Veterans Access to Community Care Act of 2015

Mr. President, we are back to continue debate and voting on amendments to this bipartisan Keystone XL bill.

I will focus on two main subjects today. The first is to speak to what I think is the good progress we have made on this bill, moving us toward ultimately a final vote and final passage. I believe we probably surprised a few people yesterday by adopting an amendment on climate change that few thought would be adopted. We have now processed a total of nine amendments. Some would say, well, nine is not much, but just to put it into context, last year, the Senate held just 15 rollcall votes on amendments. That was in all of 2014. Over just a couple of days here in this new Congress, we are already at 60 percent of last year's total, and it is still January. We have eight amendments that are pending at this moment and set to be voted on today. We will work out the timing and order of those votes. My hope is that we will exceed last year's total today.

I believe our productivity has been good. I appreciate the cooperation of the ranking member on the committee. What we have been able to do with this measure is important because I think it stands in pretty stark contrast to what we have seen in recent years and, quite honestly, to the delays the Keystone XL Pipeline has faced over those years.

The second part of my comments this morning--I wish to provide a little bit of perspective about how long this cross-border permit has been pending, awaiting a final decision by the President.

Sometimes when we talk in terms of the raw numbers, some ask: What does that really mean? What does it mean to be on the 2,316th day that has passed since the company seeking to build this pipeline first filed its first permit with the State Department?

It has been more than 6 years, more than 76 months, and more than 330 weeks.

The President noted in his State of the Union Address this week that Keystone XL was just a single oil pipeline. And he is right--it is just a single oil pipeline. We have multiple pipelines that cross the border. We have hundreds of pipelines that cross the country. So it begs the question: How and why has it taken so long to get action

on just one single pipeline? Why has it taken so long?

There have been a lot of examples we have heard on floor. I mentioned yesterday that President Obama was still a sitting Senator when the permit application was filed. Others have said the iPad was not even out on the market when the first permit was filed. We heard that 2,300 days is longer than it took the United States to win World War II, longer than Louis and Clark's expedition to explore the West, and longer than Project Mercury, which put the first American into space. There have been a lot of comparisons in terms of what it really means to be longer than 2,300 days.

I mentioned on the floor many times that in Alaska we are seeking to try to advance our natural gas resource, and in order to do so we need a big pipeline to move from the North Slope down to tidewater, and so we are working to train welders because we know that when that day comes and we have the opportunity to build that line, we are going to want Alaskans to have those jobs. They may be temporary in that you don't weld a pipeline forever, you do it until the job is complete, but those are good jobs for those Alaskans and for people who come up to our State.

The Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center in Alaska does a fabulous job. In my opinion, it is the best pipeline training facility we have in the country. Every year, graduates from the training center are sent out, ready to go to work on projects such as Keystone XL. We are probably talking about seven sets of welders who have graduated at this point, and we need to keep approving projects that can help these young people or those who have been retrained as welders to get jobs. That is what they are waiting for.

We can even think about this length of time which has ensued since the first permit application has been pending in terms of flying to Mars and back. We could probably complete about three roundtrips from here to Mars and back, depending, of course, on the distance between the planets, but I am just putting it in context.

If we wanted to stay closer to home, we could describe those 2,300 days in terms of how many times we could hike the Appalachian Trail-- probably 10 or 12 depending on the weather. One of these days I would like to hike the Appalachian Trail. I don't know that I have the time, it is one of those issues when you think about how long this has been pending before this administration.

Today I will add one more example to show the comparison. At this time in the football season, we are all focused on what is going on with Super Bowl XLIX, which is coming up in 10 days now. We will see Super Bowl XLIX pit the reigning NFL champions, the Seattle Seahawks-- in Alaska we don't have our own professional football team, so we kind of adopted the Seahawks. I will let my colleagues know that I will be standing with the ranking member in rooting for the Seahawks on the big day next week. A lot of folks are excited about it, and we will be watching it. The game will be played next Sunday.

For the moment, let's look back to September 19, 2008, when the first cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline was first submitted to the State Department. Let's specifically focus on the Seahawks because they provide a pretty good example of how much has changed over the past 6 years. Back in September of 2008, the Seahawks were about to start a season in which they would have a record of just 4 and 12-- winning 4 games and losing 12. At that point they were still a good team and we were still rooting for them, but they were a pretty different team. For starters, the Seahawks had a head coach. Their current coach, Pete Carroll, was still at the University of Southern California coaching the Trojans. Their star running back, Marshawn Lynch, was about to start his second year in the NFL as a member of the Buffalo Bills. It would be another 2 years before Lynch joined the Seahawks and just over 3 years before the Nation discovered his love of Skittles during the game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The most famous members of the Seahawks secondary--the Legion of Boom--are Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas. Back in September of 2008, both were still in college, respectively playing for Stanford and the University of Texas.

Of course, we cannot forget Russell Wilson. A lot of Alaskans are rooting for him to get a second consecutive Super Bowl as the starting quarterback for the Seahawks. Back in September of 2008--he played just a handful of college games at that time. He was a redshirt freshman at North Carolina State.

My point here is not necessarily about football--although that is what a lot of us are talking about--it is to demonstrate that a lot can happen over the course of 2,300 days, and it does, whether we are talking about what goes on in politics, in world events, or the world of sports. My point is that it should probably take the Federal Government less time to approve an important infrastructure project-- what the President himself has called just a single oil pipeline--than it takes to build an NFL championship team.

I would like us to get to the point where we are done discussing the merits of this important project and be done in the sense that we can move forward not only with Keystone XL but move forward as a nation when it comes to North American energy independence and providing jobs and greater economic benefit to this country.

I am pleased with the process we have had on the floor over the past couple of days. I look forward to the series of amendments on which we will have votes this afternoon--likely after lunch--and the opportunity to be in further discussion about these issues that I think have been pent-up for a period of time.

With that, I acknowledge my colleague on the energy committee and co- fan of the Seattle Seahawks.

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

Madam President, for the information of all Senators, we are working now to set up votes on several pending amendments to the bill. These votes should be after lunch today. Right now, we are looking at 60-vote thresholds on the Fischer amendment, along with the Boxer side-by-side, the Sanders amendment, and the Lee amendment.

I do understand that the Boxer amendment is now filed at the desk.

Amendment No. 18, As Modified

I ask unanimous consent that the Fischer amendment, No. 18, be modified with the changes at the desk.

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

Madam President, we have a number of Members who have asked to come to the floor to speak over the course of these next couple of hours. Many will be speaking to their specific amendment on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Again, we encourage folks to use this time, while we have a little bit of time before we move to the votes this afternoon.

