Floor Statements

Mr. President, the most important words in our Constitution are the first three. We all know them: ``We the people,'' written in supersize font so we don't forget what our Constitution is all about--government, as Lincoln put it, of, by, and for the people, or, as Jefferson put it, government designed to produce laws that reflect the will of the people.

We don't see that now. We don't have a government of, by, and for the people. Instead, we have a system that has been profoundly corrupted. It has been corrupted by gerrymandering. It has been corrupted by voter suppression and intimidation. It has been corrupted by dark and dirty money that has flooded our campaigns and wiped out the voice of millions of Americans. That is where we are now in this corrupted state.

We have debates on the floor that are all about helping a small group of people within a circle of power and privilege rather than having bills that help the citizens of the United States of America. In fact, we have a President who just this week said his goal was to tear down healthcare for 30 million Americans, to wipe out the expansion of Medicaid, to wipe out the tax credits that assist so many Americans with being able to afford insurance, to wipe out the protection to be able to get healthcare if you have a preexisting condition, and to wipe out the ability of your children to be on your policy until the age of 26. That is government by and for this very little circle of privilege and power instead of the people of the United States of America. We saw it in other ways too.

In 2017, we saw a bill that reached into the Federal Treasury, took $1.5 trillion, and gave almost all of it to that small group of people inside that circle of privilege and power while it ignored the rest of the country. That is what happens in corrupt countries. The power elite reach in, take the Treasury for themselves, and ignore the will of the people.

Every Member of this body took a pledge to the Constitution of the United States--a Constitution not founded on we the powerful but on we the people. So I ask: Are we going to honor that oath? If we are going to honor it, it means we have to stand up and end this deep and vast corruption.

Yesterday, Senator Udall and I and all of my colleagues on this side of the aisle introduced a bill that is designed to take on gerrymandering, to take on voter suppression, and to take on dark money. Let's talk about gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court has never done a thing about it even though it is clearly all about having the powerful choose its voters rather than having the voters choose their Representatives. It is a complete shredding of the vision of the Constitution. The Supreme Court utterly failed to act. It has a case before it now, and it will have another opportunity, but don't hold your breath.

The time to address gerrymandering is before it is done. How do you do that? You do that with independent commissions. Independent commissions have been adopted in States like Iowa, and they have been widely received by the citizens as an issue of fairness. Yet, across so many States, we have congressional districts that are deliberately gerrymandered to favor the parties in power. It has happened in Democratic States, and it has happened in Republican States. You see it sometimes by the crazy configurations of the map. Sometimes you see it when a State that is essentially equally divided between the parties produces congressional Representatives heavily leaning to one side.

It is hard to remedy after the fact, but you can remedy before the fact by having independent commissions across this country. The way you take that on is you have a group of six individuals. They take two from the Democrats and two from the Republicans and two of whom are Independents, and they may select a broader set of participants--maybe an additional three

for the Ds and three from the Rs and three from the Independents. Then, when they take votes, there has to be a vote from each of those three sectors. That is sort of the design that forces cooperation and sets up a condition of fairness, and that is what the For the People Act does that we introduced yesterday.

Now, I will tell you that State by State, and in my State, people ask: Why should I fix gerrymandering when that State over there still favors the other party? It is like waving the white flag on my turf while they are ripping us off over there. That is why it should be done at the Federal level. That is why we should pass the For the People Act.

This act takes on the issue of voting fairness. If you really believe in the vision of a democratic republic, you believe in voter empowerment, not voter suppression. Yet what have we seen this last November 6? We have seen strategies to keep college students from voting, strategies to keep communities of color from voting, strategies to keep the poor from voting, strategies to prevent Native Americans from voting. Those strategies are born from people who don't believe in the vision of our Constitution. They don't believe it is the foundation for what we have. They see this as just a game to produce a result, which is a government for that small group of people inside that circle of power and privilege. I am a little more patriotic than that. I believe in the vision of our Constitution, so let's take on these efforts to obstruct voting.

We did have a bill that had vast bipartisan support. It was called the Voting Rights Act, and we reauthorized it with vast bipartisan support because not so long ago, both sides of the aisle believed in the vision of our Constitution but not now. Unfortunately, now we are hearing that our colleagues across the aisle like voter intimidation. We see the Republican States engaging in it on a massive scale. It is increasing their power. They want to hold onto it--to clutch it to their chests and not let go. Yet, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in our country, you would let go. You would say: Let's appeal to all of the voters with our vision and not try to stop them from voting.

That is why we need to take down the barriers for voting. That is why we need automatic voter registration and internet registration and same-day registration--so people can sign up to vote. It means we need better access to voting so there isn't manipulation at the precinct places and so there is early voting nationwide and the right to choose to vote by mail.

Now, of course, I am a little biased on this because my home State of Oregon led the Nation in automatic voter registration, and we led the Nation in voting by mail. For those who are worrying about people voting who shouldn't be voting, nothing is more secure than to vote by mail, and those who are worried about electronic machines being hacked and not having a paper ballot, there is nothing more secure than voting by mail.

When polls do occur and people go to those polls, shouldn't we make sure they are adequately staffed? The whole strategy of moving polling places at the last minute in order to confuse people and the whole strategy of understaffing polling places in the neighborhoods that you don't want to have vote is really evil--evil in that it takes away the vision of our Constitution. Voter empowerment is the vision; voter suppression is not. So that takes us to those polls and to our making sure we have a polling protection act. That is why we need the For the People Act--to take that on.

Then we come to dark and dirty money--money flowing in from corporations and all kinds of overseas, foreign participants. Nothing is being done here about that. Of course, the vision laid out by Thomas Jefferson called it equal voice. It meant distributed power among the electorate, not concentrated power, only with equal voice. He said it was the mother principle. Only with that do you get bills that reflect the will of the people. We are getting bills that reflect a small circle of power and privilege, not the people, because of this dark money concentrating power.

When the Koch brothers' cartel puts hundreds of millions of dollars into our campaign, the ordinary voter asks: Where is my equal voice? I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars. I will be lucky if I can give $10 to this candidate and $15 to that candidate. So the American people know the system is rigged--rigged in a profound way by this dark money.

Where does this come from?

It comes from that same Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act, from that same Supreme Court that failed to take on gerrymandering. It is the Court that has flipped our Constitution on its head and has replaced we the people with the vision of government by and for that small group of people in a circle of power--people like the Koch brothers, who, in 2014, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to change the makeup of this Chamber. Nobody in my blue-collar neighborhood has hundreds of millions of dollars. They know the system has been rigged. That is why we need the For the People Act--to restore the vision of our Constitution.

I encourage all red-blooded, patriotic Americans to stand up for their Constitution, to fight for the vision embodied in Jefferson's mother principle of equal voice, distributed power, and to remedy the dark money flowing through our campaigns. Not only is it vastly corrupting, but it drives vast cynicism because the people see what is going on.

Let's fix the gerrymandering on the front end. It is hard for the courts to do it on the back end even if they had the will to do so. Let's fix fair voting on the front end and not argue about it afterward when we can't even count the ballots because there are electronic machines and people didn't have a fair chance to get to the polls. Let's fix the dark money and embrace equal voice.

I am concerned that time is short to save our Republic because the money has so piled up under this strategy of government by and for the powerful that over the last decades, while the wages and benefits of ordinary people have been flat or declining, the wealth of that small circle of power has gone through the roof.

In the first three decades after World War II, everyone participated. It was the spirit of the war. We were all in it together. Let's make our government work for all. In the midseventies, it ended--vast wealth for the wealthy and only struggling opportunities or struggling conditions for those ordinary Americans.

We have to save our Constitution. Let's do it. Let's pass the For the People Act. Let's have a full and robust debate on this floor so we will all be accountable to our citizens and to our pledge and our oath to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand that this week it is the intention of the majority leader to put on the floor of this Chamber a resolution that is related to taking on the enormous challenge of climate chaos. If I just heard that announced, I would say ``well done'' because it is way past time for us to wrestle with this calamity affecting all of our States and all countries around the globe.

Temperatures across the planet are going up. All kinds of impacts are being felt. So if the majority leader said, ``Yes, we are going to rise to our responsibilities and have a serious debate on the floor; we are going to take a bill to committee; we are going to wrestle with how we in America cannot only take on carbon pollution here but show the type of leadership that mobilizes countries around the world and mobilizes leadership around the world,'' well, then, I would say ``well done.''

But, unfortunately, that is not what is about to happen. The majority leader says he doesn't want to talk about climate. So he wants to put a resolution on the floor with no debate in the committee, no serious effort to develop a series of policies to take on this calamity, and just to create a farce out of this Chamber. This Chamber, which I love, is being used in this horrific fashion, taking very serious issues that threaten our economy and threaten our natural resources and making fun of them and choosing to do nothing.

It was Henry David Thoreau who said: ``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' But I am sure that when Henry David Thoreau spoke he had no inkling of the challenges we would be facing here in the year 2019.

