Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Blumenthal and I be recognized for the next 20 or so minutes to speak on the issue of cybersecurity.

Madam President, I rise to speak about cybersecurity, but specifically about the cyber threat to our Nation's critical infrastructure. By critical infrastructure I mean the power grid that supplies electricity to our homes that keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I mean the financial services' processing systems that connect our ATMs to our accounts and move money around in our complex financial system. I mean the communications networks by which we talk and e-mail and text and message one another.

The men and women we have charged with our Nation's defense and we have confirmed in these roles in the Senate have repeatedly and consistently warned us about the danger of cyber attacks on this critical infrastructure. It provides power and light and heat, tracks and records financial transactions, allows communication and data transfer, keeps airlines safe in the air, controls our dams, and enables our commerce. The consequences of failure in these areas could be catastrophic. We must pay heed to these warnings about America's critical infrastructure as we consider cybersecurity legislation.

The administration has described this cyber threat in no uncertain terms. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has stated:

[I]t's clear from all that we've said [that] we all

recognize we need to do something. . . . We all recognize

this as a profound threat to this country, to its future, to

its economy, to its very being.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned:

The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a

cyber attack.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has compared this threat to the September 11 attacks.

Prior to 9/11, there were all kinds of information out

there that a catastrophic attack was looming. . . . The

information on a cyberattack is at that same frequency and

intensity and is bubbling at the same level, and we should

not wait for an attack in order to do something.

Attorney General Holder stressed the urgency of responding to this threat in a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He said:

This a problem that we must address, our nation is

otherwise at risk and to ignore this problem, to think it is

going to go away runs headlong into all of the intelligence

we have gathered, the facts we have been able to accrue which

show that the problem is getting worse instead of getting

better. There are more countries that are becoming more adept

at the use of these tools, there are groups that are becoming

more adept at the use of these tools, and the harm that they

want to do to the United States and to our infrastructure

through these means is extremely real.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has warned that ``a cyber attack could stop society in its tracks.''

NSA Director and U.S. Cyber Commander GEN Keith Alexander, a four- star general, has stated:

We see this as something absolutely vital to the future of

our country. Cybersecurity for government and critical

infrastructure is key to the security of this Nation.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security found that companies which operate critical infrastructure have reported a sharp rise in cybersecurity incidents over the past 3 years. Companies reported 198 cyber incidents in 2011, up from 41 incidents in 2010, and just 9 in 2009. This may reflect that the private sector is just now beginning to catch on. It is unfortunate but true that the private sector cannot be counted on to respond to this growing challenge on its own.

As Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has explained, and I quote again:

There is a market failure at work here. . . . Companies

just aren't willing to admit vulnerability to themselves, or

publicly to shareholders, in such a way as to support the

necessary investments or lead their peers down a certain path

of investment and all that would follow.

These were administration warnings, but the concerns are bipartisan. A wide range of national security experts from previous Republican administrations have echoed this alarm. Former Director of National Intelligence and NSA Director ADM Mike McConnell has said, and I quote:

The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are

losing. It's that simple.

He explained:

As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most

targets of significance, yet our cyber defenses are woefully

lacking. . . . The stakes are enormous. To the extent that

the sprawling U.S. economy inhabits a common physical space,

it is in our communications networks. If an enemy disrupted

our financial and accounting transactions, our equities and

bond markets or our retail commerce--or created confusion

about the legitimacy of those transactions--chaos would

result. Our power grids, air and ground transportation,

telecommunications and water filtration systems are in

jeopardy as well.

That ends the quote from Admiral McConnell.

Admiral McConnell also made a comparison to threats from the past.

The cyber-war mirrors the nuclear challenge in terms of the

potential economic and psychological effects. . . . We

prevailed in the Cold War through strong leadership, clear

policies, solid alliances and close integration of our

diplomatic, economic, and military efforts. We backed all of

this up with robust investments--security never comes cheap.

It worked, because we had to make it work. Let's do the same

with cybersecurity. The time to start was yesterday.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has also echoed the administration's warning that a cyber attack has the potential of causing devastation on the scale of another September 11. He stated:

I hope we do not have to wait for the cyber-equivalent of

9/11 before people realize that we are vulnerable.

Former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security Stewart Baker has compared the threat to the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina.

