Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I just want to say how honored I am to serve on Senator Boxer's committee with her as our chairman and leader and how eager I am to fight beside her in the struggles ahead. With that, with my appreciation, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to ask consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I ask further consent that time during all of the quorum calls be charged equally to both sides.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, through the Chair, I will tell the distinguished chairman that I, with great enthusiasm, intend to offer my amendment. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support it. You should support it if you are from a coastal State because the coastal problems that coastal States face are so often overlooked. If you are not from a coastal State but you visit coastal States to go to the beach, if you like to eat fish or, frankly, if you like imported products that come through our coastal ports, you too have an interest in this legislation. I hope you will support it. Finally, this is a piece of legislation that was agreed to before by this body in the form of the RESTORE Act. In the RESTORE Act, we literally sent billions of dollars to our colleagues along the Gulf States for remediation, repair, and economic reconstruction after the two disasters of Hurricane Katrina and the explosion of the oil well. Those two disasters. So for reasons that don't merit further discussion here today, that part of the agreement was left unaccomplished. Whether you are from a coastal State or whether you enjoy coastal products or visits, I would urge my colleagues, for the sake of the Senate being a place in which a bargain once struck is honored, that we owe a vote strongly in support of the authorization--and this is only an authorization, no funding whatsoever--of a national endowment for the oceans that will allow coastal and Great Lakes States to at least be able to compete for funding to be obtained later through existing structures--no new bureaucracies--so we can do what we need to do to protect our coastal economies. I thank the chairman.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I may seek recognition.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. At the Chairman's suggestion, and with her permission, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be called up.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask for the yeas and nays, Madam President.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, while the chairman goes about the parliamentary task of organizing a sufficient second on the national endowment bill, I do wish to describe some of the changes our coastal and Great Lakes States are seeing and need to deal with. Probably the most obvious of all are the storms we have been seeing-- the unprecedented and extreme storms we have been seeing--along our coasts. Whether it was Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy, we have seen unprecedented damage done at the merger of land and sea, where driven by these powerful storms the sea can wreak such havoc on the land. But it goes well beyond the damage of extreme storms. If we go out into the Gulf of Maine, we can see the cod catch, which is a historic fishery going back centuries, has now collapsed to the point where the Draconian measures that must be applied to that fishery actually risk extinguishing the fishing industry for cod in some of our Northeastern States. We can move down the coast to the Carolinas, where highway departments are raising the bridges out to the Outer Banks in order to prepare for higher seas and stronger storm surges. We can go further south, to the Florida coast, where in some parts of that ocean--the Caribbean ocean nearby--as little as 10 percent of the coral remains alive. That is actually a pretty big industry for Florida. I think they do 15 million scuba dives a year for recreational purposes--15 million scuba dives--which are not just economically valuable for the dive boat owners and operators but for the people who travel, who have meals and who stay in hotels and buy equipment. They are not going to come to do scuba diving there as much if the famous Caribbean reefs and coral reefs off of Florida continue to die at the rate they are. We can go all the way across the country to the West Coast, where we see the oyster fisheries in Washington and Oregon threatened by the acidification of the oceans. There have been oyster hatcheries that have had massive die-offs within the hatchery when acidified water from the sea welled up and came into the intakes of these, in many cases, multigenerational family operations and were too acidic to allow the larval oysters to develop their shells, resulting in massive die-offs and economic loss. I can tell two stories about my home State of Rhode Island that are very current. In Rhode Island, the biggest storm we have seen, worse even than Superstorm Sandy in recent decades, was the famous hurricane of 1938, which did immense damage along our shoreline at a time when our shoreline was far less developed than it is now. Between the 1930s, when that hurricane took place, and now, the sea level at the Newport tide gauge in Newport, RI, has actually climbed 10 inches. So when the next hurricane of 1938 comes--or perhaps even a bigger one, as our current experience of storms would seem to suggest is possible--it will be driving a higher ocean against the shore and probably not just 10 inches higher, because a storm surge will stack that 10-inch increase as it crashes against our Rhode Island shores, and that can be a game changer. States such as Rhode Island have to do a lot of work to