Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. My question was not whether the House voted on some, not all. I think the fact is that the House voted on nothing the Senate passed; they have done nothing but tee up political votes to send over to us.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I join my former attorney general colleague, Senator Heitkamp, in expressing all of our appreciation for what the Capitol Police did. We all know when that event transpired, our job was to go and hunker down, stay away from windows where we might be a target, and keep out of the way and not add to the difficulty or confusion. They had a much tougher job. Their job was to go to the danger and keep the United States Capitol safe. They did their duty and they did it well. It is now incumbent upon us to do our duty and that is to get rid of the tea party shutdown. We are now in tea party shutdown day 4. I have been watching this debate as it transpired on the floor and I have been participating a little bit in it. I have heard some interesting comments that have been made out here. The first one is the suggestion that this is not a tea party shutdown. They say it is not a tea party shutdown, but the tea party warned of it, the tea party wanted it, the tea party is cheering it, and the tea party says they are profiting from it, that it is a big success. When did the tea party warn of it? One example is when Lynn Westmoreland, the Republican from Georgia, long before this all began, told the Faith and Freedom Coalition: This is what we are going to do. If the Government shuts down we want you with us. The tea party wanted it. Joe Walsh, Republican of Illinois: Most people in my district say shut it down. Representative Jack Kingston told reporters that his Georgia constituents would rather have a shutdown than ObamaCare. Representative Tim Huelskamp said: If you say government is going to shut down my constituents say, OK, which part can we shut down? The tea party not only warned of it and wanted it, but they are cheering it. Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said this: We are very excited. It's exactly what we wanted, and we got it. She pointed out in another quote: This is about the happiest I have seen members in a long time. How happy are the tea partyers about the tea party shutdown? Here is what Republican Representative Devin Nunes said: ``They are all giddy about it.'' The dictionary definitions of ``giddy'' say, ``feeling or showing great happiness and joy. Joyfully elated, euphoric.'' ``Giddy'' also means ``lightheartedly, silly'' or ``dizzy'' and ``disoriented,'' but that is another story. Elated, giddy, exactly what we wanted--now they say they are profiting from it. Here is GOP cheerleader John Tamny, in Forbes magazine. I am quoting. Republican politicians and members of the Party should cheer. . . . The Republican Party . . . decision to allow a shutdown of the federal government-- and get this-- and to ideally allow it to remain shut through the 2014 elections . . . is . . . good politics. I will say that again: Republican politicians and members of the Party should cheer. . . . The Republican Party . . . decision to allow a shutdown of the federal government and to ideally allow it to remain shut through the 2014 elections . . . is . . . good politics. Echoing that sentiment we had our colleague Senator Rand Paul the other day say, ``We're going to win this, I think.'' So the tea party warned of the tea party shutdown, the tea party wanted the tea party shutdown, the tea party is cheering the tea party shutdown. They are so happy that they are giddy. And they are claiming that their tea party shutdown is a big success. It is a little late now to say, well, it is really not our tea party shutdown. I have also heard colleagues come to the floor and say nothing they are doing is extremist. It is not extremist to shut down the government and make the demands they are making. One dictionary definition for extremist is ``one who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm, especially in politics.'' I would say that shutting down the U.S. Government is beyond the norm, even in politics. I would say refusing to ever allow a vote on a Senate-passed bill under the constitutional procedures that prevail between our Houses is beyond the norm. And I would say that deliberately putting hundreds of thousands of people who serve our country out of work is beyond the norm. The norm would be for them to vote on our Senate bill over in the House. Over and over we in the Senate have voted on their House measures. We voted to strip out the extraneous measure and send back the continuing resolution. We voted to table. We followed the Constitution, we have done our duty, and we have voted. They in the House may not like that they do not win the Senate vote, but we did our duty in the Senate and have repeatedly voted on House measures. Over in the House they have not yet once voted on the Senate measure. It is sitting on the Speaker's desk without ever a single vote. If the Speaker called up the Senate measure and allowed a vote over there in the House, it would pass and the tea party shutdown would be over. But, remember, who wants this shutdown in order to use it for bargaining leverage? The giddy folks, the folks who are so happy they have caused this, the folks who think this is good politics. I think it is safe to say they are extremists, both by the dictionary definition and in their disregard of our traditional back and forth, one House voting on the other House's measure. Last, and this one is particularly rich, they say we won't negotiate. Let's remember that this all began with a deal negotiated between the Speaker and the majority leader that we pass a clean continuing resolution funding the government. What did the Speaker get out of that deal? We agreed to fund the government at the Speaker's level. He actually won that negotiation. That was what was negotiated. But the Speaker did not honor the deal. As I say, it is rich that we negotiate, we give the Speaker the funding level he wants, then he breaks the deal and now claims we won't negotiate. One of my colleagues came to the floor a little while ago and he called to mind the radio commentator Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey used to have his catchphrase in his radio broadcast, ``and now for the rest of the story.'' And he talked about the rest of the story. The President has made his position very clear. It is: We will not negotiate while you are holding hostages. Open the government and we will negotiate about everything and anything. But we will not negotiate while you are holding hostages. All the Republicans report in this Chamber is the first part: We will not negotiate. It is not a question of the rest of the story, how about the rest of the sentence? We will not negotiate while you are holding hostages. Remember that 19 times we have tried to appoint conferees to negotiate a budget between the Senate and the House and every time, the tea party extremists have stopped us. Let's remember that they do not want to negotiate. They want to negotiate with hostages. That is a very different thing. They want to negotiate with hostages, hundreds of thousands of people who serve our country whom they are using as hostages and will not let go back to work and earn their living. That is not just negotiation. There is something more than just negotiation going on when it involves hostages or other threats. Every mom whose 4-year-old is having a tantrum over not getting what they want knows that is not just negotiation. Every 12-year-old picked on by the school bully in the school playground knows that is not just negotiation. And every businessman who is asked to pay protection money knows that is not just negotiation. There is something else going on. Ordinary Americans get the difference between negotiating in good faith, the way we have to if we had appointed conferees and went to have an actual conference between the House and the Senate about our budget, the way the rules in the Constitution propose, and negotiating with a threat or negotiating while holding hostages. We are not going to negotiate while you are holding hostages. There are two parts to that sentence. May I have 1 minute to conclude? I see Senator Portman has arrived.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank the distinguished Senator from Mississippi for his remarks about these Honor Flight veterans. We just had a group come down from Rhode Island, including one gentleman who was 100 years old. It was so meaningful for them. In Rhode Island, it is particularly the fire chiefs and the firefighters who have been helping to organize these honor flights, and Chief George Farrell and others took immense pleasure and meaning out of having brought these gentlemen down and enabling them to have this recognition. The tide of time is sweeping that ``greatest generation'' into its dying years, and while they are still among us, it is a wonderful thing to do. So I thank the Senator from Mississippi for that. I came to the floor to, I guess, say: Welcome to tea party shutdown, day 1. We do not know how long this is going to go, but it is already having, I will say, miserable impact in Rhode Island. We have as many as 7,000 Federal employees facing furlough. We just got word that at Naval Station Newport 800 men and women have been furloughed. Our Rhode Island National Guard let us know they are anticipating 300 furloughs. These are people who work hard for our Federal Government. They do important jobs, particularly with respect to the National Guard and Naval Station Newport. They support our troops. It is not fair to them that the tea party extremists over in the House would insist on putting them out of work in order to force a way around the constitutional process of government here in Congress. The key to putting those 7,000 Rhode Islanders, the 800 Naval Station Newport, the 300 civilian