Floor Statements

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent from the roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Michelle Friedland to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit. Had I been present, I would have supported cloture on the nomination of Michelle Friedland.

Mr. President, the Armenian genocide is sometimes called the ``forgotten genocide.'' But every April, we come together to remember and commemorate the Armenian genocide and to declare that we will never forget.

In order to prevent future genocides, we must clearly acknowledge and remember those of the past. For many years the Congress has had before it a resolution which clearly affirms the factual reality that the Armenian genocide did occur. I was a strong and vocal supporter of the genocide resolution for my entire tenure in the House, and I am proud to have joined Senator Menendez and Senator Kirk in introducing the Armenian genocide resolution in the Senate.

This is the 99th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, yet the suffering will continue for Armenians and non-Armenians alike as long as the world allows denial to exist and prevail. It is long overdue for the United States to join the many other nations that have formally recognized the Armenian genocide.

That is why today's passage by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the genocide resolution in advance of the 99th anniversary is so historic. I was proud to vote for this important resolution today in committee, and I will keep fighting to ensure its passage by the full Senate. I will continue to work with the Armenian-American community to build a prosperous and bright future for the Armenian people.

We must continue to stand with our ally Armenia to address the challenges they face. Armenia is confronted with blockades by Turkey and Azerbaijan--one of the longest lasting blockades in modern history. The United States must provide increased assistance to Armenia, work to promote trade with Armenia, and work to reestablish the Turkish Government's commitment to normalized relations. And the United States should work to facilitate a closer relationship between Armenia and Europe.

The Armenian people are true survivors. Despite repeated invasions, loss of land, and the loss of between one-half and three-quarters of their population in the genocide, the people of Armenia have prevailed.

We have a shared responsibility to ensure that the Armenian people are able to build their own independent and prosperous future. Together we can continue to build an Armenia that is respected and honored by its allies and neighbors. But for this to happen, there needs to be universal acknowledgement of the horror that was the Armenian genocide.

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent from votes during today's session. Had I been present, I would have opposed the motion to table the Reid amendment to H.R. 3979 and I would have supported the motion

to table the Vitter motion to appeal the ruling of the Chair.

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

Madam President, every day firefighters and other first responders around our country put their lives on the line to protect the public. Yesterday members of the Boston Fire Department bravely entered a burning building in Boston's Back Bay in a selfless effort to save lives and keep the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts safe.

Firefighters head toward the danger as ordinary citizens run away from danger. They are a very special breed, these firefighters. It is with a very heavy heart that I come to the floor today, along with Senator Warren, to honor two of these courageous men, Lieutenant Edward Walsh and firefighter Michael Kennedy, who became caught in the fire and heroically sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. Thirteen other firefighters were injured in the blaze and are expected to survive.

Firefighter Michael Kennedy was 33 years old. A native of the Roslindale

section of Boston, he lived in Hyde Park and had been with the Boston Fire Department for the past 6 years. A former marine, Michael was among the first responders who nobly and bravely served those injured in the Boston Marathon bombing almost 1 year ago.

Lieutenant Edward Walsh was 43 years old. He lived in West Roxbury with his wife and three children. Lieutenant Walsh came from a firefighting family. Both his father and uncle were fire lieutenants in nearby Watertown. He had been with the Boston Fire Department for 9\1/ 2\ years and was stationed at Engine 33, Ladder 15, just blocks from the building where the fire occurred.

Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy are American heroes. Their memories will live on forever as everlasting examples of the extraordinary courage and dedication that is at the very heart of the Boston Fire Department and in the hearts of firefighters everywhere. Boston is strong because of heroes such as Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy who place the safety of others before themselves.

In this nine-alarm fire, there were zero civilian casualties. These two brave men put their lives on the line so that others may go on living. I offer my condolences to the families of Lieutenant Walsh and Firefighter Kennedy and to the Boston Fire Department. Massachusetts has lost two of its finest sons, and I grieve along with the rest of the Commonwealth, along with Senator Warren, and along with everyone else for the loss that has been suffered.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the science proves there is a danger, the economics prove there is a solution, and the politics tonight begin the process of saying there is a way to deal with this issue.

The planet is running a fever, but there are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in the preventive care so that we deploy the strategies which make it possible for our planet to avoid the worst, most catastrophic effects of climate change. We can do it and do it in a way that helps our economy.

There are now 80,000 people working in the wind industry in the United States. There are 142,000 people in the

solar industry. That is 220,000 people. There are 80,000 people in the coal industry. Most of the wind and solar jobs have been created in the last 5 years. This is a job-creating revolution which is taking off.

Tonight we are going to stay up all night to talk about this climate change issue in the hopes that tomorrow will be the dawn of a new era where the Congress begins to do something about this issue and where it responds to its historic duty to the next generation to end this crisis.

Mr. President, I am honored to be joining Senator Schatz who has been working with Senator Whitehouse and with Senator Boxer to put together this very important discussion, very important evening.

While we are discussing climate change, I thought I would first talk a little bit about baseball. Something very funny happened in baseball. From 1920 all the way through the entire modern baseball history, the average number of players who hit more than 40 homeruns in a season was 3. That is all--Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio. No matter who was playing in the United States, the average number of players was 3.3 who made it over 40 homeruns in a season.

Then something very strange started to happen. All of a sudden there was a dramatic spike in the number of players who could hit more than 40 homeruns. In 1996 it went up to 17 players all of a sudden, with an average of only 3.3 who hit more than 40 homeruns. Year after year the same thing was occurring.

Then it occurred to someone, maybe they are injecting these players with steroids. Now some people said, no, the ballparks are getting smaller, maybe they are corking the bats, maybe they are juicing the baseball. But, no, it turned out that they were injecting steroids into baseball players. And all of a sudden the average of 3.3 players averaging more than 40 homeruns in a season had spiked to three and four times that, until Major League Baseball decided that they were going to test for steroids. A very strange thing started to happen. The average number of players hitting more than 40 homeruns went right back down to the traditional average.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, NOAA has the same kind of chart for our climate. NOAA has been able to do the calculation going back to 1880 of what the average temperature is on the planet. As you can see, it stayed at a pretty current level until all of a sudden, especially beginning in the 1970s, there is a dramatic spike. As we all know, 20 of the warmest 30 years ever registered have occurred in the last 30 years. As we all know, the fourth warmest year of all time ever recorded occurred just last year, 2013. But we haven't applied the same steroids equivalent test for this change in temperature. We have a pretty good idea of what has happened because scientists all across the United States agree on this issue: It is manmade. The chemicals we are putting into the atmosphere are causing the same kind of chemicals ballplayers were putting into their bodies were causing in the dramatic rise in the number of homeruns that were being hit in Major League Baseball.

(Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumes the Chair.)

This is basically an obvious correlation between what we are doing as human beings and impact on the world in which we live. And just as those homeruns went up when the players used chemicals, so too has the temperature on the planet. And the same distortions that occurred in our national pastime are now occurring on our planet.

