Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am opposed to H.R. 3370 because it abandons the much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program, NFIP, that were instituted in the Biggert-Waters Reform Act of 2012. That bill set the NFIP on a course to quickly remove Federal subsidies from the program and make it actuarially sound. If these policies had been fully implemented, it would have allowed the development of a private insurance marketplace for flood insurance, which does not currently exist. H.R. 3370 prevents flood insurance policies from being written at an actuarially sound rate when homes are sold to a new buyer or when a flood insurance policy lapses. New purchasers of homes in areas that require flood insurance should not be subsidized for making that decision. H.R. 3370 puts in doubt the hope that NFIP's subsidies are eliminated.

Thank you, I yield the floor.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I spoke last night in anticipation of this all-night session that was going to take place. I was not surprised at the general topics that were covered. There are probably five all together that they were stated over and over. I would like to clarify a couple of things that probably are worthwhile this afternoon.

One is my good friend from California--this is a quote, we took it down--said:

When 97 to 98 percent of the scientists say something is

real, they do not have anything pressing them to say that

other than the truth. They do not have any other agenda. They

don't work for oil companies. And I will tell you, as

chairman of the environment committee, every time the

Republicans chose a so-called expert on climate, we have

tracked them down to special interest funding, those 3

percent. They know where their bread is buttered.

That is kind of an interesting and a timely statement to make because what they are not telling you--and I am talking about the Senator from California and the other Democrats--is that the hedge fund billionaire and climate activist Tom Steyer plans to spend $100 million through his NextGen PAC. The NextGen PAC is his political action committee. He has made the statement that he is going to be spending $100 million in the midterm elections of 2014 and is going to be looking very carefully to make sure that all of the Democrats go along with his activist agenda.

That was actually a statement that was made, that has been written up. It is all documented. I am going to submit for the Record at this point all of the newspaper articles, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and others that talk about this climate activist Tom Steyer, who is going to be spending $100 million in the next election.

What I would like to do is cover the points that were made. As I say, they were made over and over, different people saying them, the same talking points. I am sure Tom Steyer's people had the talking points well prepared and moveon.org and George Soros and Michael Moore and the Hollywood elites and that crowd all had their talking points to sound real good. I noticed that so many of them were reading those points and were not familiar with the issues.

But last night many of my colleagues pointed to weather as the reason for manmade climate change. Yet they failed to quote meteorologists in the speeches. Let me read just what the meteorologists are saying about climate change.

A recent study by George Mason University reported--that was over 400 TV meteorologists--they reported that 63 percent of the weathercasters believe that any global warming that occurs is the result of natural variations and not human activity. That is a significant 2-to-1 majority.

Another study by the American Meteorological Society last year found that of their members, nearly half did not believe in manmade global warming. Furthermore, the survey found that scientists who professed liberal political views were more likely to proclaim manmade climate change than the rest of their colleagues.

I think we can name names here. Certainly one of the more prominent names is Heidi Cullen. She was with the Weather Channel. She spent most of her time with a background of very liberal thinking, liberal agenda, talking about this until she is no longer there anymore. She is now with one of the groups, the very liberal groups.

This is a good one, a lifelong liberal Democrat. His name is Dr. Martin

Hertzberg. He is a retired Navy meteorologist with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry who also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. This is a quote from Dr. Martin Hertzberg:

As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the

constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-

trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to

science. The global warming alarmists don't even bother with

data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are

totally out of touch with reality and have already been

proven to be false.

CNN, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, had yet another of its meteorologists dissent from global warming fears. His name is Chad Myers, a meteorologist for 22 years and certified by the American Meteorological Society, spoke out against anthropogenic climate change on CNN in December of 2008.

He said, ``You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant.''

Since they are talking about the weather, here are a few facts that are not mentioned on drought and hurricanes. Several of the people came to the floor during the evening to talk about increase in drought, the increase in hurricanes and all of that. According to NOAA, hurricanes have been in decline in the United States since the beginning of records in the 19th century. The worst decade for major--category 3, 4, 5--hurricanes was in the 1940s. Severe drought in 1934 covered 80 percent of the country. The current one, the drought we went through a year and a half ago was 25 percent of the country.

Then they talked about, last night, the icecaps are melting and all of that. My colleague Senator Feinstein from California pointed to melting icecaps as proof of climate change. Yet reports on what is not melting show a different story. This past December a research expedition of climate scientists got stuck in deep ice in Antarctica. We all remember that. I remember talking about that and showing pictures on the floor when that took place. That was a bunch of people who were going up there to try to solidify their case on global warming. They were stuck in ice for weeks on end. It took a couple of weeks and a couple more icebreakers getting stuck before the research vessel was finally freed.

A paper published in the October Journal of Climate examines the trend of sea ice extent along the east Antarctic coast from 2000 to 2008 and finds a significant increase, average of 1.43. That is 1.5 percent a year of increase of ice in the Antarctic.

Greenland, the IPCC--now, keep in mind, I talked yesterday about the IPCC. That is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a minute, I will show how it was discredited. But in Greenland they said--they admitted that in 2001, to melt Greenland the ice sheet would require temperatures to rise by 5.5 degrees Celsius and remain for 1,000 years. The ice sheet is actually growing by 2 percent a year. That is what is going on right now on this very ice sheet. Everyone is concerned about Greenland. Yet it is actually growing, not decreasing.

In January 2010, Time magazine: Himalayan Melting: How a Climate Panel Got it Wrong: ``Glaciergate'' is a black eye for the IPCC and the climate-science community as a whole.

In December of 2008, Al Gore said--this is good. Al Gore said, ``The entire--

That is a little over 5 years ago. Gore said, ``The entire North polar icecap will disappear in 5 years.'' It is now 5 years and 1 month past the deadline, December of 2013, and the Arctic ice is actually doing pretty well. Last month, BBC reported that the Arctic icecap coverage is close to 50 percent more than in the corresponding period in 2012. So contrary to what Al Gore predicted, that it would be gone by now, it did not disappear.

I had a good quote there by Richard Lindzen talking about Gore. This is Richard Lindzen, one of the foremost authorities, scientific authorities on climate anywhere in the world. He is MIT. He has been quoted extensively. He said, talking about Gore:

To treat all changes as something to fear is bad enough. To

do it in order to exploit that fear is much worse.

I mentioned last night that the New York Times designated Al Gore as perhaps the first environmental billionaire in the United States. He said the entire North polar icecap would disappear in 5 years. It has actually increased substantially.

Last night they talked about the IPCC is the gold standard of climate science. Senator Whitehouse defended the credibility of the IPCC despite climategate, saying last night:

So after all that, after six published reviews whose

results confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the

science as a result of these emails--

We are talking about climategate now.

--for people to continue to come to the floor and suggest

that the email chains revealed some flaw in the data or some

flaw in the science, it's untrue. It's as simple as that.

It's just not true.

But we know this is not the case. The emails are very clear that the scientists were manipulating the data to generate a result they wanted. This is what some of the emails disclose: One of the scientists said, and the emails disclosed, that the IPCC was systematically distorting facts, cooking the science of global warming to either cover up data that did not tell the story they wanted everyone to hear and exaggerating the impacts of the changing climate to help drive people-- out of fear--into action.

Here are two examples. We have about 12 examples. I have read them all in the past on the floor of the Senate. But here are a couple of examples of how the IPCC was cooking the science. The IPCC claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Of course it is not true. Yet it was put into the IPCC's fourth assessment report.

The assessment report is a report the IPCC has that the media picks up and the public consumes. According to the Sunday Times, that is in the UK, this claim was based off of a brochure that was used by the World Wildlife Fund to promote global warming activism. They put it on a brochure after finding a paper from a little-known scientist in India.

That scientist was wrong. According to the Times, Himalayan glaciers are so thick and at such a high altitude that most glaciologists believe it would take several hundred years to melt them at the present rate. More alarming, from the East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit, the CRU, disturbing evidence was revealed that the climatologists had been increasingly cooking the books. One leaked email from 1999--keep in mind, these are the guys who are giving the science to the IPCC.

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding the real

temps to each series for the last 20 years, i.e., from 1981

onwards, and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

In other words, they were falsifying the increase in the temperature. What he is saying is that he changed the numbers to show the warming is happening when it has not happened.

Another e-mail that was revealed in 2009:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming

at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't. Our

observing system is inadequate.

Despite this, the IPCC has continued to say global warming is continuing to happen.

The media outcry from these email leaks was surprising because we did not hear as much about it in the United States as we did in the UK and other places. It seemed to be the mainstream press organizations that have been strong partners with the global warming activists, alarmists, that began to question their confidence in the whole premise.

Here are some quotes. Keep in mind these are from legitimate organizations, publications, major publications that are credible.

Christopher Booker of the UK, the Telegraph--one of the largest papers in the United Kingdom--said that what has happened with climate change is they are talking about falsifying the information to make the public believe this is actually happening. They said it is the ``worst scientific scandal of our generation.'' That is very serious, I say to the Presiding Officer, the ``worst scientific scandal of our generation.''

Clive Crook of the Financial Times stated: ``The closed mindedness of these supposed men of science . . . is surprising, even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'' That was from the Financial Times. We are all familiar with that publication.

A prominent IPCC physicist said: ``Climategate was a fraud on a scale I've never seen.''

U.N. scientist Dr. Philip Lloyd said: ``The result is NOT scientific.''

Newsweek magazine said: ``Once celebrated climate researchers feeling like the used-car salesman.''

``Some of the IPCC's most quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures.''

