a quarter of Iowa's electricity is generated by wind. They are leading the country. More than a quarter of their electricity is generated by wind. It measures in the gigawatts. That is a lot of wind power. And they love it. The farmers get paid for having the wind turbine on their farm. If you look--I don't know how well the camera can see this--this is the turbine itself, the stand that it rises up on, the column. That is the doorway into it. We are standing on a gravel sort of service road ring around it so that equipment can be pulled up to it for maintenance purposes. But look right here. That is not too far away. That is maybe 25 feet. They are farming right up to 25 feet away from this thing. So you farm and you get paid for having the wind turbine located on your farm. It is a wonderful two-fer. The conclusion I drew from all of this--from the exciting new types of energy being grown from algae, from the huge commitment to wind, from the audiences that came out and expressed their support for getting stuff done on climate, for the bipartisan support from so much of this clean energy stuff--is that Iowans have awoken to the threat of climate change. And that is important. Because Iowa plays a key role in our politics. Iowa helps determine which issues our Presidential candidates will be judged on. In 2016, I will bet that Iowans are going to insist they all address carbon pollution and they are not going to accept a lot of nonsense denial out of those candidates. In fact, I believe if the Republican Party tries to nominate a climate denier for President, they are in big trouble. Of course, the carbon fuel-funded denial machine will do its best to change the subject, to muddy the waters, to create doubt, to use its anonymous dark political money to keep candidates quiet. But all the money in the world can't change the fact that Iowans know, just like Rhode Islanders do, that climate change is real. And those Iowans are going to put those Presidential candidates on record. If you are a denier, good luck in Iowa. Iowans see the changes taking place and they are speaking up. Farmers in Iowa and fishermen in Rhode Island may be miles from each other geographically, but they both see in their lives around them the facts of the changes that are already happening. The time to sit on the sidelines is over. If we fight hard, if we are willing to have this fight, I am confident we can do a strong climate bill in Congress and soon--a climate bill that will strengthen our economy, because it will; a climate bill that will redirect our future, as it must; a climate bill that will protect our democracy, because the pollution of our atmosphere and oceans that the carbon polluters are doing is matched by the pollution of our democracy that they are doing with their dirty and anonymous money; and finally, a bill that will honor our duty to the generations that will follow us, because each American generation takes that duty as a very high duty. Right now we are dishonoring that duty and we are not leaving for future generations the kind of country we should. I went recently to Ukraine. I met with one of the leaders of the Ukrainian freedom movement. His name is Vitali Klitschko. If you are a boxing fan, you know who Vitali Klitschko is because he is a huge guy who was the world heavyweight boxing champion for years, and he has now thrown himself into the struggle of Ukraine for freedom; first of all, freedom from Russian influence and control, and more recently freedom from the oligarchs who basically robbed the country blind but were finally run out after that long bloody siege at the square in Kiev, the Maidan. Vitali has an interesting phrase that he uses. Because when he started this fight, it wasn't the least bit clear that anybody could win this thing. The oligarchs are billionaires. They have immense resources at their disposal. And they keep stealing, so there is always more. And, of course, the Russians are right there with their baleful influence, trying to make sure there is as little freedom and opportunity as possible and to keep Ukraine under their thrall. Those are some powerful forces. So people would ask him: Can you win? And he had a very simple answer. I can't imitate the good Slavic accent, and I can't imitate the basso profundo voice of a man that big, but his phrase was memorable: No fight, no win. Well, we have had no fight in us for too long on climate. It is time to put some more fight into this thing, because I think on climate the opposite is true. This isn't a no-fight, no-win situation. This is a ``if we fight, we will win'' situation. The facts are there. The public is ready. There is nothing between us and doing our duty other than the barricade of lies, the polluter-funded denial beast that is out there shopping their nonsense, and we can outdo them. It doesn't take much. Because, among other things, it is always easier for the truth to win over a lie. You just have to be willing to go out there and have that fight. So we have to wake up. When we do, we will win. I am more confident than ever, having been back from Iowa.