Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to start debate on what is called the Congressional Review Act of the stream protection rule. For people who are probably saying ``I don't understand any of that; could you explain it to me?'' what we are going to do tonight is to start this debate, which is really about clean water, and it is about making sure that polluters clean up their messes, particularly when it comes to streams and the beauty we have in our country that is used by many people. And it is about making sure that rules for polluters paying are enforced in law and, clearly, agencies which have developed those rules in conjunction with laws that are already on the books continue to have those laws in effect.

We are in a new administration, and already the debate is starting where people would like this end result to be clean water, 0; Donald Trump, the new President, 1. That is because this administration is starting a war on clean water, and tonight that debate is coming to the Senate floor. It is coming to the Senate floor because the last administration worked for more than 5 years on producing something to make sure that we had safe drinking water and safe stream water for fishing and to make sure that industries that are known for polluting ensure that their level of pollution is cleaned up.

After more than 5 years in the implementation of that rule, after thousands and thousands of hours of discussion and debate, as it has become a rule, now there is one thing that can stop it. There is one thing that can stop it; that is, if Congress uses its authority under the Congressional Review Act to repeal it within the 60 days of legislative action that it has become effective.

What is happening is that the Trump administration and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to say that we want to repeal more than 5 years of hard work of clearly outlining a stream protection rule to protect streams in the United States of America from pollution caused by certain types of mining activity.

Let me show you a picture of what I am talking about. This stream could be anywhere in America. It could be anywhere in the United States of America. It is probably a good picture. Why? Because it shows the great outdoors. Probably for me, it is somewhere I would like to hike. It shows a stream, but it shows the degradation of that stream with the pollution in the stream.

Whether you are Trout Unlimited, which supported this rule, or you are the Wilderness Society, or all the hunting and fishing groups that supported this rule, or you are just one of the many citizens in a State where mining exists and you are happy that it exists there but you also want them to be clean up their messes--these are the people who do not want to see this level of degradation in the streams.

Why don't they want to see it? Because first and foremost they obviously don't want to see it, but if you are a fisherman and you are out fishing, you certainly don't want to see the impacts that selenium is causing on fish.

There are a couple of incidents here where the impacts of selenium on fish are shown in this diagram. Deformation both here in the tail and here in the mouth of fish are impacts from selenium in streams. We do not want to see selenium having that kind of impact on our fish.

What do we want to do? We want to make sure that we are measuring selenium in the streams and that we are cleaning it up. That is what we want to do. The notion that somehow people have described a rule for stream protection that is about having safe drinking water and having safe fishing water is about a ``war on coal'' is just wrongheaded. This is about making sure that we don't overturn something that took over 5 years to get in place. And I should say, it is the first time in 33 years that we have updated this rule.

For 33 years, the Department of the Interior has said that the hydraulic impact of mining on a stream should be mitigated. What has changed in the last 33 years is that we now have better technology and we have more information about selenium. We know that it impacts fish, and we want mining companies to measure their impacts on headwaters and make sure they are doing something to minimize this selenium impact.

I know people think that maybe in this process for 5 years--somehow that created a decrease in the amount of coal in the United States of America, even though the rule was just getting started. Let's look at the real issue. The real issue is that natural gas becoming cheaper in the United States of America has pushed down the demand for purchasing coal, a more expensive product that had nothing do with this rule.

I have been in business and, yes, you plan for the future. And if you think your business is going to have to increase its insurance or change its business practices, yes, you consider all of that, but this chart clearly shows that our electricity grid has gone from having 50 percent of it supplied by coal now down--as this line is crossing here--to about 30 percent of our electricity grid from coal.

This rule was not in place. Saying that you want to have safe drinking water has nothing to do with what has happened in the marketplace as natural gas has become a more viable option than coal. This chart shows it.

We have another chart that also shows this 23-percent decline in coal. Why? Again, because of natural gas consumption going up. For those on the other side who would like to say this is somehow about a war on coal, I will tell you, we should not denigrate anybody for the job that they have done to support their families. In fact, I believe we should make sure they have a pension, make sure they have health care.

It is a tragedy that we bailed out Wall Street from the U.S. Treasury, and as pension programs all across America imploded, nobody wanted to bail out the pension program for miners so they could retire with the kinds of health benefits that other people do. If we want to help individuals who are suffering in coal country, I suggest that we take care of their pensions.

In the meantime, what we should do is make sure we are preparing for the health and safety of people who depend on these streams for multiple uses; that is to say, there are those in an outdoor economy who count just as much on those streams and count on them not being polluted because of certain mining activities.

This chart can be shown in just about every State of the United States. The outdoor economy in our States--the people who like to go fishing, the people who like to go hunting, the people who like to navigate our rivers and want to do so when they are not polluted--is 6.1 million direct jobs in the United States. That basically dwarfs the coal industry.

This isn't about saying one job is better than the other, but the notion that somehow we are hurting our economy because we want to have clean streams and we want people to be able to safely catch fish without selenium in them is basically ignoring the facts. By not regulating the coal industry to make sure they are cleaning up their mess, you are hurting the 6.1 million jobs that depend on having clean streams.

I know people here probably understand that Montana is full of streams. That movie, ``A River Runs Through It,'' is iconic in the Northwest as an example of why people love the outdoors because they want to fish. They want the experience of going and being outdoors and having the wonder of that.

I personally have been in the streams of West Virginia and have had a fabulous time. I want other people to understand that these streams are worth protecting all over the United States of America. But the movie is not called ``A River Runs Through It and a Mine Sits on Top of It.'' We don't have people moving to Montana and buying ranches, making investments, hiring people, and diversifying because they want to see the mines in Montana. They want to see the beauty of the outdoors. They want it to be pure and pristine, and they want people to clean up their pollution. If we are talking about an economy and you want to talk about jobs, do not ruin the $80 billion in tax revenue that comes from an outdoor industry because you want to allow an industry to continue to pollute.

I am going to continue for the next year to make this point to my colleagues in the West who are going to try to overturn every rule they don't like because they think somehow that they want to claim it impacts jobs. We are going to have this discussion, and we are going to show that the outdoor economy is just as important and is actually producing more jobs and producing more revenue. The only point of conflict, I think, is when one impacts the other to the degree of creating pollution and then taking a beautiful stream away from us-- because no one wants to fish in a stream with that level of pollution.

Why are we here? We are here because certain types of mining-- particularly, mountaintop removal mining--make it way more challenging to protect those streams. As I mentioned, for the last several years, people have been discussing what to do to make sure that these companies are making sure the environmental impacts are minimized. The production of these mines has actually fallen a great degree in the last several years.

We have been working, as I said, during this time period to make sure that we implement the right kind of regulations so that people will clean up this mess. As I mentioned, it has been basically since the early eighties until this level of attention was given to a new rule. Why do we want to change a rule that was from 1983? Because it says that you must minimize the disturbances to the prevailing hydraulic balance at the mine site and offer areas and quality of water and ground water systems, both during and after the mining operations.

President Trump did not invent that. That has been in law all along. The notion that somehow that has changed is not correct. It has been in the opening days of the Trump administration that people are trying to say that stewardship doesn't matter, that somehow, yes, we want to have immaculate water

and immaculate air--as President Trump said--but it is OK if regulations cause a problem for business. What business? The outdoor industry or the coal industry? Because right now, you are talking about making a change to what is protection of those streams and repealing a law that is about safe drinking water. We don't want to eliminate that.

We want to make sure that we use the best technology available to minimize the disturbances, address the impacts on fish and wildlife, and any other related environmental issues. We know a lot more about mining and fishing. As I showed you one picture, I will show you another impact of selenium. Basically, it is showing the deformation. What we now know much more about is how selenium does impact these areas.

What is at stake if you kill the stream protection rule? Our sportsmen--groups like the National Wildlife Federation and Trout Unlimited--say this:

The resolution is an ill-conceived tool for jettisoning a

very useful rule that protects mountain head water streams

and communities throughout the coal country in Appalachia. We

urge you to oppose striking this rule, and to instead work

with the Department of Interior to protect these streams, and

make necessary improvements to improve the CRA, instead of

using it as a cleaver.

They go on to say:

150,000 passionate trout anglers work to conserve, protect

and restore our Nation's trout and salmon fisheries and their

watersheds. And our members give back to the resources they

love by investing dollars and hundreds of thousands of

volunteer hours to conserve streams.

So you can see that they feel passionately about this. They feel passionately because this is part of our outdoor economy and what people have passion about.

In my State, people would say: Well, you have these other jobs. No, actually, in our State, there are 250 abandoned mines in Washington. Yes, if we don't clean them up, and if we don't make sure there is reclamation, there is still pollution.

We have had a mine history in our State, but we want responsible mining and we want responsible cleanup. With today's rule that is in place and that you are trying to repeal--to repeal safe drinking water, basically--that would take those tools away and allow pollution to continue. What is the cost of that? It is very small. You would think that the way some people go on about this, that somehow this is astronomical amounts of money. Basically, it is about 0.1 percent of the industry's annual revenue. When you are in business, you think about your costs. You think about your cost of doing business. Yes, the cost of doing business has to include making sure that you clean up pollution. To me, this is an industry that makes way more than this in its annual revenue.

Am I empathetic to my colleagues who represent States that are changing in their energy mix and resources? Do you think we need to have a plan for that? Yes. Do I think we need to have a plan for how we are going to diversify? Yes, I do. But this is not an economic debate about how we are going to save jobs. In reality, as I showed in the chart before, the natural gas prices are driving coal to a much lower level of our electricity grid than ever before in our history, and that is not going to change.

Let's make sure we clean up our streams. Let's make sure we use the best technology available to make sure we are detecting that pollution and require people to have a minimal amount of responsibility in the cost of what it takes to make sure that selenium is not in drinking water or impacting our fish.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know my colleague from Oregon is around somewhere and wanted to speak on this rule, and when he shows up on the floor, we will certainly give him the time to do so. I want to make a couple of points while we are waiting for him.

First, in this discussion here with my colleagues, there is some discussion and I guess the start of what will be a continuing theme that somehow, if you get rid of regulations, we are going to restore competitiveness to the U.S. economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you ask businesses what we need to do to be competitive as a country, they will say: Make sure we have a great education system. Make sure we invest in R&D. Let's develop new technology.

If we look at where businesses are locating, they want to locate in beautiful, pristine places because they know that is where their employees will want to locate. So, first of all, that somehow the government is going to restore the economy by deregulating and letting polluters pollute is just not correct. It is not what America wants. What people want is to have safe drinking water, and they want an outdoor economy that is supported by having a great environment.