George Monbiot is a columnist for the Guardian. He was on the other side of this issue. He was upset because people were finding out the truth and said: ``It is no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging . . . I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them . . . I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.'' He is one of the strongest supporters of global warming.

Last night we heard more and more, and now we get to the rest of the story, and that would be what is most important. I say this is the most important because many years ago--this would have been about 2002, when almost everyone believed the world was coming to an end and it was global warming that was causing it--they all talked about how it must be true. Frankly, I thought it was true at that time until we did some checking to find out what would it cost to regulate greenhouse gases. I mean, even if it were a legitimate problem that was destroying this country, what would it cost?

The first reports we got were from Charles Rivers and from the Wharton School. Some of their economists came up with it. The range is between $300 to $400 billion a year. This is based off of a regulatory threshold of 25,000 tons. This is very tough.

I have a good friend, Senator Ed Markey, who was in the House with me for quite some time. We disagree on this issue, but the last bill that came up, the last legislation to force us to have a type of cap-and- trade, was based on capping these people who emit 25,000 tons or more. That is based off of the regulatory threshold of 25,000 tons. Only the largest facilities, such as oil refineries and powerplants, would have been affected. But doing by regulation what they cannot do by legislation, they have to do it under the Clean Air Act.

This is kind of under the weeds, but it is very important. I thought the bill was too costly for the American people. It would regulate those who emitted 25,000 tons or more, but the Clean Air Act would regulate those at 250 tons or more. That is every church, every school, every small shop would be covered, apartment buildings in America.

So when you stop and think about it, we have never been able to calculate. No one disagrees with the fact that if we did it through regulation, it would cost between $300 to $400 billion a year. For those people who are listening right now, $300 to $400 billion a year may not mean too much. But every year I calculate, in my State of Oklahoma, how many people, families we have who file a federal tax return. Then I do the math. That would have meant $3,000 to each family in the State of Oklahoma. So it is a big deal. That is what it would cost them.

While they are extremely costly, the agency is busy doing other things that also include other types of regulations. The ozone, for example, their regulation--and it hasn't gone through yet--all 77 of my counties in Oklahoma would be out of attainment. That would be 7,000 jobs lost in my State.

Utility MACT is something that has already been implemented. That is what put coal out of business--$100 billion in cost, 1.65 million jobs.

Boiler MACT is already implemented also. Every manufacturing company has a boiler, and so they would regulate those boilers. The cost of that is $63 billion, costing 800,000 jobs that were lost. That is already implemented.

The BLM fracking regulations would be about $100,000 per well. On fracking, I can remember when hydraulic fracturing was something not many people knew much about. I did because the first hydraulic fracturing took place in my State of Oklahoma. It was 1948.

I remember when the last Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, made the statement when I asked her the question live on TV--I said: Is it causing groundwater contamination? She is the one who said there has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination by using hydraulic fracturing.

President Obama, in his effort and his war on fossil fuels, is trying to stop them. We have heard him say several times: Well, we have good, cheap, abundant, plentiful natural gas to take care of our energy needs in America. That part was true, but then the next thing he said was: We have to stop hydraulic fracturing. Without hydraulic fracturing, we can't get 1 cubic foot of gas.

What I have tried to do is let the public know the cumulative impact of all of these regulations. A lot of people think of regulations as only affecting large corporations. If someone talks to Tom Buchanan of the State of Oklahoma--he was recently elected president of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau. If we ask him what the most critical thing is for the farmers in the State of Oklahoma, he will say the overregulation by the EPA. He said: Overregulation by the EPA is much more significant to the ag community in Oklahoma and across the country than anything in the farm bill.

So the cumulative impact of all of these regulations so far is about $630 billion annually and about 9 million jobs lost.

I would only say that last night they had a good time talking about these things, and the same story was told over and over using a slightly different slant on it.

But in terms of the cost, this is the reason that they have tried ever since the Kyoto Convention. The first bill was introduced in 2002 and several of them since then. They were never able to pass a bill through the House and the Senate on regulating greenhouse gases because cap and trade is so costly.

But what people have to realize--I know right now as I speak that there are a lot of people out there who really believe global warming is happening, really believe the world is going to come to an end, really believe we are going to have to do something about it, and so we start in the United States. So knowing that these people are out there--and there are even people in my State of Oklahoma who have bought into this--when Lisa Jackson, who at that time--she is not there anymore. She was Obama's pick and was the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. I asked her the question on the record, live on TV in one of our committee hearings--I said: Let's assume that we pass legislation and that we impose the cost of $300 to $400 billion on the American taxpayer. If that is the case and if they did that, would that have the effect of reducing greenhouse gases worldwide? Her answer: No, it wouldn't, because the problem isn't in the United States; the problem is in China and India and Mexico and other places.

Now, you could carry out that argument even further and say that those people who want to do away with emissions and have cap and trade in the United States--that could cause it to have actually more, not less, emissions of CO2 because we would be chasing our manufacturing base to countries that didn't have any requirements. So if you really believe it, then still it isn't true.

I would end with one more quote. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, whom we talked about 1 minute ago, was asked this question: Why is it that so many of the bureaucrats, the very liberals who want government to be controlled from Washington, want our lives to be controlled from Washington, why is it that they are so concerned with carbon regulations? Richard Lindzen's answer was this: ``Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life.''

It is unfortunate. There are a lot of people even in this body who believe we should have much more power in the Senate. I can assure you that the problems we are facing now are problems because of too much power being concentrated in Washington, DC.

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

If the Senator needs more time, I will not object.

Mr. President, all night long? Well, that is going to be fun.

By the way, the Oklahoma City Thunders are not playing tonight, so we may get a few more viewers.

It is nice to look over and see probably the most articulate and knowledgeable of all of the alarmists historically as our newest Senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey.

You can be good friends and still disagree. The Senator from Rhode Island certainly knows that because we had a little disagreement last week. The Senator from California certainly knows this as well.

We have been working on this for a long time. This started with the Kyoto Treaty. I think most people have forgotten about that. During the Clinton-Gore administration, Gore came back from Rio de Janeiro and said we are all going to die from global warming. I will say that he knows what he is doing. The New York Times speculated that Al Gore is very likely the first environmental billionaire in existence, so I guess he knows what he is doing there.

In spite of the fact of what has happened recently, I think it is probably necessary to have something all night, something to get the attention of the American people, because they keep saying--and I hear it over and over--climate change is real, global warming is real; it is real; it is real; it is real. If you say it enough times, then people are going to think it is real.

Tonight, all night long, you can say ``it is real, it is real, it is real,'' but I think people have heard that before and times have changed. A couple of things have happened, and I know a lot of you regret this.

I remember so well when Lisa Jackson was the Administrator of the

There are more impacts that are taking place. The greenhouse gas regulations for existing powerplants are expected to be released in June of 2014.

The other regulations that are out there--and I am not going to spend any time on this because there are too many. But on the greenhouse gas legislation--even though when it started, it was Charles Rivers and the Wharton School and MIT--they came out with the approximation of $300 to $400 billion a year; and that is every year. The greenhouse gas regulatory costs under the Clean Air Act are totally different. No one has even calculated this yet.

I would like to make sure we understand that under the bill my good friend Ed Markey and Waxman put forth, it would regulate the emissions of those organizations that emit 25,000 tons or more. However, if you do it through the Clean Air Act, it would be 250 tons. So you are talking about instead of 25,000 tons--which might be only the very large organizations; refineries and that type of thing--under the Clean Air Act, which is what they are attempting to do today as we speak, it would be just 250 tons, which would be every school, every hospital, every shop, and many residences.

So the greenhouse gas regulatory costs--if it costs $300 to $400 billion to regulate organizations that emit 25,000 tons, how much would it be if they emitted 250 tons? It is something that has not even been calculated yet.

So we have all of these impacts of the regulations that take place. But the greatest of all would be, if you think about the cumulative impact study back--I have introduced legislation, along with several others. I know John Barrasso and several others have cosponsored legislation that would tell the public the cumulative effect of all these regulations.

For example, as to the ozone regulations: 77 Oklahoma counties would be out of attainment; 7 million jobs would be lost.

As to Utility MACT--that is something that did pass--a $100 billion cost--1.65 million jobs lost. It has already been implemented.

Boiler MACT--and every manufacturing company has a boiler; and ``MACT'' means ``maximum achievable control technology''--Boiler MACT is costing $63 billion, and 800,000 jobs have already been lost.

The BLM fracking regulations would be $100,000 per well--duplicative of effective State regulations, which have been doing very well now since 1948.

And there are greenhouse gas costs of $300 to $400 billion.

So I guess what I am saying here--and I know I am using up quite a bit of time, but it is important to look and see what has happened since the time they were all talking about global warming. Everybody was talking about it, and how they are going to have an all-night thing to try to revive it because the public has gone in the other direction.

George Mason University had a study where they actually interviewed several hundred of the TV meteorological people. Mr. President, 63 percent of them said that if global warming is taking place, it is from natural causes, not from global warming.

Polar bears. Everyone is concerned about polar bears. I know my good friend from California gave me a polar bear. It is my favorite coffee cup and I use it all the time. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the number of polar bears that were wandering around out there was between 5,000 and 10,000. Today, it is between 15,000 and 25,000.

The threats. A lot of times when people cannot win an argument, then they threaten. NASA's James Hansen said this is ``high crimes against humanity.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., called me a ``call girl,'' a ``prostitute.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., also said: ``This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.'' In other words, we need to start killing people.

In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for skeptics. September 29, 2007: Virginia State climatologist skeptical of global warming loses his job after a clash with the Governor. ``I was told that I could not speak in public.''

