Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act

Mr. President, along with Senator Joe Manchin--and actually a total of 60 sponsors--I have filed S. 1, which is the Keystone approval bill. It is a very simple, straightforward bill. This is legislation we have seen before in this body. What it does, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, is authorize Congress to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline project.

I have this map in the Chamber to show you the project. It runs from Hardisty in Alberta, Canada, all the way down to our refineries in Texas along the gulf coast.

This project will move 830,000 barrels of oil a day. Some of that will be oil from Canada. Some of that will be domestic oil from the Bakken region in Montana and North Dakota.

This is part of building the infrastructure so we can build a comprehensive energy plan for our country. We are producing more and more oil and gas in our country from shale from places such as the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana, the Eagle Ford in Texas, natural gas from places such as the Barnett and the Marcellus in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

What we are working toward is--some people refer to it as energy independence, but really energy security for our country.

What does that mean? It means we produce more energy than we consume. Obviously, energy has a global market. The market for energy is a global market. We know that. The market for oil and gas is a global market.

But the point is, working together with our closest friend and ally, Canada, we can have North American energy security where we produce more energy than we consume.

Why is that important? That is important because it is about creating jobs. It is important because it is about economic growth. It is important because it is a national security issue.

Why do we continue to rely on oil from the Middle East? Why are we continuing to send dollars to the Middle East where you have--look at what happened in Paris today with an attack by Islamic extremists. One of the ways we fight back, one of the ways we push back is we take control of our own energy destiny. We can do it. We are doing it. Why are gas prices lower today at the pump? Is it because OPEC decided to give us a Christmas present? I do not think so. It is because we are producing far more energy than we ever have before. But to continue to produce that energy, we have to have the infrastructure to move that energy from where it is produced to were it is consumed. That means pipelines. That means roads. That means rail. For electricity, that means transmission. But we cannot have an energy plan for this country that really works without the infrastructure to move that energy safely and effectively. That is what this project is all about.

So why are we here talking about it today? It seems like a pretty straightforward proposition. After all, I think there are something like 19 different pipelines that cross the border. In fact, there are millions of miles of pipelines in this country. Here is a map I have in the Chamber of just some of them. We have millions of miles of pipeline in this country. A lot of them, as you can see, cross the border.

So why are we standing here today talking about another pipeline project? Because for the past 6 years--for the past 6 years--the administration has held this project up. They keep saying: There is a process. As a matter of fact, Josh Earnest, just yesterday, said: Oh, we have a process. Congress should not intervene in the Keystone XL Pipeline approval issue because there is a process. Really, Mr. President, there is a process? Let's see. The TransCanada company filed application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline in September of 2008-- September 2008. If you do the math, that is more than 6 years ago. And there is a process somehow to get to a conclusion?

So that company, which has invested hundreds of millions already, wants to build, ultimately, an $8.9 million project that will move 830,000 barrels of oil a day. And here they are 6 years later still waiting for approval. That is why today we are asking Congress to step forward and do what the American people want.

Keystone is not a new issue. The American people understand this issue. Poll after poll shows the American people, by a margin of about 70 percent to 20-some percent, support this project. Whom do we work for? We work for the people of this great country, and 70 percent of the people of this great country say: Approve the project. After 6 long years, where all of the requirements have been met, approve the project.

But the President, of course, continues to hold it up, and even yesterday issued a veto threat. Why? Why is he wanting to threaten a veto on a project that 70 percent of the American people support? It is really hard to understand, isn't it? Because every time an objection comes up, we have worked to address that objection.

When there was an objection on the route, the company rerouted. So the President says: Well, it is an environmental concern. He says: Well, it is an environmental concern. Really? An environmental concern?

This is what his own study found. After 6 years of study, the State Department, in multiple environmental impact statements--three draft statements and two final environmental impact statements--this is what they found: no significant environmental impact, according to the U.S. State Department environmental impact statements.

That is not something I did. That is not something the company did. That is something the Obama administration did--repeatedly--and came to the same conclusion: no significant environmental impact. In fact, if you do not build the pipeline, you have to move that oil with 1,400 railcars a day.

Now, Canada is going to produce the energy. North Dakota, Montana, other States, are going to continue to produce the energy. So that energy is going to move. The question is, how and where? If we cannot build the pipeline, then it has to go by railcar. So do we really want 1,400 railcars a day moving that product around or do we want it to move more safely, more cost-effectively, with better environmental stewardship through a pipeline? Common sense.

Then there is this idea somehow: Well, Canada is not going to produce that oil if they do not have a pipeline. Wrong. They will move it by rail, and they will build other pipelines. Here are several that are already in the planning stages, as shown on this map. They will move it to the East Coast to refineries they have there or they will send it west and it will go to China.

Now, does that make sense? It does not make sense to the American public, which is why the American public wants to work with Canada as well as produce energy in our country to become energy secure. The idea that we would say no to our closest friend and ally, Canada: We are not going to work with you, we are going to continue to buy oil from the Middle East, and we are going to have you send your oil to China, makes no sense to the American people. And it should not. It should not. That is why they overwhelmingly support this project.

So here we are. We are starting the new Congress. I think, very clearly, in the last election, the people said: We support this project. You saw it time after time with candidate after candidate who supported this project who won their election. But on an even bigger issue, an even bigger message, the people of this great country said: We want the Congress to work together in a bipartisan way to get things done. We

want the Congress to work together in a bipartisan way to get things done.

So here we have legislation that has passed the House repeatedly with a bipartisan majority. Here we have legislation that has bipartisan support in this body. Here we have legislation that the American people overwhelmingly support, after clearly giving the message in the last election that they want us working together to get work done, and the President issues a veto message right out of the gates. Why? For whom? Whom is he working for?

So it is incumbent upon us to work together in a bipartisan way to get this legislation passed. The way we are approaching it--and I see my good friend and colleague from the great State of West Virginia is here. I want to thank him and turn to him, but I want to do it in the form of a question.

It was my very clear sense from the last election--and I think the very clear sense that we all got from the last election--that they want to see Congress working together in a bipartisan way, in an open process to get the important work of this country done.

So with this legislation, it is not just that it is about important energy infrastructure. It is also that we want to return to regular order in this body, offer an open amendment process, allow people to bring forward their amendments, offer those amendments, debate them, and get a vote on those amendments. If they have amendments that can add to and improve this legislation, great, let's have that process. Let's have that debate. Let's have those votes. Let's make this bill as good as we can possibly make it. Then the President needs to work with us. The President needs to meet us halfway and get this done for the American people.

So I would like to turn to my good colleague from the great State of West Virginia and say: Aren't we doing all we can here to try to make sure we are approaching this in a bipartisan way with an open, transparent process to try to build support for this legislation?

Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from West Virginia not only for his support on this project but for his willingness to work hard, to work together to find bipartisan solutions, whether it is this legislation or other legislation. That is what it is incumbent upon us to do. It is not easy, but we have to be willing to engage in the hard work it takes to get to this legislation, to get these solutions in place for the American people.

I again thank the Senator for his leadership. I look forward to continuing to work with the Senator and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come to good solutions. That is what this effort is all about.

I want to turn to the Senator from the State of Montana. The pipeline project goes right through his State. Here is somebody who has dealt with the issue on the House side of Congress and who has the project in his home State. So he is talking on behalf of people where the pipeline is right there.

I would like to turn to him and ask: What are the people in Montana saying? It is fine for somebody far removed from a project to say I am OK or I am not OK with it, but how about the people who are right there on the site? They are directly affected. Tell us what is the sense in the Senator's home State? What is the Senator hearing when he talks to people?

I would like to thank the Senator from Montana again. We are hearing from somebody who is there, who is talking to people, where this project is going to be located, one of the States it would pass through. I thank the Senator for his perspective and for his hard work and commend him for being here and for his continued efforts not only to work with our caucus but to reach out to the Democratic caucus as well and find common ground on this important issue--something the Senator from West Virginia said a minute ago; that is, let's focus on the facts. I think the more understanding we create as to what the facts are, the more this gets done on the merits.

I turn to the Senator from Wyoming--somebody who has long experience with energy, somebody who comes from an energy State, a State that produces a variety of sources of energy, and pose the same question to him. In terms of focusing on the facts, whether it is the environmental aspect, whether it is the jobs, whether it is making our country energy secure, talk to us a little bit about the importance of this kind of vital infrastructure--projects such as Keystone--for our country.

I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his comments today and for his continued hard work in support of the issue. I look forward to working with him again to get this done for the American people.

I turn to our leader on the energy committee, the chairman of the energy committee, the Senator from Alaska, who understands energy. She is from another State that produces a huge amount of energy for this country, wants to produce more, and can produce more but only with the infrastructure to do it. Isn't that what we are talking about here today? This country can have more jobs, more economic growth, and more energy that we produce right here at home. But, Senator, don't we need the infrastructure to move that energy as safely and as cost- effectively as possible?

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska for her leadership on the Energy Committee and also for her willingness to work in an open way on these important issues.

Across this body, on both sides of the aisle, there should be a deep appreciation for her willingness to bring these bills forward so we can debate them and we can offer amendments and we can build the kind of energy future for this country our people so very much want to have.

The Senator from Alaska is somebody who lives and breathes this topic when we talk energy--somebody who is truly committed to it but truly committed to an open dialogue on all types of energy, giving everybody an opportunity to weigh in and build the best energy plan for our country that we possibly can.

So I extend my thanks to her and also my appreciation, and likewise say I look forward to working with her on this issue and on so many important energy issues.

I wish to turn to my colleague from the State of North Dakota and ask her for her perspective on why this project is so important for our country and for the energy future of our country.

I ask unanimous consent to exceed for 5 minutes to wrap up the colloquy.

I want to thank my colleague from North Dakota for speaking on the important points she made, and that is that the energy we are producing in this country is helping consumers at the pump by bringing down prices.

I want to turn to my colleague from Kansas who wants to close this colloquy and address the very point that we need this infrastructure to keep doing that, to benefit our consumers at the pump.

Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from Kansas, and with that we will wrap up the colloquy. I would like to thank my colleagues, and we will be back.

Again, we are looking to work with all of our colleagues here in an open process to offer amendments and pass legislation that is important for the American people.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and with that I yield the floor.

Mr. President, even during moments of intense polarization here in Washington, especially over the past 6 years, it is really kind of refreshing to find a topic--maybe a handful of topics--on which there appears to be bipartisan consensus, and that includes the topic du jour, the Keystone XL Pipeline. I wish to share a few reasons why I believe that is the case.

First, the Keystone XL Pipeline will be good for our economy, and it will be good because it will create jobs. I know there is some hairsplitting out there. Some people say: Well, these are not really good jobs; they are only temporary jobs or some such thing. But the truth is--I will tell you what the President's own administration said about that.

The State Department--President Obama's State Department--said that roughly 42,000 American jobs would be created directly and indirectly from the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Now, it is true that some of these would be temporary construction positions, but by there nature, construction positions are such that you go to work on one job, finish that job, and move on to the next job. If the President has a problem with that, I am not sure what he or anybody else can do about it. There are also other permanent jobs that will be created by this Keystone XL Pipeline related to refining and transporting this oil, and many of them will be in Texas.

As a matter of fact, this pipeline--which will go from Canada into North Dakota and across the United States--will end in southeast Texas, where we have most of our refining capacity here in the United States. It will then be refined into gasoline and other types of fuel.

By the way, one of the blessings of having a plentiful supply of oil as a result of what has happened here in the United States is lower gasoline prices. Boy, those came just in time for the Christmas holidays and put money in people's pockets. It was like a pay raise for hard-working American taxpayers.

The President has also tried to downplay the job-creation impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline by saying it would have a ``nominal'' impact on consumers and the Nation. I am curious. At a time when the national labor participation rate is hovering at its lowest point in three decades and we are coming off of the financial crisis that we have had since 2008--which has finally, after all of these years, recovered many of the lost jobs that were lost as result of that crisis--does the President truly feel that any additional jobs--especially 42,000 additional jobs--are just nominal and not worth the candle? Well, for those people who don't work and are now able to find work, those jobs are not nominal. For the people who are working part time and want to work full time, those jobs will not be nominal. When we need to grow the economy so we create more opportunity for more hard-working taxpayers, no job, in my view, should be deprecated as just a nominal job and not worth having. That is what the President is saying.