reconfigure where the so-called velocity zones are, where it is safe to build or not safe to build, what is actually now vulnerable in a 100-year flood or a 500-year flood as things change along our coasts. That is something that is a little hard to debate. It is actually a measurement. It is a measurement of 10 inches on a tide gauge. This is not some theory. This is what has happened. That water lying out there 10 inches higher is a terrific risk to our State and something we have to prepare for. Given the way State budgets are, we would like to be able to compete, once we have found some Federal funding, for the ability to figure things out so investors and people living along coastal communities can have a solid and fact-based appreciation of what the risks are to them from this worsening condition of stronger storms and higher measured sea levels. Another Rhode Island-specific example is the winter flounder. The winter flounder is a major catch species in Narragansett Bay--or at least it was. We can go back to the earliest Native American settlements and find winter flounder bones around the settlements. For many years the winter flounder was the biggest catch in Narragansett Bay. I know a certain amount about it because when my wife did her Ph.D. thesis, she studied the winter flounder in Narragansett Bay and what was happening to it and how its life cycle interacted with another bay creature called the sand shrimp--or the Crangon septemspinosa, which is the technical name. In the time between when she wrote her thesis and now, the catch of winter flounder in Narragansett Bay has crashed more than 90 percent. It is no longer an active direct fishery in Narragansett Bay. I can remember not that many years ago, it doesn't seem, driving over the Jamestown Bridge or the Newport Bridge or the Bristol Bridge and looking down and seeing trawlers working the upper bay trawling for winter flounder. We don't see that any longer because that fishery has crashed. It has crashed for two reasons. One is the bay is warmer in the winter. I am having a dispute with PolitiFact right now, but I stand by my assertion it is 4 degrees warmer in the winter. They think it is more like 3 degrees warmer in the winter than it was 30 years ago. Four degrees in water temperature may not seem like much to us humans, but we don't live in that environment. If that is your environment, 4 degrees sends a signal to certain species they don't belong there any longer and to move to cooler waters. The other thing it has done is it has allowed this other bay creature, the sand shrimp, to move in earlier to the bay when the larval winter flounders are still small enough to be eaten by the sand shrimp. It used to be the sand shrimp would come in and they would feed on the larval winter flounders, but enough of them would get big enough soon enough that they got too big to eat for the sand shrimp. In fact, as they got bigger, they would turn around and eat the sand shrimp. That was the cycle of life. Now the sand shrimp come in earlier. There are fewer winter flounder because of the temperature, and because they are getting in earlier, it is a much more dangerous environment because the larval winter flounder are smaller and remain prey longer. So for all those reasons, there goes what once was a very key fishery. These are just individual examples. Every coastal State, every Great Lakes State could come and have their Senator give the same speech with at least two examples of things that are changing and making a dramatic difference in the coasts. The phrase I use is: The faster you drive, the better your headlights need to be. These changes are coming fast. Things that used to happen across centuries are happening in decades; things that used to happen over decades are happening in years. We need to have better headlights as we see these changes coming at us, and the headlights are the science, the research, the information, and the ability to do this kind of work. I hope my colleagues, on the merits, will support my amendment. I hope even if they do not particularly care, even if they are from an inland State and don't have a great interest, that simply in the interest of the spirit of the Senate they will respect an agreement once it has been reached and will make an effort to make sure agreements, when struck, aren't broken and that I will get my partisan support. With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President and colleagues, if I could have my colleagues' attention for a moment, I would appreciate it. This is a measure that this body has voted on before in a strong bipartisan vote. This was part of the RESTORE Act, which was a part of the highway bill. For reasons that don't merit further discussion now, this piece of it fell out of the bargain that had been reached at the last minute in conference. I hope this will be a bipartisan vote with support on both sides. If you supported the RESTORE Act, you have already supported this bill. If you believe that deals should be deals in the Senate, then you should support this bill. For all of us in coastal States who are facing very unique pressures, it is very important that we as a body support this bill. It does not create a single extra bureaucracy or person. It works within the existing government, and it adds no funding. I am going to have to work with all of you to find funding for it later and within our existing budget constraints. This is just the authorization. Please give me a strong bipartisan vote.