Barone: Warmists have a ``desire to kill heretics.''

The Weather Channel--Heidi Cullen, by the way, is a meteorologist on the Weather Channel. She is off with an environmental group right now, so she is not around anymore.

Polling--where the American people are going; I think it is important to understand--this is a Gallup poll that is a current one right now. According to a Gallup poll, climate change is the least important environmental issue among the voters.

In March of 2010, the same Gallup poll: Americans rank global warming dead last, 8 out of 8 environmental issues.

In March 2010, Rasmussen: 72 percent of American voters do not believe global warming is a ``very serious problem.''

The global warmist Robert Socolow laments:

We are losing the argument with the public, big time. . . .

I think the climate change activists, myself included, have

lost the American Middle.

So there are definitely some things going on here that are not in their favor.

I would like to mention this, though. I think a lot of people have talked about the various scientists. On my Web site you can look up several thousand--this is a long time ago--I think we passed through 1,000 qualified scientists way back in 2006, and it has gone up since that time to many, many, so it is something where there are a lot of scientists. One of my favorite scientists is one because he is a Nobel prize-winning Stanford University physicist. He said:

Please remain calm. The earth will heal itself--climate is

beyond our power to control. The earth doesn't care about

governments and legislation. Climate change is a matter of

geologic time . . . something the earth does on its own

without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.

Richard Lindzen of MIT was a former U.N. IPCC receiver. He said: If the government wants carbon control, that is the answer the NAS will provide. He is the one who also said: The ultimate controlling factor is once you control CO2, you control people.

The Harvard Smithsonian Study. The study examined the results of more than 240 peer-reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. The study covers a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion that climate change is not real and that the science is not accurate.

Dr. Fred Seitz--he is the former president of the National Academy of Sciences--said: ``There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.''

So we have a lot of scientists on both sides of this issue. I think the American people have woken up. I use something quite often because it is a little bit comical--and this is just kind of from memory, but this is something that actually did happen. Mr. President, 1895 was the first time we had, in recent history--we have had cold spells before, and we had the medieval warm period and all of that stuff; that was a long time ago--but in 1895--starting with current, more modern history--they had a cold spell that came in. That is where, I say to my friend from New Hampshire, they first came up with a new ice age that was coming. That was in 1895. That lasted from 1895 to 1918. Then, in 1918, they came along with a warming period. That was the first time we heard the term ``global warming.'' That was in 1918, and that lasted until 1948.

And get this. These are about 30-year cycles. That lasted until about 1945. In 1945, all of a sudden it changed from this warming period to a cooling period. That lasted until 1975. Then it changed to a warming period. Now, since 2000, it has leveled off, and we are going into another cycle. You can almost set your watch by these cycles.

Here is an interesting thing about that. In 1948, when it changed from a warming period to a cooling period, that coincided with the greatest single release of CO2 in history. That was right after World War II.

So these are the things that are happening. I know they are going to enjoy staying up all night. They will have an audience of themselves, and I hope they enjoy it.

But I have to say this in all sincerity. When you see something, and instead of going right along with the public and saying, it must be true because everybody is saying it--and everybody goes over and over again and talks about the climate is real and the science is real, and all that--well, that happens when it is not real, and that is what we have been going through.

Right now I know President Obama is going through all kinds of efforts to try to do through regulations what the elected people would not do in the House, as well as in the Senate. When people realize--and they will be reminded again, even though it has been a while--now, I think it might be clever that after several years now where people have been talking about global warming that now they are trying to revive it, and that is what you are going to hear all night long here tonight.

It is kind of interesting that this is happening at a time that we are going through this cold spell. It certainly has not been much fun in Oklahoma.

So I think the American people are not ready to pass the largest tax increase in the history of America, and we will have to wait and see.

With that, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for an observation, since the Senator mentioned my name?

The reason I did not use the word ``hoax'' is because then I might be guilty of advertising my book, and I certainly did not want to do that.

I agree with my good friend from Louisiana that this legislation, H.R. 3521, is critical to providing the best treatment for our country's veterans, and I believe that it is the government's duty to honor the promises made to our veterans. In Oklahoma, roughly 340,000 veterans call our State home, attend our churches, and contribute to our communities. On behalf of Oklahoma, we are humbled by the immeasurable dedication of each and every one of them.

Therefore, this legislation also authorizes funds for an improved Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Tulsa, OK. The current building lacks the space to care adequately for the large number of veterans that receive their medical treatment at the facility. Due to the size of the facility, services such as the Behavioral Health services are located several miles away. Lastly, the parking lot capacity is not acceptable. This bill will improve this clinic to include primary care, women's health, imaging, specialty care, physical therapy, audiology, optometry, mental health, prosthetics, dentistry, and a pharmacy.

With the passage of this bill, there will be funding to improve and expand our VA clinics in 19 States across the United States, including Louisiana and Oklahoma. The facilities would then be able to provide the services that were promised to our men and women that were willing to make the personal sacrifices necessary to serve in the defense of our country. Many of our veterans have paid the price with scars, some visible while yet many go unseen such as post- traumatic stress disorder--PTSD, depression, and traumatic brain injuries--TBI. I urge our colleagues to remember that it is our Nation's duty to care for them in return.

Madam President, when the majority leader said 1 minute ago that Congress cannot idly stand by and not do anything, I have to remind him that we have been doing so for quite some time. We have been working on the problem of sexual assault, and the reality is that Congress has been aggressive in instituting reforms to tackle sexual assault in the military since the fiscal year 2009 Defense Authorization Act. We have enacted 47 provisions, either directly addressing sexual assault or instituting reforms to the Uniform Code of Military Justice that will improve efforts to address allegations of misconduct.

These reforms have strengthened the protections and the care of the victims while preserving the rights of the accused. These historic reforms are vital to ensuring a sound, effective, and fair military justice system.

I look at the bill we are considering that will be coming up in a short while. The bill would modify the court-martial convening authority in a way that I believe creates very serious procedural problems.

In a January 28, 2014, letter to the Department, it cited--and I am going to cite some very technical problems:

Potentially irreconcilable and could result in long delays

from bringing some cases to trial and, if a conviction

ultimately results, could produce still more years of

appellant litigation, perhaps ultimately culminating in the

conviction's reversal.

To make matters even worse, the bill includes a requirement that the new military judge advocate billets required to perform these duties must be taken from existing billets. This is what we have been fighting and arguing about, the problems that we are having now in the overall military. No billet growth is authorized in this, so it will have to come from existing billets.

I received a personal letter from the Judge Advocate General of the Army, General Darpino.

He said:

The bill would not be cost neutral. According to initial

estimates, the Army would require an additional 50 judge

advocate colonels along with the increase of about 200 judge

advocates of other ranks and about 150 legal support staff.

That is a quote. She went on to say:

. . . this is happening at a time when the services are

attempting to reduce their personnel costs to accommodate

shrinking budgets. And that is just the impact in the Army.

On November 18, 2013, the Department of Defense provided an

assessment of the devastating impact of the Gillibrand bill.

The Defense office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation

estimate a total cost of over $113 million per year--

That is every year--

to implement her bill in the Army, Navy, Air Force and

Marines. Not only is her bill not executable in a cost-

neutral basis, it is not possible to grow the total inventory

of nearly 600 judge advocate officers and legal assistants

required by the bill within the 180 days of enactment. The

decision we make today will have significant consequences for

the future of our military. More specifically, the bill we

are debating this week threatens to tear apart what I

strongly believe is the fabric of our Armed Forces: the chain

of command.

I can't find people I can confide in and talk to personally, who have been in the military, who don't agree with this. I was in the Uniform Code of Military Justice when I was in the U.S. Army--not at the level of some of the Senators who have been there more recently, such as Senator Graham, for example, and at a higher level. I was an enlisted man. But I was a reporter, and a lot of times the reporters, the enlisted personnel, really know more about the situation than some of the bosses. I was firmly convinced that--granted, this was years ago-- you can't mess with the chain of command.

When you stop and think about what a commander has to do--he is required to take care of the physical and medical condition of our troops. He is required to oversee their training. He is required to have medical care if they are wounded, and he has to make the decision of sending our troops into combat. It is inconceivable to me, with all of these responsibilities, that he be taken out of this chain.

It is not just me. Others agree with this. I had conversation with Col. Ana Smythe of the Marine Corps. She said at a press conference:

What you don't understand if you're not in the military is

that the fabric and the essence of the military is built

around the chain of command. . . . If we dismantle or weaken

the chain of command, we are lost.

The CMSgt Barbara Taylor said about the Gillibrand bill:

It would be devastating to the United States military. . .

. A commander cannot be held responsible if he does not have

the authority to act.

So I think those of us who have had military experience and who have been involved in the military understand the serious problems that would come from the adoption of this bill. I strongly recommend we defeat the Gillibrand bill.

With that, I yield the floor.

I yield back.

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

Mr. President, it is my understanding Senator Bennet is going to be due here shortly. I should be done by that time and ask unanimous consent that I take about 15 minutes of Senator Cornyn's time.

Mr. President, January 2014 may go down on record as the coldest of the months in United States history. Between the freezing temperatures from last week's polar vortex storms, much of the Nation experienced record cold weather at least once or twice, and this has been going on now for the last 3 years. While we won't have official nationwide temperature data for January for a few more weeks, we do have preliminary figures. Throughout the entire month, over 2,387 daily cold temperature records were set around the country, and many of those were in my State of Oklahoma. At least 49 of these daily records occurred on January 6 and 7 when the first round of the polar vortex hit. In Tulsa yesterday it went down to 2 below zero. That was a recordbreaker--that had held since 1912. That was the last time it got that cold. The same day in Enid, OK, it got down to minus 3. In Bartlesville--and this may be wrong, but the figure showed it was actually minus 14, making it even colder than the South Pole, where it was only minus 11.