I would also ask that the President visit the Texas leg of this pipeline. As a matter of fact, the President did go to Cushing, OK. The irony of that is, once again, the President seems to be taking credit for something he didn't have anything to do with because this domestic portion of the pipeline from Cushing, OK, down to southeast Texas didn't require his approval at all. But what does he do? He holds a press conference there. It is just like the President taking credit for this renaissance of American energy. He has had absolutely nothing to do with it. All of that has happened as a result of private investment on private lands and not on public lands.

As a matter of fact, the Federal Government continues to make it harder and harder to produce more American energy, which, again, according to the laws of supply and demand, as we have seen, will bring down gasoline prices for American consumers. At a time when wages have been stagnant for so long as a result of the policies of this administration, why wouldn't we do something to put more money into the pockets of hard-working American families? Why wouldn't we do that?

Well, I would ask the President to visit the Texas leg of the pipeline, which was constructed and went operational about a year ago this month and is already transporting about 400,000 barrels of oil a day to gulf coast refineries. Of course, again, this does not require his approval, but that didn't stop him from claiming credit for it. I think he would find it edifying and educational to go there.

In Texas alone more than 4,800 jobs were created to construct that gulf coast portion of the pipeline. That includes heavy equipment operators, welders, laborers, transportation operators, and supervisory personnel. When our friends across the aisle spend so much time and effort trying to argue for a minimum wage increase, they turn around at the same time and deny hard-working Americans from earning these high- paying wages and these high-paying jobs.

I was reading an article today about a welder in Texas who went to school to learn how to be a welder. Now, it was not a 4-year liberal arts education such as many of us have had. He didn't go to law school or medical school, but he is earning $140,000 a year as a welder. Those are good jobs. Those are the

kinds of jobs we ought to encourage, and they are the kinds of jobs that the Keystone XL Pipeline would help pay for.

Well, perhaps these kinds of jobs don't count in the President's book because they are not funded by the taxpayer. In other words, they are not a result of stimulus funds. The President seems to believe that the only jobs worth having are those that are paid for by borrowing money, increasing the debt, and having the Federal Government pay for them. We have recently been down that road once before when we had the nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. Remember that? The President said these were shovel-ready jobs.

I remember at the time Speaker Pelosi said they were targeted, temporary, and timely, I think it was. It was the three t's. The President came back later on--when the stimulus did not have the desired effect and the $1 trillion of borrowed money, including interest, didn't create the kind of economic recovery he had hoped for--and said: Well, I guess shovel ready didn't really mean shovel ready, as if it were a joke.

Well, this Keystone XL Pipeline is paid for as a result of private investment and not as a result of tax dollars--your money and my money going into this pipeline. The Texas portion of the pipeline was a $2.3 billion private sector investment. The taxpayer funded infrastructure project seemed to be the only kind of investment the President actually wants to see and encourage. There are many examples, and perhaps the most notorious of which was Solyndra, where the Federal taxpayer was asked to sink a bunch of money into a project that basically flopped because there was no market for what they were making. It was not economically viable. But that is the kind of investment the President wants to encourage while discouraging private investment that creates jobs.

Now, in Texas we are proud of that portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and like so much of what makes my State successful, it was not built by the government. I am proud of the fact that my State is doing better than the rest of the country. I wish the rest of the country would do as well when it comes to job creation and opportunity because I worry, as I think many parents worry, that we are somehow losing the hope and the aspiration for the American dream. When young men and women graduate from college and can't find jobs so they end up living with their parents, we here in Washington say, that is OK, because we will let your parents keep you on their health insurance coverage until you are 26, as if that is supposed to be some kind of answer to their inability to find work commensurate with their education and training.

Well, this is not a government solution. Of course, we all remember the President notoriously said to the private sector: Well, you didn't build that. That certainly doesn't apply here because the private sector did build the Texas portion, and what we would like to do is complete the Canadian-U.S. portion so we can get even more of this oil down to Texas and refine it into gasoline so it is available to consumers here in the United States.

The President acts as though if we don't complete this pipeline, this oil is not going to be produced. That is malarkey. We know that China is starved for natural resources, and Canada is not just going to sit on this valuable natural resource. They are going to build a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean, put it on a tanker, and send it to China or other countries that need those natural resources.

Well, I am beginning to think the one reason why the Texas leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline was so successful is because the Federal Government didn't have anything to do with it. That seems to be the test. If the Federal Government has something to do with it, it ends up not delivering as promised. But if the private sector does it, it has the potential of living up to expectations.

Well, we all know the President has continued to delay making a final decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline. I know last year the distinguished Presiding Officer sponsored the bill in the House that approved the Keystone XL Pipeline. Over here in the Senate, I remember the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, was urging--in almost desperate terms--that Senator Harry Reid allow a vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline after denying it for many months, even years.

Well, we know what happened. It failed because very few Democrats on that side of the aisle decided to support the Keystone XL Pipeline. Perhaps it was because even at that time the President said he was undecided whether to sign it or to veto it. There have been times when the President has said--of course, he says lots of things, but I have learned one thing around Washington, DC: We can't just listen to what people say, we have to watch what they do. The President indicated, with the start of this new Congress following the November 4 election, that he was looking forward to working with the new Congress in a constructive way. I just have to ask you, Mr. President: Is it constructive to issue a veto threat on a piece of legislation before it is even voted out of the energy committee and isn't even on the floor for consideration by the Senate?

The majority leader, Senator McConnell, the senior Senator from Kentucky, has said we are going to have an open amendment process, a procedure many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and actually many on this side of the aisle, haven't experienced under the former majority leader--an open amendment process. I anticipate there are going to be a number of amendments offered, some of which will succeed and some of which will not succeed. I don't know anybody who can tell us right now exactly how this bill will leave the Senate, although I am confident it will pass since there are at least 63 Senators, on a bipartisan basis, who said they will vote for it. As we know, 60 is the magic number in the Senate, so we have a pretty good idea it will pass. But we don't know what other measures will be attached to it, some of which may command more Democratic votes, some of which may make the President more interested in taking another look at this legislation. So to prematurely issue a veto threat before the Keystone XL Pipeline is even voted out of committee, much less comes to the Senate floor, does not strike me as wanting to work with the Congress; just the opposite.

I say enough is enough. That is what we heard from the voters on November 4: Enough is enough. They are sick and tired of the dysfunction in Washington, DC. I heard that story daily back in Texas and around the country as I traveled: Enough is enough. We want Congress to function. We want our elected representatives to work together to find solutions to the problems facing our country, and the No. 1 problem is not enough jobs. There are not enough good jobs for hard-working Americans.

So now the President has, in spite of this, said: I am not going to sign that legislation once it reaches my desk. He said this before the Senate has even acted on it. It is just breathtaking. Is that within the President's authority under the Constitution? Yes, it is. The President can either sign legislation or he can veto legislation. The Constitution gives him that authority. But I think the President ought to have to explain to the American people his reasons for saying he will not sign this legislation. Again, this is the same project his own State Department said would create 42,000 jobs, again at a time when the percentage of people in the workforce is at a 30-year low. While unemployment is coming down, unfortunately a lot of it has to do with the fact that people are not looking for work and have dropped out of the workforce. They have given up. Hopefully, in spite of the Federal Government--and I say it is in spite of the Federal Government--the economy seems to be strong enough to be growing, finally, but we need to continue to have our economy grow. We need to continue to let this American economy create jobs for hard-working American taxpayers.

I say in closing that I hope the President makes his decision not wearing ideological blinders, not just listening to the hard left base of the Democratic Party that thinks we can somehow survive and prosper with only wind turbines and solar panels. By the way, Texas actually produces more electricity on wind energy than any other State in the Nation. We do believe in an ``all of the above'' policy. The President says he does but apparently does

not, at least his actions would so indicate.

So we are missing out on a golden opportunity to further enhance North American energy security with one of our strongest allies, and that is another very important reason for this. Why in the world would we continue to import oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East that have their own problems, in an unstable region of the world, when we could import that oil from our best ally and next-door neighbor, Canada, and in a way that benefits our economy and creates jobs.

I believe what the American people said on November 4 is they want effective, efficient, and accountable government and one that benefits all hard-working Americans and especially hard-working American taxpayers.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson returned to his old elementary school in rural Texas with a major piece of legislation. At a picnic table on the lawn of his school and sitting beside his very first teacher, President Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA.

Our Nation has always held the ideal of education for everyone. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

By far the most important bill in our whole code is that

for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other

sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of

freedom and happiness.

The idea of a strong public education for every child was woven into the fabric of this Nation. But ESEA put that idea into action. It aimed to close the gaps between rich and poor, Black and White, children growing up in the crowded neighborhoods of Philadelphia, to the rural districts of Texas, children with every advantage in the world and kids with disabilities. This law moved our country in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go to close those gaps.

In the coming weeks and months, Congress will have the opportunity to make sure we continue moving our country toward this ideal and to work together to fix the broken No Child Left Behind law, because we as a nation still believe every student should have access to a quality public education, regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money their parents make.

Education and fighting on behalf of children is what drew me to public service in the very first place. When my kids were much younger, I found out their wonderful preschool program might close because of budget cuts. I knew how valuable that program was and how much it was helping our local children, so I put my two young kids in my car and I drove off to the State capitol to explain to our legislators why they couldn't just cut this program. When I got there and was finally able to get one of the legislators to listen to me, he said something I will never forget. He said to me: You can't make a difference. You are just a mom in tennis shoes.

Well, I couldn't believe that, and I was furious. I drove all the way home telling my two little kids in the car that I was going to change that. So I got home, picked up the phone and started calling other parents, and they called other parents, and we held rallies, and we wrote letters. Finally, after it was all said and done, the legislature voted to keep the funding for that preschool program.

Throughout my career, as a preschool teacher, to serving on the local school board, the Washington State Senate, and here in the U.S. Senate, I have been committed to expanding educational opportunities and making sure every kid has someone fighting for them and their future. But that battle is far from over. Now is the time to take another big step forward, putting the ideals of our Nation into action.

The current law, No Child Left Behind, is badly broken and it is time to fix it. The good news is this doesn't have to be a partisan issue. Nearly everyone--Democrats, Republicans, teachers, parents, business leaders--agrees this law needs to be rewritten. So today I wanted to come to the floor to lay out some pretty basic but very important principles I think should guide any bill to fix No Child Left Behind.

For one, we need to work to reduce redundant and unnecessary testing so educators focus on preparing students for college and their career and also ensure we know how all of our students are progressing. We need to continue to hold schools and States accountable for delivering on the promise of a quality education for all our kids so they can compete in the 21st century economy. We need to improve our schools and give them the resources they need so every student does have the opportunity to reach their potential. And I believe we need to expand access to early childhood education so students can go to kindergarten ready to learn.

What is clear to nearly everyone is that No Child Left Behind is not working. For one, the law requires States to set high standards for schools, but it didn't give them the resources they needed to meet those achievement goals. In effect, this law set up our schools for failure. It sets teachers up for failure. It set our students up for failure. That needs to change.

I have heard from parent after parent and teacher after teacher in Washington State who have told me that not only are students taking too many tests, oftentimes the tests are of low quality and are redundant. That needs to change too.

We are still facing inequality in our education system, where some schools simply don't offer the same opportunities. For example, African-American and Latino students are significantly less likely to attend a high school that offers advanced math classes. According to the Department of Education, 30 percent fewer students from low-income backgrounds reach proficiency or higher on assessments compared to their peers of affluent backgrounds. On average, kids from low-income neighborhoods don't have access to qualified

and experienced teachers, as do students from wealthier neighborhoods. That needs to change.

The current law is not working for our States either. I have seen firsthand how No Child Left Behind is not working for my State of Washington. The law is so bad the Obama administration began issuing waivers to exempt States from the law's requirements. Washington State had received a waiver but last year it lost it. As a result, most of the schools in my home State are now categorized as failing. That means that hard-working parents sending their kids to schools in communities such as Spokane in eastern Washington, the Tri-Cities in central Washington, and Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and many others in western Washington are receiving a letter in the mail that says their children aren't getting the type of education we expect in this country.

Not only that, but Washington now has less flexibility in how to use Federal investments in education. That needs to change.

I recently heard from a woman--her name is Lillian, who lives in Shoreline, WA--last year whose son was going into the fourth grade in the same school district where I used to serve as a school board member years ago. Her son has a learning disability. With the help of teachers and specialists in his elementary school he has shown great signs of progress. But then Lillian said she got a letter in the mail 2 weeks before school started describing the school as failing, and that left her worried about her son's education.

