A bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Don and Deyon Stephens, Founders of Mercy Ships, in recognition of nearly 40 years of service as the leaders of a humanitarian relief organization that exemplifies the compassionate character of America.

Mr. President, tomorrow marks another somber occasion. Eight years ago, the news ticker came across our televisions saying that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Louisiana, was on fire, the Coast Guard was on the scene, and workers were missing.

It was a Tuesday night. It was nearly midnight on April 20, 2010. By morning light, we knew 11 men would not be going home again. For 87 days, the oil gushed into one of the most productive marine environments in the world. The studies show the oil impacted the deepwater corals and fish at the bottom of the food chain, all the way from the bottom up to the dolphins and sea turtles at the top.

Here is one example. This is one in the bayous. You can see the marsh grasses in the distance. You can see the oil as it is coming up, and it is literally covering everything. They did studies on fish that would be in a bayou like this. A little fish, about as big is this, is called a killifish. LSU professors did this study, and they compared them to the bayous where there was not this kind of oil, compared it to similar killifish. What they found over time was the little fish in bayous like this were stunted. They didn't reproduce. They mutated because of this.

Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed for 3 months. A lot of it is still there. Some of it is at the bottom where that well was, and that wellhead on the sea floor below the rig was a mile deep. We worked as one gulf community in a bipartisan way. We passed legislation--it was called the RESTORE Act--to send a message that there were going to be fines and penalties under the Clean Water Act. So many barrels of oil, a figure, and then the culpability of the oil company that allowed it to happen. A Federal judge did an extended trial over several years and came up with that fine and that penalty. The RESTORE Act said that money that was going to be assessed against the oil company was going back to the Gulf of Mexico region, and it was going to aid in the economy and in the environment.

There was another impact. The winds caught that oil slick and started sending it east from Louisiana, and it got over to the white sugary sands of Pensacola Beach in Destin and tar balls as far east as Panama City Beach. Those white sands were completely covered in tar and oil. Those photographs of Pensacola Beach went around the world. What was the result? Our guests, our visitors, our tourists, for an entire season, thought all of the Gulf of Mexico beaches along Florida were covered like Pensacola Beach was, and they didn't come for the entire year. Not only did you have an environmental effect like this, you had an economic effect like the loss of tourist revenue in the hotels, motels, the restaurants, the dry cleaners, the little newspapers, and all the ancillary businesses that depend upon a $60 billion-a-year tourist industry in Florida. Still, I am afraid the oil industry hopes we have forgotten all of this.

This month, the media released documents from 2016 in which BP claims that an oilspill can be a welcomed boost to local economies. Can you believe that? This oilspill was in 2010. In 2016, we have just uncovered documents that BP claimed that an oilspill can be ``a welcome boost to local economies.'' How outrageous and how arrogant. I can assure you, the coastal communities of Florida vigorously disagree, and I bet you the coastal communities that had to put up with that in their bayous would disagree vigorously as well.

All that progress, and yet the industry is relentless in wanting to take us backward. They still want to open up Florida's beaches and offshore to drilling, and we have to fight it every day.

The one thing we also have going for us is, the Gulf of Mexico, off of Florida, is the largest testing and training area for the U.S. military in the world. This Senator just climbed into an Air Force jet to fly part of the training profile for young pilots, knowing they have restricted airspace. That was out of Eglin Air Force Base--the testing and training designee for all of the Department of Defense. We have a range that goes from the Panhandle of Florida all the way south in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Key West. In a one-angle shot, they can shoot sophisticated, long-range weapons 600 miles to do the testing.

Big Oil is now trying to roll back some of the basic safety rules that were put in place after the disaster in order to prevent another tragedy. It is happening in front of our eyes. Two years ago, they said that an oilspill could be a welcome boost to the local economies. Yet they are rolling back safety rules today that were put in place in the aftermath of there being 11 people killed on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. They are rolling that back today in this administration's agencies.

That is why I am joining Senator Cantwell and other colleagues in introducing legislation to codify these sensible safety measures, like those designed to update the standards for blowout preventers and a requirement for a third party to certify the safety mechanisms.

Let me explain what a blowout preventer is. It didn't work in the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. A mile below the surface, where the well comes out of the Earth, there is a thing called a blowout preventer. If, as happened, there is a blowout in BP's oil well, there is a mechanism that is supposed to safely cut the oil line--pinch it and stop it from flowing. It was faulty. It did not work. So there have been new standards for blowout preventers since 2010. In 2018, 8 years later, the oil industry is trying to roll back those safety requirements that were put in place in the aftermath of their spilling 5 million barrels of oil into the gulf.

Do you see the fight that we have? It is almost every week. We can't allow the Department of the Interior to take us backward in time and expose our beautiful beaches and our tourism-based local economies, as well as our military, to another Deepwater Horizon-type catastrophe if they keep pushing back these safety rules.

That is the purpose of introducing this legislation today with Senator Cantwell. If we don't watch it, we are going to be right back in the same place we were 8 years ago. It will be 8 years ago to the day tomorrow that we had that awful experience.

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

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

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

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