We must begin now to protect our critical infrastructure

from attack. And so far, we have done little. We are all

living in a digital New Orleans. No one really wants to spend

the money reinforcing the levees. But the alternative is

worse. . . . And it is bearing down on us at speed.

Former NSA Director and CIA Director Michael Hayden has said:

We have entered into a new phase of conflict in which we

use a cyberweapon to create physical destruction, and in this

case, physical destruction in someone else's critical

infrastructure.

Former Republican officials have also noted the cybersecurity gap in the private sector due to this market failure. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff said:

The marketplace is likely to fail in allocating the correct

amount of investment to manage risk across the breadth of the

network on which our society relies.

The following examples are emblematic of the market failure that both Democratic and Republican national security officials have identified in this cybersecurity area for critical infrastructure.

When the FBI-led National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force informs an American corporation that it has been hacked, 9 times out of 10 that American corporation had no idea.

Kevin Mandia of the leading security firm Mandiant has said, and I quote:

In over 90 [percent] of the cases we have responded to,

Government notification was required to alert the company

that a security breach was underway. In our last 50

incidents, 48 of the victim companies learned they were

breached from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the

Department of Defense, or some other third party.

In operation Aurora, the cyber attack which targeted numerous companies, most prominently Google, only 3 out of the approximately 300 companies

attacked were aware that they had been attacked before they were contacted by the government.

We cannot count on the private sector to defend itself against a threat about which it is so unaware. An advanced persistent intrusion of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's systems also went undetected until the chamber received help from the government. The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of the U.S. Chamber, gained access to everything stored in its systems, including information about its 3 million members, and remained on the network for at least 6 months and possibly more than a year. The chamber only learned of the break-in, according to the article, when the FBI told the group that servers in China were stealing its information. The special expertise of our national security agencies is a consistent theme through these examples. As former Assistant Attorney General, OLC Director, and Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith has explained:

The government is the only institution with the resources

and the incentives to ensure that the [critical

infrastructure] on which we all depend is secure, and we must

find a way for it to meet its responsibilities.

By the way, that was Goldsmith at the Department of Justice in the Bush administration. This is a Republican appointee speaking. These warnings have been repeatedly communicated to us in the Senate. We cannot plead ignorance of them.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell dated January 19, 2012.

This explains that the threat is only going to get worse; inaction is not an acceptable option. This letter was signed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Director of National Intelligence and NSA Director ADM Mike McConnell, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, former Defense Secretary Dr. Willian Perry, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, former Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn, III, and former Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Security, Richard Clarke.

I also have a letter written to Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell, dated June 6, 2012, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Secretary Chertoff, Admiral McConnell, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, General Hayden, and General Cartwright urged us to:

. . . bring cyber security legislation to the floor as soon

as possible. Given the time left in this legislative session

and upcoming election this fall, we are concerned that the

window of opportunity to pass legislation that is in our view

critically necessary to protect our national and economic

security is quickly disappearing.

They specifically focused on the threat to critical infrastructure, stating that ``protection of our critical infrastructure is essential in order to effectively protect our national and economic security from the growing cyber threat.''

We must not ignore this chorus of warnings issued by those who are the most informed and most alert about the danger to our critical infrastructure. We must pass cybersecurity legislation, and we must ensure that the cybersecurity legislation we pass addresses our Nation's critical infrastructure. No bill that fails to address critical infrastructure can be said to have done the job of protecting our country.

Our Nation will be vulnerable if critical infrastructure companies fail to meet basic security standards, as they do right now. Legislation must include a mechanism to end this continuing vulnerability. If operators object to a particular approach to cybersecurity for our critical infrastructure on the basis that it is too burdensome or too unwieldy, they will find many Members of the Senate on both sides--myself and Senator Blumenthal included--who are ready and eager to work with them. But if the purpose of the exercise is to come to an end point in which the operators of our critical infrastructure do not have to reach adequate levels of cybersecurity, then we need to move on and we need to vote and go beyond that.

The question of how we get to cybersecurity is one we should engage in the Senate. The question of whether we protect our privately held critical infrastructure in a responsible way is one we should not allow to deter us from getting this job done to protect our national and economic security.

Whatever the ultimate solution, we simply must find a way to improve the cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure.