Ladies and gentlemen, the planet is running a fever, but there are no emergency rooms for planets. There are no hospitals to go to. We have to engage in preventive care. We have to put in place the measures that reduce dramatically the likelihood that we are going to see the worst catastrophic effects of this dangerous warming of our planet.

If you are still skeptical, perhaps the findings of another skeptic, Dr. Richard Muller and his colleagues at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, will reassure you. Let me quote from Dr. Muller's July 2012 New York Times column entitled ``The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic.'' Here is what he said:

Our results show that the average temperature of the

earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit

over the last 250 years, including an increase of one and a

half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it

appears likely that essentially all of this increase results

from the human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Our current understanding of human influence on climate change rests on 150 years of wide-ranging scientific observations and research. It is informed by what we see today with our own eyes measured by our own hands. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme downpours are increasing. The ocean is becoming more acidic.

But climate change is more than just numbers in a scientist's book. In my home State of Massachusetts it is having tangible impacts now. My State, Massachusetts, loses an average of 49 football fields of land to rising sea levels each and every year. Rates of sea level rise from North Carolina to Massachusetts are two to four times faster than the global average. Extreme downpours and snowfall in New England have increased by 85 percent since 1948.

According to scientists at the University of New Hampshire, New England winters have become 4 degrees warmer on average since 1965. In other words, we now have in New England the same weather that Philadelphia had in 1965. We are 4 degrees warmer than we were in New England in 1965. We have Philadelphia's weather. Thank God in Boston we do not have their athletic teams, but we do have their weather and it is getting warmer.

In Massachusetts and most of New England, spring has sprung 5 days earlier on average than it did in the latter part of the 20th century.

Around the iconic Walden Pond, plants now flower 10 days earlier on average than they did in the 1850s, according to the careful records kept by Henry David Thoreau. Our iconic cod have been moving north as ocean temperatures warm. Cod need cold water. As the ocean warms, they are moving farther and farther north. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod is our iconic beach front, ocean front, and fishing front. The cod are moving north and away from our State because they need cold water.

The coastal communities that depend upon them are being affected negatively by the absence of these fish. Scientists are just beginning to understand the consequences of the increasingly acidic ocean on scallops, lobsters, and plankton, which are the base of the food chain in the gulf of Maine.

As Dr. Aaron Bernstein, from the Harvard School of Public Health, has written, climate change is a health threat, no less consequential than cigarette smoking. Increasing temperatures increase the risk for bad air days, and in turn it increases the risk of asthma attacks. It is worse for people with lung disease.

I have two stories. Rachel is from Cambridge and Sylvia is from Amherst. Their moms talked about the impact of pollution on the health of their children. I think it is important for us to understand that asthma and other illnesses that are created by pollution are preventable but only if we here in the Senate put in place the policies that make it possible for us to reduce the risk to these young people all across our country.

I strongly support all of the efforts the Members are putting together tonight to focus on this issue. It is not

just the planet, it is the children of the planet who are negatively impacted by all of this additional pollution. Left unchecked, the impacts of climate change will only become worse in the future.

An analysis by the Sandia National Lab found that changes in rainfall alone could cost Massachusetts $8 billion in GDP and nearly 38,000 jobs between 2010 and 2050. That is Massachusetts alone. New England could see a $22 billion hit to our GDP and almost 100,000 jobs lost from changing precipitation patterns. Sea-level rise will also threaten coastal communities where one-third of the Massachusetts population lives.

The seas are getting hotter and they are getting higher. Those hotter, higher seas are making storms more damaging. Storm surges on top of sea-level rise could cause hundreds of billions in damages to cities on the Massachusetts coast during the next decade.

In 1775 Paul Revere warned Massachusetts revolutionaries of an invasion coming from the sea. With climate change, Boston and the Bay State could face an invasion of the sea itself in Massachusetts and all across New England.

As sea levels rise and storms become more severe, many of Boston's best known landmarks will be threatened, including Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, North Station, Fan Pier, Copley Church, John Hancock Tower, the Public Garden. The Back Bay will revert to its original personality as a bay.

We have to be realistic about this. The threats are there. The scientists are warning us. This can happen. There but for the grace of God and a few degrees, Hurricane Sandy would have damaged the city of Boston. We have been warned. Anyone who hasn't been hit by a Hurricane Sandy yet has been warned. It is coming, and it will be worse than Hurricane Sandy.

By the end of this century, Massachusetts summers could feel like North Carolina's summer--not Philadelphia. By the end of the century, the temperatures are going to keep warming. By 2100, Maine could be the only State in New England that still has a skiing industry. That is how rapidly the snows are disappearing. The economic impact of climate change isn't confined to New England because we already feel the cost of climate disruption. The GAO added climate change to its 2013 high- risk list based in large part on two reports they did at my request. GAO found that climate change presents a significant financial risk to the Federal Government. GAO could just as easily say it presents a significant financial risk for all of America.

As daunting as the impacts of climate change are, the good news is we have the solutions to address it. We can generate good jobs in America that are also good for saving all of creation.

With wind and solar, we have a tale of two tax policies. Here is the solar industry in the United States. Back in 2007, there was a production of perhaps 200 megawatts of electricity from solar. It was at the dawn of the solar industry. It wasn't as though the Sun had not been up there or that the technologies did not exist or could not have been created in order to capture it, but the tax policies were not there.

In 2008, Congress passed a law which added an 8-year tax incentive for the solar industry. We can see what happened to this industry. It had been denigrated for years--up until last year when there was 5,000 new megawatts. Think of five Seabrook nuclear powerplants of electricity generated by solar in 1 year. That tax break stays on the books until the end of 2016, and by the end of 2016, there is an expectation that 10,000 new megawatts of solar will be installed in the United States in 1 year, ladies and gentlemen, if we keep those tax breaks on the books. We can see what happens when there is a consistent, predictable tax policy on the books.

Let me show you another tax policy. This is the tax policy for the wind industry. The wind industry has not had the same good fortune which the solar industry has had. Every time there is a tax policy that is put on the books, wind starts to build upwards of 2,000 megawatts in 2001, but then the tax policy evaporated and it collapsed as an industry. When we put it back on the books, it went back up to 2,000 megawatts. It expired at the end of that year and collapsed again.

In 2005, we put a policy on the books that began to see the kind of installation of wind that we knew was possible from the beginning of time. We all knew it. We all knew the Dutch were right with those windmills. We all knew there was something to it, but there was no tax policy that was consistent, until we reached 2012 when, unbelievably, 13,000 new megawatts of wind was installed in the United States--13 nuclear powerplants. There is only 100,000 megawatts of nuclear power in the United States after 70 years of tax subsidies. Look at what happened with wind in 1 year--13,000 megawatts. But then it expired, and it collapsed down to only 2,000 megawatts in the year 2013.