Because No Child Left Behind is broken, so many parents and schools and districts across the State of Washington are facing a similar uncertainty, and that is not fair to our students. That needs to change too.

It is time to rewrite No Child Left Behind with something worthy of this Nation's children and their future. In the coming weeks and months, these are some of the core principles I am going to be fighting for. Let us work with our States and districts to reduce unnecessary testing, especially by targeting redundant and low-quality tests. This is an obvious step we need to take and one you won't find much disagreement on.

That doesn't mean we should roll back standards or accountability for schools to provide a good quality education. We need to make sure we establish expectations for our students that put them on a path to competing in the 21st century global economy.

And let me be clear on assessments. We know if we don't have ways to measure students' progress, and if we don't hold our States accountable, the victims will invariably be the kids from poor neighborhoods, children of color, and students with disabilities. These are the students who too often fall through the cracks, and that is not fair. True accountability makes sure we are holding our schools up to our Nation's promise of equality and justice. This is a civil rights issue, plain and simple.

Another reason assessments are important is they help parents monitor their kids' progress. If a school is consistently failing to provide a quality education year after year, parents deserve to know. We shouldn't forget this law provides the Nation's largest Federal investment in K-12 education. It would be irresponsible to ask our taxpayers to spend billions of dollars on education without knowing if it is making a difference in our students' lives. That is a good government principle which Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on and which the taxpayers should have every right to expect.

So let's maintain strong accountability that measures the students' growth with statewide assessments. I believe annual assessments are one of the most important tools we have to make sure our schools are working for every student. We need to make sure these assessments don't lead to unintended consequences. But I would be very concerned about any proposal that rolls back this key student and taxpayer protection and accountability tool.

I believe we need statewide assessments that give parents, civil rights groups, and policymakers the ability to see how students are doing from district to district.

Furthermore, to make sure we are meeting our obligations to all of our students, let's increase funding for schools that have high numbers of children from low-income backgrounds. Rich or poor, every child should get a high-quality education.

The ones who are on the frontlines of this noble work--let's make sure our teachers and principals have the resources they deserve to continue to build their skills so they can best help the students about whom they care so much. Let's improve schools through innovation and with coursework that challenges our students--not just so they earn a diploma but so their diploma means they are truly college- and career- ready.

I believe Congress should only pass an education bill that expands access to preschool programs. This is a particularly important issue to me. As a mom and when I was a preschool teacher, I saw firsthand the kind of transformation early learning can inspire in a child not just to start kindergarten ready to learn but to succeed later in life. That is why law enforcement, business groups, military leaders, and so many others support expanding access to early childhood education.

Congress needs to catch up with the Democratic and Republican Governors and legislators around the country who support investments in early learning, and we need to make sure the investments in our youngest kids that will pay off for generations to come are part of this bill.

Those are just some of the core principles I am going to be focused on as we work together to revamp our Education bill.

Providing an excellent education to all students is a national priority--not just because our children deserve it but because it is one of the best investments we can make to ensure long-term and broad- based economic growth. Businesses and entrepreneurs need the next generation of workers to come in and help them innovate, invent, build, and grow. That is something I hear from my Washington State businesses all the time.

Making sure all students are able to take on the jobs of the 21st century is the only way our Nation will stay economically competitive in the years to come. Other countries are investing massively in education and their students, and we cannot afford to fall behind in this country.

Let me be clear on another point. The only way Congress will be able to fix this law is by working in a bipartisan way. That means Republicans should come to the table ready to work with Democrats to get this done. I know the Republicans are the majority in the Congress, and I welcome our new committee chair, Senator Alexander. I listened carefully to his remarks and thank him for reaching out to begin this process. But parents across the country are expecting us to put partisanship aside and work together for the good of our children.

Secretary Duncan, President Obama, and so many of us here in Congress have made it very clear that we aren't going to accept a bill that hurts students or doesn't live up to the ideals of our great Nation.

There is no question, as Senator Alexander said, that there are some serious differences in the way the two parties approach this, but I am confident, just as we did with the budget last Congress, we can find common ground and move forward if both sides are willing to leave their partisan corners and work across the aisle. Everyone should be able to agree that this law needs to provide every student in every school in every State with a quality education, and that is what I am going to be fighting for.

When President Johnson signed the Education bill, he said he envisioned ``full educational opportunity as our first national goal.'' Our Nation's commitment to that ideal is so important to me and my family. I would not be here in this Senate Chamber without it. When I was 15 years old, my dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In just a few short years he could no longer work at the five-and-dime store he ran. Without warning, my family fell on hard times. But instead of falling through the cracks, my six brothers and sisters and I got a good education because of our public schools, and we all went to college with the support from the program we now know as Pell grants. My mother was

able to get the skills she needed to get a job through a worker training program at Lake Washington Vocational School.

Today I believe we need to continue to make education a national priority so more families can seize the opportunities that are only possible with access to a good education. So I am glad to be here on the floor today with the chairman of our committee, and I call on Democrats and Republicans to work together to fix this law.

For the child who may not live in the best neighborhood or the kid whose parents are struggling to make ends meet, for every student who deserves the chance to learn, grow, and thrive--I hope we can work together to write a bill to make sure every child in this country gets a quality education. Let's make sure our country continues to have the best workforce the world over. Let's deliver on Jefferson's promise of education as the foundation for freedom and happiness.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to say that nothing has changed in Cuba since Cuban arms were captured on this North Korean ship going through the Panama Canal a year and a half ago, just after the Obama administration started its secret negotiations with the Cuban Government--not the regime, not its mindset, nor its oppression of its people.

This is the essence of the regime. They put this missile system and MiGs in a container ship going through the Panama Canal, hid them under tons of sugar in violation of U.S. Security Council resolutions. It was the most significant violation of security council resolutions as its relates to North Korea in quite some time, and certainly the biggest violator in all of the Western Hemisphere.

We could not trust the Castro regime then, and we cannot trust it now. What we can trust are the voices of those who promote human rights and democracy who have been arrested and rearrested time and time again, year after year, for demanding nothing more than their ability to speak their minds freely, openly, and without fear.

Voices such as Berta Soler, the leader of the Ladies in White--the Ladies in White are a group of women who each Sunday travel to mass dressed in white, normally holding a gladiola--peacefully. These are women whose husbands or sons languish in Castro's jail simply because of their political views. And as they march to church, they are savagely beaten by state security.

Berta Soler, the leader of the Ladies in White, said:

Sadly, President Obama made the wrong decision. The freedom

and democracy of the Cuban people will not be achieved

through these benefits that he's giving--not to the Cuban

people--but to the Cuban government.

The Cuban government will only take advantage to strengthen

its repressive machinery, to repress civil society, its

people and remain in power.

Or the voice of Yoani Sanchez, a prominent Cuban blogger and independent journalist, who said, ``Alan Gross was not arrested for what he did but for what could be gained for his arrest. He was simply bait and they were aware of it from the beginning. Castroism has won, though the positive result is that Alan Gross has left alive the prison that threatened to become his tomb.''

Or the voice of Rosa Maria Paya, the daughter of Oswaldo Paya, the island's most prominent and respected human rights advocate, who was killed in what the regime calls an automobile accident, what many of us call an assassination. His whole effort was under the existing Cuban Constitution to petition his government under that constitution for changes in the government, of which he amassed thousands of signatures of average Cubans across the island, and the regime saw that as such a threat that he was run off the road and, sadly, killed.

His daughter Rosa Maria Paya said:

The Cuban people are being ignored in this secret

conversation, in this secret agreement that we learned today.

The reality of my country is there is just one party with all

the control and with the state security controlling the whole

society.

If this doesn't change, there's no real change in Cuba. Not

even with access to Internet. Not even when Cuban people can

travel more than two years ago. Not even that is a sign of

the end of the totalitarianism in my country.

Or another voice, the voice of Sakharov prize winner Guillermo Farinas, who spoke for many Cuban dissidents when he said this:

Alan Gross was used as a tool by the Castro regime to

coerce the United States. Obama was not considerate of Cuban

citizens and of the civil society that is facing this

tyrannical regime.

In Miami, Obama promised he would consult Cuba measures

with civil society and the non-violent opposition. Obviously,

this didn't happen. That is a fact, a reality. He didn't

consider Cuba's democrats. The betrayal of Cuba's democrats

has been consummated.

As you can see, Farinas is in the midst of being arrested by state security simply for a peaceful protest.

Or the powerful voice of the husband of Berta Soler, Angel Moya, a former political prisoner of the Black Spring in 2003 when Fidel Castro imprisoned 75, including 29 journalists along with librarians and democracy activists. He said this:

The Obama Administration has ceded before Castro's

dictatorship. Nothing has changed. The jails remain filled,

the government represents only one family, repression

continues, civil society is not recognized and we have no

right to assemble or protest.

The measures that the government of the United States has

implemented today, to ease the embargo and establish

diplomatic relations with Cuba, will in no way benefit the

Cuban people. The steps taken will strengthen the Castro

regime's repression against human rights activists and

increase its resources, so the security forces can keep

harassing and repressing civil society.

These are the voices of those who languished inside the belly of the beast. These are the voices not of this romantic image that some have of Castro's Cuba but of the reality, the harsh reality--people who, simply to be able to promote the basic freedoms that we enjoy here in the United States and most people in the Western world, are constantly thrown into jail for long periods of time, beaten and oppressed.

Those are the voices of freedom inside of Cuba. These are the men and women who have been arrested and suffered under the oppressive hand of the Cuban regime for the belief in the right of all Cubans to be free. These are the people who know that nothing--nothing--has changed. The regime, after reaping the benefits of what in my view is a bad deal, is still arresting peaceful protesters, including more than 50 at the end of December.

As a matter of fact, on New Year's Eve when most of us were celebrating the advent of the new year, there was an effort inside of Cuba. Tania Bruguera and a series of other human rights activists and political democracy activists were going to hold in Revolution Square a 1-minute opportunity for any Cuban who wanted to come forth and talk about what they aspired to for their freedom, what they aspired to for the Cuba of tomorrow to be. It was going to be a peaceful demonstration and an exposition of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of Cuba's political dissidents and human rights activists inside their country. In that peaceful effort, dozens of human rights activists and political dissidents, including the organizers, were arrested before they ever got to the event. The event was totally suppressed.

Weeks after the administration's deal with the Castro regime--even then--the simple act of speaking for 1 minute about what your views would be of the future were repressed. So let me say that while I welcome the news that Cuba has released 53 political prisoners and that the administration has finally shared the list of names it negotiated with the Castro regime, this entire process has been shrouded in secrecy.

Reuters reports that the administration officials said the list was created in June or July. But some of the 53 were released well before June, before the list was supposedly put together. As a matter of fact, 14, to be exact, were released 6 to 8 months before the December 17 announcement. One was released over a year ago.

So, clearly, the list that supposedly was put together by the administration with the regime could not have envisioned or could not take credit for

those who were released well before the list was put together. Many had simply finished their unjust prison terms. Clearly, keeping the list secret provided the regime the flexibility to define ``mission accomplished.'' The fact is, the release of 53 political prisoners does not mean there are no longer political prisoners inside of Cuba. Human rights groups had stated, prior to the President's speech in December, that there were over 100 long-term political prisoners in the country, and there were 8,900--to be exact, 8,889--political detentions in Cuba last year--an appalling number--8,889.

In short, while 53 political prisoners have been let out of jail, the same corrupt jailer is still ruling the country. The Castros have a long history. I have followed this not only for all of my career of 23 years in the Congress, but even before that. They have a long history of rearresting these political and human rights activists whom they previously released.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

I ask unanimous consent to be able to continue for about 10 minutes.

Mr. President, the fact is that as someone who has spoken out time and again on the brutal repression of the Cuban people under the Castro regime, someone whose family has suffered the consequences, I believe the agreement this administration has reached with the Castro regime is one-sided and misguided. It fails to understand the nature of the regime that has exerted its authoritarian control over the Cuban people for over 55 years. Now, no one wishes that the reality in Cuba were more different than the Cuban people and Cuban Americans that have fled the island in search of freedom.

In December, the same month that the President announced changes to U.S. policies, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a group that works within Cuba, documented 489 political arrests, bringing the total number of political arrests during the first 11 months of 2014 to nearly 8,900.

This is the regime that imprisoned an American citizen for 5 years for distributing communications equipment on the island. Releasing political prisoners today in Cuba is meaningless if tomorrow these individuals can be arrested again and denied the right to peacefully pursue change in their own country. It is a fallacy that Cuba will change just because an American President believes that if he extends his hand in peace, the Castro brothers will suddenly unclench their fists.