So I want to say a couple of other things. Obviously, this rule that we are talking about and that has been developed over a long period of time is an

improvement over the 1983 rule because it gives us a better idea on the pollution that is happening. Now, if people don't want to know that information, I guess that is OK. The court, counter to what my colleague from West Virginia said, did not say that it was suspending the rule. It said that it was still in effect, that the pollution had to be cleaned up. It said: Come back and look at the economic impact. But somehow, some are saying that the Supreme Court decision on the MATS rule gave EPA and others a get-out-of-jail-free card; you don't have to look at pollutants. They have to look at pollutants.

So what is this issue about? It is about clean water.

Mr. President, I wish to enter into the Record a couple of articles that I have seen from constituents. My colleague from West Virginia mentioned a few people. These are the real people in America who want this.

One of them is a gentleman named Ben Kurtz, who happens to be from Grand Junction, CO. This is what he says:

It's often said that drag is a fly fisherman's greatest

enemy. The truth, however, is that a wet fly or heavy drag is

irrelevant if you don't have clean water to fish. Our lakes,

rivers, streams and the fish that inhabit them are all

extremely sensitive to pollution. And right now, many of

these streams all across our country are being threatened by

dirty groundwater stemming from coal mines.

Despite this, it's been nearly a decade since the

Department of Interior has updated its Stream Protection

Rule--an inadequate, Reagan-era regulation governing impacts

to waterways from coal mining which was weakened even further

under the Bush administration.

For the last six years, DOI has been engaged in the process

of updating and gathering input on the rule, with the

ultimate goal of revising it to make it more effective, in

line with the challenges our waters face today as well as the

law Congress passed in the 1970s to create it. While it has

been a long time coming, that process now appears to be

coming to a close.

Once finalized, the revised rule would establish common-

sense new protections that would safeguard the health of our

waterways, and by extension, the communities that are

impacted by them. For example, the rule would strengthen

baseline requirements for water quality testing to ensure

that coal mining operations are not polluting streams in a

manner similar to that of the old hardrock mines throughout

the West.

In addition, the revised standards would require coal mines

to develop a plan for how to protect fish and wildlife while

also putting in place measures that will reduce impacts on

habitats and improve reclamation of mines that have

shuttered.

I mentioned earlier as a side note to this letter that we have 250 such mines in our State.

These proposed changes are just common sense: The rule is

low-cost (independent analysts have calculated that the

safeguards would cost between 1 and 60 cents per ton of coal

that's mined) and while the revisions are expected to result

in cleaner waters and improved public health, its impact on

jobs will be slim to none.

Still, the issuing of a strong final Stream Protection Rule

is not a foregone conclusion, as the coal industry is intent

on maintaining the status quo. Were that to transpire it

would mean streams that are at greater risk of being polluted

with coal mine waste and runoff.

Taking all of this into account, it's clear that whether

you're a fly fisherman or not, the revised rule is something

we should all support. Cleaner waters not only mean better

fishing but cleaner and healthier communities too.

Speaking on behalf of my fellow fly fishermen, I applaud

the Department of the Interior for its ongoing efforts to

enact sensible safeguards that protect the federal lands we

all support and enjoy. It's time for DOI to push the Stream

Protection Rule update across the finish line so we

fishermen--

Obviously, this letter was written before that--

can go back to worrying about the little things--like what

color fly to cast--rather than fretting over groundwater

pollution that threatens our vibrant ecosystems and

jeopardizes our health.

Well, I think Mr. Kurtz said it the best.

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

Mr. President, I can read others, but these are the people who are concerned about this rule. These are the individuals who want to know whether we are going to do our job and to say that polluters must pay. I believe that if we have the technology and the rules to do that, why would miners object? Why would the mining industry object to having the correct information?

I will read another letter from a Montana rancher this time.

As a long-time rancher of north of Billings, water supply

has been a 70-year-old struggle for my ranch. The coal

industry has posted a threat to my water supply since the

1970s, and more recently increased mining, spurred by fast-

growing markets and the export to Asia, which has sparked

water damage across the West. The limited water we are

talking about in the West makes it doubly valuable and in

need of protection. As the saying goes: ``Whiskey is for

drinking and water is for fighting.'' So it is absolutely

essential that we protect the water we have, and sometimes

that means a stronger rule from the Federal Government.

Most cattle ranchers in the Bull Mountains where I live

rely on a combination of wells and natural springs to water

our livestock. And like other nearby operations, my ranch is

currently being literally undermined by coal mines using

massive and destructive long wall machines that make it

difficult for efficient mining because of surface

disruptions, impairing coal aquifers, subsiding recharge

areas, and they pull surface streams underground. I can think

of no industry that degrades water in such a reckless and

cavalier way as the coal industry. From acid mine drainage

and thousands of mines' buried headwaters across Appalachia,

to eating streams on the prairie that are destroying wells

and springs in Montana's Bull Mountain.

While Montana surface mining laws require reclamation of

the area over long mines, reclamation is a slow and uncertain

process, and water in the existing mines in Montana has not

been reclaimed, according to the bond-released statistics.

These proposals for mining are to be included along these

rivers and even moving along tributaries, to get it out of

the way of coal mining. In Wyoming, Angelo Creek is slowly

being eaten by a coal mine. With all of it as a backdrop, I

am happy to see the proposal by the Department of the

Interior to update this regulation put in place over 30 years

ago.

So the proposed Stream Protection Rule would safeguard

communities from destructive coal mining practices and keep

pace with our current science and modern mining practices.

These new rules would minimize impacts to surface and

groundwater such as springs on my property by requiring

companies to avoid mining practices that permanently pollute

and diminish streams, requiring coal companies to test and

monitor the conditions of streams that their mining might

impact before and during and after operations.

The proposed rule would also require companies to restore

streams and other waters that they were using and that were

capable of supporting, like in the ranching area, prior to

the mining activities. The Department of the Interior could

also improve parts of the stream protection rule by providing

technical assistance.

It is very well to have good standards and test these out

in rules, but if they are poorly implemented on the ground

and over time, the results will be like no rule. So the

Interior Department's work to update and modernize these

decade-old rules and regulations is absolutely essential if

we are going to keep a bad situation from getting worse.

Clean water in the West is too precious to let coal companies

pollute it or diminish it.

This happens to be from a woman named Ellen Pfister who has a cattle ranch in the Bull Mountains area of Shepherd, MT.

So these are just two examples of people who really want to see us do something. Why? Because clean water is so important to them. It is so important to the outdoor economy, and it is important to this particular rancher who wants to make sure that clean water is an aspect of their farming.

There are a couple of other points I wanted to make about the rule and this notion that somehow overregulation has destroyed the pension program. It is so amazing that here in the Senate, somebody thinks that overregulation could blow that big of a hole into the pension program. The pension program had a more than 23-percent drop in the implosion of the economy in 2008 and 2009. So that kind of hole was there before this process. It is sad that now miners who are going to reach a retirement age won't have a pension to retire on. I think it is appalling that we bailed out Wall Street and we don't want to help with a pension program that basically took a major hit during the downturn. What are we saying to people? We don't care about those pensions, but we will turn over the keys to the Treasury to someone else?

So the notion that, somehow, standing up for clean water is equated with the pension program is just not true. We support those workers. We will do anything to help them from all aspects of that picture, including giving them a pension and making sure they have health care and retirement. We have had that discussion, and many of my colleagues had that discussion here late into the night just at the end of last year. I am sure that we are waiting for a response from Leader McConnell as to when he is going to put that kind of legislation on the Senate floor. But, unfortunately, what we have instead is a rule trying to hold back making sure that we have safe drinking water, safe fishing water, and an outdoor economy that can count on these things.

I thank my colleague from Hawaii for being here earlier and talking about this issue, as well as my colleague who is the ranking member from the EPW committee, Senator Carper from Delaware, making an eloquent statement and talking about the West Virginia economy, as he is a native of West Virginia, and now my colleague from Oregon, who is also addressing this issue. I appreciate their coming to the floor tonight and being part of this discussion.

This is so important to all of us and really to all of our country. I think making sure that people understand how important clean water is to various aspects is so important. So I thank my colleague from Oregon.

How am I recorded?

This is not business as usual.

You are stealing health care from Americans. I vote no.

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

Mr. President, I look forward to having this discussion this afternoon about the Affordable Care Act and the many votes and actions that are going to be taking place. I especially look forward to having this discussion with the Presiding Officer because I know his State is greatly impacted by the health care delivery system and its shortfalls, and I look forward to discussing with him some of the many ideas that our colleagues have.

I will say this at the outset of my comments. I am willing to work with anybody to improve our health care delivery system. I am willing to discuss with anybody what we need to do to improve the quality of health care for Americans, and I am specifically interested in making sure that we improve the outcomes of many Americans' health care and that we also lower costs.

It has been the hallmark of what the Northwest health care delivery system has been all about. Yes, that is right. We get less money and deliver better outcomes. It is not because we all like to hike, although there are many Washingtonians who like to hike. It is because we have had to make do with less, and we have built a better system. We hope the rest of the country can move forward along similar lines.

So I am here to talk about the Affordable Care Act and the many aspects of it that are so important to our Nation in actually slowing health care costs and reducing our deficit. That is one of the cornerstones of why we did delivery system reform and why we did health care reform. We needed to slow the rate of health insurance increases, and we needed to lower the costs for us as a nation as well for the private sector. That was the task at hand. So to my colleagues who are ready to repeal all that, I ask you to wait. I ask you to stop and think about what we are doing, and before you repeal, think about what we are going to put in its place because this is such an important issue.

What does the Affordable Care Act mean? One of the aspects that I think is getting lost in this debate is that people are talking about what has happened in a percentage of the individual market. They are talking about the plans as they related to last October and what happened with rate increases. Some people said: Oh, well, a lot of providers went out and offered a lot of low-ball coverage costs and came back with higher rates later. Some people said: Some of the pools aren't big enough. Some people said: Well, the coverage we are going to guarantee is going to help. But the issue is that the Affordable Care Act is much more than just what we tried to do in the individual markets. It is about providing affordable coverage, but it is also about reducing costs, improving the health care delivery system, protecting women's health, and saving the taxpayers money. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will think about all of these issues--providing affordable coverage, reducing costs, improving the health care delivery system. I warn my colleagues that if you repeal the Affordable Care Act and take away its improvements to the delivery system, you are going to balloon the deficit, and that is something that we cannot afford.

What am I talking about when I say ``affordable coverage''? Well, let's take Washington State, for example. I am sure the Presiding Officer could take his State also, but in our State, there are 3 million Washingtonians with preexisting conditions who are guaranteed coverage; there are 50,000 young adults who can keep coverage through their parents' plans; and more than 600,000 Washingtonians have been covered by the Medicaid expansion.

To me, the Medicaid expansion is about simple math. Medicaid is expanded because it is the most cost-effective, economical way for that population to get health care coverage and to be part of the health care system, keeping our costs down and keeping that population healthy.