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman's leadership and her offer of 5 minutes of time. I will not need anything near that. I want to take this moment to extend to all of my colleagues a very heartfelt thank you for that last vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank the distinguished Senator from Louisiana for his hard work, along with Chairman Boxer, to get us to this point, which I think is a very auspicious point with a very bipartisan bill on the floor and with the Senate on the cusp of an agreement that will allow us to implement the managers' amendment and call up the first tranche of Senate amendments. I thank him and the Chairman for agreeing that an amendment of mine will be one of that first tranche of amendments. I am not going to call it up now because the agreement is not finalized, but I will discuss it so we can save time later on once the bill is pending. My amendment would establish a national endowment for the oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Our oceans and our coasts face unprecedented challenges. Our coastal States, including our Great Lakes States, badly need this endowment. Water temperatures are increasing, the sea level is rising, and ocean water is growing more acidic. Right now, we as a country and we as States and local communities are ill prepared to engage in the research, restoration, and in the conservation work that is necessary to protect our coastal communities and our coastal economies. The noted ocean explorer Bob Ballard, who famously discovered the wreckage of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic, has said: a major problem . . . is the disconnect between the importance of our oceans and the meager funds we as a nation invest not only to understand their complexity, but to become responsible stewards of the bounty they represent. Just how large is that bounty our Nation reaps from our oceans? Well, in 2010, marine activities such as fishing, energy development, and tourism contributed $258 billion to our U.S. gross domestic product and supported 2.8 million jobs. Along our coasts, shoreline counties, which actually include many of our biggest cities, generated 41 percent of our GDP, which is $6 trillion. Coastal communities are the engines of our economy, and changes in the oceans put that economy at risk. We must find ways of using these vital resources without abusing them. Last month the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee heard from scientists and industry leaders from across the country who are deeply worried about threats to our oceans. On the Pacific Coast, ocean acidification is killing off the oyster harvest--a major cash crop for that region. They are being killed off by sea water too acidic for the larval oysters to form their shells. Live coral in some Caribbean reefs is down to less than 10 percent, which is bad news for Florida, which usually sees over 15 million recreational dives every year. Think of what those 15 million dives mean for Florida's economy. This not only affects the dive boats and trainers who take people out for scuba diving, but for hotels, restaurants, and retailers. Evan Matthews, the port director for the Port of Quonset in my home State of Rhode Island, spoke on behalf of America's port administrators to tell us that rising sea levels make port infrastructure more vulnerable to damage from waves and storms. Virtually all of our economy is touched by what goes through our network of coastal ports, and damage to any of them--since they work as a network--could disrupt the delivery of vital goods not only to coastal States but to inland States as well. So it affects all of us. But for the coastal States, this is very big. We have work to do preparing for changes in our oceans and preventing storm damage such as we saw in Superstorm Sandy. We need to reinforce natural coastal barriers such as dunes and estuaries that help bear the brunt of storm surges as well as acting as nurseries for our bounty of fish. We will need to relocate critical infrastructure such as water treatment plants and bridges, which are increasingly at risk of being washed away. We need to understand how ocean acidification and warming waters will affect the food chain and our fishing economies. We need to know where the high-risk areas are so coastline investors can understand the geographical risks. These are coastal concerns, but they have implications for all 50 of our States. If you eat seafood or take a beach vacation in the summer, this concerns you. If you have purchased anything produced outside the United States and imported through our network of coastal ports, this concerns you. According to 2011 data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 75 percent of U.S. imports arrived on our shores through our ports, so they probably should concern you. The National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes can help coastal States and communities protect more habitat and infrastructure, conduct more research, and clean more waters and beaches. The need is great and we must respond. This amendment will just authorize the National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes. We will have to figure out how to fund it later. When we have figured out how to fund it, the endowment would make grants to coastal and Great Lakes States, to local governments, to planning bodies, to academic institutions, and to nonprofit organizations to learn more about and do a better job of protecting our coasts and oceans. It would allow researchers to hire technicians, mechanics, computer scientists, and students. It would put people to work strengthening or relocating endangered public infrastructure. It would help scientists, businesses, and local communities work together to protect our working oceans, and it would protect jobs by restoring commercial fisheries and promoting sustainable and profitable fishing. How great is the need for