Floor Statements

Reserving the right to object, how much longer----

I apologize to my friend from South Carolina.

Mr. President, I want to talk about an issue that millions and millions of people all over this country are increasingly concerned about; that is, last week the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, released a proposal in response to a recent Federal court decision that struck down the Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order. The proposal would, for the very first time, allow Internet service providers to be able to pay for priority treatment.

What this means, in point of fact, is the end of net neutrality and the end of the Internet as we know it. What net neutrality means is that everyone in our country--and, in fact, the world--has the same access to the same information. Whether you are a mom-and-pop store in Hardwick, VT, or whether you are Walmart, the largest private corporation in America, you should have the same access to your customers.

Net neutrality also means that a blogger, somebody who just blogs out his or her point of view, in a small town in America should have the same access to his or her readers as the New York Times or the Washington Post.

If the FCC allows huge corporations to negotiate ``fast-lane deals,'' then the Internet will eventually be sold to the highest bidder. Companies with the money will have the access and small businesses will be treated as second- or third-class citizens. This is grotesquely unfair and this will be a disaster for our economy and for small businesses all across our country.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel for their strong support of net neutrality. They are doing exactly what the American people want from the Commission. During last week's hearing Commissioner Rosenworcel stated:

We cannot have a two-tiered Internet, with fast lanes that

speed the traffic of the privileged and leave the rest of us

lagging behind.

Commissioner Clyburn noted:

[The] free and open exchange of ideas is critical to a

democratic society.

And she is, of course, absolutely right.

I have to say--and I don't mean to be particularly partisan on this issue, but the facts are the facts--that in contrast, the Republican Commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Reilly, would like to completely deregulate the Internet. Commissioner O'Reilly said, in response to the proposal:

As I've said before, the premise for imposing net

neutrality rules is fundamentally flawed and rests on a

faulty foundation of make-believe statutory authority. I have

serious concerns that this ill-advised item will create

damaging uncertainty and head the Commission down a slippery

slope of regulation.

That is Republican Commissioner O'Reilly.

What does all of this mean in English? What it means is that when we talk about deregulating the Internet, we are talking about allowing money--big money--to talk, and allowing the big-money interests to once again get their way in Washington. That is very wrong. We cannot allow our democracy to once again be sold to the highest bidder.

I think all of us agree the Internet has been an enormous success in fostering innovation and enabling free and open speech across the country and throughout the world. We kind of take it for granted. But when the Presiding Officer and I were growing up, there was no Internet, and I think we can all acknowledge now what a huge advance it has been for business and for general communication. Unfortunately, these Republican Commissioners on the FCC want to fix a problem that does not exist. What they want is to change the fundamental architecture of the Internet to remove the neutrality that has been in place for decades--since the inception of the Internet--and to allow big corporations to control content online.

Let me say the American people--people in Vermont and across this

country--care very deeply about this issue. A little while ago, in advance of the FCC's vote, on the Internet I asked people in Vermont and throughout the country to share their views with me, to write to me and tell me what they thought about the attempt to do away with net neutrality, and I was blown away by the response we received. More than 19,000 people have submitted comments to my office so far, and what they are saying in statement after statement after statement is that the FCC has to defend net neutrality.

I think these 19,000 people represent the vast majority of the people in this country who understand how important net neutrality is, and I want to take this opportunity and a very few moments to share some of the comments I received through my Web site.

Anthony Drake of Moreno Valley, CA, said:

Net neutrality is vital for a free and open internet, and

the economic advantages that it has brought our nation and

the world. Please work to reclassify ISPs as common carriers

under Title II of the Communications Act.

Stamford, VT, resident Roy Gibson concurred, telling the FCC that Internet providers ``should be treated like utilities.'' I agree with Roy Gibson.

Reg Jones of Bennington, VT, said President Obama must uphold his campaign promise to enforce net neutrality. He further said:

Net neutrality should be mandated as President Obama

promised. Any attempt to allow differential speeds and access

to the Internet should be squashed and those who propose it

should be replaced by people who represent all of the

citizens of this country. Internet access should be for the

good of all, not for the select few who already have too much

power and more money than they need.

William LaFrana of Versailles, KY, said:

Everyone should have equal access to the Internet. The

Internet was developed with taxpayer funding, and should not

be held hostage to corporate piracy.

Patricia Moriarty from Harwich Point, MA, wrote:

The Internet is the only place where we truly have freedom

of speech and the ability to freely exchange new ideas around

the world. Leave the Internet OPEN.

President Obama himself has long been on record supporting net neutrality. In 2007, then-Presidential candidate Obama said:

What you've been seeing is some lobbying that says that the

servers and the various portals through which you're getting

information over the Internet should be able to be

gatekeepers and to charge differential rates to different Web

sites . . . so you can get much better quality from the Fox

News site and you'd be getting rotten service from the mom

and pop sites. . . . And that I think destroys one of the

best things about the Internet--which is that there is this

incredible equality there.

That is what Barack Obama said when he was campaigning for the Presidency. Barack Obama was right when he said that, and I would very strongly urge the President to stand for what he said when he was campaigning for President and defend net neutrality.

I understand the FCC is an independent body, but the American people have spoken with a clear and unified voice that they want to maintain net neutrality. What is so frustrating for the American people is to elect a candidate--in this case President Obama--who campaigned on an issue and now see many of the FCC members he appointed moving in a different direction. It is simply not enough for the President to sit on the sidelines on this issue. We need him to speak out for net neutrality, as he did when he campaigned for President.

Let me conclude by simply saying the Commission will soon consider whether to reclassify the Internet as a so-called common carrier. Under this distinction, the Internet would be treated like other utilities. Being classified as a common carrier will mean Internet service providers must provide the same service to everyone, without discrimination. This is the only path forward to maintain an open forum, free of discrimination.

Over the next few months the public will have an opportunity to weigh in on this proposal by the FCC. Each of us--and I hope every Member of Congress--should be concerned about this issue. I encourage you to be vocal. If people want to write to my office--sanders.senate.gov--we already have 19,000 people commenting and we welcome even more. I hope the American people rally around this issue of net neutrality and that we defeat any proposal to do away with that.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, as I think most Americans know, about 4 years ago the Supreme Court rendered a decision, which I happen to believe is one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, and that is their decision regarding Citizens United. As a result of that decision, what they said is corporations are people and individuals could spend an unlimited--unlimited--sum of money in elections. By ``unlimited,'' I mean hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars--quite as much as they want through independent expenditures.

I think many Americans observed the repercussions of that decision just last month. A gentleman named Sheldon Adelson, one of the wealthiest people

in this country, worth many billions, held what was called the Adelson primary in Nevada. What he did was invite prospective Republican candidates for President to come to Nevada to chat with him, to tell him their views; and if he decides to support one of those candidates, they will end up receiving, in all likelihood, hundreds of millions of dollars.

But it is not just Sheldon Adelson. Probably even more significantly, when we talk about the impact of Citizens United and we talk about the flood of money coming in from the billionaire class to the political process, it is important to talk about the Koch brothers.

I understand there has been a lot of criticism of Majority Leader Reid because he has talked about the Koch brothers, but I think the majority leader is exactly right. The issue is not personal. I don't know if the Koch brothers are nice guys or not nice guys; that is not the issue.

The issue is the impact this billionaire family, the second wealthiest family in America, is having on the political process; and, second of all, and even more importantly, what do they stand for? Who are they? Why are they pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process?

I have a problem, to tell you the truth--whether somebody is a rightwinger or leftwinger--I have a real problem with these rich guys spending huge sums of money.

But at the end of the day what is important to understand is what do they want? Why are they spending so much money in politics? Why are they supporting candidates throughout this country, running for the Senate, running for the House? Clearly they will be heavily involved in the next Presidential election. What do they stand for? That is the issue.

It disturbs me very much, by the way, that the media hasn't been talking about that. What do these guys stand for? What do they want?

Many Americans know the Koch brothers provided the main source of funding for the creation of the tea party--that is fine--and many Americans know the Koch brothers want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They have run a lot of ads supporting candidates who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That is their view, and that is fine as well.

But what I think most Americans don't know is the Koch brothers want to repeal virtually every major piece of legislation that has been passed in the past 80 years to help the middle class, to help working families, to help the elderly, to help the children, to help low-income people. Their view, their ideological view, is that we should eliminate or substantially cut back on all of those programs.

In 1980, David Koch, one of the Koch brothers, was the vice presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party. In fact, he helped fund the Libertarian Party in that year. I want to read to you and discuss with you a few of the excerpts from the 1980 Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on. People may think: Well, that was back in 1980. But do you know what. It is my impression their views haven't changed one iota; that they are funding many organizations all over this country that essentially espouse those very view views David Koch ran on in 1980.

This is the first quote that was in the 1980 Libertarian Party platform David Koch ran on as a vice presidential candidate and helped fund. He said: ``We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system.''

That is their view. That shouldn't surprise anybody. These guys do not believe government should be involved in health care, in retirement security. It is totally consistent with what they believe.

But when Americans see ads on television paid for by David Koch, I hope they understand these guys eventually want to see--probably not tomorrow--the repeal of Social Security. They want to privatize it, they don't want it to exist.

What is the reality? The reality is the overwhelming majority of the American people disagree with the Koch brothers. The reality is Social Security is probably the most successful Federal program in the history of our country. For more than 78 years, in good times and in bad, Social Security has provided every single benefit owed to every eligible American without delay. That is in good times, bad times, recession, boom, whatever it was. Before Social Security was created, nearly half of seniors lived in poverty. Today, while still too high, that number is 9.1 percent. We have gone from 50 percent down to 9.1 percent largely because of Social Security.

The main point is according to virtually every poll I have seen, including the latest National Journal poll on the subject, 76 percent of the American people do not want to cut Social Security at all, an issue you and I were involved in. They do not want to cut Social Security. They sure as heck do not want to repeal Social Security.

So when you see the ads on television being paid for by the Koch brothers, understand where they are coming from in terms of Social Security.

Let me give another quote, and this is an exact quote from the 1980 platform of the Libertarian Party, David Koch, vice presidential candidate: ``We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.''

Abolition, what does that mean? It means if you are a senior citizen, 70 years of age, you are not feeling well, you go to the doctor, the doctor diagnoses you with cancer, you are not going to have Medicare there for you. If you don't have a lot of money, how are you going to get the health care you need? Well, you know what. You may not, because according to the Koch brothers, the Federal Government should not be involved in public health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

What happens if you are a low-income person? What happens if your kid is on the Children's Health Insurance Program, called Dr. Dynasaur in Vermont--I don't know what it is called in Hawaii--but it covers all of the States in this country. Millions of kids are getting their health insurance through the Children's Health Insurance Program. What is the Koch brothers' view? We should eliminate it. The Federal Government should not be involved in health insurance.

According to the latest polls I have seen on this subject, 81 percent of the American people do not want to cut Medicare benefits at all and 60 percent of the American people don't want to cut Medicaid benefits at all, because they understand that in these tough times it is terribly important that we have guaranteed health care programs for our people. Yet the view of the Koch brothers is we should end Medicare and Medicaid.

So, again, when you see ads on television, understand who is paying for them.

We have been discussing the minimum wage bill. The Presiding Officer and I agree it is absolutely imperative that we raise the minimum wage. I think $10.10, the bill we had on the floor last week, is a start. I would go farther, but I think most Americans understand a family breadwinner and a family who is making all of $7.25 an hour or $14,000 or $15,000 a year is not a wage upon which anyone can live.

Yet when you read the platform David Koch ran on--and again, their success has been that where their ideas were thought to be pretty crazy and kooky in 1980--he got 1 percent of the vote and ran because they thought Ronald Reagan was much too liberal in 1980--today these ideas are increasingly becoming mainstream. They are in the Ryan budget passed by the Republican House. They are reflected by actions in the Senate by my Republican Senate colleagues.

One example is when we talk about the minimum wage, some of us think we have to raise it. Their view, what the Koch brothers said in 1980, and I believe it is their view today:

We support repeal of all laws which impede the ability of

any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

So this is not a debate about whether you raise the minimum wage to $10.10. You do what they are doing in Seattle, WA, over a period of time raising it to $15 an hour, whether you raise it to $9 an hour, that is not their debate. Their debate is we should repeal the concept of the minimum wage.

What does that mean in real terms? It means that in high-unemployment areas of this country where workers are desperate for jobs, if an employer says: I am going to give you 3 bucks an hour, and you say: I can't live on 3

bucks, and the employer says: Well, I have 20 other people who are prepared to take the job, that is their goal. They do not believe the Federal Government should be involved in providing at least a minimum wage for the workers of this country.

They believe, among other things, that we should abolish the U.S. Postal Service, and I want to get into that. Their view is, again, the Postal Service, a Federal Government program--not a question of having a debate, how do you strengthen the Postal Service, what do you do, and what do you not do--they want to abolish the U.S. Postal Service.

Let me go to another quote from David Koch, which I think maybe is the most interesting of all. This is where they are coming from. This is their philosophy:

We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and

``aid to the poor'' programs. All these government programs

are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and

inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is

the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.