The cold weather is continuing into February. Many schools canceled classes today around the State of Oklahoma because of the cold weather. It snowed more than 2\1/2\ inches in Tulsa yesterday, 5.2 inches in Henryetta, just south of Tulsa.

There was an article in the Daily Oklahoman. They have a great zoo over there, but they reported that the grizzly bears refused to go outside their habitat yesterday because it was too cold.

I know many in the media cry foul when I talk about global warming when it gets cold outside, but is this really any different from the President talking about global warming on a hot day in June of last year when he announced his climate action plan? No one seemed to mind that, but there seems to be a different set of rules when we talk about how cold it has been, which it has been for the last 3 years.

When we experience extreme cold like we have had the last few weeks, everyone in their right mind takes a step back and wonders if global warming is really happening. When you look at the facts, you just have to wonder. Consider this quote from the journal Nature, which stated that over the last 15 years, ``the observed [temperature] trend is . . . not significantly different from zero [and] suggests a temporary `hiatus' in global warming.''

This is something that has been a pattern for a long period of time. I can recall--and I am going from memory now--from the time they started keeping these temperatures, we started the first cold spell of recent history in 1895, and that lasted until 1918; 1918 turned into another warming area that went to 1945; and 1945 to 1975 was again another cooling spell and, of course, from 1975 to 2000. So we know what has been happening.

The President has not acknowledged this fact. In fact, on multiple occasions he has said--and this is something he has said over and over--``the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago.'' Unfortunately for his talking points, the data that has been reported in Nature magazine, the Economist, and even in the United Nations IPCC report shows that is just simply not true.

Two weeks ago, in a hearing we had in the Environment and Public Works Committee, my friend Senator Sessions pressed EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy on this point, asking her whether the President's statement was true. Ultimately, after running around the question for a few minutes, she said, ``I can't answer that.'' You may not think this is an important fact, but it is. The President's entire climate action plan and efforts to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are built fully on the fact that global warming is happening and that we are all going to die if we don't do something about it.

What we all need to be aware of is that the impact of the President's climate action plan, when implemented, will be stunning. It will completely adopt global warming policies and the implementation of regulations like cap and trade. The President has already done a stunning amount of this work already. We have been able to uncover that in the first 4 years he was in office, he actually spent--and people are not aware of this--$110 billion of taxpayer money on global warming-related activities.

The cap-and-trade legislation we have debated over the last 10 years carries a price tag of $300 billion to $400 billion a year. It would have been the largest tax increase in American history. It was soundly defeated--a bill in the Senate--but through the climate action plan the President is now trying to accomplish by regulation what he couldn't achieve through legislation.

We have heard the term ``the imperial President'' being used recently.

Well, listen to what was stated in the State of the Union Message, and these are the words he used: ``We are going to set new standards on carbon pollution from power plants.'' What he is saying is this: We couldn't pass it for 12 years with four bills to do that. We can't get more than 25 percent of the Members to vote for it, so we are going to do it through regulation.

The first round of greenhouse gas regulations was proposed in the first week in January. These regulations, if finalized, would impose strict regulations on new powerplants that would make it impossible to build a coal-fired powerplant. You may wonder: Do we really need coal anymore with all the new energy we have coming onto the market, with the natural gas and the shale deposits and all that? The answer is yes.

Before I go into that discussion, I think it is important to point out a problem with the timing of the new rules proposal. I had a chart here--I don't have it with me right now--that showed that when I was ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee--and this would have been way back in October 2012--we released a report highlighting the administration's actions to delay the finalization of costly environmental regulations until after the 2012 Presidential elections. Whether it was the farm dust rule or the ozone standard, the President punted regulation after regulation until after the election to minimize the influence it would have on voters. It appears that is exactly what is happening today with the first round of greenhouse gas regulations for the construction of new powerplants.

As we know, under the Clean Air Act new rules for powerplants must be finalized within 1 year of the proposal's publication in the Federal Register--that is what kicks it off, when it is written in the Federal Register--or the proposed rule is invalidated. This is important because after announcing his climate action plan, the President ordered the EPA to ``issue a new proposal by no later than September 20, 2013.'' The EPA proposed a new rule on September 20, but it did not publish in the Federal Register until January 8, 2014--this past January. Had the EPA published this rule in the Register on the same day they proposed it on September 20, 2013, they would have been forced to finalize the rule by September 20, 2014, which would be 6 weeks before the 2014 elections.

This reveals an astounding double standard and is consistent with the remarks made at the State of the Union. On the one hand, the President says we don't have time to delay action on global warming. He says we must act before it is too late. But on the other hand, his actions show that it is OK to wait to finalize rules that will harm the economy until after the elections. Ultimately, this hypocrisy reveals that the administration is fully aware that the EPA's greenhouse gas regulations will put a drag on the economy, and now that we are starting to see strains of our electricity markets develop, the cost is becoming real to consumers.

Consider American Electric Power, one of the country's largest electric companies. They are the ones that actually supply the power for my State of Oklahoma. Last week, during the recent cold weather, they reported they were running 89 percent of the coal generation they scheduled to retire in 2015. But these coal-fired powerplants, which were critical to keeping homes all around the country warm during these cold temperatures, are going to be shut down because of President Obama's environmental regulations.

American Electric Power said: What it should make everyone think about is, what are we going to do when the generation is not available? We need to be thinking about reliability and resilience in extreme times, not just the status quo.

If this recent cold weather occurs again in a year or two from now, once these plants are shut down, there simply will not be enough electricity available to keep homes and businesses warm. If cold weather pushes electricity demand up to the point where remaining powerplants are overloaded--the ones that haven't been shut down by the President--it could result in massive blackouts, and when Americans need their electricity it won't be there. It would be as if we were living in the 1600s and everyone will be cold. Again, the annual cost of this would be in excess of $300 billion to $400 billion that would be a hit on the GDP. And this does not even begin to measure the suffering we would have to experience.

The President, as he has done with ObamaCare, may just say that these plants can stay open, that he won't enforce these new rules he is creating, but I don't think that is realistic. American Electric Power's warning comes in the wake of regulations the President has already finalized. The new ones that are being developed will make things even worse by making coal-fired powerplants impossible to build or keep open. What has been a steady source of cheap electricity will be gone in just a few short years.

I have long said the Clean Air Act was never intended to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; it was written only to include the most egregious, harmful air pollutants, not carbon dioxide and other harmless greenhouse gases.

Surprisingly, even some Democrats are starting to publicly agree with me. Last week, at an Energy and Commerce Committee meeting over in the House, Congressman John Dingell from Michigan, a staunch Democrat, said, ``Like most members of this committee, I think the Supreme Court came up with a very much erroneous decision on whether the Clean Air Act covers greenhouse gases. Like many members of this committee, I was present when we wrote that legislation, and we thought it was clear enough that we didn't clarify it, thinking that even the Supreme Court was not stupid enough to make that finding.''

That is a direct quote from John Dingell. So I wish the Supreme Court would have sided with Congressman Dingell.

As things now stand, the EPA is poised to put the Nation out of business with greenhouse gas regulations that would cost the entire economy some $300 billion to $400 billion.

Every year I always calculate the number of people in my State of Oklahoma who file Federal income taxes. This $300 billion to $400 billion cost would mean about $3,000 per family of those who file Federal income tax returns. So it is a huge amount, and it would be the largest tax increase in history. Out of this concern, I am introducing a commonsense bill today, the Electricity Reliability and Affordability Act, which will allow States to keep their powerplants open if they believe it is necessary to maintain electricity, reliability, and affordability. In other words, the States can opt out.

American Electric Power's announcement should cause all of us great concern, but the EPA is not listening. States have long protected and conserved their environments with great success, and State governments are in a much better position to determine which powerplants should and should not remain open, despite the regulations.

I know my friend from Colorado is waiting to take the floor, so the last thing I will say is that in the State of the Union Message, the President made the statement that he is going to go ahead and do this, regardless of the fact that we have killed this legislation four times over the last 12 years. And at that time, I was talking about $300 billion to $400 billion as the cost, but that would have been the cost if this had been legislation. Specifically, talking about legislation such as the Lieberman-Warner act and several of the others, that would regulate sources with at least 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions. However, if you do it by regulation and not legislation, that would have to be under the Clean Air Act, which would regulate systems of 250 tons of CO2 a year. So while the legislation would have regulated the CO2 emissions for powerplants, refineries, and major factories, if the President is able to do it through regulations, that would cover every school, every church, and every apartment house in the Nation. So it is very significant.

I know that right now we are on the farm bill, but we have to remind people that this is something that has been just announced that they are going to be doing.

I remember when Lisa Jackson was the Director of the EPA. She was appointed by President Obama. I asked her the question: If we are to regulate this and one of these bills would pass,

which means we would be regulating CO2 emissions, would this have the effect of reducing CO2 worldwide?

She said: No, because that would only apply to the United States of America.

That is not where the problem is. The problem is in China, India, in Mexico, and other places.

So I remind my fellow Members this is something very serious and worthy of consideration at this time.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for such time as I may consume in morning business.

Mr. President, it is a little bit humorous to me that we are talking about extending unemployment benefits in the midst of one of the most intense cold fronts in American history. I saw one newscaster yesterday who said: If you are under 40, you have not seen this stuff before. It has to make everyone question--and I am going to tie this together--whether global warming was ever real.

