Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Let me welcome Senator Blunt to the discussion and invite him to chime in now. He has been a very important voice in the bipartisan discussions on how we can find a proper way to protect American privately owned critical infrastructure. He is a consummately experienced legislator from the House and has been a great addition to the Senate, and we welcome him to the discussion.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Our topic is the urgency of the need to protect our privately held critical infrastructure--the power grid, the machines that process our financial transactions, and the communications networks that connect our BlackBerrys and our phones. In this area, no one is more expert than Senator Mikulski, who is a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, helped draft the Senate intelligence report on cyber, and has the pen as the cardinal for the budgets of most of the agencies that are relevant to this discussion. So let me lead immediately to Senator Mikulski, who has been enormously helpful in this arrangement.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor most every week to discuss the issue that I think is the one that Members of Congress in this era are most likely to be judged on in the future; that is, the relentless carbon pollution of our atmosphere that we are engaged in and the changes in our climate and in our oceans that are very visibly happening as a result. I know there are many interests in Washington that would prefer us to ignore this issue, but just because they ignore it and just because they want us to ignore it doesn't mean it is going anywhere. The country, as we have heard in the last few weeks, has baked in record heat. I think it was Bloomberg News that described the Midwest farmers as farming in hell. It has been scorched by drought, driven by unprecedented wildfires, and that has resulted in an increasing amount of chatter in the news and even some conversation on the Senate floor about climate change. Some have tried to say there is no relation, but I want to talk a little bit about the science of what we see happening around our country and around the world. There is an interesting report that I would mention. I am not going to put it in the Record because it is too large. It is called ``The State of the Climate in 2011,'' a special supplement to the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. What we see is that 2012 is shaping up to look a lot like 2011, which Deputy NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan called ``a year of extreme events, both in the United States and around the world.'' The report I just showed is a peer-reviewed report. It was compiled by 37 scientists from 48 countries. As explained by Dr. Sullivan, and I quote her: Every weather event that happens now takes place in the context of a changing global environment. This annual report provides scientists and citizens alike with an analysis of what has happened so we can all prepare for what is to come. Here are some of the highlights from the American Meteorological Society report. The first generally is that warm temperature trends are continuing. Four independent datasets show 2011 was one of the 15 warmest years since recordkeeping began in the late 19th century, and yet one of the coolest since 2008. The average temperature for 2011 was higher than the 30-year annual average temperature. The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. On the opposite pole, the South Pole Station recorded its all-time highest temperature of 9.9 degrees Fahrenheit on December 25, Christmas Day, breaking the previous record for warm weather around the South Pole by more than 2 degrees. So the warm temperature trends continue. The other major finding of the report is that greenhouse gases continue to climb. Major greenhouse gas concentrations like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide continued to rise. Carbon dioxide steadily increased in 2011, and the yearly global average exceeded 390 parts per million for the first time since instrumental records began. This represents an increase of 2.10 parts per million over the previous year. I would note that the Arctic sampling stations have for the first time in history recorded concentrations over 400 parts per million. That is an ominous number because the Arctic tends to be the leading edge for these indicators. There is no evidence that natural emissions of methane in the Arctic have increased significantly during the last decade, so they have not yet contributed to this steady increase. But there could be significant increases of methane in the future as the tundra thaws and as methane captured under the permafrost is released. Arctic sea ice is decreasing. Arctic sea ice extent was below average for all of 2011 and has been since June of 2001. It is a span of 127 consecutive months through December of 2011. Both the maximum ice extent, which was 5.67 million square miles on March 7, and the minimum extent, 1.67 square miles on September 9, were the second smallest measurements for maximum and for minimum of the satellite era. A fourth finding is that sea surface temperature and ocean heat content continue to rise. Even with La Nina conditions occurring during most of the year, the 2011 global sea surface temperature was among the 12 highest years on record. Ocean heat content measured from the surface down to 2,300 feet deep continued to rise since records again being taken in 1993, and ocean heat content was at a record high. In addition to putting 2011 into the context of these longer trends and timelines, the researchers from NOAA and the U.K. Meteorological Office also examined the link between climate change and extreme weather events that occurred in 2011. Here is what they say: In the past it was often stated that it simply was not possible to make an attribution statement about an individual weather or climate event. However, scientific thinking on this issue has moved on and now it is widely accepted-- Widely accepted-- that attribution statements about individual weather or climate events are possible, provided proper account is taken of the probabilistic nature of