these projects? We know because a few years ago NOAA received $167 million for coastal restoration projects through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. When they asked for proposals, more than 800 proposals for shovel-ready construction and engineering projects came in--projects totaling $3 billion, seeking that $167 million in funding--projects from Alaska to Florida to the Carolinas to Maine. But NOAA could only fund 50 of the 800. The National Endowment for the Oceans will help us move forward with more of these key projects to help protect our oceans and drive our economy. We will continue to take advantage of the oceans' bounty, as we should. We will trade, we will fish, and we will sail. We will dispose of waste. We will extract fuel and harness the wind. We will work our working oceans. Navies and cruise ships, sailboats and supertankers will plow their surface. We cannot--we will not--undo this part of our relationship with the sea. But what we can change is what we do in return. We can, for the first time, give a little back. We can become stewards of our oceans--not just takers but caretakers--and we must do this sooner rather than later, as changes to our oceans pose a mounting and nationwide threat. Let me quote Dr. Jeremy Mathis of the University of Alaska, who said this recently: This is going to be a shared threat. . . . [I]t's not unique to any one place or any one part of the country. And so we're going to have to tackle it as a nation, all of us working together. . . . Whether you live along the coast of Washington or Rhode Island, or whether you live in the heartland in Iowa, this is going to be something that touches everybody's lives. So today I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment to authorize the National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes. It will not obligate any funding. We will figure out later an appropriate way to fund it. But at least help our Nation take this important step protecting our oceans and coasts; protecting the jobs they support through fishing, research, and tourism; protecting the stability of our national economy, which depends on ports and maritime activity; and, of course, protecting the property and the lives of the millions of Americans who live and work near the sea. Colleagues, you can help us become, as Dr. Ballard said, ``responsible stewards of the bounty [the oceans provide].'' For those who are not sure, let me add one further consideration for my colleagues, a Senate consideration. This endowment, together with funding--indeed, permanent and directed funding--was part of a negotiated package with billions of dollars in benefits to America's gulf States. For reasons that are not worth discussing and are no one side's fault, that agreement was broken and this part of that deal fell out. If you believe people should keep their word around here, if you believe agreements forged in the Senate should stick, then I would ask my colleagues, just on those grounds, to support this partial repair of that broken agreement. I look forward, for that and other reasons, to having bipartisan support for this amendment, and I hope we can make a strong showing in this body to carry it forward as part of this important water resources development legislation. With that, I will take this opportunity to yield the floor. Seeing no one seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I don't think it will take this long, but I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor again to address climate change, particularly today the change that carbon pollution is wreaking in our oceans. Water temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising, ocean water is growing more acidic, and powerful storms are becoming more frequent and more intense. It is time to wake up to the threat to our oceans and coasts posed by carbon pollution. The rate at which carbon is now being dumped into the atmosphere and absorbed by our oceans is unprecedented. NOAA estimates almost 1 million tons of the carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere is absorbed into the oceans every hour--1 million tons every hour. We know with scientific certainty that carbon pollution causes the ocean to become more acidic. Indeed, we measure that carbon pollution has caused the global pH of the upper ocean to increase nearly 30 percent--by some measures nearly 40 percent--since preindustrial times. In Rhode Island, the Ocean State, coastal activities define our heritage, our culture, and also our economy. Our coastal waters are spawning grounds, nurseries and shelters for fish and shellfish, which we enjoy and from which we profit. Our shores and coastal ponds are barriers that protect our coastal communities from ocean storms and that naturally improve water quality. Our oceans and coasts make coastal States such as ours who we are. We will continue to take advantage of the ocean's bounty, as we should. We will trade, we will fish, and we will sail. We will dispose of waste, we will extract fuel and harness the wind. We will work our oceans. Navies and cruise ships, sailboats and supertankers will plow their surface. We cannot undo this part of our relationship with the sea. What we can change is what we do in return. If we use our best science and judgment to plan for the uses of our oceans, we will continue to reap the value they provide. Carbon-driven changes to our planet will continue and will accelerate. The faster you are driving, the better your headlights need to be. Our headlights in this area are scientific research and planning. As we move ever faster into this uncharted territory, our headlights had better be working to preserve the valuable ecosystems upon which our