I see that my colleague from North Carolina is here to speak. I would welcome his remarks at this time.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 3:50 p.m. today, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the following amendments in the order listed: Boxer No. 113, which is a side-by-side to Senator Fischer's amendment; then Fischer No. 18, as modified; Manchin No. 99; Sanders No. 24; Lee No. 71; Murkowski No. 123, which is a side-by-side to Senator Wyden's amendment; Wyden No. 27; Blunt No. 78, as modified; Cornyn No. 126, as modified; and Menendez No. 72, as modified; further, that all amendments on this list be subject to a 60- vote affirmative threshold for adoption except for Cornyn No. 126 and Menendez No. 72, which are germane, and that no second-degrees be in order to the amendments. I ask consent that there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided between each vote, and that all votes after the first in the series be 10-minute votes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 123.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the Blunt amendment, No. 78, with the changes at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up the Cornyn amendment, No. 126, as modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to make sure we understand the vote was scheduled to begin 3 minutes ago. As part of the unanimous consent agreement, there was not a time allowed for Senator Boxer to speak. I don't have a problem in giving-- --

I am happy to make sure that is allowed. It wasn't included in the consent, but I am certainly happy to allow for the minute as Senator Boxer has asked.

I move to reconsider the vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, we had a robust discussion yesterday on two amendments that dealt with the issue of climate change. I think we had a very clear and resounding vote on the one that had a perfectly reasonable statement that climate change is real; climate change is not a hoax.

I also supported the amendment of my colleague from North Dakota on this same topic. I think it was important that we had that debate.

What I am hoping we can do now is get beyond the discussion as to whether climate change is real and talk about: What do we do? How do we move forward to those technologies? How do we make a difference with reasonable steps such as greater efficiency, a no-regrets energy policy that makes our energy supply even cleaner.

I want to move on to that. But I think at this point in time, with what we have had in front of us, we could have a whole series of amendments that basically restate the same thing.

I would like to move us beyond that conversation, and I look forward to that. But at this time I move to table, and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that a motion to table is not debatable.

I object.

Mr. President, for the same reasons that I just expressed in the previous amendment that was before us, I would suggest that we move to table this amendment.

I will make that motion now to table the Sanders amendment, and I would ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I wish to remind Members that we are trying to keep a schedule here. We have six more amendments to go in this stack, and we are supposedly at 10-minutes per amendment. We have not been following that. I urge Members to stick close so we can move more expeditiously.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 123

Mr. President, we have the sense of the Senate that would express that all forms of bitumen or synthetic crude should be subject to the 8-cent-per-barrel excise tax associated with the oilspill liability trust fund. This is important because right now we have a legitimate but unintended loophole on the books, and it is also a matter of fairness because conventional oil pays into the trust fund. We need to address this, and I commend my colleague Senator Wyden for the effort he has done. But the problem that we have is that as we work to enact legislation to update our laws, we have to make sure it is consistent with the Constitution, which requires revenue-raising measures to originate in the House.

If we agree that we want to close this loophole, which we should do, we need to allow for the House to address this. Otherwise, we face a blue slip issue, and quite honestly, it would act as a poison pill to the Keystone XL bill. The sense of the Senate expresses to do it legitimately through the Constitution.

Mr. President, again, let me remind my colleagues that while we may agree we need to address this legal--but there is a loophole in the law. As many of us have just voted, 75 I believe, we say we need to address this oilspill liability trust fund issue.

Doing so in the manner that the Senator from Oregon has suggested does create a blue-slip problem. It would cause this bill to fail. It is not constructive to do so. The sense of this Senate that we just passed, I think, sends clearly the message that we want to address it, but we need to do it in a constitutional way. I would ask Members to vote no.

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

Mr. President, we have just gone through a considerable period processing some votes. I appreciate the patience of colleagues as we have gone through it. As the majority leader mentioned, we want to figure out what the next tranche--the next grouping of amendments--will be, and then we will be able to figure out the path forward.

It is the hope of myself and the ranking member of the committee that we be able to get through a few more votes this evening, at a minimum, but also to set up a more clearly defined path for the coming days ahead, for tomorrow and Monday.

So I ask for the indulgence of Members as we call up a few amendments now to get them pending, and then we will work together to figure out what those votes will actually look like--which votes we will actually take up this evening.

Again, I think the opportunity to get amendments pending on both sides is good. It gives everybody an idea of the lay of the land and gives them a chance to look at the amendments we will bring up.

So at this point in time I wish to call up an amendment. When I have concluded, I will turn it over to the ranking member and an amendment will be called up on the Democratic side, and then we will come back to this side. We will alternate back and forth to get these amendments pending so Members can know what it is we have in this universe out there.

Amendment No. 67 to Amendment No. 2

With that, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up Sullivan amendment No. 67.

I turn to my colleague, Senator Cantwell.

I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up Murkowski amendment No. 98.

I turn to my colleague from Arizona at this time.

Mr. President, at this time I turn to my colleague from Texas.

Mr. President, I turn to my very patient colleague from Kansas, Mr. Moran.

Mr. President, I would like to turn to my colleague from Montana.

Mr. President, we now have in front of us six amendments that are pending on the Republican side, six amendments that are pending on the other side of the aisle. We indicated we wanted to try to get these up, alternating back and forth. I think we have a pretty good range in front of us. Recognizing that it is important Members have an opportunity to take a look at the now 12 amendments that are pending, I think it is our hope that we would be able to, as the chairman and the ranking member, sit down and figure out how many of these we might be able to move to a vote this evening and dispense with some of them.

I think it is pretty clear we will have a difficult time perhaps advancing such a plan with everything tonight. So if we could have a little bit of time to work through an agreement to present to Members-- I think right now people are taking a little bit of a break from the floor activity, and that is appreciated, but I want to give them notice as to where we are.

It is my hope we will be able to come to an agreement relatively shortly in terms of how many amendments we might be able to take up and vote on this evening, thus giving Members a better chance as to whether we are staying in for the long haul tonight or perhaps just for a shorter period, but we need a little bit of time to take a look at that.

Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Washington stating that. This is by no means saying this is it for the night. I am just saying give the floor managers an opportunity now, with a dozen amendments that we have in front of us, to figure out what it is that we have. This would probably be a great time for people to speak on either their amendments or other amendments that they might wish to bring pending, but I am not suggesting this is our finite list of amendments. This is what we have for this moment in time, having gone back and forth. That is all I am suggesting.