attribution. So let me be clear. It is still not correct to say that any weather event specifically is or is not directly caused by climate change. However, what these researchers have done is evaluate methods to see if the probability of this event occurring has changed by a particular percentage given the changing climate. Have we, in effect, loaded the dice in our atmosphere to make extreme weather events more likely? And not only have we loaded the dice, but how loaded are the dice? How are the odds changing? This paper evaluated six events from last year, and here are some of those findings: La Nina-related heat waves such as that experienced in Texas in 2011 are now 20 times more likely to occur during La Nina today than during La Nina years 50 years ago. So we have loaded the dice for these events to happen during the La Nina years by a factor of 20. That is a pretty heavy increase. Researchers evaluated a very warm November that the United Kingdom experienced in 2011. They found that warm Novembers are now 62 times more likely for the region. Again, not only are the dice loaded for unusual weather events, they are loaded with big numbers. The next month, December 2011, was very cold. Researchers found that cold Decembers were 50 percent less likely to occur now versus 50 years ago. Moving on to 2012, I wish to mention another event that happened this week. On Monday, researchers at the University of Delaware and the Canadian Ice Service reported that a 46-square-mile chunk of ice broke off from the Petermann Glacier on the northwest coast of Greenland. This piece of ice is two times the size of Manhattan. In August 2010, a piece four times the size of Manhattan separated from the glacier. This most recent breakoff of the Petermann Glacier puts the glacier's end point where it has not been for 150 years. Andreas Muenchow, a researcher at the University of Delaware, said: The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting and reducing in size as a result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and the atmosphere. When we change the temperature, we change the circulation patterns. Those go hand in hand. Relatedly, an article published in Science magazine examined data from not the Arctic areas but the tropic areas from coral reefs around the world. The researchers concluded that sea levels during the last warming period, which is most similar to today's climate, were roughly 18 to 30 feet higher than today. That is about 6 to 10 feet higher than previous estimates had projected. The likely culprit: more melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets than was previously assumed. All of this evidence, these changing trends and emerging science evaluating increased probability of extreme weather events, ought to be enough for us to consider limiting our greenhouse gas emissions. It ought to be enough of a warning for us to stop what is presently an uncontrolled experiment that we are conducting on our planet. We should do this while we still can. Yet, unfortunately, there are special interests in Washington who deny that carbon pollution causes global temperatures to rise; deny that melting icecaps destabilize our climate so that regions face extreme drought or outsized precipitation events; deny that they have any responsibility to do anything about this. These special interests have a strong grip on Washington and on Congress. They pretend to us and to the American public that the jury is actually still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution, that we should wait, we should let them continue with business as usual and wait for the verdict to come in. Well, they are wrong. The jury is not still out. The verdict is, indeed, in, and their claims to the contrary are, frankly, outright false. This is a pattern, actually, that has manifested itself with other industries in the past. The lead paint industry, the tobacco industry, and others have all had legions of scientists who have been willing to manufacture enough doubt about the danger of the product--tobacco is safe to smoke, lead paint won't hurt children, that sort of thing--so as to delay public safety action that would protect the public from their product. They obviously have a motive in doing that because they want to keep selling their product and keep making profits, but the cost has been terribly high to the public when we have listened to that kind of science. Unfortunately, we are listening to that now again. We should not be fooled. The vast overwhelming bulk of scientists agree that climate change is happening and that human activities are the driving cause of this change. When I give these talks, I often refer to a paragraph from a letter we received in Congress in October of 2009. The letter was very powerfully stated, particularly when we consider the cautious way in which scientists ordinarily couch their findings. Here is what the letter said: Observations throughout the world make it clear-- Clear is the word they use-- that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence-- And they close with this-- and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. In other words, if we look at the peer-reviewed science, the body of science, objectively, one cannot reach those conclusions. Those contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment. Clearly, subjective assessments are different, but subjective assessments we should discount because of the motives that lie behind them. The letter I just quoted was signed by an enormous number of very prestigious scientific organizations, from the American Association of the Advancement of Science, to the American Chemical Society, the Geophysical Union, Institute of Biological Science, Meteorological Society, Society of Agronomy, American Plant Biologists, the Ecological Society of America, the Organization of Biological Field Stations, Soil Science Society of America, and an immense group of very respectable organizations not gathered together for the purposes of argument about climate change but who have a responsibility to their scientific communities to be accurate. These are highly esteemed scientific organizations. They know the jury is not still out. They know that the