As you see from the quotes I have read, a majority of democracy activists on the island, many whom I have met with in the past, have been explicit that they want the United States to become open to Cuba only when there is a reciprocal movement by the Castro brothers. They understand that the Castros will not accede to change in any other way. In my view and in theirs, the United States has thrown the Cuban regime an economic lifeline. With the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, Cuba is losing its main benefactor, but it will now receive the support of the United States, the greatest democracy in the world.

This is a reward that a totalitarian regime does not deserve. It is a reward that at the end of the day perpetuates the Castro regime's decades of repression. The regulatory changes the regime has won, which are clearly intended to circumvent the intent and spirit of U.S. law and the U.S. Congress, present a false narrative about Cuba that suggests that the United States and not the regime is responsible for its economic failure. So let's be clear. Cuba's economic struggles are 100 percent attributable to a half century of failed political and economic experiments that have suffocated Cuban entrepreneurs. In Cuba private business is controlled by the Cuban government--most significantly the military--with the benefits flowing directly to the regime's political and military leaders.

Cuba has the same political and economic relations with most of the world. But companies choose not to engage because of political, economic, and even criminal risks associated with investment on the island, as exhibited by the arbitrary arrests of several foreign investors from Canada, England, and Panama in just recent years.

To also suggest that Cuba should be taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism is alarming while Cuba harbors American fugitives such as Joanne Chesimard, a cop killer who is on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists for murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She is not the only one who is a cop killer inside of Cuba from the United States. There is also Cuba's colluding with North Korea, as I showed before, to smuggle jets, missile batteries, and arms through the Panama Canal in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution, and for giving refuge to members of FARC from Colombia and members of ETA from Spain, groups that the State Departments has recognized as foreign terrorist organizations.

Now, finally with respect to the President's decision to attend the Summit of the Americans, I am extraordinarily disappointed that we intend to violate our own principles laid down in the Inter-American Democratic Charter in 2001, on the Summit being a forum for the hemisphere's democratically elected leaders. This action disavows the charter, and it sends the global message about the low priority that we place on democracy and respect for human and civil rights.

So in this new Congress I urge my distinguished colleague, the now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Corker, to hold hearings on this dramatic and mistaken change in policy. I will keep coming to this floor to address at length all of the issues I have raised. I will come to this floor again and again to expose one of the most oppressive, repressive, and undemocratic regimes in the world.

To those of my colleagues who herald this agreement and for those in the press who still live with the mistaken romanticism of the Castros' revolution and who speak out about human rights abuses and democratic movements all over the world, it is so hypocritical to be so silent--a deafening silence when it comes to the democratic and human rights movement inside of Cuba.

I have listened to many eloquent speeches of my colleagues about human rights violations and democracy movements in many parts of the world. But on Cuba their silence is deafening.

This does not end here. It does not end today with one speech. It surely will not end until the people of Cuba are truly free.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I know my colleagues are coming to the floor to talk about various amendments. It is likely that on Tuesday we will start voting on at least the pending amendments we have discussed so far. I come to the floor today to talk about the proposal by TransCanada Corporation and about the fact that, obviously, there are some here who want to give an expedited approval to that and usurp the President, who needs to review this project in detail to make sure we understand the interests of various people, property owners, and people affected by the pipeline.

One particular issue in this debate is why Congress should be hurrying to give a special interest permitting go-ahead while the President still has issues to address and as do the local communities. I know many of my colleagues are going to come to the floor to talk about those special interest concerns, as well as the issues of energy efficiency, property rights, climate change, and a whole host of priorities. But I am here today to talk about an issue I think is particularly important, which is the fact that tar sands has a loophole and doesn't pay into the oilspill liability trust fund.

Both of my colleagues, Senator Markey and Senator Wyden, are going to be putting forward amendments to close this loophole. As a country we have made sure the taxpayers aren't stuck with the tab of cleaning up oil spills. The principle behind that is to keep our waters safe and to keep our communities from paying the cost of this pollution. It means really to have commonsense laws on the books providing that polluters pay for cleanup. So that is the principle that drives the oilspill liability trust fund. It is something we have had in place for a while.

Basically, what the oilspill liability trust fund means is simply that American taxpayers won't be left holding the bag for the responsibility of spills that happen. We currently in law have a loophole that means that companies that produce the tar sands don't have to pay into the trust fund. That is because they are considered as synthetic petroleum. So just by the definition, they basically have had a loophole. It is important to me, as the United States considers whether a pipeline should be built across our country that would include these tar sands, which is very thick and heavy material and it is often diluted with lighter oil so it can be easier to handle. But when the spills happen, and it spills in water as we saw with the Kalamazoo spill, it leaves a thicker oil behind that usually sinks to the bottom of the water. That makes it hugely expensive to clean up and really almost nearly impossible to clean up.

These concerns are driving us to make sure that as the United States and Canada continue to look at tar sands production, we are getting the technology in place to deal with this and to get the job done and to make sure that those who are liable for those

kinds of spills are actually paying into a fund that would help clean up the mess.

That is why it is so important that the Senate take up action on one of these amendments, so that we will be paying into the oilspill liability trust fund for any pipeline that is carrying this crude material.

I want to go back to why this trust fund was created and why it was so important. The oilspill liability trust fund was created in 1986 as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act. This bill was signed by President Reagan, but it took 4 more years and a major disaster before the country actually funded the oilspill liability trust fund, and that disaster was Exxon Valdez. My colleague from Alaska will be on the floor later today, and I am sure she could talk a lot about this issue as well. I had many conversations with the late Senator Ted Stevens about this issue, and there were various times when we increased payments into the oilspill liability trust fund. When one comes from the State of Washington and Pacific waters and when one comes from Alaska, how we clean up these oil spills is incredibly important to our economies.

What happened in 1989 is that an oil tanker hit a reef and ended up spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. It didn't take long for those pristine waters of Prince William Sound in Alaska to be impacted. So the impacts of the Exxon Valdez disaster were devastating not just to Prince William Sound but to the entire Pacific Northwest, and the total cost of that cleanup was $2.5 billion.

Ten years ago, a Federal judge ordered Exxon to pay $6.7 billion to thousands of Alaskans affected by that oil spill. Fishermen in the Northwest lost more than $300 million as a result of that oil spill. At the time, the livelihood of individuals was impacted and, obviously, the wildlife was impacted. It killed sea otters, harbor seals, and approximately 250,000 birds. The images of all this wildlife are seared into our memories even 25 years after the spill.

When the gulf spill just recently happened, we revisited a lot of those issues because we wanted to make sure we were getting things right. It was very interesting to see the environmental effects years later and some of the things that still had not recuperated from the oil spill in Prince William Sound.

In 1990 Congress passed the Oil Spill Pollution Act, and it was signed into law by President Bush. It added sweeping improvements to the oil spill response and held parties responsible. It established the mechanism actually to invest in the oilspill liability trust fund. Specifically, the bill said: Let's have a per-barrel tax to raise the revenue for the fund. So today that is an 8 cents per-barrel tax on oil products.

As I mentioned, this was signed into law by President Bush, who specifically praised the funding of the oilspill liability trust fund. He said that ``the prevention, response, liability, and compensation components fit together into a compatible and workable system that strengthens the protection of our environment.''

The reason I am bringing that up is because if the oilspill liability trust fund was good enough for oil products promoted by a Republican President, then it ought to be good enough for us in Congress to add tar sands. That literally was just not thought of under the current definition because of the way the definition was written. Because it is a synthetic fuel, they have a loophole. It is a question whether we are going to close this loophole or whether we are going to let them pay zero into the trust fund.

The fund is used to pay for immediate cleanup costs and spills in navigable waters. This is a very important point. Some people would say: Well, aren't people just liable for their own mess, and why don't they just clean it up?

I can tell you that in trying to protect Puget Sound and trying to clean up the waters off the coast of Washington, you might think it would be easy to figure out where the oil came from. It is not. When you have a busy waterway like Puget Sound, and all of a sudden somebody sights an oil slick or oil product in the water, they don't know how serious it is. It takes months and months, sometimes years, to figure out where the pollution came from.

Yes, in the case of Exxon Valdez we had a ship that hit a reef and caused a problem. But in many cases, sometimes you don't know where the spill is coming from. A lot of people will say: Well, it wasn't us. Or they start this process. An oil spill needs an immediate response, and that is why we established the oilspill liability trust fund--to have an immediate response so that we are not sitting around waiting for weeks and months to figure out who did the oil spill, and so somebody can start the process immediately and work with the Coast Guard to actually clean it up.

You would think this doesn't happen that frequently, but it happens a lot more frequently than people realize. That is why an immediate fund is important, and that is why everybody who is producing oil should pay into it. Yet there is a loophole in the law, so the per-barrel tax doesn't apply to tar sands.

In 2011 the IRS issued a ruling stating that the tar sands imported into the United States were not subject to the excise tax on petroleum. The ruling was actually based on a 1980 House Ways and Means Committee report that crude oil does not include tar sands. As I said earlier, it is considered synthetic. Therefore, according to the IRS, it is not subject to the tax.

We should simply clean this up and have those responsible for their mess also be responsible for paying in to clean it up. When the oilspill liability trust fund was established, it was intended to be a mechanism for all oil spills--not the definition of oil as a product.

Congress should fix this next week when we vote on this legislation and figure out exactly how to make sure the Commandant of the Coast Guard would have the tools to deal with this.

I, too, have concerns about the fact that we don't really have the tools yet to accurately clean up tar sands. When the Commandant of the Coast Guard was before a commerce hearing just a year ago--because I have a great deal of concern about the moving of this product on a variety of transportation means--I asked him about tar sands because the last thing we want to see is product out on our waterways. He said: Our technology is not as sophisticated when you have tar sands. They are heavier, they sink into the water, into the ocean bottom, so it is a challenge for us. Once it settles on the sea floor, our technology is lacking in that regard.

Basically, I am finding that some of the dirtiest oil out there does not pay into the oilspill trust fund, and we don't even have the mechanisms for cleaning up. Unfortunately, we learned that lesson very hard in the 2010 Enbridge pipeline, which was owned by another Canadian company, along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. It ruptured, and it spilled 1 million gallons of tar sands into the river.

This is a picture of that cleanup and the process, which was $1.2 billion that was spent. So for those of you who don't know Kalamazoo, it was an incredible economic, environmental, and historic issue for the people of Michigan. The river was closed for business for 18 months after that spill. More than 35 miles of the river had to be off limits because it was difficult to clean up.

Today, 4 years later, they are still impacted. As I said, the cost was $1.2 billion because they had to dredge the bottom of the river. So any oil spill of that magnitude is damaging. Yet, when we look at this issue, the fact that these tar sands were sinking to the bottom made that dredging even more serious.

It is the reason why we need to make sure these tar sands are taxed just as any other oil that is produced in the United States and pays into this trust fund. A Cornell University study found that ``this spill affected the health of hundreds of residents, displaced residents, hurt businesses, and caused a loss of jobs'' in Kalamazoo. This study is located online at: https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/ ilr.cornell.edu/files/GLI_Impact-of-Tar-Sands-Pipeline-Spills.pdf.

I think it is just the start of what the challenges will be for us when we allow this kind of tar sands development to move through the United States. Our spill responders are very skilled. First, they know we need to do everything we

can to prevent spills, to begin with. They are developing technologies to respond to the case of an emergency. They are doing everything they can to use this trust fund.

So we need to make sure we are having those who are producing this product pay into the trust fund. We need to make sure we are closing this loophole. So my colleagues--as I said, Senator Wyden and Markey-- have been working on this issue for some time. Senator Wyden, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, I know he feels very strongly they should be paying into the oil spill liability trust fund and paying their fair share of revenue. I know Senator Markey has worked on this issue in the House of Representatives before coming to the Senate.

So we need to make sure people understand that dredging is not good enough, that our country needs a plan, that we need not just to rush through this pipeline and basically to think that we have all of the technology, all of the methods, all of the appropriate emergency funds to clean this up. We need to make sure we are not sitting here arguing with a company--a Canadian company--that just wants us to clean up the mess and leave the U.S. taxpayer paying the bill.

In fact, there was some debate in the Kalamazoo spill whether the Enbridge company had hit their liability cap and so the trust fund should pay for it, even though they never paid into the trust fund.