I yield the floor to Senator Blumenthal, who has been engaged in efforts with me to try to find a way through to a bipartisan bill that will protect our critical infrastructure. He has expertise in this area as a superbly trained lawyer, a multiply elected Attorney General of his home State, a former marine dedicated to our national security, and as a person who brings the highest level of legal talent to this discussion, having argued, I think, five separate cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been an enormous asset, and I appreciate his participation.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am delighted to respond to the Senator in two ways. First, as the Senator so well pointed out, this is not a future threat or a prospective threat that we need to prepare ourselves against; this is an ongoing, current threat. There is a campaign of attacks into our national security infrastructure, into our intellectual property, and into our critical infrastructure, such as the power grids and the communications networks we count on in our daily lives for what we consider the American standard of living here at home. So time is not our friend.

As one of the individuals I quoted said--I think Admiral McConnell-- the day to get this done was yesterday. So the sooner the better. We do need to form a consensus in this body, enough to move through the parliamentary obstacles that exist in this body, which allows us to go forward and will allow us to go forward in a way that does something serious about forcing the operators of our critical infrastructure to put in adequate cybersecurity protections. If they have to do it because they have incentives to do it, that is one way of getting there. If they have to do it because there are regulations that demand it, that is another way of getting there. There are different ways of getting there. And as the Senator from Connecticut and I have discussed--and we are actually working together on this--we are open to different ways to get there, but it should be agreed amongst us in the Senate that getting there, getting to the point where America's critical infrastructure is protected from cyber attack as reasonably well as we can should be the nonnegotiable goal. Anything short of that should be seen as failure.

There is another thing I wanted to add. The Senator was very generous in his remarks and credentialing of a great number of Senators who have been working very hard. I would also like to single out Senator Coons, who has been very helpful in our efforts.

I will stay on our side of the aisle at this point and add in particular Senator Mikulski. Barbara Mikulski serves on the Intelligence Committee. She is keenly aware of the cyber threat. She has taken deep dives into this issue in her role as a cardinal on the Appropriations Committee. She does the appropriations for many of the national security agencies and law enforcement agencies that are deeply involved in this. So when she speaks, she speaks with real authority and she speaks with real impact. Her participation in this effort is extraordinarily helpful, in addition to the efforts of the many Senators whom my colleague singled out as well.

With that, I yield the floor. I see the Senator from Louisiana is here, and I thank the Senator from Connecticut.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, we were here two winters ago, in February, when Washington was hit by a snowstorm that achieved the nickname Snowmageddon. The city and, in fact, much of the mid-Atlantic was buried under feet of snow. It was the biggest snowstorm in 90 years for this area. People in Washington were struggling to get to work and school, and people went without power for days.

This being Washington, some of our colleagues in the Senate seized on that opportunity to mock climate change and to suggest these winter snowstorms were inconsistent with the projections of what would happen from global warming and climate change. As an initial matter, that is a false comparison from the very get-go all by

itself. Climate science models have predicted consistently that as polar icecaps and glaciers melt and more water enters the system, we can expect heavier precipitation events. One of the ways it has been described is that if you have a pot on the stove and you have the heat under it and it is simmering, when you turn up the heat, you get more activity in the pot. You add energy to a dynamic system like a pot of boiling water, and it creates more energy in the dynamic environment.

In the same way, the extra energy coming in because of climate change, our carbon pollution in the atmosphere, is energizing our atmosphere and our weather, and we are getting weather extremes as a result.

There was an article in Science Daily, headlined ``Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters.'' It says this:

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate

change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans

might think.

That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino

effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather

outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes--

think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington,

DC, during February 2010.

I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.

That shows the original challenge to climate change theory, based on the incident of Snowmageddon, was like so much that is said to challenge climate change--phony, outright wrong, a misunderstanding of how it works, and misrepresenting what it shows.

Scientists have recently published an article in

Oceanography that demonstrates that link between climate

change and severe winter weather in the northern Hemisphere's

middle latitudes. I think that can be debunked as a phony

claim against the facts of climate change that are

surrounding us. Look around at what is happening now. We are

seeing extreme weather on the other side.