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I yield the floor to Senator Udall of New Mexico, this may be my last chance to speak before the all-night session comes to its end, because I am about to relieve the Presiding Officer. In fact, I am overdue for that. But I did want to take this moment to say a few thank-yous. As one of the instigators of this episode, I thank my staff in particular for all the work that went into this. I thank the parliamentarians and the Senate clerk staff, who had a long night with us, and I appreciate it very, very much. There is only one page I see on the floor remaining-- no, there is another one. I want to thank all the pages. Many of them stayed here through the night, and it was a very long night for them, and I appreciate very much their effort. Then throughout the building, because the Senate had to be kept open, there were people who were kept here-- the Capitol police and others--and it is much appreciated. One of the things about the Senate is when we are in session, the light on the top of the Capitol stays on. So all night last night, people across the city could look and see that the light on the Capitol stayed on. I hope that wasn't the only light that was shed last night, but at least it is an example, and I just express my appreciation to all of the people who we have inconvenienced in order to make this point.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I inquire through the Presiding Officer if the Senator from Connecticut would be willing to engage in a brief colloquy. If the answer to that is yes, I would propound the following question: I know the senior Senator from Connecticut to be a very deeply believing patriot. He spoke in his remarks about how each American generation takes upon itself a covenant. I also know the senior Senator from Connecticut serves on the Armed Services Committee and has to consider, as part of his responsibilities in the Senate, the power that America projects around the world, which is sometimes military power, but also sometimes the soft power that comes from our role. I know also, as a student of history, Senator Blumenthal knows that President Lincoln described the United States of America as the ``last best hope of earth'' and that Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural, described this American government as the ``world's best hope.'' Finally, I heard the Senator say that climate change will have consequences. I wonder if he would care to comment on what a failure to address climate change by the United States of America, knowing the information we know, would mean in terms of the kind of hope America is to the world, in terms of the kind of credibility America needs to project its soft power. Is there a consequence the Senator could foresee in our foreign policy and in our national security from fumbling and dropping this ball at this time?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The energy is definitely out there. There is no doubt about it. Poll after poll shows how strongly Americans feel about climate change. My favorite one, because it involves Republicans, is a poll taken of self-identified Republican voters under the age of 35--young voters, the future of the party, the future of the country, the future demographic they need to reach out to. When asked what they feel about climate denial, 53 percent of young Republican voters described climate denial with three words: Ignorant, out of touch or crazy. So there are lots of reasons to have confidence. But one reason to have confidence is young people in this party view the climate denial strategy which we heard here earlier this evening from the one Republican who came--they view that theory as ignorant, out of touch or crazy. If this is what the young people in their own party think about it, that is not a position they can hold. Up against the common sense and the reality, up against the force of public opinion, and up against the effort of this evening which Senator Schatz has done so much to make happen, there shows a new spirit of stirring in the Senate. Then I think we win. I think the American people win, more to the point.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And the particularly vicious looking duck. The solution on climate is not the equivalent of piranhas, alligators, snakes, and a vicious duck. The solution on climate is actually a triple win. The Senator mentioned the earlier limits on pollutants. We found over and over that despite the regular claims by the industry that this was going to be the end of civilization as we know it and an economic catastrophe would ensue, when we actually look back, people saved money because of the harm they were spared. I think the Clean Air Act is $30 saved for every $1 we had to invest in cleaning up. So the limits actually saved money. In this case, we will add--as the Senator mentioned before--the growth in new industries, the $6 trillion clean-energy industry we want to be in rather than trailing behind and buying from China. Finally, if we believe in market theory, if we believe markets are the most efficient way to make choices, then we have to set up a market which is a fair one. This business the Senator mentioned of a business being able to externalize its costs by saying, ``That is not my responsibility. I don't have to pay for that. I am just going to dump it.'' This is no more