So are we going to let the American taxpayers clean up a Canadian oil mess at our expense--that we paid in--and everybody is affected by that? I think we should slow down this process and make sure we are getting things like the oil spill liability trust fund right and that we are getting this added to this legislation before it moves out of the Senate.

I know my colleagues will get a chance to look at this next week. As I said, we will probably start voting early next week on some of these amendments that are being offered. But I hope my colleagues will close these loopholes and make sure that the U.S. citizen and taxpayer is not left on the hook paying for oil spill responsibility that should be the responsibility of these individual companies. I know we are expecting some of our other colleagues to come to the floor shortly to speak on their amendments.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business

Mr. President, these will be my first remarks of the 114th Congress. I am encouraged by the commitment of many of my colleagues, including the majority leader, to restoring the Senate as one of America's great institutions. It is time for us to get to work. We begin this Congress with a number of urgent priorities--not the least of which is job creation.

More than 9 million Americans are still unemployed. More significantly, perhaps, millions more have given up looking for work. The latest jobs report from the Department of Labor shows that the labor force participation rate is only 62.8 percent--one of the lowest levels in 36 years. This number matters because it reflects the size of the U.S. workforce. It reflects how many working-age Americans have a job or are actively looking for one.

Now, some people have suggested we should take heart in the latest job figures, that this points to an improving economy. I disagree with that. I am not at all satisfied with these employment numbers, particularly with the fact that only 62 percent of eligible members of the labor force actually are choosing to participate.

To me, a shrinking workforce points to a weak economy. Boosting the job market is important to boosting future economic growth. I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance job-creating legislation that has a positive impact on American's daily lives. Fortunately, dozens of job bills were passed during the last term of Congress by the House of Representatives.

These ideas deserve consideration and debate in this Chamber. I think in the new Congress, these ideas will receive that consideration. I am aware that there is likely to be disagreement about the details, disagreement about the merits of some of the progrowth ideas that have come over to us from the House of Representatives, as well as proposals concerning energy and health care, to name a few. But resolving our differences is part of what make this Chamber and our country unique. In a floor speech early last year, Leader McConnell said: I am certain of one thing. The Senate can be better.

I think that is one of the messages from the American people in last November and last December's election. The American people believe the Senate can be better. We each have a responsibility and a role in making the Senate better. We could start by legislating through the committee process. We have begun doing that already. Instead of backroom deals, pushed through at the last minute, which has been the order of the day in past years, bills should be thoroughly debated and vetted--first in committee and then on the Senate floor.

The issues of our day deserve that attention. Forging consensus takes effort, but that is how the Senate is supposed to work. Our consideration next week will demonstrate that this is a new day in the Senate. I look forward to being a part of the debate and the amendment process on the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal.

Offering amendments is a way in which each of us can have input on the legislation at hand--input on behalf of our constituents, the people who sent us here. For too long the amendment tree has been filled by the majority leader, essentially limiting the right of every Member to voice the concerns and opinions of the people they represent, essentially limiting the our right to represent the people of our States who sent us here.

Instead of a series of continuing resolutions, we should return to the process of 12 separate appropriations bills. In doing so, we could carefully assess Federal spending and reduce waste, and I think the American people sent that message to us also in November and December. The Federal debt has reached unprecedented levels, forcing us to make tough decisions on how to do more with less.

With regard to national defense, I look forward, during the 114th Congress, to serving as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower. Our subcommittee has a wide range of oversight responsibilities, including the procurement, sustainment, and research and development needs of the Navy and Marine Corps.

From classified briefings and other hearings with senior officials in the Navy and intelligence community, I am well aware of the imminent and emerging threats facing our sea services. America should maintain its ability to project power around the world while upholding our obligations to our friends and allies.

Our Navy is now the smallest it has been since World War I, demanding, I believe, a robust investment in sea power.

In the coming weeks the Seapower Subcommittee will hold hearings to determine whether the President's budget proposals for the Department of the Navy are sufficient to meet our national security requirements. Following these hearings, we will draft the Defense authorization bill to deliver important capabilities and support for our sailors and marines. This support includes funding for construction of various types and classes of ships, such as aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, submarines, and large and small surface combatants.

I wish to note that supporting the Department of Defense is best done when Congress legislates under regular order. The Republican-led Senate

should take up a defense authorization bill and a defense appropriations bill, and we are committed to doing so. Regular order will help provide our military planners with valuable budget predictability--something they have suffered without in past years.

I was very pleased to learn this week that Chairman McCain plans for the Armed Services Committee to mark up a defense authorization bill before Memorial Day. Our committee did that under the leadership of Senator Levin last year, but where this Senate fell down on its responsibility is that we didn't get the bill to the floor until December, and then it was in a rushed and unamendable form.

Our goal under regular order is for us to take up the bill on the floor this summer and have a conference report between the House and the Senate reported before August. I am heartened that Chairman McCain intends to do this. I am heartened by the commitment of the distinguished majority leader that we will indeed take up that legislation before the end of the fiscal year.

I should also observe that, absent congressional action, budget sequestration will return to the Defense Department in October of this year. Sequestration remains one of the greatest challenges facing our military. Unless we take action, the ability of our military and our industrial base to react to unforeseen contingencies will be severely eroded, and there will undoubtedly be unforeseen contingencies. There are always unforeseen contingencies, and we will be unprepared for them unless we take action to prevent sequestration.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Budget Committee, I will work to help forge a bipartisan path so we can avert a return to the across-the-board defense cuts under sequestration. I am so pleased that a bipartisan task force within the Armed Services Committee is already taking shape to discuss this issue. We will begin to have discussions beginning Monday and Tuesday of next week.

With regard to commerce, I also look forward to assuming the chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. My chief focus will continue to be the deployment and adoption of broadband in rural America--something I am interested in as a Senator from Mississippi and something the distinguished Presiding Officer is interested in as a Senator from Louisiana.

Broadband has become a vital economic engine in this country and around the world. In many ways, the proliferation of the Internet is like the construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. We need to ensure that people in rural areas have the same quality broadband as those in urban areas. To that end, our committee will continue to examine ways to foster broadband growth and development. We also need to find ways to make more spectrum available for wireless, which can help spur innovation and economic growth in the mobile broadband space.

I also expect the Senate this year to deal with legislation regarding the Environmental Protection Agency and the Obama administration's environmental executive overreach. The administration has proposed a litany of costly environmental rules, targeting everything from coal- fired powerplants, to small streams, to small ponds. Many would cause significant economic harm, while providing little or no help to the environment--no help to the environment but significant economic harm. By EPA's own estimates, its recently proposed ground-level ozone rules could cost taxpayers as much as $44 billion per year, making it the most expensive rulemaking to date. Meanwhile, EPA's clean powerplant rule could lead to a loss of 224,000 jobs each year. These costs are staggering.

I am pleased that the final omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2015, which was passed in December, included limits on the controversial waters of the United States proposal, which regulates small ponds, streams, and puddles. However, I remain committed to ensuring that this rule will not be implemented at all. By broadening the definition of ``waters of the United States,'' Washington bureaucrats would potentially regulate puddles and ditches on farms and in backyards. Is this really what is necessary to protect the environment? Is this really what the American people require?

These regulations would have significant impact on the State of Mississippi. Our economic growth depends on agriculture, and it depends on manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries.

With each new environmental regulation, the administration is compounding the financial burden on the American people without delivering any environmental benefits. We can have clean air and we can have clean water without losing 224,000 jobs. We can have clean air and water without the cost of $44 billion per year for one single regulation.

Low-cost and reliable energy is at the core of economic growth. Economic gains from the abundance of affordable energy could be lost if these rules are allowed to be put into place. In an economy desperate for growth, a regulatory onslaught is the worst way to encourage jobs and investment.

The American people also want us to address the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare. I was particularly interested in the thoughtful remarks of the Senator from Delaware, who spoke immediately before me. The remarks of my distinguished colleague suggests that Members on both sides of the aisle heard the message from the American people in November and December in the elections. I think both sides recognize that the Affordable Care Act is not affordable and as a matter of fact is causing great hardship and pain to the majority of the American people. So I am pleased to hear Members on the other side of the aisle at least acknowledge that many major, significant changes need to be made to ObamaCare.

Overall disapproval of the President's health care law is at an alltime high of 56 percent. Americans are suffering under the law's mandates and taxes. Many are faced with the financial burden of higher copays and higher deductibles. This is a reality.

I must say that I appreciate the remarks of the distinguished senior Senator from New York recently when he acknowledged that passing ObamaCare in the way previous Congresses did was a mistake, that most Americans were satisfied with their coverage and it was a mistake to turn that entire system on its head to solve a problem which we very much needed to solve with regard to the uninsured and underinsured.

There was a better way to provide health insurance to those individuals without disadvantaging the vast majority of people who were satisfied with their health care and who now find themselves in a much worse position.

Congress has the responsibility to ease the burden of ObamaCare by repealing the law's most onerous provisions. I would like to repeal the entire act and start over with some good aspects that we could incorporate into a better bill but also start off with a better way to provide health care for Americans and provide those who were uninsured with the opportunity to get insurance.

At the very least, we should pass legislation restoring the 40-hour workweek. I hope this is one of the things my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about. I note that the President of the United States has threatened to veto Affordable Care Act amendments that would restore something that has become very traditional in the United States--the 40-hour workweek. It is very surprising to me that it would be on that proposal that the President of the United States would say: No, I will not even sign legislation to restore something as traditional as the 40-hour workweek.

We need to repeal the medical device tax, and clearly there are well over 60 votes in this body today to do just that. We need to exempt veterans from the employer mandate, to provide relief to rural hospitals, and we need to repeal the health insurance tax. I hope we can do that, and I hope the sounds I hear from the other side of the aisle indicate that we can reach bipartisan consensus and send legislation to the President persuading him that there is such broad support for that and he should sign it.

We can do better for the American people than the higher copays, the higher deductibles, and the broken promises they received under the

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

Mr. President, I know we are all concerned right now with the progress that is going to be made on the pipeline, and I would like to make a few comments about it.

I have three charts. Let us look at this one from Oklahoma. I want to remind everyone that we had a visitor to the State of Oklahoma--the only time, I understand, the President has been in Oklahoma. President Obama came to Cushing, OK.

Let me explain where Cushing, OK, is. It is in the central part of the State, and it is the hub of all the pipelines--all the way from Canada down to New Mexico. Of course this is the pipeline in question here that we have been talking about over and over now for months and months and months, and it is one we understand just how great it would be. So the President, knowing this is very popular--and this trip was, in fact, actually before the election--made a trip to Oklahoma and talked about how good--well, I will actually read the quote. Keep in mind this was in Cushing, OK, right in the middle of the hub of the pipelines going through. The President said he was directing his administration ``to make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done.''

That sounded real good. The problem was everyone in Oklahoma knew he wasn't telling the truth. I don't like to stand here and use the ``L'' word, because nothing really gets done by it, but he has done everything since that time to destroy the pipeline.

The President was making the statement then that he was not going to stand in the way of furthering the production of this pipeline to go down south through Texas. Well, there is good reason for that, because he couldn't do anything about it. It doesn't go across any international borders. But where he has blocked this is where he can do so, because it crosses the international border between Canada and the United States.

I want to mention that there is a person who has been very active in the political realm. His name is Tom Steyer. He has been very much involved. Quite frankly, I don't object to people who are right forward and honest about what their intentions are. This is the man--Tom Steyer, who is a billionaire--and he has had several meetings and said that he was going to put up $50 million of his own money and raise an additional $50 million--that is $100 million--to put in races in the coming election, meaning this last November.

It is my understanding that, in the final analysis, he wasn't able to raise the extra money, but of his own money--and these are his words, not mine--he put in $70 million. Mr. Steyer said:

It is true we expect to be heavily involved in the midterm

elections . . . we are looking at a bunch of . . . races . .

. . My guess is that we'll end up being involved in 8 or even

more races.

So we are talking about some $70 million that was going to be involved, and I would say that wasn't a real good investment because he didn't win any of those 8 races and actually netted out a loss of 9 races.

So again, he has a stated goal to try to do two things with his influence and his money. Again, I don't criticize him for this. He believes in his cause. His two causes are No. 1, to try to stop any further development on Federal land--in other words, to try to do what he can with some of the suggested pollution and all these things that are supposed to go with it--and another thing is to stop the pipeline.