Last week, Eugene Robinson wrote a Washington Post column that was entitled ``Feeling the Heat.'' He wrote:

Still don't believe in climate change? Then you're either

deep in denial or delirious from the heat.

He points out that the evidence is mounting in irresistible and ultimately irrefutable ways. To quote from his article:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says

the past winter was the fourth-warmest on record in the

United States. To top that, Spring--which meteorologists

define as the months of March, April and May--was the warmest

since recordkeeping began in 1895.

Again, this spring--March, April, and May--was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1895.

He continues:

If you don't believe me or the scientists, ask a farmer

whose planting seasons have gone awry.

The Bloomberg news recently wrote a story entitled ``U.S. Corn Growers Farming in Hell as Midwest Heat Spreads.'' The story reported that corn crops are in the worst condition since 1988 and that 53 percent of the Midwest is experiencing moderate to extreme drought conditions.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, the Bloomberg article I have just referenced.

It is not just the agricultural sector that is getting clobbered by the drought and the heat. As the Presiding Officer, Senator Udall of New Mexico, knows all too well, and to quote from a New York Times story:

Explosive wildfires have burned across much of the west in

recent weeks. In southwestern New Mexico, the largest

wildfire in state history has burned nearly 300,000 acres.

Of course, New Mexico is the Presiding Officer's home State, but the article also describes other fires on the loose in Colorado and Utah.

The High Park Fire, which has been burning for weeks near

Fort Collins and is one of the largest and most destructive

blazes in the state's history . . .

The article also mentions that Colorado had more than half a dozen fires burning and said conditions have not been this bad in a decade.

So we are seeing exactly the kind of extreme weather conditions the climate scientists, whom the deniers have always mocked and made fun of, actually predicted. They predicted this would happen, and it is, in fact, happening.

It is clear we can't take a particular storm and say this storm, this fire, this drought was the product of climate change. The example people use to describe what is going on is that it is akin to loading dice. The more someone loads the dice, the more the numbers they have loaded the dice to show up will show up. So we will get more weather events. Even if we don't load the dice, we are sometimes going to get double sixes. We can't show every double six is because the dice were loaded, but when we see more and more double sixes showing up--more than history would suggest or more than the odds would suggest--then something is going on. That is what we have done by loading our atmosphere with carbon pollution. We have loaded the dice for these extreme weather events, and now we are reaping that bitter harvest from the pollution we have thrown up there.

Unfortunately, the bitter harvest in this city is that we continue to listen to propaganda and nonsense from the polluters designed specifically to create enough doubt to prevent us from taking action about something that is creating these immense consequences for foresters and firefighters in the West, for corn farmers in the Midwest, and for anybody who has to experience extraordinary weather events like ``snowmageddon,'' so-called, here in Washington. These things are beginning to have an effect as real life begins to model what the climate scientists predicted.

NOAA's Chief Jane Lubchenco spoke before an audience in Australia, which is experiencing very similar conditions, and said these extreme weather events are convincing many Americans that climate change is a reality. We are seeing that more and more.

Yale, George Mason University, and the Knowledge Networks did some polling on this subject, and 69 percent of the respondents said they agreed that ``global warming is affecting the weather in the United States'' versus 30 percent who said they disagreed. So better than 2 to 1 the American people are ready for us to do something about this. They know there is a connection and they expect us to take responsible action.

Gallup polls are reflecting a rebound in the public's concern about climate change from 51 percent in 2011 up to 55 percent in March of this year. Before the recession, it was all the way up to 66 percent, until the economic issues pushed it aside.

The contention the polluting industries and their mouthpieces here in Washington make--that the jury is still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution--is simply false. The jury is not still out. The verdict is in, the verdict is clear, and we should start doing something about it.

When I come to the Senate floor to give these talks, I often quote a letter from back in October 2009 that was signed by virtually every major scientific organization in the country--the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Agronomy, the Botanical Society of America, the Soil Science Society of American, the American Statistical Association, and I could go on and on. The point is not to name all the multiple responsible and respected scientific organizations that signed the letter but to read what it was they said. If we think about it, as I read it, think about how cautious scientists ordinarily are in the language they use. Here is what they said:

Observations throughout the world make it clear--

Clear--

that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific

research demonstrates--

Not suggests, demonstrates--

that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are--

Not maybe, are--

the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple

independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are

inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of

peer-reviewed science.