That is our challenge, ladies and gentlemen. If we give the same kind of predictable tax and policy treatment to these renewable energy resources that were given to the oil industry over the last century, they have a lot to worry about. By the way, you don't have to worry about the oil or the gas industry. Their tax policies stay the same. Through the good times and the bad times, the oil industry keeps the same tax breaks on the books. They know they can rely upon that. Those two industries know the $7 billion in tax breaks they rely upon are going to be there year after year after year.

Let's talk about what else can happen in other industries. Let's talk about the automotive industry. The Senator from Minnesota just talked about the fuel economy standards we put on the books. Look what happened since the fuel economy standards were put on the books and implemented by Barack Obama. George Bush did not implement them. I am proud to be the host author of those fuel economy standards, but it took Barack Obama to put them on the books--54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2026. Look what has happened. We are now nearing 600,000 hybrids, plug-in vehicles, and all-electric vehicles per year. It is skyrocketing. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are reporting record profits and record sales. People will buy them, but you have to create the policy in the country.

By the way, that one policy--the fuel economy standards that were put on the books in 2007 in this body, and over in the House of Representatives--backs out 4 million barrels of oil per day that we import into our country by the year 2040 when all of these standards that we put on the books are finally implemented.

How much is that? The United States imports 3 million barrels of oil a day from the Persian Gulf. We are backing out 4 million barrels just by putting together a policy that incentivizes the industry to invest in the kinds of technologies that Americans want to buy and citizens around this planet want to buy. Wind, solar, hybrids, all-electric vehicles--it is all there. It is what we can do in order to create jobs and at the same time save the planet.

I will talk about some other numbers that I believe are really relevant. The coal industry now has 80,000 employees. The wind industry has 80,000 employees in the United States. We saw how low it was in 2007. Well, they now have 80,000 employees. The solar industry has 142,000 employees. Coal only has 80,000 employees. We saw what happened from the moment that predictable tax policy went on the books until today, and it is continuing to go off the charts, but we know there will be people who are going to be out here fighting to take away those tax breaks and will compromise the ability of the EPA or the Department of Transportation to keep those standards on the books.

Back in the 1990s, I was the chairman of the Telecommunications Committee in the House of Representatives, and I was able to put three bills on the books. One bill created the 18-inch satellite dish, another one created the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth cell phone license. That is what drove the price of a phone call from 50 cents a minute down to 10 cents a minute. It was 1996 when you started to have one of these devices in your pocket. At 50 cents a minute, you didn't have one. By the way, it was the size of a brick before that bill passed.

Finally, the 1996 Telecommunications Act moved us from analog to digital. It moved us from narrow band to broadband. It created this revolution of Google, eBay, Amazon, YouTube, and Facebook. All of that

happened because of the policies created by the House and Senate and signed by the President, and it unleashed $1 trillion worth of private sector investment. It revolutionized villages in Africa and Asia. We invented those technologies and sold them around the world.

We have the same kind of economic possibility for renewable energy and new energy technologies as we had in the telecommunication sector, and we have a chance to cap another $1 trillion to $2 trillion worth of investment in the private sector.

Let's move on to our Nation's carbon emissions from energy due to fossil fuels. The total amount of greenhouse gases in our country from energy sources fell from 2005 to 2012 by 12 percent. We installed more wind, solar, and fuel-efficient vehicles. We got more efficient and we reduced our coal use from 2005 to 2012, but in 2013 that reversed, and the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources increased by 2 percent in 2013. What happened? The price of natural gas increased in 2013 by 27 percent. As a result, U.S. electric utilities returned to burning more coal and using less natural gas. U.S. energy-related carbon emissions are still 10 percent below 2005 levels, but to keep driving them down, we need to keep the price of natural gas low and continue to drive the deployment of wind and solar up.

For the oil and gas industry, the crisis in the Ukraine is an opportunity to throw open the doors to unrestrained exports of American natural gas. But the notion that gas exports will help Ukraine is an illusion. It is a talisman, some lucky charm. This is a simple matter of geo-economics, geology, and geopolitics. We have already approved five export terminals that could send 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas abroad every year. That is nearly equal to all the gas consumed by every home in America. Just take that slice of the pie, and we are going to export all that natural gas. That is twice as much as Ukraine consumes every year.

Exporting natural gas could raise U.S. prices upwards of 50 percent and create an energy tax of $62 billion each year on American consumers and businesses, and it will put the coal industry back in business because coal will then be less expensive than natural gas. Then our ability to meet this goal of reducing greenhouse gases will be replaced by a policy to export all the natural gas we can get to the ports of the United States, and the lower our supply is, the higher the price is going to be for the remaining natural gas within our boundaries. The Energy Information Agency says that just with the terminals that are now being proposed, it is a 52-percent increase in the price of gas here. We saw it last year. When gas went up 27 percent, coal replaced natural gas, and our emissions went up, not down. So we just have to be realistic about this whole debate in Ukraine about what it means for us in handling this issue.

By the way, it is what has been leading to manufacturers returning to the United States. It is what is a big part of why there is a move towards natural gas vehicles, which also backed out imported oil. But the higher natural gas prices are the more we undermine our ability to make real progress on climate change, on manufacturing, on natural gas vehicles, on utilities moving from coal over to natural gas. That is our challenge as a people.

Then, finally, we are the leader, not the laggers. The whole world is looking at us. So much of that CO2 is red, white, and blue, and they look to us to be the leader. You started your industrial revolution in the 19th century, they say to us. If you want us to reduce our greenhouse gases, you reduce yours. So we cannot abdicate this responsibility.

Last week I attended a conference here in Washington called Globe. There were 100 legislators from around the world who came here--the key players on energy and the environment in each country in the world. We had a conference over in the Russell Building. Each of these legislators said they are looking to us for leadership. Five hundred new laws have been put on the books over the last 15 years in these countries on climate change. But the question comes to us. What are you going to do this year, next year, the year after on these issues? Their countries are even more vulnerable than our country. They do not have the resources which our country has. So that is our opportunity.

Henry Waxman and I built a coalition of utilities, of businesses, of labor, of faith and environmental groups, and concerned citizens in 2009. The pieces are still out there, I say to my colleagues. We can do it again, but we are going to need everyone's help.

Recently, the books of Massachusetts author and national treasure Doctor Seuss have been popular and read on the Senate floor. I wish I had time to read the entirety of his environmental classic ``The Lorax.'' But since there are so many Senators who want to talk about the impacts of climate change and the benefits addressing it will bring our country, I will just have to close with this short portion. Here is what it says:

But now says the Once-ler, now that you're here, the word

of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you

cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's

not.

So to my colleagues in the Senate and to everyone watching and following tonight, thank you for caring a whole awful lot. This is not for us; it is for all the subsequent generations of this country and this planet who are looking to this Chamber for leadership. We are going to make things better from tonight onward. This is a moment. The science is clear; the economics are clear; and now the politics is clear. We are going to have a big fight about this in 2014 because future generations are going to look back and know that this Senate stood up and we had the debate on the most important issue facing this planet.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I seek recognition to speak for 10 minutes.