I want to put into English what they say. What they are saying is they want to get rid of food stamps, they want to get rid of all nutrition programs, all affordable housing programs, Meals On Wheels Programs, which help vulnerable seniors, congregate meal programs, Head Start--which obviously are important to millions of working families and their children.

So you ask: Well, what happens if I am hungry and there is no food stamp program because they want to get rid of all of these programs, because they think the Federal Government should not be involved in these issues? What do we do when people are hungry when they can't find jobs?

Well, they can go to their local church, they can go to their local charity. Maybe they will get some help, maybe they won't. In other words, we are back to the days of Charles Dickens. We are back to the days of Charles Dickens where ordinary people and lower income people have no rights and no benefits. The only way they get help is if some charity is there to dole out some money.

I don't believe that is where the American people are, and I don't believe that is what the American people want.

Back In 1980, the Libertarian Party had a rather bold proposal, and they said: ``We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.''

Essentially what they are saying is no more government. That is it. No more government.

There is going to be a vote in a few minutes, and I am going to seesaw, and I will be back on this issue. But I wanted to point out to what degree these folks, who are worth at least $80 billion, whose wealth increased last year by $12 billion, who have indicated they are prepared to spend as much as it takes to elect people who to some degree or another--I am not sure all of the candidates they support agree with everything they say, but they know what they are doing. They are smart.

They are spending huge sums of money to create an America in which the wealthiest people will get huge tax breaks while working families, the middle class, the elderly, the children, and the sick will be left out on the street all by themselves. That is not the vision of America the American people believe in. I doubt there are 5 or 10 percent of the American people who believe in that vision, maybe less than that.

But when you have $80 billion, and you are worth that much and can spend unlimited sums of money, you will have a huge impact on the political process, and you will have candidates who talk about this perspective, who defend this point of view, because that is where their money or campaigns comes from, rather than talking about the needs of working families or ordinary Americans.

Let me make this last point, and that is this: It was 34 years ago the Koch brothers said:

We urge the repeal of Federal campaign finance laws, and

the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election

Commission.

They have come so far in 34 years that that is now the position of a number of Republicans, including, as I understand it, the chairman of the National Republican Party.

What does that mean? It means if you repeal all campaign finance laws, the Koch brothers and other billionaires will not just be able to spend as much as they want on independent campaign expenditures, they will be able to give money directly to the candidates of their choice.

Let me conclude by saying: I hope everybody pays attention to what the Koch brothers stand for.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all remaining time on both sides.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Reserving the right to object.

Madam President, let me touch on a few of the points of my distinguished colleague from Louisiana.

First of all, regarding the allegations against the VA in Phoenix, as we know, these are very serious allegations, and it is absolutely appropriate the inspector general do a thorough and independent investigation of those allegations. As I am sure my colleague from Louisiana knows, the leadership at Phoenix has rejected those allegations, saying those are not true. The Secretary of VA has done what I believe,

and I would hope my friend from Louisiana believes, is the right thing to do, which is to do an independent investigation.

I am not a lawyer, but I did learn enough in school to know you don't find somebody guilty without assessing the evidence. And frankly, just because CNN says something doesn't always make it the case. So what we need is a serious independent investigation into the very serious allegations about Phoenix and any other facility within the VA. I have said I will hold hearings immediately--more than one hearing, if necessary--to get to the truth of the matter regarding the VA situation in Phoenix.

I would also tell my friend that when we talk about the VA, when we talk about health care in general--and I am sure he would agree with me--as a nation we have a whole lot of serious problems, don't we? We have about 30 million people today who have no health insurance at all. Harvard University estimates about 45,000 people die each year because they do not get to a doctor when they should, because we are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't guarantee health care to all people.

There was a study that came out recently that indicates that some 200,000 to 400,000 patients a year die in hospitals in America because of medical errors, in ways that could have been prevented--200,000 to 400,000 people a year. So, yes, as chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee, I am going to do everything we can do, along with my colleagues, in a bipartisan way to make sure the veterans of this country get all of the health care they need, and get the best quality they can.

This is a very serious issue, and with an independent investigation taking place in Phoenix now, we are going to get to the truth of that.

When we talk about the VA, as I am sure my colleague from Louisiana knows, in fiscal year 2013, the VA provided 89.7 million outpatient visits, and the VA has 236,000 health care appointments every single day. Today, over 200,000 veterans in 151 medical centers in 900 community-based outreach clinics all over this country are walking into the VA to get health care. I assure my colleague from Louisiana that every single day there are problems within the VA. When there are over 200,000 people walking in, there are going to be problems. But I also assure my friend there are problems in every other medical facility in America today as well.

I just mentioned the very frightening situation that, according to a very significant study, we are experiencing between 200,000 and 400,000 patients dying from what are preventable deaths because of hospital errors all over America. My point about saying that is to say, let's put the VA within a broader context. If you want to criticize the VA, fine, I am there with you. You got problems, I will work with you. But let's not paint a broad brush.

The VA has 151 medical centers, they have 300,000-plus employees-- many of them veterans themselves--and in my view, and in the view of the veterans community--the veterans associations--the Veterans' Administration is providing high quality care to the veterans across this country.

It is not just me. My colleague from Louisiana may have recently read that an independent customer service survey, done by the American Customer Satisfaction Index--these are people who assess how people feel about medical facilities around the country--found that in 2013 an overall satisfaction rating for the VA was 84 percent for inpatient care and 82 percent for outpatient care, which in some respects was higher than for the hospital industry in general.

For the past 10 years, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index has found a high degree of loyalty to VA among veterans of over 90 percent. I would suspect my colleague from Louisiana finds--as I have found when I talk to veterans in Vermont--and he asks them, as I am sure he does, what do you think about VA health care, veterans will say: You know what. It is pretty good health care. Is it perfect? No. Are there problems? Yes. In general, they think it is pretty good health care.

What I am going to do, Madam President, is I am going to object, and I am going to ask for a unanimous consent request on legislation that I have offered, and I want to say a word about that.

I want to ask a question of my friend from Louisiana. My colleague from Louisiana has indicated he wants to work with us. I think I heard that in his statement today, and I applaud that. I am not quite sure he has done that yet, but I look forward to working with him and his staff. I would invite my colleague from Louisiana to come to my office at a mutually convenient time to see how in fact we can work together.

Will my colleague from Louisiana take me up on that offer, I ask through the Chair?

Madam President, I just asked a brief question of my friend from Louisiana.

I do object. And I am going to----

Madam President, unfortunately, I didn't quite hear that the Senator from Louisiana wanted to work with us. So I will have my office call his office and see if we can sit down with our staffs and find out what the Senator's concerns are about the legislation.

It is not Bernie Sanders' legislation. It is not the Veterans' Committee's legislation. This is legislation supported by the American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and virtually every other veterans organization in America.

In preparation for the discussion I look forward to having with my colleague from Louisiana, this is not changing the world. This is not legislation that is going to solve every problem in the world. But it does do a whole lot to improve the lives of millions of veterans and their families who are hurting, and I think it is appropriate that we do that. I want my colleague from Louisiana to be thinking about these issues and to come into the office and tell me: No, Senator Sanders. I disagree.

Does he disagree with restoration of full COLA for military retirees? As he knows, for current people in the military and new people who are coming in, they are going to get less of a COLA than longstanding members of the military. Maybe he disagrees; maybe he doesn't. Let's talk about it.

Does he believe the veterans community--people who go into the VA-- should be entitled to dental care? I don't know about Louisiana, but in Vermont that is a very serious issue. All over this country veterans are dealing with rotting teeth, and they can't get that care in VA facilities right now.

There is widespread support for advanced appropriations for the VA. I think virtually all the veterans organizations understand that the VA could do a better job if they had advanced appropriations. I support it. Many people support it. I don't know if my colleague from Louisiana supports it. Let's work together, and I will find out.

The next time we come down to the floor and go through this exercise, we can tell the people what we agree with and what we don't agree with.

On ending the benefits backlog, the truth is that the current VA Administration--General Shinseki and others--inherited a paper system. Can you believe that? In the year 2009 the VA benefits system was on paper--maybe the last remaining system of its size in the world to still be on paper and not digital. What people at the VA have done-- General Shinseki and others--is they transformed that system from paper to electronic records. Guess what. The backlog is going down. But that is not good enough for me. We have language in this bill which will make sure the backlog continues to go down.

There is an issue I am sure my colleague from Louisiana is very familiar with: instate tuition. There are veterans from Louisiana who may want to go to school in Vermont or veterans from Vermont who may want to go to school in Louisiana, but they can't get instate tuition. It is a serious problem, and we address it. What does my colleague from Louisiana feel about that issue?

Then there is extending health care access for recently separated veterans. As he knows, we have legislation now that extends free health care to all those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for 5 years. I think it should be extended for 10 years. Does he agree or does he not agree? The veterans community feels very strongly about that issue.

We have high unemployment rates for returning veterans. We want to do something to expand employment opportunities.

We have the issue of sexual assault--a very serious issue, as we all know--and we want to make sure the VA is providing excellent-quality care to those victims of sexual assault.

We have, in my mind, a really tragic problem. The good news is that a few years ago Congress did the right thing and said to the post-9/11 veterans, those men and women who came home seriously injured: We are going to pass a caregivers act to give support to your wives or your sisters or your brothers who are providing often 24/7 care for you-- every single day, long hours--at great stress. We are going to help you.

But what we didn't do is reach back to the Vietnam-era veterans, the Korean war veterans, even World War II veterans. There are families today in which a 70-year-old woman is taking care of her husband who lost his legs in Vietnam, and day after day, year after year she is getting virtually no support from the government.

This legislation has the strong support of the Paralyzed Veterans of America and many other organizations that say we can't ignore those people. I don't know what my friend from Louisiana feels about this. Let's talk about it.

Here is the bottom line. The bottom line is, as I have said many times, I do support the provision the Senator from Louisiana speaks about. We do need these facilities. But we need a lot more. We need cooperation and people coming together.

I believe the Senator from Louisiana said there were 44 people who voted in opposition. He is right. He forgot to mention that there were 56 who voted for this bill, with the support of every veterans organization in America. One person was absent who would have voted for it, so 57 voted for it and 44 voted against it. Unfortunately, in the rules of the Senate, when we have a Republican filibuster, we do need 60 votes. I am looking for three more Republican votes. One of those votes I would very much appreciate receiving is from the Senator from Louisiana. That would make me two votes shy. And we think we are making some progress with some other Republicans who understand that we must address the serious needs facing the veterans community.

I again extend my request to the Senator from Louisiana to work with me. But pending that, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to Calendar No. 297, S. 1950, with the Sanders amendment, which is at the desk and is the text of S. 1982, the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act.

Madam President, I hear what my colleague from Louisiana says. I hear that he objects to passing legislation which has the support of virtually every veterans organization in the country that represents many millions of veterans. I hear him objecting to legislation which has the support of 57 Members of the U.S. Senate. I hear him objecting to what I believe is legislation which has the support of the vast majority of the American people, who do believe we should do right by our veterans. It is very easy to send people off to war; it is a lot harder to take care of them when they come home.

I would simply say that I look forward to sitting down with my colleague from Louisiana and other Republican colleagues--and we are doing that right now but specifically with my colleague from Louisiana, Senator Vitter--and seeing where we can agree and how we can create some significant legislation to address the very serious problems facing the veterans community.

Madam President, I simply reiterate my hope that Senator Vitter would sit down with me, his staff would sit down with my staff, and we can work out our differences. I have always been willing to compromise and make changes in the legislation.

But for the veterans of this country who have suffered so much and who have been hurt so much, we owe them so much, and we have to do right by them.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about one of the great crises facing our country; that is, the high cost of college, and the fact that hundreds and thousands of young people who are bright and wish to get a higher education have now decided that, because they do not want to leave school deeply in debt, they are not going to go to college. What a loss that is, not only to the individuals and the enhancement of their own lives, but it is a loss to our Nation because in a highly competitive global economy we need the best educated workforce possible. The fact that college is becoming a distant dream-- an unreachable dream--for millions of families is a horrendous situation which this Congress must address.

Over the last 10 years, the cost of attending a public 4-year college has increased by nearly 35 percent at a time when middle-class incomes have remained flat and, in fact, many families have seen a decline in their incomes. Of the students who do go to college, hundreds of thousands graduate with significant debt--on average, over $27,000.

This morning I was talking to a staffer of mine who is $119,000 in debt. And what was her crime? How did she accrue that debt? Did she go on a spending spree? Did she lose her money in a gambling casino? Her crime was that she wanted to go to law school, and she

came out of law school $150,000 in debt. Today that is down to $119,000. I have talked to doctors and dentists who are now several hundred thousand dollars in debt.

The important point to make is there was once a time in the United States when that kind of college and graduate school indebtedness did not exist. Only a few decades ago this country made a commitment to our students that if you worked hard, if you studied hard, and if you wanted to pursue a higher education, you could do so at little or no cost. That was what we used to do. Unfortunately, in that very important area we have regressed, and regressed significantly.