That is a very ``sciencey'' way of saying something that is pretty harsh, which is that all these contrary assertions about climate change simply cannot be reconciled with an objective assessment of the facts, of the vast body

of peer-reviewed research. If it can't be reconciled with an objective assessment, what kind of assessment is it getting? What it is getting, I submit, is a phony assessment, a political, propaganda-driven assessment, and an assessment with the purpose of creating enough doubt to slow down political action, to preserve the status quo, and to allow pollution to continue to pour out of these smokestacks.

I speak very specifically about smokestacks because Rhode Island is a downwind State, and so much of the coal pollution that gets piped up into the atmosphere through Midwestern smoke stacks ends up landing in my State. It lands in the form of ozone, in particular. There are days in a Rhode Island summer that look clear, look beautiful, and someone can be driving by sparkling Narragansett Bay in the morning on their way to work when off goes the radio and the radio jock, in giving the news announcements of the day, says: Today is a bad air day in Rhode Island. Infants should stay indoors. The elderly should stay indoors. People with breathing difficulties should stay indoors.

This is an otherwise beautiful day. Yet children, seniors, and people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors? Yes, because corporations, pumping carbon pollution and other forms of pollution out of their Midwestern smokestacks, will not clean up their act. So they get to hold Rhode Islanders, on a clear summer day, captive indoors because they will not clean it up? That is wrong. It is just plain wrong.

I am going to continue to come to the floor on a regular basis to keep pointing this out. For some reason, this has become the issue in Washington that dare not be mentioned. Enough of that. It is time we started to mention it. It is time we started to force this issue, and it is time we started to do something about it because any other form of activity faced with these facts would be wildly irresponsible.

Let me give the example I have used before. You are a parent. You have responsibility for the welfare and well-being of your child. Your child is showing symptoms. You don't know quite what is wrong, but you take her to the doctor and the doctor says: Something is wrong here. She needs treatment. Treatment is not going to be easy, it will not be cheap, but she needs it. You think: OK. That is bad news. I tell you what, I am going to be a responsible parent and I am going to go get a second opinion. So you go and get a second opinion and that doctor says the exact same thing: Your daughter is sick. She needs treatment. So you ask a couple more doctors who are friends. You get a third and fourth opinion.

Let's say you are the most determined parent in the world and you go out and you get 99 second opinions. You contact 100 doctors about your daughter's condition, and 97 of them, 97 of those doctors say your daughter is sick and she needs to be taken care of and she needs this treatment. At that point you say: There is still doubt. There are these three other doctors who aren't so sure about this, so I am not going to do it. That is not something a responsible parent would do. I suspect in some circumstances that would be so irresponsible that it might land you in the child and family services office of your local government.

That is exactly what we are being asked to do about climate change-- to ignore the 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate scientists who understand this is real, this is man-made, and the consequences are going to be ferocious for us because there is a 3-percent doubt. It gets even worse because so many of the scientists involved in the 3 percent are scientists for hire who have economic ties to the polluting industries. Some of them even go back to previous fights, such as those over whether cigarette smoking is good for you or whether lead paint is safe for children. These are scientists who have made a career of manufacturing doubt on behalf of the cigarette and tobacco industry, on behalf of the lead paint industry, and now on behalf of the big carbon polluters. In a nutshell, they are phonies, and we are being asked to believe them.

I see the Senator from Florida is here, and I think my time at this point has probably expired. I appreciate the time to come before this body and share these views again. I will close by pointing out if there is one place we truly need to worry about climate change and about the effects of our carbon pollution, it is not just in our atmosphere, it is not just in the climate or in the weather, it is in the oceans. The oceans are undergoing historic changes as a result of the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. We are acidifying our oceans at a rate that is unprecedented. We are now out of a bandwidth that has lasted for 8,000 centuries--8,000 centuries. Our entire species has developed within a safe bandwidth of atmospheric carbon and of ocean acidity that we have now, for the first time, stepped out of and a long way out of. If we do not take this issue on in a responsible way, we are going to bear an even more bitter harvest.

Exhibit 1

[From the ScienceDaily, June 6, 2012]

Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters

(By Anne Ju)

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate

change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans

might think.