The challenge in this year of 2019 is that in a single human lifetime the carbon dioxide in the air has gone up 30 percent--trapping enormous quantities of heat, raising the temperature of our oceans, where 90 percent of the heat is trapped, changing the weather that we experience in all kinds of ways, and driving a huge increase in forest fires in our country. If that alone were the impact, that would be enough to take action. In fact, if we just look at that one issue of forest fires, looking at the Fourth National Climate Assessment, it is estimated that the change in climate has doubled the acres burned by forest fires--just that one issue.

In my home State of Oregon, we really see this. In the Northwest there is a beautiful forest. The landscape, particularly west of the Cascades, has the most incredible old-growth forest and timber stands you would ever see, and it is burning at an unprecedented rate.

Why is that? Well, for one, we have summers that are hotter and dryer than before. That hot, dry period extends for about 2 months longer than before. Then, we have storms that are more likely to have lightning strikes than before. Combine this very dry forest with lightning strikes, and you have a huge problem on your hands. It isn't just some remote forest that is burning. It is our natural resources, our ecosystems, and our timber stands. It is also having an impact on the commerce of our cities and the recreational industry.

That is not the only impact that we see in my home State of Oregon. We also see that the acidification of the Pacific Ocean from carbon dioxide is starting to make it hard for shellfish to make shells. Most significantly, 10 years ago we discovered that the acidity of the Pacific Ocean was killing the newly born oysters as they tried to create a shell and to do so in more acidic water. We have to change the chemistry of the ocean water now. We have to buffer it in order to enable the oyster industry to survive. What kind of canary in the coal mine is that? What kind of warning is it that the shellfish is in trouble because the ocean is becoming too acidic?

You may say: Why does that have anything to do with carbon in the atmosphere? It has everything to do with carbon in the atmosphere, because the ocean waves absorb the carbon dioxide, it becomes carbonic acid, and that acid makes the ocean more acidic.

I stand on the beach in Oregon and look out at the Pacific Ocean. Of course, you can only look out at about 20 miles of the sea, but all you see is water. It is hard to imagine that you would have to go thousands of miles to hit another continent. Yet, that ocean, as vast as it is, has changed its chemistry in our lifetime, not just becoming more acidic but becoming warmer. In fact, we have a calamity ongoing right now off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. The kelp is disappearing. With the kelp disappearing, that is a concern for every fisherman. The kelp forests provide a lot of shelter and food for a lot of species. How do we know what impact that will have on our fisheries, which are so important to our coastal economy?

We have the fact that the change in snowpack is affecting our winter sports. The lowered average snowpack just means warmer, smaller trout and salmon streams in the summer. People want to fish. They want healthy streams, not streams that are too tiny and too hot for the salmon and the trout. You see the impact we are having on forests, farming, fishing, and on the cities from smoke and on human health as people inhale that smoke. It is not just an impact on the economy. It is an impact on our health and our children's health. That is just in my State.

So I would ask my colleagues across the aisle, every one of them, to say: Do you know what? We have a responsibility to take on issues that are doing great damage.

That damage isn't just wildfires. We are seeing more intense weather events across the country. This is in all kinds of places--severe weather storms, droughts, hail, tornadoes, and, probably most significantly, more powerful hurricanes, like Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Florence just last year in 2018. Of course we saw the trio of hurricanes in 2017.

You say: Are hurricanes connected to all of this? How can that be?

Hurricanes take their energy from the ocean. When the ocean is warmer, it creates a fiercer hurricane. It takes that energy, and it becomes winds that are moving faster and a hurricane that is larger and endures longer when it hits land.

It is estimated that extreme weather events cost Americans nearly a half trillion dollars over the last 3 years. In 2017 alone, between the fires and the hurricanes, damages were estimated at $300 billion. That is real damage. That is real economic damage happening here in the United States of America. When talking about $1 billion of damage, that is talking about a lot of families being set back a long way. We are talking about a lot of infrastructure being ripped up, and we are talking about lives lost.

Despite this enormous damage and despite lives lost, the majority leader wants to create a farce over an issue threatening our country and our planet? That is just wrong. It is way beyond wrong--to see the face of a calamity and to do nothing. Well, it could go with all kinds of adjectives--none of them complimentary, not a one.

We should be the opposite here, taking on the responsibility of addressing these issues that are having an impact--having an impact in the heartland, having an impact on our soy and corn crops, having an impact on the coasts, having an impact in the Southeast, with hurricanes, and the Northeast, with Lyme disease and spreading tick infestations, the loss of the moose, and the lobsters heading north along the ocean into Canada.

So we must not bury our heads in the tar sands. We cannot allow the political donations that are present now in our corrupted governmental system to deter us from doing the work we need to do. Yet that appears to be exactly what is happening. We have a broader responsibility here--a responsibility to our sons and daughters. We have a responsibility to our grandchildren and their sons and daughters and their grandchildren.

This contamination of our atmosphere cannot be easily undone. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. So we have to prevent it from being put there in the first place. There is so much we can do together. There is so much we can do to say this challenge is real, to say we will work together as Americans to take this on and to help lead the world in ending this horrific damage that will persist for hundreds of years.

There is so much to do. We can create millions of good-paying jobs together for America and export products to the world instead of buying products from the world. We can make sure that as we do that and as we invest in an energy transformation, not only do we create millions of good-paying jobs, but we also make sure that rural America is not left behind, that our former fossil fuel communities are not left behind, and that our frontline urban communities that have so often been left behind are not left behind. We can make an economic renaissance that goes into every corner of our Nation where often economic improvements have not gone before.

These elements are the core elements of the Green New Deal. One is to face reality and together say: Yes, we have a big challenge in front of us of devastating consequences and growing consequences. Maybe it was a theory 20 years ago, but today it is a reality in every town across this country. It is a big calamity. We should say we will work together to take it on. That is the second basic principle, coming together, and then there is a surge of activity to develop alternatives and deploy alternatives to the use of fossil fuels.

The third piece of this puzzle is that in so doing, we will create millions of good-paying jobs. Isn't that what so many leaders run on? I certainly love the idea of good-paying jobs.

My dad, a union mechanic, was able to raise a family and be part of the great middle class of America and be part of the American dream: buy a house, take the family camping on vacations, participate in having a 40-hour workweek, and get paid overtime if you had to work more. Yet that dream is further and further out of reach. Don't we want to create those better paying jobs in the process of renovating our energy economy?

Years ago, I undertook tearing the insides out of a house in the 1980s and then rebuilt that house. When you rebuild a house, there is plumbing, wiring, framing, sheetrock, windows, and roofing. I would buy a lot of stuff to renovate that house. That type of construction renovation puts a lot of people to work. If construction renovation puts people to work, think about how renovating our entire energy economy puts people to work. That is the third core principle.

The fourth is to make sure those economic gains go to those who have previously been left behind. That is an important message for rural America. That is an important message for urban frontline communities previously left behind. There is so much work to do and so many ways we can make sure these communities participate.

When I go out to Oregon, I do a townhall in every county every year-- 36 counties. Twenty-two of them are rural. In political terms, you would describe them as deep red. People are frustrated by the very low wages and the very low number of jobs in those rural communities. Now we have an opportunity to say we have to go to work in an intensive way--a way that can create jobs all across this Nation and all across rural America. Instead, we have the majority leader bringing the issue to the floor as a farce. That is profoundly disturbing.

I encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let us not miss this opportunity before us--an opportunity for America to lead, an opportunity for America to build its economy, an opportunity for America to lead the world. We cannot afford to miss that opportunity. America cannot afford for us to miss that opportunity, and the world cannot afford for us to fail.

Thank you.

Madam President, Robert F. Kennedy once said: ``We want to make sure that we bequeath to our descendants a better and safer world than the one in which we live today.'' For nearly four decades, Dan O'Neill has dedicated himself to creating that better, safer world for future generations. As he prepares to step back from his work and enjoy a much-deserved retirement, I want to share a few thoughts about this wonderful individual.

As a young man volunteering for an NGO in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Dan came face to face with some of the worst that humankind has to offer: extreme poverty, oppression, famine, and war. At first, he documented these horrors in photos, articles, and journals, until one day when he decided he couldn't just watch anymore. In the face of relentless horror and carnage, specifically the brutal genocide in Cambodia and coverage of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields, Dan's conscience wouldn't allow him to just

sit by as a witness. He knew he had to act; and act he did.

In 1979, he founded the Save the Refugees Fund to give lifesaving aid to hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fleeing for their lives and safety. Three years later, he expanded on that effort by cofounding Mercy Corps, a global nongovernmental, humanitarian aid organization with the goal of alleviating suffering, poverty, and oppression by helping people build just, secure, and productive communities.

Thirty-eight years later, Dan has traveled the world to meet with political and religious leaders; worked on the ground to establish and run Mercy Corps programs in some of the least hospitable places on Earth; and witnessed, firsthand, natural disasters, human catastrophes, political upheavals, war, and famine. The organization that he created, Mercy Corps, has provided over $4 billion in lifesaving assistance to more than 220 million people in need in at least 122 countries.