Depending on what State you are from and what philosophy you have as an individual, you may not be for Medicaid expansion. There have been many times that across the aisle we have been able to come to terms on Medicaid expansion and on the CHIP program because we believe that having a healthier population is a good economic policy for our Nation. After the Affordable Care Act implementation, we actually have results, studies, and analysis by various States in the Nation that have said that expanding the Medicaid population has helped our economy and has helped our States overall. So I would say to my colleagues, please do not repeal the Medicaid expansion. Please do not put these people back on the street with their health care problems and health care issues and increase the cost of uncompensated care. That is not a strategy.

What else do we want to do? We want to drop the rate of uninsured Americans. The Affordable Care Act has done that, decreasing by more than 40 percent the number of uninsured Americans. Less than 9 percent of Americans are now uninsured. In our State, the uninsured rate has dropped to 5.8 percent, which is a nearly 60-percent decrease. For us in the State of Washington, we have more people covered. The Affordable Care Act is covering more people, so we have taken more people out of the uninsured market.

The way the other side of the aisle would like to describe this is that the whole thing is falling apart because of some changes and shifts in the individual market, but the facts are there that the law is not only expanding coverage but lowering costs. Looking at what health care costs would have been over the last decade has always been a tricky issue. The rates of health care costs were going up. I like to say that we may want health care costs to keep pace with the rate of inflation--and I will give health costs a little bit of an inflationary bump because of technology and new innovation. It is not the same as the rate of inflation for everything else, but at the same time, we shouldn't be seeing double-digit increases in the costs of health care. Our goal was to change the system to the degree that we would see health care costs more in line or a little bit above the rate of inflation.

This chart shows the national expenditures for health care on the dotted line on these actual and most recent projections of what the health care system is doing now compared to what it would have been before the Affordable Care Act. So again, people are debating over what these increases are, when in reality we were seeing double-digit increases, and now we are seeing the cost growth of health care go down.

So going back to the chart for a second, this projection is so big because of many factors. This is about changing the delivery system; this is about making sure that there are not exorbitant amounts of uncompensated care; and this is about making sure that we don't overspend on the health care delivery system. I can imagine that for some States this must be the most frustrating issue, particularly if the reimbursement rate has led to a population that is constantly underserved because no one wants to see those patients. We in the Northwest have had that frustration because we get somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000 less--maybe even more--per Medicare beneficiary than many other States in the country. That has led to a situation where people don't even see Medicare beneficiaries in parts of our State. That is right. People have to travel a great distance to find a doctor because they can't find one because of the Medicare reimbursement rate.

My solution is, if we are providing health care in my State with better outcomes and lower costs, I shouldn't be penalized for that; I should be rewarded. Every other State should try to practice medicine that actually helps us lower the costs.

So why are we working on this issue? The Affordable Care Act has contributed to slower cost growth. Medicare spent $473 billion less in the 5-year period from 2009-2014 compared to the benchmark--compared to what would have been done if we did nothing. So, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I know you are all for repeal. Where will you replace this money? Where are you going to come up with those savings? If you come to the floor and say that you don't want to repeal the delivery system reform that we fought so hard for and crafted, that you are willing to make those changes and keep the delivery system, we will be listening with open arms and great receptivity because there are many people on this side of the aisle who have worked very, very hard on these reforms.

In the private sector, we have also slowed the rate of growth in insurance premiums. I am talking now about the employer-based plans. We slowed the rate to one-third of what it was before.

Individuals are seeing lower increases than what they would have had to pay before these reforms.

So what is the debate about now? What we are trying to do in health care reform is improve health care by decreasing costs, having better patient outcomes, and helping doctors spend more time with their patients than with their paperwork. This is critically important because what we are seeing in the United States is doctors spending more time on the paperwork of the system than on the actual outcomes of their patients.

We want everybody to have a medical home. We want everybody to have a delivery system that rewards outcomes, and that is what we are driving for, but the debate in Washington has not been over this issue of where Americans get their insurance coverage. As you can see from this chart, 49 percent of Americans get insurance through work, 34 percent of them through Medicare and Medicaid and other public programs, and then a much smaller percentage are uninsured or in the individual market. The debate now is over the individual market. The debate is over the 7- percent number.

In some States, the individual market was out of whack for a variety of reasons. Maybe the risk pool was too small, maybe insurers went too low on their original estimates, maybe they made some changes that didn't work in that marketplace, but that doesn't mean we throw out all of the Affordable Care Act that is doing such great work just because 7 percent of the population in the individual market needs further attention. It doesn't mean that we repeal all of this. It certainly doesn't mean that we give this uncertainty to the American people about whether they are going to have health care coverage and give the illusion that the other side of the aisle is doing anything but taking the system and capping Medicare and Medicaid, giving out a check that never keeps pace with inflation, and then taking the savings from the system and channeling it into corporate tax reform relief. No, no, no, no, no. We need to make the health care delivery system work for the American people, deliver better outcomes, and continue to make reforms.

What are the innovations that we are talking about in the delivery system? Well, my colleague, the Presiding Officer, will know, because he understands health care, that the innovation in health care is about everybody having a medical home. Why do you need a medical home? You need a medical home because you need to be seen, not by the emergency room physician but by your doctor and someone who is going to understand your health care needs.

We need to make investments in primary care and prevention and wellness. I am sure the Presiding Officer understands that we don't have enough primary care providers in the United States. We need to change our system for the GME; that is, graduate medical education, so we can get more primary care providers.

We also need to focus on health and wellness. That is what the Affordable Care Act does. It starts to look at the system and rewards prevention and wellness. The Affordable Care Act says: OK, let's try to do this in a new way. Accountable care organizations aim for a global budget instead of all the paperwork that has to happen. A provision I authored, the Basic Health Plan, which is being used in the State of New York, is showing results in lowering

the costs of premiums, giving affordability to people well beyond what they were able to otherwise get.

The other idea is rebalancing nursing care to community-based care. Twenty-one States applied for and were approved to do rebalancing. A lot of these States were Republican States in the South that took the money from the Affordable Care Act and bought into this really smart notion. It says: Let's rebalance away from nursing home care into community-based care, and we as the Federal Government will help incent that. So all the Republican Governors that took that money from the Affordable Care Act to try to rebalance their population away from a very expensive delivery system to a new delivery system, are they now going to pay us back? Is that what repeal is going to mean, that we are going to ask them to pay us the money back or that we are going to forgo this notion that moving people out of nursing homes and keeping them in their community homes is more important?

I will tell you this. We have a problem of an aging population in the United States of America, and the best thing we can do is help change the delivery system so it is more cost effective for the future. That is what the Affordable Care Act did.

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, which is also a part of the Affordable Care Act, drove in some incredible efficiencies. The Secretary just spoke today at the National Press Club, talking about focusing on better managing care for many people affected with diabetes because they are one of the biggest cost drivers. So all of this innovation is part of the Affordable Care Act. Are we going to repeal that, too? Are we going to repeal all those health care delivery reforms that are helping reduce the cost of health care?

So what does repeal actually mean?

I am taking it from two different sources here; that is, a full Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act will increase the deficit by $350 billion over 10 years.

Why does the Congressional Budget Office and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget say that? Why do they say that? Why would they make such a claim? Because they know that built into the Affordable Care Act are changes to the health care delivery system that improve access, focus on better outcomes, and change our system for the better. We cannot afford to repeal this as a way to try to say to our base: This is a better way of delivering health care.

What does the Affordable Care Act come down to?

The philosophy we pushed through is to put the patient at the center of the health care delivery system so that it works for them. The repeal attempt by the other side is nothing more than basically saying we are going to come up with a model where you are not at the center of this, you are going to get a check that no longer pays for your full health insurance costs, you are going to get capitated and so is Medicare and Medicaid--or at least that is all we can get out of the other side right now about their plans.

It is very important to me that we do not repeal the Affordable Care Act and that we certainly don't repeal the Affordable Care Act without any idea what it is that we are going to be doing instead. We have millions of Americans who will not be covered, and we are going to throw away our whole system, which has managed to save private employers and individual families millions of dollars--I would say billions of dollars over the time period of this legislation and put us on the right track. If we have to make some changes and adjustments to the system, let's make some adjustments and changes to the system, but let's not throw out the entire legislation, and certainly let us not steal away the Affordable Care Act from the American people.

Basically, that is what repeal is. Repeal is stealing away the affordability they have been granted over these last several years and instead taking it for some other corporate interest. I hope it is not to stuff it into a tax reform bill to give relief to corporate America because that is not what we need. We need a delivery system that works for everyone. We need to save those individuals by making sure there is a cost-effective health care option for them and the marketplace, and I look forward to seeing real and serious legislation--not a poster board but a solution.

I love working with my colleagues who want to work on these ideas. I do. I will because this is a solvable problem. It is. We have shown that. We have enough results. We have to make some adjustments, but repealing is just stealing health care from hard-working Americans. I urge my colleagues to turn that down.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to applaud the President's veto of legislation that would have rubberstamped the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. This legislation allowed a circumvention of Federal review processes and allowed corporations not to adhere to various environmental safety standards that are important for the American people. So I am glad the President is vetoing this legislation.

The rules for siting cross-border pipelines are well established, and time and time again TransCanada has shown that it doesn't want to play by the rules. So with this veto by the President of the United States, he is clearly saying TransCanada must play by the rules.

The President's veto recognizes three important implications for Congress in the intervening and trying to pass this Keystone Pipeline process.

First, this bill was premature because it authorized the construction of the pipeline while legal and administrative processes were still ongoing in Nebraska and North and South Dakota and where landowners and tribes are seeking review in the courts and before regulatory bodies.

The legislation also eliminates the need for a national interest determination, which is associated with the process of the pipeline, which was a key authority for the U.S. Government to insist on safety and environmental regulations. It is a process that should have allowed the State Department and the President to insist on pipeline safety conditions.

Finally, this legislation did not address the loophole for tar sands oil companies to avoid paying for oilspill cleanups.

By vetoing this bill, the President refused to throw hundreds of conditions out the window. These are things from 59 different pipeline safety conditions that would have been legally binding--but not if the legislation had passed.

My colleagues also remember that we talked about work--that we now have concerns on the existing Keystone Pipeline. So I am glad the President of the United States vetoed this legislation.

I hope we will get on to working on other important energy opportunities. I hope my colleagues will not try to override this veto but instead focus on renewing the energy tax credits that help employ hundreds of thousands of people in various industries--anything from solar, to wind, to hybrid electric vehicles--and get on to the other issues that are so important for us in talking about a 21st-century energy strategy.

Again, I am glad the President of the United States has vetoed this legislation that would have been a rubberstamp by Congress for a special interest. Instead, let's make sure all environmental and safety conditions are met.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the importance of the issue of Net neutrality and the importance of it to our innovation economy.