fair than a New Jersey neighbor or a Hawaii neighbor or a Connecticut neighbor or a Rhode Island neighbor, instead of cleaning up their lawn, just shoveling their leaves over to the next guy's wall. We don't get to do that. We are responsible for cleaning up our own lawn when the leaves fall, in the same way these companies that are making this mess are responsible for cleaning it up. So it is actually a triple win. We have markets which work correctly, limits which save money for people in the long run, and the proper investment in green industries which are going to grow. So if that is alligators, snakes, and piranhas, I think it is the exact opposite. It is abundance and opportunity and innovation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is a win. The only thing I would distinguish a little bit is the example of the boy who went into the pool filled with piranhas and alligators and snakes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The bipartisan work I think is mostly being done at the local level--at the level of Governors and mayors, at the level of local city councils. One example which comes to mind is the City of Miami. Miami is really ground zero for climate change. On high-tide days, their streets already flood with water which is pushing up through what should be ways for water to flow off the streets but comes up into the streets-- saltwater. The freshwater supply is already being inundated by saltwater as it pushes through the porous limestone the Miami area is built on. They realize they have a real problem. So four county governments came together to deal with this. The four counties are led two by Democrats and two by Republicans. I mentioned earlier we used to have bipartisanship on this issue until Citizens United was decided by the Supreme Courts, until all the big money came in, until all the dark money came in, until people on the Republican side who were willing to speak up about climate change were punished and threatened so badly they could no longer do it. The Citizens United effect hasn't worked its way down to Governors and counties, so they still see the real action. I think the Senator as a mayor will also remember there were reality- based problems to be dealt with--not every day but 10 times a day or 15 times a day. Abraham Lincoln in the movie ``Lincoln'' said: I like to get my public opinion bath by having real people in. The Senator got a reality bath every day as mayor, and every mayor out there is getting a reality bath every day. Here, we don't deal with that. Here, it is different. We don't have to live in the same real world. We live in a more political world. So people can say things which are, frankly, irresponsible, untrue, and get away with it longer. The intimidation factor of big money is worse here. So where is the bipartisanship? It will be back here. It is inevitable. But we know there can be bipartisanship here by looking at bipartisanship live and healthy and in action on climate at the municipal, State, and county level.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May the record reflect that this is perhaps the first reference in the history of the Senate to dinosaur flatulence.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The one we hear the most often right now is: Don't worry, climate change has leveled off. Global warming and the temperature increases have leveled off. Well, as you just saw, 93 percent of the heat goes into the ocean. So if you are measuring just the atmosphere, a tiny wobble in the 93- percent share the oceans take up will make a massive effect in the atmosphere. But more to the point, if you take a graph, here is the leveling they show over the last 15 years. The problem is, if you go back through the data, you can show it leveled here, and then it leveled here, and then it leveled here, and then it leveled here, and then it leveled here, and then it leveled here. There are constant levels in an upward-going staircase. If you cherry-pick the data, you can say: OK, it has gotten level for that period. But if you really look at the trend of the identical data, that is the real trend. That is the actual trendline through the data. So when somebody comes to you and says: Ignore that trendline; instead look at it having gotten flat. And by the way, forget all those other times it got flat before. What do you think about somebody who makes an argument to you like that. It is a ridiculous argument. It ruins the credibility of the person who makes it. How you can believe that is astonishing.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Climate science doesn't tell you that every day is going to get a tiny little bit warmer. Climate science tells you that putting that extra energy into the system will make the weather extremes worse, both warmer and colder. So the fact there have been cold snaps is actually perfectly consistent with climate science. Not only does that argument ignore the difference between weather and climate, it also takes advantage of people who haven't drilled into the climate science. Because if you knew the least little bit about the underlying science, you would know the point made no sense because that is exactly what the people who predict global warming predicted would happen. If anything, it confirms the argument that people are trying to rebut. So it really, really is a dishonest argument.