Madam President, we have now engaged in a debate over the last couple of weeks over whether we should begin to expand a massive exportation of American natural gas--our own natural gas--to put it out onto the world market as a way of helping Ukraine deal with Russia.

This whole notion is constantly being invoked, like an incantation--a talisman--that somehow or other this is some kind of a magic bullet that will help solve the problems in Ukraine. In fact, it really is nothing more than another aggregation encyclopedically of discredited notions, nostrums, that have no relationship to the reality of the global energy marketplace. These are actual arguments being made, false premises that do not, in fact, have any likelihood of having any substantial impact on the totality of the Ukrainian situation.

Let me give a few facts as a way of dealing with where we are right now. The United States has already approved five export terminals that could send 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas abroad. How much natural gas is that? Let me tell my colleagues: It is more than twice what Ukraine uses in a year. The United States has already

committed to doing that. More than a quarter of all of the gas Europe imports in a year would be ascribable to the amount of natural gas the United States has already approved. It would be nearly as much as every single U.S. home uses yearly. That is how much natural gas is part of the already approved export terminals in this country.

The Department of Energy found that exporting 4.4 trillion cubic feet--a level we will reach within the next approved export terminal-- could raise the price of domestic natural gas up to 54 percent. That could mean that American consumers would pay $2.50 more per thousand cubic feet. That translates into--listen to this number, I say to my colleagues--a $62 billion energy tax every year on American consumers and businesses.

What do I mean by energy tax? I mean that but for that exportation, consumers' bills, corporations' bills, would be $62 billion lower per year over the next 10 years. Can we imagine the debate here in the Senate over increasing $62 billion worth of taxes on Americans in one year? We would come to a standstill if we had that kind of debate. But because it is part of energy policy, people assume it is something that is outside the purview of what should be a great national debate which we are having.

Let me tell my colleagues, low-cost domestic natural gas has allowed the United States to add--let me say this--530,000 manufacturing jobs since 2010, according to Dow Chemical. If low prices continue, we could add 5 million more jobs in the manufacturing sector by 2020. Who says this? America's Energy Advantage. Who is in that organization? Dow, Alcoa, Nucor, and other major corporations. To what do they relate the manufacturing revival in our country? Low prices. Energy that gives them a reason to return the manufacturing jobs from overseas.

Except for the cost of labor, what is the single largest component in a manufacturing job? The cost of energy. The lower it is, the more likely the manufacturing company will have the jobs here in America. If we increase the price by 54 percent or more, which is what many people here are now proposing, we reduce the incentive for a manufacturer to create those new jobs here in the United States.

Let me give my colleagues another fact. Every dollar invested in domestic manufacturing creates $8 in finished products. Manufacturing is at the heart of who we are as a country. This is something that right now is a discussion we should have in this country--the relationship between low-cost energy and the new manufacturing jobs we want to see. We can generate that economic value here in America, but if we send our natural gas overseas, that same kind of manufacturing future can be constructed in China. Let's have that debate here in our country.

Last month the U.S. chemical industry topped $100 billion in new investments as a result of low-cost U.S. natural gas. According to the American Chemistry Council, those 148 new factories and expanded projects could generate $81 billion per year in new chemical industry output and 637,000 new jobs in manufacturing here in the United States by the year 2023.

Now let's go to, in my opinion, some of the complete canards that are thrown out about where this natural gas will go if it is put out into the free market. First of all, let me say this: We are not Russia. We are not Venezuela. We are not a Communist country where the government controls where energy goes. No. We are a capitalist country. We are proud of it. The decision as to where natural gas is going to go is going to be made by the CEOs of oil and gas companies in our country, and they are going to send it to where they can get the highest dollar. Let me say this right now: The highest dollar is in China. The highest dollar is in South America. The highest dollar is not in Ukraine. So anyone who thinks that setting up these export terminals and sending our natural gas that could be helping our manufacturing sector overseas is going to help Ukraine's geopolitical situation doesn't understand the geo-economics of it, the geology of it, or the geopolitical implications of it. They have not thought through the totality of what happens when we take our precious resource and we start spreading it around the world.

Some are going to argue that it helps Ukraine. Well, it is going to help China more than it helps Ukraine. It is going to help South America more than it helps Ukraine. It is for sure going to help the CEOs of big oil and gas companies. That is what this debate is really going to be all about. Because we don't captain those ships. ExxonMobil has a tiller for those ships, and those ships are going to steer toward where the highest price is on the world marketplace. When those LNG tankers set sail for Asia or South America, we should know what else we are sending abroad on those ships. American jobs will be on those ships. They will be sailing to other countries. Fighting climate change is on those ships, because we will burn more coal here in the United States rather than natural gas, which has half of the pollutants of coal. We will be increasing the greenhouse gases the United States of America is sending up into the atmosphere.

When we are sending that natural gas overseas, we will be increasing the cost of a conversion of our large bus fleet and our large truck fleet over to natural gas as the fuel which makes it possible to drive them around our country. Here are the statistics. It is quite simple. If we move one-third of our fleet off of oil and on to natural gas as a way of fueling large buses and large trucks, then we back out 1 million barrels of oil--1 million barrels of oil--per day. That is a signal we should be sending to the Middle East. That is a signal that we are serious, that we are tired of exporting young men and women overseas and getting nothing in return.

So let me summarize by saying this: No. 1, it is a $62 billion consumer tax. No. 2, it slows our conversion from coal over to oil in our utility industry. No. 3, it slows the conversion of vehicles over to natural gas. No. 4, it slows our manufacturing revolution. No. 5, it slows our economic recovery. Our real strength is in our strong economy fueled by this low-cost oil and natural gas in our country.

We need a huge national debate in our country about the impact on our economy before we start putting it out on the high seas believing, erroneously, it is going to have some huge impact on Ukraine.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the coal under our Federal public lands is a tremendously valuable asset that belongs to the American people. For nearly my entire career in Congress, I have been working to ensure that we do not shortchange taxpayers by giving this asset away to the coal companies for bargain-basement prices. As we are facing Federal deficits and budget cuts for programs that benefit hard-working, middle-class families, we need to ensure more than ever that we are not giving a windfall to coal companies on the backs of taxpayers in Massachusetts and across the Nation by selling this public coal for less than it is worth.

In 1982, following coal lease sales by the Department of the Interior on public lands in the Powder River Basin, PRB, in Wyoming and Montana, I asked the Government Accountability Office, GAO, to investigate whether taxpayers had received a proper return in these lease sales. The GAO found that this Federal coal was sold for pennies on the dollar. The GAO report concluded that the Interior Department had sold this public coal in the Powder River Basin for $100 million less than it was worth. Following that revelation, there were a number of recommendations made to reform the Federal coal leasing program and ensure that taxpayers were protected. Unfortunately, I have concerns that similar problems with the Federal coal program may persist today at the expense of taxpayers in Massachusetts and around the country.