communities and economies rely. The National Ocean Policy, signed by President Obama in 2010, provides a commonsense framework for sensible research and planning and public-private cooperation, as we face the significant challenges bearing down on our oceans and coasts--on both our ecosystems and our industries. Last week, the White House released the National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, a blueprint for effective management of our oceans and the Great Lakes. It is not easy to balance the competing needs of commerce, conservation, culture, and recreation. More than 20 Federal agencies oversee our marine industries, governing everything from fisheries to oil and gas leasing. The implementation plan takes this on and moves us toward better and more collaborative management of ocean resources. The implementation plan gathered the thoughts of a wide range of key stakeholders: maritime and energy industries, conservation and recreation interests, academic experts, and Federal, State, local, and tribal governments. The plan supports economic growth by streamlining permitting and approval processes, by improving mapping and ocean observing, and by providing greater access to data and information. The plan lays out specific actions and timelines to protect and restore coastal wetlands and reefs and to prevent economic losses and job losses due to degraded shores and degraded waters. Our coasts need immediate attention, so the plan could not come too soon. It states: Our nation lost nearly 60,000 acres of coastal wetlands each year between 1998 and 2004. . . . Habitats are being altered by invasive species that threaten native aquatic life and cost billions of dollars per year in natural and infrastructure damage. The implementation process the administration is pursuing is all about local needs and concerns. So the National Ocean Policy establishes voluntary regional planning bodies. Local people can get together, layer together the relevant data, and promote greater and more responsible use of their region's ocean resources. In New England, we have seen the value of this cooperative ocean planning. Rhode Island's Ocean Special Area Management Plan--a special area management plan is called a SAMP in the trade--has made ecosystem restoration and industry interests advance simultaneously. I recently spent time at the Northeast Regional Planning Body meeting in Rhode Island and I know our region is excited to move forward with a regional process. So let's look at some of the practical results when you get the information and the affected people in the room together. In Rhode Island, the wind energy industry, with its vast potential for manufacturing and maintenance jobs, is rapidly developing wind farms off of our coasts. Thanks to the groundwork that was laid by the Rhode Island SAMP, wind developers moved fairly smoothly through the regulatory thicket and they have avoided interference with marine highways, critical fisheries, habitats, and naval training ranges. There is actually quite a good report I commend to all my colleagues on the ocean SAMP published by the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan. It is a practitioner's guide, and it is a very effective document that shows how well this worked. In this process, local people were listened to and they were heard. When the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced this wind energy area here off of the Rhode Island coast, there was an area named Coxes Ledge, and the fishermen were concerned. The floor of the ocean at Coxes Ledge made it particularly rich fishing grounds and they didn't want it interfered with by having that area put up for wind farm development. Sure enough, when the map came out, the curve of Coxes Ledge is going right through the middle of the wind farm area, protected for the fishermen. They were listened to and they were heard. So much of this is simple common sense. In Massachusetts, the endangered North Atlantic right whale, a population of about 450 of them, feeds in the waters just off of Boston. The whale strikes between shipping and the right whales were becoming a problem. And because the right whale is endangered, it was becoming a real risk for shipping going in and out of Boston Harbor. So they found data that showed where the whale strikes were likely to be and they mapped that data. When they mapped the data, they saw if they moved the shipping channel out of Boston Harbor up a little bit they could come through an area that was largely safe from whale strikes. The cost to the industry was somewhere between 9 and 22 minutes of extra transit time--virtually nothing--while the number of whale strikes has dropped significantly. Here is another example from outside of Delaware. The green sort of neon-colored dots here track the signals coming off cargo ships going in and out of Delaware Bay. As you can see, there is a pretty solid track coming out of Delaware Bay right through here. When Delaware first proposed its wind energy areas, they proposed these light green blocks as wind energy areas. This one, as we can see here, was planned right on top of the main shipping channel heading southeast out of Delaware Bay. Critics say these kinds of efforts to get the data and the people in the room together ``zone'' the ocean. That is just plain factually wrong. The policy brings together people who use our ocean. In this case, the case of Delaware Bay, simply putting everybody in the room allowed the wind energy areas to be modified to avoid the conflict. So the southeastern area comes out and the turbine areas are beside it and the problem has been solved. That is not zoning, that is what military officers would call situational awareness; what