Mr. President, I think it was the intention of the ranking member and myself that we go back and forth. We have done that, six each time now. I don't have other Members on our side who are either present, which we have asked them to be, or have asked me to offer on their behalf. I am certainly not suggesting to the Senator from Vermont that he should not be allowed to get his amendment pending. I am just trying to keep with the agreement we have that we go back and forth.

Through the Chair, I am sure we will have other amendments. Again, I want to defer to the Senator's ranking member on that as far as whether we bring it pending at this moment in time. It might be possible after we reach our agreement that we have another set of back-and-forths to get these pending agreements put forward.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I also ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, thank you very much for recognizing me to take the opportunity to address something I hope can readily and easily be solved. If common sense prevails--and we know it doesn't often enough here in our Nation's Capital--one, the Department of Veterans Affairs certainly, in my view, can solve this problem. If common sense doesn't prevail there, then surely the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the President could agree upon a legislative fix that is really nothing more than common sense. I am talking about a veterans issue--one that is certainly prevalent in a rural State such as mine. My guess is it is a problem that occurs in a State such as the Presiding Officer's as well.

I was very pleased. I came to the Senate floor and talked about the importance of passing and approving the CHOICE Act. We remember the scandal of last year in which it became clear the Department of Veterans Affairs had significant problems across the country. The VA hospital in Phoenix was a poster child for bad behavior that resulted in potentially the death of veterans. One of the things we did to try to help the Department of Veterans Affairs better take care of America's veterans was to pass the CHOICE Act. We did that in August of last year. It was signed into law, and it is now being implemented by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There are many issues that are associated with the implementation of this bill, but let me raise one. The crux of that legislation is this. If you are a veteran and you live more than 40 miles from a VA facility or if you can't get the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide the services within 30 days or the timeframe in which you need those services, then the Department of Veterans Affairs is required by law to provide those services, if you choose, at a place of your choice, presumably your hometown.

This is about service to our veterans in their hometowns across Kansas and across States around the country. The theory is that the Department of Veterans Affairs is incapable of providing those services perhaps for a number of reasons, including lack of the necessary professionals. Therefore, let's take advantage of the professionals we have at home in our hometowns. Let the veterans see his or her hometown physician. Let the veteran be admitted to his or her hometown hospital. It is a pretty commonsense kind of reaction to the inability of the Department of Veterans Affairs to meet the needs of veterans across our country--provide another option. If that is the choice of the veteran, that veteran wants to have care at home, give them that option.

As a Senator from a State such as Kansas, this makes sense to me even in the circumstance in which the Department of Veterans Affairs can provide the service. For 14 years I represented a congressional district in Kansas, the western three-fourths of our State. The congressional district is larger than the State of Illinois and has no VA hospital.

We pushed for a number of years and were successful in opening outpatient clinics so veterans could get that care closer to home than the VA hospital, and those outpatient clinics provide--or at least intended to provide--routine care.

Here is the problem today. The law says if you live more than 40 miles from a VA facility, then the VA must provide the services at home if you choose. The Department of Veterans Affairs is defining facility as any facility, including the hospital or the outpatient clinic. That doesn't seem too troublesome to me until you take it to the next step, which is, even if the VA hospital or the outpatient clinic doesn't provide the service that the veteran needs, they still consider it a facility within 40 miles.

In my hometown, where I grew up, we have had an ongoing dialogue with one of our honored veterans. He needs a colonoscopy. My hometown is nearly 300 miles--250 miles from the VA hospital in Wichita. There is an outpatient clinic, a CBOC, in Hays, 25 miles away. But guess what. The outpatient clinic in Hays doesn't provide the service of colonoscopies.

One would think the veteran in my hometown could go to the local physician or the local hospital and have the colonoscopy performed and the Department of Veterans Affairs provide and pay for the services. But no, because there is an outpatient clinic within 40 miles, even though it doesn't provide the colonoscopy, our veteran is directed to drive to Wichita. Incidentally, we have calculated the mileage expense of the veteran doing it. It does not make sense economically, either. But regardless of that, it certainly doesn't make sense for that veteran.

I have said this many times over the years as we have tried to bring services closer to home to veterans. If you are a 92-year-old World War II veteran and you live in Atwood, KS, up on the Nebraska border, how do you get to the VA hospital in Wichita or in Denver?

Our initial attempt was to put an outpatient clinic closer. The problem with that--we now have an outpatient clinic in Burlington, CO, and an outpatient clinic in Hays, KS. But that is still 2\1/2\ hours from Atwood, KS. If you are a 92-year-old World War II veteran in Atwood, KS, how do you get to Hays or Burlington, CO? The answer is you probably don't.

Our veterans are not being served. We attempted to address this issue. Let me say it differently. We addressed this issue in the CHOICE Act and said that if you are 40 miles from a facility, then the VA provides the services at home. The VA is interpreting that facility-- the word facility--just to mean any facility there regardless of what service it provides.

In many instances--I take Liberal, KS, where there is a CBOC. They haven't had a permanent physician in their CBOC in almost 4 years. But yet Liberal--the CBOC in Liberal--counts as a facility even though there is no physician who is regularly in attendance at the clinic. These issues ought

to be resolved in favor of whom? The veteran. Whom, of all people, would we expect to provide the best service to? In any capable way we can, whom would we expect to get the best health care in our Nation? I would put at the top of the list those who served our country.

The committee that passed this legislation, the CHOICE Act--it says in the language--the conferees recognized the issues I just described and added report language that allows veterans to secure health care services that are either unavailable or not cost-effective to provide at a VA facility, which was intentionally included to give the VA flexibility to provide veterans access to non-VA care when a VA facility, no matter what size or location, cannot provide the care the veteran is seeking.

Yesterday I introduced S. 207. I would ask my colleagues to join me. Again, I guess my first request is, Could the Department of Veterans Affairs fix this problem on their own? If not, I would ask that my colleagues join me in fixing this legislatively with one more directive to the Department of Veterans Affairs saying, if they cannot provide the service at the CBOC, then it does not count as a facility within the 40 miles.

This is a problem across our States. I had my staff at a meeting in the VISN in which they were describing how they were going to implement the CHOICE Act. They put up a chart in which they show how they are going to have a mobile van work its way through the area of our State and Missouri and talked about how that will then satisfy the 40-mile requirement.

Why is the VA bending over backward to avoid--let my say it differently. Why is the VA not bending over backward to take care of the veteran, instead of bending over backward to make sure it is the most difficult circumstance for a veteran to get the health care they need at home?