guardsmen employees, back on the job is a very simple one, and it is in the hands of Speaker Boehner. All he has to do is call up the continuing resolution. All he has to do is take the measure the Senate passed and put it before the House for a vote. Just give it a vote. That is all it takes. Why does he not do that? He doesn't do that because there is this peculiarity over in the House called the Hastert rule. It is not a real rule; it is just called that. It is a practice. It is a practice named after former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert. The practice is that if your own caucus won't agree on a bill--if the Republicans, all by themselves in a room with no Democrats present, won't agree on a bill-- then the Speaker won't even give Democrats a chance to vote on it. It will never come to the floor. It is the most partisan rule or practice that exists in this body, in my estimation, and it has been a problem for the Republicans before. There have been times when Speaker Boehner has had to use that key he has to simply put a measure before the body without clearing that partisan prescreening by his Republicans. He has done it over and over to protect the Republican Party from itself, when they were going to force choices that would be terrible for the country and terrible for the party, ultimately. The first was on the fiscal cliff. Remember the hair's-breadth antics that led up to the fiscal cliff? Well, finally, Speaker Boehner put the fiscal cliff bill to a vote in the House and it passed 2 to 1. The Republicans voted against it in the caucus, so we know it flunked the Hastert rule test. But it passed the House with a bipartisan vote of Republicans and Democrats, and it spared us then from going off the fiscal cliff. That was the right call for the Speaker to make. It was the right call for the country. It was the right call for his party because they didn't want to own that debacle and he made a good decision at that time. The next was the Violence Against Women Act. Over and over we have passed the Violence Against Women Act in bipartisan fashion in the Senate, and it has been passed in bipartisan fashion over in the House. We passed it again in bipartisan fashion in the Senate, but it was going to fail in the House. Well, how do you go back to your voters, if you are a reasonable House Member, and say: We refused for the first time to pass the Violence Against Women Act? It came over in bipartisan fashion from the Senate. It had strong support here, but we refused to pass it. Well, they couldn't. So once again Speaker Boehner waived the so-called Hastert rule--this practice of having to have his caucus have a pre-veto on anything that comes to the floor--and he brought the Violence Against Women Act to the floor, and once again it passed. It passed with Democratic and Republican support. The third time was the disaster bill for Sandy. Many of our States were hit darn hard by Sandy. New York and New Jersey took really crushing blows. But the House Republicans didn't want to fund this particular disaster recovery. In fact, they voted 3 to 1 against it--3 to 1 against disaster recovery for their fellow Americans. That is how they voted over there. But Speaker Boehner knew how much trouble he would be in with, among others, Governor Christie of New Jersey, so he called it up anyway. He violated this so-called Hastert rule and he brought it up for a vote, and it passed again in bipartisan fashion. Today, tonight, tomorrow, the next day--any time he chooses--Speaker Boehner can turn the key and unlock the government tea party shutdown. He can do that. He has done it three times before. Of course, that got all his tea party folks all excited and they started making new threats and new challenges and new demands, so he is reluctant to go down that road again. But he has done it before, and it remains in his hands. I would submit it is the right thing to do for our country, and that he should put that first. The first way they fouled up the continuing resolution was to try and stall the Affordable Care Act on it. Well, we voted that down over and over, and cooler heads may be beginning to prevail. But I would remind everybody there are two pretty distinct, I guess we will call them ObamaCares now, since that is the word that is being used--two ObamaCares out there. One, to use Majority Leader Reid's phrase, is a punch line. It is the punch line ``ObamaCare'' that revs people up at rallies, that sends that rightwing e-mail chain into vibrations, but which is mostly a product of a fertile and overheated imagination. The real ObamaCare, at least the real one we see in my home State of Rhode Island, is actually something we like a lot. Seniors are getting protection from the dreaded doughnut hole and are saving over $1,000 each on prescription medications, on average. They see the Affordable Care Act as something that is having a real benefit in their lives right now. Parents, such as myself, who have kids out of college and under 26-- and I hear this from everybody across Rhode Island--are saying: Thank gosh the Affordable Care Act is there, because my daughter is out of college and she hasn't been able to find a job yet that has a health care benefit, so I can keep her on my policy and I don't have to worry if she gets sick the whole family could be bust. Having her on my policy makes me feel so good. Thank you for that. That is what I hear. That is a real and good thing for actual Rhode Islanders. It is not the imaginary ObamaCare. It is the real ObamaCare. Families who have a child with a preexisting condition--what do you do about that? You could spend down and give up all your resources, everything you have worked for and earned, so that your family can go on Medicaid--that is one way--or you could stay in the same job forever because the minute you try to move from your employer's health care plan to a new employer's health care plan, your child's preexisting condition doesn't get covered any longer. So you are trapped. Across this country, people are spared that agony by the Affordable Care Act. We had Peter Orszag in the other day to talk to our caucus. He said that if you extend out the cost of Medicare to the future, it is already down $1.2 trillion from the savings we see from reforms that are happening in red States, in blue States, in Massachusetts, where the Presiding Officer is from, in Utah, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, in California, in Rhode Island--all across the country. It is not political. It is about a better health care system, and we are already seeing the savings. That is what they want to take away. That is what they want to stop. One thousand dollars out of the pockets of seniors and back to the pharmaceutical companies--that is what the result would be; parents having to lose the protection for their kids at 26; families trapped with a child with a preexisting condition never able to leave the company they work for; and the savings that we are already seeing beginning to evaporate. Why do you shut down the country and harm people in those ways? It makes no sense. The tea party shutdown has to stop. I ordinarily come to the floor at this time to discuss the appalling way the Senate and the House are blissfully ignoring the evidence all around us of what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans. There is a clear connection between the problems we are in today that have caused this tea party government shutdown and our inability to face the facts about carbon pollution as a Congress. There are some similar characteristics between those two problems, and I would like to discuss them briefly. One characteristic is an inability to face and address present or looming problems--real ones. In the case of the tea party shutdown, they have actually created a massive artificial problem--a government shutdown for our country--at the same time that the tea party members prevent us from getting together to take the Senate budget and House budget and bring them into conference and agreement in the ordinary process like adults. It is all in the service of the pretense I just discussed: that the Affordable Care Act isn't actually good for our country. It is a triple phony-problem whammy for our country. This inability to face and address real problems is the first characteristic. The second characteristic is that inability is based on opposition that stands on false or fanciful arguments based more on propaganda than facts. In the case of climate, the fanciful argument--the falsehood--is that the jury is still out. The evidence is not only real, but it is overwhelming right now. The third characteristic is that the opposition that gives rise to this inability to face and address real problems is fomented by small interest groups wishing to exercise undue influence without due regard for the harm they cause to their fellow Americans. That is our DC trifecta these days. We can't deal with real problems. We have an atmosphere of phony arguments and propaganda that foul things up, and it is based on opposition that is driven by small but powerful special interests. I hope and pray the American people will send a strong message to the tea party to knock off the tea party shutdown that is closing and fracturing our government. I hope the response of the American people is a wake-up call to them. As one faction of one party in one House of Congress in one branch of our separated powers of government, they don't get to have everything their way. That is not the way the Constitution was structured. And that is particularly true when the public doesn't agree with them--and the public doesn't agree with them. They just lost an election on this exact issue. We are going to have other disagreements, and if we just roll through this one and then bang right up against the next hostage scenario--very likely on the debt limit, which, if we blow that and go into default, will be even more catastrophic than the