This week, I am releasing a new public GAO report on the Federal coal leasing program. This is the first time in 20 years that the GAO has evaluated this program and it is well overdue.

The findings in the latest GAO report highlight the fact that there still is a lack of competition for Federal coal leases. This dearth of competition amongst coal companies means that it is the Interior Department, and not the market, that is ensuring a fair price is set for these valuable resources. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this issue, for every cent per ton that coal companies decrease their bids for the largest coal leases, it could mean the loss of nearly $7 million for the American people. We have to act to correct the issues identified in the report and make sure national resources are not being given away at below market prices.

The GAO has found that the Interior Department is not properly considering the potential of future exports of this coal from Federal leases. These coal leases are issued for 20 years and can be further extended. Coal exports for electricity generation in other countries have doubled in just a few years. Companies want to sell U.S. coal overseas to China and European markets to increase their profits. If we are not properly valuing the possibility that coal exports to higher priced markets will continue to increase, we risk not only costing taxpayers money but also exacerbating climate change by, in effect, subsidizing coal companies to send more coal abroad to be burned in dirty power plants.

Moreover, the GAO has concluded in its public report that the Interior Department lacks transparency and is not providing sufficient information to the public on the Federal coal leasing program. I am extremely concerned that a lack of transparency and public information for the American people and for the Congress is inhibiting proper oversight of this important program to protect taxpayers.

When I was serving as ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, I began an oversight inquiry into the Federal coal leasing program in July 2012. While the Department has provided me, and my staff has reviewed, hundreds of pages of leasing documents, certain critical information necessary to properly evaluate this program has been withheld. As a result, the Interior Department is not providing information on the Federal coal program to the Congress in a way that allows for proper oversight. While the intent of this restriction may be to protect the integrity of future lease sales, the effect is to hamper congressional oversight.

As part of its investigation, the GAO released two reports to me, one that is public and one that is not able to be made public. GAO kept one of these reports nonpublic because the Interior Department believes that the proprietary information contained in the nonpublic report could harm the integrity of future lease sales. I believe that increased transparency with these coal lease sales would increase the integrity of the process, not lessen it. It would be very helpful for the American people to be able to review this information. But even if that is not possible because of concerns about proprietary information, Senators should be able to review this information and debate it in order to ensure that taxpayers are protected. Unfortunately, we are not able to have that debate on the floor of the Senate for the American people. That is wrong and very troubling.

It is concerning to me that an agency would seek to withhold this sort of information from Congress. Without this information, we cannot make a legislative decision about whether the statutes governing coal leasing on Federal lands are working as intended and whether the Department is administering them properly.

Based on my staff's examination of the materials provided to me by the Department and included in the nonpublic report issued to me by the GAO, it appears that the Interior Department may be consistently undervaluing Federal coal leases. The GAO report found that the Interior Department is using information that is outdated in valuing coal leases. Based on

the examination of the materials provided to me, I believe that this problem may be even greater than stated in the GAO report. I am concerned that the Department may be using extremely outdated information and boilerplate analysis that does not reflect current market conditions.

These are tremendously serious problems. Based on my staff's examination of the materials, I believe that using appropriate market calculations and assumptions in some recent coal lease sales could potentially have yielded $200 million more for the American people and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars more.

Therefore, I am transmitting two letters to the Interior Department, one that I am able to release publicly and one that I cannot, which seek answers to how the Department will respond to the recommendations in the GAO report and other issues involved in Federal coal leasing. I believe that until the questions and issues that I have raised in my letters to the Department are properly addressed to guarantee sufficient taxpayer protections are in place, the Interior Department should temporarily suspend further Federal coal leasing. I will also be introducing legislation in the future to reform the Federal coal program to guarantee a fair return for the American people.

Congress needs to be able to conduct the necessary oversight to ensure that the problems we have seen in the Federal coal program in the past do not continue. Until that happens we cannot assure taxpayers in Massachusetts and every State that they are getting a fair return on this public resource that they own. Until that happens, we lack the assurances that we are not subsidizing coal companies to increase carbon pollution by sending our coal overseas. It is time for the Congress to be able to conduct the oversight of this program that is required.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on January 8, 2014, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the GAO Report on Government Support For Bank Holding Companies.''

Madam President, 1.3 million people already have not had a happy new year. That is because, when we tried to extend the emergency unemployment insurance before the holidays, the Republican leadership said no. The temperatures may be dropping to new lows, but we should not freeze unemployment benefits.

When the economy was collapsing and AIG, the multinational insurance company, needed funds, we found that money for AIG. But when the Americans who are still recovering from the very recession caused by these institutions need more unemployment insurance, we just cannot seem to find a way to get it done.

These are not just numbers. These people, 1.3 million people across the country and 60,000 in my home State of Massachusetts, now face the harsh reality in 2014 that their country no longer has their backs.

One of these people is named Vera Volk. She is from Lynn, MA, just north

of Boston. She is a 20-year employee in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry who was laid off in May of 2013. Her layoff was in part due to sequestration, cuts in the Federal funding of biotech last year.

Last month Vera lost her unemployment benefits when the emergency unemployment insurance program ended. Vera has suffered a double injustice. First, her job was eliminated through sequestration, and then she was denied the extension of her unemployment benefits. Without the additional unemployment insurance, Vera and her family now need help to obtain food and medical assistance. In the near future, Vera's family faces the loss of their car and their home. Thousands of families in Massachusetts are facing similar but equally difficult decisions due to the termination of this critical program.

Published reports say that unemployment insurance kept 2.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, out of poverty last year alone. That is why I am a cosponsor of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act that Senators Reed and Heller have introduced, to reinstate and continue Federal support for the emergency unemployment insurance program until the end of March. Under that legislation, unemployed residents of Massachusetts such as Vera Volt would be eligible to receive up to 35 weeks of additional unemployment benefits.

Today, there are approximately 11.3 million Americans out of work and looking for a job. In Massachusetts, the unemployment rate is 7.1 percent and approximately 245,000 are looking for work. Unfortunately, in too many cities such as Lawrence, New Bedford, and Springfield--all over Massachusetts there are cities with much higher unemployment rates. Those unemployed workers in Massachusetts and across this country are finding it extremely difficult to find a job in this market. According to the Economic Policy Institute, for every one job opening there are 3.1 unemployed workers. So 2 out of every 3 job seekers have no job that they can actually find. Yet we are going to pretend that there is a job for them to be able to find.

There are many people who believe they are not working hard enough to find a job. Let me tell you something. Back in 2000, the unemployment rate in the United States of America went down to 3.8 percent. Guess what happened. People who were unemployed took those jobs. When unemployment goes down to 3.8 percent, when the government and the private sector are doing their job, people come to work.

In Massachusetts in 2000, unemployment went down to 2.8 percent. People were not hiding under their beds. People were not pretending they could not work. When the job was there, people took it. This is not ancient history; this is 2000, 3.8 percent unemployment, 2.8 percent unemployment for the State of Massachusetts. People who are offered a job will take a job. The jobs are not there. It is not the fault of these families. It is not the fault of these job seekers. We should not be punishing them. We should not be punishing their families because this capitalist system is not producing the jobs right now.