Again, he was the one who made the statement. He also has been very influential in this administration. It has been reported--this was about 2 weeks ago--that he had visited the Obama White House some 14 times, which led a member of the watchdog group Public Citizen to say: ``Tom Steyer has not just got the ear of the President, but he clearly has the President's attention.''

Now, these White House meetings were often with President Obama's counselor and chief environmental adviser John Podesta. We all know John Podesta. We have known his background for a long time. Personally, I have known him. He has lobbied for Mr. Steyer to be the U.S. Secretary of Energy, saying, ``I think he would be a fabulous choice for energy secretary, and I've let my friends in the administration know that.'' The reports also show that Mr. Steyer and Mr. Podesta have met with George Soros, one of the liberal billionaires.

So this effort is going on, and I think it is necessary to remind the American people because it has probably been about 6 months since anyone has even talked about some of the obstacles we can look forward to that are in the way of getting the things done that need to be done.

The President tries to downplay the job numbers. We talk about the 42,000 jobs. The President said a couple days ago: Wait, those are just temporary jobs. Well, all jobs are temporary, but these jobs will be there for a number of years and will lead to others.

The President tries to downplay the numbers by using rhetoric that has earned his statements multiple Pinocchios. The Washington Post has a program where they check the facts, and several times he has been the recipient of these Pinocchio awards.

Unfortunately, his attitude toward construction and manufacturing jobs is one that would stop jobs for hard-working Americans.

So I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--and this is very significant. We are talking about jobs. We are talking about important jobs. We are talking about high-paying jobs. I am a little biased because in Cushing, OK, we are the hub of these pipelines going through America. So what is going to positively affect our economy nationwide will probably be even more in my State of Oklahoma.

The President has done a lot of talking about the transportation infrastructure. Of course, this pipeline is part of it. We think about transportation infrastructure as roads, highways, and bridges. I applaud every time I hear him saying we need to do something about our transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, it is always just words. He never follows through. He had a program on two different occasions that was going to be very ambitious and was going to start constructing new highways. He was very specific about where they were going to go. But then that was the end of it. He got the word out there, and everyone heard about it and agreed that he must be for highways, but then he forgot about it.

I am pretty biased here because I chair the Environment and Public Works Committee that deals with all the infrastructure. I would say this: We are embarking on a very ambitious transportation reauthorization bill, and it is one that is going to include lots of modes of transportation. Of course, it would all be a part of this pipeline and the benefits that are coming through it. So I would say he does a lot of talking about that, but we are going to really have to get down and do it.

I often wonder what could have happened 6 years ago. Just to refresh our memories, the first thing this President did was his $825 billion stimulus bill. How better could you stimulate the economy than having an ambitious transportation bill? I remember my colleague on the other side of the aisle, Barbara Boxer, and I offered amendments on this amount. I, of course, vigorously opposed the $825 billion--that was a checkbook given to the President in the opening months of his office. But the fact was that it was going to pass, and we knew they had the votes to pass it right down party lines--which it did--and then he was going to be in a position to say: We are now going to be doing these things. So Barbara Boxer and I thought, well, let's get a percentage. I think our amendment was 8 percent would be reserved--a modest amount-- for highways. If we really want to stimulate the economy, there is no better way to do it than that way.

That is kind of a background of what has been happening.

I really believe, now that we have a majority, that we are going to get busy and try to get this done and will be successful in doing it. We have a lot of critical infrastructure projects. This is supported by the chamber of commerce and by labor unions. Almost everyone out there is in support of this.

Yesterday, I think it was, in one of the committee hearings--I wanted to

make sure this was properly answered in the committee hearing because it was in a committee that I am not on, the energy committee.

One of my good friends on the Democratic side of the aisle made the statement: We are very proud of the President because our production has dramatically increased during the 6 years he has been President of the United States.

Yes, that is true, but it has been in spite of the President. Let me give a couple statistics that people are not aware of. In the shale revolution taking place in this country, we have increased, during that period of time, our production--we are really talking about shale production--by 61 percent. So 61 percent in 5 years. That is what it has been. But all 61 percent of that has been on private and State land. On Federal land--over which President Obama has jurisdiction and can stop it--while the rest has increased by 61 percent, it has decreased by 6 percent.

I think we need to make sure to remind people because we don't want the public thinking that somehow the President is not involved in a war on fossil fuels. He is definitely involved in a war on fossil fuels.

Let me mention one other thing about the shale revolution. Because of the Marcellus, what is happening back East--people have always historically thought about the West and the State of Oklahoma as being kind of where all the oil is and where the production is. That really was true for a long period of time, but with the Marcellus coming in, Pennsylvania, New York--the Northeast has been a heavy production area. In fact, I have heard figures that in Pennsylvania, the second largest employer right now is people involved in the shale production that is taking place there. I don't know that it is the second largest, but that has not yet been refuted.

So very important things are happening there, but the key to making all of this happen is the pipeline. We know that eventually we are going to be there, but there has already been a veto threat. We are going to pass a bill. I know we are going to pass a bill. It is going to pass the House and the Senate. The President will probably veto it. He said he would. I am inclined to think that a lot of my friends on the Democratic side are going to stop and think ``Wait a minute, this is good for everyone,'' and there will be a bunch of people overriding a veto. I really believe something like that is going to happen, this is so significant.

People have said: The reason we don't want this is because it is dirty. This is up in Alberta, Canada. This is going to affect the environment.

First of all, it won't. People understand that is just not a true statement. But if it were true, it is something that is ridiculous because China is already making their deal. It has been made public that China wants to have transportation across Canada that would go to the west coast and be able to be sent over to China. If that should happen, in terms of the pollution, since they don't have any safeguards over there, that would result in increasing, not decreasing, any pollution that would be associated with this production.

I know a lot of people want to talk about this. To give an idea of what all is there in moving this production around, this is a very significant chart because it shows what is out there today and what can be produced. A minute ago I talked about the Northeast. That is the Marcellus we are talking about. It is a huge benefit out there. Yet a lot of the people who represent that part of America are not even aware that this is not just the Western United States. Just look at that, and we can see.

We have an opportunity here. I feel very strongly that our friends up there with the pipeline coming down--everyone is going to benefit. We have seen the charts. Certainly the Presiding Officer has many times pulled out the charts that show the great benefits that are going to be there for the entire country, along with our rapid path to be totally independent of any other country in our ability to produce our own energy.

This is a win-win situation. We are eventually going to get it but the sooner the better. I applaud the Chair and others involved in the legislation we are going to be considering.

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

Thank you, Mr. President. I take this time--and some of my colleagues will be joining me--to express concerns about the first major bill that has been brought to the floor under the Republican leadership dealing with the Keystone Pipeline.

I want to start first by talking about the so-called urgency for us to take this issue up and circumvent the normal process. The normal process would be for this matter to continue through the regulatory review, which is there to protect the public interest. To short-circuit that in an unprecedented way and for Congress to approve a site for a pipeline is not the way it is done.

In order to consider this there must be some urgency. First, let me just share with my colleagues what the American people are experiencing with the price of gasoline at the pump. It is at a historic low over the last 5 years, with $2.19 the average price for gasoline at the pump. So there is certainly no urgency if we are talking about trying to get more oil in the pipelines for the cost of energy. By the way, I think we all understand that our actions here in this Congress will have very little to do with the availability of oil in the near term. It would take some time to construct the pipeline and for it to have an impact on the level of oil that is available.

The second issue that I find somewhat puzzling with regard to the urgency of this issue--and some of my colleagues have pointed it out on both sides of this issue--is that there is already a pipeline that is available that could be used. Admittedly, it is not as efficient as what they are trying to do with the Keystone, and that is to make tar sand, the dirty oil we have, more economically available and feasible to be transported. That makes little sense under today's economics and the price of gasoline makes it even more hard to understand. Construction of this pipeline and the approval of this Congress will have very little to do with the consumer availability of energy here in the United States.

Now, compound the fact that we are talking about Canadian oil, the dirtiest oil--the tar sand oil--that is being transported through the United States because Canada doesn't want to transport it through their own country because of their concerns on the environmental side and which ends up in Texas at the Port Arthur, TX, refinery. Now for those who are not familiar, that is a foreign tax zone which is tax-free. So, therefore, the oil can go into the international marketplace in a very easy manner. Valero, which is one of the potential users--consumers of this oil--is building export facilities in order to handle more exports to the international communities. None of us can speak with any definitive judgment as to how much of this oil will in fact end up in the United States, but the fact that they are transporting it to a southern port--they are not transporting it to a refinery in the Midwest, which would be a lot closer and a lot cheaper--is a clear indication this oil will end up in the international marketplace and will have very little to do

with energy security in the United States. I think we have to make that clear.

We are bypassing the normal process to allow Canadian oil to enter the international marketplace more efficiently with risk to the United States and very little benefit. Why are we doing this? We hear it will give us jobs. I am for job creation. I would like to see us work on a transportation bill where we could create millions of jobs in a far more harmonious way than we can with Keystone. I am for clean energy policies which will create great permanent jobs in the United States. But the job creation estimates for the Keystone Pipeline are that it will create literally a few thousand temporary construction jobs. They are not permanent jobs. There are only a handful of permanent jobs. So it isn't about creating jobs, and it is not about energy security in the United States.

What is this all about? There is very little benefit compared to the risk factors in the United States. Let me talk about the risk factors which give most of us concern. The environmental risk factors have us the most concerned. Tar sand is a multitype of product that is literally mined and processed into a crude oil which is very thick and dirty. There are different ways to get to the tar sand, but one way to get to the tar sand is to take the topsoil off the property and mine it through a strip mining process. That has been done in Canada, and it is still being done in Canada, causing tremendous environmental damage. It is, in and of itself, a process that most of us would want to avoid. Yet this legislation does nothing to prevent that type of processing of the tar sands. Tar sands produce a very thick oil product that can only make its way through the pipeline by it being processed, and it creates additional risk factors because of the way it is processed.

There have been oil spills of the tar sands product. We have seen it in Arkansas and we have seen it in Michigan. It caused devastating damage. It is not easy to clean up. It is not like normal crude. It causes permanent-type damage to a community, as we saw most recently in Michigan. So there are risks associated with taking Canadian oil in an effort to make it easier to reach the international marketplace, unlikely to end up in the United States, creating few permanent jobs. Frankly, a lot of us don't quite understand this.

As I said, it is dirty. The use of this tar sands oil produces a much larger carbon footprint than other crude oil, causing additional problems in dealing with climate change. We have a serious issue with what is happening to our environment. I am proud to represent the State of Maryland. Most of the people in my State live in coastal areas. They know the consequences of global climate change. They understand it. They know what is happening along the coast, and they know we are at risk. They understand the fact that we have inhabitable islands in the Chesapeake Bay that have disappeared and are disappearing. They understand that our seafood crop, the blue crab, is threatened because the warming water affects the sea grass growth which is critically important for juvenile crabs to survive. They understand the risks and want us to be responsible in dealing with climate change. They also know that we are getting a lot more extreme weather in the east coast of the United States and throughout our country.

They know on the west coast. They are getting dry spells and wildfires. They understand the risks. They understand the cost to America of not dealing with climate change issues. The costs involve not only direct damage that is caused but also in the global consequences of climate change.

So we are worried about our carbon fingerprint. We are proud the United States is joining other countries in dealing with climate issues.

I applaud the work of President Obama, in the most recent international meetings, when he dealt with climate change issues. We need to do a better job.

Why are tar sands an issue? Because tar sands produce more carbon emissions than other types of oil. It is about 81 percent higher than the average use of crude oil and 17 percent higher than the well-to- wheels basis of producing oil. That is a concern. That translates into millions and millions of cars--the difference between that and having millions of cars on the roads. It is an important part of our leadership.

If we are trying to establish international credibility and then we facilitate more of this dirty tar sands oil, what message does that send? What type of cooperation should we expect to receive?

I am trying to figure out why this is the new priority of the leadership in the Senate. Why is this the very first bill to come to the floor of the Senate when, as I pointed out earlier, there seems to be no urgency. I have been told it has been delayed and delayed and delayed. The reason it was delayed is because the construction operating firm changed the routes of the pipeline. They had one route mapped out--and no alternative routes--but didn't check to make sure it didn't violate State laws. Now they are wondering why it is taking so long. It is taking so long because they had to change the route. It is not the governmental process that is slowing this down, it is the fact that the proposers of this route did not have their ducks lined up in a row before they submitted the route that could be approved. We are still not sure about that.