We ought to always err on the side of what is best for veterans, not what is best for the Department of Veterans Affairs--if you could ever make the case that providing services someplace far away from the veteran is good for the VA.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak to this issue. It is an important one. I have mentioned it to a number of my colleagues. They have described similar circumstances in their State. I have met with the Department of Veterans Affairs personnel. I serve on the veterans' committee, have since I came to Congress. We will work in every way with the veterans' committee, Republicans and Democrats, to make certain there is a fix to this issue.

But I want to highlight the manner in which the Department is implementing the CHOICE Act is not the way Congress intended, and it is not the way that benefits the veteran. Finally, let me say that even if there was some circumstance in which the Department does not have the authority to do what we are asking them to do in the CHOICE Act, they have the ability today to provide non-VA care whenever they deem it necessary.

There is also the opportunity for them to use a pilot program that many of us have in our States. I see the Senator from Maine is on the floor. They have a pilot program, the ARCH Program, in which we are trying to provide services to veterans at home. There are a variety of ways the Department can solve this problem. I ask them to do that.

In the absence of their solution, I ask my colleagues to join me in sponsoring, in debating, in potentially amending but most importantly in passing and sending this bill to the President so we can resolve once and for all that the Department of Veterans Affairs is created for the benefit of the veteran, not the Department.

I yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

The Senator from Alaska.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside to call up amendment No. 73.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is an amendment that sets aside the endangered threatened species listing of the lesser prairie chicken. It is an important issue to the citizens of Kansas but also to Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado.

I look forward to having this conversation and debate on the Senate floor at the appropriate time.

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

Mr. President, earlier this evening an amendment of mine was made pending to the legislation that we now have before us, amendment No. 73.

I thank my colleagues for allowing that amendment to become pending, and I look forward to the opportunity now, while we are determining the remainder of the evening's schedule, to describe the nature of amendment No. 73.

I have a copy of the amendment in front of me. It is a short paragraph, but it is one that has significant consequences to the people of Kansas. But in addition to the people of Kansas, it has significant consequence to the people of Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The story we are talking about is the lesser prairie-chicken. In March of 2014, the lesser prairie-chicken was listed not as an endangered species but a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

It is true the numbers of birds declined in 2012 and 2013. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had their explanation for why there was the decline in the population of those birds, both those who live on the land but as well a number of wildlife experts--people who are very interested in conservation practices in our State--believe and agree that the primary reason behind the bird's decline in population was the historic and prolonged drought that our area of the country has experienced in the past several years.

There is less habitat for birds generally in our State and across this region of the country, but the reality is that it is because we have had so little rainfall. We have been in a drought in a significant part of the Nation, in our part of the country, for a number of years, and as a result there is less habitat and a decline in the bird population. What many believe is that with the return of rainfall, with the return of snow this winter and the moisture it will provide, we will have increasing wildlife habitat for the lesser prairie-chicken and a large number of birds and other wildlife in our State and in the surrounding States where this is a significant issue.

There are some exceptions that have been written into the designation, but the reality is that there are huge, ongoing, significant economic consequences to the listing as a threatened species of the lesser prairie-chicken in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. Front and center of that, of course, are the consequences to agriculture. It is how we earn a significant portion of our living in our State. Land values, for example, have dropped as a result of this issue. Oil and gas exploration has been disrupted. Wind energy projects that have been an important component of our State economy and particularly a benefit to the economy of rural Kansas have been harmed as a result of this listing. These disruptions have driven down county tax revenues that are used for essential services in some of the most challenging and difficult parts economically of our State, from damage to Main Street,

and certainly harmed a portion of Kansas that always struggles to be economically viable.

The listing, in my view, was based on an artificially low population estimate due to the drought I described. I guess I failed to mention that 1 year ago this was a bird which could be hunted in Kansas. So, again, it was prevalent enough to be able to be pursued by those who hunt, but because of the drought the population declined. In fact, every Kansas county that is included in the habitat area was experiencing a D3-Extreme or a D4-Exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, again highlighting that what we need here is rainfall and moisture that comes from snow and rain and that listing this as a threatened species doesn't create the moisture necessary to create the habitat for the return of the population of the bird.

What we really have asked for is an opportunity which has been offered and suggested by conservation groups in Kansas, by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, and by the Kansas Farm Bureau and others to work together to find a solution short of this listing to increase bird population in Kansas. And I assume that is true in the other States as well. We are looking for a cooperative effort to improve habitat, and the fact is that the listing as a threatened species has been so disruptive that we have been unable to get what we would say is a more commonsense, less broad-brush approach to solving this problem in place as compared to the heavy hand of this listing. We stand ready, willing, and able to provide that kind of local effort to improve habitat and bird population.

This amendment would not mean the lesser prairie-chicken would never be listed again, but it gives Kansans and others the opportunity to go back and make certain that efforts at the local level are given a chance to work before the very dramatic and devastating implementation of this decision to list the bird as threatened.

So this is a relatively straightforward and simple amendment that will take the lesser prairie-chicken off the list as a threatened species, give Kansans and others the opportunity to improve the habitat, reduce the economic damage that is being done in our State and the States that surround us as a result of this listing, and then give us the opportunity to again work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to find a better solution and one that, I might add, may be more easily found once the rainfalls return to the State of Kansas.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to describe this amendment, and it is certainly my request and I look forward to it being an amendment that would be considered tonight, later this evening.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, first, as an original cosponsor of the good Senator's bill, I compliment him for taking the leadership position he has on this issue, for bringing it forward and so eloquently expressing his support for it.

This is an important bill. I think it is one we all can agree on, on a bipartisan basis. Let's get it through and to the President.

Cyber Security

Mr. President, I start with a question, a basic question: Why are we here? Why do we have those jobs? What is it we are supposed to do? The clearest expression of the answer to that question comes from the preamble to the Constitution, which lays out exactly what our responsibilities are.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more

perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic

Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the

general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to

ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this

Constitution for the United States of America.

This is the purpose of the Constitution. It is the purpose of the government. The most solemn responsibility of any government, I would submit--any government, anywhere, any time--is to provide for the security of its citizens, to provide for the common defense. That is our most solemn and fundamental responsibility.

We are not doing that right now. We are avoiding, missing, obfuscating, and not dealing with one of the most serious threats facing our country. I refer to the threat of cyber attack. Every intelligence official I have talked to in the last 2 years, every military official, everybody with any knowledge of the defense and the security, the national security of this country, has emphasized that the most serious threat we face right now is cyber.

What does that mean? Cyber attacks. The disabling of critical infrastructure, attacks on our businesses, financial systems. This is a direct threat that is heading at us like a freight train on a track. The problem is we see it coming, but we are not doing what we should to deal with it.