Until the 1970s, at the City University of New York, one of the important and best educational systems in the country, the cost was completely free. The University of California system, one of the largest and best university systems in the world, did not begin charging tuition until the 1980s. In fact, in 1965, average tuition at a 4-year public university was $243.

We know we are living in a highly competitive global economy, and if our Nation is to succeed, we need to have the best educated workforce in the entire world. But the sad truth is we are now competing against other nations around the world that make it much easier for their young people to go to college and graduate school than is the case in the United States of America.

According to a report released last year by the OECD--the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--the United States was one of the few advanced countries in the world that did not increase its public investment in education over the last decade.

From 2008 to 2010, most advanced countries experienced significant economic decline as a result of the Wall Street collapse. Despite that, the vast majority of countries increased educational spending by 5 percent or more. The United States was one of the few nations to decrease overall educational spending.

I live about 1 hour away from Canada in northern Vermont. In Canada, average annual tuition fees were $4,200 in 2010--roughly half of what they were in the United States--and yet the OECD says Canada is one of the most expensive countries for a student to go to school.

Germany, an international competitor of ours, is in the process of phasing out all tuition fees. Even when German universities did charge tuition, it was roughly $1,300 per student.

According to the European Commission in 2012, the following countries do not charge their students any tuition--and these are countries we are competing against. These are countries where young people go to college without any out-of-pocket expenses. Those countries are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden.

In Europe, university systems enjoy a very high level of public funding. The EU average is 77 percent. In other words, in countries throughout Europe--Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and all of the rest--what governments understand is that investing in higher education is terribly important for the individual students and their families. But, in addition, it is enormously important for the competitive capabilities of those countries.

So countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, each put in more than 88 percent of public funding into their universities. In the United States, the number is 36 percent. Countries all over the world that don't provide free higher education pump significantly more into their university systems than we do.

The result is several very significant points. First, we have many working-class and middle-class young people who are looking at the economic picture we face as a nation and looking at their own lives, and they are saying: Do I want to go to college and leave school $50,000 or $60,000 in debt? How am I going to pay off that debt once I leave school?

Many of these young people, tragically, are saying: I don't want to take that risk. I don't want to leave school deeply in debt. I will not go to college.

What a tragic situation that is for our entire country, because we are losing the intellectual potential of all of those young men and women.

Second, those who do go to college are coming out of school with an incredible chain of indebtedness around their neck, which impacts every aspect of their lives. It determines what kind of jobs they will get. Will they do the job they had hoped to do their whole lives--their life's dream, the work they were looking forward to doing or are they going to gravitate to those jobs which simply pay them a lot of money and enable them to pay off their debt?

For the first time in our country's history, American families have more student debt than credit card debt, and that is an extraordinary reality. All over this country families are struggling with debt in a way they never have before. The average loan balance for American graduates has increased by 70 percent since 2004. Average student debt is now near $27,000. In Vermont, it is even higher at $28,000. One in eight borrowers is carrying more than $50,000 in student debt. The percentage of families in the United States with outstanding student debt increased from 33 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2010.

The bottom line here is we have a huge crisis which is impacting millions of individual families and individual young people. But from a national perspective, it is a crisis which is impacting our competitiveness in the global economy.

There was once a time, not so many years ago, when we had the best educated workforce in the world and we had a higher percentage of college graduates than any other country on Earth.

That is not the case today. I think we have got to do some very hard thinking about the crisis regarding college affordability and the crisis regarding student debt. If this country is to remain internationally competitive in the global economy, we need some bold ideas in terms of how we address these crises.

I can tell you that in Vermont, as I speak to young people around my State, this is the issue foremost on their minds. The young people in high school are wondering about how they can afford to go to college. The students in college are worried about how they are going to pay off their college debt. Our job must be to say to every young person in this country that if you are a serious student, if you study hard, you are going to be able to get a higher education regardless of the income of your family, and you are going to be able to get the best education our Nation can provide you based on your ability and not on the income of your family.

This is an issue of enormous importance to individuals around the country, but it is an issue of huge consequence for the economic future of this country. So in the coming weeks I will be introducing legislation--I know there is a lot of other good legislation that is going to be coming to the floor--because this is an issue of huge consequence, and it is an issue that must be addressed.

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

Mr. President, there has been a lot of criticism waged at the majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, for his discussion about the Koch brothers. That criticism of Senator Reid is unfortunate. I think what Senator Reid is trying to do is educate the American people about the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and what it has done by allowing billionaire families, such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and others, to pump hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process in order to elect candidates in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House, who are working overtime against the best interests of the middle class and working families of this country and, at the same time, are working to provide even more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and large profitable corporations.

I think it is important, when we talk about the Koch brothers, not to make this discussion personal. It is not a personal discussion. It is a discussion about what the most powerful political family in this country believes. If they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars--and this is a family worth $80 billion, and they may end up spending, in fact, billions of dollars on campaigns--what is it they want? What do they believe? What do folks such as Sheldon Adelson believe, when they invite potential Republican candidates for President to come to Las Vegas for what has been called the Adelson primary, where he will listen to them and decide who he might support and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on in a Presidential campaign?

So I think it is important we know what the Koch brothers believe. Here is the best information I have. In 1980, as it turns out, David Koch, one of the two brothers, ran for Vice President of the United States on the Libertarian Party platform. What is interesting to me is to what degree the platform he ran on--which in 1980 got him 1 percent of the vote on the Libertarian ticket--to what degree that extremist set of positions has now become mainstream Republican today.

I want to take a few minutes to quote exactly what was in that 1980 platform so the American people can recognize to what degree ideas that at one point were considered extremist are now mainstream Republican. This is what was in the 1980 Libertarian Party platform upon which David Koch ran for Vice President:

We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and

the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election

Commission.

What that means is the Koch brothers, and increasingly the Republican Party, now believe there should be no campaign finance laws, that Citizens United did not go far enough, and that the Koch brothers should be able to spend millions of dollars by giving that money directly to individual candidates. That is what the Koch brothers said in 1980. That is what many Republicans believe today.

Let me state an exact quote from the platform:

We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt,

and increasingly oppressive Social Security system.

There are many Republicans today who not only want to see cuts in Social Security but who ultimately want to privatize Social Security who believe it is unconstitutional for the U.S. Government to be involved in retirement benefits for seniors.

Libertarian Party platform, 1980:

We oppose--

Listen to this one. This is really quite incredible:

We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation,

including capital gains taxes. We support the eventual repeal

of all taxation.

Repeal of all taxation? That is the government. Basically, what they are saying, very boldly, straightforwardly--we have to respect their honesty--is they don't believe in government.

I have not heard any of my Republican colleagues say they want to abolish all taxation. That is not what they say and that is not what they believe. But on the other hand, it is important to note that the Ryan budget, just passed in mid-April in the House, provides a $5 trillion tax break over a 10-year period, mainly by cutting the top individual and corporate income tax rates significantly. In other words, at a time when the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well at the same time as the middle class disappears and more and more people live in poverty, what my Republican colleagues believe is we should give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

The Koch brothers' position in 1980 was that they support-- Libertarian Party platform:

We support repeal of all laws which impede the ability of

any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

What does that mean?

Yesterday, we had a vote on the floor of the Senate which said that a $7.25 an hour minimum wage is a poverty wage; that people who are working 40 hours a week and are making $7.25 an hour are living in poverty; that they cannot bring up and raise families on those wages; and that if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, we could increase the salaries of approximately 28 million Americans. On that vote to overcome a Republican filibuster, one Republican voted with members of the Democratic caucus, and we lost that vote.

What is interesting, it is not simply that almost every Republican voted against raising the minimum wage; what is more significant is that many Republicans believe we should abolish the concept of the minimum wage.

Many of us know Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to be an honest and straightforward guy. He tells it the way he sees it. This morning on the ``Morning Joe'' television show, this is what Senator Coburn said, and I quote from the transcript:

I don't believe you ought to interfere in the market. If

there's to be a minimum wage--my theory is I don't believe

there ought to be a national minimum wage. That's my

position.

In other words, what Senator Coburn is saying today and, in fact, what many Republicans agree with him about, is we should abolish the concept of the minimum wage--something the Koch brothers were talking about 34 years ago.

What are the implications of that if we do as Senator Coburn suggested and just let the market work and don't have government interfere by establishing a minimum wage American workers should receive? What it means, quite simply, when we let the free market work, is that if people are in a high unemployment area and there are many workers competing for few jobs, an employer will say to a potential employee: I am prepared to hire you, good news, and I am going to pay $4.

The worker says: I can't live on $4 an hour. That is a starvation wage.

The employer says: That is OK, because I have 20 other workers who are prepared to accept that wage.

That is what happens when we abolish the concept of the minimum wage.

Many of us--and I think the vast majority of the American people-- have a very different vision of where our country should go. We don't believe we should be abolishing the minimum wage. We don't believe we should be cutting or privatizing Social Security or transforming Medicare into a voucher program or making horrendous cuts to Medicaid.

What, in fact, the American people want is the Federal Government to start standing up for working families rather than millionaires and billionaires. In poll after poll, what the American people have said is they want us to invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of decent-paying jobs. That is what the American people want. They do not want tax breaks for billionaires but the creation of millions of jobs for rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

The American people, despite what Senator Coburn and others may believe, want us to raise the minimum wage. Poll after poll suggests the American people want us to raise the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour.

The American people do not want us to cut Social Security. In fact, more and more Americans want us to expand Social Security, to make sure when elderly people reach retirement age, they can live and retire with dignity.

I think there has perhaps never been a time in the modern history of this country where the political lines have been drawn as clearly as they are right now. If you listen to the Koch brothers, if you read the Republican Ryan budget in the House, their positions are quite clear: Tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and significant cuts in the programs that are life and death for the middle-class and working families of this country.

That is not what the American people want, and it is time we began to listen to the American people. It is time we took on those people, those billionaires who are spending huge amounts of money electing candidates who represent their interests. And it is time we listen to the working families of this country, who are struggling to survive.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to bring to your attention to a remarkable Vermont family.

The Marvin family has an incredible family tie to Vermont and to one of the State's best known products--maple syrup. David Marvin founded Butternut Mountain Farm in 1972 on land his father purchased in Johnson, VT., in the 1950s.

David Marvin has a strong and enduring commitment to an iconic Vermont industry. Through careful stewardship, and with the help of his wife Lucy, he has built a company renowned for quality maple products.

The family produced maple syrup, grew Christmas trees and consulted on timber management. Today, David's children, Ira and Emma, are integral to the operation, which includes more than 80 employees, maple syrup from 300 Vermont farms, and a 75,000 square-foot facility in Morrisville, VT. Butternut Mountain Farm is more than just a producer of maple syrup; it has also become an effective marketer of a treasured product of Vermont.

The family and the company have been recognized for their success. Just a decade after the company's founding, for example, Butternut Mountain Farm was named Vermont State Tree Farm of the Year and National Tree Farm of the Year by the American Forest Institute.

The Marvins are encouraging a culture of conservation. Their Morrisville operation is increasingly relying on renewable energies and energy efficiency. The family has also developed a pay structure that seeks to reward employees with flexible hours, to help reduce commuting costs, and a fair wage.

It is also worth noting that the Marvin family's business plays a crucial role in supporting the jobs of countless Vermonters throughout the state who produce maple syrup which is bottled by Butternut Mountain Farm.

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

Madam President, I hear more and more from people in my own State of Vermont and from people, in fact, all over the country via email, through my Web site, who are wondering whether this great country is evolving into an oligarchic society.

Historically, as I think most people know, the United States was the envy of the world for so many reasons. But one of the reasons, economically, is that in our country there was always the belief that regardless of your income you have the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. There was the reality--not just the belief--that we had a great and expanding middle class; that if your dad and your mom didn't go to college--which, in fact, was the case in my family--you would have that opportunity to go to college and move up the educational ladder or the business ladder or professional field. There was the feeling that economically what America was about, and what we celebrated, was the great middle class. People today, both from an economic perspective and from a political perspective, are beginning in a

very serious way to question that reality.

What they are looking at is that today in our country we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. I think a lot of young people say, well, how could that be? In England you have the Queen of England, all the lords, all the royalty all over Europe, and we don't have that in the United States.

Yet the truth is that over the years we have moved to a situation where in terms of wealth and income, we are now the most unequal society of any major industrialized nation on Earth.

I keep mentioning one statistic, because I don't hear too many other people talking about it, but we need to talk about it. That is, in terms of wealth. Wealth is what we own. Wealth is what we have accumulated over a lifetime of work. In terms of wealth, the top 1 percent in our Nation owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America.

I would ask those people back home who might be listening, what does the bottom 60 percent own? The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the wealth. What do you think the bottom 60 percent owns? They own 25 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent? What do they own? The answer is they own all of 2.3 percent--all of 2.3 percent is what the bottom 60 percent of Americans owns in terms of total wealth.