Today, amid the world's most dire situations, you can always count on Mercy Corps to be there, building the foundation for those just, secure, and productive communities. Where this is a desperate challenge, you are likely to find Mercy Corps at work, providing vital aid and assistance to refugees in Jordan; giving water to famine- stricken families in South Sudan; or bringing desperately needed public attention to today's worldwide refugee crisis. All of that is, in no small measure, thanks to Dan O'Neill's inexhaustible passion and leadership.

So to Dan O'Neill, who has done so much, for so many, for so long, I simply want to say, thank you. I wish him all the best as he begins this next chapter of his life.

Mr. President, it was a powerful opportunity to join my colleague from Delaware, Senator Carper, in traveling to the Northern Triangle of Central America--Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--to try to understand more about the dynamics in that region, which are driving so many families to come north, to take the difficult journey through Central America, through Mexico, to come to our border and to ask for asylum.

This has been a significant flow, which has expanded greatly. We have seen in the past that most of those arriving on our border were men from Mexico who were seeking work but not so much now. Now we have this flow of families from Central America. These families are traveling to find something better for their lives and for their children's lives. It is not an easy journey, and it is a journey that has created quite a conversation here in the United States of America.

The conversation coming from our President has been this: How do we stop them from asserting asylum at the border?

President Trump has a number of strategies to deter families from coming. His strategy was to separate children from their parents, treat those fleeing as criminals, create great trauma for the children, and use this as a strategy of deterrence. This was first laid out very clearly by John Kelly just months into the administration. In March of 2017, he said: Yes, this is exactly what we are considering.

The administration then proceeded to implement it first as a pilot project and later as an all-out strategy to treat those migrating as criminals, lock up the parents, separate the children, inflict trauma, and deter people from coming. I can state that any strategy that involves mistreating children as a political tactic--a political message of deterrence--is simply evil. It comes from a very, very dark place in the heart of this administration to deliberately injure children in this fashion.

Why doesn't the President look to Central America and ask: What is motivating these families to come? How can we change that motivation? What are the forces at work in that region?

Those were the questions that Senator Carper and I were undertaking to answer on our recent trip, and I appreciate so much that he went through the great work of organizing it.

We went first to Guatemala, then to Honduras, then to El Salvador. We met with the President. We met with the incoming President of El Salvador. We met with the civil society organizations--those who understand the roots of what is going on within the society--and here is what we learned. We learned there were three powerful forces driving families to leave those countries: security, economics, and corruption.

Let's talk a little bit about those three things.

Security. I had the chance to meet a woman and her daughter, Gabriella and her baby Andrea. Gabriella told me about her journey. She said that her family took a loan from a private bank, which probably meant a financial loan from the local drug cartel or financial group associated with a drug cartel. The family wasn't able to repay the loan. They were given a deadline. They were told: If you don't repay the loan, one of your family members dies, and that will be you, Gabriella.

Gabriella was pregnant. She figured that as long as she was pregnant, they would not kill her. So when she was 8 months pregnant--1 month ago--she fled the country to save herself and to save her baby.

I met her and her baby on the border. They had just crossed the bridge into the United States of America. I asked her: How did you get past the American border guards, who wouldn't allow anyone across the bridge if they didn't have a passport or visa? Her face lit up for a moment. She said: Well, I was rebuffed time and again at the center of the bridge, not allowed to come across and assert asylum, and I was desperate, blocked on the Mexican side.

Then I saw there was a pedestrian bridge and a car bridge, and on the car bridge were folks who were washing windows for tips. So I asked to use an extra squeegee from one of the window washers, who gave it to me, and I washed windows on the car bridge to get into the United States of America. And there she was at the foot of the bridge with her baby.

She told me that because she fled with her baby, those who were enforcing that private loan from that private bank killed her uncle. That is the security issue that comes with all of the various versions of that story.

I met another woman, Patricia. Patricia had a 14-year-old daughter. Patricia had to pay extortion money. The President of Guatemala told me that every business has to pay extortion money. In this case, though, Patricia had no money left to pay the extortion. So the drug gang--or the gang that controls the streets and runs the extortion--came to her house and assaulted her 14-year-old daughter. So she fled. She fled to protect her daughter from any other such horrific circumstances. She came to the United States.

That is a security issue. This is not a situation where if you don't pay the extortion money, they break your window. This is: If you don't pay the extortion money, we kill you; we rape your daughter; we kill your family--maybe we torture them. That is the security issue.

Then there is the economic issue. In Guatemala, the median age is 18. I believe they said it is the youngest median age on the planet. A huge number of young people are coming into working age, and while they are working to create jobs, they are not possibly creating enough jobs. So you have this huge number of people without jobs. What are they going to do?

I will state that one thing they do is go hungry. Malnutrition is a horrendous demon haunting the country of Guatemala. One individual showed us a picture of Guatemalan children against a wall and their average heights; they had lines across the wall for their heights. They had a similar picture of Guatemalan children being raised in the United States. It was to dramatize the fact that the children growing up in Guatemala at age 9 are 6 inches shorter than the Guatemalan children growing up in the United States at the same age. It is stunting-- stunting from persistent malnutrition. So joblessness and malnutrition, an insufficient network of schools and trained schoolteachers--all of these things are economic challenges.

Let me tell you, it is not just the fact that you don't have a job. It is that in your small village across the country--across all three countries--you may see on a street, as was described to us, a shack, a second shack, a third shack, a fourth shack, and then a beautiful house. That beautiful house was there because somebody in that village made it to the United States of America, and they have been sending back money year after year in sufficient quantities that the family is now prosperous. They can build that beautiful house.

That beautiful house stands as a billboard. It is an advertisement for what might happen if you can make it to the United States and get a job. So on the one hand, there are no jobs, and on the other hand, this beacon of hope is saying to you: If you can make it across the border, you might be able to be prosperous yourself and, basically, enable your entire family to be prosperous.

Then we have corruption. This isn't garden variety corruption. For generations--for hundreds of years--there has been a class in these countries that is beyond the law. They call their efforts to change this a campaign against impunity. That is not a word we use a lot in America--``impunity''--but it means individuals who are never touched by the legal system. They can do whatever they want. They pay no fines. They never go to prison. They suck money out of the country. They suck money out of all of those layers of the economy below them. They have become extraordinarily rich. They talk about the 8 families in Guatemala and the 14 families in El Salvador.

So that corruption we have been working to take on. We, the United States, in partnership with the governments there, have been working to take that on. So those three things--security, the economy, and corruption--are the factors driving people to flee north.

A few years ago, then-Vice President Biden went to Central America to understand those issues better. Out of that came the Alliance for Prosperity--the Alliance for Prosperity--a strategy based on Plan Colombia, as my colleague from Delaware laid out, that would strengthen the programs to take on the security issues, to take on the corruption issues, to take on the economic challenges that are draining those countries so that people didn't feel that to survive, they had to flee north.

We funded this at a modest level in fiscal year 2016. It was $754 million. Think of that as it compares to money we have been spending on the border--billions and billions and billions of dollars for physical infrastructure, for border security, for high-tech sensors, for a system of courts to adjudicate asylum, all of that. We spent only about three-quarters of a billion dollars to strengthen those three countries.

Along comes the Trump administration, which says that it is concerned--very concerned--about this flow of people coming from Central America to our border, and they propose a 34-percent cut in this program. They propose cutting it from $754 million to a proposal of $460 million. Well, the Democrats and Republicans restored funding, put it back, not quite to the $750 million number but to $627 million.

The Trump budget came out the next year and cut it again; they proposed a 30-percent cut. Again, here in Congress, we worked to restore those programs, not where they were before but, basically, $100 million more than the Trump administration asked for.

So to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Doesn't it make sense for us to support the Alliance for Prosperity? For each dollar we send, they provide between $4 and $7; that is $4 to $7 in very poor countries.

Doesn't it make sense to support the commissions against impunity, the commissions against corruption? In the last 2 years, the Trump administration has been undermining these commissions against corruption. Well, that is just wrong.

The result, as you saw in El Salvador, was the election of the mayor of San Salvador, Nayib Bukele, a very young fellow in his thirties. What did he run on? Taking on corruption, taking on impunity. Shouldn't we be a partner with them in this?

If we don't want families to flee north, then we shouldn't want the elite to operate with impunity and suck all of the resources out of the country and leave people starving. Let's partner with the governments there to take on corruption, not undermine these commissions of support.

A trip to Central America will make you really appreciate our institutions, our economy, our education system, our healthcare system, our court system, our opportunities for our children. We can do far better, for sure, but every piece of what we have that works so much better than those parallel systems in Central America calls out to those there to come and participate in our society. If we want families to stay where they are, they are going to have to have an opportunity where they are, which means we have to take on the security issues, including the street-level extortion. We have to help them take those on. We have to help them improve their economy and their education system. We have to help them take on the systemic, high-level, massive corruption that drives resources into the hands of the very few at the expense of the very many.

That is the mission we should be talking about here on the floor-- wrestling with here on the floor. Maybe we shouldn't return to the levels that Obama had that we had passed in a bipartisan way here. Maybe we should do double what was done in 2016--or triple--if we really want to help anchor those societies' rudders that have people fleeing for their lives to come here.