While I know the leftwing media is giving me a hard time for talking about my opposition to the administration's global warming policies when it gets cold outside, I think it is important to point out two things. No. 1, the administration is intentionally ignoring the most recent science around global warming, and No. 2, global warming policies costing between $300 billion and $400 billion a year, along with the rest of the EPA's environmental regulations, are resulting in millions of job losses.

We are talking about extending unemployment benefits, yet it is really jobs we need, and the jobs are being robbed from us by the overregulation that is taking place in the Environmental Protection Agency, and of course, the crown jewel of all of those is cap and trade. When I say $300 billion to $400 billion a year, that would constitute the largest tax increase in American history.

I find that sometimes when we are talking about these large numbers-- and I am sure the Presiding Officer agrees with this--it is hard to relate that to everyday people, to our own States, and to how it affects our families. So at the end of each year I get the total number of families in my State of Oklahoma who filed a Federal tax return and I do the math. In this case, it would cost about $3,000 for each family in my State of Oklahoma to pay this tax, this cap-and-trade tax that supposedly will stop us from having global warming.

It is interesting that people now realize this would not stop it. Even if we did something in the United States, it wouldn't affect overall emissions of CO2, and that is what we are talking about. That is what makes global warming so important to mention as we debate the extension of unemployment benefits.

If we want to improve our employment figures, what we need to do is stop the onslaught of environmental regulations that have come out during this Obama Presidency.

First, let's talk about the global warming issue. It is interesting that we have often seen global warming related to events affected by unseasonable or unusually cold weather. Often, this has occurred whenever Al Gore has been involved in an event. Let me give a couple of examples. In January of 2004, Al Gore held a global warming rally in New York City. It turned out to be what would go down as one of the coldest days in the history of New York City. Three years later, in October of 2007, Al Gore gave a big global warming speech at Harvard University, and it coincided with temperatures that nearly broke Boston's 125-year-old temperature record.

In March of 2009, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was snowed out of a global warming rally in Washington,

DC. Because of all the snow, her plane wasn't able to land and they had to cancel her appearance at the event.

A year later, in March of 2010, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had to cancel a hearing entitled ``Global Warming Impacts in the United States'' due to a major snowstorm. At that time, I was the ranking member of that committee, and they were all geared up, ready to have this big hearing, and they couldn't do it because of a major snowstorm. That was in 2010. So this has been going on now every year going back to 2010.

Just last year, in July of 2013, a cruise liner that was chartered to discuss the impact of global warming planned to sail through the Northwest Passage of the Arctic but got stuck because the passage was full of ice. Now, more on that in a minute. In that same month, Al Gore had an event in Chicago training people about global warming but was greeted with the coldest temperatures in 30 years.

A lot of folks, even in the last day, have said that just because there are cold temperatures does not mean global warming has stopped. Most alarmists will, however, correct you that it's no longer global warming, but instead, climate change. Increases in temperature still matter. In a November 2013 Executive order, the President implemented new climate change policies--very expensive ones; large tax increases-- stating that ``excessively high temperatures'' are ``already'' harming natural resources, economies, and public health nationwide. In other words, he's implementing his climate change policies because of rising temperatures, otherwise known as global warming.

So temperatures falling and really cold days do matter. It does matter when the ice caps are growing and temperature increases pause for 15 years. And that is what has happened for the last 15 years. If global warming is not happening, then there is no need for the ensuing policies--whether you call it global warming or anything else.

Monday was a cold day. At one point, the temperature average in the country was 12.8 degrees. In Chicago, it was 16 degrees below zero. That broke the record that was set way back in 1884, when it was 14 degrees below zero. This made Chicago colder than even the South Pole at the same moment, where it was only 11 degrees below zero.

Just this week, down at the South Pole, a number of ships were stuck in the ice, even though it is in the middle of the summer down there. This was all over the news, and for good reason.

On November 27, a research expedition to gauge the effect of global warming on Antarctica began.

On December 24, a Russian ship carrying climate scientists, journalists, tourists, and crew members for the expedition became trapped in deep ice up to 10 feet thick.

An Australian icebreaker was sent to rescue the ship, but on December 30 efforts were suspended due to bad weather.

On January 2, a Chinese icebreaker, the Xue Long, sent out a helicopter that airlifted 52 passengers from the Russian ship to safety on the Australian icebreaker.

The Chinese vessel is now also stuck in the ice along with the Russian vessel. Twenty-two Russian crew members are still on board the Russian ship, and an unreported number of crew members remain on the Chinese ship.

On January 5, the Coast Guard--that is us; we came to the rescue-- called to assist the ships that are stuck in the Antarctic. Our icebreaker ship is called the Polar Star.

Just a few months ago the journal Nature--that is a well-respected publication on environmental science--they published an article that said over the last 15 years ``the observed [temperature] trend is . . . not significantly different from zero [and] suggests a temporary `hiatus' in global warming.'' This is not something that is appreciated by the Obama administration. What they are saying is--and this was the Journal--that it had stopped. In fact, I along with some of my colleagues, have asked the President for the data backing up his claims that warming is actually happening faster now than previously expected. Considering the most recent data, those statements have not been true. No models predicted there would be a fifteen year pause in global warming, but the President hasn't yet fully responded to our inquiry. Let's go back. When you look back in history, and you look at these cycles, you have to come to the conclusion that God is still up there.

I have this from memory, and I think I will get this right. From 1895--they had a cold spell that came in, and that is when they said another ice age is coming. That lasted until 1918. In 1918, that all changed, and all of a sudden it started getting warmer, and that is when the term ``global warming'' first came out. So from 1918 to 1945 it was a warming period that we went through. Then, in 1945, it changed and another ice age was coming that everyone was concerned about. That lasted from 1945 to 1975.

Then, in 1975--and this is interesting because in 1975 we got into this time period we are talking about now; and that is, they were saying that global warming is coming upon us.

Well, what is happening now--and these people have an awful lot of their time and resources and reputation at stake here--it is now to the point where that has reversed and we are going into another one of these cycles.

The interesting thing about 1945 is that 1945 was the year where the greatest surge in CO2 emissions happened. It was during that year. That was right after World War II. That precipitated not a warming period but a cooling period.

In December of 2008, Al Gore said:

The entire North Polarized cap will disappear in five

years.

The North Polar cap is the Arctic ice cap.

Well, we are now 5 years later when, as Al Gore said, it should all be melted by now. The deadline was December of 2013, Arctic ice is actually doing pretty well. Just last month, the BBC reported that the Arctic Ice Cap coverage is ``close to 50% more than in the corresponding period in 2012.'' In other words, in 1 year it increased by 50 percent. This is the very ice cap that Al Gore said would be gone by now. So contrary to what Al Gore predicted, the ice cap did not disappear last year; it grew.

In May of 2006, Al Gore said in his movie ``An Inconvenient Truth'' that the Antarctic Ice Cap melt could result in a 20-foot increase in sea levels.

You contrast that with the frozen global warming expedition down there this week and a September 2013 report in the Washington Post that Antarctic Sea Ice has hit a 35-year high this past year.

Now, these things--people do not seem to stop and think. These were predictions that were made. This is the same Al Gore where there was an article in the New York Times saying that arguably he is the world's first environmental billionaire, and all these things people were saying were gospel truth. Now we know they are not, but nobody talks about it. The media does not talk about it. When you put it all together, it is impossible not to sit back and wonder: If there is this evidence that the temperatures are actually getting colder, should we really pursue cap and trade and other similar regulations and policies that will cost the economy $300 billion to $400 billion a year to implement? In light of our high unemployment levels--and that is what we are talking about today; we are talking about extending unemployment insurance--I do not think so. That is what we are here talking about anyway: unemployment numbers.

To help remedy the problem, I am submitting two amendments. The first one I want to talk about is amendment No. 2615.

The EPA has systematically distorted the true impact of its regulations on job creation by using incomplete analyses to assess the effects of its rules on employment. They have even published that many of their regulations will result in net job creation.

EPA's costly regulations, as any reasonable person knows, actually reduce business profitability and cause actual job losses. New mandates and requirements do not help the economy add jobs.

For example, the EPA estimated that its 2011 Utility MACT--that was passed. MACT means ``maximum achievable control technology.'' In other words, we come along in all of our great wisdom up here and we pass a law saying how much emissions can take place, and yet there is no technology that will accommodate that.

So the EPA estimated that its 2011 Utility MACT--that is the one that

passed; it was passed into law--rule would create 46,000 temporary construction jobs and 8,000 net new permanent jobs. By contrast, a private study conducted by NERA Economic Consulting that examined the ``whole-economy'' impact of the rule--and we are talking about the Utility MACT; that is what put coal out of business in a lot of the United States--the study estimated that the rule would have a negative impact on worker incomes equivalent to 180,000 to 215,000 lost jobs in 2015, and the negative worker impact would persist at the level of 50,000 to 85,000 such ``job-equivalents'' annually.

The EPA estimated its Cross State Air Pollution rule would create 700 jobs a year. By contrast, the same NERA study estimated the rule would eliminate 34,000 jobs from 2013 through 2037.

It lets you know that the EPA is controlled by the President, and they are there to fortify anything he says, even though we have studies to show just the opposite is true.

The EPA also estimated its Industrial Boiler MACT rule--every manufacturer has a boiler, so this affects all manufacturers--would create 2,200 jobs a year. By contrast, NERA, in their study, estimated the rule would eliminate 28,000 jobs each year from 2013 to 2037.