If you had a big pizza with 100 slices in it, 1 person would get 38 percent of those pieces of pizza if we looked at wealth, and the bottom 60 percent of the people would have to share 2.3 percent of the pizza. I don't think that is what America is supposed to be about and that situation is getting even worse.

In terms of income now--all right, everybody goes out and works--we have millions of people today who are working longer hours and their income is going down. Their wages are going down. Maybe they are paying more for health care. Their pensions are going down.

But in terms of all new income--new income generated in this country--from the last statistics we saw, which were from 2009 to 2012, in terms of all new income, 95 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent. So more and more income goes to the millionaires and billionaires while millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, and while we have the highest rate of childhood poverty, at 22 percent, of any major country on Earth.

Since 1999, the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000. Do you want to know why people are angry, why people are concerned, and why people are worried what is going to happen to their kids? It is because the median family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999.

Let me break it down even further. The typical male worker, that guy right in the middle, made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. Imagine that. In the last 44 years, with all of the increase in productivity, with all of the robotics, with all of the space technology, all of the iPhones, iPads, and everything else where people are now producing much more, the typical male worker made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. The typical female worker earned $1,775 less last year than she did in 2007.

Today in America we have more people living in poverty than ever before, and that is 46.5 million people. Here is a fact that should frighten everybody; that is, half of Americans have less than $10,000 in their savings account right now. Can you imagine that? That means if your car breaks down and you need that car to get to work or you have a serious health problem and you don't have particularly good health insurance, there it goes. It goes.

Then you talk about people who are older who have to retire. How do you retire with dignity if you have less than $10,000 in the bank? Well, you are going to get Social Security. Thank God, you, I, and other Members have fought hard to make sure there were not cuts in Social Security that many people wanted. But is Social Security alone enough? No. The answer is it is not.

What is happening in this country is that while the middle class shrinks, there is another reality; that is, the people on top are doing phenomenally well. Today we see a situation in which some of the wealthiest families in America--the Koch brothers come to mind, and I will talk about them in another context. They are now worth $80 billion. In the last year alone their wealth went from $68 billion to $80 billion--in 1 year a $12 billion increase in their wealth.

Sheldon Adelson--another billionaire who has had his name in the paper a whole lot recently by bringing prospective Republican candidates for the Presidency to Las Vegas to talk to them and see what they have to offer him and how much money he will contribute to their campaign--also saw a huge increase in his wealth over the last year.

What is the face of oligarchy? The face of oligarchy is what we see in Russia. When many people refer to oligarchy, they think of Russia. In Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a small number of bureaucrats were able to steal a lot of public property, and they became multibillionaires. They controlled oil companies, banks, gold mines, aluminum companies, television stations, and other state-owned companies, and that is how they became oligarchs.

By 2001 5 oligarchs controlled 95 percent of Russia's aluminum production, 40 percent of its copper, and on and on it goes. People may say: Oligarchy has to do with Russia; what does it have to do with the United States of America? Well, it has everything to do with the United States of America because that is the direction in which we are moving.

Now, let me cite some examples of what oligarchs do. When we think of oligarchies we might want to think of a gentleman named Hank McKinnel, Jr., who was the CEO of Pfizer--a major drug company--from 2001 to 2006. When he retired, he received a $188 million golden parachute-- $188 million--at the same time as the people in our country are paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. That is oligarchy.

When we think about oligarchy, we may want to think about a gentleman named Lee Raymond who served as the CEO of ExxonMobil from 1993 to 2005. When he retired--and remember, this is at a time when the vast majority of the American people did not have the resources to retire with a shred of dignity--Mr. Raymond received from ExxonMobil a golden parachute, retirement benefits, of more than $320 million--$320 million. That is at the same time as people in Vermont and all over this country are finding it harder and harder to pay for gas at the pump.

What oligarchy is also about is that in 2009 ExxonMobil, maybe the most profitable corporation in the history of America, did not pay any Federal income taxes, even though in that year it earned $19 billion in profits.

When we talk about oligarchy we might want to think about somebody like Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He recently received a 74-percent increase in pay--more than $20 million in total compensation. Interestingly enough, that is a pretty big salary--$20 million--but what did he do to earn it? During that same period, over the last year, the bank he runs, JPMorgan Chase, paid out over $20 billion in penalties to the Federal Government for financial fraud. So after paying out $20 billion to the Federal Government in penalties for financial fraud, he still got a $20 million compensation package. That is called oligarchy. No matter what you do, if you are at the head of a large financial institution, you are going to get rewarded for that.

Oligarchy has a lot to do with a gentleman named William Mcguire, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group from 1991 to 2006. Everybody knows of the crisis we are facing in health care. Everybody knows that tens of millions of Americans today, despite the Affordable Care Act, are still uninsured. Everybody knows we spend more per capita on health care than do the people of any other nation. Yet when this gentleman retired from UnitedHealth Group in 2006, he received a $285 million golden parachute. So here we have the most dysfunctional health care system in the world, the most expensive health care system, with tens of millions of people uninsured, yet the head of a major insurance company gets $285 million in retirement benefits. That is called oligarchy.

Let me take oligarchy away from the economic realm and turn it into an area that I am--and many Americans are--very concerned about. Recently, we saw an interesting spectacle relating to politics that took place in Las Vegas. A gentleman named Sheldon Adelson--who is worth some $38 billion, and who is maybe the world's largest casino magnate not only in Las Vegas but off the shores of China as well--held a meeting in Las Vegas in which he brought forth Republican candidates who are interested in running for President. Now, here is the point. In the last Presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney spent a little over $1 billion in their campaigns. Sheldon Adelson, if he provided more money into a campaign than both Obama and Romney spent, would still have $9 billion more in wealth than he did in 2013.

What am I saying? What I am saying is that we are moving toward a situation where people such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have so much money it would hardly matter to them to write a check for more than both Obama and Romney spent in the last Presidential election. They could write out a check for $2 billion, and it would be insignificant, a fraction of their increase in wealth over a 1-year period.

As bad as that situation is, because of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we may not have seen the worst yet. Judge Thomas, of the Supreme Court, the most conservative member of a very conservative Supreme Court, wrote an opinion which said: Maybe we should look at doing away with all limitations on campaign finance. Many Republicans think that is a great idea. Let us do away with all limitations.

In the real world, what does that mean? It means that billionaires-- people who are worth $20 billion and, in the case of the Koch brothers, $80 billion--if we moved in that direction and ended all limitations on campaign spending, could sit in a room--and the Presiding Officer comes from the State of Wisconsin, a moderate-sized State--and they could write a check for $50 million or $100 million for a candidate for Senate or Congress or Governor of Wisconsin or of Vermont or anyplace else, and it would not matter at all.

So I want people to take a deep breath and think about whether that is what we believe American democracy is supposed to be. When I grew up, we believed what American democracy was about--and we still practice it to a large degree in the State of Vermont, where we have town meetings. On the first Tuesday in March people come out, and they argue about the school budget, and they argue about other budgetary items, and every person has a say and every person has a vote. In my career, I have done hundreds and hundreds of town meetings, where people from any walk of life can walk in the door and can ask any question they want. I think democracy is about elected officials talking and communicating with people, regardless of their income, and listening to their comments and answering their questions. That is what democracy is about.

I do not believe democracy is about a handful of billionaires, such as the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, being in a position in which they can spend as much money as they want on any political race in this country. It is very hard for me to imagine how anybody could defend that as being democracy. It is not. It is oligarchy. It is the power of a handful of billionaires to control the political process.

So both in terms of economics, where so few own so much and so many have so little, and in terms of politics, where a handful of billionaires increasingly are able to determine the nature of politics in America and who is elected and who is defeated, I think we as a nation have a lot of hard thinking in front of us. We have to ask ourselves: Are we going to fight for our democracy and an expanded middle class? Are we going to fight for a democracy where one person has one vote and billionaires cannot fight elections? To my mind, that is the most important issue we face as a nation.

I hope the American people become engaged in that struggle and are prepared to take on the billionaires, who, apparently, are not content to have $10 billion or $20 billion in wealth. They feel the need to have more and more and more and to take that money out of the hides of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. They want more tax breaks for billionaires, and then they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and every other program that is of importance to working families.

So we need a very serious debate about these issues. We need millions of Americans to stand and fight with us to defend American democracy and to stop this country from evolving into an oligarchic form of society.

With that, I yield the floor.

I object.

I will respond later.

Mr. President, that is a fair question. Let me ask my colleague from Louisiana--as he knows, I will be speaking more to this in a moment. I wish to thank Senator Landrieu for her strong support of legislation I introduced and for her support not only for veterans in Louisiana but for every veteran in this country. This legislation is supported by virtually every veterans organization in the United States of America.

I will respond at this point to my colleague from Louisiana to say that if I were prepared to support the Landrieu amendment, which has no offsets--and she makes a good point, that veterans have paid for this legislation in their blood already--would the Senator from Louisiana object to an amendment I offered for the comprehensive bill that had no offset as well?

Reserving the right to object, let me again thank Senator Landrieu, who has raised this issue with me on numerous occasions. The

issue we are talking about--I think Senator Vitter referred to it--is clearly not just an issue for Louisiana, it is an issue which addresses the need to see built 27 major medical facilities in 18 States and Puerto Rico. To my mind, this is a very important provision, which is in fact why I put it in a very prominent place in my legislation.

What I would say to my friend from Louisiana is that as important as that provision in the bill is, there are many other provisions of equal or greater importance. What I would say to my friend from Louisiana is that organizations--and, again, virtually every veterans organization in America, representing millions and millions of veterans, wants this body and Members of the Senate to not just give speeches on Veterans Day or Memorial Day about their concerns for veterans, they want this body to start acting on behalf of the veterans in this country.

What they want us to do, among many other things, is an advanced appropriations. I know my friend from Louisiana isn't a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and maybe he does not know that in the last government shutdown we were 10 days away from veterans--disabled veterans--not getting the checks they live on. This bill I have introduced addresses that.

Maybe the Senator from Louisiana does not know we have a major backlog problem; that while the VA is making good progress and significantly reducing that backlog, I as chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee want to make absolutely certain that when a veteran applies for a benefit, that benefit is adjudicated in a rapid, efficient, and accurate way, and my legislation deals with that issue.

I don't know if the junior Senator from Louisiana knows we have a real problem for veterans in Louisiana and across this country who are trying to take advantage of the post-9/11 education bill. Over 1 million veterans and their families are taking advantage of it but suddenly find themselves, if they move from Vermont to Louisiana or Louisiana to Vermont, they may not be able to take advantage of instate tuition. Our bill addresses that issue.

None whatsoever.

Mr. VITTER addressed the Chair.

I think I have the floor.

Mr. President, the point I am making is that furthermore, not only are we dealing with the instate tuition issue, which impacts veterans from Louisiana and Vermont and every other State, we are dealing with another issue in that we are going to extend for 5 years to 10 years unfettered access to VA health care for recently separated veterans. At a time when real unemployment in this country is close to 12 percent and many veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and they are looking for work and work is hard to find, this legislation renews our vow to hire heroes because we believe it is important that veterans get back to work and take care of their families.

Mr. VITTER addressed the Chair.

Not at all.

I wanted to mention to my colleague from Louisiana, which he may or may not know, that we have a very serious problem in the military regarding sexual assault, and it is terribly important that the men and women who were sexually assaulted get the help and the treatment they need in a VA facility and we address that issue.

The Senator from Louisiana may or may not know that 2,300 veterans-- these are men and women who suffered injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan and came back home--are unable, because of their wounds, to have babies, and this legislation is going to help them start the families they want.

The Senator from Louisiana may or may not know--and I know the Senator from Illinois Mr. Durbin does know--that in this legislation we deal with the caregivers act; that right now we have 70-year-old women who have taken care of their husbands who lost their legs in Vietnam or in Korea or whatever war, and they are crying out for us to give them a modest degree of help.

What I say to my friend from Louisiana: Now is the time to stand with the veterans of this country. If he thinks it is too expensive, then don't send them off to war. Don't send them off to war. Taking care of veterans is a cost of war. They paid for it. I am very proud, again, that this legislation has the support of the American Legion, VFW, DAV, Gold Star Wives, Vietnam veterans organizations, Iraq, Afghanistan veterans organizations, and all the others--virtually all of the other ones.

I implore my friend from Louisiana to do the right thing and support this comprehensive legislation which addresses his concerns in this provision, but it does a lot more.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we talk about holding hostage. The distinguished junior Senator from Louisiana pointed out that 43 Senators voted against comprehensive legislation that is supported by virtually every veterans organization in this country. The arithmetic is 43 voted against it, that is true. How many voted for it? Fifty-six voted for it and 1 was absent who would have voted for it. Fifty-seven voted for comprehensive legislation, 43 voted against it.

So when the Senator talks about holding veterans hostage, I would suggest to my friend from Louisiana that maybe instead of filibustering this bill and requiring an undemocratic 60 votes, let the majority rule.

The American people want us to pass this legislation. If you choose not to vote for it, that is your right. But I do urge you not to hold us hostage by demanding 60 votes when a very strong majority wants to see it passed.