Mr. President, I speak now to a bill we will introduce this Wednesday, the Equality Act. The Equality Act will be introduced by a group of us in the Senate and by another group led by Congressman Cicilline in the House.

It is an appropriate moment for us to ponder in this Chamber why this piece of legislation is part of our American journey toward the vision of opportunity for all and why we all should be supporting this beautiful legislative proposal.

My involvement in the Equality Act began in my home State of Oregon, when I was serving in the legislature there, and we had the question of how can we change the systematic discrimination against our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. How can we give them the same opportunity everyone else has?

So we came together and said we should do an Oregon Equality Act, an Oregon Equality Act that would create the same basic protections the Civil Rights Act has for race and gender and ethnicity.

We went about doing that. I was the speaker. I worked very hard to make that happen, and we succeeded. We ended discrimination in Oregon based on who you are or whom you love. Discrimination should be ended across the whole country.

I arrived here in January 2009, and I was assigned to the Health, Education,

Labor, and Pensions Committee--the Health Committee. I asked Senator Kennedy if I could possibly serve on this committee to help fight for health and education and labor, and he arranged that. I will never forget having his voicemail on my phone saying: Yes, you are a member of the committee.

A few months later came the real surprise. Senator Kennedy was struggling with the brain cancer that killed him later that year, and through his team, he asked me to take on one of his civil rights bills, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

That was to end discrimination for LGBTQ Americans in employment, give them a fair chance to get a job here. Well, this is something that had been part of our Equality Act in Oregon. We had gotten that done, and because I helped lead that fight, he asked me to take over and lead the fight to end employment nondiscrimination.

That was 2009. It took 4 years of work--work with the community and work with our legislators inside this building. Then, finally, in 2013, the time was ripe to put it on the floor and have this debate. This Chamber, with the supermajority, bipartisan vote, said, yes, let's end discrimination in employment, and we passed the Employment Non- Discrimination Act.

Then I went over to the House, and it died without consideration. I got together with the advocates and asked, where do we go from here with the House not acting? Do we simply continue to reintroduce the Employment Non-Discrimination Act--which had been first introduced in 1996, first considered on this floor and almost passed just one vote short in 1998. Do we continue to do that?

Out of that conversation, we developed a different vision. Let's do a full Equality Act like Oregon has done, like a number of other States have done and end discrimination not just in one sector or another, not just in places of accommodation, not just in financial transactions, not just in serving on a jury, not just in terms of housing, not just in terms of employment, let's base the Equality Act on providing the full spectrum, the full measure of protection for opportunity.

I thought that was a pretty good idea. Later that year, I introduced the Equality Act in partnership with many others. We laid out that first Equality Act in the Johnson Room--the Johnson Room, which looks out at the Supreme Court and reminds us of 1964. In 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, driven forward by President Johnson, who came from Texas, who came from the South, and said: It is time to end discrimination in the United States of America based on race and gender and ethnicity. He drove that legislation through, and it has been a foundation we haven't questioned since because we know it is right. We know it is part of this journey of the United States of America going back to our Declaration of Independence, going back to our Constitution--a vision of opportunity for all and liberty for all.

We know it was imperfect, and we have worked now for almost two and a half centuries to perfect that vision of opportunity. Senator Ted Kennedy once said: ``The promise of America will never be fulfilled as long as justice is denied to even one among us.'' The promise of America--that promise of America that Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put, in 1776--is a vision where we are all created equal, with ``unalienable Rights . . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.''

How can that vision be propelled, sustained, and promoted if, in fact, as you pursue your life, the door is slammed shut on you, saying, ``No. There is opportunity for that individual but not you,'' and the door is slammed shut--liberty for that person but not you, and the door is slammed shut.

We have come to understand that is just wrong. It is completely incompatible with the vision that was laid out, the vision of our Declaration and the vision of our Constitution.

In fact, in this Chamber, we start with a pledge, and we talk about one Nation under God with liberty and justice for all. Classrooms across the country start their day with a pledge of liberty and justice for all, but what is liberty if the door is slammed shut? That is the denial of liberty. That is the opposite of freedom. That is the crushing of opportunity.

So the story of America goes forward. The fight goes forward. We had the 1964 Civil Rights Act that was a culmination itself of decades of work. We had the voting rights struggle during the same time period, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. We fought a number of battles-- battles of discrimination against those with disabilities. We fought for workers' rights, but our LGBTQ brothers and sisters still face discrimination all across this country. We are still in a situation where so many doors are slammed shut.

We have had a lot of progress in the last 10 years. Ten years ago, we had the Defense of Marriage Act, and now we don't. We had don't ask, don't tell in the military, and now we don't. We had only three States that recognized same-sex marriage, and now it is the law of the land as the Supreme Court weighed in and said it is required by the vision of our Constitution.

Discrimination in all kinds of ways is still legal in 29 States--more than half the country. In more than half the country, you can be married in the morning, denied service at a restaurant for lunch, fired from your job in the afternoon, and kicked out of your apartment that night because discrimination is still legal against LGBTQ Americans in 29 States.

LBJ gave a definition of freedom. He said: ``Freedom is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.'' Discrimination is the opposite of freedom.

Let freedom ring in this Chamber as we introduce the Equality Act later this week. Let freedom ring down the hall as the House of Representatives holds a debate in committee and on the floor in the months to come, and when that freedom bell rings so loudly that they pass that bill, the Equality Act in that Chamber, let them bring it down this hallway right into the Senate; that we might debate the same and put an end to the extraordinary, disgraceful discrimination that still marks the lives and slams the doors shut on millions and millions of Americans every single day.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Mariah Shriner, may have privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be here on the floor with my colleague from New Mexico, who has been a champion for restoring our democracy, working year after year over the last decade toward that vision, and presenting tonight superb comments on the history of where we have been and where we should go.

This last weekend, I went to Alabama. I went with Congressman John Lewis to be there to look into the history of discrimination in our Nation, the history in which we had separate entries to buildings for Whites and for Blacks and separate water fountains. We had front doors for White America and back doors for Black America.

We were standing on the spot where Rosa Parks stood before she stepped onto the bus and said: I will not sit at the back of the bus. I will be treated like every other American. She asked for equality, and she started a big movement to break down discrimination.

Last weekend, we also gathered together in Selma, AL, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. This spot is where John Lewis and a whole set of individuals took a stand. They were planning a march. They were going to march for voting rights--for voting rights in America, voting rights that had been taken away as a strategy of suppressing the voice of the people, particularly the voice of African Americans.

We have struggled in the history of our country toward full equality of opportunity--full equality to participate in this beautiful democratic Republic we call America. We started with a Constitution that was flawed by not recognizing the full equality of every American.

We fought a war over slavery, and after that war, a strategy was devised to continue to strip the right to vote from African Americans by taking African-American men, arresting them as felons, and then saying that felons can't vote--a determined strategy both to reenslave, because the constitutional amendment said that you could put people to work if they were a felon, and to strip voting rights from them.

That is a history we should be putting behind us--a history of voter intimidation and a history of voter suppression. Have we not come to the point where we can recognize that the real vision in our ``we the people'' democracy is that every person gets a full chance to participate, that we should be looking for voter empowerment, not voter suppression?

This beautiful document we have worked to perfect and fulfill over time. It was President Lincoln who said: ``America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.''

Aren't we at that point now, where the vision of government of, by, and for the people has been corrupted by voter suppression, by voter intimidation, by gerrymandering, and by dark money flooding our campaigns? Aren't we at that point now that our very essence of our constitutional vision of government by and for the people is being destroyed by these corrupting forces?

Here is what we have in America right now. We have a circle of power of those of great wealth and those of great privilege, and they want to run this government and write our laws to benefit those inside that circle.

That circle isn't that large. It is a small percent of our population, but they use their great wealth and their great leverage to continue to corrupt the vision of our Constitution because the last thing they want is a government that serves the people.

What they are invested in, what they fight for is government by the powerful few and for the powerful few. If anyone has any doubt that we have reached this point of huge corruption in this country, look simply at what happened in this Chamber in 2017 when the majority party said that we have two missions: Mission one, take down healthcare for 20 to 30 million Americans; mission two, raid the national Treasury for $1\1/ 2\ trillion and give it to the very richest Americans and largest corporations.

That is what happens in a corrupted government by and for the powerful rather than by and for the people. That is what happens in dictatorships around the world where the elite raid the National Treasury and steal the money for themselves.

I will tell you what else happens. They don't invest in ``we the people.'' They don't invest in the foundations for families to thrive. We know what those foundations are: good public education, debt-free college, employment programs that include apprenticeships and career technical education, a healthcare system that is simple and seamless and is there when your loved one is sick or injured, and it doesn't send you into bankruptcy, a system where drug companies can't gouge you and raise their prices dozens or even a hundredfold because the laws were written to let them do it, a system that invests in affordable housing so every family can have a decent home in a decent community, investment in infrastructure, rural broadband, repaired highways, expanded transit systems, all kinds of infrastructure that enable our economy to thrive and our people to do well.