The Internet is a $638 billion economic force, and according to the McKinsey Global Institute, it supports millions of jobs across our Nation. Setting the right policy for the Internet is critical for the continuation of American job creation in an innovation economy.

Over the next 24 hours, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to announce strong Net neutrality standards to support the growth of this innovation economy.

According to news reports, the FCC will establish clear rules of the road to ensure that no content is blocked and that the Internet cannot be divided into fast and slow lanes. This announcement would set a clear framework for the innovation economy and the millions of jobs that depend on it across our Nation. It would make a game-changing milestone for American innovators and consumers because a comprehensive plan would protect consumers while still allowing for flexibility of business growth and investment and making sure that American consumers and innovators are protected.

The Commission is expected to vote on this rule later this month, and I hope that all of our colleagues will be paying attention to this decision because this decision is not just whether I can download or use Netflix, it is really about equal access to the marketplace. It is about how the future

success of these innovators are determined.

Over the last few years, we have been debating the future of the Web, and that is because broadband companies have tried to leverage what is to be established as a two-tier Internet--those with fast lanes because of their ability to pay more and slow lanes for those who can't pay more.

I believe the President did the right thing. He called on the FCC to make the right decision when it comes to the Internet and protecting it from cable companies who want to overcharge or slow down connections. The FCC seems to be willing to make the right call, by protecting consumers and the Internet, under a new order which, just like a utility, would give consumers the ability to be protected from bad service or exorbitant fees. At this point in time, that is what we need to do to protect consumers.

According to the news reports, Chairman Wheeler will announce a plan to use the FCC authority in the most comprehensive way to protect Net neutrality, prohibit pay-to-play fast lanes, prohibit blocking and throttling, require greater transparency for consumers, and apply the rules to wireless broadbands so that smart phones are treated just like the browser on your desk.

This plan would cover what is known as the middle mile or Internet traffic or the companies that content providers, such as Netflix, pay to bring traffic to cable companies, such as Comcast, to connect to you, the end user. These important policies will provide certainty to a startup in business, and they will make sure that those products get equal access.

Last month I had a roundtable in Seattle with several startups and experts on Net neutrality, and many of those companies relied on the Internet to transform their ideas into successful businesses. They explained how the debate affects more than just tech companies. They said software is revolutionizing every industry, from retail to health care, everything from the way you pay for your coffee at Starbucks to how you access your own personal health information.

If we allowed a two-tier system to develop, the big guys would have the ability to pay more while the smaller customers would have disruptions. What we have done, hopefully with an announcement today, is to make sure we are putting a stake in the ground to protect consumers.

The CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association put it best when he said:

We have a multi-trillion dollar evidence base study that

says the current rules of the game--which mean open, neutral

access to the Internet--work.

I couldn't agree more.

Our innovation economy depends on equal access for all ideas. The proof is in the numbers. Over 6 million U.S. jobs are tied to the Internet. That adds up to a payroll of $558 billion. In the Seattle metropolitan area alone, from 2009 to 2014, there were 433 different venture capital deals related to Internet companies, totaling nearly $2.6 billion.

All of this growth in the Internet economy relies on an open Internet. That means no blocking, no throttling of these priorities. That is why I support strong net neutrality rules. They need to be responsible and efficient.

I thank Chairman Wheeler for his leadership in setting up strong rules. I hope this information on the Web continues to be one of our great economic engines and continues job development here in the United States.

A strong net neutrality rule is the best tool in the toolbox for preserving the openness of the Internet today. It will go a long way to help us continue our economic prosperity.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

I know originally we pushed the bill back, so I am happy to move it back to reclaim some of that time and help us. I know there are a few things which have been worked out, and we very much appreciate that.

I yield back our time.

Amendment No. 246

Given the results on other votes--given the vote on the Boxer and Booker amendments, and given everybody here, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the Cantwell amendment No. 131.

Madam President, I wish to speak also for a few minutes about what an incredible process this has been. As the Senator from Alaska stated, this was all a very unique experience, coming to a new Congress and being the very first bill up and everybody moving to that discussion. So I thank the Senator from Alaska.

Let's just say both sides of the aisle tested people on amendments and the amendment process, but I would say it was the trust we could negotiate that got us through a couple of rough spots and the fact that I could count on the Senator from Alaska for negotiating and trusting what she had to say about how we could move forward in getting those votes and getting things done. So I thank her for that and I thank her for her leadership. I certainly can't wait to work with her on broader energy policy legislation, because while I think people probably still look at us as representing the States of Washington and Alaska, what people may not realize is how intertwined Alaska's and Washington's economies are. So if there is anybody who can find commonality on energy policy, even given the difference of our States and the differences on each side of the aisle, I think the Senator from Alaska and I will have a chance to do that. I think this process we just went through bodes well for us trying to say to both sides of our aisles that there are things we can put on the table and discuss and a process we can go through, and that process can work. So I thank her for that.

I look forward to the many initiatives--in fact, we just had a hearing this morning. I said, with two women heading up this leadership on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and two women staff directors, multitasking is front and center in the U.S. Senate. I don't think a lot of people would see either of us out in the halls making declarations. I think we just hustled our way to the floor to try to get things done. I hope that is what we can do as we move forward through this process.

I too wish to thank certainly Karen Billups on the majority side staff. I hadn't had a chance to work with her yet in this capacity and I certainly appreciated her steady hand on that. I want to thank on our side our staff director, Angela Becker-Dippmann. The very first day-- like sometime in mid-January, I think--to come back to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and then have the first bill and have it right in front of us and not be totally staffed up, I certainly appreciate her leadership and her dedication to energy policy. Also, I thank Sam Fowler and David Brooks and Jared Leopold on my staff for their hard work on this.

I too have a list of staff that I wish to read quickly: Will Dempster, Clayton Allen, Renae Black, Elizabeth Weiner, Tara Billingsley, David Gillers, Al Stayman, Dan Adamson, Elizabeth Craddock, Nick Sutter, Aisha Johnson, Caroline Bruckner, Bryan Petit, Faye Matthews, and Carl Seip. There are also a couple of other people from my staff, Nicole Teutschel and Travis Lumpkin who also helped.

I really want to thank the floor staff. This is the first time I have managed a bill on the floor, so thanks to Gary Myrick and Tim Mitchell and Tricia Engle; and Reema in Senator Durbin's office, and Emma, thanks so much for helping us through a process that, as my colleague said, for the most part didn't take us way late into the night and we got a lot of things accomplished when we could during the day.

Needless to say, I am not as excited about the passage of this legislation as my colleague on the other side of the aisle, but we did find out some things during this process. We found out that the majority of the Senate doesn't think that climate change is a hoax. We couldn't quite agree on whether it is significantly caused by man, or just caused by man in some areas, but that was a step. We saw huge enthusiasm for energy efficiency. We saw that people were willing to accept voice votes or receive 95 votes on things that were energy efficiency items, so I think that bodes well for the Senator from Alaska and me thinking about more energy efficiency policy.

Obviously, I remain concerned about the holes in the legislation, everything from the things we didn't get to pass--the trust fund--and the fact that we still need to figure out oilspill cleanup processes on something like tar sands.

I appreciate the Senator from Alaska mentioning some of these issues as areas for continued work because we will definitely take her up on that process. And, certainly, we want to try to take up some of the issues our colleagues, such as Senator Peters, brought up and work on them moving forward. I hope this process, as it relates to this legislation--I hope our colleagues--coming from the State of Washington where we have so many coal trains and oil trains coming through our area, I wish the pipeline would be some remedy for us, but it is not. Even according to railroad statistics and other statistics, a pipeline is not going to make one dent in the number of oil trains coming to the Pacific Northwest. So the fact that the Commandant of the Coast Guard says we don't have a solution for cleaning up tar sands is something we want to work on and push forward on.

I hope we can get our colleagues around the fact that the number of crude oil incidents has been growing since 2009. It used to be we were having a decline and now, according to the Associated Press, we are seeing an increase; at least 73 different accidents in 2014, an 87- percent increase over 2009.

We are seeing these new sources being developed and new ways of transporting them, and huge acceleration, and I hope Congress will take a deep breath and get to these issues as it relates to safety and security outlined and into law. I hope we will have a chance to do that.

I still hope the President of the United States vetoes this legislation because, frankly, I want him to be able to negotiate. I want him to be able to negotiate with this company the terms and agreements by which this pipeline is going to be built. I want him to protect the American economy, I want him to protect the American farmers, and I want him to protect the American environment.

Again, I say to my colleague from Alaska that if she and I can get through these few weeks on a bill that a lot of our colleagues were predetermined on, but have so many different amendment discussions, then, yes, maybe it bodes well for a bigger bipartisan energy bill. I will certainly look forward to working with her on that.

I thank her for her leadership during a time period where she had many things on her plate, and this was just one of them. I hope we can get some of the issues we care about on our side of the aisle that I think really do lead to job growth, such as the energy tax credits, a focus on energy efficiency, and a focus of diversification also on the energy agenda.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Merkley amendment No. 125 be withdrawn.

Mr. President, speaking in opposition to this amendment, there is a reason why they call it a national monument. That is because it is a national process, and it is a national decision.

Yes, Presidents of the United States consult with Governors and consult with State legislators, but they are not required to have a bill or the authority of the Governor before they make a national monument.

Nearly half of our national parks, including the Grand Canyon and Olympic National Park, were designated under this Antiquities Act. Sixteen Presidents--eight Republicans and eight Democrats--have designated over 130 national monuments since Teddy Roosevelt signed this act in 1906.

I think it has worked well for the United States of America. Please turn down this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Carper amendment No. 120 be withdrawn.

Mr. President, this is a sweeping attack on millions of acres of land recommended for wilderness. This would nullify much of the Obama administration's plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and would also immediately abolish wilderness studies on BLM lands in 12 Western States. It would also abolish protection for 2.3 million acres in national wildlife refuges. These lands have been refuges, and they should be managed accordingly. So I would ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague from Alaska for her hard work in getting us through this process. I think our colleagues can see the daylight to finishing this up tomorrow, hopefully. I know Members have worked across the aisle on some of these remaining issues, and we are still trying to work a few of them out. So hopefully tomorrow will go as smoothly as today has.

I would like to turn now to my colleague from New Mexico to call up his amendment.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska for her work on this process and for her legislation. As she said, she and I have a gentlewomen's agreement to move forward, and we would like to do that so we can finish business on this legislation, and we are working in good faith on that process. Just as she said, we are going to work on getting the next amendment before us. I thank the Senator for her hard work.

I would like to turn to my colleague from California to call up her amendment.

Mr. President, before recognizing the Senator from California, I failed to say that there is no way this legislation would be where it is today, moving forward in the process, without the Senator from California. She has been a great adviser all through this process and a great protector and advocate of the issues we are interested in on the environment, on security, and on safety. I thank her for her leadership, and I look forward to supporting her on this amendment.