verdict is, in fact, in and that it is time we did something about it. It is really irresponsible and nonsensical for us not to. The science on this goes back to the Civil War. It was a scientist named John Tyndall, an Irish scientist practicing in England, who determined that carbon dioxide and water, when they were trapped in the atmosphere, had a blanketing effect and would trap heat in the atmosphere--the basic principle of global warming. In 1955, the year I was born, a textbook called ``Our Astonishing Atmosphere'' said the following: Nearly a century ago, scientist John Tyndall suggested that a fall in the atmospheric carbon dioxide could allow the Earth to cool, whereas a rise in carbon dioxide would make it warmer. If that was century-old information the year I was born, then I think it is entitled to some credence around here. Of course, we are observing these changes. Let me put one into context, and then I will yield the floor. That one is that 390-parts- per-million figure I alluded to earlier. For the last 8,000 centuries-- 800,000 years--we have been able to measure what the range was of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, and for all that period, 800,000 years, it has been between 170 parts per million and 300 parts per million. So 170 to 300 is the range. So when we are out of that not by a little bit but by a lot--we are already to 390, and in the Arctic we have hit 400--this is measurement, by the way, not theory--that is something to be worried about because when we look back at history, before 800,000 years ago, back into previous geological events, we find that these high carbon concentrations are associated with really dramatic die-offs, very hostile environments for human occupation. Of course, we have never had that experience because we have really only been around on this planet for probably less than 200,000 years. We only started scratching the soil, planting things and developing agriculture, 10,000 years ago. So 800,000 years ago is a long time, and the safe bandwidths our species has developed within during that 800,000 years is something that we should not be so frivolous about flying outside of to the tune of now hitting 390 parts per million. There will be consequences that will be grave. We are already seeing consequences that are grave. Our ocean is acidifying in unprecedented ways. If we are looking for a first catastrophe to ensue, it is as likely to be through the acidification of our oceans as it is through climate and through the damage that an acidic ocean can do to small creatures, particularly those at the very bottom of the food chain, the ones all the others eat. Let me put it this way: It is a hard thing for an animal to succeed and survive in a physical environment in which it is soluble. So I see a colleague on the floor, and I will yield to him. I appreciate the attention of the Senate to this issue, and I hope the day will come soon when we can wrench ourselves free of the grip of the special interests and do something serious about this looming threat. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I believe we have a number of speakers who are coming over from the caucus lunch to discuss the upcoming vote on the DISCLOSE Act. I wanted to take the time that is available until a speaker shows up to continue to report the previous support for disclosure from our colleagues and from other Republican officeholders and officials. I think where I left off in my previous listing was Senator Lisa Murkowski, who wants Citizens United reversed and has said: Super PACs have expanded their role in financing the 2012 campaigns, in large part due to the Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited contributions to the political advocacy organizations. She said: However, it is only appropriate that Alaskans and Americans know where the money comes from. My friend Senator Jeff Sessions, a ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, at one point said: I don't like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable. . . . To the extent we can, I tend to favor disclosure. Senator Cornyn said: I think the system needs more transparency, so people can more easily reach their own conclusions. Senator Collins has been quoted: Sen. Collins . . . believes that it is important that any future campaign finance laws include strong transparency provisions so the American public knows who is contributing to a candidate's campaign, as well as who is funding communications in support of or in opposition to a political candidate or issue. That is from the Hill. Senator Scott Brown has said: A genuine campaign finance reform effort would include increased transparency, accountability and would provide a level playing field to everyone. Senator Tom Coburn has said: So I would not disagree there ought to be transparency in who contributes to the super PACs and it ought to be public knowledge. . . . We ought to have transparency. . . . If legislators were required to disclose all contributions to their campaigns, the public knowledge would naturally restrain legislators from acting out of the current quid pro quo mindset. If you have transparency, you will have accountability. As I reported earlier today, the Republican Senate support goes to people who have left the Senate as well. I would remark again on the extraordinary editorial written in the New York Times by Senators Hagel and Rudman. House Speaker Representative Boehner has said: I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all the money we raised and how it is spent. And I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. Representative Eric Cantor, the majority whip, I believe, has said: Anything that moves us back towards that notion of transparency and real-time reporting of donations and contributions I think would be a helpful move towards restoring the confidence of voters. Newt Gingrich has called for reporting every single night on the Internet when people make political donations. Mitt Romney has said that it is ``an enormous, gaping loophole . . . if you form a 527 or 501(c)(4) you don't have to disclose who the donors are.'' Well, this is a chance for our colleagues to close that enormous, gaping loophole