Did we see what this corrupted system now in place of government by and for the powerful, did we see an investment in healthcare or housing or education or infrastructure or living-wage

jobs? We did not because this Chamber is now run by and for the powerful of the United States of America, not the people.

So along comes the other Chamber at the end of this hall, and this other Chamber says: We want to restore the vision of our Constitution, and they put together H. Res. 1. They said: Let's take this on. Let's take on the gerrymandering. Let's take on the voter suppression. Let's take on the dark money. They put together this bill for the people--for the people, not for the powerful.

They proceeded to say: Let's start with that challenge of gerrymandering. Let's make sure the people pick their leaders instead of their leaders picking their electors. Then they proceed to take on voter suppression and voter intimidation.

It was President Lyndon Johnson who said ``the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.''

That powerful instrument is at the heart of our Constitution. It is the instrument that the powerful and privileged want to diminish, destroy, and take away so they can continue to run this country by and for themselves.

So this bill says: Let's proceed to do voter empowerment. Let's extend early voting to all States. Let's ensure that there is an opportunity for people to register to vote, sign up to vote on the internet, and have same-day registration. Let's encourage vote by mail, which gives a full opportunity for everyone to participate without having to get to a poll on a day that it is difficult to get there, and let's make sure changes designed to suppress voting are not automatically approved, that we will restore the Voting Rights Act, which said we will protect the voting system, its sacred heart, the Constitution, and we will not let people's rights be stripped away.

If you look back at November 6, and you look at what happened across the country, you see the plot--the plot to prevent the poor from voting; the plot to prevent minorities from voting; the plot to prevent college students from voting. One State went so far as to say you can't vote if your ID doesn't have an expiration date because the college IDs in that State didn't have an expiration date--strategy after strategy, purging people off the voting rolls without their permission right before the election.

So this bill, the For the People Act that the House is working on right now and that we will introduce right here in this Chamber says: We believe in the Constitution of America; we believe in the power of the people, and we will protect the right to vote. The For the People Act takes on campaign finance. It proceeds to say: We will have disclosure of contributions. There is sunlight on the system that disinfects it--a phrase that so many of my colleagues used to say when they were opposing the McCain-Feingold limits. They said: We oppose caps on donations, but we support disclosure. It is the sunshine that disinfects the system. Suddenly, when the bill that provides disclosure was up before this body, the individuals who said that said: ``Oh, I was wrong, I don't want sunlight in the system,'' and voted against disclosure. So the House is saying: Let's do it. Let's create transparency.

There is an honest ads component that says people need to be able to know who is funding the ads they are seeing. I know I have seen in my campaigns, attack ad, after attack ad, after attack ad funded by front groups.

Wouldn't it be better for America if the folks behind those ads actually have to disclose that they are behind those ads?

We have in this bill a small-dollar match so individuals who seek to run for the House or the Senate with small-dollar donations, donations up to $200, get a 6-to-1 match, encouraging breaking the grip of the vast dark money and the money that comes from the most affluent in large chunks, leveling the playing field for participation by regular Americans, freeing our elections from the grip of dark money.

This bill, the For the People Act, says let's improve the ethics. Let's reduce or try to eliminate the conflicts of interest that haunt this Chamber and haunt the House Chamber down the hall.

John Lewis stood on that bridge on Bloody Sunday. Congressman John Lewis, long before he was a Congressman, in 1965, stood on that bridge. He stood, and he was the very first person in line as the troops approached to beat up the protesters. They shoved him, they pushed him down, they struck him in the head, and then they proceeded to beat up and terrify the other protesters on that bridge.

Those protesters were standing for the vision of our Constitution, were standing for voting rights, the most powerful instrument, as Lyndon Johnson said.

They went back to that bridge the following Tuesday, and they marched up and were stopped, and they agreed to turn back--``Turn Back Tuesday.'' Then they reorganized again and more people joined. They came back a third time and they marched over that bridge and they marched all the way to Montgomery, AL, to fight for voting rights because it is the heart and soul of an individual's ability to participate in our democracy. John Lewis has said this:

There is still work to be done. Get out there, push and

pull, until we redeem the soul of America.

The For the People Act that the House will pass and that we will introduce here in this Chamber is the fight to redeem the soul of America. Let's stand together--old-timers and new Members of the Senate, those who sit on the left of the aisle and those who sit on the right of the aisle, those who come from blue-collar communities and those who come from circles of power--to stand behind the vision of our Constitution, the ``we the people'' vision, so this Chamber will do the work of the people. Let's restore the soul of America together.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Henry David Thoreau asked: What is the use of a home if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?

We are here at a unique moment in human history when the planet is threatened. It is not just our local stream that has been polluted by some factory. It is not a river that is so toxic that it catches on fire. It is not just a small section of my home State that has been afflicted by some new disease in the forests. It is our entire planet that is at risk. So any Member of this Chamber who is not coming forward to help figure out how to address that is guilty of vast malpractice, legislative malpractice, and moral malpractice and incompetence because that is what a legislature is about. When there are big problems that we face, we come together. We don't ignore them. We wrestle with the best way to take them on. That is what this conversation is about.

Senator Carper's resolution says three things, the first of which is we have a real problem, and it is easy to demonstrate that. We can take a look at all of the information we have coming from every major scientific organization that tracks increasing heat on

the planet, but maybe that is a little too complicated. Let's just ask a simple question. What have been the hottest years in human history? When have they been? Were they in the 1700s, in the 1800s, in the 1900s? When were those 5 hottest years? They were the last 5 years-- 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. This is no coincidence because that would be an astronomically unlikely thing to occur. We have enough science to know why this is occurring, not just that it is occurring.

It is occurring because we are generating carbon dioxide, and we are generating methane. They trap heat. We have been told, for the better part of a century, that this was going to be a problem, and the problem has arrived. It is not some theory. It is not some computer model. It is not some ivory tower. The facts are clearly evident. They are evident in our forests with longer and hotter fire seasons. They are evident in more powerful hurricanes than we have seen before because they draw so much more energy from an overheated ocean. We see it in the spread of diseases, like Lyme disease with the spread of tick populations. We see it with changing species. We see it with glaciers. We see it with melting permafrost. We see it with rising sea levels. We see it everywhere unless you are blind to the facts. We are not here to be blind. We are here to act. So we know the problem is real. That is the first point.

The second point is we know what is causing it--human activities, our putting methane into the air and putting carbon dioxide into the air. Therefore, we know the third point, which is our responsibility to act.

So many of us have come forward and have said: Here is an idea. How about this? This will completely change the amount of carbon dioxide from the transportation sector. Here is an idea. This would really change the carbon dioxide generated by power generation, electricity generation. How about this? This would greatly reduce the carbon dioxide generated from heating buildings.

Yet, in that conversation, there is the sound of silence from the right side of the aisle. Do we hear multitudinous ideas? No. We hear none. That is where the legislative malfeasance and where the moral irresponsibility lies--in pretending that you can be a leader in this country, in this Senate Chamber, and not address this major challenge that is afflicting our planet. That is unacceptable. We don't need fake and phone debates on the floor of a resolution that hasn't gone through committee. We need real discussion and real engagement.

It was not that long ago that Republican leaders across this Nation were taking on this issue. H. W. Bush ran for the Presidency to take on climate change. When he got into office, he didn't end up doing a lot, but he ran on it and campaigned on it. Other leaders have said we have a responsibility to be good stewards of our resources. I have heard that from the Republican side of the aisle for my entire lifetime--good stewardship. So why the silence now? Why the failure to look at the facts? Why the failure to bring forward ideas? This is not OK. We need real debate, real discussion.

I have put forward ideas I would love to see debated, one being that we need to dramatically reduce the fossil fuels, which we own as a public, coming out of the ground. We have to lead the world, and we can't ask the rest of the world not to extract and burn fossil fuels if we are still profiting from doing so.

I laid out the vision--the 100-percent mission in all sectors--and how we can get there over the coming decades. It is a 300-page bill that is full of ideas. Maybe they are not all the best of ideas, but I encourage my colleagues to read them, to find ones they like, and to bring forward their ideas. Where do tax credits play in this conversation? Where do limits play on pollution? Where do incentives to transition to renewable energy come in? Let's have that debate as serious policymakers and leaders of this country who are responsible for our Nation and for the future of our planet.

Henry David Thoreau lived a long time ago, but he laid out the point that we are responsible for the health of our planet. Let's take that responsibility seriously. Let's engage. Let's debate every single idea. There are hundreds of them out there. Let's go through them. Let's forge a bipartisan plan. Let's not let any industry in America contaminate the process, the political process, through these dark donations. Let's not, any party in this country, be misled from addressing the serious issues before us because they are blinded by the hundreds of millions of dollars falling on their campaigns. Let's do what we have to do, what we have a responsibility to do. History will judge whether we have done that which cannot be delayed. That is our responsibility.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Cyrus Johnson, be granted privileges of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. President, Henry David Thoreau once said: ``What use is a home if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?''