I would like to turn to my colleague from Michigan, if I could. We are going to offer a couple of amendments on our side and go back to the Senator from Alaska, but at this point in time I would like the Senator from Michigan, who has had a very devastating personal experience related to tar sands, to talk about his amendment and call up that amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 131.

Madam President, as my colleague said, we are going back and forth on offering amendments to this bill and I hope this process will lead us toward getting this bill wrapped up. I know many of my colleagues have been talking about various aspects of this legislation, and this particular amendment focuses on making sure that if this project goes forward that we meet certain environmental standards.

I can't say how important that is because the first serious delay in the approval process came because a bad route was selected. The pipeline was

originally proposed to go through an aquifer that is critically important to a large percentage of agriculture in the area. So this is very important to me, and that was a very glaring example that we need to get this right.

What was wrong then is that Congress was set to intervene and basically say the State Department was wrong and just go ahead and approve this pipeline. So I feel we are about at that same point again in saying just forget the administrative process and let us go ahead and deem this approved. So if Congress, rather than the administration, approves this pipeline, the American people will lose all the protections and conditions attached as part of the national interest determination.

Just so people understand, according to Executive Order 13337, the State Department can require permits to contain ``such terms and conditions as the national interest may . . . require.'' So the President can decide a pipeline is in the national interest if it is constructed to meet those specific standards.

In this case, the State Department's environmental impact statement outlined hundreds of conditions that should be met to ensure the pipeline is built to the highest safety standard. To quote the environmental impact statement:

If the proposed Project is determined to serve the national

interest . . . the applicant would be required to abide by

certain conditions listed in this Supplemental EIS and the

Presidential Permit.

So these conditions, or mitigation measures, as the report refers to them, are compiled in one section of the report and it highlights the measures TransCanada needs to take to deal with and reduce the impacts when they are operating this pipeline. These are higher standards for environmental and public safety that the company would be obligated to meet.

The problem is the bill before us would authorize the pipeline without those mechanisms and without those conditions. If TransCanada declined to meet these conditions, there would be no legal recourse for the injured parties to take TransCanada to court.

I wish to talk about those conditions that are included in the environmental impact statement so that my colleagues understand what we are talking about when they say they would vote to bypass this process. I will give three examples of the conditions included in the environmental impact statement.

First, along the proposed pipeline there are areas where the terrain is fragile. There has been a lot of discussion of the Sand Hills region of Nebraska and how difficult it would be to site a pipeline on those very fragile sandy soils. The Sand Hills are so fragile that the current route goes around them just to compensate. However, in southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska, there are areas that, according to the environmental impact statement, ``exhibit conditions similar to the Sand Hills Region and are very susceptible to wind erosion.''

Let me read from the appendix about how TransCanada would be required to operate the pipeline in those areas.

This document proves site-specific reclamation plans that

itemize construction, erosion control, and revegetation

procedures for those fragile areas . . . To reduce the

potential impacts related to severe wind and water and

erosion, the following summary . . . of best management

practices would be implemented during construction,

reclamation and post-construction.

This document then goes on to list 16 specific bullet points outlined that TransCanada must meet. These conditions for the Sand Hills-like area along the route include: avoiding wetlands, avoiding erosion-prone areas such as ridgetops, working with landowners to build fences to prevent livestock from the construction, providing compensation to landowners who need to let pastures rest until vegetation can be reestablished.

Most people would agree TransCanada should do these things. I think the American people would say follow the rules and do the things that are required. It makes sense to do these things for the protection of our environment and vulnerable areas and for the landowners whose livelihoods depend on the land around the pipeline. But if S. 1 became law, the State Department would not have the authority to ensure the things I just mentioned--that they build the fences, they compensate the ranchers as outlined, and the conditions be required that the State Department has laid out.

So the State Department, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and TransCanada are working on a plan to ensure the protection of endangered species along the pipeline route and these important things are part of what we want to see addressed. Implementation of an agreement that is designed to avoid harm to these species is what we are trying to make sure of if the President has the authority to issue a permit.

In contrast, the bill we are considering, S. 1, exempts the pipeline from further review under the Endangered Species Act. According to the State Department, the process that is now underway to establish these implementing agreements to protect these vulnerable species would stop--would stop--if this bill became law.

Finally, the conditions would require TransCanada to improve its safety standards. And my colleagues may not know that TransCanada received a ``warning letter'' from the Federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for violating pipeline safety regulations over a year and a half ago. As outlined in a September 26, 2013, letter from the administration:

TransCanada experienced a high rejection rate for welding

and failed to use properly qualify welders.

So in 1 week alone, 72 percent of TransCanada's welds had to be replaced. After TransCanada's shoddy work came to light, the State Department added 2 new safety conditions to the 57 conditions that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had already required.

One of those conditions required TransCanada to hire a third-party contractor to monitor pipeline construction and report back to the U.S. Government whether that construction is sound.

So this new condition was that TransCanada adopt a quality management program to ensure ``this pipeline is--from the beginning--built to the highest standards by both the Keystone personnel and its many contractors.'' But if this legislation is approved, this pipeline and all the conditions I just mentioned fall away. That is why I do believe that, with this legislation, we are acting prematurely. So I am offering this amendment.

Last week we had a very big reminder that pipeline spills do happen when 30,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Yellowstone River in Montana--not the first spill into that river, unfortunately.

So I ask my colleagues, why would we continue on a process without making sure that TransCanada follows the established safety issues on pipelines and we make sure that they comply with these environmental laws?

I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for this amendment. I hope my colleagues will stand with 61 percent of the American people who believe that due process is more important than special interests.

Madam President, I yield to my colleague from Alaska.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up on behalf of Senator Gillibrand amendment No. 48.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment amends the Safe Drinking Water Act to protect clean drinking water sources from hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, and from underground storage of natural gas.

The Safe Drinking Water Act currently exempts underground injection of fracking fluids and underground storage of natural gas from regulation under the act. The Gillibrand amendment repeals those exemptions and makes underground injection of fracking fluids and underground storage of natural gas subject to those regulations.

I know my colleague from New York has been on the floor many times-- actually three times, I think--at various times during this debate trying to offer this amendment. I am offering it on her behalf tonight. I am sure she will be looking for time to come and discuss it further.

Amendment No. 55 to Amendment No. 2

Mr. President, at this time I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 55 on behalf of Senator Peters.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, the Peters amendment No. 55 would require the EPA to complete a study on the environmental impacts of petcoke. My colleague has been here on the floor speaking on the tar sands issue in general because Kalamazoo had one of the worst tar sands oilspills in the Nation's history. He has been on the floor talking about the things we need to do to protect people not just in the State of Michigan but throughout the United States.

One of the aftermath effects of this issue is also petcoke, which my colleague from Illinois has been speaking to on the floor. This is a very big issue for midwest Senators who have an amount of petcoke in their communities and want to see the proper environmental treatment of it.

I am sure Senator Peters will be back to the floor to speak in more detail on amendment No. 55, but I offer it on his behalf.

I see the Senator from New Jersey, and I think he is here to speak on another matter, but I will yield the floor at this time.

If I could, I want to say to our colleagues who may have been following this process that we encourage people who haven't spoken or who plan on speaking to come down to the floor and do so.

I appreciate the Senator from Alaska working with us on this amendment process today.

I was going to give some comments in addition to my colleague from Alaska about the process and where we are and respond to some of the comments she has made. If the Senator from Rhode Island could wait a few minutes, is that possible?

I thank the Senator from Rhode Island. We are here tonight because we haven't ended debate on the Keystone Pipeline bill. We haven't ended debate because our colleagues voted to not end debate on this important measure, and I think for good reason.

Our colleagues from both sides of the aisle got to offer amendments last week, to discuss them, and have a chance to vote on them. I would say this is a very different process from what happened in December, where basically an up-or-down vote was going to be given on a process.

So I am glad my colleagues--like from Michigan where they had a major tar sands spill in their State--who want to offer amendments on pipeline safety can do so. I want my colleagues to be able to offer amendments as it relates to security and safety, particularly when it relates to safe drinking water and the issues of the pipeline.

Since this bill has been introduced, two major pipeline spills have been discovered. So just within the time we have been on this bill, 3 million gallons of brine spilled from a pipeline in North Dakota. That was discovered on January 6, the same day we started with this bill being introduced.

On Friday North Dakota officials discovered that the contamination from the spill reached the Missouri River. So on January 17, 30,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the Yellowstone River, a different incident, from a pipeline that broke in Eastern Montana. It temporarily shut down drinking water services for 6,000 people in Glendive, MT. So you bet these issues are important to me, and they are important to my colleagues. I hope we do not have to rush through the process of having a vote on these amendments. I think all of my colleagues see the Thursday night event, where the discussion was, let's get four or five amendments or six pending amendments and then coming back 1 hour later to table them is not the kind of legislative process we are used to here.

I hope in the next couple of days my colleague and I can work on these in a much more productive fashion, with the list of amendments that Members want to offer and a timely way to debate them. Hopefully my colleague from Alaska and I could actually work

with our colleagues, and either get some of them accepted or work for a vote schedule that would actually allow us to have the vote and have the debate as opposed to tabling.

This Senator is not arguing that any side does not have a right to table an amendment. I am simply saying: I think colleagues want to know what the process is going to be and whether they can discuss this.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a story that is about one of those pipeline spills. It is about the Federal Government issuing warnings to the pipeline company in November about the concerns regarding those spills.

To me this is an issue where we have had some debate about the pipeline and the oilspill liability trust fund. I would hope we would come back to that issue because these issues about spills and safety and security should be part of the debate. But I go back to the larger issue which is I hope we turn down this legislation overall.

To me all of the issues we are talking about, whether it is about safe drinking water, whether it is about oilspills and the requirements on these companies or if it is about whether TransCanada can take U.S. property under eminent domain or whether it is about the route itself, all of these questions in my mind are premature for us, the Congress, to decide.

Over 60 percent of the American people say they want this pipeline decided in a normal process. They want the State Department, in this instance because it crosses a border, to be the entity that determines national interest. So I do not want to predetermine that when there are so many important issues to be negotiated. The very company that wanted to negotiate with the State Department on this pipeline was negotiating some of the original routing. Yet at the very time the State Department was telling them the original routing would not work, they were here trying to persuade Members to vote for the authority to override the President and to give that routing, which we now know was flawed.

I do not want to be premature about this. I do not want to be premature about cutting off debate. I want to get to these amendments before us and get the bill done with the input of my colleagues, given that the debate was brought up to the floor.

If you ask me what I want to debate, I would be debating some other legislation because I do not think this bill is going to be signed by the President of the United States.