their Presidential nominee has pointed out. One of my favorite comments is by Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee said: I wish that every person who gives any money [to fund an ad] that mentions any candidate by name would have to put their name on it and be held responsible and accountable for it. And it's killing any sense of civility in politics because of the cheap shots that can be made from the trees by snipers that you never can identify. The cheap shots that can be made from the trees by snipers that you never can identify. Let me give an example of that. I am going to read parts of an article from this morning's New York Times. In early 2010, a new organization called the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity-- With a name like that, you know it has to be bad in this environment-- filed for nonprofit, tax-exempt status, telling the Internal Revenue Service it was not going to spend any money on campaigns. Weeks later, tax-exempt status in hand as well as a single $4 million donation from an anonymous benefactor, the group kicked off a multimillion-dollar campaign against 11 Democratic candidates, declining to report any of its political spending to the Federal Election Commission, maintaining to the I.R.S. that it did not do any political spending at all, and failing to register as a political committee required to disclose the names of its donors. Then, faced with multiple election commission and I.R.S. complaints, the group went out of business. The editorial continues: ``C.H.G.O.'s story is a tutorial on how to break campaign finance law, impact elections, and disappear--the political equivalent of a hit and run,'' Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics . . . wrote in a new report. A cheap shot from the trees by a sniper you can never identify, and to this day no one has ever identified the $4 million donor. I see the Senator from New Jersey. I am delighted to yield to him so he can make his remarks. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, at least--at least--10 Republican Senators are on record supporting transparency and disclosure in election spending. Some of them are very significant leaders on the Republican side. Senator Mitch McConnell said this: I think disclosure is the best disinfectant. Senator John Cornyn, head of the Republican campaign operation, said this: I think the system needs more transparency so people can more easily reach their own conclusions. Other Senators, colleagues, and friends come from States that require disclosure in election spending. The States they represent know this is wrong. The arguments against this bill are few. Some of those arguments are false. Others don't hold water. Huge majorities of Americans-- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--support cleaning up this mess. More than 700,000 Americans signed up as citizen cosponsors of this bill in the last few days. The actual number, I believe, is 721,000. But then that ran up against this: outside political spending that went from 1 percent to 44 percent, not disclosed in the last election. And these secret groups, such as Crossroads, with $76.8 million, and the majority of the money that they spend is secret money--that has changed the debate. But those who are out of the need for that secret money, such as former Republican Senators Rudman and Hagel, are clear: A bill is being debated this week in the Senate, called the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. This bill is a well-researched, well- conceived solution to this insufferable situation. We believe every Senator should embrace the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. This legislation treats trade unions and corporations equally and gives neither party an advantage. It is good for Republicans and it is good for Democrats. Most important, it is good for the American people. I urge my colleagues on the Republican side to follow the example of their former colleagues Senator Rudman and Senator Hagel; and I pledge to Senator Murkowski that we take her comments very seriously. She has cast a sliver of daylight. I intend to pursue that sliver ardently to work through this problem. I will conclude by also complimenting Senator McCain. He believes there is a benefit for unions in here that I do not see, which I disagree exists. But certainly he has a record of courage and determination on campaign finance that entitles his judgment to our respect. I look forward to working with both of them. I yield back our time.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I yield the floor to Senator Sanders, I wanted to take 1 minute and thank Senator McCain for his many years of principled advocacy in this area. People have written entire books about the work he has done. I think it was Elizabeth Drew who wrote one of the best books about the courage Senator McCain has shown over the years. So I come to this debate with enormous respect for him. I will say the bill is not bipartisan, but that is not for lack of trying. We have reached out over and over again. In the face of an absolute stonewall on this subject, we have changed the bill ourselves in order to accommodate concerns. The stand-by-your-ad provision was criticized by the Republican witness in the Rules Committee, so we removed it. The National Rifle Association was livid about the $600 threshold because it would require them to disclose their members, so we raised it to $10,000. Over and over, where there have been substantive objections to the bill, we have met them. At this point, not one Republican--for all of our contacts across the aisle--has expressed anyplace in this bill where an amendment could be made. We have never been given any language, we have never been shown the area that, in theory, is better for the unions. It is, as Senator McCain himself admitted, facially applied to corporations and unions and other organizations alike. I would refer back to the op-ed in today's New York Times by Republican former Senators Rudman and Hagel agreeing this is, in fact, a fair bill. It is balanced among all parties, and all Senators should support it. With that, I yield the floor to my colleague, Senator Sanders, with appreciation for allowing me that moment of his time.