As I said earlier, for Congress to dictate where a pipeline should be is wrong. That is not our role. We should let the regulatory process, which is there to protect the public, go forward. It would also trample on States rights. There are some serious legal challenges pending in State courts as to the actions of a Governor dealing with a location issue. That should be resolved by the courts, and we are pretty close to having that ruling. It is very unclear to me what impact this legislation would have on States rights as it is currently being litigated in the State court. Why are we doing that?

The delays have been caused because of the way this pipeline was suggested. The regulatory process that would protect the public safety is moving forward. Considering oil and gasoline prices at the pump there is no urgency. There are serious environmental risk issues.

I understand the State Department report has been mentioned frequently. Look at the State Department report and look at what it is saying about the price for oil. The per barrel price of oil was a lot higher when they did that report. Lower costs have a major impact on what we are talking about here.

I urge my colleagues to let the process go forward. I thank the President for spelling out his concerns and his desire to let the regulatory process reach its conclusion, let the State court decision go forward as to what the State believes is the right thing to be done here. I believe all of that will give us a much better process than us trying to substitute our judgment for what should be done through a regulatory process.

I am going to close by quoting from one of the individuals, Ben Gotschall, from Nebraska, who has been very active on this issue. He said:

The Cowboy Indian Alliance shows our cooperation and our

working together in mutual respect. That shared bond proves

that we pipeline fighters are not just a few angry landowners

holding out, or environmentalists pushing a narrow agenda. We

are people from all walks of life and include people who have

been here the longest and know the land best.

I think that is pretty instructive. This is a broad coalition that is concerned about the actions that are being contemplated in the Senate-- actions that would overrule landowner rights, actions that would take away State rights, actions that would shortcut regulatory process, actions that help private companies directly without taking into account the regulatory protections that are provided under law.

It seems rather unusual that this would be the very first issue where we could work together in a bipartisan way to expand opportunities for energy in the United States. Clean energy produces a lot more jobs, and we could be talking about incentives so we could have a larger production of clean energy in the United States. Democrats and Republicans would clearly work together to come up with ways we could have more efficient use of energy.

Democrats and Republicans could clearly work together in that regard. There are so many areas where we could work together and show the

American people that we understand their frustration with Congress's failure to deal with many of the issues in the last Congress, but instead it looks as though we are picking an issue that is more about special interest than it is one that will help deal with an energy problem in the United States and has the potential to broaden our environmental challenges in the United States.

For all of those reasons, I hope my colleagues will reject this approach and let us go back and work together to find a common way to help us deal with our environment.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to speak about an amendment that I will be offering as part of the Keystone Pipeline legislation. It is an extremely simple, straightforward amendment. It is a brief amendment, but it basically raises a very fundamental issue, and that issue is whether the Senate will abide by scientific evidence, will come down on the side of science as we debate this enormously important issue of climate change.

The amendment is very brief, and I wish to read it and then explain why I believe it is such an important amendment. This is what it says:

It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement

with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific

community that, No. 1, climate change is real; No. 2, climate

change is caused by human activities; No. 3, climate change

has already caused devastating problems in the United States

and around the world; No. 4, a brief window of opportunity

exists before the United States and the entire planet suffer

irreparable harm; and No. 5, it is imperative that the United

States transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and

toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as

possible.

That is it. That is the entire amendment. I would say that for the scientific community around the world, there is nothing in that statement that smacks of controversy. These are simple statements of fact, agreed to by the overwhelming majority of scientists who have written and studied climate change.

Climate change is, in fact, one of the great threats facing our country and the entire planet. It has the capability of causing severe harm to our economy, to the food supply, to access to water, and to national security.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the leading international scientific body on this issue--reported yet again this past fall that ``warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.''

More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States and across the globe agrees with these findings, including, among many other organizations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union, to name just a few. In fact, at least 37 American scientific organizations, 118 international scientific organizations and national academies, and 21 medical associations all agree that climate change is real and is being caused by human activities.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of 37 American scientific organizations, 135 international scientific organizations, 21 medical associations, and some religious and teacher organizations that understand that climate change is real and that it is caused by human activity.

Mr. President, let me read from an excerpt of a letter signed by virtually every major scientific organization in this country that was sent to the U.S. Senate way back in 2009. This is what the letter states:

Observations throughout the world make it clear 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 contrary

assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of

the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is

strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad

impact on society, including the global economy and on the

environment. For the United States, climate change impacts

include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of

extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water

scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and a

disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The

severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase

substantially in the coming decades.

Let me repeat that one sentence:

The severity of climate change impacts is expected to

increase substantially in the coming decades.

We know that the Earth's climate is warming and warming quickly as a result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The 2014 National Climate Assessment reported:

The most recent decade was the nation's warmest on record.

U.S. temperatures are expected to continue to rise.

According to NOAA, October, August, June, and May were the hottest months ever recorded. And 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States and saw at least 69,000 local heat records set.

The consequence of this rapid and dramatic rise in global temperatures--what does that mean? What is going to happen? The answer is, it is going to mean more severe storms, more flooding and destructive storm surges, heat waves, drought, forest fires, and the inundation of water supplies and agricultural land with saltwater.

As the New York Times reported in August, droughts in the West and Southwestern United States appear to be intensifying as a result of climate change.

Over the past decade, droughts in some regions have rivaled

the epic dry spells of the 1930s and 1950s. . . . The country

is in the midst of one of the most sustained periods of

increasing drought on record.

China's heat wave a year and a half ago was the worst in at least 140 years. Fire-suppression costs in the United States have increased from roughly $1 billion annually in the mid-1990s to an average of more than $3 billion in the last 5 years, adjusted for inflation, reports the National Climate Assessment.

Our oceans are not just warming, they are becoming more acidic, threatening fish, coral reefs, and other sea life.

A study published in the Journal of Science reported:

Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are driving a

rate of change in ocean acidity, which is already thought to

be faster than at any time in the past 50 million years.

The authors warn that we may be entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.

Extreme storms are also becoming more common and more intense, with extraordinary impacts. For example, when Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines a year ago, it displaced over 4 million people, killed thousands, and cost the country at least $15 billion in damages.

What will happen if we fail to cut back dramatically on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change continues to accelerate? What will that reality mean for our country and for the globe? The IPCC estimates that without additional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ``warming is more likely than not'' to exceed 4 degrees Celsius--7.2 degrees Fahrenheit--by the end of the century.

Let me repeat that. If we do not begin the process to dramatically reverse carbon emissions and slow down the warming of this planet by the end of the century, warming is more likely than not to exceed 4 degrees Celsius, which is 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in a planet that is over 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Similarly, just last year the White House released the National Climate Assessment, emphasizing that global warming is already happening and warning that global warming could exceed 10 degrees in the United States by the end of the century--10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The World Bank, which is a pretty conservative organization, talked about a world in which temperatures increase by just 4 degrees Celsius, that that would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on many systems, ecosystems, and associated services. This is the warning we hear from the World Bank, which is a fairly conservative international organization.

The IPCC reports that sea levels are likely to rise another 10 to 32 inches by the end of the century. Some studies have reported projected increases of more than 6 feet during that time period.

As the New York Times reported, a rise of less than 4 feet would inundate land on which some 3.7 million Americans live. Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Boston are highly vulnerable.

Similarly, according to the IPCC, ``many small island nations are only a few meters above present sea level. These states may face serious threat of permanent inundation from sea-level rise.''

Reuters has reported that experts estimate that if the sea level rises by 1 meter over the next 50 years, 20 million additional people will be displaced from their land.

The Army Corps of Engineers has predicted that the entire village of Newtok, AK, could be underwater by 2017 and more than 180 additional Native Alaskan villages are at risk. Parts of Alaska are literally vanishing.

As reported in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, U.S. Forest Service researchers reported that wildfires are expected to increase 50 percent across the United States under a changing climate and over 100 percent in areas of the West by 2050. So huge increases in forest fires are expected.

The World Health Organization reported in August that the number of weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the 1960s, and more than 60,000 people now die each year in weather-related natural disasters. By 2020 food production is estimated to drop by 50 percent in some African countries, and by 2090, the World Health Organization anticipates, climate change will double the frequency of drought and the duration will be six times longer.

In 2003 a heat wave in Europe killed an estimated 70,000 people. As a study published in Nature Climate Change projects, however, Europe will likely experience severe heat waves once every 5 years now, which is 10 times more frequent than just a decade ago.

The need to act quickly is profound and pronounced. In its fifth assessment, the IPCC found that ``without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally.''

In order to prevent ``irreversible and severe impacts,'' we must quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and to do that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, in the face of deep concerns all over this planet, what is the Senate going to do over the next few weeks? Well, I hope very much that we do not go forward with the Keystone Pipeline, which moves us exactly in the wrong direction by expanding the production and transportation of some of the dirtiest fossil fuel on this Earth. I think that would be a terrible mistake. But maybe more importantly, I hope the Senate goes on record in strongly supporting the overwhelming scientific evidence which tells us loudly and clearly that climate change is real, that climate change is caused by human activity and the emission of carbon, and that climate change is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.

We have a short window of opportunity in order to move dramatically to reverse climate change and cut carbon, and we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

I intend to offer an amendment which basically urges the entire U.S. Senate to go on record in making it clear that they understand what scientists are talking about. They are going to listen to the scientific community, and they are going to take actions for which our kids and our grandchildren will be proud of them so that we do not leave them with a nation and a planet substantially less habitable than the planet on which we were born.

With that, I want to thank Senator Bennet and Senator Carper for cosponsoring this amendment. I hope we can have more cosponsors and I look forward to seeing the adoption of this important amendment.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are going to be voting shortly on the motion to proceed to S. 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline. I am here to urge my colleagues to vote no on that motion to proceed. We had a couple of chances to come to the Senate floor already today and last week and talk about the important issue of energy development in the United States and how we move our country forward with job creation and energy development. The President--we got to hear his remarks and certainly we respect people's points of view that this issue is an issue we have had a lot of time to discuss.

Mr. President, the issue is whether the American public and people in affected States have had a lot of time to talk about this issue and whether they have had a transparent process to talk about this issue.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article that

was in USA TODAY whose headline is ``Permit problems plague Keystone XL pipeline's S.D. leg.''

This is an article that just recently appeared in the paper about how South Dakota is bringing up objections to the pipeline, and they want to do due process with their public utility commission to make sure this project meets the criteria of environmental and safety concerns and security concerns that State wants to see met.

The reason this is still an issue in South Dakota is because part of the pipeline will go through South Dakota. There have been many changes since the original proposal was put forth, and people in South Dakota want to know exactly what these changes are and exactly how they will go through the process. In fact, one Native American tribe representative who was objecting said:

The company is not just asking to recertify its old

project. They are going a step beyond that that is not

allowed by law.

So there are people who want them to go through the normal process because siting of a pipeline of this nature is of great concern to local residents, to property owners.

I find it interesting that in the debate on this issue, we on this side of the aisle are the ones who are advocating and standing up for property owners to make sure there is not a taking of their property without a transparent process and input for that process because that is exactly what transpired here when the company, with the help of the State of Nebraska, did not continue to proceed through their public service commission, their public utility commission, and instead tried to pass a law saying that the environmental review and security issues and oversight could be done by the Governor.

Now, my colleagues who are Governors know that when you are Governor, you do not have the most transparent process. It is not as if citizens are going to come to hearings in the Governor's office. It is not as though all of that is there for review. Certainly those citizens do not have the ability to object and make sure they are getting the right compensation for their property and make sure issues of safety and security are addressed.

So that is why some private property owners sued. Because the legislature and the Governor did not have the right to act; the law taking the power away from the utility commission and giving it to the Governor was unconstitutional. The separation of powers is divided between the Governor and their public service commission. It is the job of those UTCs--utilities and transportation commissions around the country--to protect the interests of the public in the siting of these facilities. That this authority was now moved up through the legislature to the Governor to decide all of that was clearly something that was not constitutional. I find it very interesting that four of the seven supreme court justices said, in fact, yes, that law passed by the legislature was not constitutional.

So my question is, What is the hurry? Now that this issue, based on standing and the other justices not deciding, has the process to move forward, Congress feels some sort of urgency to be a siting commission and site a pipeline that has, No. 1, failed to go through the public process in the State of Nebraska; No. 2, has a public process now being questioned in the State of South Dakota, raising concern and urgency that those issues of the public be addressed; and No. 3, goes over what the President of the United States has said he wants to follow as a due process and make sure all the issues are brought to the table.