We have to reach out with a helping hand to these families so they can make it through this difficult time when the system is failing them. Instead, we are going to blame them for not finding jobs that do not exist. It is a beautiful circular argument where you never have to help the people who are actually being victimized by a failure in the economy. The truth is--and I restate this--when it went down to 3.8 percent unemployment in 2000, employers called these people back and said we want to put you to work, and the workers said, yes, we are ready to do it.

Here we are, once again, back in this cycle where too many people are pointing the finger at the worker when we know the worker will do the job. We have to be honest. The system, this capitalist system, this interaction between the government and capitalism right now is not producing the jobs for these workers. We have to work on that. That is our responsibility. We should be humble enough to say that it is the government, it is the private sector, not working together smarter--not harder--in order to accomplish these goals for all of these workers across our country.

If we did that, I think that ultimately we would have the very interesting result, according to all economists, of actually injecting more funding into the economy, creating more jobs, not destroying an additional 200,000 or 300,000 additional jobs this year because we did not inject the funding that would be provided to the unemployed that would be spent on the economy that would keep it on the upward tick it is on right now.

Instead, paradoxically, we are going to wind up with Republicans, if they are successful in cutting off this funding for long-term unemployment, seeing unemployment actually rise instead of being lower.

We have to work together in a bipartisan fashion in order to make smart investments now that will create the jobs, continue our country's economic recovery, and lower unemployment. I believe that our national strategy for job growth must continue to emphasize the areas where we excel as a nation. It is education, it is health care, it is biotech, it is clean tech, it is technology in general, and it is the investment into these areas that continues to give us the opportunity to be an engine for job growth in the world.

But while we chase this dawn of a brighter economy, we must not leave behind millions of Americans and their families. Let's not punish those who are already the victims and who continue to be the victims of a Wall Street collapse because we, as a nation, fail to understand and identify these innocent victims who still sit up there with their families.

I hope we can come together on a bipartisan basis to continue this program which is such a lifeline to the unemployed, their families and our economy.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma.

This final couple of days that we are going to be in session are very important because they are the days preceding the expiration of the wind energy tax break. It expires on December 31. There are energy efficiency tax breaks that expire on December 31.

This is unfortunate, because these are industries that are rapidly growing. But let's take note here. If you are the oil industry or other older fossil fuel industries, your tax breaks are not expiring on December 31. For the wind industry, for the renewable energy industry, we have to come back out here every year and try to get those tax breaks renewed. Each year as we reach this December 31 date, we talk about a Congress adjourning without completing it, sending total corporate unpredictability out into the marketplace, knowing that we need to have a robust, competitive marketplace.

Honestly, Adam Smith is spinning in his grave as he watches a Senate adjourn without continuing the tax breaks for wind, as the tax breaks for all of its competitive industries continue on year after year. They are permanent tax breaks. Actually, Adam Smith is spinning in his grave so rapidly that he would qualify for a permanent tax break, because he would be generating so much energy, wondering how can you have such inconsistency? How can you have one source of energy have to come in almost like a mendicant each year begging, and then having the year expire, after having added 13,000 megawatts of new electricity to the grid last year, knowing that the entire nuclear industry only added 100,000 in 60 years?

Here we are again. Those tax breaks are going to expire. We are going to leave here. We could not get unanimous consent in order to take them up here today to extend those tax breaks. Once again, the energy sources of the future, the innovative new energy sources, pay the price. They are not allowed to be given permanent status or, as we leave here, any status at all as of the end of this year.

Young people in our country, the green energy generation, looked and they asked: Well, why can't we have our era's energy technologies given permanent tax breaks or at least year to year before you go home? Why can't you have that kind of a debate out there? Why is there a debate at all, to be honest with you, given the fact that there is $7 billion a year that is going to be given to the oil industry, a permanent tax break?

We are not looking for that for wind. We are looking at much smaller amounts of tax benefits. So from my perspective, I look at the warming planet, I look at the Chinese and others who are targeting wind sources. I was in China in 2009. We rode by a wind factory with wind turbines, hundreds of them. They were all, in a lot of ways, pointing right at the American economy, in the same way that those Cuban missiles were pointing at our country in 1962--pointing right at us, a threat to us. But in the 21st century, it is a threat to our economy because we are not investing in these new technologies in the way we continue to invest in the old.

The least it could be and should be is a level playing field. Let's see who wins. Let's let capitalism work. Let's have this true Darwinian paranoia-inducing capitalism that allows for winners to be selected based upon the same kind of tax breaks for everyone. If that is the case, I think everyone would be happy. But that is not the way it is going to be this year. That is not the way it is most years.

Permanent tax breaks for the older technologies, and the kind of halting, questioning, capitalism-killing, corporate-questioning tax breaks for the nascent but growing and vibrant new technologies that the Chinese and the Germans and the Danes and others see as their job- creating sectors in their economy.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for this opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I support the Murray-Ryan budget agreement, even though I disagree with a number of provisions included in the bill, because it includes balanced savings to roll back sequestration for the next 2 years and help restore much needed certainty to government agencies and our economy.

Sequestration is just a fancy word for cuts--mindless cuts. I strongly believe we must end the mindless, across the board cuts from sequestration which have significantly reduced funding for a number of Federal programs that are critical to Massachusetts families and businesses.

Sequestration has also significantly cut Federal spending on the research

which has been critical for the development of the Massachusetts economy and will damage our economy in the long-term.

Under the Murray-Ryan agreement, sequestration under the Budget Control Act would continue. However, the size of sequestration will be rolled back and the Appropriations Committee will have the authority to make changes to existing spending rather than be required to impose an across the board cut. The agreement would set overall discretionary spending for this year at $1.012 trillion--which is about $46 billion less than the Senate budget level and $45 billion above the level set in the Budget Control Act. Spending would increase only slightly next year. Unfortunately, this legislation does not eliminate sequestration from future years, in fact the agreement extends sequestration for 2 additional years (fiscal years 2022-2023).

The agreement includes dozens of specific deficit-reduction provisions, with mandatory savings and non-tax revenue totaling approximately $85 billion. Those provisions include higher security fees for airline passengers, reduced contributions to Federal pensions, higher premiums for Federal insurance for private pensions, and savings from not completely refilling the strategic petroleum reserve.

Finally, the agreement would reduce the deficit by between $20 and $23 billion. It also includes a 3 month extension of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, SGR.

It is unfortunate that this agreement fails to include a critical extension of unemployment insurance, which is a critical component of our ongoing recovery and a lifeline to millions of Americans seeking employment. As a result of objections raised by the minority in the Senate, unemployment insurance will terminate just a few days after the holiday season ends. This action will cut off support desperately needed by more than 1.3 million Americans including more than 30,000 in Massachusetts. The U.S. Department of Labor has found that for every $1 of unemployment benefits spent, $2 of economic activity are generated. Extending unemployment benefits would increase our Gross National Product by 0.2 percent and create more than 200,000 jobs in 2014 alone. These Americans need our help and deserve our best efforts to resolve this issue before we adjourn for the year.