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to follow up a bit on what I said I would do earlier, because this has been in some respects half a debate. Other than my friend Senator McCain who has courageously fought on this issue for some years, we have not heard much from the other side of the aisle here, so in some respects it is only half of a debate. In another respect, of course, it is no debate at all, because we are in a filibuster situation with the Republicans blocking us actually going to the Senate debate on this bill. So while it is debate in the lay sense of the word--it is a discussion--it is not Senate debate on the floor, because we stand here being filibustered with a majority of Senators who demonstrably support going to this bill. I said I would describe some of the things my Republican colleagues have said in the past about disclosure, so let me begin doing that. Senator McConnell, of course, has very publicly been in favor of it. That may relate to the fact that a report by the Corporate Reform Coalition went State by State, and the Republican leader's home State of Kentucky has a ban on independent expenditures by corporations in its State constitution. Its State constitution bans the conduct that is at issue here. Kentucky has disclosure provisions that require disclosure when independent expenditures of over $500 are made in any one election. He is here objecting to a $10,000 limit, and Kentucky disclosure provisions ``require disclosure when independent expenditures of over $500 are made in any one election.'' It further requires under Kentucky statute 121.190, subpart 1, that the name of the advertising sponsor must be put on any communication. So consistent with the laws of his home State, our Republican leader has for many years stood out in favor of disclosure. Around 2000 he said, ``Republicans are in favor of disclosure.'' And he said: Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate. Other leaders on the Republican side, such as Senator Alexander, have said: I support campaign finance reform, but to me that means individual contributions, free speech and full disclosure. In other words, any individual can give whatever they want as long as it is disclosed every day on the Internet. That is exactly what this bill does, but only for donations $10,000 and more. I don't believe there was a floor in Senator Alexander's remarks. I see the distinguished Senator from Iowa has arrived. In the spirit of going back and forth, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I think what I would like to do is actually share some of the thoughts from it. Here is what Senator Rudman and Senator Hagel, two former Republican Senators, say: Since the beginning of the current election cycle, extremely wealthy individuals, corporations and trade unions--all of them determined to influence who is in the White House next year--have spent more than $160 million. Excluding party expenditures. That's an incredible amount of money. To put it in perspective, at this point in 2008, about $36 million had been spent on independent expenditures. Independent meaning independent of a candidate's campaign. In all of 2008, in fact, only $156 million was spent this way. In other words, we've already surpassed 2008, and it's July. In the near term, there's nothing we can do to reverse this dramatic increase in independent expenditures. These two distinguished former Republican Senators wrote: Yet what really alarms us about this situation is that we can't find out who was behind these blatant attempts to control the outcome of our elections. We are inundated with extraordinarily negative advertising on television every evening and have no way to know who is paying for it and what their agenda might be. In fact, it's conceivable that we have created such a glaring loophole in our election process that foreign interests could directly influence the outcome of our elections and we might not even know it had happened until after the election, if at all. This is because unions, corporations, ``super PACs'' and other organizations are able to make unlimited independent expenditures on our elections without readily and openly disclosing where the money they are spending is coming from. As a result, we are unable to get the information we need to decide who should represent us and take on our country's challenges. Unlike the unlimited amount of campaign spending, the lack of transparency in campaign spending is something we can fix and fix right now--without opening the door to more scrutiny by the Supreme Court. A bill being debated this week in the Senate called the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is a well-researched, well-conceived solution to this insufferable situation. Unfortunately, on Monday the Senate voted, mostly along party lines, to block the bill from going forward. But the DISCLOSE Act is not dead. As of now, it is 9 short of the 60 votes it needs. They then describe the bill and continue: We believe that every senator should embrace the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. This legislation treats trade unions and corporations equally and gives neither party an advantage. It is good for Republicans and it is good for Democrats. Most important, it is good for the American people. What's more, every Senator considering re-election faces the possibility of being blindsided by a well-funded, anonymous campaign, challenging his or her record, integrity, or both. The act under consideration would prevent this from happening to anyone running for Congress. Without the transparency offered by the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, we fear long-term consequences that will hurt our democracy profoundly. We are already seeing too many of our former colleagues leaving public office because the partisanship has become stifling and toxic. If campaigning for office continues to be so heavily affected by anonymous, out-of-district influences running negative advertising, we fear even more incumbents will decline to run and many of our most capable potential leaders will shy away from elective office. No thinking person can deny that the current