We might just expand that question to say what use is anything if we destroy our planet because it is the only one we have. There is no planet B, no rescuing by going to some horrific other planet nearby. We have the gem, we have the treasure, and we have the responsibility to make sure we don't destroy it.

Here we are. Within a single human lifetime, we have increased the percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a dramatic amount--about 30 percent in my lifetime and more if you are older--and that chemistry change is really unseen in geological history on this planet, such a rapid change with rapid, deep growth.

That is why we are coming to the floor to keep talking about this issue, reach across the aisle, reach across the country, and find partners to say this isn't a blue or red issue. This isn't a city or rural issue. It affects us all, and we need to all work together to respond. As we do so, we need America to lead the world in responding.

Senator Carper's resolution says a couple simple things. It says we recognize that we have a very warming climate on Earth. It says we recognize that human activity burning fossil fuel has consequences, and it calls on us to act. There we are. It is time to confront this enormous threat to our beautiful blue-green home in the middle of the cosmos.

There are some who say: That is so scary, so intimidating, so threatening. I just can't open my eyes or ears to hear that information. I have to pretend it is not real.

We are here in the Senate. We are here where we don't have the privilege of covering our eyes, our ears, pretending it is not happening. We have the responsibility to face this when others shy away and act.

There are others who say: You know, we just can't be sure exactly what is happening so let's wait another 10 or 20 years because we can't measure it as precisely as we want. It is like saying: Oh, cancer is ravaging my body, but I am not going to take any medicine because I am not sure if it has affected 15 percent or 16 percent of my cells. Well, you know you have cancer, and you know you need to act.

So there we are. Let us not let our heads be buried in the tar sands. Climate chaos is real. It is ravaging our planet. It is because of human activity, and we do have the responsibility to respond.

The year 2018 was one of the four hottest years on record. Nine out of the ten of the hottest years on record occurred since the year 2000. If we are looking at this chart, we don't see the Earth becoming any cooler. We see the Earth becoming a lot warmer. Four of the hottest years on record, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015--that was the last 4 years having been the 4 hottest years on record. The odds of that happening by accident is essentially none.

We have some very serious scientific heft weighing in. In October, the United Nations climate panel said we must act dramatically within this next decade. A month later, on Black Friday, we had the release of the ``Fourth National Climate Assessment''--the Trump administration's ``Fourth National Climate Assessment''--and it concluded that ``Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.''

There was a report from the Global Carbon Project that which found that global carbon emissions are going up. They went up 0.7 percent in 2018, hitting a record breaking 37.1 metric tons around the world. That is human activity putting out carbon dioxide that acts as a blanket on the planet. This isn't some new thought.

We go back to 1959. We had an eminent scientist who became better known for his work in the nuclear world, but he was asked to address the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. At that speech in 1959, he said: The energy you have unleashed and harnessed can do dramatic things to

change the world, but you have a couple of challenges. One challenge is that there isn't an infinite amount of petroleum in the ground. Another challenge is it creates carbon dioxide. It doesn't look like a pollutant because you can't see it and you can't smell it, but in fact, it traps heat. I think he framed it more scientifically, that it traps infrared energy.

He said that is going to be a problem, and, of course, we are seeing that problem all the time now. You don't need these scientific reports out of a global panel or a fourth assessment from the administration to tell us what is going on because we see the facts on the ground.

In my home State of Oregon, you can't move around the State without seeing the impact. In Eastern Oregon, you have the warmer winter. It is not killing the pine beetles. So the pine beetles are killing the trees. More pine beetles and less trees is not a good thing.

If you are over on the coast, the oyster men will tell you they had a big crisis in 2008 and 2009 because all of the baby oysters were dying, not because of a bacteria but because the acidity in the Pacific Ocean has gone up. How is that related? Because carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean and becomes carbonic acid. We burn so much carbon dioxide that we changed the acidity of the ocean. Can you imagine that is possible? It seems impossible, but it speaks to how much carbon dioxide we released within a few decades of human civilization on this planet.

You can keep going on with this story around Oregon. Our kelp beds are disappearing. They provide protection for all kinds of fish species. The kelp are dying because the blue sea urchins are eating them. The blue sea urchins are expanding rapidly because the starfish are dying because the ocean got too warm for them. It is one story after another. There is less irrigation water, less snowpack, warmer streams, and harsher conditions for trout and salmon all within the State of Oregon, and there are similar stories throughout our Nation.

Perhaps the most destructive factor, though, has been the increased number of forest fires. There are bigger fires, hotter fires, and a longer fire season. They are not just ravaging our forests but producing smoke that has a huge impact on our towns. We take a lot of pride in our wine in Oregon, and a lot of our grapes had smoke taint and weren't usable this last year.

We have towns where furniture salesmen said they couldn't sell the furniture because it had the lingering smell of smoke.

It had an impact on the entertainment world. The Shakespeare Festival had to shut down and partially move inside to smaller venues, which is having a huge impact on their finances and a huge impact on the tourism attraction.

This stuff is real. It is why we should all be here, Democrats and Republicans, talking about the challenge and saying: What higher calling is there in our life than to come together to discuss this honestly and to work together to find solutions?

This isn't something where we can just say that the next generation can deal with it because the effects are cumulative. They build up. They become worse. It is a lot worse now than it was 10 years ago, and 10 years from now, it will be more so.

There is no easy, fast way to strip the carbon dioxide back out of the air. We can work at it, but it is not easy. We can plant more trees, yes, but, meanwhile, those hotter fires are killing more trees. Those pine beetles are killing more trees. In other words, it is urgent. The time to act is now.

In 1988 George H. W. Bush ran for President as an environmentalist. He announced he was going to take on global warming. His opponent, the Democrat, ran on the coal industry. That is not the same partisan alliance as you might hear today. George H. W. Bush said: ``Our land, water and soil support a remarkable range of human activities, but they can only take so much and we must remember to treat them not as a given but as a gift.''

Those words should echo in this Chamber. We have other words in this Chamber that seem to not address all of the facts that are right in front of us. One individual said: ``The satellite says it ain't happening.'' Well, one could probably pick out some one piece of data from one satellite somewhere and say it doesn't show the story, but you collect all the data together and it is happening.

Here is a chart of how the globe is warming over time. It shows the difference in average temperatures. Here we are with just one tiny cache where there is a significant drop in temperature. There is a little bit of white and light blue showing that it stayed about the same, and there is a whole lot of red saying things are getting a lot worse. That is the collected data. Maybe there is some satellite that took a picture of one little spot here, but to cherry-pick data like that is dishonest.

We can't afford to pretend that things are OK when we are facing such a dramatic challenge to our blue-green home in the universe. NOAA, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, works at this, and they record all kinds of data from all around the world.

Here is another chart that shows the Earth's climate record. This one shows the zigs and zags over time. We are going back to 1880, but if we look from 1880 to 1980, we see a significant rise in the temperature of the planet. If we go from 1980 until now, it is this absolutely frightening horror show of increasing temperature. That is what is happening when we talk about snowpacks. We talk about glaciers, we talk about coral, we talk about pine beetles, and we talk about 100 of these things where there is that feedback. All of those affect humans. Those aren't just some abstract things, like if a tree falls in the woods but nobody hears it, did it really happen? Did we really hear it? Does it matter? No.

These reverberate back on our quality of life in this planet, including security concerns. The civil war in Syria that produced millions of refugees trying to get to Europe started with an extended drought because of the stresses of a warming planet.

Our military weighs in and says that climate chaos accentuates all the security concerns we have. It creates instability around the world. If one doesn't want to listen to the scientists, how about if we listen to our own military?

That is what the discussion of Senator Carper's resolution is all about. That is what the Green New Deal is all about. The Green New Deal says a few simple things. It says we have a big problem. Check. Yes, we do. It says we need to take it on boldly and aggressively. Check. Yes, we do. It says when we take it on boldly, we can create millions of jobs, and that will be a good thing for our economy. Check. Yes, it is.

Creating those jobs is good. It says when we do that, we shouldn't leave our frontline communities behind. We should make sure those communities--rural communities and inner-city communities that have been left behind previously in different economic expansions--can't be left behind now. Check. That is absolutely right.

Let's make this economic surge benefit everyone in every community, with special attention to communities that have been struggling.

My colleague is here from Virginia. I am so glad he is. I am talking a lot about what is happening on the west coast of America. Perhaps he will fill us in a little bit on the perspective from the east coast. This is not one isolated spot on our planet. This is a concern to all of us. We need bipartisan work on this. Some suggest we put a fee on carbon. Let's have that conversation. Some suggest we provide more subsidies to renewable energy. Let's have that conversation. Some say we should do a green workforce--green corps training. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about every strategy we can bring to bear and come to a collective plan because there is no space in the urgency of this issue for us to retreat into blue and red corners. There is no time. It is unacceptable.

I feel it is such a privilege to come to this floor and be part of this conversation, and I encourage all of my colleagues to do likewise. There are few issues that threaten us on this scale, but this one does. Let's work together to save our country and save our planet.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, how do we make our communities, our States, our Nation, and our planet better for our children? How do we make it better for our children's children and their children? Isn't that the task we have in the U.S. Senate, to make things work better, not worse?