I would be debating energy tax policy on clean energy items. I would be debating other things that I think would be impacting more our energy strategy for the future, our economy, and job creation. I think there are a lot of those out there. I hope my colleague from Alaska and I, once this debate is over with, will be able to sit down and talk about these issues, in a bipartisan fashion, and work with the committee.

In 2007, we passed the Energy Independence and Security Act out of the energy committee on a bipartisan basis. It was landmark legislation that unleashed a lot of investment. It unleashed investment in making sure we had higher fuel efficiency cars in our country, which was good for the consumer because they got a car that got more mileage. It made investments in things such as the smart grid and other energy infrastructure.

I hope that is what we will get back to, because when I look at what is happening--I know my colleague from Alaska just talked about some of these issues as it related to Alaska. I know she means what she says when she says she is speaking from the heart and working hard for Alaskans. I visited Alaska with her and my colleague, then-Senator- from-Alaska Mark Begich. I visited many parts of Alaska.

I understand. Alaskans want to have an economic opportunity. They want their energy to be cheaper. I would say I am empathetic to the issue because we have five refineries in the State of Washington. We are the fifth largest refining State in the Nation. A lot of our oil comes from Alaska. So I can tell you that people in the Northwest are furious that even though we have those refineries--so a lot of refining capacity and the oil comes from Alaska--we still have some of the highest gas prices in the Nation. Many times we have asked for various investigations about why we have the highest gas prices in the Nation and why this issue continues to plague us.

I know my colleague, when she speaks about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ideas about more drilling, that it is about getting more oil supply. But more oil supply from Alaska has not helped Washington consumers have cheaper gasoline prices.

So I want to continue to diversify our economy off of fossil fuels and onto other things. I hope we will get a chance to work on an energy bill that does that. If I could just address for a couple of minutes the issue of the President's decision to move forward on a plan that would help preserve the Arctic wildlife refuge as wilderness. My colleague from Alaska mentioned this issue is something that has been going on for some time. She is right.

The predecessors that she and I--the former chair of the energy committee, Scoop Jackson, and the former late Senator Ted Stevens-- everybody has

been a part of this. I actually was here at a pretty dramatic floor debate on this issue in 2005, in which some people wanted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, even to the degree that they put that as a rider on the Defense bill. We were able to stop that. I think that was the will of Congress, that they did not want to see drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But we have had this discussion since 1960, when Dwight Eisenhower set aside originally 9 million acres, and in 1980, thanks to the work of Scoop Jackson, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which expanded the refuge to 19 million acres.

I have visited the refuge. I do believe it is a critical habitat for wildlife and the Gwich'in people who called this the sacred place where life begins. It is truly special. I do think we have had many discussions about this. This action probably will not be the last of them, but I do applaud the President for taking the Arctic refuge, which is habitat for 45 different species of land animals, 36 different species of fish, 180 species of birds--and has the greatest variety of plant and animal life of any park or refuge in the polar Arctic. I do believe it is an ecosystem and an ecosystem that is unlike anything else we have in the United States.

So I am proud the President has taken what has been a refuge that was lacking a plan and has now put a wilderness plan in place or the elements of what it will take to preserve those various species and animals and that very special place.

I know my colleague feels very strongly about the President's announcement. I think a refuge plan that is based on science and public comment--we have had a plan, but this is the first plan to say we are going to protect this area. It recommends 12 million acres of refuge, including the coastal plain as wilderness. It is one of the most pristine and unique public places.

I am confident America can meet our energy needs without opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I am convinced we can come up with an energy strategy that is much more compelling for the future of the United States, one in which we can lead and one in which we can help other countries, whether it is what the President did with China in getting an agreement or working with India or all the things we are doing to try to be a leader in what is energy efficiency and ways to impact the marketplace so consumers can look for cleaner, more efficient uses of fuel.

So this is going to be a continuing debate in this Congress between a 19th century view of energy policy and a 21st century view of energy policy. I would ask my colleagues to think about these countries the President has just recently visited. He went to China. No one thinks China's air standard is what we should have in the United States. India has had its own challenges. They have hundreds of millions of people who are without electricity needs.

So the question is whether these sources of energy are going to be that solution, whether a dirty source of fossil fuel is going to be the solution or whether we can work together on cleaner energy solutions. I think we can do that.

In fact, I am excited the United States can be a leader in these technologies, which will result in more job growth, just as those previous energy bills did when we worked together for higher fuel efficiency standards, for more energy efficiency, to come up with more sources of diversified fuel. I am very confident we are going to, in the next few years, usher in a new era of aviation.

We have already proven we can fly airplanes with a 50-50 drop in jet fuel. We now have to prove we can manufacture those large sources and get planes flying on that. What a great accomplishment that will be in reducing carbon emissions and giving the flying public and those airlines something that is much more affordable than what we have been dealing with for the last 10 or 15 years.

I look forward to my colleague and I working tomorrow--some tonight and a little bit starting early tomorrow--on how we move forward with this legislation. I know my colleague and I see a path forward. Similar to any two people who are trying to manage a bill on the floor, we also know we have all of our colleagues to work with because nothing in the Senate operates unless it operates through our process and working collaboratively or, I should say, it can work, it is just going to take a very long time.

So we pledge to work in the next few days to try to get an amendment process that will not be prematurely cut off after 1 hour of a pending bill but will come to terms, and hopefully our colleagues will work with us to limit the number of those amendments and we can move forward to legislation that we think will help our economy grow.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska. I am certainly tired of hearing about deflate-gate. I don't know if our bantering on the floor can keep the focus on the real talent of the football team and the individuals, but I certainly want to say that she has proven she is a true 12, and that is important to us in the Northwest. I thank the Senator for her comments.

We are here today to continue the debate on the Keystone XL Pipeline, and I see my colleague from Vermont is here, and he probably wishes to give comments about his amendments. Hopefully we will be voting later today on the various amendment proposals we discussed yesterday. We will be talking to Members about other amendments they would like to see on this legislation.

Before I turn it over to Senator Sanders, I wish to draw focus for a few minutes to the fact that this process, debate, and discussion about the protection of environmental issues, property rights, and environmental laws is incredibly important in the United States of America. I say that because I want to submit for the Record two news articles that just came out today. One is entitled ``Montana oil spill renews worries over safety of old pipelines,'' and the other story is headlined ``Cleanup Underway for Nearly 3M-Gallon Saltwater Spill In

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Menendez amendment, No. 72, be modified with the changes that are at the desk.

On behalf of Senator Manchin, I call up his amendment, No. 99.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

I yield to Senator Boxer so she can call up her amendment.

Mr. President, the original agreement said that, further, that all these amendments be limited to 60-vote affirmative threshold adoption, except for Cornyn and Menendez, and that no second- degrees be in order. So the original agreement we entered into allowed for this vote.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, speaking against the Lee amendment, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this because it is an amendment relating to oil and gas permits on Federal land. I guess if colleagues want to keep trying to loosen environmental regulations, then maybe they should support this amendment.

This amendment would impose new limitations on the Secretary of the Interior and their ability to process permits for drilling and provides a waiver for the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act if necessary reviews have not been completed by an arbitrary deadline, and it waives judicial review of these actions.

So I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. President, I will speak for the Senator from New Jersey, although this is a foreign policy question in general.

Let me say this: In the next 10 years, 50 percent of the new buildings that are going to be built in the world are going to be built in China. They are the most energy-inefficient buildings on the planet. So when we reached an agreement through the President of the United States to work together as a way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases, guess what is going to win. American business, American product, and we are selling it to them because we have an agreement to work together to be more energy efficient.

So I don't want to slow down this President or any President in cutting deals to get U.S. products into markets because they agree we need to deal with this issue. Please don't slow down the ability to get U.S. product into foreign markets. Oppose the Blunt amendment.

I know our colleagues have been working throughout the day on these amendments, and I applaud them for their cooperation. As the Senator from Alaska said, oftentimes these needed side-by-sides-- people need to see these. We have various committees that have been involved in these amendments, so I appreciate the patience of our colleagues.

I think going back and forth tonight on getting another set of amendments pending is a good idea because we have many Members on our side who have amendments they are very interested in having votes on. I appreciate them being here tonight. So I call on Senator Cardin to offer his amendment.

I wish to recognize the Senator from Rhode Island to call up his amendment.

Mr. President, I call on the Senator from Vermont to offer his amendment.

Mr. President, I call on the Senator from Rhode Island to offer his amendment.

I call on the Senator from Delaware to offer his amendment.

I would like to call on the Senator from Massachusetts to offer an amendment.

Mr. President, we did go back and forth on these amendments, but I heard Senator McConnell say he wanted Members to offer amendments. We have several Members who want to offer amendments. I hope there will be a time that those Members will be allowed to get their amendments pending before this body.

Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Alaska helping us to work through this process and being down here to talk about how we move forward. I heard her say we are obviously thinking about how we move through the amendment process, and I am sure she and I will get a chance to talk about the potential votes we will have later on as we continue with this amendment process.

Like her, I wish to add a few comments to this morning's comments about the State of the Union Address last night because I do feel as though it was the first time we heard a speech from a President of the United States that was all about an innovation economy.

As someone from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, I know a lot about innovation, and I was glad to hear he basically spoke about the whole perspective of what it takes to have an innovation economy and how we have to think about research and development and investing in our workforce. He mentioned trade and a variety of things that are all components of an innovation economy and how we can continue to move forward. I was very glad to hear that level of innovation, including his community college effort because it is about training the workforce for the future.

I also heard him talk about making improvements in infrastructure. The one thing I didn't hear him talk about was the issue of plug-in vehicles or electric cars. The reason I bring that up is because I think for most of the Bush administration, and maybe even some of the earlier days of this administration, I constantly heard talk about how we had to get electric vehicles and plug-in cars so we could get off our dependence on foreign oil.

We should take pride that in last night's speech we didn't have to listen to that because we have made progress in plug-in electric cars. Plug-in electric cars are in the marketplace, and we are making great progress in that area. We are also making progress in getting off foreign oil, and we are seeing how fuel efficiency is having a positive impact on our savings.

The President of the United States was asking what is the next level of innovation we have to do and how do we move forward while still protecting ourselves from what has been the deterioration of our environment from the greenhouse gases and the threat it makes to our planet.

Again, being from the Pacific Northwest, I consider those threats to be very real. The shellfish industry has been almost ruined due to the lack of oxygen in the water and the amount of carbon that basically sinks into our oceans and causes damage to the shellfish.

I see the Presiding Officer is also from the great State of Alaska.

When it comes to sources of feeding for Pacific Northwest salmon, there are not a lot of great food sources for the salmon. Climate change is having an effect on the ecosystem and the economy, so you can bet that climate issues are very important to our State. Those issues are no longer hidden and there is no longer a way to escape from that. It is on our plate right now.