accumulating economic harm of a government shutdown--if we keep going into one hostage scenario after another, then we won't have solved the real problem: We cannot work like responsible adults when a minority--a faction of one party in one House in one branch of government--is having the procedural equivalent of a tantrum. And true as science and real as Mother Nature, we have the problem of carbon pollution bearing down upon us. Will the polluters prevent action on that? Will we fail to do our duty as representatives of the American people? Will we be unable to face and address this real problem because we are opposed by false and fanciful arguments, with the strings pulled by special interests, instead of us looking plainly at the problems and coming together for a reasonable solution? This has been a different day than my usual ``time to wake up'' speech. It is time to wake up to the problems of carbon pollution and climate change. It is also time to wake up to the peculiar way that special and narrow interests are able to tie this body in knots and do damage to the American public for their own benefit. That larger problem is something we are going to have to reconcile ourselves with. If we just look at this as one problem--the tea party shutdown-- and we get through it, we will simply go on to another unless we have decided that our Constitution matters for something, that the structure of government the Founding Fathers put together gave us a procedure to work out our differences and that we should follow that constitutional procedure even when we have strong feelings about something. That is the legacy of the men and women who founded this country. It is the legacy for which men and women have fought and bled and died. It besmirches that legacy to have a tiny faction of one party in one House of one branch of government break the whole mechanism just because they want everything their own way. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as the Senator from Wisconsin has so eloquently said, we are indeed nearing the brink of the self-imposed catastrophes of government shutdown or government default or both. Unless Speaker Boehner can find a way to restrain his rightwing tea party extremists, find a way to work sensibly with Democrats and steer us back from the brink, then an unnecessary and self-imposed calamity awaits. I should probably be more specific. It is not just self-imposed, it is tea party imposed. While we try to find our way around this unnecessary tea-party- imposed disaster, a real disaster is looming. It is a real disaster, it is really looming, and we could address it. Instead, we are having to fend off totally unnecessary disasters cooked up by rightwing tea party extremists. It is infuriating. When the real disaster has fully hit us, folks will look back at this era and they will wonder: What was wrong with them? Who were those people? The warnings were everywhere and they did nothing? Instead, they wasted time threatening each other with cooked-up calamities, rather than deal with the real disasters? That is disgraceful. They will be right. Of course the real and looming disaster is what unprecedented levels of carbon pollution and unprecedented levels of atmospheric carbon are doing to our weather and our oceans. That is for real. That is Mother Nature. That is not just political gamesmanship and hostage taking. That is what brings me here now for the 44th time to say it is time for us to wake up to the threat of climate change. While Congress keeps sleepwalking on this issue, I am proud to say President Obama has awoken. Last week his administration announced important new carbon pollution standards for future powerplants. These standards will reduce the carbon pollution that has been wreaking havoc on our oceans, our atmosphere, and our health. Those of us who believe in science and who are awake to the changes already happening all around us should rally behind the President and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to support these proposed standards. Just look at the evidence of what carbon pollution is doing to our planet. According to news articles, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, will soon announce it is now more certain than ever that human activity is the main cause of the recent climate changes we have seen. This may surprise some of my Republican colleagues who tried pointing to a recent slowdown in surface temperature as evidence that climate change has stopped. According to the IPCC, this phase is, unfortunately, only temporary, as other slowdowns have been in the past. If you look at the history of global warming and of temperature, you can see that across time you can add steps in because of the variability that is inherent in our climate. But nobody could look at that and not see the constant rising thread that runs through it. No regression analysis, to use the technical term, would not show that global warming is real. The fact that we are at a step is--well, here is what Richard Muller, noted physics professor at UC-Berkeley, had to say in an article that came out today. He quoted himself from 2004 when he wrote: If we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small--then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend. . . . And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we . . . recognize that the natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling. Which has happened over and over through the progression of climate change. He followed on today: The frequent rises and falls, virtually a stairstep pattern, are part of the historic record, and there is no expectation that they will stop, whatever their cause. The land temperature record is full of fits and starts that make the upward trend vanish for short periods. Regardless of whether we understand them, there is no reason to expect them to stop. The current cause is consistent with numerous prior causes. When walking upstairs in a tall building, it is a mistake interpreting a landing as the end of the climb. Whatever the cause of these recurring steps, even contrarian scientists understand the principle that is operating here: More carbon dioxide leads to more warming. It is as simple as that. It is a 150- year-old established basic principle of physics. The oceans, which I talk about a lot in these speeches, have a lot to do with it. The deep oceans absorb excess heat, saving us from a lot more heat here on the surface. Researchers say the oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat over the last 50 years. If the ocean has absorbed this much of the heat, think what a small fluctuation in what the ocean is doing will do to our atmospheric temperature: 93.4 percent, only 2.3 percent. You do not have to wiggle this much in order to create the kind of steps and changes and oscillations that we have seen in the stairstep of climate change. Oceans don't just absorb the heat, they also absorb about 30 percent of our carbon emissions chemically, emissions that would otherwise be in our atmosphere, causing more warming. Absorbing those emissions has already made the oceans more acidic, with dangerous consequences for marine life as this continues. But it has spared us even more extreme climate effects here on land. Environment America recently released a report earlier this month highlighting the power sector's pollution, which creates an enormous amount of this. In 2011, 5.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in the United States. The blue circle is the whole country. Just over 40 percent of that total, 2.2 billion tons, came from the power sector. That is the green sector. The inner circle, the red one, is the emissions just from the 50 dirtiest powerplants in America. One out of every 8 tons of America's carbon dioxide emissions, the ones that are causing these changes in the oceans--the ones that are causing these changes in the atmosphere-- come from these filthy 50 powerplants, such as Luminant Generation Company's Martin Lake Plant in Texas, emitting the equivalent of 3.9 million car emissions, or Alabama Power Company's H. Miller, Jr. Plant, emitting the equivalent of 4.3 million car emissions, or the champion, Georgia Power's Scherer Plant, the largest emitter of carbon pollution in America, which emits as much pollution as 4.4 million cars. If these 50 plants were an independent country, that country would alone be the seventh largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, just behind Germany, just ahead of South Korea. From my State's perspective, these out-of-State powerplants are a hazard. It is out-of-State powerplants that emit the chemicals that turn into ground level ozone in downwind Rhode Island. Rhode Islanders pay the price, particularly on bad air days, and we have had six of them so far in 2013. About 12 percent of Rhode Island's children and 11 percent of our adults suffer from asthma, and ground level ozone puts them at greater risk. We have a lot of good Rhode Island reasons to clean up the power sector. That is why I support the administration's proposed standards for new powerplants. The standards will limit the effects of climate change on future generations by telling polluting industries it is time to clean up your act, it is time to stop dumping toxic carbon pollution, it is time to get responsible about what you are doing to our environment and our health, to our children, our oceans, and our atmosphere. We can still avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. Some changes cannot be avoided; some are already happening. But if we act now, we can avoid the worst predictions for heat waves, sea level rise, ocean acidification, storms, and other disruptions. That is why we in Congress should support the President's goal to reduce emissions to 17 percent below our 2005 output at the end of this decade and to get emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. The standard for good powerplants is a good first step, but we also need to clean up existing powerplants, particularly these 50, which I will remind everybody emit more carbon dioxide than South Korea. We should get serious here in Congress and fix the market failure in our power sector that ignores the true costs of burning these fossil fuels. We should pass carbon-fee legislation. What do we see instead, here in Congress? Here is an example. Last week a House subcommittee hearing on the President's climate action plan brought out these wildly misleading statements, such as: ``We can say over 40 years we've got almost no increase in temperature'' went one. ``The arctic ice has actually increased by 60 percent'' went another. In reality, surface temperatures are up about 1 full degree Fahrenheit over the last 40 years. That increase in Arctic sea ice is only relative to last year's all-time record low. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that this year's summer minimum is the sixth lowest in the 34 years records have been kept, and it is right in line with the long-term rapidly declining ice cover trend. The Republicans did a lot of complaining at the hearing about the President's climate action plan. To my Republican colleagues who don't like the President's plan, I say come to the table. Let's negotiate climate legislation in Congress. Republicans in Congress should support a carbon fee, as many Republicans outside of Congress do. If you do not like polluting interests having to bear 100 percent of the costs of complying with the carbon pollution standards, let's look at a carbon fee. A carbon fee, by contrast, would give those same companies an opportunity to work with Congress to share in some of the revenue generated by the fee. Or the revenue could be returned to the American people as a tax cut, if Republicans prefer; even as a corporate tax cut, if Republicans prefer. Or we could use that revenue to forgive all Federal student debt in this country--forgive all Federal student debt in this country. What a shot in the arm that would be to our economy. Or we could give struggling seniors a $1,600 Social Security raise. There are a lot of wonderful things that could be done, but my colleagues must first come to the table. What they cannot do is deny. To deny is to lie. The time for that has passed. It is time to wake up. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, may I take this opportunity to thank my friend Senator King for his remarkable comments on the Senate floor. I think it truly is our choice in this time and in this generation to be Nevilles or to be Winstons. Which way will we go? On that choice will hinge history's judgment of us. There was another good Winston Churchillism that talked about `` . . . the sharp agate points, upon which the ponderous balance of destiny turns.'' For better or for worse, we live at a time that is a sharp agate point upon which the ponderous balance of destiny will turn. Senator King has done a wonderful job of calling us to that duty and to that responsibility. I fear that in this particular body the facts are less relevant than the interests that are involved. There are special interests, there are polluters who are calling a tune to which too many of our Members are happy to dance. I worry that many of them will be willing to go down with the ship; that as the waters gurgle down their throats that last time, the last words up out of their mouths will be the flagrant falsehood: But the science still isn't real. As much as I would like to see us solve this problem in this Chamber, as committed as I am to making that happen, I think we do have to call on the American people to stand and be counted and to make sure their voices are heard, because the choice that is before us is one where the American people have a view. They understand this problem and they know it is real. They are not fooled. They are not part of the polluters' dance. But they have to be heard. Whatever we can do to make sure their voices are reflected here I think we need to do. There are some very important voices that recognize climate change is real: the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the entire property casualty insurance industry, the nameplate corporate leaders of America--whether it is Ford and GM or Nike and Apple or Coca-Cola and Pepsi, our national security establishment or national intelligence establishment and our foreign policy establishment. Wherever you look, people get it, except right here where the polluters call the tune and too many of us dance to it. But with more people standing up the way Senator King did, the sooner we will be able to bring that day. I am confident the American people will get this done and get it right. The last Churchillism--I am kind of a fan of Winston Churchill: The American people will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else. We work together to bring that day forward. Let me change the subject briefly to remark on a different occasion. It is also oceans related. Battle of Lake Erie We have just been through the 200th anniversary of one of the pivotal naval victories in our Nation's history which was led by a great Rhode Island hero, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Commodore Perry was born just after the dawn of our Republic in 1785, in South Kingstown, RI. His father Christopher Perry had fought in the American Revolution and after the war became a captain in the U.S. Navy. By the time young Oliver reached his teenage years, he was already serving as a midshipman on his father's vessel. Interestingly enough, his father's vessel was called the General Greene, named after Rhode Island's Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, whose statue stands in this building--in the center of the Capitol--and who is renowned. General Cornwallis is reputed to have said that ``Greene is more dangerous than Washington.'' Young Oliver Perry was also destined for great things. The late 1700s and the early 1800s were a very precarious time for this fledgling American democracy, and it was still an open question whether our experiment in self-government would endure. In 1812, when America once again declared war on Britain, following a series of disputes over trade and territory, the future of this young democracy hung in the balance. Oliver Hazard Perry went to war. He began his war service in Newport, RI, but in February of 1818, as the War of 1812 raged on, Perry was given command of the American forces on Lake Erie. When Perry arrived in the region, the British had taken Detroit and were looking to expand their control of the American Northwest. As Richard Snow wrote in his chronicle of the Battle of Lake Erie for American Heritage magazine: ``Perry took command vigorously and at once.'' He oversaw an aggressive shipbuilding operation on the lake's shore and worked diligently to raise enough men and guns to carry out his mission. GEN William Henry Harrison, later to be President, had positioned his fleet into a stalemate with British GEN Henry Procter on Lake Erie, leaving Perry and his fleet with the responsibility of retaking the lake for the United States. Perry sailed west and holed up in Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie's South Bass Island. There he waited until, on September 10, 1813, Robert Heriot Barclay sailed his British command within sight of Commodore Perry's lookout. As Snow wrote about that: The American ships cleared for action; stands of cutlasses were set up on deck, shot was placed near the guns, and the hatches were closed . . . Sand was sprinkled on the deck so that the sailors could keep their footing when the blood began to flow. Perry brought the ship's papers, wrapped in lead, to the ship's surgeon and told him to throw them overboard should the Lawrence be forced to strike. Sometime during the morning he hoisted his battle flag, a blue banner bearing the dying words attributed to Captain Lawrence: ``Don't give up the ship.'' The battle commenced, but the British were better armed and gained an early advantage. Soon enough, Perry's flagship, the Lawrence, was crippled, but he refused to give up. He took down his flag, climbed aboard a small row boat, and made his way toward the Niagara, the Lawrence's sister ship which had yet to engage in the battle. Perry's crossing between the ships is the inspiration for William Henry Powell's painting, which hangs in the staircase directly outside of this room right now. It is the biggest painting in the Senate, and it features a hero of the littlest State in the country. From the Niagara, Perry reengaged the battle with the British and ultimately gained the day. He forced their surrender and sent the now famous message to General Harrison: ``We have met the enemy and they are ours.'' Lake Erie had been secured for America. The War of 1812 continued on through 1814, but Perry's victory on Lake Erie was pivotal. Had the British taken Lake Erie, it would have provided a base for attacks into New York or into the new State of Ohio and for control of the American Northwest. Instead, the Treaty of Ghent ended the conflict with no loss of territory or trade to the United States. Perry continued his naval service after the war, but he contracted yellow fever during a mission to Venezuela in 1819 and he died at the age of 34. Today, his name and his actions are remembered in ways large and small throughout our country. In Ohio, on Lake Erie, a bicentennial celebration was held this year commemorating the great battle, and Put- in-Bay boasts a memorial maintained by the National Park Service-- Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial. I am told that up there one can toast to Perry's victory with a Commodore Perry IPA, courtesy of Cleveland's Great Lakes Brewing Company. In Rhode Island, one can travel along Commodore Perry Highway in his native South Kingstown or visit the newly commissioned Rhode Island tall ship SSV Oliver Hazard Perry, which will provide education-at-sea programs to Rhode Island kids. It is fitting that we continue to honor this great Rhode Islander. His victory on Lake Erie was, to borrow from Churchill, one of those ``sharp agate points'' on which history turned. So today I hope we will all take a moment and remember Oliver Hazard Perry and reflect on how differently our world would have turned out were it not for his actions. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here, as the Presiding Officer knows, for the 43rd time now, to say it is time to wake up to the threat of climate change. Today I am joined by my colleague from Maine, Senator Angus King, a fellow New Englander, whose State, like Rhode Island, has rich cultural and economic ties to the sea. As carbon pollution changes our oceans, the consequences for our States, for our fishermen, for our economies, for our way of life are very real--far more real than the lives of the deniers. Here is what we know: The oceans are warming. That is a measurement, it is not a theory. Sea level is rising. That is another measurement, not a theory. And oceans are becoming more acidic. Again, that is a measurement. In fact, according to research published in the journal Oceanography, the acidity of the oceans is now increasing faster than it has in the last 50 million years. We know what is causing it--carbon pollution. My colleagues can deny and delay and dance all day to the polluters' tune, but these are facts. The changes are already reaching our marine life. A research paper published in August looked at the changes over time of where species have lived, when they laid their eggs, and how they have grown their shells. The authors concluded that more than 80 percent of the changes documented in the study were consistent with what one would expect as consequences of a warming and acidifying ocean. Some species are moving toward the colder water of the North and South Poles, moving at about 10 to 45 miles per decade, extending their range. Events that are timed for spring and summer, such as egg laying or migration, are happening on average about 4 days earlier per decade. This means if a parent teaches their child how to fish, where the best spots are, how to dig for quahogs or what time of year to get the traps out, all of that changes by the time that child becomes a parent. Here is how these changes are affecting Rhode Island, according to Christopher Deacutis, the previous chief scientist of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program. I will read what he said: Although regional climate factors, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, can influence temperature trends, there appears to be an overall increase in annual Narragansett Bay water temperature of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1960. Fish species in Narragansett Bay are shifting, seemingly in step with increased temperatures. Jeremy Collie-- And he is a URI professor. --and others have shown that cold-water marine species, such as the winter flounder, which used to be the dominant fish species in the bay, are radically decreasing in numbers. Meanwhile, warmer-water species, such as summer flounder, scup, and butterfish seem to be increasing. More southern warm-water species that weren't seen in the past are likely to extend their range north as Narragansett Bay continues to warm. In addition, there seems to be an overall shift from large bottom-dwelling species, such as flounder, to small water column plankton-feeding species, such as anchovies. That is the end of his quote. NOAA researchers studied 36 fish in the northwest Atlantic Ocean-- fish such as the Atlantic cod and haddock, yellowtail and winter flounders, spiny dogfish, Atlantic herring--and found that about half are shifting northward. Janet Nye, the lead NOAA researcher, said: During the last 40 years, many familiar species have been shifting to the north, where ocean waters are cooler, or staying in the same general area but moving into deeper waters than where they traditionally have been found. They all seem to be adapting to changing temperatures and finding places where their chances of survival as a population are greater. Those are long descriptions of the situation. Here are some briefer descriptions. One Rhode Island fisherman told me: ``It's getting weird out there.'' Another said he is seeing ``real anomalies . . . things just aren't making sense.'' Some might say: Who cares about the winter flounder or these other fish, for that matter? Some people don't care about God's world or God's species unless they can monetize them. Let's answer them in the terms they care about. The winter flounder has been a lucrative catch for Rhode Island fishermen, and according to a variety of estimates commercial fishing generates about $150 million to $200 million of spending per year in Rhode Island and directly supports about 5,000 workers. Recreational fishermen spend over $100 million annually and directly support about 2,000 workers. Last year the Commerce Department declared the northeast groundfish fishery a disaster. To quote Acting Commerce Secretary Blank: The diminished fish stocks . . . resulted despite fishermen's adherence to catch limits intended to rebuild the stocks. The Commerce Department says it is not overfishing that is preventing our stocks from rebounding. Scientists think warmer waters could be the culprit. The effects of climate change on marine life don't stop with warmer waters. Carbon dioxide emissions are also causing our oceans to become more acidic. Last week two Rhode Islanders came down and visited us here in the Senate: Bob Rheault, the executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, and Dave Spencer, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen's Association. Dr. Rheault told my colleagues about shellfish larvae literally dissolving because of more acidic waters. More acidic waters caused a 70- to 80-percent loss of oyster larvae at an oyster hatchery in Oregon and crashed wild oyster stocks in Washington State. This is an industry worth millions to those local economies. The problem, as Dr. Rheault pointed out, is that while we know carbon pollution is causing ocean acidification, we don't know enough yet how to protect the shellfish industry. We could help by continuing support for the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act and by supporting funding for the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System. We could support funding for the National Endowment for the Oceans. We need to better understand the changes around us to protect the economic, ecological, cultural, and recreational value our oceans and coasts provide. Rhode Islanders are already working hard to rebuild our fishing industry. We are managing overfishing and limiting water pollution. We have planned for the future by developing a special area management plan for our coasts and waters. We are working on a shellfish management plan to better support an industry that is growing at 20 percent a year. We have supported world-class oceanographic research with scientists at URI's Graduate School of Oceanography, conducting some of the highest quality long-term research on marine ecology. My wife Sandra was part of that research tradition at URI, and I can remember as a young husband helping her in her lab and out on the bay. There was a story recently in the Providence Journal about a lobsterman named Al Eagles, out on his boat near the Newport Bridge recording on a tablet computer the size, gender, and location of lobsters he catches. Mr. Eagles is working with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation trying to improve the southern New England lobster stock assessment. American lobsters have been, in the past, Rhode Island's most valuable commercial catch. Mr. Eagles said: The last 2 years it has been very slow. It's been the worst 2 years we've ever had. In Rhode Island, lobster catches and stocks rose rapidly in the 1990s and then plummeted around 2000. Again, it is a similar story. Scientists think the lobsters are moving offshore and northward to shelter in cooler waters. As the lobsters move offshore and change their traditional behavior, we need to know more about what is going on. But it gets more difficult. We are doing our level best, from our scientists to our fishermen, from our labs to our lobster boats, to understand. There is now so much more we need to understand. Fisheries and fisheries management, like so many other industries, is going to have to operate in a new reality--a reality of warmer and more acidic seas. In the colder waters of Maine, as Senator King will explain, a lobster boom continues, but it is not all good news, and Maine lobstermen are already sounding the alarm bells at what climate change will mean for them in the future. The fates of our two coastal economies--Maine's and Rhode Island's--are connected. The Presiding Officer represents the State of Massachusetts, which is right in the middle of this problem as well. None of our three States can solve what carbon pollution is doing to our oceans alone. Even with our three States working together, we can't solve what carbon pollution is doing to our oceans. Federal action is necessary to reduce the carbon emissions that are warming and acidifying our seas and to help us adapt to the changes we can no longer avoid. Fishermen and scientists know these challenges are real, as does my friend from Maine, Senator Angus King. But we can't act alone. It is time for all of Congress to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here on what we are calling the Shaheen-Portman bill, the energy efficiency bill, and I note that the lead sponsor of the bill, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire, as well as the ranking member of the energy committee, Senator Murkowski, are both here. I have been cleared by them to take a minute on the floor right now and talk about an amendment I would like to have offered and voted on and added to this bill. We