With that, Mr. President, I would object.

Reserving the right to object, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for coming to the floor today to talk about, in fact, an important issue.

Before I respond to him directly, I did want to comment he is right, there were 43 Members of the Senate who voted against what is regarded as the most comprehensive veterans legislation to have been introduced in several decades, legislation that was supported by virtually every veterans organization in the country, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans, Vietnam Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Gold Star Wives, and dozens and dozens of other veterans organizations.

If I might point out that while my colleague from Louisiana is, of course, right that there were 43 Senators who voted no, he neglected to mention that there were 56 Senators who voted yes. There was one Senator who was absent on that day who would have voted yes.

We are now at the stage where we have 57 Senators, which I would suggest to my colleague from Louisiana is significantly more than 43 percent, it is 57 percent.

If we could have the cooperation--and I hope we can maybe make some progress right here, now, from my colleague from Louisiana who has shown interest in veterans issues--do you know what, we can do something that millions and millions of veterans and their families want us to do.

If my colleague from Louisiana would allow me, I would like to quote from what the Disabled American Veterans, the DAV, has to say about this legislation--which, unfortunately my colleague from Louisiana voted against. He was one of the 43 who voted against it.

DAV says:

This massive omnibus bill, unprecedented in our modern

experience, would create, expand, advance, and extend a

number of VA benefits, services and programs that are

important to the DAV and to our members. For example,

responding to a call from DAV as a leading veterans

organization, it would create a comprehensive family

caregiver support program for all generations of severely

wounded, injured and ill veterans. Also, the bill would

authorize advance appropriations for VA's mandatory funding

accounts to ensure that in any government shutdown

environment in the future, veterans benefits payments would

not be delayed or put in jeopardy. This measure would also

provide additional financial support to survivors of

servicemembers who die in the line of duty, as well as

expanded access for them to GI Bill educational benefits. A

two-plus year stalemate in VA's authority to lease facilities

for health care treatment and other purposes would be solved

by this bill . . .

--which, of course, is what the Senator from Louisiana is referring to. Then they continue:

. . . These are but a few of the myriad provisions of this

bill that would improve the lives, health, and prospects of

veterans--especially the wounded, injured and ill--and their

loved ones.

That is the DAV. I ask my colleague from Louisiana--you are raising an important issue, and I agree with you. But what I cannot do is take this issue over here, separate it, and that issue over here, because tomorrow there will be somebody else coming and saying: You know, Senator Sanders, I want you to move forward on this. Then the next day somebody else comes forward and says: I want to move forward on that.

We have a comprehensive piece of legislation, supported by millions of veterans, and supported by 57 Members of the Senate. I ask my colleague from Louisiana--who is concerned about veterans' issues--work with us, support us, give us the three Republican votes we need. We had 55, 54 Members of the Democratic Caucus. We only had two Republican votes. Help me get three more votes. You will get these facilities in Louisiana, we will get these facilities all over the country, but we will also address many of the major crises facing the veterans community.

With that, Madam President, I would object to my colleague's proposal.

First, I would tell you that--two things in terms of Senator Landrieu. She has, in fact, spoken to me on numerous occasions about her concerns about this issue but, more importantly, she has shown a willingness to stand for all veterans in this country, and she voted for the legislation supported by the American Legion, the DAV, and the Vietnam Veterans of America and virtually every veterans organization. So I thank Senator Landrieu very much for her support for comprehensive legislation that would benefit millions and millions of Americans.

Essentially, what the Senator from Louisiana is saying is let's work together. I agree with him, let us work together. I have 57 votes for this piece of legislation. Right now, I ask my friend from Louisiana, work with us. What are your objections at a time when we have given huge tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires, and when one out of four corporations in this country doesn't pay a nickel in Federal income taxes. Does my colleague from Louisiana think that in this country we should not take care of the men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend this country?

I am prepared, my staff is prepared, to sit down and hear the Senator's objections. I am not sure what his objections are. He hasn't told me. Is the Senator opposed to an expansion of the caregivers program? Is he? So that 70-year-old women who have been taking care of their husbands who lost their legs in Vietnam get a modest bit of help? Is that an objection the Senator has? Is the Senator objecting to the fact that maybe we provide dental care to some veterans whose teeth are rotting in their mouths? Is the Senator objecting to advance appropriations so we are not in a situation where if we have another government shutdown, disabled vets will not get the checks they need? Is the Senator objecting to the fact that right now we have young veterans who are trying to go to college through the GI bill but can't get in-State tuition? Is the Senator objecting to that? Is the Senator objecting to helping veterans find jobs in an economy where it is very hard to do so?

I am not quite sure what the Senator's objection is. Tell me. Tell me now or sit down with my staff and me, and maybe we can work it out and do something of real significance for the veterans of this country.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 297, S. 1950; that a Sanders substitute amendment, the text of S. 1982, the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Pay Restoration Act, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I believe at this point--please correct me if I am wrong--that I control the floor; is that correct?

While my friend from Louisiana is still here, let me answer yes in response to his question. Senator Landrieu has asked me, very forcefully, to move forward on this provision on more than one occasion, and my response to Senator Landrieu, who voted for the comprehensive legislation, unlike Senator Vitter, is the same.

Secondly, what the veterans organizations of this country want is for the Congress to recognize the very serious problems facing the veterans community. What I can tell my colleague from Louisiana is that to the best of my knowledge the veterans organizations have been to my colleague's office, and we are trying to get some specific objections as to why he is not supporting this legislation and we have not gotten that.

So I would ask my colleague from Louisiana to come forward and tell me what he disagrees with, which he has not done yet, and I look forward to working with him. I agree we have to work together. I am offering him that opportunity to tell me what he doesn't like. Let's get a piece of legislation the veterans of this country need and want and that we will be proud of.

With that, I believe I have the floor; is that correct?

Madam President, how much time remains?

I will tell my colleague from Louisiana that I don't intend to be addressing this issue.

Madam President, it is not my intention to get involved in Louisiana politics, but just let me say that Senator Landrieu has voted for this legislation, she has been a champion of veterans rights, and I look forward to continuing to work with her on comprehensive legislation that will benefit all of the veterans of Louisiana and those in the other 49 States.

Madam President, I wish to change subjects, if I might, and I wish to touch upon an issue which I believe is far and away the most significant issue facing the American people; that is, a struggle not just to make sure we can preserve and expand the vitally important programs that are life or death to tens of millions of working-class and middle-class families--programs such as Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. The issue we are discussing now is not just whether we must create the millions and millions of jobs that we need. Real unemployment is not 6.8 percent. It is close to 12 percent and youth unemployment is close to 20 percent. We have to create millions of jobs for our young people and for working families around this country.

We have made some progress with the Affordable Care Act, announced just yesterday. About 10 million more Americans will have access to health care who formerly did not, but we have to go further. We have to join the rest of the industrialized world, all of which have stated-- every country has stated--that health care must be a right and not a privilege. When we do that through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program, we can do it much more cost-effectively and end the absurdity of the United States spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other nation.

All of those issues, and education and climate change, are all enormously important for the future of this Nation. But the issue that is even more important than all of those is whether we can prevent this country from moving to an oligarchic form of society in which virtually all economic and political power rests with a handful of billionaire families.

I know we don't talk about it too much. Most people don't raise that issue. Certainly we don't see it in the corporate media. That is the reality. Right now in America we have, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth.

What we are looking at is the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America. I have very little doubt the overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea what the bottom 60 percent looks like. The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the wealth of America, and the bottom 60 percent owns all of 2.3 percent. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider and wider. We have one family--one family--the Walton family, who owns Walmart, that owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people.

In terms of income, the situation is equally bad. In the last number of years since the Wall Street collapse, 95 percent of all new income has gone to the top 1 percent.

So we have an economic situation where the middle class is disappearing, and more people are living in poverty than at any time in the history of the United States. We have 22 percent of our kids living in poverty, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. All the while the middle class disappears, more and more people are living in poverty, people on top are doing phenomenally well. Almost all new income goes to the top 1 percent.

It is not just a growing disparity in terms of income and wealth-- that is enormously important--but it is what is happening to the political foundations of America. What we are now seeing as a result of Citizens United--and we are going to see it more as a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision of today in McCutcheon--will enable the billionaire class to play an even more prominent role in terms of our political process.

The Koch brothers are worth about $80 billion--$80 billion. They are the second wealthiest family in America. Working with other billionaires, such as Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs are prepared to spend an unlimited sum of money to create an America shaped by their rightwing extremist views--and I mean unlimited.

If your income went up, Madam President--and I know our Presiding Officer is not quite there in this status--from $68 billion to $80 billion in 1 year--a $12 billion increase in your wealth--and you believed passionately, as the Koch brothers do, in this rightwing agenda, why would you hesitate in spending $1 billion, $2 billion on the political process? Last year, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a little more than $1 billion for their entire campaigns. These guys can take out their checkbook tomorrow and write that check and it will be one-twelfth of what their increased wealth was in 1 year. It doesn't mean anything to them. It is 50 bucks to you; it is $1 billion to them.

So we have to be very careful that we do not allow this great country, where people fought and died to protect American democracy, become a plutocracy or an oligarchy, and that, frankly, is the direction in which we are moving.

I suspect that many of our fellow Americans saw a spectacle in Las Vegas--and this was not the usual Las Vegas spectacle, with the great shows they have there--this was the Sheldon Adelson spectacle. This is what the spectacle was just last weekend. Sheldon Adelson said to prospective Republican candidates for President: Why don't you come on down to Las Vegas and tell me what you could do for me because I am only worth $20 billion. I am only the largest gambling mogul in the entire world. But $20 billion isn't enough, so I want you to come to Las Vegas and tell me what favors you can give me if you happen to be elected President and, by the way, if you sound the right note--if you kind of do what I like--I may put a few hundred million into your campaign. Maybe if I am feeling good, I will throw $1 billion into your campaign.

The media has dubbed this the Adelson primary. What primaries generally are about are hundreds of thousands of Republicans getting together

and they vote on whom they want their candidate to be in a State-- Democrats do the same--and candidates make an appeal to ordinary people to get votes. Some of us are old-fashioned and we kind of see that as democracy.

I come from a State which proudly has town meetings. I have held hundreds of town meetings in my State. I know it is old-fashioned. I know it is getting out of step, but I actually listen to what people have to say. They walk in the door free, occasionally we actually even serve some lunch, and they don't have to be a billionaire to ask me a question. I answer questions and I talk to people. I understand that is old-fashioned, not the way we do it anymore.

The way we do it now is the Adelson way: walk in the door and I will give you hundreds of millions of dollars or come to a campaign fundraiser, and if you make the largest contributions--tens of thousands of dollars--I will listen to you.

We have to turn this thing around, because if we don't, we are going to end up in a situation where not only the economy of this country is going to be controlled by a handful of billionaires and large multinational corporations, but we are going to be living in a country where the political process is controlled.

Somebody mentioned to me--and I don't know, maybe I will introduce this legislation. We all know what NASCAR is. These guys who drive the racing cars have on their coats they are being sponsored by this or that oil company or this or that tire company. Maybe we should introduce that concept in the Senate. You could have a patch on your jacket that says: I am sponsored by the Koch brothers. Eighty-seven percent of my funding comes from the Koch brothers.

Maybe we will give you a special jacket, and then you have the Adelson guy or this person or that person. But it might tell the American people why we continue as a body to give more tax breaks to billionaires and yet we are having a heck of a tough time raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. It might tell the American people why we do nothing to close corporate loopholes, but we are having a hard time addressing pay equity in America so women get the same wages that men do.

I think when we talk about issues such as campaign finance, a lot of Americans say: Well, yes, it is a problem, but it doesn't really relate to me.

Let me suggest that it absolutely does relate to every man, woman, and child. It is imperative people understand what the agenda is--the Koch brothers, for example. These are people who have been very clear that they want massive cuts in Social Security or the privatization of Social Security. They want massive cuts in Medicare or the voucherization of Medicare, and massive cuts in Medicaid. As some of the largest polluters in America in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the Koch brothers want to crack down on the ability of the EPA to regulate pollution. These guys want to cut back on funds for education so our kids can afford to go to college.

So if we think the issue of campaign finance does not relate to our lives, we are very mistaken. We are moving toward a situation where people with huge sums of money are going to spend unlimited amounts to elect candidates who reflect an extreme rightwing agenda which will make the wealthiest people in this country even richer while continuing the attacks against the middle class and working families in this country.

I will conclude by saying this--and I mean this quite honestly. As somebody who grew up in a family that didn't have a lot of money and as somebody who represents the great State of Vermont, where people constantly tell me they ask for so little, I have heard veterans say: I don't want to use the VA because another veteran really may need it more. I don't need this program and somebody else may need it more.

I don't understand how people worth $80 billion are spending huge sums of money to become even richer. They are doing it by trying to attack life-and-death programs for the elderly. Why would somebody want to cut Social Security when they are worth $80 billion and have more money than they can dream of for retirement? Why would somebody want to do that when they are worth billions and have the best health care in the world? Why do they want to make massive cuts in Medicare or Medicaid? What motivates somebody with so much money to go to war against working families and the middle class?