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator knows better than I what is happening in New Jersey. You know how hard New York and New Jersey in particular were hit by Sandy. You have our sympathies, because we had some Sandy damage in Rhode Island but we just caught a glancing blow. The full thrust of that hit was on New York and New Jersey, and you guys paid the price. In the recovery, FEMA and other Federal agencies and your State agencies are starting to look at this in a whole new way. They are saying: We can't build back the same. The same didn't work last time. And by the way, with that sea level rising, the same is probably going to not only not be enough for the last time, it is going to be way less than is necessary for next time. So the very way in which the U.S. Government, the State of New York government, the State of New Jersey government, the city of New York government are taking a look at how they respond to Sandy and how they recover and how they rebuild for the future is a perfect living example of the point my colleague is making. For that purpose, it doesn't matter whether this is manmade. The fact that it is happening, the fact you can predict it means it would be reckless and foolish not to take that into account as you rebuild.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. To follow up on Senator Schatz's point in terms of the bipartisanship we can hope for here sooner or later, on the skiing question and snowboarding question that was raised, the Park City Foundation in Utah, which runs all of the Park City resorts, the Park City Foundation in Utah predicts an annual local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075. That would cause a complete loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort area--a complete loss of snowpack. The foundation--this Utah foundation--estimates it will result in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, and hundreds of millions in lost economic growth. We have to be able to find a way to work with Senators from Utah on that. The point that Senator Schatz made about the northeast comes home because when you drill down into the report a little further, they say the number of economically viable ski locations in New Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half; that skiing in New York will be cut by three-quarters. I do not know what that does to skiing in New Jersey, but I will say that they said there will be no ski areas in Connecticut or Massachusetts. They overlooked Rhode Island. They did not mention Rhode Island. But I can promise you, knowing geography, if there is no ski area that can survive in Connecticut or Massachusetts, then Yawgoo Valley in Rhode Island is in trouble. That is our sky slope. So this really does hit home. I want to mention, the bicameral task force that Henry Waxman and I run brought in all of the major sports leagues to talk about how climate change is affecting their sports. We had the National Basketball Association, we had Major League Baseball, we had the U.S. Olympic Committee, we had the National Football League and the National Hockey League. They all agreed we need to take action on climate change. In particular, the NHL talked about the history of their sport, with kids growing up and playing on frozen ponds. Many of those frozen ponds do not freeze any longer or they freeze so little that a child does not have a chance to learn to skate and develop that skill out on the pond. So the NHL has been active. I appreciate that. The other point I wanted to mention is a lot of these winter sports are part of the Winter Olympics. There was a study done by the University of Waterloo that took a look at all of the different locations in which there have been Winter Olympics, all of the way up to Sochi. The green shows that from 1981 to 2010, all of these locations for the Winter Olympics were climate reliable for snow conditions. Then they run a couple of different scenarios, 2050s with low emissions, 2050s with high emission; 2080s with low emissions, 2080s with high carbon emissions; and one by one the sites of previous Winter Olympics fall away as reasonable sites. If we go to the 2050s low- emissions scenario, there goes Sochi and there goes Grenoble. If we go a little bit further, Vancouver, Squaw Valley, Sarajevo are in trouble. When we go to this part of the chart, a number of the sites where we have had Winter Olympics are no longer climate suitable for Winter Olympics, including Lillehammer, Nagano, Torino, Innsbruck, Oslo, Sarajevo, Squaw Valley, Vancouver, Chamonix, Grenoble, and on. So the people who are involved in these winter sports know about this. One hundred athletes of the Sochi Olympics from 10 different nations wrote a letter saying we have to take climate change seriously. They particularly focused on the small towns in the mountains where skiers and snowboarders train and where the economy is based on snowboarding, skiing, and winter sports, and the devastation that would happen in those small towns if that economy collapsed because of climate change. I yield to the Senator from Hawaii.