That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino

effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather

outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes--

think the ``Snowmageddon'' storm that hamstrung Washington,

D.C., during February 2010.

Cornell's Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and

atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research

associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a

paper published in the June issue of the journal

Oceanography.

``Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote

phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives,''

Greene said. ``But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces

our weather patterns here.''

A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during

summer, exposing darker ocean water to incoming sunlight.

This causes increased absorption of solar radiation and

excess summertime heating of the ocean--further accelerating

the ice melt. The excess heat is released to the atmosphere,

especially during the autumn, decreasing the temperature and

atmospheric pressure gradients between the Arctic and middle

latitudes.

A diminished latitudinal pressure gradient is associated

with a weakening of the winds associated with the polar

vortex and jet stream. Since the polar vortex normally

retains the cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic

Circle, its weakening allows the cold air to invade lower

latitudes.

The recent observations present a new twist to the Arctic

Oscillation--a natural pattern of climate variability in the

Northern Hemisphere. Before humans began warming the planet,

the Arctic's climate system naturally oscillated between

conditions favorable and those unfavorable for invasions of

cold Arctic air.

``What's happening now is that we are changing the climate

system, especially in the Arctic, and that's increasing the

odds for the negative AO conditions that favor cold air

invasions and severe winter weather outbreaks,'' Greene said.

``It's something to think about given our recent history.''

This past winter, an extended cold snap descended on

central and Eastern Europe in mid-January, with temperatures

approaching minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit and snowdrifts

reaching rooftops. And there were the record snowstorms fresh

in the memories of residents from several eastern U.S.

cities, such as Washington, New York and Philadelphia, as

well as many other parts of the Eastern Seaboard during the

previous two years.

Greene and Monger did note that their paper is being

published just after one of the warmest winters in the

eastern U.S. on record.

``It's a great demonstration of the complexities of our

climate system and how they influence our regional weather

patterns,'' Greene said.

In any particular region, many factors can have an

influence, including the El Nino/La Nina cycle. This winter,

La Nina in the Pacific shifted undulations in the jet stream

so that while many parts of the Northern Hemisphere were hit

by the severe winter weather patterns expected during a bout

of negative AO conditions, much of the eastern United States

basked in the warm tropical air that swung north with the jet

stream.

``It turns out that while the eastern U.S. missed out on

the cold and snow this winter, and experienced record-

breaking warmth during March, many other parts of the

Northern Hemisphere were not so fortunate,'' Greene said.

Europe and Alaska experienced record-breaking winter

storms, and the global average temperature during March 2012

was cooler than any other March since 1999.

``A lot of times people say, `Wait a second, which is it

going to be--more snow or more warming?' Well, it depends on

a lot of factors, and I guess this was a really good winter

demonstrating that,'' Greene said. ``What we can expect,

however, is the Arctic wildcard stacking the deck in favor of

more severe winter outbreaks in the future.''

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

Mr. President, I am delighted to join my senior colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Jack Reed, on the Mark Udall national economic tour of the renewable energy production tax credit, and I am delighted that daily tour has touched on Rhode Island today.

This renewable energy production tax credit is a vital part of our energy security strategy. It is pretty simple. It provides a per- kilowatt hour corporate tax credit for energy that is produced by various clean energy systems, such as wind, biomass, hydro, or geothermal. It makes a lot of sense. We need to do it. The problem is that it expires at the end of this year. And given the way that wind, biomass, solar, and other such projects have to be financed in advance and built over time, the market effect of the expiration of this production tax credit at the end of this year is already being felt in projects that are not going forward now or are under a cloud right now because of the uncertainty we are creating.

We know what happens when we allow the production tax credit to fail: The installations of this kind of equipment drop dramatically. The Department of Energy estimates that new wind installations will be virtually nonexistent next year if the production tax credit is allowed to expire. I don't know if there is a State in the Union in which people are not seeking to build wind energy to capture this free and abundant resource. All those projects will become nonexistent if this does not continue. It doesn't make any sense at all.

In Rhode Island, it is particularly important not only because we don't have a lot of domestic energy sources--so this is a good one for us as a domestic energy source--but also because of the jobs these projects support. We are not supporting international shipping tycoons who bring the oil over here, we are not supporting Saudi princes who pump the stuff or other folks from OPEC or around the world. We are supporting engineers in America, manufacturers in America, assemblers in America, factory workers in America, when we go this route.