We have this question before us: Do we have a carbon pollution problem? What is the answer, yes or no? I ask each of my colleagues, yes or no?

Presiding today is a new Member of the Senate from Florida. I have been down to Florida. I will tell you that I heard about the rising seawater polluting the aquifers and creating freshwater supply problems for communities in Florida. I heard about coastal erosion. I heard about coral reefs being damaged and the fish offshore. I heard about the toxic red algae on the gulf side--so toxic it is killing fish and dolphins and turtles and manatees, and they are washing up on the shore of Florida on the gulf side.

The people have two problems. The toxic algae is creating breathing problems, and then there is a stench arising from the dying sea life. People on the gulf side of Florida say: We have to take inland vacations.

I know my colleague presiding today knows about these issues in his State because we see the impacts of carbon pollution and climate chaos in every single State. We certainly see it in my State. We see it through the more powerful forest fires--hotter, more acreage, and more destruction. We see it in the smoke affecting the communities and the economies throughout Oregon. Of course, we saw the devastating forest fires in California, wiping out the town of Paradise and afflicting so many other communities.

It is not just the impact on the natural world; it is the impact on the people. When you affect the fisheries, you affect the fishermen. When you affect the forests, you affect the timber industry. When you proceed to produce conditions of more floods and more droughts, you affect the farmers and ranchers of America. It is the people of America.

How about the Panhandle of Florida. It was wiped out by a more powerful hurricane, driven by those warmer ocean temperatures. What does one say to them--that there is not an issue; that we don't have a problem?

The entire scientific community of the world has said you can see the facts on the ground, but we don't need them to see the facts on the ground. We see it through the everyday impacts on Americans, on our farmers, our ranchers, and on our communities plagued by smoke or wiped out by hurricanes.

So we do have a problem. The answer is, yes, we do have a problem. If you say there is no problem, then your head is stuck in the tar sands, and you are failing your responsibility not just as a U.S. Senator, you are failing your responsibility as a human being. You are failing your constituents if you think there is no problem, while their lives and their economy are being so dramatically impacted by this issue.

I ask my colleagues, did you come here to fail your constituents, to fail as a Senator, to fail as a human being to address this issue? Did you come to fail, or did you come to take on the issues that face us and build a better world for your children?

If you believe there is a significant challenge, what are you doing about it? What actions are you planning? Because if you believe there is a problem and you are not putting forward a plan to address it, then your leadership is a failure.

So we have a choice on the Republican side of the aisle. Is it that you are too obsessed with the power of the Koch Brothers to address the needs of the citizens of the United States of America, that you have your heads stuck in the tar sands? Is that the issue, or is it that you want to sit on the sidelines? You know there is a problem, but you want to sit on the sidelines and do nothing, in which case you are a failed leader.

So how about reject ignorance, and how about reject failed leadership and come together to make a better world for our children. That is what we need to do, all of us, together, because the impacts we see from carbon pollution and climate chaos--those are not impacts affecting blue America or red America; they touch the lives of every citizen, no matter which political party they belong to. It is going to affect every child we have now and every child born in the future, whether they register as a Democrat or a Republican. We have already wasted decades in getting at this issue. Let's waste no more time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I want to begin by recognizing two members of my team who will be leaving at the end of this week--Tricia Peebles and Adrian Deveny--who are on to new adventures and new opportunities to make the world a better place.

Tricia has been with me on my Senate team for over 10 years--since I came to the Senate just over 10 years ago. Before that, she was with me on my team when I was speaker in Oregon for 2 years. So it has now been a dozen years of working together. From the very beginning of this wild ride, she has been with me as my State scheduler. I don't know how I could have done any of it without her.

When you are inventing a State Senate office from the ground up and you need someone with imagination, creativity, and commitment, well, Tricia has all of those in spades. Out in Oregon, she is not only the gatekeeper and defender of my schedule, she is a real advocate, making sure I connect with and hear from and work with Oregonians from all walks of life, Oregonians from every corner of our beautiful State. She has used her uncanny knowledge of the map of Oregon and small cities to get me to townhalls in each of Oregon's 36 counties year after year for 10 years straight. She has done so with military precision. Seriously, it is amazing. Name any two cities in the State, and Tricia can tell you how long it takes to drive between them, any potential road hazards, and most importantly, the nearest Subway sandwich shop so the team can stop and get a bite to eat.

It is always tough to lose an original member of a team, and I honestly don't know how we are going to fill the very large space that will be left in her absence, but I am very excited for her as she takes on her next adventure and wish her nothing but the best.

Adrian Deveny joined my office back in March of 2011. Here we are, almost 8 years later, and he has been an indispensable member of my team. In his 8 years, he has been leading our efforts to tackle the greatest challenge facing humankind on this planet--the challenge of carbon pollution and climate chaos.

He has taken us through initiatives, such as the Keep It in the Ground Act, which said that we as citizens of the United States must no longer profit from leasing out the fossil fuels that we own for extraction and combustion because it contributes to the problem, and the 100 by `50 Act, which said that we need to get to 100 percent renewable energy and that we need to do so by the

year 2050 or earlier and laid out a detailed roadmap on how to do so in each section of the energy economy.

He tirelessly advocated for programs that had real, direct impacts on people's daily lives, whether it was the Rural Energy Savings Program, which created the opportunity throughout rural America for families to upgrade the insulation in their homes and businesses to save energy and have it paid for in large part by those savings in energy, or reforming our Nation's outdated chemical laws with the significant reform of TSCA, where he played a central negotiating role to try to get us from the starting line to the finish line, or helping make electric cars more affordable.

He did all of this and so much more and always with the type of steady disposition, cheerful attitude, nothing but kind words, and support for his teammates that really helped him to be a key facilitator with staff throughout the Senate. He has been the calm in a chaotic storm of a Senate office. It will be tough to see him go, but he won't be going too far away--just moving over from our office in the Hart Office Building to the minority leader's office, Chuck Schumer's office, here in the Capitol to help lead the Democratic caucus's collective efforts on issues related to energy and the environment. So our loss on Team Merkley is the Senate's gain.

A big thank-you to Adrian for all of his hard work on behalf of the people of Oregon and on behalf of a better world, a better energy policy, a better environmental policy, a policy that points at taking on the biggest challenge facing human civilization on this planet.

Thank you, Adrian, for all of your work to save our beautiful blue- green planet.

Climate Change

Mr. President, the most important words in our Constitution are the first three, ``We the people,'' written in supersized font so we won't forget about the core mission of our Constitution--a nation that, in President Lincoln's words, is designed to be ``of the people, by the people, for the people.'' Well, in a ``we the people'' nation, it is the responsibility of government and its leaders to put the interests and well-being of its citizens first.

In July of 1932, while accepting his party's nomination for the Presidency in the height of the Great Depression; after the stock market had crashed, losing almost 90 percent of its value; after 11,000 American banks went bust; after nearly a quarter of the United States was unemployed, Franklin Roosevelt called for ``a new deal for the American people.'' He said that they were living in ``unprecedented and unusual times'' in which we must ``highly resolve to resume the country's uninterrupted march along the path of real progress, of real justice, [and] of real equality.''

Well, in our ``we the people'' Nation, we are once again finding ourselves in unprecedented and unusual times, and a big factor is the ravages of climate chaos, carbon pollution and the chaos that ensues from that wreaking havoc not only on the environment but on the lives of Americans all across our Nation. We see it in the wildfires that are burning longer and hotter than ever before, not just affecting our forests and the jobs in our forests and our forest economies but at times incinerating entire communities, such as Paradise, CA. Even when such a dramatic event doesn't occur, there is significant damage to our cities, their economies, and their people's health from the smoke.

We have seen over time that the average number of large wildfires has grown. Back in the decade of the 1980s, there were about 140 per year. Now here we are after the turn of the century looking at nearly twice that--250 major wildfires per year on average. And the fire season has gone from roughly 5 months in the early 1970s to 7 months. This is just characterizing the impact of longer, hotter summers--one impact of climate chaos.

We also see climate chaos in the oceans. They are growing hotter year by year. They are growing more acidic year by year as carbon dioxide becomes carbonic acid, actually changing the chemistry of the ocean. We have found that the oceans are about 30 percent more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution, affecting our coral reefs and our shellfish.

A recent study found that the planet's oceans are heating up even faster than we anticipated--40 percent faster than we thought just 5 years ago. Now, 2018 broke the record for the warmest ocean temperatures. It beat out the previous record holder of 2017, and that 2017 record broke the previous record holder of 2016. Rising temperatures don't just harm our sea life; they are impacting citizens through impacts on the fishing industry, impacting the coastal communities for which coastal activities are their lifeblood.

I was down on the gulf coast of Florida where they had a red tide that has been in place for 10 of the last 12 months. A red tide essentially is toxic algae that produces toxins that float inland and irritate the lungs and aggravate the asthma of those living near the seashore, and it kills sea life. In addition to the toxins from the red tide, they have dead manatees, dolphins, fish, and turtles washing up on the shores and decomposing, adding to the stench. People on the gulf coast of Florida take inland vacations that at times extend to months to escape the consequence of the red tide, and it causes a huge impact on the economy of those coastal cities.