The President of the United States said: Let's deal with that and move forward, and instead of talking about one pipeline, let's talk about an energy plan and an infrastructure investment for the Nation.

I will point out to my colleagues: You are becoming dangerously close to saying we can't do something like Portman. How many times were my colleagues from Ohio and New Hampshire held up on energy efficiency because no one would let us vote on that? How long--1 year, 2 years? Then yesterday we finally had a vote, and 95 of our colleagues voted yes on moving forward on energy efficiency.

I will also point out that energy efficiency is, I believe, key to our economy of the future. If the United States is a leader in making energy--no matter what source it comes from--more efficient, we will write the playbook around the globe because so many people will want to make very dear energy resources more usable, better utilized, and have lower costs to their individual businesses and consumers.

Energy efficiency is incredibly important, but we never got to energy efficiency. It is almost as if the other side of the aisle is saying: You will only get energy efficiency if we pair it with other legislation where we are rolling back environmental rules, and that is the objection I have and the people from the State of Washington have as well.

People want people to play by the rules. They want to know that if you propose a pipeline, you will actually follow the laws to protect the environment, such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and follow the process of what is in the public interest. We should be having that debate. We should not usurp the President of the United States in determining what is the national interest of this country.

At the very time the State Department was saying to this company, TransCanada, you have a pipeline proposal we don't like because it goes right through an aquifer, at the very moment when the State Department was telling them we don't like the proposal and you need to adhere to the environmental laws, the same people were in Congress trying to get Senators and House Members to vote on

legislation that would have said pass the pipeline right through the aquifer.

I believe the President should be given the due diligence to drive home with this foreign company the fact that we have a national interest, that this national interest will be met, and that we will set the standard for whether these environmental laws are going to be complied with. I don't believe we should be usurping them. I think my colleagues are now offering amendments on the other side that also usurp other environmental laws.

I hope my colleagues will think about this because it will certainly give the Senator from Alaska and myself something to think about. As we try to move forward on energy legislation, we are going to have to think about how we are going to pass something that has bipartisan support.

Since I have been on the energy committee--and I have been on the committee now the entire time I have been in Congress--I have had the opinion that you should not hold up good energy legislation just to try to get bad energy legislation. I have the opinion that we should pass energy bills every year. That is the transformation our country is going under.

I wish we would have helped the Senators who wanted to usher in energy efficiency 2 years ago, but it is telling that 95 of our colleagues have always thought that was an easy lift. We should keep moving forward on those issues that are easy lifts and ensure the businesses that need predictability and certainty that we can move forward on that.

Another example is the clean energy tax credits. While we are trying to overwrite environmental rules to give a foreign interest a pipeline through our country--I should say, people thought the pipeline that went through Yellowstone was safe, and we just had a big spill there this past weekend. It is not as if these spills don't happen.

We had a colleague from Michigan talk about the spill that happened in Kalamazoo. I just saw the Commandant of the Coast Guard again last night at the State of the Union Address and we talked about how we don't have a solution for cleaning up tar sands in the water, and that is why we in the Pacific Northwest are so interested in this issue.

Let's not hurry through a process of special interest when we can do things that we need to give predictability and certainty on, such as the energy tax credits that are germane and are within the boundaries of what Congress is supposed to be deciding on. The American people are asking us to debate those issues and to come up with a resolution on them. I don't know that the American people are asking us to override a process and usurp what is the right of the President to make sure our national interests are considered in this policy debate.

I do appreciate the Senator from Alaska working through this process, and I do appreciate the fact that I think she is serious about she and I sitting down and talking about a larger energy bill. I pride myself on having a Pacific Northwest view; that is, there are things that are good for both Alaska and Washington and we should work on them together. Maybe there are some things that are well and good for Alaska and Washington but maybe the rest of the country doesn't agree with, but we will work through a process together.

I say to my colleagues, as we look at these next tranches of votes, we should consider what the President said last night. We need a broader innovation strategy for our economy. I believe there are ways to get there. I think these amendments we are considering--I don't think we need to change the Antiquities Act. I am a big believer in the fact that there are some tremendous national beauties that have been established through the Antiquities Act both--actually by lots of Republican Presidents, and I don't feel we have to change the Antiquities Act. I certainly don't think we need to change the Endangered Species Act, and I don't think we need to overrule the Clean Air Act, as the amendment does of the Senator from Pennsylvania.

We will have more time to talk about these amendments on the floor, but I hope my colleagues will understand that we want environmental rules to be followed, and we want people to follow a process. We want these issues to move forward from an energy policy that will move America to a 21st century energy policy and not continue to hold on to the 19th century pollutions that are challenging our economy.

I am sure we are going to hear from our colleagues when they come down to debate these issues as it relates to greenhouse gases and other things. Again, I appreciate my colleague from Alaska helping us to work through this process. I appreciate that it is a debate and that all of my colleagues will have a chance to come down and express their opinions.

With that, I yield back to my colleague on whatever process we are going to follow to go back and forth on amendments.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hoeven be followed by the Senator from Vermont to speak for 10 minutes about an amendment he has filed.

Mr. President, as my colleague from Alaska just said, we are making progress. We have another group of amendments we are going to be voting on shortly. I would encourage any of the Members on our side who would like to take a few minutes to go over their amendments before the vote--we have a few minutes between now and 3:15 p.m.--to do so. During this series of votes coming up, we will be working with our colleagues to get the next set of amendments and to continue to move forward.

I will have a little more to say, but I see a couple of our colleagues here, so I will give them a chance to talk about their amendments.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the Lee amendment, No. 33, which is going to be voted on shortly. I know my colleagues are going to have 2 minutes divided before the vote, so people can add comments as they wish.

This amendment makes it very difficult for citizens to retain counsel, particularly related to the Endangered Species Act. I don't know why we would be handicapping legal cases just because they deal with the environment. I mean, I guess if you are not interested in protecting the environment, you would want to make it harder for people to retain lawyers. But when I think about property rights and clean water and clean air and all of those issues, I think that is something on which we ought to go the extra mile

and make sure they get representation and counsel, not handicap them and make it harder just because we don't want companies to adhere to environmental laws.

I believe this is important because my colleagues should remember that the ESA was signed into law in 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon and was intentionally drafted to manage and to engage citizens in the protection of endangered species.

Now, in general, litigants in the country must bear their own costs, and the prevailing party is not ordinarily entitled to collect his or her expenses in a defending suit from the loser. But both the courts and Congress have provided an exemption from that rule, and so they have allowed in certain circumstances for judges to shift the cost to litigants in the interest of fairness and to further protect the public interest.

So that is what is at stake this morning. I think the Endangered Species Act is a prime example of why the courts decided they wanted to have this kind of leeway and protection. Congress knew when it enacted the Endangered Species Act that it would be difficult and the Nation would want to make sure that ordinary citizens had the opportunity to help ensure compliance with the law. So Congress recognized that when a citizen did so, he or she did not do so necessarily by themselves alone but with the counsel of a private attorney. Congress recognized this reality in statute.

So this is what we are going to be addressing. In contrast, the Lee amendment would weaken the prevailing citizen's request for reimbursement under an Endangered Species Act--and narrow those restrictions of equal access to justice. This is because the cap on fees would include the Equal Access to Justice Act, which often falls well below the market-based rate for attorneys. Basically, what the Lee amendment does is say you will not be able to recap on the attorneys' fees at the cost of doing business, and their hope is that citizens will then not have representation before the courts on issues such as clean air, clean water, and other environmental issues.

I say to my colleagues--and I have said this to the now-ranking member on the EPW Committee--I don't know why we are not taking up the Superfund bill. To me, getting the Superfund reauthorized--these are polluters that have polluted our country, and they are not even paying the tax that it would cost to clean up the pollution.

Instead, we are considering an amendment that says: Let's roll back the environmental law on this issue and make sure that citizens don't have the right to help enforce environmental law.

I ask my colleagues to defeat the Lee amendment when we get to it.

Mr. President, in speaking in opposition to the Toomey amendment, it is an attack on the Clean Air Act. I want to speak in favor of making sure that we are doing everything the Supreme Court said we need to do, which is to enforce the Clean Air Act.

While my colleague is making a point, I do not know why we should give some powerplants in Pennsylvania an exemption to the Clean Air Act. Obviously, there are businesses all across America that have to comply with environmental laws. By voting against this amendment, we can continue to fight against these pollution issues and make sure that special interests are not getting another narrow carve-out in this legislation.

So I would ask my colleagues to make sure that we are not creating a special exemption for the mercury and air toxic standards in the Clean Air Act and vote against this amendment.

My colleague from Hawaii, Senator Schatz, wishes to speak on his amendment.

Mr. President, I again thank the Senator from Alaska for working through this process and the due diligence given. I think we are very close to having the side-by-side language, and once that is done, we will give it out to everyone for review. We need to get the Fischer amendment and the side-by-side figured out.

Everybody is asking about the process. If we could get the next set of amendments offered by colleagues, it will give us a chance to proceed on figuring out when the next votes will be scheduled.

With that, I understand Senator Sanders wishes to speak.

Mr. President, just to reiterate our opposition to this legislation, new polling has come out showing that the American public really does--over 60 percent--support going through a normal process and not subverting what are environmental laws. But we are going to move forward in getting this legislation voted on. My colleague just outlined a process for this afternoon. So I would encourage Members to come to the floor to offer their amendments. I know Senator Franken is coming to speak on his amendment, and I see the Senator from Massachusetts here to speak on his amendment. So hopefully while they are speaking we can get a vote schedule firmed up and talk about other amendments besides the three we have pending. But I would agree with the Senator from Alaska that Members should come down here and talk on their amendments and we should keep the process moving.

With that, I am not sure who is queued up to speak.

May I inquire of the Senator from Alaska and Senator Hoeven how long he intends to speak to make sure our colleague from Massachusetts knows he has his time before we get locked out for lunch?

Mr. President, I would think that if it is OK to allow the Senator from Massachusetts to proceed, knowing that our hard stop is 12:30 p.m., that at least--I would make this request: that both Senators be allowed to speak for 10 minutes, starting

with Senator Markey, followed by Senator Hoeven. If they want to extend their remarks, they can make a unanimous consent request to do so.

I see my colleague from Minnesota who wanted to speak on his amendment which is pending, and I know our colleague from Nebraska is here. She has been waiting, so I hope before we adjourn we could accommodate both of them.

Mr. President, as we go back and forth on offering amendments, I wish to turn to the Senator from Hawaii for him to offer his amendment.

I would like to call on the Senator from Illinois to offer his amendment.

Amendment No. 69 to Amendment No. 2

Mr. President, I know we are running against a time clock here in getting ready for the State of the Union Address tonight. I appreciate my colleague from Alaska going back and forth on these amendments and allowing both sides of the aisle to set up some pending amendments. I will just say the Toomey amendment asks for an exemption of the Clean Air Act which I wouldn't support. I know we will have a chance later on to have that discussion.