To say it is coming is kind of an understatement. This is an unusual chart, but it goes in time from 2004 until today. It is basically the frequency and size of cyber attacks in our country. The bigger bubbles are bigger attacks. The smaller bubbles are smaller attacks. From 2004 to 2006, a few but not many. It is bubbling up and it is about to boil over. Each year we have seen more attacks, larger attacks, more serious attacks. The evidence is overwhelming that this is a threat we are facing. Sony was a wake-up call if ever there was one. What if the Sony attack had been the New York Stock Exchange or the railroad system, where cars bearing toxic materials are derailed, or the natural gas pipeline system or any other of the critical infrastructure of this country, financial or physical, would have disabled us?

I was at a hearing yesterday in the Armed Services Committee. We had the testimony of two of the wisest men in America--Brent Scowcroft, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who was the National Security Adviser to President Ford and President George H.W. Bush, and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter-- talking about threats.

Brent Scowcroft said he believes the cyber threat was analogous to the nuclear threat: People would not be killed, but our country could be destroyed. He saw this as one of the two fundamental threats we face. Yet what are we doing in Congress? Not much. It is as if we got a telegram from Admiral Yamamoto in 1941 saying, I am steaming toward Pearl Harbor and we are going to wipe you out, and we did nothing, or a telegram or a text message from Osama bin Ladin saying, We are heading for the World Trade Center, what are you going to do, and we did nothing.

We have the notice. It is right in front of us. Yet we are not acting. What are the risks? The biggest risk is in the nature of our society. The good news is we are the most technologically advanced society on Earth. The bad news is we are the most technologically advanced society on Earth--because it makes us vulnerable.

It is what they call an asymmetric vulnerability. We are the most vulnerable because we are the most wired. We are in the most danger because of our technical advancement. What can they do to us? This gives you an idea of how this risk is accelerating and how it fits. This is the number of devices in the world connected to the Internet. Back in 2003 it was very few. By 2010 we were up to 10 billion devices connected to the Internet. The projection is, by the end of this year, we will be at 25 billion devices connected to the Internet. By 2020, not that long from now, 50 billion

devices will be connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Critical infrastructure, I have mentioned. The financial system, what would it do to the country if all of a sudden everybody's bank account disappeared? Most of us, many workers in America, have their--we do not see cash money or a paycheck. It goes electronically into our bank account. What if all of that just disappeared? Chaos would ensue.

The same thing with transactions on the New York Stock Exchange or the great transactions of our banks. It would be chaos that would tumble through the economy and then into people's daily lives. Transportation could be paralyzed. The simply act of messing around with how red and green lights work in a major city could paralyze a major city for hours, if not days.

The transportation of toxic or volatile compounds could be compromised. Of course, the energy system, the electrical grid, we do not realize how dependent we are on these modern facilities until they go down. Periodically in Maine, when I was Governor, we had an ice storm where three-quarters of our people lost electricity for sometimes 2 weeks at a time. We learned what a disaster that was. One of the things we learned was that home furnaces, heating oil furnaces, need electricity to fire. People got cold. It was not just: Gee. I cannot watch TV tonight. It became life threatening.

The second area of vulnerability is financial. Data breaches, that is something that is happening all of the time. Then, finally, property ideas, theft of ideas. Where are these threats coming from? All over the place. North Korea, Russia, China, Iran. Terrorist organizations are now looking into the cyber field--hackers for hire, somebody in some country or somebody's basement somewhere in the world who hires out to take advantage of the vulnerability, particularly of the Western countries and particularly the United States.

We are already incurring huge costs, the cost of these data breaches, the cost of protection against these data breaches. Our financial system is spending a huge amount of money to protect itself from these breaches. We have to act. We have to act. It is beyond time to act.

My favorite quote from Mark Twain--and there are many. But my favorite is: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.

History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.

Nothing new ever happens. This would not be the first time in history a great nation ignored threats to its existence. In August of 1939, Winston Churchill, in talking about the House of Commons, but he could have been talking about the U.S. Congress:

At this moment in its long history, it would be disastrous,

it would be pathetic, it would be shameful for the House of

Commons to write itself off as an effective and potent factor

in the situation, or reduce whatever strength it can offer to

the firm front which the nation will make against aggression.

Earlier in the thirties he said--and this is a perfect analogy of where we are today:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now

that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the

remedies which then might have effected a cure.

We are at the line between manageable and too late. I would argue it is almost over that line. Now is the time that we have to act, but we aren't acting because of a variety of reasons: the complexity of our process--four committees have to consider cyber legislation; the differences with the House; the differences with the White House. There are all kinds of complications in our system which seem to be preventing us from acting.

Again, Churchill is appropriate:

There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the

Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of

the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed

unteachability of mankind.

Boy, that is a dark judgment. Continuing:

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would

be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of

counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation

strikes its jarring gong--these are the features which

constitute the endless repetition of history.

Let's act before the crisis starts. Let's act while we still have time.

There are at least three bills that I know of that are available. One is a bipartisan bill that was heavily negotiated in the Intelligence Committee, came out of the committee I think 12 to 3 last summer. That is available. It is a new Congress, but the ink is barely dry. There is a bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee. A bill that came out of the homeland security committee in December of 2012--and lost in this body by a couple of votes--from my friends Senator Collins and Senator Lieberman also dealt with this problem. In other words, we don't have to start from zero. We don't have to invent these solutions; we just have to have the will to put them in place. Yet we don't act.

People say: Well, we have national security, Senator. What are you talking about? We are spending almost $600 billion a year on the defense of this Nation.

And the answer is yes, but in some ways it reminds me of the famous Maginot Line of France in the thirties. The Maginot Line has come to symbolize a faulty defense premise, which really isn't true. The Maginot Line worked. The problem was that the Maginot Line stopped. It went from Switzerland to the Belgian border. It stopped at the Belgian border, and the Germans came around it and behind it and overwhelmed France in 6 days. So the problem wasn't that the Maginot Line was not an effective defense--and our defense budget certainly is not ineffective; it is absolutely essential. But we are not defending the whole frontier. There is a piece of it, like Belgium, that is undefended, and that is our failure.

So what are we going to say when the crisis strikes? What are we going to say when we go home to our citizens in our home States when the financial system goes down and people can't get their money? There are threats of violence and violence across our country when toxic waste is spilled in our waterways. What are we going to say? ``Well, we would have done something about it, but that was in four committees, and that was really hard'' or ``You know, we just got in this argument with the White House and couldn't work it out'' or ``Gee, we would have solved it and your paycheck wouldn't have disappeared except the House--you know how they are.'' Can you imagine trying to defend yourself with that kind of argument? You would be laughed out of the place.