My home State is still at 11 percent unemployment, so we have no tolerance for knocking down these jobs. This is not an acceptable energy strategy, it is not an acceptable jobs strategy. It is self- defeating for America's interests.

Senator Reed mentioned TPI Composites. It is a great company. It is in Warren, RI. In the Warren and Bristol area, there is a real constellation of incredibly talented folks and small companies that are affiliated with the boat building industry. TPI and others do composite work--hulls, spars, masts, products that are light, strong, fast, and that help Rhode Island build the fastest and the best boats in the world. This technology has been transitioned from plain boat building and hull building to building the giant wind vanes that turn on these giant wind turbines.

This is an important industry for us and it is a valuable American industry. The idea that we would burn foreign oil rather than building composite wind vanes in Warren, RI, makes no sense at all. We are in the final stages of getting the Department of Interior's approval to build offshore wind turbines in Rhode Island. Senator Reed and I have worked very hard to get TIGER grant funding to Quonset Point, where they have hardened up the pier so that a crane can operate on it. You don't see much on the pier now. It is flat, but it was dug out, steel was put in, and concrete was put down. Had we driven the crane out on the old pier, it would have crumbled down into the water and taken the crane with it. So we had to harden up the pier to put this crane out there, and the crane is now in a position to take these big wind turbines, which are too big to put on a truck and too big to put on a train. You have to build and assemble them shoreside and then barge them out to a location. We can do that now at Quonset Point. The project is expected to create 600 to 800 new jobs, and it could expand beyond that and position this Rhode Island facility as a hub for regional wind energy manufacturing.

This is important to us. We need this production tax credit. It goes along with a long history of government support for emerging industries. When the commercial airline industry was beginning to open, it had immense government support from subsidized airmail, from military contracts, from aeronautics R&D. The reason we took it from the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk to massive Boeing factories--which is still one of the world leaders in aircraft production--is because along the way the government supported American industry because they knew-- we knew--this was an industry that had to compete with overseas manufacturers and needed our support.

In the same way, the clean energy industry is in an arena of international competition in which our country and our companies are competing with foreign interests. We are competing with foreign companies and we are competing with the foreign governments that back them. Unfortunately, many in this building don't see that. All they see is the old, dirty, polluting fossil fuel industry and competition for the fossil fuel industry from clean energy. So they want to knock it down. Never mind that the well-established fossil fuel industries get far more in terms of government support than emerging clean energy technologies. The Environmental Law Institute points out that the United States has invested nearly six times more in subsidies for fossil fuel from 2002 to 2008 than we did in renewable energy. So it is not that their hands are clean of government support; they are here sucking up all the government subsidies they can, and they don't want clean energy to compete with them. They want to knock it down. That is a terrible mistake. We cannot allow the heavy hand of the fossil fuel industry lobbyists to stamp out competition in clean energy. It may be good for big oil, but it is not good for America, because we are in international competition to lead the world and be the manufacturers of wind, solar, geothermal, and other technologies. We are going to end up buying it. We want to also have built it. And, if we can, we want to be exporting it as well. We need to support these industries as they continue to develop and continue to grow so we can once again lead the world as we have in the past.

I thank Senator Udall of Colorado for his leadership. He persistently and patiently comes every day to help make this point, and I am delighted he happened to choose Rhode Island as his point of focus today because Rhode Island truly does wrap it up. It is energy security, energy independence, local jobs and getting ahead and winning the game of international competition for this new technology.

I yield the floor.

If the Senator will yield for a question.

I not only salute what the Senator from Iowa has done on the production tax credit, but I also recognize that one of our great Rhode Island companies that is developing bioprocessed algal fuels has opened its major facility in the Senator's State, and there is a very good Iowa-Rhode Island connection on the development of algal fuels. I appreciate the fact our two States are able to work together so this Rhode Island company can have such a significant facility in Iowa.

It did.

Taxes

Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 10, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 10, 2012, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Developing the Framework for Safe and Efficient Mobile Payments, Part 2.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 10, 2012, at 2:45 p.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Boosting Opportunities and Growth Through Tax Reform: Helping More Young People Achieve The American Dream.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 10, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

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

Madam President, in light of the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act, I wanted to come to the floor today to bring just a few Rhode Island voices into the discussion that is taking place.