I frankly don't understand it. I can only think that this has to do with power--the drive for more and more power, the thrill it must be to tell candidates: Do you want my support? This is what you have to do.

But I think this is just a huge issue that we as a nation have got to address. Too many people have given up their lives fighting for American democracy to see this great Nation be converted into a plutocracy or an oligarchy. We must not allow that to happen.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, as the longest serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, I wish to address an issue which I believe does not get the kind of discussion it should from either political party but certainly not from our Republican colleagues--the moral, economic, and political dimensions of the kind of income and wealth inequality which we have in our country today. In my view, this is the most important issue facing the United States because it impacts on virtually every aspect of our lives. It is an issue we must be discussing thoroughly and one in which the American people have to be engaged.

The fact is that while we often speak of the United States of America being the wealthiest Nation on the face of the Earth, that is only partially true, because within the context of total wealth is the reality that the great middle class of this country is disappearing. The reality is we have more people living in poverty today than at any time in the history of the United States of America. The fact is we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major industrialized nation on Earth. So if we add it all together, yes, we are the wealthiest Nation on Earth, but the reality is the people on top own a huge amount of this wealth while the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing.

I will speak to our colleagues and the American people about some of the realities in terms of income and wealth distribution.

Today the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of America. I wonder how many Americans

know how much the bottom 60 percent owns. I want people to think about it. The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth, and the bottom 60 percent owns 2.3 percent. One family in this country--the Walton family, the owners of Walmart--are now worth as a family $148 billion. This is more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of American society. Today the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people. This is distribution of wealth--what we own.

The latest information we have in terms of distribution of income is from 2009 through 2012, which says that 95 percent of all new income earned in this country went to the top 1 percent. When we talk about economic growth--2 percent or 4 percent, whatever it is--it doesn't mean much, because almost all of the new income generated in this growth has gone to the very wealthiest people in this country. The top 25 hedge fund managers made last year over $24 billion. This is enough to pay the salaries of more than 425,000 public schoolteachers. Over the past decade, the net worth of the top 400 billionaires in this country has doubled by an astronomical $1 trillion in the last 10 years.

In a moment I will discuss the extraordinary political power of the Koch brothers, a family investing very heavily in the political process, spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to elect rightwing candidates who will protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful.

To give some idea of what is going on in this economy, everybody should understand that Charles and David Koch--the Koch brothers--are the second wealthiest family in this country. In the last year alone, this one family saw a $12 billion increase in their wealth, bringing their total wealth to $80 billion.

The other day in the Washington Post there was an article talking about the Adelson primary. When we talk about a political primary, what it means is we have candidates in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party competing against each other to get the support of the people in their respective parties. Well, forget about that. That is old news. Now the goal is to appeal to one multibillionaire so this individual can contribute hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign. This is what is going on right now in the Republican Party.

While the wealthiest are doing phenomenally well, while the United States today has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth, and while that income inequality is worse today than at any time since 1928, what we are also seeing is the collapse of the middle class and an increase in poverty.

Since 1999, the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000 after adjusting for inflation. The typical middle-class American family earned less income last year than it did 25 years ago, back in 1989. The Presiding Officer is probably the last person in the world I have to explain this to, having written several books on this subject.

Why are people angry in this country? The median male worker in this country made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago, and the typical female worker earned $1,700 less than in 2007.

The question I think every American should be asking is: How does it happen, when we have a huge increase in productivity--everybody has a cell phone, everybody has a sophisticated computer, we have robotics in all of our factories, we have a huge increase in productivity--where is all of the wealth going which increased productivity has created? The answer is pretty clear: It has gone to the top 1 percent.

So the moral issue we have to address as a nation is: Are we comfortable as a nation in which in recent years we have seen a huge increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires, while at the same time we have more people living in poverty than we have ever had before?

This is an incredible fact: As an aging nation with more and more people reaching retirement, half of the American people have less than $10,000 in their savings accounts and in many ways have no idea how they are going to retire with dignity. So the first issue we have to deal with is a moral issue. Are we comfortable living in a nation when so few have so much while so many have so little, and so many of our brothers and sisters--our fellow Americans--are struggling economically every single day?

Today we are addressing the issue of extending long-term unemployment benefits. There are millions of workers right now, including people who have worked their entire lives and who no longer can find a job. They have virtually no income coming in and are struggling to survive. Single moms are trying to raise families with very limited income. Is this the nation we are comfortable being?

I don't think we are. But it is not just an issue of individual income. Today, corporate profits are at an all-time high while wages are near an all-time low.

Then when we look at issues about how can we fund early childhood education, how can we make sure every American has health care as a right--how do we make sure that when people lose their jobs they are going to get the unemployment they need, we should remember that every single year corporations--large, multinational corporations--avoid paying at least $100 billion a year in taxes because they stash their cash in the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens. The result is one out of four American corporations pays nothing in Federal income taxes. In fact, over the last 5 years, huge companies, profitable companies, such as General Electric, Boeing, and Verizon, pay nothing-- zero--in Federal income tax, even though all of those companies have made a combined profit of $78 billion since 2008.

Here is the irony of all ironies. It is one thing to understand that the very wealthy are becoming wealthier while everybody else is becoming poorer, but it is another thing to understand that the people who have the money, the billionaire class, are going to war against working Americans. If one has $80 billion, do they really need to invest in the political process so they can elect candidates who will give even more tax breaks? Do they really need to invest in rightwing candidates who are out there trying to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Environmental Protection Agency, nutrition, food stamps, and education? Why, if somebody has $80 billion, are they working so hard for more tax breaks for themselves and for more cuts to the middle class and working class in terms of programs people desperately need?

Frankly, I think this is not an economic issue. I think it is a psychiatric issue. I think it is an issue which suggests people are simply power hungry. They need more and more. I think this is a very sad state of affairs.

The struggle we are engaged in now is stopping the billionaire class from cutting Social Security, from cutting Medicare, from cutting Medicaid, and from preventing us from creating the millions of jobs our economy desperately needs. But at the end of the day, what we are really talking about is whether this Nation is going to become an oligarchic form of society, and what that means, what an oligarchic form of society is about and which has existed in many countries throughout the world, historically--in many countries in Latin America, although that has recently changed--is a nation in which both the economics and politics of the nation are controlled by a handful of very wealthy, billionaire families. It doesn't matter what party is in power because the real power economically and politically rests with a billionaire class. It clearly seems that unless we act boldly to reverse this trend, we are seeing this country moving in exactly that direction.

One of the reasons is as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which regards corporations as people and allows the superwealthy to spend as much as they want on elections. The billionaire party, which is obviously aligned with the Republicans, is now, in fact, the major political force in this country. It is not the Republican party, per se. It is not the Democratic party, per se. It is the billionaire party led by people like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. They are the dominant political force in this country because they can spend unbelievable sums of money on elections. They can spend as much money

as they need, setting up think tanks and various organizations which will support their extreme rightwing point of view.

In the last presidential election Barack Obama's campaign spent a little bit over $1 billion. Mitt Romney spent somewhere around there, maybe a little bit less, but about $1 billion. The Koch brothers' wealth increased by $12 billion in one year.

Is there any reason to doubt that in the future this one family will be able to spend more money on a campaign than the presidential candidates themselves, receiving donations from hundreds of thousands of people? That is where we are today. Where we are today is that the very foundations of American democracy are being threatened by a handful of incredibly wealthy people who are saying: You know what. Eighty billion is not enough for me. Yeah, I made $12 billion more than last year--not enough for me. I have to have more, and I am going to get more tax cuts for myself, and in order to do that we may have to cut Social Security; we may have to cut Medicare; we may have to cut Medicaid; we may have to cut education for middle-class families.

We are in a debate about whether we raise the minimum wage. My view-- and I know the Presiding Officer's view--is that we should raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour so that every working person in this country at least--at least--can have a minimal--minimal--standard of living. Many Americans don't know that it is not just that virtually all Republicans in the Congress are opposed to raising the minimum wage. The truth is many of them want to abolish the concept of the minimum wage.

The theory of the minimum wage is that nobody should work for below a certain wage. For many of my extreme conservative friends, they think it would be perfectly fine in a high unemployment area if we abolish the minimum wage. People today are working in this country for $3 and $4 an hour.

It is not only economics. Many of these billionaires are involved, as the Koch brothers are, in energy, in oil. What they want to do is abolish agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency so they can pollute more and more and more. The scientific community tells us in an almost unanimous fashion that climate change is real, climate change is made by human activity, climate change is already creating problems in our country and around the world, and that if we don't get our act together and significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions, the problems will only become worse. Yet you have families such as the Koch brothers and other energy-related billionaires spending huge sums of money trying to confuse people about the reality of climate change.

So to my mind the issue that we have to focus on as a Congress, the issue that we have to focus on as American people is: What kind of nation do we wish to live in? Do we want to live in a nation where a handful of billionaires own a significant amount of the wealth in this country while the middle class has less and less, where families cannot afford to send their kids to college or get decent childcare for their little ones, where people are reaching the age of 65 with virtually nothing in the bank in order to provide a dignified retirement? Is that the country we want to live in or do we want to see the middle class grow and have a more equitable distribution of wealth and income, a fairer tax system where the millionaires and billionaires and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

From a political point of view, which is equally important: Do we want to have a nation in which the concept is one person, one vote; that we are all equal; that you have as much say about what happens in government as anybody else or do we want to have a political system where a handful of billionaires can sit around the room and say: OK, put $100 million into that State. Let's put $50 million into that State--where a handful of billionaires will determine who gets elected President, who gets elected Senator, who gets elected Governor, and have Members of Congress crawling up to these billionaires: What do you need, Mr. Billionaire? How do I get the hundreds of millions of dollars you can give me?

Is that really what American democracy is supposed to be about?

We have some very fundamental issues we have to address as a Congress. So I would suggest that we put on the agenda the issue of distribution of wealth and income and the implication of that grossly unfair distribution of wealth and income that we have right now.

With that, Mr. President, I would yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I appreciate the interest my colleague from Louisiana has on this very important issue. I agree with him that we want to expand VA health care, that we have run into a bureaucratic morass, and there are 27 facilities in 18 States that can and should be approved. If the Senator from Louisiana is prepared to join with me, we can pass his concern today or within the next couple of weeks, along with many other provisions the veterans community is deeply concerned about.

During the last government shutdown, it is not widely known but the truth is that we were 7 to 10 days away from a situation where veterans--disabled veterans, veterans who have pensions--were not going to get their benefits. The comprehensive bipartisan legislation that received 56 votes here on the floor--unfortunately, not the vote from my colleague from Louisiana but 56 votes, and we are working to get the 60 votes we need to overcome a Republican point of order, and we are going to get those 60 votes--makes sure we do have advanced appropriations so no disabled veteran will not get a check in the event of another government shutdown.

My colleague from Louisiana may or may not think that is an important issue. I don't know. I think it is an important issue. And I can tell him the reason the legislation I introduced has the support of the American Legion--and, by the way, 500 of them were here this morning at a very interesting hearing--has the support of the VFW, the DAV, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Gold Star Wives of America, and virtually every organization is because they understand that the veterans community has very serious problems we have to address.

My friend from Louisiana may or may not have concerns about making sure that every veteran gets their benefits in an expedited way and that we don't have this backlog. Our legislation addresses that. My friend from Louisiana may or may not be concerned that there are veterans who want to take advantage of the post-9/11 GI bill--which over 1 million people are now having advantage of--and are having problems with getting instate tuition. Our legislation addresses that. Our legislation for the first time makes sure dental care will be part of VA health care. Our legislation addresses the reprehensible situation faced by many women and men in the military who had to deal with sexual assault. We think they should get the care they need. And on and on and on.

So we have a comprehensive piece of legislation which is supported by virtually every veterans organization in this country. We received 56 votes--1 person was absent who would have voted for it--57 votes, and we are now working with some of our Republican colleagues to make sure we get the 60 votes. And I say to my colleague from Louisiana, work with us. Bring some of your other colleagues on board. Please don't tell me this is too expensive. If it is too expensive to take care of our veterans, then let's not go to war in the first place.

So I give my colleague from Louisiana the opportunity now to do something really extraordinary, to do something the veterans' committee wants.

I object to the proposal from my colleague from Louisiana, and in its place I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 297, S. 1950; that a Sanders substitute amendment, the text of S. 1982, the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

If we pass this right now, we deal with the Senator's concerns and a lot of other concerns.

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

Mr. President, let me begin by commending my colleagues Senator Mikulski, Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander, and Senator Burr for their hard work to reauthorize the child care development block grant. This is a modest piece of legislation and I urge my colleagues to support it.

The main point I wish to briefly make this morning is that even if this modest piece of legislation passes, it will not begin to address the very serious problems we face in childcare in our country and, even more importantly, in childhood poverty.