Come on. Let's do this. I don't know exactly how to proceed, except maybe those four committees should get together, talk to each other, and say: Let's bring a bill to the floor.

I would like to see this body decide that we are going to pass cyber protection legislation between now and May 1. There is no reason we can't do it. The bills are drafted. We just have to pull ourselves together and take collective responsibility for defending our country.

If we don't do this--a friend and colleague on this floor yesterday-- we were talking about it, and he said: It is political malpractice if we don't get this done.

This is a threat we know about. It is important. It is serious. We know at least some of the important things we have to do to coordinate better between the government and the private sector. We know how we can help to solve this; we just have to summon the political will to do it. And it isn't even that controversial. There are differences here and there, but this isn't one of the big fights in the Senate where we have great ideological differences, this is one where we should be able to come together. It is a lack of coordination and a lack of political will.

I don't know how I can say this more strongly. I think this is one of our most fundamental responsibilities. I go back to the preamble to the Constitution--the primary reason that governments are established and that our government was established, one of the basic reasons is to provide for the common defense. If we don't do that in the face of this threat, shame on us. This is one of the most solemn responsibilities we have as Senators, as Members of the Congress, and as members of the Federal Government of the United States.

I deeply hope that the next several weeks and months will be a time of productive discussions and a commitment to at least an attempted solution, the beginning of a solution to this

grave threat facing the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I had some concluding thoughts about the President's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Much of it we have heard before. In fact, what the President laid out was largely what his agenda has been for the last 6 years. In other words, we have been there and we have done that, and it hasn't worked very well. We have had tired big government proposals. In fact, the President seems as though he has doubled down in a lot of ways on higher taxes, more redistribution, and more regulations that are out of step with what the American people, I believe, want and need.

I think what they want more than anything else, from a strictly economic point of view, is to get the economy growing again. Let's create jobs. Let the private sector actually create jobs--not government. We know government is pretty incompetent when it comes to job creation. And we now have this nagging little minor detail called the national debt where we keep borrowing money and pushing that down the road to the next generation and beyond.

It is ironic in a lot of ways because the President came to the people's House to give his State of the Union speech, which is the House of Representatives, but his speech was anything but for the people. He claimed that really his focus was on middle-class economics. I think he had been listening to the senior Senator from New York who, after this last election, gave a speech at the National Press Club and said that Democrats had made a terrible mistake leading off with the President's new term in 2009 with ObamaCare and other big government programs and they had neglected stagnant wages and the middle class. So I think the President, in a tipping of his hat to Senator Schumer and his comments post election, has essentially acknowledged that his first 6 years have failed to address the needs of the middle class. That is why he kept using the phrase ``middle-class economics'' during his speech. But it wasn't really about the middle class. It wasn't about hard-working American taxpayers. Time and again, it seemed his most urgent priority was himself. His speech was really about him and his agenda, his pet projects, his vision for bigger government.

I would just point out that the President quite candidly admitted it was his agenda and his policies that were on the ballot on November 4. I think that sent a shudder through every incumbent who was running for reelection who happened to have voted for his big government agenda. But the point is that it was soundly rejected on November 4. You couldn't tell that from the President's tone and his cheerleading last Tuesday night. But my point is we have been there, we have done that, and it didn't work. So let's try something different.

We have felt the experience of this experiment in big government for the last 6 years. If anything, what the voters said on November 4 is enough is enough. I can't remember who originally said it, but someone said famously that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You can't try the same old tired policies over and over and actually expect a different outcome. At least to my mind, reality wasn't what was driving the President's remarks. If it was, he would have focused on the biggest concerns Americans have right now. I mentioned jobs, stagnant wages, rising costs, and issues such as health care costs.

Unfortunately, ObamaCare really backfired on a lot of middle-class workers, and it actually raised their health care costs rather than lowered them. Then there are the stagnant wages I mentioned a moment ago. But if he really cared about those issues as he should and as we do, he would be working with Congress to address those issues, and he would have given some attention to one of the first major pieces of legislation that we have taken up in the 114th Congress on a bipartisan basis.

Of course I am referring to the Keystone XL Pipeline that we are debating now, where 11 Democrats joined all of the Republicans who are present to proceed to this bill. So when I say it is bipartisan, I am not just saying it. It actually is.

Sometimes you can tell a lot from what a person doesn't say. In this case, the President spoke more than 6,000 words, and he didn't mention the word Keystone in one of them. Instead of using this opportunity when millions of Americans and people around the world were listening to the President to lay out sound reasons why he continues to oppose this jobs and infrastructure project year after year, the President merely said we should look beyond a single pipeline to meet America's infrastructure needs. We need to start somewhere, and the President won't even start by taking the first step of approving this infrastructure and job-creating project known as the Keystone XL Pipeline.

I think there is a Chinese proverb that says a trip of a thousand miles has to start with the first step. That is true here as well. It may be a single pipeline, but it is a single pipeline that his own State Department has said has the potential to support more than 40,000 jobs.

Here is what I don't get. There are 2.5 million miles of oil and gas pipelines in America today--2.5 million. What is this fixation with this roughly thousand-mile pipeline that comes from Canada down to southeast Texas where it is refined, turned into gasoline, and other refined products? Why has this become such a political football?

It is because the President and, unfortunately, some of his own party who are wed to a political base that won't allow them to do the rational, realistic, practical thing, which would be to approve this pipeline. The President tried to minimize this.

We have heard people say these are temporary jobs. My job here is temporary. The President's job is temporary. It is going to run out in a couple of years. Every job is temporary in that sense. To try to denigrate these well-paying construction jobs from welders and others-- people who make $125,000, $140,000 a year in my State--and to denigrate them, to minimize them, and to say it is just a temporary job and is really not all that important is a slap in the face to the people who are hungry to find work, people who are working part time who want to work full time, people who are working for minimum wage but want to improve their standard of living and their ability to provide for their family.

Then there is this. We need to remember the percentage of Americans participating in the workforce is at a 30-year low--a 30-year low. What that means to me is that some people just simply have given up looking for work, and so they have dropped out. They have retired. They have gone on to do other things. But it is a symptom of a disease in our economy. It is not something we should be proud of. If we are actually interested in getting more Americans back in the workforce, the President would approve this pipeline.