We see chaos in extreme weather events, massive storms like Harvey and Irma and Maria, which in that year cost our country $265 billion in damages, took the lives of thousands--thousands in just Puerto Rico-- and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes in the gulf and the Caribbean. We also see it in wild temperature swings in communities like Chicago. Last summer, Chicago experienced recordbreaking heat and then was hit with a recordbreaking polar vortex. This is climate chaos.

We the people, we the farmers, we the foresters, we the fishermen, and, of course, we the frontline communities of America, minority and low-income communities, whose health is being impacted, feel the impact, a devastating impact, and bear the brunt of climate chaos.

So it is now another time for a new deal for the American people to take on this massive, immediate threat to our people and our planet--a threat we cannot delay responding to.

This time, it must be a Green New Deal--a Green New Deal that not only transitions America to an energy economy that is powered by 100- percent noncarbon, clean, renewable energy, but a Green New Deal that creates millions of good, living-wage jobs in the process and continues our Nation's march along the path of real progress, real justice, and real equality.

Let's think, for a moment, of what the core principles are when we say the words ``Green New Deal.'' Here are some of the core issues.

The first is an energy shift that utilizes today's technology and utilizes and improves our electric grid and our transportation system from ones powered by fossil fuels to ones powered by renewable energy. A key principle of the Green New Deal is that of an energy shift to solar and offshore wind, wave energy, tidal energy, and geothermal energy--all potentially contributing to the noncarbon electricity to power our Nation.

Here is the good news. The cost of noncarbon, nonfossil fuel energy has dropped. It has fallen about 90 percent over the last decade. It has gone from 35 cents per kilowatt hour with solar energy to about 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. That is a massive change. Wind has fallen about 70 percent, and now it is down to 2 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour. What does this mean? This means that a decade ago, the costs were above the costs of burning fossil fuels. Now they are below or are even with the costs of burning fossil fuels because it is about 10 cents per kilowatt hour to create electrons from coal, and it is about 5 cents from natural gas. When you have wind at 2 to 4 cents and solar at 3 to 5 cents, you are competitive, and that means we can choose not only the energy that is best for the planet and best for our health but that is also the smartest investment for our economy.

This is where we are now. We can pursue the smartest investment. If you don't have any understanding of the impact of the climate chaos that is devastating our resources and our cities and our people, you can still choose green power, because it is the smartest economic decision.

The second core principle of the Green New Deal is to create millions of

jobs. Our President likes to talk about jobs, and we need his help in actually creating jobs by renovating our energy economy, by investing in these technologies, and by advancing these technologies. It is so we are selling them to the world rather than buying them from the world. It is so they are employing people in the United States of America rather than employing people in China. We want this revolution to be here, driven by the United States of America--by red, white, and blue ingenuity and innovation. It is not for us to be on the receiving end of technologies that are developed elsewhere, and it is not for us to be on the receiving end of products made elsewhere.

In creating these jobs, we need strong protections for American workers. We want these jobs to be living-wage jobs. We want to see workers able to organize and able to unionize so as to make sure these are family-wage jobs, because a good-paying job is better than any government program for a family's foundation to thrive.

Right now, renewable industries are booming. Jobs in solar and wind are growing 12 times faster than is the rest of the economy. Over 3 million Americans now work in renewable energy and energy efficiency, outnumbering fossil fuels 3 to 1. This is the future of jobs in the United States of America. This is the future of good-paying jobs in the United States of America. Just think of how many more jobs we can create down the road if the United States is leading the world, not following. Let's be the leaders in this green technology revolution. Like Roosevelt's New Deal with the Works Progress Administration, which created jobs that paved a path for the economy to recover, the Green New Deal will drive tens of millions of good-paying jobs for Americans in the decades ahead.

The third big principle is that no one gets left behind in this revolution. It ensures that all Americans have the benefits of the new green economy and that the hard-working Americans who are in the fossil fuel industry and have provided the power that has taken our Nation so far forward have the respect for what they have accomplished and have the opportunity for jobs in the future. It is a just transition into good-paying careers and for communities that have been stumbling in their efforts toward economic progress but have been bypassed in the economy of the past.

They will not be bypassed in the green economy of the future because the point is to design that economy so that those communities can benefit from the clean energy and can benefit from the jobs that the Green New Deal creates. That includes there being access to clean public transportation, community development investments, and the ability of low-income families to not only receive clean energy but to get the clean energy jobs and job training and apprenticeship programs and healthcare and housing that everyone in America should have access to.

Those are the three core principles of this vision. They are the three core principles that will take us forward quickly and productively and will put us in the economic lead of the world. It is a lead we are losing as we stumble--trapped by fossil fuel special interest money and its control of Congress. There are those who say this vision is too bold, that this vision is too far-reaching, but let us think of what Robert Kennedy once said: ``Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.''

For the sake of our planet and our Nation and our families and the ``we the people'' vision of our government, let us dare, and let us dare greatly.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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

Mr. President, I was just over in the Russell Senate Office Building, and a group of freshmen from the House intercepted me and handed me this piece of paper, this document, and asked that it be made part of the Record of the Senate, and I have come to do that.

Let me explain that these freshmen House Members want to see the Senate engaged in debate on how to end this shutdown of our government. They see in their home districts across this country tremendous damage occurring in all kinds of fashions--damage to security; damage to the economy; damage to families trying to get a home mortgage, and they can't get their FHA approval; damage to farmers who are seeking that loan that is necessary to prepare for the next farming season; damage in the preparation for next summer's forest fires.

I have been hearing about this from my home State. In Oregon, we just had a training for fighting fires canceled. We have prescribed burns that need to be done during the winter that are being canceled. We have thinning, which makes the forest more fire-resilient, that is being canceled. We have the reduction of fuels on the forest floor that add to the intensity of fires--the removal of those--being canceled. These just add more to the list of so many ways that folks are being affected across the country.

I am going to share this letter with the Presiding Officer and our colleagues. It says:

Dear Senator McConnell:

We write as Members of the Freshman Class of the 116th

Congress, an historic group that has the distinction of being

the first Congress to be seated in the midst of a partial

government shutdown.

We as a legislative branch have the power to end this

shutdown now. In December, the Senate unanimously passed

legislation that would have kept the government open. In

January, the House then passed those same bipartisan bills

and sent them to the Senate. If the Senate were to pass these

bills, we would be able to reopen the government and then

proceed to debate about immigration reform and border

security.

However, it is impossible to have a meaningful policy

discussion while the executive holds public servants hostage.

We respectfully request that you allow the Congress to work

its will and allow a vote on this bipartisan legislation to

end this shutdown so that we can end this manufactured crisis

and allow our devoted federal workers to get back to work for

the American people.

Sincerely Susie Lee, Member of Congress; Abby Finkenauer,

Member of Congress; Mikie Sherrill, Member of Congress; Mike

Levin; Jahana Hayes; Lori Trahan; Katie Hill; Ayanna

Pressley; David Trone; Ed Case; Gill Cisneros; Rashida Tlaib;

Kendra Horn; Angie Craig; Joe Cunningham; Chris Pappas; Andy

Levin; Susan Wild; Sylvia Garcia; Katie Porter; Debbie

Mucarsel-Powell; Ilhan Omar; Madeline Dean; Haley Stevens;

Greg Stanton; Josh Harder; Lucy McBath; Abigail Spanberger;

Chrissy Houlahan; Donna Shalala; Lauren Underwood; Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez; Veronica Escobar; TJ Cox, Dean Phillips;

Jahana Hayes; and then a few more people who have added their

names in script that I may not be able to read accurately.

In total, there are an estimated 46 signatures on this letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the freshmen of the House are speaking a lot of common sense in this letter. They are saying: Here we are, looking at bills that the Senate passed under Republican leadership and that the House has passed under Democratic leadership. That is the foundation for going forward. Let not the Senate leadership be the obstruction to common sense. Let not this Chamber sit empty, sit quiet, and sit without votes on these bills to put our government back to work.

They want to see the Senate have the courage to take positions, to be here and argue, to say yes or no, but we don't say yes or no if there is no bill before us, and that must confound these 46 freshmen, who kind of expected that after more than 200 years of organizing, we would have a Senate that could actually operate as a legislative body, not sit here vacant and quiet in the midst of a national catastrophe--a catastrophe of the Trump shutdown affecting so many families.

There are 800,000 families of Federal workers, hundreds of thousands more families of contractors, millions of Americans who simply want a core government service so that they can proceed with their lives--a business permit, a home mortgage, an agricultural loan, work being done to prevent forest fires, and a compromise to our national security in terms of our Coast Guard and our TSA agents. It makes no common sense for us to sit here without action.

I praise the House freshmen for bringing a fresh, intense, commonsense view to the conversation on Capitol Hill. Let their words be heard in this Chamber.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Celine Wolff, have privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.