Our colleague from Nebraska came to the floor and offered an amendment that would make it incredibly difficult without first proving there was negative management of Federal land to get any more national monuments. National monuments have been big economic drivers in a lot of communities and have preserved some very unique parts of our country. We will have a chance to talk about that a little bit later. But I wish to make sure we get our colleague recognized so he can offer his amendment. Then, I think we will probably, as my colleague from Alaska said, be finished for this afternoon as it relates to offering amendments back and forth. I wish to recognize the Senator from Rhode Island for his amendment.

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

Mr. President, I know my colleagues are coming to the floor to talk about various amendments. It is likely that on Tuesday we will start voting on at least the pending amendments we have discussed so far. I come to the floor today to talk about the proposal by TransCanada Corporation and about the fact that, obviously, there are some here who want to give an expedited approval to that and usurp the President, who needs to review this project in detail to make sure we understand the interests of various people, property owners, and people affected by the pipeline.

One particular issue in this debate is why Congress should be hurrying to give a special interest permitting go-ahead while the President still has issues to address and as do the local communities. I know many of my colleagues are going to come to the floor to talk about those special interest concerns, as well as the issues of energy efficiency, property rights, climate change, and a whole host of priorities. But I am here today to talk about an issue I think is particularly important, which is the fact that tar sands has a loophole and doesn't pay into the oilspill liability trust fund.

Both of my colleagues, Senator Markey and Senator Wyden, are going to be putting forward amendments to close this loophole. As a country we have made sure the taxpayers aren't stuck with the tab of cleaning up oil spills. The principle behind that is to keep our waters safe and to keep our communities from paying the cost of this pollution. It means really to have commonsense laws on the books providing that polluters pay for cleanup. So that is the principle that drives the oilspill liability trust fund. It is something we have had in place for a while.

Basically, what the oilspill liability trust fund means is simply that American taxpayers won't be left holding the bag for the responsibility of spills that happen. We currently in law have a loophole that means that companies that produce the tar sands don't have to pay into the trust fund. That is because they are considered as synthetic petroleum. So just by the definition, they basically have had a loophole. It is important to me, as the United States considers whether a pipeline should be built across our country that would include these tar sands, which is very thick and heavy material and it is often diluted with lighter oil so it can be easier to handle. But when the spills happen, and it spills in water as we saw with the Kalamazoo spill, it leaves a thicker oil behind that usually sinks to the bottom of the water. That makes it hugely expensive to clean up and really almost nearly impossible to clean up.

These concerns are driving us to make sure that as the United States and Canada continue to look at tar sands production, we are getting the technology in place to deal with this and to get the job done and to make sure that those who are liable for those

kinds of spills are actually paying into a fund that would help clean up the mess.

That is why it is so important that the Senate take up action on one of these amendments, so that we will be paying into the oilspill liability trust fund for any pipeline that is carrying this crude material.

I want to go back to why this trust fund was created and why it was so important. The oilspill liability trust fund was created in 1986 as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act. This bill was signed by President Reagan, but it took 4 more years and a major disaster before the country actually funded the oilspill liability trust fund, and that disaster was Exxon Valdez. My colleague from Alaska will be on the floor later today, and I am sure she could talk a lot about this issue as well. I had many conversations with the late Senator Ted Stevens about this issue, and there were various times when we increased payments into the oilspill liability trust fund. When one comes from the State of Washington and Pacific waters and when one comes from Alaska, how we clean up these oil spills is incredibly important to our economies.

What happened in 1989 is that an oil tanker hit a reef and ended up spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. It didn't take long for those pristine waters of Prince William Sound in Alaska to be impacted. So the impacts of the Exxon Valdez disaster were devastating not just to Prince William Sound but to the entire Pacific Northwest, and the total cost of that cleanup was $2.5 billion.

Ten years ago, a Federal judge ordered Exxon to pay $6.7 billion to thousands of Alaskans affected by that oil spill. Fishermen in the Northwest lost more than $300 million as a result of that oil spill. At the time, the livelihood of individuals was impacted and, obviously, the wildlife was impacted. It killed sea otters, harbor seals, and approximately 250,000 birds. The images of all this wildlife are seared into our memories even 25 years after the spill.

When the gulf spill just recently happened, we revisited a lot of those issues because we wanted to make sure we were getting things right. It was very interesting to see the environmental effects years later and some of the things that still had not recuperated from the oil spill in Prince William Sound.

In 1990 Congress passed the Oil Spill Pollution Act, and it was signed into law by President Bush. It added sweeping improvements to the oil spill response and held parties responsible. It established the mechanism actually to invest in the oilspill liability trust fund. Specifically, the bill said: Let's have a per-barrel tax to raise the revenue for the fund. So today that is an 8 cents per-barrel tax on oil products.

As I mentioned, this was signed into law by President Bush, who specifically praised the funding of the oilspill liability trust fund. He said that ``the prevention, response, liability, and compensation components fit together into a compatible and workable system that strengthens the protection of our environment.''

The reason I am bringing that up is because if the oilspill liability trust fund was good enough for oil products promoted by a Republican President, then it ought to be good enough for us in Congress to add tar sands. That literally was just not thought of under the current definition because of the way the definition was written. Because it is a synthetic fuel, they have a loophole. It is a question whether we are going to close this loophole or whether we are going to let them pay zero into the trust fund.

The fund is used to pay for immediate cleanup costs and spills in navigable waters. This is a very important point. Some people would say: Well, aren't people just liable for their own mess, and why don't they just clean it up?

I can tell you that in trying to protect Puget Sound and trying to clean up the waters off the coast of Washington, you might think it would be easy to figure out where the oil came from. It is not. When you have a busy waterway like Puget Sound, and all of a sudden somebody sights an oil slick or oil product in the water, they don't know how serious it is. It takes months and months, sometimes years, to figure out where the pollution came from.

Yes, in the case of Exxon Valdez we had a ship that hit a reef and caused a problem. But in many cases, sometimes you don't know where the spill is coming from. A lot of people will say: Well, it wasn't us. Or they start this process. An oil spill needs an immediate response, and that is why we established the oilspill liability trust fund--to have an immediate response so that we are not sitting around waiting for weeks and months to figure out who did the oil spill, and so somebody can start the process immediately and work with the Coast Guard to actually clean it up.

You would think this doesn't happen that frequently, but it happens a lot more frequently than people realize. That is why an immediate fund is important, and that is why everybody who is producing oil should pay into it. Yet there is a loophole in the law, so the per-barrel tax doesn't apply to tar sands.

In 2011 the IRS issued a ruling stating that the tar sands imported into the United States were not subject to the excise tax on petroleum. The ruling was actually based on a 1980 House Ways and Means Committee report that crude oil does not include tar sands. As I said earlier, it is considered synthetic. Therefore, according to the IRS, it is not subject to the tax.

We should simply clean this up and have those responsible for their mess also be responsible for paying in to clean it up. When the oilspill liability trust fund was established, it was intended to be a mechanism for all oil spills--not the definition of oil as a product.

Congress should fix this next week when we vote on this legislation and figure out exactly how to make sure the Commandant of the Coast Guard would have the tools to deal with this.

I, too, have concerns about the fact that we don't really have the tools yet to accurately clean up tar sands. When the Commandant of the Coast Guard was before a commerce hearing just a year ago--because I have a great deal of concern about the moving of this product on a variety of transportation means--I asked him about tar sands because the last thing we want to see is product out on our waterways. He said: Our technology is not as sophisticated when you have tar sands. They are heavier, they sink into the water, into the ocean bottom, so it is a challenge for us. Once it settles on the sea floor, our technology is lacking in that regard.

Basically, I am finding that some of the dirtiest oil out there does not pay into the oilspill trust fund, and we don't even have the mechanisms for cleaning up. Unfortunately, we learned that lesson very hard in the 2010 Enbridge pipeline, which was owned by another Canadian company, along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. It ruptured, and it spilled 1 million gallons of tar sands into the river.

This is a picture of that cleanup and the process, which was $1.2 billion that was spent. So for those of you who don't know Kalamazoo, it was an incredible economic, environmental, and historic issue for the people of Michigan. The river was closed for business for 18 months after that spill. More than 35 miles of the river had to be off limits because it was difficult to clean up.

Today, 4 years later, they are still impacted. As I said, the cost was $1.2 billion because they had to dredge the bottom of the river. So any oil spill of that magnitude is damaging. Yet, when we look at this issue, the fact that these tar sands were sinking to the bottom made that dredging even more serious.

It is the reason why we need to make sure these tar sands are taxed just as any other oil that is produced in the United States and pays into this trust fund. A Cornell University study found that ``this spill affected the health of hundreds of residents, displaced residents, hurt businesses, and caused a loss of jobs'' in Kalamazoo. This study is located online at: https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/sites/ ilr.cornell.edu/files/GLI_Impact-of-Tar-Sands-Pipeline-Spills.pdf.

I think it is just the start of what the challenges will be for us when we allow this kind of tar sands development to move through the United States. Our spill responders are very skilled. First, they know we need to do everything we

can to prevent spills, to begin with. They are developing technologies to respond to the case of an emergency. They are doing everything they can to use this trust fund.

So we need to make sure we are having those who are producing this product pay into the trust fund. We need to make sure we are closing this loophole. So my colleagues--as I said, Senator Wyden and Markey-- have been working on this issue for some time. Senator Wyden, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, I know he feels very strongly they should be paying into the oil spill liability trust fund and paying their fair share of revenue. I know Senator Markey has worked on this issue in the House of Representatives before coming to the Senate.

So we need to make sure people understand that dredging is not good enough, that our country needs a plan, that we need not just to rush through this pipeline and basically to think that we have all of the technology, all of the methods, all of the appropriate emergency funds to clean this up. We need to make sure we are not sitting here arguing with a company--a Canadian company--that just wants us to clean up the mess and leave the U.S. taxpayer paying the bill.

In fact, there was some debate in the Kalamazoo spill whether the Enbridge company had hit their liability cap and so the trust fund should pay for it, even though they never paid into the trust fund.

So are we going to let the American taxpayers clean up a Canadian oil mess at our expense--that we paid in--and everybody is affected by that? I think we should slow down this process and make sure we are getting things like the oil spill liability trust fund right and that we are getting this added to this legislation before it moves out of the Senate.

I know my colleagues will get a chance to look at this next week. As I said, we will probably start voting early next week on some of these amendments that are being offered. But I hope my colleagues will close these loopholes and make sure that the U.S. citizen and taxpayer is not left on the hook paying for oil spill responsibility that should be the responsibility of these individual companies. I know we are expecting some of our other colleagues to come to the floor shortly to speak on their amendments.

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