Let me tell you about one person with whom I met last Friday in Beaumont, TX. We call it the golden triangle. It is a place where refineries are seemingly almost everywhere. It is a blue-collar community but one that is proud and contributes a lot to the Texas economy. I was in Beaumont, as I said, and we were there to mark the 1- year anniversary of the southern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline's coming online. This is a little confusing. But this is the portion of pipeline that is already in place, and it doesn't require a transit with Presidential approval to cross from Canada into the United States.

Believe it or not, there are already 4,800 jobs that have been created and an average of 400,000 barrels of Canadian crude pumped into southeast Texas already. We are not talking about doing something that is new. We are talking about adding to what already exists by completion of this pipeline.

My point is this. If the President wants to see what the potential economic impact and the impact on jobs and on the standard of living would be for the entire Keystone XL Pipeline, all he needs to do is to look to southeast Texas--to Beaumont, TX--where

the impact has been nothing but positive.

I met with the mayor of Beaumont, the county judge, other local businesses, officials, and stakeholders. The mayor and the county judge pointed out that it is the taxes they get from the economic activity caused by this pipeline--which exists and which would do nothing but be enhanced by the Keystone XL Pipeline--that helps pay the taxes that pave roads, provide health care to people who don't have access to it-- who can't afford health care. It provides to pay the law enforcement. It provides all of the governmental functions, including education. This is what adds to the tax base which allows local governments, including school districts, to provide for the education of our children.

Then there is this. There is the multiplier effect of the investment by the private investment on this pipeline. It is the multiplier effect because people who earn these good wages spend the money at restaurants, buy homes, rent apartments. They buy things at retail outlets. That is the multiplier effect from this pipeline.

One person in particular I want to close with is a gentleman I met by the name of Kenneth Edwards who is a vice president with the United Association, the union of plumbers, fitters, welders, and service techs. I think Mr. Edwards would agree with me that we wouldn't necessarily see eye to eye on everything. But after being married 35 years, I don't know many married couples that agree on everything. So that is not all that unusual. It isn't a surprise that Republicans and unions haven't been on the same page on every issue. But there is an issue where we agree 100 percent, and that is the need for the President to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline after 6 long years.

Mr. Edwards speaks on behalf of many union workers nationwide who, as he put it, earn their living from a series of temporary jobs that happen to add up to a lifelong career. He told me last week he wants the President to put his famous veto pen away, to take out his approval pen, and to sign his approval of this project right away.

Speaking of temporary jobs, the President is ending his time in office. He has 2 more years left. His State of the Union Address leads me to believe he is not open to changing course and making much of a departure from the partisanship and gridlock that marked his first term and a half. But there is still time to change his mind.

With the Keystone XL Pipeline bill that a bipartisan majority of Congress will soon send his way, we are presenting him an opportunity to say that he heard the message that voters delivered on November 4. I heard the American people say we are tired of the dysfunction in Washington, DC. We actually want to see Congress and the White House work together to get things done on behalf of the American people.

It is not too late. I hope he will listen not only to people such as Kenneth Edwards and union workers across the country but to the vast majority of Americans who support this important project.

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

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham).

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 71

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).

Mr. President, the next amendment following the Cornyn amendment seeks to prohibit the use of eminent domain in the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline, but eminent domain is actually irrelevant to this bill. This is actually designed to confuse things and ultimately end up being a poison pill. I think it is accurate to say that the distinguished Senator from New Jersey is no fan of the Keystone XL Pipeline, so he wants to add this provision to the bill to make it impossible, basically, to implement.

The bill doesn't authorize or mandate the use of eminent domain to take any property; it simply approves a cross-border permit. The decision on how the property should be taken should be and will be made by the individual States in a process overseen by State courts and subject to the U.S. Constitution. My amendment simply reiterates that the standard in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies.

I ask all Senators to vote for the Cornyn amendment and to vote against the Menendez amendment.

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

Mr. President, the Senate has spoken on the preceding amendment and overwhelmingly affirmed the Constitution as the only standard that should apply under these circumstances.

The standard being proposed by the Senator from New Jersey is an anti-States rights amendment, and it is designed to be a poison pill on this Keystone XL Pipeline, which he obviously does not support and wants to use every means to kill.

I would ask for a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to take a couple of minutes to talk about the pending business--the TransCanada tar sands pipeline. I think it is helpful to start out by recognizing that we actually haven't had a global energy bill in the Senate going back to 2005. So it has been about 10 years since we have truly looked at our entire energy policy in this country and set a new course for what we should be doing in the future.

Despite the fact I think bumper stickers are a little dangerous, I thought it would be helpful to at least try to encapsulate the general direction we should be going--the short and sweet of what lens we should be viewing our national energy policy through. I think if I had to boil that down to a simple and concise statement, what I would say is simply fewer imports and cleaner fuels. So as we look at different proposals over the course of this upcoming Congress, I think it will be very helpful, particularly on the energy committee and on the floor, to view these projects through that lens.

Oddly enough, we are not dealing with a major energy policy as the very first thing the Senate considers as its pending business. We are dealing with one single project put forward by TransCanada, an international corporation, that has spent millions and millions of dollars over the last few years lobbying Washington for this particular project.

A lot has been said about the tar sands and about oil sands, but one of the things I think would be helpful to talk about is the fundamental difference between the oil that is produced around the United States and tar sands production. At the end of the line we are talking about the energy that is produced, but at the front end there is an enormous difference between oil that is drilled in Southeast New Mexico, Northwest New Mexico, in West Texas, in North Dakota or Colorado and in the tar sands. If we look through that same lens of fewer imports and cleaner fuels, tar sands development fails on both of those fronts.

We talk about more dependency in the United States on importing energy, and here we are talking about a substantially dirtier fuel source. In fact, we aren't allowed props on the floor, but when having this conversation in caucus, I brought some tar sands with me so I could show people the difference between oil and tar sands and how just toxic and sticky it is and how it represents a step backward in our overall energy policy in this country.

When thinking of oil production, most people think of putting a well in place, you case the well, and there is a well pad. It has an impact, certainly, but it is substantially limited compared to what we are seeing going on in the boreal forest in northern Alberta right now.

This is a picture of northern Canada. For those of us in arid Southwestern States, I can't tell you how envious we are of the kind of water one finds in this part of Canada. Also, the fish and wildlife and the forest resources are substantial. If we look at this picture, some people would say: That is the kind of place one might want to see as a national wildlife refuge or a national park. This is what the boreal forest looks like before tar sands production.

The thing to remember is that tar sands are not drilled for. They are not produced the way oil and natural gas is produced. Tar sands are mined, and they are strip mined. Let us see a picture that exemplifies the boreal forest and then the tar sands production area in the back. This in the front is how it started out and the back is what you have once you are producing the tar sands.