I will remind my colleagues that if everybody here had their way, the President would have approved the original Keystone XL pipeline route. Congress thought they should stick their hands in the middle of this siting and land use issue and put in legislative language on a passed bill by the Congress saying the President, if it was a national security interest, must decide and site the Keystone Pipeline. Thank God those at the State Department and the White House decided that was not such a smart idea because that current pipeline went through a major aquifer that served eight States and posed a great deal of concern to landowners, farmers, residents, and various individuals about that particular proposal.

So if this body would have had its way before--those who support this pipeline--they would have pressured the President to approve what is now a defunct, horrible idea of what was proposed by TransCanada. So now I ask my colleagues, are you sure all of the issues have been addressed here at the local level? Because clearly there are people in Nebraska and people in South Dakota who do not think so.

Last I checked, our job is not to site pipelines; our job is to move our country forward on an energy strategy that will produce jobs, diversify our resources, and make the United States a leader in energy.

I know my colleagues feel as if we will get a chance to address a lot of issues if we do move forward in a debate, and I am sure there will be many on many sides. I question whether we shouldn't be spending our time focusing on a bipartisan energy bill with lots of support on a whole myriad of

others issues we need to work on, as we did in 2007, to make sure we are helping in the transformation of energy policy moving forward that will produce a lot more jobs.

This particular proposal, as many of my colleagues have pointed out, while there are some immediate construction jobs, the long-term jobs are very few compared to many of the other things we have been doing.

I would also like to point out that since Keystone has undertaken more development in the United States, that part of that development in the United States has also come into question lately. The security of the welding on the pipeline that has been done in the southern part of that pipeline has come into question, even to the point where I think the State Department has said to the company: We are going to have a third-party validator approve whether you are actually meeting the standards we would like to see in the development of this pipeline in the United States.

But there are many issues here about safety and security, as my colleagues can point out who have brought up these issues before. My colleague from Michigan suffered one of the most devastating oilspills in her area. That was a tar sands oilspill. My colleague from Michigan, Senator Stabenow, has actually flown over that oilspill and cited that it took 4 years and $1.2 billion to clean it up and that the tar sands sunk to the bottom of the river and the river had to be dredged.

So this is something my colleagues may not quite understand, that the tar sands, even according to the Commandant of the Coast Guard--we do not really have a solution for its cleanup when it spills in water. That is why I want to make sure that tar sands pay into the oilspill liability trust fund, as any other oil source does, so that we can make sure we are planning for the future and for getting help and response for any of these oilspills that could occur in the future.

But needless to say Michigan and the Kalamazoo spill taught our Nation how dangerous this oilspill process could be. So why are we prematurely trying to cut off the debate on this issue at the local government level and say that we in Congress know better than these utility and transportation commissions and their transparent siting process for the American public? Why do we somehow know better that this is where a pipeline should go and how the process should work?

So I hope my colleagues will stop and think more about how TransCanada proposal. I know some of my colleagues like to talk about being a good neighbor, and I like to say, you know, we in the Pacific Northwest consider British Columbia a very big friend and neighbor. There are many times that people talk about two provinces and five States working together as an organization on economic issues. So that structure has been in place for many years in the Pacific Northwest. But the people of British Columbia have not been a big supporter of tar sands oil expansion. Something like 60 percent of the public of British Columbia opposes having a tar sands pipeline cross their province. TransCanada knows they are not going to be successful in getting this oil from Alberta across British Columbia out to the Pacific because the people of British Columbia do not want it. So, of course, why not come to the United States? Why not ask them if they want a pipeline going through the middle of their country?

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark laid out five principles that ought to have been met in order to site a pipeline of tar sands. Those conditions have not been met, and the province is officially opposed to the pipeline. So there was a lot of opposition and concern there.

I will note for my colleagues that when a public UTC--a utility commission or public service commission--when they evaluate a project, they have to look at the environmental impact, and that is water supply, wildlife, vegetation, plants, and they have to look at the economic and social impact. They need to look at alternative routes, the impact to future development near the pipeline, and the views of cities and counties. Again, I will note that I think all of those are a part of having a transparent process instead of a political process on siting.

So I am not for moving forward on what I consider special interest legislation, Congress siting for a special interest--this TransCanada company--a project that even people in Canada have raised suspicion about.

I hope that we will allow the President to still do due process on such an important issue of environmental concern and that we will not start setting a standard that if you want to short-circuit the eminent domain and protection rights of individuals, we will just bypass all of that at the local level and somehow go to Congress and they will get that done for you. I think that is a very bad message.

I hope my colleagues will turn down this legislation, I hope that we can move on to other energy issues that will help our country diversify and move forward in the future.

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

Reserving the right to object. Is the vote scheduled for 4 minutes from now?

I am happy if the Senator speaks until the time of the vote, but I think we should keep to the vote schedule.

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

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the critical need for cyber security legislation.

Computers control nearly everything we use in our daily lives. They control our cars, our phones, our water supply, our power grid, our financial services, our retail networks, our food production and in many respects our military capabilities.

Fortunately, our adversaries have not yet succeeded in inflicting major physical damage on our Nation's interdependent critical infrastructure.

That is not to say however they are not vulnerable to persistent threats in cyber space. Look no further than in the ``2014 U.S. State of Cybercrime Survey.'' That is a study prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the U.S. Secret Service, Carnegie Mellon University, and CSO magazine.

Of the more than 500 U.S. executives and security experts surveyed, 77 percent of businesses detected an attempted security breach in the previous 12 months, and 34 percent of these businesses said the number of security incidents detected increased over the previous year, with an average number of 135 incidents per organization.

The report makes many key observations, but let me emphasize a key finding that resonated with me. One thing

is very clear: Most organizations' cyber security programs do not rival the persistence, tactical skills, and technological prowess of today's cyber adversaries.

Cyber thieves proved their determination just last week when Russian hackers amassed over 1 billion Internet user names and passwords, the largest known collection of Internet credentials.

In the years following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence consistently ranked terrorism as our No. 1 threat, but that started to change a few years ago. In 2012 then- FBI Director Robert Mueller predicted that ``in the not too distant future, we anticipate that the cyber threat will pose the number one threat to our country.''

He was right.

In 2013 and 2014 the intelligence community's Worldwide Threat Assessment lists cyber as the top threat to our Nation. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and unauthorized leaks of classified information remain grave threats to our country, but cyber is now our No. 1 threat.

Yet it is hard to believe no major cyber security legislation has been enacted since 2002, when Congress passed the Federal Information Security Management Act--or FISMA--and the Cybersecurity Research and Development Act. Of course, there have been provisions relevant to cyber security enacted in subsequent laws but nothing as significant or comprehensive as the laws passed 12 years ago.

As we begin a new Congress, let me articulate a few guiding principles that should be included in any cyber security legislation.

First, we must acknowledge the need for the government and the private sector to cooperate in order to fend off cyber attacks, but today businesses are reluctant to share critical information out of fear of legal repercussions. Congress must provide proper incentives, such as liability protection, to encourage the private sector to share cyber threat information with our government.

Next, any cyber security legislation must strike the right balance between protecting our Nation's computer infrastructure and protecting individual privacy rights.

Thus, information sharing between businesses and the government must be tailored to the recipient's actual security responsibilities. Moreover, any legislation should avoid overly broad language that could clash with privacy protections.

Furthermore, a voluntary, nonregulatory approach is most likely to yield consensus legislation. The role of DHS and other government agencies should be to provide advice and resources to improve our Nation's cyber security posture, not to pile on additional burdensome regulations.

Finally, and perhaps most important, we must build a strong cyber security workforce in the public and the private sectors. Enacting cyber security legislation will mean very little if there are no trained professionals prepared to tackle our Nation's cyber security challenges.

In order to build the enduring capabilities capable of protecting our cyber infrastructure, we must encourage young people to pursue high- tech careers and attract highly skilled workers from around the world.

Beyond the civilian realm, the cyber threats we face present critical new challenges to our national security. Arguably, we have not yet faced a similarly novel catalyst for policy formulation and change since the development of our nuclear deterrence strategy more than 60 years ago.

As we face this new world of cyber threats, the fundamental question remains the same: What is the most efficient and effective means to defend our country, the United States, while remaining true to the Constitution at the same time. Answering that question should be the cornerstone of the President's cyber security strategy.

I was encouraged to hear the President say during his visit to the National Cybersecurity Communications Integration Center earlier this week that ``cyber threats are an urgent and growing danger.'' I certainly share that assessment of the dire nature of this very real threat to our national security.

While I applaud the White House for its plans to host a conference on cyber security and consumer protection next month, the nature of the cyber security threat demands a comprehensive strategy to protect our Nation.

Much work remains to be done on this front, especially from the standpoint of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. The urgency of this task was amplified when the Congressional Research Service concluded just this month that ``the overarching defense strategy for securing cyberspace is vague and evolving.''

As we face these threats, we must act decisively to ensure that bureaucratic barriers do not hinder the development of an effective strategy to counter threats from cyber space. As it stands, there is not a single agency primarily responsible for cyber defense.

The Department of Homeland Security is charged with protecting civilian networks and working with the private sector. The FBI and Secret Service are responsible for investigating cyber crime, and the Department of Defense is responsible for defending its own systems and partnering to protect the defense industrial base.

Critically, the Defense Department is only tasked with supporting DHS when the cyber attack is directed at our homeland. Yet these differences of responsibility can operate as artificial barriers to the efficient and effective cyber defense system.

Indeed, the lack of a single organization with direct responsibility runs counter to the basic leadership principle of unity of command. It bears remembering that these boundaries only exist for our agencies, not the hackers which seek to exploit the limitless terrain of cyber space. In a world in which the lines between cyber crime and cyber warfare are increasingly blurred, we need to ensure that all of our defensive cyber capabilities are brought to bear against the wide variety of threats facing our infrastructure, private and public, civilian and military.

Nevertheless, the need for a primary agency of responsibility does not necessarily mean the Department of Defense should be that agency, even despite its remarkable capabilities. Such a course would raise both legal and practical concerns.

Beginning with the legal issue, as the Supreme Court has stated, there is a ``traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs.''

The use of the military to enforce the law, with respect to domestic hackers or to virtually patrol on private networks is problematic because of the provisions of 18 U.S.C. section 1835.

In addition, the Defense Department's organization to defend against cyber attacks might not be the most efficient. Currently, U.S. Cyber Command, which is responsible for the training and equipping of our cyber warriors, is also entrusted with the Department's operational activities in cyber space. Such a construct makes sense. Yet unlike a unified combatant command, Cyber Command is a subunified command under U.S. Strategic Command. Though this configuration has been considered and agreed to by the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am still not convinced of its value. Therefore, I also hope the President addresses how our military forces can best be aligned to facilitate the most efficient and effective cyber defense possible.

But returning to the larger question, if concentrating our efforts entirely in the hands of the Defense Department is not advisable, what are we to do?

One possible solution has been presented by Richard Clarke, the noted former member of the National Security Council, in his book, ``Cyber War.''

To be clear, I am not endorsing Mr. Clarke's proposal. We surely do not need another government bureaucracy, but I do believe it is an important concept to be discussed during future debates on cyber security. Specifically, Mr. Clarke argues for a civilian cyber defense administration which would be responsible for protecting ``the dot-gov domain and critical infrastructure during an attack.'' As well as assigning those Federal law enforcement agencies personnel responsible for cyber crime to this centralized cyber defense administration, it would only be logical to ask if such an agency could provide other cyber defense functions.

Accordingly, addressing proposals such as this as part of answering the

question as to what is the most effective organization we can employ for cyber security should be a focal point of the President's address.

But we should not just place these questions at the President's door. The Senate itself must consider modifying the way it considers cyber security legislation and issues.

Currently, there are at least five separate Senate committees which are responsible for various aspects of cyber security. Therefore, we, too, have a unity-of-effort issue, and the Senate should consider means to concentrate this body's expertise on this critical matter.

In conclusion, there are a myriad of questions which our government must address before we are able to state we have the most effective, efficient, and constitutional cyber security defense possible.

I hope the President fully utilizes the opportunity presented to him in his State of the Union Address to answer these important questions-- and if he doesn't, we have to. So we better solve these problems. I presume the President will speak intelligently on these issues and hopefully in a way that will unify the country, unify the Congress, and get us all working in the same way.

We can't afford to let this drag any longer. This is one of the most important sets of issues we have in our country. It may be one of the most important issues or sets of issues in the world at large.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.