situation is unacceptable and intolerable. We urge all senators to engage in a bipartisan effort to enact this critically needed legislation. The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 is a prudent and important first step in restoring some sanity to our Democratic process. Then the article closes by identifying the authors: Former Senator Warren Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire, is a chairman of Americans for Campaign Reform, and former Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, introduced disclosure legislation in 2001. While we await my colleagues who are scheduled to come to the floor, let me add that it is not unique or unusual that Senators Rudman and Hagel, former Republican Senators, should be supportive of the DISCLOSE Act and of disclosure of who is making these massive, now secret, contributions to buy influence in our elections. First of all, it is not surprising because it is so darned obvious. It should be obvious to any thinking person, as Senators Rudman and Hagel said, that when somebody is spending the kind of money that is being spent--a single donor making, for instance, a $4 million anonymous contribution--they are not doing that out of the goodness of their heart. They are not doing that just for the sheer fun of it. They are doing that because they have a motive. One doesn't spend $4 million in politics if one doesn't have a motive. If one thinks otherwise, one really needs to wake up and have a cup of coffee. If we add to that the insistence on the funding being secret, there is only one reasonable conclusion that a thinking person can draw about why somebody who is spending that kind of money with a motive would want their spending and their identity to be secret, and that is because the motive is a crummy motive. It is a lousy motive for the American people. If the American people were excited about the motive, they wouldn't want to keep it secret. It is only because they want to do bad deeds in the dark. When time permits again, I will go through some of the Republican Senators who have spoken out in favor of disclosure and transparency in the past. We all know from the debate last night that the minority leader has--and I will yield to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee as soon as he is prepared--Senator Alexander has been on record, as well as Senator Chambliss, Senator Sessions, Senator Cornyn, Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, Senator Brown of Massachusetts, Senator Coburn, and, of course, most prominently and most courageously over a long period of time and with great distinction, Senator John McCain. So at this moment, I will yield to my distinguished chairman and friend, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I appreciate him giving his voice to this debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank Chairman Leahy. I ask unanimous consent, in terms of scheduling floor time, that Senator Manchin of West Virginia be recognized now for up to 5 minutes; that Senator McCain, if he is on the floor, be recognized at the conclusion of Senator Manchin's 5-minute period; and if Senator McCain is not present on the floor, that I be recognized in his stead.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I believe Chairman Leahy will shortly be joining us to discuss the DISCLOSE Act. I ask unanimous consent that an op-ed piece authored by former Senator Warren Rudman and former Senator Chuck Hagel--two former Republican Senators who distinguished themselves in this body and have gotten together to write an article about the DISCLOSE Act--be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the duration of today's session, Alex Link, Rob Famigletti, and Samantha Freeman, fellows on my Judiciary Committee staff, be granted floor privileges.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Colorado for his impassioned and eloquent support. I think we recognize that through the course of our country's history, men and women have shed their blood, have laid down their lives in order to protect this experiment in liberty that is the ongoing gift of our country to the rest of the world. When we take that experiment of liberty and turn it over to the special interests, it is a grave occasion. I yield the floor. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, 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. 520, 521, 522, and 523.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is a fascinating development. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I will try. My recollection is that before the super PACs kicked off with all this, 9 percent of the ads were negative in the last election cycle, at a time when 78 percent, I want to say, were negative--or 70 percent. It went from 9 percent being negative the cycle before--the Presidential cycle before--to 70 percent being negative now. That is nearly eight times as much negativity--more than half, nearly three-quarters, where it was less than 1 in 10 before--an explosion of negativity. So we know that is happening. The other thing we know is happening is it is misleading. It is not accurate. It is deceptive. The Annenberg Institute has done a study of the top four outside spenders--outside political spenders that aren't campaigns or parties--these special influence manipulating machines. The top four--they looked at their ads and, if I remember the figure correctly, 76 percent of them contained information that was deceptive.