We heard from our colleague from Wyoming in his statement recently on the floor that there is no significant environmental impact from this project. But when we look at tar sands production, I don't know how we can look at a photo such as this and say there is no significant environmental impact.

Let's look at the next picture, and we can take an even closer look at what the tar sands look like when it is in production. We are talking about an enormous area across northern Canada impacted in this way. As we can see, the tar sands is not oil, it is sand and bitumen together.

To be able to process tar sands, to send it through this tar sands pipeline--the Keystone or any other pipeline--to be able to produce it and refine it is a very complicated process. You start by removing the forest cover, then you scrape off the topsoil, and after that you dig up the remaining tar sands and then you have to heat those up and process it to get the energy-bearing oil portion out. Just to be able to move it through a pipeline you have to heat it up, you have to pressurize it and you have to add caustic solvents.

One of the reasons it has been so incredibly difficult to clean up the existing tar sands spills in places such as Michigan and Arkansas is because--unlike oil, where we have a fair amount

of experience, though it is not easy to clean up--there are additional solvents and because the very sticky nature of this substance makes it almost impossible to clean up. We have had very little luck cleaning up tar sands spills to date.

We see in the front of this picture the boreal forest--or what is left of it--and then we see acres and acres and acres, thousands upon thousands of acres of tar sands production. So I think the first thing that is important for people to know is that this simply is not traditional oil and gas development. It is not clear a well pad, drill a hole, and produce oil. It is the kind of impact that if it were proposed for New Mexico or New York or California or even Texas we would have enormous outcry. We don't have the kind of open-pit mining and strip mining we once had in this country, but that is what it is most analogous to.

That said, another one of the claims that has been made repeatedly about this particular project is that the emissions it would create are inconsequential. So it is helpful to look at the emissions to understand that, because tar sands are fundamentally not only harder to handle but fundamentally dirtier from a pollution point of view than traditional oil resources. It is instructive to look at the difference between if we created the same amount of energy from domestic New Mexico, Texas, Colorado or North Dakota crude oil versus if we produced that energy from tar sands.

Once again, we get an idea of the emissions just at the source of the tar sands development here, but if we were to build this tar sands pipeline and we burned all of that produced tar sands that will move through it, the incremental pollution impact of that, the incremental carbon pollution--not the base pollution of whether we created the same amount of energy from oil sources or from some other sources of energy, if we used oil from the United States to create this energy--not looking at that but just the increment of burning tar sands oil instead of conventional crude oil, it is the equivalent of putting 285 million cars on the road for 1 year.

So the addition of carbon pollution to the atmosphere is anything but inconsequential if we look at it from the point of view that it is the equivalent of doubling Pennsylvania's cars--putting another Pennsylvania's worth of auto traffic on the road every year for 50 years.

What that doesn't take into account is the additional carbon released simply because we are cutting down all the forests, eliminating the peat bogs, and fundamentally industrializing an enormous portion of Alberta and Canada. That increment is another 6 million cars' worth of carbon pollution on the road for 1 year.

So that brings me to: What difference does this make?

We may have seen in the news a few days ago how 2014 was the hottest year on record. I wish I could say that was an anomaly. Unfortunately, it is not. Fourteen of the last 15 years have been record-setting years. And if there is something we know from our geologic records-- from ice cores, from the science that has been done at NASA and NOAA and analyzed by our national labs and our university scientists--it is that over time the amount of carbon pollution in the atmosphere--the parts per million of carbon dioxide at any given time--tends to correlate with temperature. It doesn't matter if it comes from a volcano, it doesn't matter if it comes from the exhaust of a car. But because we have added such an enormous increment in recent years, since 1880 and the Industrial Revolution, we can see that as the parts per million of particles go up over time--this is the CO2 concentration over that time period from the Industrial Revolution to today. It is actually not quite up to date because, unfortunately, we are now up here above 400 parts per million. Over that same time period, the average temperature has gone up year in and year out, with fluctuations, but the trendline continues to go up to a very dangerous level.

Adding an additional increment of carbon pollution is simply not something we can afford at a time when we need to be showing real leadership in terms of cleaning up our energy sources, moving forward to a clean energy future, and putting Americans to work here, domestically, with that approach.

The temporary jobs this tar sands pipeline will create are not inconsequential. But since this has been sold as a jobs program, it is worth stepping back and talking about how much of a permanent impact this is going to make. I would make the argument that if we were truly serious here in the U.S. Senate about the type of temporary construction jobs this pipeline would create, we would get serious about passing a transportation bill--and not only passing a transportation bill, but financing transportation in this country, financing infrastructure in this country the way we have historically.

We have a deficit of trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure at this point in this country because we won't pay to maintain it. In fact, our parents' generation built an infrastructure that is the envy of the world. With the current approach in the Congress, we haven't even had the decency to maintain the infrastructure they built and pass it on to our children unimpaired, much less create additional infrastructure of the type we saw from previous generations.

So if we look at the permanent jobs, as articulated in the environmental impact statement, we are talking about 30 to 50 permanent jobs from Keystone. That is slightly less than a single McDonald's, although I would argue that construction jobs are usually higher paying than McDonald's. But it gives us a sense of the kind of scale we are talking about in terms of permanent jobs. If we compare that to just regional projects in individual States--a transmission line in the Southwest, three times as many jobs as that; an electric vehicle plant in the West in Nevada, substantially many, many increments of permanent jobs more, which once again brings us to the fact that in this recovery, just in the third quarter of 2014, we saw 18,000 in clean energy jobs created in this country.

We need jobs in this country. We need energy in this country. And I would argue that the sooner we commit ourselves to a clean energy job- intensive future, the sooner we will address the real challenges that are in front of us.

I continue to urge the President to exercise his discretion and his veto of this. I suspect it will pass the U.S. Senate. But the sooner we get through this process, my hope is that we can return to a real debate about how we address the science that all the scientists have said is out there. We did make a big step forward yesterday in that the Senate for the first time--and the Republicans in the Senate in particular for the first time--accepted the reality of climate change. Unfortunately, right now the policy prescription is to make that climate change worse.

It is time we had an Apollo project for clean energy in this country. That will take transition. That means we are going to continue to produce fossil fuels as a part of that transition. But the sooner we get serious about investing in research and development, the sooner we get serious in terms of scaling the very real and economically competitive technologies we already have, the sooner we get serious about building infrastructure, such as transmission lines to carry renewable energy from parts of the country where it can be produced today to parts of the country where it will be consumed, the sooner we will lead the world and put this country back on track to be the world leader in not only energy but in clean energy.

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