Before the Senate adjourns for the year, I hope that the Senate can act on the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act which would reinstate and continue Federal support for unemployment insurance (UI), effective January 1, 2014, for an additional 3 months to temporarily prevent the expiration of benefits for 1.3 million Americans. I am a cosponsor of this legislation because it would allow all States to continue Federal unemployment insurance without a lapse from January 1, 2014. The bill would also allow any State whose agreement was previously terminated in 2013 to enter into a new agreement with the Department of Labor for emergency unemployment compensation.

I have heard from a number of veterans from Massachusetts who have expressed their deep concerns about a provision in the budget agreement that would reduce the annual cost of living increase for military retirees under the age of 62. I am concerned that this provision could have a serious financial impact on these patriots and their families who fought to protect our freedom. The retirement compensation of servicemembers and Federal employees should never be reduced to lower our deficit especially while corporate tax loopholes and billions in subsidies for oil companies remain on the books.

I am proud to cosponsor the Military Retirement Restoration Act. The bill would replace the cuts to military retiree benefits from the Murray-Ryan Budget Agreement by preventing companies from avoiding U.S. taxes by abusing tax havens. I am hopeful that the Senate will be able to consider this legislation early next year. I also strongly support the review of this provision by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Levin before it takes effect in December 2015. Finally, I await a comprehensive review of the military retirement and compensation systems being conducted by the Military Retirement and Compensation Modernization Commission established by Congress which can provide a better solution than the one included in the budget agreement for military retirees.

I would also like to speak about another provision of the Bipartisan Budget Act: section 203, which limits access to the Social Security Administration's Death Master File, DMF. The DMF is a little-known but critically important piece of our Social Security system. It is the authoritative index of all deaths reported to the Social Security Administration from 1936 to the present, an index that contains over 85 million records of death. The DMF is therefore the prime tool available to formally confirm the death of an American citizen, and a variety of enterprises, from life insurers to pension funds, rely on the DMF to administer benefits and premiums.

Under section 203 of the Bipartisan Budget Act, access to the DMF will be greatly restricted. From now on, the Department of Commerce will not be allowed to disclose information in the DMF with respect to a newly deceased person for 3 years except to persons certified under a new program managed by the Commerce Department. Under this new program, which has yet to be established, certification will be given only to those persons who have either a legitimate business or fraud prevention interest and have processes in place to safeguard the information. The goal of section 203 is laudable--to prevent persons from using the DMF to engage in identity theft and fraud. Given the sensitive nature of this information, it is good that steps are being taken to prevent the misuse of this data.

Yet, while I support the goal of this section, I am concerned about how it will be implemented. Many insurance companies and pension administrators rely on the DMF to determine when benefits should be paid to their beneficiaries. In fact, nine States actually require that insurers access the DMF prior to the payment of benefits. These companies' access to the DMF is critical to their efforts to serve consumers, and their access cannot be interrupted while the Department of Commerce creates its new access certification program. Similarly, State Treasurers and Comptrollers, and their authorized personnel, also use the DMF for important purposes and need continued access while the regulations are being developed by the Secretary of Commerce.

I therefore urge the Department of Commerce to take immediate regulatory action to ensure that insurance companies, pension plans, and State Treasurers and Comptrollers' access to the DMF is not inhibited during the initiation of the certification program and that all parties have an opportunity to obtain certification prior to losing access to the DMF. The Department of Commerce should also ensure that stakeholders, both in the industry and in the beneficiary communities, have an opportunity to provide input on any rulemakings regarding either the certification program or the access restrictions themselves.

Earlier this year, I released a report that outlined the damage to our economy caused by sequestration and proposed an alternative plan that would produce the $1.2 trillion savings called for in the Budget Control Act without imposing the mindless, across-the-board sequestration cuts.

I strongly believe we can work together on a bipartisan effort to replace these misguided cuts of sequestration with a balanced deficit reduction plan that includes a more progressive tax code, targeted cuts to defense spending and nuclear weapons, an end to unnecessary oil subsidies, and the expansion of innovative programs in Medicare that improve the quality of healthcare for beneficiaries.

At the same time, we must make smart investments now that will create jobs and continue our country's economic recovery. We can no longer afford to make irresponsible across-the-board cuts that hurt middle class families and hurt our still-fragile economy.

Our national strategy for job growth must continue to emphasize the areas in which Massachusetts excels: an emphasis on education; investment in our high-tech, medical, and clean energy industries; and strong support for the teachers, firefighters, and police that form the backbone of our communities. This approach has resulted in the Bay State consistently having an unemployment rate that is significantly lower than the rest of the Nation.

I want to work in a bipartisan effort to fix our fiscal problems and I believe working together we can reach a bipartisan agreement to fix sequestration and maintain our fiscal discipline.

I thank the Senator for her leadership. She and I have met with people all across the State of Massachusetts who are fearful of the impact that this can have upon their ability to live in their own homes, to sell their homes, to continue to operate their businesses, to sell their businesses.

This is a fundamental issue for our State. Senator Warren and I bring this concern to the floor even as we know that it is a concern that is felt all across the country. It is Louisiana. It is New Jersey. It is South Carolina. It is West Virginia. It is the coastlines of our country. Yes, it is.

The warmer the climate becomes, the warmer the oceans become; the warmer the oceans, the higher the tides; the more devastating the storms, the more changes that take place in terms of the impact on the homes, the businesses, all along the coastline.

But climate change does not only affect the coastal areas. It is affecting our whole country--the whole planet. There is a huge change which is taking place. That is why we are out here. We are out here because of climate change. The storm that hit New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy, was devastating. We saw the courage of the people of New Jersey and New York in responding to that storm. But just with a couple of changes in the direction of that storm, it could have wiped out everywhere from Cape Cod up to Newburyport, Maine, and New Hampshire.

But for a small change in that storm, it could have been down in Delaware, Virginia, wiping out that coastline. But for the grace of God go the States that we represent. The same thing is true all across the country.

We know that the pollution we pump into the sky heats the water and the air. It gives storms more power. We know this scientifically. With more powerful and more frequent storms, we realize that this tragedy is lapping right at the doors of every citizen. We have to do something to prevent it from becoming worse.

But at the same time, we also have to realize that these families are innocent victims. They did not have anything to do with the policies that did not deal with climate change for a generation, that ignored the science. They are now dealing with the consequences of a failure to deal with that issue. We cannot allow the failure to act to be borne by those who are the least able to afford it.

That is what is happening. It is going to be innocent Americans who now have to suffer because we did not have the political will to deal with this issue of climate change.