In addition to those examples, the National Association of Manufacturers did a study that determined the cumulative impact of EPA's regulations is $630 billion annually and totals about 9 million jobs lost. That did not even include the cap-and-trade regulations, which would cost another $300 billion to $400 billion per year.

The EPA has not yet fully studied or disclosed the impact of these rules, but we know it is going to be very expensive.

If we really want to do something about unemployment numbers in this Nation, we need to hit the brakes on EPA's regulations. Let's do not worry about extending the time of unemployment compensation, unemployment insurance; let's do something about the costly regulations.

I think everybody knows some of the disasters that are taking place in the country. They are aware of ObamaCare. They are aware of what he is doing to the military. They are aware of the excessive spending that has come from his budgets. But nobody talks about the regulations, which really exceed the cost of supporting greater national debt.

So my amendment does this by prohibiting the EPA from making any of its new regulations final until it complies with requirements under the Clean Air Act's section 321.

Section 321 was put into the Clean Air Act back in 1977, and it was supposed to require the Federal Government to state what the job impact would be as a result of the various regulations it pursued. How many times has the EPA conducted this study? Not once. So that amendment would help reduce the impact of EPA's rules on job loss.

My second amendment would actually help create jobs. It is really kind of unrelated, but since I am talking about two amendments that are very significant now and would help resolve our jobs problem to a great extent, I will talk about amendment No. 2605. It would help us take advantage of our vast domestic oil and gas resources.

We have seen huge increases in oil and gas development in recent years due to the advancements in precision drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and other technologies. These technologies have unlocked the shale revolution and, because of this, official government estimates now predict that we will become completely energy sufficient by 2035.

What they will not tell you is that this could happen a lot faster. Right now, 83 percent of Federal lands are currently off limits to oil and gas developers. There is not a good reason for this. It is just the administration preventing us from having more jobs and energy independence.

You have to keep in mind, we now and then hear people from the Obama administration saying: Well, wait a minute, during the last 4 years or 5 years, the production has increased by some 40 percent. But that is all on State property and on private land. On Federal land, it has actually decreased by about 15 percent because of the war against fossil fuels that has taken place out of the White House.

So the amendment I am offering would give these resources to the States to unlock and develop on their own. The assumption here is the States should be in a better position to know what they want to do with these regulations in their own State and any damage that might come to the environment--let them make that decision instead of the Federal Government doing it.

A recent report by the Institute for Energy Research estimated that if we completely developed these off-limits Federal resources, it would create 2\1/2\ million jobs and generate $14.4 trillion in economic activity. But it would also help us achieve energy independence by 2024, 11 years sooner than it would otherwise.

So if we want to create jobs, this is how we can do it. We should embrace our energy future and aggressively expand production. If we want fewer people to lose their jobs in the future, we should prevent the EPA's regulations from moving forward, at least until they fully study the impact the rules will have on job losses.

We have been trying to do this now for a long period of time, to determine what these costs are. When the American people find out, in terms of the dollars of cost and the jobs that are lost with excessive regulation, they will come and let their feeling be known, certainly at election time.

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

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

Madam President, I think we are going to have a lot of discussions on the floor concerning a number of things that happened in the last couple of weeks, not the least of which is what is going on in Antarctica right now, and the fact that some people had to be lifted out of there.

It is kind of interesting, and I don't want anyone to misunderstand me and think that I am reviving a lot of the previous interest concerning the issue of global warming for any reason other than the fact that right now, after it has been determined, without any doubt, that the House and Senate would never pass anything like cap and trade, the President is attempting to do through regulation what he could not do through legislation. What I am concerned about is the expense, and in a minute I will talk about the cost of these issues.

We have a real serious problem in this country. People are concerned about the spending and about what is happening with our military. They are concerned about a lot of issues, but the cost of the overregulation that has taken place in our society is overlooked quite often.

If you ask anyone associated with the farm bureau or anyone in the agricultural community what their major problem is, they will tell you it is the overregulation by the Environmental Protection Agency that is really making it difficult for them to survive. It is the same thing with manufacturers, producers, and others. When we look at the crown jewel of all regulations, it is cap and trade. Cap and trade would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of this country.

I think it is kind of interesting that what is happening right now up in the Antarctic is something that has been happening for quite a long period of time. While there has been a concerted effort of people who believe that global warming is taking place and that we are all going to die, and all of that, at the same time the evidence out there is almost laughable.

In January of 2004, when Al Gore held a global warming rally in New York City, I remember that it was one of the coldest days in New York City in its history. In March of 2007, a Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate climate bill was canceled due to a snowstorm. In April of 2007, global warming rallies were greeted by unseasonable snow, and as a result several of them were canceled. In October of 2007, Gore's global warming speech at Harvard University coincided with temperatures that nearly broke a 125-year temperature record. In October of 2007, the British House of Commons held a marathon debate on global warming during London's first October snowfall since 1932.

In December 2008, Al Gore spoke to an audience in Milan, Italy--by the way, I attended that meeting--about global warming, and outside it was snowing, which is a rare event for that area. Snow and freezing rain also struck Rome, Naples, Palermo, and Sicily.

A lot of people are not aware that among those who were responsible for the whole global warming movement was the United Nations. It was an effort--I will not go into it now unless it becomes appropriate and I have more time to talk about it. But the United Nations has one big party every year--usually in December--and it is what we call the global warming party. It is where all the countries come to attend, and they have all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink. It is the biggest party of the year.

I can remember going to one of these annual parties when there was someone from Benin, which is a Sub-Saharan African country. I went up to this person and said: You can't tell me you believe all this stuff. The whole idea was to have the 192 countries that go to this party every year believe global warming is taking place, and we are all going to have to stop doing things to try to preclude it from happening, and that would destroy our economies. His response was: Oh, no, but this is the biggest party of the year.

That took place, as I said, in Milan, Italy in 2008. I always remember that one because they had my picture on telephone poles saying ``Wanted.'' I saved several of those and brought them back to the United States so I could distribute it to the people who were enjoying it quite a bit. Anyway, the meeting in Milan was about global warming. Yet there were records set on snowfall and freezing rain.

In March of 2009, Nancy Pelosi--at that time she was the Speaker of the House--had a big global warming rally that was supposed to be the largest one that had ever taken place in this country, and it was snowed out.

In February of 2010, the Senate EPW, Environment and Public Works Committee--at that time I was the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee--had a hearing entitled ``The Global Warming Impacts, Including Public Health, in the United States,'' and it was canceled due to a major snowstorm. This goes on and on.

One thing that is not on the list, which should be on this list, is what happened in Copenhagen in 2009, and that was the annual party of the United Nations. I remember it so well because people were trying to go over there and say that the United States of America was going to pass cap and trade, and that we would encourage all of them to do it. I am going from memory now, but I am quite sure that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and John Kerry were all there. At that time, John Kerry was a Member of the Senate. All of them assured these people--these 191 countries--that we were going to pass cap and trade.

I went all the way over and all the way back to spend 3 hours on the ground--and I have to say it was probably the most enjoyable 3 hours I ever spent--to tell them that under no circumstance was the United States going to pass the largest tax increase in history based on trying to stop--something they were calling at that time--global warming. The 191 countries which attended that meeting had one thing in common, and that was that they all hated me.

Nonetheless, I was telling them the truth, and they tried to pass it again and again. There probably aren't 35 votes in the Senate right now that would vote for a cap-and-trade bill which would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of this country.

All of that had taken place over a long period of time, and now we are up to 2013 and 2014. In November, President Obama issued an executive order on climate change stating ``excessively high temperatures'' are ``already'' harming natural resources, economies, and public health nationwide.

I guess if you say something long enough, sooner or later people are going to believe it because they assume if the President says it, it must be true.

On January 6, AccuWeather issued a warning that a ``blast of arctic air will deliver some of the coldest weather in 20 years'' to the midsection of the United States.

Meteorologist Ryan Maue of Florida said about the historic cold outbreak: ``If you're under 40 [years old], you've not seen this stuff before.''

The National Weather Service reported that the temperature at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport hit 16 degrees below zero on January 6, breaking the negative 14-degree record in 1884. This makes Chicago colder than the South Pole where it was 11 degrees below zero. The average temperature in the United States on January 6 was 12.8 degrees.

I say all of this because this is kind of a predicate to what is happening

now. On November 27, the research expedition to gauge the effect of climate change on Antarctica began. This was in the news today.

On December 24, the day before Christmas, a Russian ship carrying climate scientists, journalists, tourists, and crew members for the expedition became trapped in deep ice up to 10-feet thick. An Australian icebreaker was sent to rescue the ship, but on December 30 efforts were suspended due to bad weather.

On January 2, a Chinese icebreaker--and here come the Chinese now-- called the Xue Long, sent a helicopter that airlifted 52 passengers from the Russian ship to safety to the Australian icebreaker. The Chinese vessel is now also stuck in ice along with the Russian vessel. There are 22 Russian crew members who are still on board the Russian ship, and an unreported number of crew members remain on the Chinese ship.

On January 5, the U.S. Coast Guard was called to assist the ships which were stuck in the Antarctic.

That is what is happening today. Let's go back and relive a little bit of history when I was under a lot of criticism because I was opposed to assertions by Al Gore which the New York Times said might arguably be the first environmental billionaire.

In December 2008, Gore said, ``The entire North Polarized cap will disappear in five years.'' It is 5 years later, and it hasn't disappeared yet. In fact, we have been reading about it.

On December 13, the BBC reported that the Arctic ice cap coverage is ``close to 50% more than in the corresponding period of 2012,'' which means it has increased by 50 percent over this period of time. That means it is increasing by 50 percent over this period of time. This is the same icecap Al Gore said was going to disappear 5 years ago.

