Geothermal Exploration Act of 2010

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to help the Pentagon turn energy from a source of risk to a source of advantage. The Department of Defense, DOD, Energy Security Act would decrease the Pentagon's consumption of petroleum, reduce reliance on the grid, and help plan for the future. All of this would help achieve an important goal that we all support: enhancing our national security.

I am grateful to my former colleague on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who introduced the counterpart bill in the House of Representatives. I am also grateful to Senator Bennet for cosponsoring this legislation. I look forward to continuing to work with both of them on this important legislation and on this important issue.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I have focused on the intersection of defense and energy for some time.

The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy. We depend on foreign imports for nearly 60 percent of our oil. Nearly every military challenge we face is either derived from or impacted by our reliance on fossil fuels and foreign energy sources.

The Pentagon is a large microcosm of this even larger problem. The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world-- consuming more energy per day than 85 percent of the world's countries. It is the largest electricity consumer in the federal government and the single largest buyer of fuel in the United States--using 2 percent of our total national consumption.

Energy supply security affects DOD's ability to accomplish its mission, and

efforts to secure supply lines and deliver fuel in-theater directly result in the deaths of service members charged with protecting it. But our military's reliance is not just on the battlefield. At home, defense facilities rely on a fragile national grid, leaving critical assets vulnerable. The Defense Science Board found in its 2008 report ``More Fight--Less Fuel'' that ``critical national security and homeland defense missions are at an unacceptably high risk of extended outage from failure of the grid.''

The Pentagon's energy consumption has serious national security implications, but it also presents opportunities. As the Logistics Management Institute wrote, ``Aggressively developing and applying energy-saving technologies to military applications would potentially do more to solve the most pressing long-term challenges facing DOD and our national security than any other single investment area.''

That is why I am introducing this legislation. The Department of Defense Energy Security Act addresses energy supply and use by decreasing consumption by facilities and vehicles and increasing the use of renewable electricity sources to relieve the Department's reliance on external power sources. In addition, the bill sets overarching policies to implement sustainable acquisition practices, sets new DOD Energy Performance Goals, and requires DOD to develop an Energy Performance Plan and an implementation assessment for accomplishing its goal of deriving 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

Utilizing alternative energy sources and energy efficiency technologies can help our military increase energy reliability and reduce its dependence on oil; improve efficiency in operations, platforms, and vehicles; reduce the costs to taxpayers of military- consumed electricity and fuel; expand portable clean technology options for use in combat and logistics; act as an anchor customer for the alternative fuels and energy efficiency industries; and reduce grid vulnerabilities at our military installations.

Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and foreign sources of energy is a goal we all share. Helping the Defense Department achieve this goal should be a national priority. I urge my colleagues--of both parties--to join me in supporting this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Defense Trade Treaty Implementation Act of 2010.

The purpose of this bill is to provide authority to implement two treaties on defense trade cooperation currently pending before the Senate--one with the United Kingdom and one with Australia. These treaties would facilitate defense cooperation with two close allies by eliminating licensing requirements for certain categories of defense articles.

I have long supported the objectives of these treaties. Indeed, in 2003--before the treaties were negotiated--I introduced legislation that would have provided the President the authority to waive licensing requirements for similar defense trade with the United Kingdom and Australia.

Subsequently, the Bush administration negotiated these treaties, and they were submitted to the Senate in 2007. To date, the Senate has not been able to act on the treaties, in significant part because of confusion and uncertainty about how they would be implemented and enforced in U.S. law.

This legislation would address the problem by providing clear legislative authority under the Arms Export Control Act to implement and enforce the treaties. In particular, it would provide authority to exempt from licensing requirements under the Arms Export Control Act exports of defense articles made in connection with the treaties.

It would provide authority for the President to issue regulations pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act to implement and enforce the treaties. It would provide authority to allow violations or abuses of the treaty to be prosecuted under enforcement provisions of the Arms Export Control Act. It would provide for notification to the Congress of significant exports of defense articles made pursuant to the treaties.

Previous efforts by both the Bush and Obama administrations to develop a viable approach for implementing and enforcing the treaties without new legislation have been unsuccessful to date, and have created unfortunate delays in bringing these treaties into force. I believe that this legislation will put the implementation and enforcement of the treaties on a far sounder and more certain footing, and eliminate the confusion that has led to these delays.

I look forward to working with other members and with the administration on this legislation. It is my hope that passage of this legislation, together with a resolution of advice and consent to the treaties containing appropriate protections for the Senate's role in overseeing arms exports and approving significant future changes to the treaty regime, may allow the treaties to enter into force this year.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Bennett to introduce an important and bipartisan piece of legislation that will help protect American's from identity and financial theft.

As you may have heard in the news, in 2009 Heartland Payment Systems--a national company that processes payments for retailers and restaurants located in nearly all 50 states--was hacked, leaving possibly 100 million people at risk of identity fraud or financial theft. These types of scenarios happen more than we would like and have the potential to keep American's from getting a loan, a new bank account, or--in worst case scenarios--from even paying the monthly bills. This situation is simply unacceptable and this bill will help address these serious problems.

Our bill requires entities such as financial institutions, retailers, and Federal agencies to safeguard sensitive information before it is compromised, investigate possible security breaches, and to notify customers when there is a substantial risk of identity theft or account fraud.

For example, these new requirements would apply to retailers who take credit card information, data brokers who compile private information, and government agencies that possess nonpublic personal information.

My colleague and I modeled our legislation after the data security and breach-response regime established under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, and subsequent regulations. It also builds on existing law to better ensure federal and state regulators comply with the law and to make certain that data security procedures are uniformly applied.

Lastly, we need to replace the current patchwork of State and Federal regulations for identity theft with a national law, like this one, that provides uniform protections across the country. Our comprehensive approach will better serve consumers by making it easier for businesses and government agencies to take the steps necessary to adequately protect all Americans from identity theft and account fraud.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to get this important and necessary bill enacted before it is too late. I think everyone can agree that our identities and bank accounts are some of the most important aspects of our lives and that, if stolen, can at a minimum make life extremely difficult.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.