I have heard, along with Senator Warren, from people all over my State. I have one business that relocated several years ago thinking that was going to satisfy the need to protect against climate change, against the change in the flood plain. Now, under the new plan, they will have to move the business again.

It is unsustainable long term for any businesses, any family to think about living in these kinds of areas unless we begin to think through how we are going to adjust to this law that is on the books which will have an almost immediate impact upon families all over our country.

We need to fix the flood insurance provisions that would have devastating economic impacts on our coastal communities. That is why I am proud to support the legislation of the Senator from Louisiana, the Senator from Georgia, Senator Isakson, Senator Menendez, Senator Merkley, and everyone who has worked on this issue.

We have to ensure that we address the issue of affordability for these homeowners, affordability for these businesses in terms of the increase of the flood insurance rate caused by the new flood maps and ensure that we put that before any crippling flood insurance rate increases.

We have to deal with affordability first. If affordability is not going to be dealt with, then there is going to be a devastation that is felt by millions of homeowners and businesses across this country.

Climate change is real. It is here. It is dangerous, but the fear of rising floodwaters should not be compounded by the fear of an unaffordable spike in insurance premiums for homeowners and businesses across this country.

I thank my colleagues for all their work on this issue. It is an indispensable part of the business of this Congress this year to pass this legislation. We must find a way to work together before we leave in order to pass this legislation.

I call upon all of my colleagues to work together with us. This is as bipartisan as it gets in the Senate. We have to find a way.

I congratulate the Senator from Louisiana for all of her great work.

I yield back.

Madam President, I thank Senator Schumer and Senator Nelson for their work on the extension of the Undetectable Firearms Act.

Plastic guns printed from 3D printers are one thing: dangerous. They have no place in our society. These 3D-printed guns can be used to dodge security checks the way Tom Brady dodges opposing defenses. Members of the law enforcement community, police men and women, the ATF, TSA, FBI, and Secret Service all support this legislation because it will make our communities safer. I share their concerns and the concerns of so many of my constituents in Massachusetts. I come here today to express my support for this bill because the safety of our children and communities must be our top priority. No parent, student, or traveler should be worried that a plastic 3D gun could be left undetected and find its way into an airplane, a train, or a classroom.

I am pleased we are passing this legislation today, but we must all remember that this is the bare minimum. Passing this legislation keeps plastic guns from becoming legal, but it does not crack down on the torrents of assault weapons filling our streets or ensure that all gun sales must include a background check. Neither does it close the loophole that allows a plastic gun with a single piece of removable metal to evade the ban.

Even after this bill passes, we must continue to fight for commonsense gun safety regulations. In 1994, I worked with my colleagues and now-Vice President Biden to enact tougher gun control laws that helped remove dangerous Chinese assault weapons from our streets. At the time, it seemed like an insurmountable task, but we got those weapons of war off our streets. Today we face a challenge that seems similarly insurmountable. So I hope that in the coming days and weeks the Senate and Congress acts in a bipartisan manner to curb the epidemic of gun violence in our country. I will work with any Member of this Chamber, on either side of the aisle, to enact comprehensive gun control legislation that will keep our neighborhoods, our communities, our cities, and our public safe. I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that we finally put tough gun safety laws on the books and get these dangerous weapons off our streets and out of our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Mr. President, the Gillibrand amendment would address an issue that is fundamental to who we are as Americans: ensuring justice for the men and women who serve in our military.

When brave young men and women enlist in the armed services, they do so to defend our country and our values. Yet those values are being undermined by the problem of sexual assault in the military.

Over the past decades, our military has expanded equality. I am proud that all of our services recognize that women have a vital role to play in the military, including in combat. I wholeheartedly endorse, after years of debate, the recognition that being openly gay or lesbian has no bearing on one's ability to serve.

These advances in equality in our military are vitally important-- they make our military stronger and all of us safer--but they are an empty promise without access to justice. And when men and women are the victims of sexual assault in the military, they are often deprived of justice.

We all know the shameful numbers. An estimated 26,000 cases of unwanted sexual contact and sexual assaults occurred in 2012--a 37 percent increase from 2011. But the statistics that trouble me most are that 50 percent of female victims did not report the crime because they believed that nothing would be done. And 62 percent of victims who did report a sexual assault perceived some form of professional, social, or administrative retaliation as a result.

And the tragedy is--they're right. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services spoke to this same problem and found: ``Unfortunately, recent events have shown these fears to be justified, and may also have communicated to perpetrators that they need not fear being held accountable for their actions.''

No wonder then, that the advisory committee voted in favor of removing the decision whether to prosecute sexual assaults and other serious crimes from the chain of command.

The United States was founded on twin ideals: equality and justice. And much of our history has involved the struggle to expand equal treatment under the law and access to justice. When we expand equality, we also provide access to justice.

I think of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it unlawful for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the law. Congress recognized that there is no equality without justice. I think back to the days when white male juries were the rule in virtually every courthouse in this country. Yet finally, the Supreme Court in Norris v. Alabama and Taylor v. Louisiana said that no one could be assured of a fair trial unless women and African Americans served on their juries.

Equality and Justice--they are two sides of the same coin. They walk hand in hand.

In the United States, one of the fundamental precepts of our criminal justice system is an independent prosecutor. The authority to charge someone with a crime is an awesome power. Exercised improperly, an innocent person can be forced to endure a trial or a criminal can go unpunished, free to harm their next victim. Under the Code of Military Justice, that critical prosecutorial decision is made by a commanding officer--someone often in both the victim's and the alleged perpetrator's chain of command--and, typically, not someone trained in the law. If----and statistically in sexual assault cases it is rare--if the commanding officer determines to try a charge by court-martial, the same commander also picks the jurors who will decide the case. I have no doubt that most commanders try their best to evaluate charges of sexual assault but they are inherently conflicted and compromised when we force them to make the call. We do these commanders a disservice by requiring them to solve this inexorable conflict.

As an impressive group of law professors, many of whom are veterans, and all of whom are experts in military justice wrote:

Commanders play a decisive role in military operations and

must likewise play a central role in reducing sexual assault

and maintaining good order and discipline generally. That

role, however, need not extend to the relatively narrow and

thoroughly legal arena of criminal prosecution. Contemporary

norms of procedural justice require that attorneys, not

commanding officers, make decisions to prosecute. As a

result, we recommend that the decision to prosecute a member

of the armed forces for criminal conduct . . . be made by an

independent prosecutor outside the chain of command.

And, they added, personnel who serve as court-martial jurors should be chosen by a court-martial administrator rather than a commander, ``to avoid concerns about jury-stacking and unlawful command influence.''

That is precisely what the Gillibrand amendment does. It vests the authority to prosecute serious criminal charges with experienced judge advocate general officers who can evaluate the evidence with a clear, cold eye and determine whether charges should be tried. That independence is the only way we can assure both the victim and the alleged perpetrator of justice--equal justice under the law. That's what this country is all about. That's why so many young men and women volunteer to serve. And we owe them nothing less.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.