President Obama, in May of this last year: ``The climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.''

To contrast with The Economist, they said: ``Over the past 15 years, air temperatures on the Earth's surface have been flat. . . . ''

Gina McCarthy, recently sworn in as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said: ``Extreme weather events are proof enough for me to show why action is necessary.''

We are talking about action on CO2.

According to preliminary reports, 2013 turned out to be one of the least extreme weather years on record, which is right after she made that statement. But the one I enjoyed so much was--I have a lot of respect for Gina's predecessor, Lisa Jackson. Lisa Jackson came in as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and I remember her very well because I asked her the question--keep in mind she was appointed by President Obama. Her job is to make people think global warming is taking place and all of these extreme things are going to happen. I asked her the question: In the event that we did the action-- at that time, there were two or three cap-and-trade bills offered in the House and in the Senate. So I said: Let's assume one of these bills passes. Would this reduce CO2 worldwide? Her reaction was: No, because this is just in the United States. This is not where the problem is.

So by their own admission, even if we were to sustain the economic disaster we would have to have in the event we passed one of these bills, it would not impact or reduce the levels of CO2.

The other recent study--15 year pause--from Nature magazine, said:

For this period, [1998-2012], the observed trend of

[temperatures] is . . . not significantly different from zero

[and] suggests a temporary `hiatus' in global warming.

This is a publication that was kind of leading the charge at one time.

So we see these things that are happening and we see that even though, time and time again, just the reverse is true, that we are going through this thing--I always have to go from memory when I go back. I remember the earlier years of this, some 12 years ago when they were looking at the Kyoto treaty. We remember the Kyoto treaty, I say to the Presiding Officer, which was an agreement we would sign on to-- an international treaty, the Kyoto treaty--and we would agree to reduce all the CO2 in this country and all of that. Of course, that didn't happen, but the cost was discussed at that time. I remember back when Republicans were in the majority, I chaired the committee called the Environment and Public Works Committee, and some 12 years ago, about the time of Kyoto, I believed it was true--everybody said global warming was coming and we were all going to die. So I assumed it was true until I started exploring a little bit and hearing quietly from some of the scientists who said: Look. The whole thing is rigged and the science is not the same as the United Nations would have us believe. So one by one they started coming forth. I stood at this podium for about a 3-year period and started naming all of the scientists who said the U.N. scientists, the IPCC, were not being honest and that they had their own agenda they were trying to support. At that time, a group of several universities--MIT was one of them, the Wharton School--a lot of their scientists said what the cost would be if we were to pass global warming legislation that had been proposed. It would be between $300 billion and $400 billion a year.

Now, $300 billion to $400 billion a year, yes, that would constitute the largest tax increase. I took this to my State of Oklahoma. I did my calculation as I always do. I get the number of people who file Federal tax returns and have them pay taxes and it would be about $3,000 a year per family. Yet, by their own admission, as Lisa Jackson said, it would not reduce overall temperatures, even if one believes that is a problem, which I don't.

Anyway, the cost--Charles River came along with a very similar cost-- $350 billion a year. So with all of those costs, we wanted to look at it and see if, in fact, the science was there, and we determined it was not.

If we look at the regulations at the EPA right now--the National Association of Manufacturers has a cumulative impact study, not including ozone or the greenhouse gases, of $630 billion annually and some 9 million jobs lost. As per the regulations for ozone, 77 counties would be out of attainment in my State of Oklahoma and 7 million jobs lost. That is all of our counties. That means we would have job losses in all of those. Utility MACT, that cost is $100 billion, and that has already been implemented. That affected all the coal States in a major way. The Boiler MACT cost would be $63 billion. I mentioned the BLM. The hydraulic fracking regulations would cost about $100,000 per well. That is an increase everyone else would have to pay in terms of producing right now. Greenhouse gas costs would be between $300 billion and $400 billion, as I mentioned before.

If we just take these regulations--the list is a lot longer than that, but this is a huge issue. This is the major problem we are having with the economy right now. Nobody seems to understand it. No one seems to care. I think that a time to bring this up as an issue is right now because of what is happening, what has been publicized recently, so it is our intention to continue to do that.

This has been a relentless 4\1/2\-, 5-year war the President has on fossil fuels. It is not just coal, but it is coal, oil, gas, and other fossil fuels. The sad part of this is we could be completely independent from all other countries--certainly from the Middle East-- from any other country in terms of supplying our own energy in this country. All we would have to do is do the same thing--allow drilling exploration on Federal public lands as we are doing throughout the country. Right now, we have had a 40-percent surge, increase, in exploration and in production in this country, and at the same time we have had a 40-percent increase overall. That is on State land and on private land. We have had a reduction on Federal land. So we have an exclusion to the problem there, and I think one of the things we can do to help people understand is to let them know that what they have been listening to--what the EPA has been telling our people, what our kids are learning in school on global warming--people are now realizing this is something that is not factual.

We are so inundated right now with problems. We have problems in Afghanistan. We have problems with our foreign policy in the Middle East. We are all concerned about the problems around the world. The area people

aren't talking about is the cost of overregulation in America that is doing probably as much damage as all the rest of the problems are doing at this time.

So I only wish to submit for the Record that some things are happening today that I think the American people need to look at. I think those statements made, which I will come to the floor and talk about later on, from 10 years ago are now becoming a reality.

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

Madam President, let me make a couple of comments here. Oddly enough, I agree with everything the Senator from Arizona said, and the Senator from Texas. It is true. The process was terrible.

I have been here--well, I guess between the House committee and this committee--for 22 years, and I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. But the effort was there to have a bill early on. I know, in working very closely with the chairman--and I have never had an opportunity to work that closely with someone in developing a bill, but we did--that it was his desire to have a bill, and it is still his desire to have a bill. The problem is we went through the option that everyone finds so offensive, and I find so offensive, and it has changed the Senate. The evidence of that is what happened in this bill.

We had people who wanted to have amendments. So what I did, I went on a Thursday--I recall that--to a Republican lunch, and I went there with 25 amendments and I said: Would you all agree to cut your amendment requests, which were over 100, down to 25? If I can take that and show it to the other side, I will see if that is acceptable. They agreed to that.

I want to repeat that. The Republicans agreed to actually 25 amendments. So I went to the other side and I could not get an agreement on the other side. So that effort was there.

As far as the amendments are concerned, the chairman has said several times that we considered these amendments. We did. To be specific, 79 amendments were put in this bill, of which over half were Republican amendments. So we tried our best to put everything in there, and it got down to the point of do we want a bill or do we not want a bill. So I want to emphasize this is not on the merits of the bill.

The bill is a good bill. My colleagues have heard us more than they want to hear us talk about what all is in this bill. It is a good bill. I think it might be better than the bill we passed out, and maybe even the House bill. But nonetheless, it is down to that or nothing. And it is for that reason I think we have to have the bill.

But I agree we have to keep talking about how bad the process was to make sure that it never happens again. We, as the minority, are entitled to have our amendments, the same as the other side, when they become a minority, are going to be entitled to have their amendments.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I will first acknowledge that at 11:15 tonight we are going to be voting on the National Defense Authorization Act. It is a must-pass bill, one which has passed prior to December 31 every year for the last 53 years. So it is very significant, and I think people are tired of hearing about it because they recognize the significance and the fact that it has to be done. So I am not going to say anything about that.

I originally came down to talk about the problems we are having in my State of Oklahoma. I have a long list of people from all throughout the State who have talked about their insurance being cancelled, the increase in the deductibles and the cost of insurance, and about the crisis we are facing in the State of Oklahoma with ObamaCare.

Madam President, I will mention one thing which has been overlooked in this debate and which I have mentioned once before but a lot of people have not recognized, and this has come from the leaders on the Democrat side, including the President of the United States; that is, the ultimate goal of ObamaCare would be a single-payer system. A single-payer system is socialized medicine.

It is kind of interesting. I remember when we had Hillary health care back in the early 1990s, and we asked the question, if it doesn't work in Denmark, it doesn't work in Sweden, it doesn't work in Canada, it doesn't work in the U.K., why would it work here? They never said it, but they were thinking: If I were running it, it would work here. So that is the ultimate goal.

I will share a personal experience, and then I will yield to the rest of the Members who wish to talk about their States.

I had a personal experience 2 months ago. I went in for a colonoscopy, just a routine thing. After checking me and going through, they said: I have good news and bad news.

I said: All right. What is it?

The good news is your colon is fine. The bad news is you are about to die because you have 100 percent obstruction in two valves, 90 percent in two arteries and 75 percent in the other arteries.

So I had as an emergency four bypasses at that moment.

I say that because if I had been in the U.K., at my age there would be a mandatory 6-month waiting period and I wouldn't be standing here today. If I had been in Canada, it is like 2 years. And I have heard our good friends, the doctors who are Members of the Senate, such as Senator Barrasso, talking about what is happening in these other countries.

A few minutes ago I was visiting with Jackie Davidson, who is scheduled for open heart surgery on Monday. I was talking about, quite frankly, how it was much easier than I thought it was going to be. And the same thing happened with my wife.

But the point is that if you are in these countries, at a certain age it doesn't work. You are denied the opportunity to have surgery. So that needs to be in the back of our minds as we talk about the current problems we are having with ObamaCare and what the ultimate goal is.

Lastly, I will say I have been contacted by two of my good friends who are members of Parliament in the U.K., and they asked me this question: Why is it you and your country are now trying to adopt something that we are trying to get away from over here in the U.K.?