The United States is the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. Unfortunately, despite our great wealth, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. We have more people today living in poverty than at any time in the history of our country. Most significantly, and related to the discussion we are having about childcare today, the United States of America has, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. In my opinion, we have a moral responsibility to address that issue and we should put our energy and our minds to focusing on how we eliminate childhood poverty in America.

I will be offering an amendment today which is a very simple amendment. My amendment says the President of the United States should submit a plan to Congress which substantially reduces childhood poverty over the next 5 years. That is the amendment--that the President of the United States submit a plan to Congress which substantially reduces childhood poverty over the next 5 years. I hope and expect we would have unanimous support for this amendment.

As the Presiding Officer will recall, not too long ago, during the Winter Olympics at Sochi, Americans there were shouting out to our great athletes: ``USA, USA! We are No. 1.'' That was something I think many of us in America supported. We wanted our athletes in the Winter Olympics to be No. 1.

While we want to be No. 1 in terms of our athletic prowess, while we want to be No. 1 in terms of our scientific and intellectual accomplishments, while we want to be No. 1 in terms of economic growth and prosperity, we surely do not want to be No. 1 in the world in terms of childhood poverty. That is where we are today, with almost 22 percent of our kids living in poverty.

The reason, quite obviously, we do not want to be No. 1 in terms of childhood poverty is not only the moral issue of turning our backs on millions and millions of our most vulnerable people--kids who are 6 months old, kids who are 2 years old, kids who are 8 years old; human beings who cannot fend for themselves--it seems to me, as a caring people, we have the moral responsibility to make sure all of our children receive the basic necessities of life and not live in poverty.

I think there is a moral obligation to make sure we eliminate childhood poverty, but there is also an economic reality as well. I will get to that in a minute. But the first point to be made is that when we look at childhood poverty in America, which is 21.8 percent, we should examine what is going on in other countries.

Is it possible to go forward and significantly reduce or eliminate childhood poverty? The answer is yes. All we have to do is look around the world. In Denmark, child poverty is 3.7 percent. In Finland, it is 3.9 percent; in Norway, it is 5.1 percent; in Iceland, it is 7.1 percent; in Austria, 8.2 percent; Sweden, 8.2 percent; Germany, 9.1 percent; in South Korea, 9.4 percent; in the United Kingdom, 9.4 percent; France, 11 percent; New Zealand, 13 percent; Poland, 13.6 percent; Canada, 14 percent. But in the United States of America, the childhood poverty rate is 21.8 percent.

As I mentioned a moment ago, this is clearly a moral issue. A powerful Nation which, in recent years, has seen huge increases in the number of millionaires and billionaires, we should not be a society in which almost one out of four of our kids gets their nutrition from food stamps. We should not be a society where a significant number of young people are dropping out of high school, standing out on street corners and destroying their lives.

This is not just a moral issue; it is an economic issue. My colleagues, please tell me what kind of economic future we have when we are competing against countries around the world which are doing a better job than we are in providing the intellectual and emotional support their kids need; that are doing a better job than we are in educating their young people. How do we compete against these countries in the very competitive international global economy? Do we say to the young children who are living in poverty: Sorry. We can't afford to provide the preschool education you need; we can't afford to provide the childcare your parents need for you, and we are really sorry the odds are that many of you may drop out of school and that some of you will end up in jail.

We have more people in jail in the United States of America than in any other country on Earth. Clearly, one of the reasons for that has to do with the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. We pay for these things one way or we pay for them another way. The way we are paying for it is by spending $50,000 or $60,000 a year incarcerating huge numbers of people rather than making sure our kids get the nourishment--intellectual, emotional, nutritional--they need in order to do well in life.

It is important for us to look at what happens around the world, to see what we can learn, and to see what is working well around the world. It is important for us to learn and to understand that in countries such as Denmark, Finland, and Norway, where childhood poverty is very low, childcare is free to all of its workers. Workers in these countries get paid maternity leave. That means when a mom has a baby, she has the opportunity to stay home with her baby during the most important months of a baby's life and not have to worry about going to work and making a living, because those societies have said the right thing--that they want kids and mothers to bond and fathers to bond well, for those kids to do well. In this country, if a person

is low income and working class and they have a baby, they have to get to work right away, because if they don't have that income, how do they take care of their families? Those countries have done the right thing and it is important to learn from them.

In many countries around the world, workers get allowances from their governments to take care of their children. Their workers are guaranteed a 4-week paid vacation. Health care is a right and not a privilege for their citizens. In France, for example, if both parents go back to work after having a child, they are entitled to receive strong childcare benefits. In Germany--hard for us to believe--but if children get sick, their parents get up to 25 days of paid leave to stay home and take care of those children. These are just a few of the many benefits people in other countries--our competitors--receive. Maybe we can learn something from them.

Unfortunately, workers in our country--in this great Nation--have none of those benefits. Here is what has happened as a result. More than one in five children in America lives in households that lack consistent access to adequate food because their parents don't make enough money. In other words, the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing--more and more income in wealth inequality--and millions and millions of families today who are raising kids are wondering how they are going to have enough food on the table to provide basic nutrition to those kids. Should that be happening in the United States of America?

The number of homeless children living in America has gone up by 73 percent since 2006. In every State in the country, including my State of Vermont, there are families living with their kids in cars or in emergency shelters. Is that the way we give kids the opportunity they need to advance in their lives?

The psychologists tell us over and over that the most important years of a human being's life in terms of intellectual and emotional growth are those years between 0 and 4. Yet, in this country today, less than half of 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool. Ninety-six percent of infants and toddlers living in low-income families don't receive the early education they need through the early Head Start Program. More than 220,000 American children are currently on waiting lists for childcare assistance. And on and on it goes.

What does this mean in English? This is what it means. It means in Vermont, in New Jersey, in Maryland--it means in States all over this country--a mom and dad wake up in the morning with a 3-year-old and they are worried about the quality and affordability of the childcare they can find for that kid. So they go to work and they are saying, what is happening? I have to go to work. I can't stay home with my child. We need to make money. Yet, I cannot find quality, affordable childcare for my child. And in this country that is exactly what we should be providing.

According to a recent study by the Children's Defense Fund, childhood poverty costs this Nation at least $500 billion each and every year in extra education, health and criminal justice expenses, and in lost productivity. In other words, rather than learning what other countries are doing--investing in our kids, nurturing our kids, making sure our kids get the great education they deserve--we turn our backs on millions of kids and then we are shocked--just shocked--that they turn to drugs or crime or self-destructive activity, and we spend a fortune incarcerating them. Think about all of the intellectual and emotional destruction that takes place in this country because we ignore the needs of our children.

We hear our fellow Senators come to the floor and talk about how the United States is the greatest country on Earth, and I share that sentiment. But I do not believe the greatest country on Earth should have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.

The amendment I have offered is a very simple amendment. I hope it is accepted. I hope it will be supported unanimously. I hope it will allow us to go forward.

What the amendment says, again, is very simple. It says the President of the United States should submit a plan to the Congress which allows us to substantially reduce childhood poverty in the next 5 years. That is it.

With that, I yield the floor and hope very much this amendment is adopted. Thank you.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Reserving the right to object.

Madam President, I appreciate the interest of Senator Vitter in this very important issue. Senator Landrieu of Louisiana shares his concern, as do Senators from many States in this country because, as Senator Vitter indicated, this bill will authorize the VA to enter into 27 major medical facility leases in 18 States and Puerto Rico. So this is, in fact, a very big issue.

But as Senator Vitter knows very well, 2 weeks ago this very same provision was part of a comprehensive veterans bill supported by the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and virtually every veterans organization in this country because the veterans community is facing a host of problems.

Senator Vitter points out one problem. He is right. But there are many other problems. I say to my friend, we could have resolved this problem 2 weeks ago if I could have had four more Republican votes, including his, to pass this legislation.

What this bill does, and the reason it is supported by millions of veterans all over this country, is that it addresses the major problems facing our veterans community. I say to my friend from Louisiana, and any other Senator, if you are not prepared to stand with veterans in their time of need, don't send them off to war. If you don't want to pay for the care veterans need, don't send them off to war and then tell us it is too expensive to take care of them.

The legislation that again is supported by virtually every major veterans organization in this country, expands the caregivers program, improves and expands dental care, provides advanced appropriations for the VA--something many of us feel is terribly important--takes a major step to end the benefits backlog, deals with the very serious problem of instate tuition assistance for post-9/11 veterans, and addresses the horrible problem that women and men in the military face when they are sexually assaulted. We address that issue as well.

This legislation also addresses the issue of reproductive health. We have 2,300 men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who were wounded in the war in such ways they are unable to have babies. They want families but can't have babies, and so we help address in this bill that issue; whether through in vitro fertilization, adoption or other ways to help them have families. That is what this legislation does.

So I look forward to working with my colleague and friend from Louisiana to get that legislation passed or to sit down and work on a compromise piece of legislation.

I would say to my friend from Louisiana, today you can be a hero. Today you can get your concern passed and the concerns of veterans all over America by supporting my unanimous consent request to pass the bill that came up 2 weeks ago.

Mr. President, I object to Senator Vitter's proposal.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 297, S. 1950; that a Sanders substitute amendment, the text of S. 1982, the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act,

be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I would remind my colleague from Louisiana that the vote on that bill was 56 to 41. This is a 15-vote plurality. There is another person who was not here who would have voted for us on that bill, so 57 votes. But because of a Republican request for a budget point of order, we need 60 votes. So a strong majority of the Members in the Senate support this comprehensive legislation. We are three votes shy of passing it. I intend to reach out to the Senator from Louisiana and every other Senator to see whether we get these three votes so we can pass the most comprehensive veterans legislation brought to the floor of the Senate in many decades.

This is not a complicated issue. On Veterans Day and on Memorial Day, every Member of the Senate and House goes back to his or her district and tells veterans just how much they respect them and love them and so forth and so on. That is all fine and well. Speeches are important. But at the end of the day, serving our veterans means a lot more than giving speeches. It means voting for programs that will improve their lives.

I will not disagree with anybody who says veterans programs are often expensive. They are expensive. When somebody goes off to war and comes back without any legs, without any arms, losing their eyesight or their hearing or dealing with TBI--traumatic brain injury--or PTSD--post- traumatic stress disorder--or suffering from sexual assault, it is an expensive proposition to make those folks as well as we possibly can. But, as I said earlier, if we are not prepared to support the men and women who come back from war, don't send them off to war in the first place.

So I very much hope I will be successful in working on an agreement with the Senator from Louisiana and some of my other Republican colleagues so we can do what the veterans community wants us to do.

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

Mr. President, as I begin, I thank Senator Boxer for her wonderful leadership of the Environment Committee and for her strong activism regarding climate change. I thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Schatz, as well, for organizing this important discussion tonight.

The scientific community has been extremely clear--no debate--climate change is real, climate change is manmade, and climate change is already causing severe damage in terms of drought, floods, forest fires, rising sea levels, and extreme weather disturbances. Given that reality, I find it extremely disturbing that virtually all--not all but virtually all--of my Republican colleagues continue to ignore the scientific evidence and refuse to support serious legislation which will address this planetary crisis. My hope is that my small State of Vermont will be a national leader, will be a model for the rest of the country in transforming our energy system, moving us away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. And doing that, by the way, will not only help the United States become a leader in reversing climate change but can, over a period of years, create millions of good-paying jobs in this country. And that has to be the goal.

Some people ask--many people ask--they say: Well, why aren't you guys

doing anything on this issue? The scientific community is almost unanimous about the causation of climate change or about its severity. What are you doing?

Let me answer that by just very briefly reading an exchange that took place in the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on April 11, 2013. Let me preface my remarks by saying Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is a friend of mine. I like Jim Inhofe. He is an honest person, a straightforward person. But on this issue, he is dead, dead wrong. This is the exchange that took place on April 11, 2013. I was in a committee hearing, and this is what I said:

What Senator Inhofe has written--

And he has published a book on this issue--

What Senator Inhofe has written and talked about is his

belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever

perpetrated on the American people. That it's a hoax pushed

by people like Al Gore, the United Nations and the Hollywood

elite.

Senator Inhofe was also in this committee hearing, and I said:

I think that is a fair quote from Senator Inhofe. Is that

roughly right, Senator Inhofe?

He was right here, and Mr. Inhofe said:

Yes, I would add to that list: Moveon.org, George Soros,

Michael Moore and a few others.

So that is where we are. We have a gentleman--again, a very honest, decent man whom I like--a former chair of the Environment Committee, a former ranking member of the environment committee, who believes that global warming is a hoax pushed by people like Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Hollywood elite. So when people ask me why we are not doing anything, I would say that is pretty much the reason.

But let me respond to that, to Mr. Inhofe's views, by saying the following: Climate change is real, and there is no longer a scientific debate about that. In the words of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which includes EPA, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Health, Interior, Transportation, and Commerce: ``global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.''

It is not my view. It is not Senator Boxer's view, not Senator Schatz's view. That is the view of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which includes some of the major agencies of the U.S. Government. By the way, clearly it is not just the U.S. Government or agencies that believe that. There are agencies representing virtually every country on Earth that have come to the same conclusion.