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I was a prosecutor for many years. I was the U.S. attorney for our State. I was the attorney general for our State. When you are prosecuting crimes, there is one very important thing that you always look for. Motive. You look for a motive. And I think one of the things that is obvious to all Americans is that the folks who engage in unlimited election spending do so because they have a motive. Someone may give $1,000 here or there because they are passionate about an issue. They may give $20 because they know the councilman who is running. But these folks who are giving $4 million at a hike, they are doing it because they have a motive, and it is important for the public to know what that motive is. So now you take the next step. If it is unlimited, it is to open the doors for the people who have a motive. If it is secret, what does it tell you about that motive? If it is secret, what it tells you about that motive is that it is a bad motive for the American people. This goes back to the point Senator Landrieu and Senator Merkley were making, whether it is trying to help get your kids through college, not having to pay the increased interest rates, to be able to get a Pell grant or whether it is paying to put food on the table or trying to get a decent job--and Rhode Island still has 11 percent unemployment--you can name your issue. If this special interest, unlimited, secret money was aligned with what the American people want, they would not be fighting about this. They would not care whether it was secret. They need it to be secret. They filibustered this bill because they know those special interest motives are against the public interest, against the interests of the American people. There is no other logic. There is no reason people would give that much money in a race-- unlimited money--if they didn't have a motive. There is no reason they would want their behavior to be secret unless that motive was bad. There is no other explanation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. They don't have children. They don't have aspirations. They don't have souls because they are not human. They don't have goals. They don't have all the things that make us different and make us human. But, evidently, they have the same rights. Because they don't truly exist, it is a legal fact that they are a legal fiction. What that is doing is empowering the people behind the corporation, the people who control the corporation, ultimately.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In effect, that is what they did. The famous expression that ``corporations are people, my friends,'' is the expression actually of Governor Romney. But it sort of attached itself to the Citizens United decision, which doesn't actually use those words. But it does treat corporations as having the same rights in the political process as human beings do. They don't have consciences because they are not human.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I follow up on the points that Senator Merkley made. The comparison he made to the constitutional change that took the Senate from election by State legislators to direct election by the people is very much a model for what is happening here. There was a desire to get the vote away from the special interests and put it in the hands of the actual people. Here it is a desire to get the spending, the money behind the vote, out of the hands of the special interests and back to the people. What Citizens United did was to go backwards, open the flood gates of special interest money, and allow it to be secret. Try to put ordinary voters up against that kind of a force. It is not fair to ordinary voters. It is not right. In some respects it puts the right they are taking up inside out, and that is the right of freedom of speech. I think we all have seen the four freedoms, the posters by Norman Rockwell. Perhaps the most famous of those posters is the one of the fellow in the tan windbreaker jacket, a thin guy. He is standing up tall surrounded by people, clearly at a townhall meeting. Why is he standing and what is he doing? He is speaking. He is having his say. The way Citizens United worked out, they are basically saying we do not have a constitutional right to speak. We have a constitutional right to listen. We have a constitutional right to listen when big money speaks. It is essentially a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-big-money version of the first amendment. When money is speech, which is the principle of Citizens United, guess what. Those with the most money get the most speech. Those who do not have a lot of money do not get a lot of speech, and those who have no money get no speech. That is not what the Founders intended. So there is a strong similarity between the move to take the vote and put it in popular hands and what we are trying to do with disclosure, which is put the money in popular hands. We cannot do that under Citizens United. With the DISCLOSE Act, at least you know what is going on. You can look at the game that is being played. It is cards up on the table. If you are being denied the ability to speak on even terms with the CEO or a billionaire or a major corporation or some big lobbying group, at least you have the right to know what they are doing, what they are saying, what is going on. You can keep score. When you get together, you can get mad and do something about it. Behind the veil of secrecy you cannot even keep score. You do not know what is going on.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor be granted to the following Members of Senator Franken's staff: Whitney Brown and Joel Salomon, for the rest of today's session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the duration of today's session, Alex Link, Rob Famigletti, and Samantha Freeman, who are fellows on my Judiciary Committee staff, be granted floor privileges.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that at 3 p.m. Tuesday, July 17, the motion to proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to S. 3369 be agreed to; that the motion to reconsider be agreed to; and the Senate proceed to the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 3369, the DISCLOSE Act, upon reconsideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 17; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the majority leader be recognized and the time until 12:30 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the second 30 minutes; and that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; finally, that the time from 2:15 until 3 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today at 3 p.m. there will be a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 3369, the DISCLOSE Act, which we have discussed at such length tonight, upon reconsideration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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