So let's keep in mind there is one big overriding problem that, if we cave in now, we will be reaching.

With that, I yield to my colleagues who wish to speak.

Mr. President, first, I wish to say the same thing. It sounds as though it is all rehearsed, but it is not. It is actually a reality that I have always felt I could call and talk to the chairman about things we might not have in common--although I can only remember one issue where we were on opposite sides, but we have our reasons for being on opposite sides. Unless we work those out, then between John Bonsell and Peter, it is always a joy to be able to call and know I am reaching the top and we are going to be able to come up with a decision.

I talked to a lot of the Republicans who voted against this, and I want the chairman to be aware of this. I think almost all of them who voted against it voted that way for one reason; that is, the process. They wanted to have amendments. They are entitled to amendments. I think we said that over the last 10 years we have averaged 9 days of debate on this most significant bill each year. That is an average. We have had about 100 amendments on average. So that is something both the chairman and I agree should have happened, but it just didn't happen. We can't really blame one side more than the other.

Then, of course, when the nuclear option came, that got things pretty hostile here, and unfortunately what suffered was our bill.

I feel strongly that we have a good bill. In fact, a lot of people don't know how this process works when we cannot get a bill through the House and/or the Senate to make it a reality, and I had to go through this one year when I was on the House Armed Services Committee. Then they had the big four; that is, the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate and the chairman and the ranking member of the House, get together and put this together. That may not be the process--in fact, it is not the process we wanted--but the choice became, do we have a bill or do we not have a bill, and we have gotten down to that choice.

What I tried to do, and I failed--I am embarrassed to say I failed with many of our Republicans in explaining to them what would happen if we don't have a bill. I started writing what the chairman talked about that is in this bill, and I couldn't keep up. He was too fast. But I would like to mention a couple of things that I think perhaps were not mentioned.

Of course, we did cover Gitmo, and I look at it just a little bit differently than the chairman does. I like the restoration of the 1- year prohibition on the transferring of the detainees to the United States. That was a 12-month provision we had last time that we tried to get in, and we actually addressed this in our bill. But in this bill-- the substitute bill we just voted on--I think it is very important and something I feel very strongly about.

On the sexual assault, we had both Senators McCaskill and Gillibrand, and I recall both of them saying: Well, this isn't everything I wanted. But they both thought it sure was a lot better than not having a bill. So I think we have done a good job there.

I always pick out one area that shows how much this would cost. If we look at the CVN-78--75 percent finished right now, $12 billion spent on it now--and if we didn't have this bill, I am sure we would try to do something, but work would stop, and people would be laid off. It would have then cost a lot more to wind things up and get back into it. When I say ``a lot more,'' we are talking about millions of dollars more. So that is one of the great victories we have.

The one aspect so many of my constituents are concerned about that I think needs to be called to everyone's attention that is in this bill is the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. I remember back when we had the bill that didn't ultimately pass, but we had an all-night session, and at 5 o'clock in the morning I passed my amendment that would preclude us from getting involved in that treaty. This was after our Secretary of State had already signed this treaty. We had 53 votes. We had all the Republicans and six of the Democrats vote in favor of that. That didn't pass, but it is very important that we address that, not just to protect Second Amendment rights but also to protect our ability to help our allies without having to go through the United Nations. And we have that provision in here, which is very significant.

On the BRAC, BRAC is controversial. I was opposed to the last BRAC round. My feeling at that time was that we were getting the force structure down artificially low, and I didn't feel comfortable bringing down the infrastructure to meet that because I was hoping we would be able to--that is the same reason I would not want to have a BRAC round right now. We have never been in such a critical fiscal condition in supporting our military as we are today.

One thing that is certain about BRAC rounds is that we can debate about how much ultimately they will save, but everybody knows what it costs in the first 5 years, and these are the first 5 years that we really can't afford it, particularly the first year.

The last thing I would mention is something I felt more strongly about than I think most of the rest of them did, and that is how much we have spent on these drop-in fuels, the biofuels, and we have language here that would say we would not do it unless they are cost- competitive. That is a huge issue to me personally.

The last two I would like to mention--people say in my conference, a lot of them are saying: Well, what is going to happen on December 31 if we don't pass the bill? I have a long list of expirations here that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record. I will only mention three of them. One is on the aviation officer retention bonus.

I think we all know and most of us believe that we made a mistake in April when we shut down some of our squadrons and about a third of our fighter squadrons for a period of about 3 months. General Walsh presented a very persuasive case that it costs a lot more to get them back to current, as we started to do in July, than the money that was saved during the time they were down. I think we lost a lot of aviators at that time because they were grounded, they weren't flying, and they just decided they would go into the private sector.

If we take away the aviation officer retention bonus, that is going to accelerate the lost number of people who would otherwise stay in the military. That would have gone away on the 31st of December. I don't know how many of the aviators we would lose, but I do know this: It is a $25,000 bonus, and the difference between retraining and retaining is huge. We can retain them, if the bonus would influence them, for $25,000, but retraining, to get to the optimum--the first level being the F-22--is about $7.5 million, but there is another $9 million to get to the top proficiency. That means $17 million as opposed to $25,000. So I think we need to in the future always keep track of retraining and retaining.

The health care professional bonus would end on December 31. Why is that important? Because a lot of these people who are taking care of our wounded warriors--not just at the hospitals but also after they leave--have special pay to take care of our wounded warriors, those who have made the sacrifices, and that would have ended on December 31.

The reenlistment bonus for Active members would also end. I remember from my military days that when people were getting ready to leave, they looked at the bonus, and that is there to encourage them to stay. So it is not just aviators; it is the ground guys and gals too.

So we have done a lot. I really appreciate that opportunity.

The last thing I will say--and I will ask my staff to put up the picture--this is my appeal to the minority leader and the majority leader. We could play the game and extend this and be here until midnight, I guess, on Thursday night. It happens that tomorrow is my 54th wedding anniversary, and I would really like to ask both the majority and the minority if we couldn't yield back a little bit of time. We know we are going to have the votes for this. I would sure like help. Those 20 kids and grandkids are waiting for me for a big dinner on our 54th wedding anniversary tomorrow night. So have mercy, give us a break, and let's try to get this voted on and go home. And Merry Christmas to everybody.

I yield the floor.

Oh, you will make it.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire, the chair of the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, for her question. I am a strong supporter of energy performance contracts that provide maximum savings for the Federal Government. It is my understanding that the components of the Department of Defense have identified additional opportunities for energy conservation and energy demand management that could benefit from performance contracting, However, in order to maximize taxpayer savings, it is vital that DoD contract for those projects that provide the greatest return on investment as opposed to directing the use of certain mandated energy sources without an assessment of relative costs over the life cycle of the project. I join with the Senator from New Hampshire to strongly encourage the Secretary of Defense and the Secretaries of the military departments to increase the use and streamline the administration of energy savings performance and utility energy savings contracting vehicles that will incorporate the most efficient and effective energy systems in order to maximize the reduction of operational costs, to conserve energy resources, and to improve the efficiency of building systems. I hope my colleague will join with me as part of our oversight responsibilities for the committee that we ensure energy performance contracts carried out by the Department of Defense meet the intent of the President's executive order of December 2011 to maximize cost reductions for the Federal Government by promoting projects to offer the greatest return on investment.

Madam President, first of all, my good friend from South Carolina is a mind reader. He always looks at you and figures out what you are going to say and then he says it better.

There are a couple of things that haven't been said during this discussion, and I want to mention them, and then I know we are going to vote. One is that our military was told--and I talked to several of the groups, the military retiring groups and others--that they would be grandfathered in. Now, I want everyone grandfathered in if we are going to do something like this. Certainly, in one installation in my State of Oklahoma, we have 13,000 civilian employees who are going to be grandfathered in, and I want them to be grandfathered in. That is the right thing to do.

People make career decisions predicated on what they are told at the time. And these military guys--and I look around the room and most of the Senators who are in here have spent a lot of time, as I have, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we talk to these guys in the mess hall, and they talk about how they happened to get in. They make these decisions, and then we come along and take it away.

I think it has been said enough, the example of the gunnery sergeant at age 42, having been in for 20 years, and it is going to cost him some $72,000, but not much is said about the officers. For the officers, it is actually a lot more than that. An O-5 officer at that agency under the same circumstances would lose $124,000. These are not wealthy people; these are people who depend upon this for their retirement.

They were told, as I mentioned, that they also--the military people-- would be grandfathered in. Now, anytime one is grandfathered in, then obviously they change the rules and the new people making a career decision will make it predicated on those circumstances of retirement that are there at that time.

I have to say this: Tomorrow we are going to be involved in the bill that was put together by the big four. It is the NDAA. It is a must- pass bill. We will pass it. I can't imagine there won't be the votes to pass it. But I can tell my colleagues this: If we had known this was going to come up, we would have addressed this in the NDAA. This is something that could have been addressed and could have been offset.

So I agree with everyone who has spoken on this issue. I think it is very difficult to understand how this could happen. We do know this: One of the differences between civilian employees and military employees is that we can't recall civilian employees.

We have a figure here. Are my colleagues aware that we actually have, since September 11, 3,456 military retirees who have been recalled to duty? Every one of them is going to be affected by this. This is a travesty we cannot allow to happen.

I applaud my friend from Alabama for bringing this up, and hopefully we will be able to correct it. We are going to have a vote right now, and I hope this is a solution to it. Then tomorrow we will have a chance to get into the details about the NDAA bill, which is a very significant bill that addresses provisions such as this.

With that, I yield the floor.