Now, when some people say: Well, there is a debate; the evidence is not yet clear; the scientific community is not quite sure, let me clear the air on that one. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters in May of last year, more than 97 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate supports the view that human activity is a primary cause of global warming.

I believe I read yesterday that the minority leader,

Senator McConnell of Kentucky, was saying: Well, for every

person who believes that climate change is real, there is

another person who disagrees. Well, the polling indicates

that is not quite accurate. But what is really important is

not what this person feels or what that person feels, it is

what those people who have studied the issue extensively

believe. That is really what matters. And for those people--

the 97 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on

this issue--they say very clearly that climate change is real

and that human activity is a primary cause of global warming.

I am reminded--I think Senator Boxer made this point a while ago-- that the debate we are having now is very reminiscent of the debate we had 30 or 40 years ago about the role tobacco plays in cancer, emphysema, heart conditions, and so forth. We had people, well-funded by the Tobacco Institute, coming before the American people, putting ads on television, saying: You know smoking is okay; there is no evidence linking smoking to cancer.

Well, they were lying, as a matter of fact. Many of these people were being funded by the Tobacco Institute. I think we are in the same position now. A lot of the information--misinformation--which is coming forward is funded by the fossil fuel industry. We should be clear about that.

Is there still a scientific debate about anything related to climate? What is the debate? Well, the only remaining scientific debates are about just how devastating climate change will be. Of that, the scientists are not exactly sure. There is a disagreement. Are we on track for a 2-degree change by the end of the century? Will the planet warm by 2 degrees? Will it warm by 4 degrees? Will it warm by 6 degrees? People are not exactly sure. But they are certainly sure that it will warm. Will sea levels rise by 1 foot? Will they rise by 3 feet? By 4 feet? Again, scientists are not clear. But they are absolutely clear that sea levels will rise.

As a result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth's climate warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other 3-decade interval in the last 1,400 years, reports a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, based on research conducted by 78 scientists from 24 nations, analyzing climate data from tree rings, pollen, cave formations, ice cores, lake and ocean sediment, and historical records from around the sea.

The globe has already warmed 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to 2012, and the vast majority of that warming, 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, has happened since 1950. According to NOAA, November 2013 was the hottest November on record, and 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, and saw at least 69,000 local heat records set.

2013 was the fourth warmest year ever recorded since 1880. The World Bank, no bastion of left-leaning environmental thinking, is among those expressing grave concern about the trend. The World Bank concluded that limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees centigrade might allow us to keep sea level rise by 2100 to less than 2.3 feet.

Unfortunately, the World Bank also acknowledges we are on track for a 4-degree centigrade increase, which would result in extreme heat waves and life-threatening sea level rise. Since 1901, the global sea level has risen about 7.5 inches and it is getting worse; over the last 20 years seas have been rising nearly twice as fast.

All over the world glaciers and icepacks are melting. Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years. Glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania have already shrunk by 80 percent and are expected to be completely gone by 2020. Greenland's ice sheets lost ice at a rate of about 60 cubic miles per year between 2002 and 2011. This is six times faster than the ice was melting during the decades before that. All of these impacts and more can be traced directly to carbon emissions and their effect on the atmosphere.

In 2013, as the Presiding Officer knows, we witnessed an ominous milestone: The daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million. The last time CO2 levels were this high was probably between 2.2 million and 3.6 million years ago, when it was so warm there were forests in Greenland.

What does climate change mean? What are the consequences of global warming? How is climate change already impacting our lives--not in 5 years, not in 50 years, but right now? For one thing, climate change is making droughts in the Western United States and in other parts of the world more severe, longer lasting, and more frequent. Scientists expect the precipitation pattern will continue shifting, expanding the geographic extent of the dry subtropics, leading to warmer and drier weather, which then causes air temperatures to increase even more.

This helps explain why drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a U.S. State in 2011, leading to a combination of drought and wildfires, costing $10 billion in damage, and the drought continues. As of last month, Texas had only received 68 percent of its normal rainfall between 2011 and 2013, and reservoirs are at their lowest levels since 1990.

We should be very clear about this: When we talk about global warming, we are talking about the globe, the global community, not just the United States, not just Texas, not just California. Australia last year endured an ``angry summer,'' which is what it was called, which brought both the hottest month and the hottest day the country had ever witnessed, and a 4-month heat

wave, severe wildfires, and torrential rains and flooding, causing $2.4 billion in damage.

Last year's heat wave in China was the worst in at least 140 years. These droughts have very real consequences for water availability. Many regions in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, are expected to experience a decline of 20 percent in water availability if the climate warms 2 degrees centigrade and a 50-percent decline if the climate warms by 4 degrees centigrade. What we are talking about here is the inability of people to get water to drink, the inability of people to get water to farm. This then leads to other problems, including mass migrations and struggles of limited natural resources.

With sustained drought and heat waves comes wildfire. As Thomas Tidwell, Chief of the US Forest Service, explained to Congress last year: America's wildfire season now lasts 2 months longer than it did 40 years ago--2 months longer than just 40 years ago--and burns up twice as much land as it did then because of the hotter, drier conditions from climate change.

We are seeing this very horrendous and expensive situation of wildfires in the southwest of this country. The wildfires, in fact, are expected to increase 50 percent across the United States under a changing climate, while some studies predict increases of more than 100 percent in parts of areas of the Western United States by 2050. When you think about climate change and you think about drier forests, we are looking at very serious problems regarding wildfires.

Rising sea levels, another great concern and impact of climate change, also lead to more destructive storm surges. According to NOAA, Hurricane Sandy's storm surge exceeded 14 feet in places, which was a record for New York City. The National Academy of Sciences estimated every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase in global average surface temperature could be a twofold to sevenfold increase in the risk of extreme storm surge events similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

When some people tell us: Well, gee, we cannot afford to address the problems of climate change, I would suggest we cannot afford not to address this crisis, if only for the kinds of money we are going to have to be spending repairing the damage of hurricanes like Sandy, and maybe hurricanes that are even worse.

We heard during a recent Senate environment committee hearing that the State of Florida has already seen 5 to 8 inches of sea level rise in the past 50 years, with no end in sight. In the Florida Keys we expect that nearly 90 percent of Monroe County would be completely inundated at high tide, with just 3 feet of sea level rise, and New Orleans can expect to see an ocean level increase of well over 4 feet by the end of the century.

In other words, what we are looking at here, in Florida, Miami, Louisiana, New Orleans, Massachusetts, Boston, New York City, what we are looking at is seas rising, which actually threatens the very existence of parts of those cities.

Experts are predicting that cities such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New York, and New Orleans will face a growing threat of partial submersion within just a few decades as sea levels and storm surge levels continue to climb. What will it mean if the seas continue to rise and extreme weather events--severe drought, wildfires, storms, flooding--become much more common? One of the most important consequences will be massive human dislocation all over the world.

More than 32 million people fled their homes in 2012 because of disasters such as floods and storms. An estimated 98 percent of this displacement was related to climate change. So when you look into the future--and one of the reasons that agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Defense and other security agencies worry very much about climate change is they see the national security implications of massive dislocations of people in different States or regions of the country fighting over limited resources, water, land, in order to survive.

The Department of Defense, in its 2010 Quadrennial Review, called climate change a potential ``accelerant of instability or conflict.'' The potential economic impact of climate change on agriculture, for example, is huge. Water scarcity will make it harder to irrigate fields, and higher temperatures will make some areas unsuitable for growing crops. A study from the International Food Policy Research Institute found that globally climate change will greatly increase prices for staple crops such as corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans, including an approximately 100-percent increase in the price of wheat.

What this means for Americans, for people all over the world who are already struggling economically, is that climate change will mean less areas being farmed and higher food prices, something we cannot afford right now.

I think the question some viewers may have is, if the science is so clear--and it really is quite clear here in the United States and around the world--why do we not fix it? Why do we not come up with the bold strategy we need so America is a leader in the world in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and transforming our energy system? The good news here is the transformation of our energy system is going to be less expensive, if you like, than doing nothing.

Doing nothing means that we will see higher food prices, we will see wildfires, we will see scarcities of food, and we will see weather disturbances wreaking havoc on communities all over America and around the world, requiring huge amounts of monies to address those problems. What is the alternative? What do we begin to do?

The answer and the good news is that we--right now, today--have the technology to begin the process of significantly transforming our energy system. We know how to do it with today's technology, and that technology will only be improved in months and years to come.

I will give a few examples of some of the good news that is happening in terms of the ability that we now have to move to sustainable energy.

The cost of solar--which certainly will be one of the major sustainable energy technologies that we look to in the future-- continues to plummet.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, in a report issued only last week, reported that the average weighted cost of a solar PV system was $2.59 per watt, a 15-percent drop from the year before.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, utility-scale solar--perhaps the best comparison to utility-scale conventional electricity generation--now costs on average 7.7 cents per kilowatt hour compared to about 10 cents per kilowatt hour on average for power plants now operating across the United States.

The cost of wind energy is also comparable to or even less than the cost of other more traditional energy sources. The average cost of wind power coming online between now and 2018 is estimated to be 8.6 cents per kilowatt hour, even without including the value of the production tax credit.

Moving to sustainable energies such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydropower clearly is something that we should be doing very aggressively.

When we do that, we not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, we not only significantly cut air pollution but in the process we create many jobs as we transform our energy system. But sustainable energy is only one part of the equation. What we must also do is invest very significantly in energy efficiency and in sustainable energy. Every dollar invested in efficiency and low-income households through the Weatherization Assistance Program results in $2.53 in energy and nonenergy benefits for a community.

I suspect the story is the same in Maine as it is in Vermont, but I can remember meeting with two older women who were sisters. They lived in Barre, VT, and they were able to get their homes weatherized. Their home, as many of the homes in Vermont, was old, leaking energy, not well insulated, did not have good windows, did not have good roofing, and the heat was just going right through the walls. As a result of a weatherization project in their home, their fuel bill went down by 50 percent.

These were seniors and low-income citizens. When we move in this direction, we can save Americans substantial sums on their fuel bills. We create local jobs. We cut greenhouse gas emissions. If that is not a win-win-win situation, then I don't know what is.

It seems to me that we should be investing substantially in subsidies such as the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit. Every dollar we invest in these efforts yields many more in savings.

It is also true that when some of my friends object to the government helping to assist sustainable energies or putting money into energy efficiency, they seem to forget that the very mature and very profitable fossil fuel industry benefits very substantially from the subsidies that we have provided them. In fact, American taxpayers are set to give away over $100 billion to the oil, gas, and coal industries over the next decade through a wide range of subsidies, tax breaks, and loopholes.

If we can subsidize the coal industry, if we can subsidize ExxonMobil and the oil industry, if we can subsidize the gas industry, we sure as heck can subsidize and provide support for wind, solar, and other sustainable energies.

I come to the end of my remarks and suggest the following: The time is now for us to take bold and decisive action. As my colleague Senator Franken mentioned, those of us who have kids--and I have four--and those of us who have grandchildren--I have seven beautiful grandchildren--they will look us in the eye 20 years from now and say: Why did you let this happen? Didn't you know what was happening? Didn't you understand what lack of action would do for our country and the planet?

That is the issue we face. We need to have the courage now to stand up to extremely wealthy and powerful forces in big energy--and that is the coal companies, the oil companies, the gas companies--and come up with an alternative vision for energy in America.

In that regard, I am proud to have joined with my colleague, the chair of the environmental committee, Senator Barbara Boxer, to introduce last year the Climate Protection Act.

Our bill does what, at the end of the day, every serious person understands must be done, and that is to establish a fee on carbon pollution emissions--an approach, by the way, endorsed not only by progressives but also by moderates and even prominent conservatives such as George Shultz, Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker, Mitt Romney's former economic adviser Gregory Mankiw, former Reagan adviser Art Laffer, and former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis.

In other words, there is an understanding that if we are to be serious about addressing the need to cut carbon emissions, there has to be a tax on those emissions.

Our legislation, which has been endorsed by, I believe, almost every major environmental organization, does several things. What we do in a very significant way is to invest in energy efficiency and weatherization because that is the low-hanging fruit. What we also do is invest, very significantly, in sustainable energy. Also, importantly, in the event that folks are paying increased costs for electricity or for other areas, much of the money is returned directly to taxpayers.

Let me conclude by saying we can have an honest debate about the best path forward to transform our energy system. This is complicated stuff, and I don't think anyone has the magic answer, but we can debate that. What we can no longer debate is whether climate change is real, whether it is caused by human activity or whether it is today causing serious harm to our country and serious damage all over this planet or whether that devastation will only get worse in years to come.

Right now we have to summon up the courage to acknowledge that we are in a crisis situation and that bold action is needed now. I happen to believe that with the United States playing a leadership role, China, India, Russia, and other major consumers of fossil fuels will follow our leadership. Our credibility is not much if we are not what we are talking about. If we want to lead the world, we have to act. This is something our children, and our grandchildren expect of us and something I hope we can, in fact, do.

With that, I yield the floor.