call it the pay for success amendment. It is amendment No. 1852. What this amendment would do is something that is quite simple and bombproof for taxpayers. Ultimately, it would save money and save energy; that is, for the properties managed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, if they do not have the capital to go back into that property and do retrofits and install efficiency measures that will bring down their cost of electricity, this amendment would allow them to contract with the private sector to bring in private capital to achieve those energy savings. There are significant restrictions in here that will protect taxpayers. Any money that goes back to these investors comes out of energy savings and only out of energy savings. If something goes wrong and the energy savings don't materialize, the investors lose. The taxpayers and the government are held harmless. Thanks to an amendment by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, as we were drafting the amendment, we have even specifically exempted the administrative costs of HUD in administering the legislation. Those have to be paid before the investors take their profits. But once the investors are paid back, there is now a more efficient building and savings for taxpayers over the long haul. In addition, the result is a reduction of our energy footprint, increases our energy independence, and reduces the contribution of ill effects, such as pollution and climate change, by HUD buildings. Now is not the time to call it up--we are at too early a stage in the proceedings--but I did want to take a moment to urge my colleagues to support this amendment. We discussed it at length with Senator Collins of Maine when we were trying to add it to the Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, and I believe we have worked through issues presented by her office and issues presented by Senator Coburn. If anybody else has any concerns, we look forward to hearing from them, but I think this is a bombproof piece of legislation, from the taxpayers' point of view. It opens up a niche for private capital to come in and earn a return on their investment by capitalizing on the opportunity we have for energy savings in these buildings. With that, I yield the floor and look forward to a future opportunity to discuss the amendment further and, with any luck, call it up for a positive vote. I thank Senator Shaheen and yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for those comments. I wish to commend her for her leadership on this bill. This is a wonderful bill to have gotten to, and she and Senator Portman have put in an enormous amount of effort in getting us here. So that is immensely commendable. I would add something I omitted in my remarks earlier because the Senator from New Hampshire brought this up in a private discussion we had on the floor a moment ago; that is, how does CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--feel about this amendment. We have an e-mail from the Congressional Budget Office saying this will not add to the deficit. It is deficit neutral. In point of fact, it actually is viewed as negative--it shrinks the deficit in the long haul, but all we needed from them was the assurance it was deficit neutral and they would treat it as deficit neutral. As the Senator from New Hampshire very properly pointed out, the benefit of this isn't just on the energy side or on the pollution side. Somebody goes in and installs the new energy efficiency equipment, installs the new windows, insulates the roof, and does whatever it is that will achieve these savings and that is work and those are jobs and that is helpful to our economy. I will again yield the floor. Voluntary Certification

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, we are back from the August recess, and I am here now for the 42nd time to try to awaken this body to the threat of climate change. Today I have come to talk about some of what went on during the recess while we were away in my home State of Rhode Island and around the globe. Here is some of what happened in Rhode Island. On August 14, Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, joined me in Rhode Island to deliver a clear message. As she said: ``Climate change poses a very real threat to public health, both now and in the future.'' Warmer temperatures in the Northeast mean harmful ozone can form very quickly. That leads to the bad air days we hear about on the news, when children with asthma and other vulnerable citizens are urged to stay indoors, often on what appear to be beautiful, sunny, summer days. Nancy Sutley and I heard from Nick Friend, a 15-year-old from East Providence, and Kenyatta Richards, an 8-year-old from Warwick, about the six Rhode Island bad air days we have had already this year that threatened Nick's and Kenyatta's health, and thousands more children. In Narragansett, a lovely Rhode Island beach town, I visited two sites that sustained significant damage during Hurricane Sandy to see how that town is using recovery aid to repair roads and public housing. People in Narragansett realize rebuilding is not enough; that we need to start adapting for future storms. The oceans are warming, undeniably, and as they warm they expand. So sea levels rise, leading to more erosion and flooding. Tide gauges in Newport show an average sea level increase of nearly 10 inches since 1930. So storm surges such as the damaging surge last year from Hurricane Sandy will batter our shores further inland, and we have to adapt to that. In Westerly, RI, town officials and the University of Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Center held an informational meeting about the effects of sea level rise on the town's coastal wetlands, planning for 1, 3, and 5 feet of coastal sea level rise, so Westerly can create a communitywide adaptation plan. Cranston, RI, was hit hard by the floods of 2010. In August, during this recess, demolition crews began tearing down homes in a neighborhood near the Pawtuxet River to buffer the surrounding homes to protect against future flooding. Cranston also announced a series of climate change workshops to increase awareness about the threats facing city residents and to help them plan ahead. So that is some of what happened in Rhode Island. Nationally, in August the Rim Fire burned in California near Yosemite National Park, the third largest wildfire on record in California. No one can say climate change caused this fire. Wildfires have been happening forever. But hotter, drier years make for worse wildfire seasons. Spring and summer temperatures are edging up, snow is melting earlier, wildfire season is lengthening, and the intensity of the wildfire season is increasing, as State and Federal fire and forest managers forewarned our bicameral task force in a hearing just before the recess. During August, nearly all of New Mexico experienced drought, with the majority of that State in severe, extreme or exceptional drought. In late August, the Bureau of Reclamation announced the first reduction of outflows from Lake Powell since the reservoir was filled in the early 1960s. Tens of millions of people who rely on the Colorado River for water will be affected. Reports are that a late August heat wave in the Midwest caused school closures in Minnesota, and students were released early from schools in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Again, it is the loaded dice phenomenon. We can't assign specific blame for this heat wave to climate change, but on a planet with hotter summers, we can expect worse and more frequent heat waves. So that is nationally. Globally, NOAA announced that July 2013 was the sixth warmest July on record. I was traveling in Asia during the recess with Senator John McCain immediately following record-setting heat. In mid-August temperatures passed 105 degrees Fahrenheit in Shanghai, China, the hottest temperature measured in the city since records began to be kept about 140 years ago. The temperature in Shimanto, Japan, hit 105 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest ever recorded in that Nation. South Korea's President Park talked with us about climate change and its importance in Northeast Asia. While we were there in South Korea, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy had warned of power shortages due to high temperatures, and we met with public officials in rooms with air-conditioners shut off to save power. Senator McCain and I heard from China's leading climate official, Vice Chairman Xie, about China's plan to invest almost $475 billion on clean energy and emissions-reducing projects through 2015--nearly $500 billion between now and 2015 and about seven regional cap-and-trade programs that will eventually include other large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin. For my colleagues who say China must act first on climate change: They are acting, and we should not look to them for an excuse to delay action here at home. Indeed, a report recently by the Pew Charitable Trusts described China as--let me quote this--China: ``The epicenter of clean energy finance, attracting $65.1 billion in investment . . . it garnered 25 percent of all solar energy investment . . . 