the military would call deconfliction. What it really is is common sense. As Nancy Sutley, the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said: With increasing demands on our ocean, we must improve how we work together, share information, and plan smartly to grow our economy, keep our ocean healthy and enjoy the highest benefits from our ocean resources, now and in the future. Our ocean and coastal economy is important. Shoreline counties in this country generate 41 percent of our gross domestic product. In 2010, 2.8 million jobs were supported by maritime economic activities; commercial ports supported 13 million jobs; energy and minerals production supported almost three-fourths of a million jobs. But all of this activity creates opportunities for conflict. The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan is a blueprint to resolve those wasteful conflicts, to ``deconflict'' intelligently, and to streamline efforts across the Federal Government to keep our oceans and our ocean economy thriving. And it lets each region go forward at its own pace. Michael Keyworth, recent head of our Rhode Island Marine Trades Association, helped develop the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan, SAMP, said this: The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan will enable regions like New England to move ahead with this smart ocean planning by engaging people like me, who live and work on the water every day, while not forcing planning on other regions that do not currently want to engage in the process. Climate change is upon us, and its effects will only accelerate as we continue to spew megatons of carbon into our atmosphere. Changes are occurring fast in the oceans. That fact makes it all the more important that Congress remain vigilant and that we put our full support behind the commonsense framework of the national ocean policy. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, last month, the Senate approved a budget that included a blueprint for balanced and responsible deficit reduction. That budget was skillfully managed by our Budget Committee chairman, Senator Murray. It would complete the deficit reduction needed to stabilize our Nation's finances with a mix of smart spending cuts and revenue from closing wasteful tax loopholes. Top economists agree we need about $4 trillion of deficit reduction to make our finances sustainable, and our budget gets us there. Together with the deficit reduction enacted last Congress, the Senate budget would reduce the deficit by $4.3 trillion through a nearly 2-to-1 mix of spending cuts and revenue. House Republicans took a very different approach with their budget, making only cuts--drastic cuts--to education, law enforcement, medical research, and even ending Medicare as we know it for future retirees. The House budget derives its deficit reduction from cuts that primarily hurt low-income and middle-class Americans, while refusing to touch a single tax giveaway to wealthy and well-connected special interests. Senate Democrats took a middle course; House Republicans produced an extremist tea party wish list. In his own budget plan, President Obama included some smart provisions such as investments in infrastructure and the Buffett rule for tax fairness. I respect the President's outreach to a compromise with Republicans, but I cannot support the cuts to Social Security benefits in his plan. It is simply wrong to place the burden of deficit reduction on seniors and the disabled. Social Security--one of the fundamental pillars of the American middle class--has not contributed and will not contribute to our deficits. Social Security is fully funded by its participants through payroll taxes and cannot by law add to the deficit. Under current payroll tax levels, Social Security will have the funds to pay 100 percent of benefits until 2033. It is true we do need to make some adjustments to ensure that full benefits can be paid beyond that date, but that task has nothing to do with deficit reduction. Even if Congress did nothing before 2033, the projected shortfall would force automatic benefit cuts, not deficit spending. I do look forward to working with Senators of both parties to ensure that Social Security remains fully solvent for generations to come, but that discussion does not belong in the unrelated debate on our Nation's budget deficits. The Social Security cuts the President has proposed are not just in the wrong discussion, they are wrong themselves. To reflect inflation, Social Security recipients each year get cost-of-living adjustments, what we call COLAs. The President's proposal changes the formula used to make that determination, shifting to something called the chained Consumer Price Index or chained CPI. It sounds innocuous, but make no mistake, it is a benefit cut cloaked in technical jargon. The argument for a chained CPI is that it is a more accurate measure of inflation--that it takes into account real-world decisions consumers make to modify their buying habits as prices fluctuate. As the price of apples goes up, we buy more bananas, so the overall effect on our budget is moderated. The result is lower annual cost-of-living adjustments--about 0.3 percent each year. But let's take a look at how seniors fare under the existing COLA structure. In 2010 and 2011, seniors received no cost-of-living adjustment whatsoever--0.0 percent in 2010, 0.0 percent in 2011. But according to the existing consumer price formula used by government accountants, prices didn't rise enough to justify COLAs. That is what the COLA formula says. But in real life, what did it look like? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seniors saw food prices rise 1.5 percent in 2010, medical costs increase 3.3 percent, and they saw their gas and home heating oil go up by more than 13 percent each, and the COLA covered zero percent. The next year, 2011, these costs increased again. Food prices jumped 4.5 percent, medical care jumped 3.5 percent, gasoline jumped 9.9 percent, and fuel oil jumped 14.3 percent, and again the COLA for seniors was zero. So 2010 and 2011 add together; they are not included in one another. So food and beverage is a total of 6 percent, plus, allowing for compounding, 6.8 percent for medical care, 23.7 percent for gasoline, and 27.8 percent for fuel oil--all with a COLA of zero percent. The numbers show what Rhode Island seniors know: The problem with the Social Security COLA is that it is too low, that it doesn't meet the real costs seniors experience in real life. Why does this happen? The existing cost-of-living formula considers prices across the whole economy, including products seniors are not so likely to buy, such as flat-screen TVs and smart phones and sporting equipment. Their prices may have fallen, but seniors don't benefit much from those lower prices. The problem is that the current system fails to account for seniors' true costs in these areas. So my position is that we should move on to a more accurate formula for seniors, one that focuses on food, medicine and heating oil and gas and the other things seniors actually buy. I have been proud to support legislation to change the Social Security COLA formula to one that is geared more toward seniors, and I will continue to fight for the adoption of that new formula. Chained CPI takes us in the opposite direction. It assumes consumers will alter the types of goods they buy as prices rise. But seniors on fixed incomes have little ability to shift their buying habits away from these basic expenses, things such as food, medical care, gasoline, and fuel oil. It is hard to shift away from those. The lower COLAs that chained CPI would produce will only cut into seniors' already tight budgets, and force seniors to bear the burden of reducing deficits that Social Security had no part in creating. A 0.3-percent reduction each year might sound small, but over time the power of compound interest makes those benefit cuts significant. For people currently nearing retirement, these cuts would amount to annual benefit reductions of $658 by the time they reach age 75, $1,147 by the time they reach age 85, and $1,622 by the time they reach age 95. That same power of compounding makes these cuts even larger for future generations of seniors. Perhaps $658 or $1,1622 doesn't sound like much money to some folks around here, but to a senior in Rhode Island living on Social Security, that is real money. After getting no COLA for 2 years in a row, Bethany, a senior from Smithfield, RI, wrote to me: My health is not the best and it's not easy trying to survive on my Social Security and the increasing prices of gas, food, etc. and co-pays for medical. . . . The COLA calculation for Social Security doesn't work. We need an increase yearly to stay even with rising premiums and everyday expenses. Please continue to fight for Social Security and Medicare. Deanne from Coventry, RI, wrote to me in February: I am 68 years old and retired. I cannot work even part time because of severe Arthritis. My son lives with me who is permanently disabled due to an accident when he was 9 years old. He is now 44 years old. We just make ends meet with Social Security as we have no other income. We wear sweat shirts and pants to bed and coats in the house during the winter because we can't pay the high prices of oil. If Social Security gets cut, I don't know how we will make it. I have worked all my adult life until the last two years. I NEED my Social Security. . . . In the face of ever-increasing prices for health care, home heating, prescription drugs and grocery bills, asking seniors to give up more and more of their Social Security benefit as they age when every dollar counts is just plain wrong. These are real-life experiences of people who are the kind of folks chained CPI would affect. Yes, we need to make additional sacrifices to complete the job of deficit reduction; no, those burdens should not fall on our elderly and disabled constituents. Our deficits come from unnecessary Bush-era tax cuts that virtually exclusively benefited the wealthy, they come from a decade of wars we didn't pay for, and they come from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They have nothing to do with Social Security, so don't take it out on the seniors. As the Senate budget shows, we can complete the task of stabilizing our Nation's finances in smart ways, in fair ways, in balanced ways, in ways that don't put the burden on those who can least afford it. When I ran for this office, I pledged to the people of Rhode Island that I would oppose cuts to Social Security, and I will keep that promise. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I now ask for a second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I understand there is a bill at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration, en bloc, of the following resolutions, which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 111, S. Res. 112, S. Res. 113, and S. Res. 114.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

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, April 25, 2013; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business until 10:30 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; further, that following morning business, the Senate recess for 1 hour to allow for a Senators-only briefing; and that when the Senate reconvenes, the Senate resume consideration of S. 743, the Marketplace Fairness Act.