37 percent of all wind energy investment . . . and 47 percent of the investment in the `other renewable energy category.' '' That is what the Pew Report said about China. The report compared that to the ``disappointing U.S. performance in the worldwide race for clean energy jobs, manufacturing, and market share.'' That is not a race we want to lose. Yet we are exhibiting disappointing performance against China. August was also a month for the usual climate denial. One of our Senate colleagues reportedly self-declared that he was a global warming denier and said he believes evidence points to the Earth entering a mini ice age. One California Representative told constituents: ``Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud.'' A conservative Representative from Iowa told his constituents: [Climate change] is not science. It's more of a religion than science. A Representative from Florida said: ``Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the Earth.'' August even brought a climate denier opinion piece to my home State ``Providence Journal:'' ``Climate science is in turmoil,'' the piece said, ``because global surface temperatures have been flat for 16 years.'' Rhode Island's PolitiFact unit quickly determined that this claim ``cherry-picked numbers and leaves out important details that would give a very different impression.'' In truth, there have been steps in the upward march of global surface temperature before. My skeptical colleagues should read about these steps and what may cause them in mainstream news outlets, which explain that while these pauses do happen, they have not and do not herald the end of climate change. Setting aside surface temperature for a moment, we continue to see warming, rising, and acidifying oceans. The recess brought the latest issue, for instance, of ``National Geographic,'' whose cover story is ``Rising Seas.'' Let me read two excerpts: A profoundly altered planet is what our fossil-fuel-driven civilization is creating, a planet where Sandy-scale flooding will become more common and more destructive for the world's coastal cities. By releasing carbon dioxide and other heat- trapping gases into the atmosphere, we have warmed the Earth by more than a full degree Fahrenheit over the past century and raised sea level by about eight inches. Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, the existing greenhouse gases would continue to warm the Earth for centuries. We have irreversibly committed future generations to a hotter world and rising seas. Here, focusing on a specific location: Among the most vulnerable cities is Miami. I cannot envision southeastern Florida having many people at the end of this century, says Hal Wanless, chairman of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. We're sitting in his basement office, looking at maps of Florida on his computer. At each click of the mouse, the years pass, the ocean rises, and the peninsula shrinks. Freshwater wetlands and mangrove swamps collapse--a death spiral that has already started on the southern tip of the peninsula. With seas four feet higher than they are today--a distinct possibility by 2100--about two-thirds of southeastern Florida is inundated. The Florida Keys have almost vanished. Miami is an island. That is from that extremist publication National Geographic. August also brought news that the IPCC will announce that it is now more certain than ever that human activity is the main cause of recent climate change. Let me be very clear about this: There is a broad and strong scientific consensus that climate change is ongoing and that human actions are a cause. It is a consensus of a breadth and strength that it is disgraceful and stupid for us to ignore it. That consensus should come as no surprise because the science behind it--behind the proposition that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the Earth-- dates back to the Civil War. It ain't news. We have known it for more than a century. Even the contrarian scientists brought in by the deniers to testify in Congress agree that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that warms the Earth. The science is credible. The danger is credible. Now it is about time for Congress to become credible. It is time to wake up. It is time to do our duty here in Congress to our country and to our fellow man. It is time for us to get serious and protect Americans from the looming harms of climate change. I yield the floor. 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, 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 order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following resolutions, which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 207, S. Res. 208, S. Res. 209, S. Res. 210, and S. Res. 211.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I note the absence of a quorum, let me express my appreciation to Senator Moran for his patience as we go through the closing script. He will have an opportunity to speak at the conclusion of this, and I appreciate very much his courtesy in accommodating us in this way. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I further ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute be agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; the amendment to the preamble be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 146, S. Res. 156.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. 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. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 1, 2013, and 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 until later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business until 11 a.m., with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; that following morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 96, the Chen nomination, under the previous order; and finally, that the second-degree filing deadline for amendments to S. 1243 be 11 a.m. tomorrow.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There will be two rollcall votes at noon tomorrow: confirmation of the Chen nomination and cloture on the THUD bill. Additionally, there will be a vote in the afternoon on confirmation of the Power nomination.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise again for the 41st time to ask my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. Today I come to discuss the serious risks that climate change poses to our energy sector. It is no controversial idea that our climate affects our energy infrastructure. In the Northeast, when we think about what causes power outages, we naturally think of bad weather. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reports that between 2007 and 2012, weather- related events were the main cause of electrical outages in the United States. That same report said: ``The average cost of a one-hour power outage is just over $1000 for a commercial business,'' just for 1 hour. This takes a serious toll on our economy. A recent Department of Energy report has highlighted how sensitive our energy sector is to climate change and to extreme weather. In September 2011, the Department of Energy reports: High temperatures and high electricity demand-related loading tripped a transformer and transmission line near Yuma, Arizona, starting a chain of events that led to shutting down the San Onofre nuclear power plant with power lost to the entire San Diego County distribution system, totaling approximately 2.7 million power customers, with outages as long as 12 hours. Earlier that summer: Consecutive days of triple-digit heat and record drought in Texas resulted in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas declaring power emergencies due to a large number of unplanned power plant outages and at least one power plant reducing its output. The report says the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, AL, ``had to reduce power output because the temperature of the Tennessee River, the body of water into which the plant discharges, was too high to discharge heated cooling water from the reactor without risking ecological harm to the river.'' This happened in 2007, 2010, in 2011, and, in some cases, the power production was reduced for nearly 2 months. The Department of Energy reports that ``the cost of replacement power was estimated at $50 million.'' It is not just power generation, energy exploration has been affected too. The DOE report explains that last July: ``In the midst of one of the worst droughts in American history, certain companies that extract natural gas and oil via hydraulic fracturing faced higher water costs or were denied access to water for six weeks or more in several States, including Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota.'' It was a similar story in the fall of 2011: Due to extreme drought conditions, the city of Grand Prairie, Texas, became the first municipality to ban the use of city water for hydraulic fracturing. Other local water districts in Texas followed suit by implementing similar restrictions limiting city water use during drought conditions. In July of 2011, the report recounts that: ExxonMobil's Silvertip pipeline, buried beneath the Yellowstone River in Montana, was torn apart by flood-caused debris, spilling oil into the river and disrupting crude oil transport in the region. The property damage cost was $135 million. Senator Vitter, our ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has told us that 18 percent of the Nation's oil supply passes through his home State of Louisiana at Port Fourchon. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that the only access road to that port is closed 3\1/2\ days a year on average because of flooding, effectively shutting down that port. With sea level rise climbing due to climate change, NOAA is now projecting that within 15 years portions of that highway will flood an average of 30 times each year--again shutting down access to that port 30 times a year. Vital infrastructure such as powerplants, power lines, roads, and pipelines are all designed to stand up to historical weather patterns. What happens when the weather stops following historical patterns? According to the draft National Climate Assessment: U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895; more than 80% of this increase has occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the nation's hottest on record. Oceans and other bodies of water are warming right along with the atmosphere. The seasons are shifting. Research shows that in the last two decades the frost-free season has increased in every region of the contiguous United States compared to the average between 1901 and 1960. In the Southwest, the record shows the frost-free season has increased 3 weeks and the western wildfire season has expanded by more than 2 months since the 1970s. Precipitation patterns and the availability of water are changing throughout the Nation. One study concluded that snow in the western mountains is melting, on average, 1 to 4 weeks earlier now compared to the 1950s. The draft National Climate Assessment shows that the amount of rain falling in what we call heavy precipitation events or, more colloquially, downpours is up in every region of the Nation. It is up 45 percent in the Midwest and 74 percent in the Northeast. Sea level is rising about 8 inches, on average, globally, but in some parts of the country it is much higher. NOAA reports that mean waters off the Galveston, TX, coast are rising more than 2 feet per century. At Grand Isle, LA, the rate is nearly 3 feet per century. These aren't just projections of what is to come, these are actual measurements of changes that have already happened or are happening around us. The result is that we have an energy infrastructure built for a different climate than the one which now exists and the one which is to come. Conditions are only predicted to get worse. The threat to our energy sector from changes in the climate should be neither controversial nor partisan. There are a lot of commonsense solutions here. Adapting our infrastructure for climate change is smart, and it will save us from costly repairs. Investing in energy efficiency by reducing the demand for power will relieve pressure on the burdened systems. Investing in a diverse energy sector will protect against the unique vulnerabilities of specific types of power sources. Rhode Island is part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, nicknamed Reggie, along with eight other Northern States. Our region caps carbon emissions and sells permits to powerplants to emit greenhouse gases, which creates economic incentives for both States and utilities to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy development. These efforts also reduce load demand on the region's electrical grid. We are proud of the effort we are making in New England. I know a lot of States are working just as hard. I say to my colleagues, our home States are hampered by the inaction in Congress. We have received credible and convincing warnings. We have received compelling calls to act. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community recognizes climate change is real and we are causing it. Our national security and intelligence community, our faith leaders, major American corporations, including the insurance and reinsurance industry and most Americans all agree we need to act. It is time for Congress to wake up, do its work to slow the onslaught of climate change, and to prepare for what are now unavoidable, inevitable effects. Yet here in Congress we sleepwalk on. This is an issue I know hits home in your home State in very different ways than it hits home in my State. But In each of our own ways, our States are already experiencing the hit from climate change. It is caused by carbon pollution that we are putting into the air, that our companies, our smokestacks are launching into the atmosphere. It changes our weather, changes our temperature, changes our seasons, changes our oceans, changes our waterways, changes our weather, and changes our lives. The tragedy is that we sleepwalk on because we are unwilling to address the special interests that are preventing us from taking the action that all Americans need. This is the archetypical fight between the public good, between an important public security issue and a private special interest that is defending itself, that is defending its right to pollute, that is defending its ability to compromise our atmosphere, compromise our health, and compromise our great oceans and waters. This should be an easy struggle. This should be an easy struggle, but it is not. And it will be a mark of shame on this generation, and it will be a mark of shame on this building that given the choice between the clear information from the scientists, the clear experience of what is happening in all of our States and the power of the special interests, we ignored the first and yielded to the power of those special interests. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, my colleagues and I have come to the floor to talk about an issue that is at the heart of the discussion of our national debt and deficit; that is, health care spending. These days around Washington, there is a regular refrain echoing through the hallways: In order to fix our deficit, we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. That is wrong. That idea is, according to the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente--somebody who knows a little something about health care--and I will quote him: . . . so wrong it's almost criminal. It's an inept way of thinking about health care. I could not agree more. It was put this way by Froma Harrop, who is a columnist for my hometown paper, the Providence Journal. I will quote her: ``The dagger pointed at America's economic viability hasn't been the existence of government programs like Medicare, it's been the relentless rise in health care costs that plagues not only Medicare and Medicaid, but everyone who uses health care.'' Attacking Medicare and Medicaid ignores the fact that our health care spending problem is systemwide and not just unique to Federal programs. Our colleague Senator Angus King has used the colorful metaphor that to go after Medicare and Medicaid when the problem is our health care system would be like attacking Brazil after Pearl Harbor--wrong target. It ignores the fact that we operate a widely inefficient health care system: 18 percent of our GDP compared to only 12 percent for our least efficient international competitors. So how can we continue to stem the rise in costs and improve our wildly inefficient health care system? Thankfully, many of the tools necessary to drive down costs have an interesting collateral benefit. They actually improve the quality of care for patients. The Affordable Care Act included 45 different provisions dedicated to redesigning how health care is delivered for the benefit of patients and taxpayers. These reforms support and encourage an ongoing delivery system reform movement--and there truly is a movement out there--driven by dedicated providers, payers, employers, and even some States that have worked for years to improve the quality and the safety and the effectiveness of health care. We are not discussing hypothetical improvements. We are not discussing theoretical cost savings. Today I am joined on the floor by colleagues who have seen how delivery system innovators in their States have achieved real improvements to quality, real improvements in patient outcomes, and real cost savings. In Congress, we can't get over yesterday's quarrels about repealing or defunding ObamaCare, but out there in the real world health care leaders across the country are innovating forward, places such as the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, Gundersen Lutheran in Wisconsin, Palmetto Health in the Carolinas, and in Rhode Island, among other places, our own Coastal Medical. One Rhode Island practical example: When intensive care unit staff follow a checklist of basic instructions--washing their hands with soap, cleaning a patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes over the patient and so forth--rates of infection plummet, and the costs of treating those infections disappear--no infection, no cost. These reforms have the triple benefit of protecting Medicare and Medicaid, improving patient outcomes, and dialing back health care spending for all Americans. How big is it? The President's Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that we could save approximately $700 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--$700 billion every year--every year--in our health care system without compromising health outcomes. The Institute of Medicine took a look at the same question. They put the savings number at $750 billion. Other groups are even more optimistic. The New England Health Care Institute has reported that $850 billion could be saved annually. The Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill--who as the CEO of Alcoa is deeply involved in the reform efforts in Pennsylvania that have been very successful and knows a fair amount about this--they estimate an annual savings of a staggering $1 trillion. Whatever the exact number is, what is clear is there is huge potential for savings in our health care system while improving or maintaining the quality of care. Since the Federal Government does 40 percent of America's health care spending, when we get that right, taxpayers as well as patients become big winners from these reforms. I will close with two points: First, many of us are asking the Obama administration to set a hard cost savings target for these delivery system reform efforts. It may be $750 billion. Pick a number that will be a target to be actually achieved. A target--a measurable goal--will focus and guide and spur the administration's reform efforts in a manner that vague intentions to ``bend the health care cost curve'' simply cannot. Second, we need to put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving that serious cost savings target for our Nation's health care system. It is hard to do that without that target to strive toward. This is an issue where our Republican colleagues should be able to join us to accelerate these reforms in our health care delivery system and to move forward beyond tired-out calls to repeal ObamaCare so we can deal with the ongoing reality of health care reform. Let's give American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency, poor outcomes and missed opportunities, let's give them a health care system that is the envy of the world. I yield for my colleague, Senator Baldwin.