One such person is a man from Providence, RI, named Greg, who has a 16-year-old son named Will. Will has cystic fibrosis, which requires Will to spend several hours every day undergoing the treatment that dreadful disease requires. He sees a specialist four times a year to monitor the disease. He has daily prescriptions and treatments.

Without this bill, Will and his father were looking at two problems: One, denial of coverage because Will's cystic fibrosis was a preexisting condition; and, two, lifetime caps.

For people like Will all around the country, this has been a real blessing because lifetime caps are forbidden and kids with preexisting conditions must be covered notwithstanding the preexisting condition. So for Greg, the father in Providence, and his son Will, I want their voices to be heard today in not so much celebration but relief that what they have been provided by the health care law is still in place.

Another voice to bring to the Senate floor is Olive. Olive is a senior citizen. She lives in Woonsocket, RI. Her husband has fairly serious Alzheimer's and requires several medications to treat it. Until the Affordable Care Act came along, Olive and her husband fell in the doughnut hole and had to pay 100 cents on the dollar for the husband's Alzheimer's medications while they were in the doughnut hole.

When I ran for this office, one of the things I pledged to do was to work my heart out to close the doughnut hole. In the Affordable Care Act, it does close. Right now there is a 50-percent discount for Olive on her husband's Alzheimer's drugs when they are in the doughnut hole. For them that 50-percent discount means $2,400, which, for senior citizens who count on Social Security in Woonsocket, makes a difference in the quality of their lives. Overall, it is up to $13.9 billion in doughnut hole discounts for seniors and people with disabilities as a result of this bill. That makes a big difference in every single one of those lives, just like Olive and her husband.

A third voice I wish to bring to the Senate is Brianne, who is a 22- year-old graduate of the University of Rhode Island, out and working part time as a physical therapist, but her job does not provide health insurance. She would be going without entirely, hanging her fortunes on chance, as the President recently said, if it were not for the Affordable Care Act. She and 9,000 young adults in Rhode Island have achieved coverage as a result of this bill by being able to get on their parents' policies.

Danny is also a recent college graduate living in Providence, having graduated from Brown University. He is passionate about renewable energy planning but couldn't make the health insurance work. Because of the Affordable Care Act, like Brianne, he is able to be on his parents' health insurance coverage and have that peace of mind.

The last story I will tell is about a small business owner named Geoff in Providence who provides health care insurance for his employees because he believes it is the right thing to do. He qualified for the law's small business health care tax credit, so he has seen a significant advantage to his small business from this provision.

I think it is a relief to put this quarrel behind us, to be able to move on and deal with the economic issues we face. As we do, I wish to make sure that Greg and Olive and Brianne and Geoff and Danny were all heard here on the floor today, because they are Rhode Islanders in whose lives this bill has made a real and practical difference.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor. I see the distinguished Senator from Wyoming ready to speak.

Madam President, before I embark on my own remarks, let me say how pleased I am to have a chance to follow the Senator from Illinois. I have had the chance to preside in the Senate, as the Senator from New York is doing now, on several occasions, and to be present on the floor on other occasions when Senator Durbin has come to the floor to speak about the DREAM Act and his passion for the opportunity it provides to young people who are in this country through no fault of their own, who know no other home in the world, and who will one day be great Americans--people who will be leaders and performers and experts and scientists and provide great value to our country--I am delighted he is doing it again. His persistence matches his passion. And, finally, with the President's decision the other day, it is beginning to reap some rewards. I hope there is more to come in the future.

Madam President, I ask to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, I will speak on carbon pollution and the damage we are doing to our world. As I try to point out every week--and last week I was not able to, but Senator Kerry made a wonderful, marvelous, very compelling speech on this subject. We have kept the floor busy every week between the two of us. I hope other Senators will join us more and more.

This is an issue we have to address. It is a disgrace, frankly, that this is one of the very few buildings in this country in which climate denial is still happening wholesale. Here and the boardroom of ExxonMobil are probably the two holdout locations.

I want to address a few things that happened this week. I want to begin by correcting an error I made in remarks last week when I came to the floor and spoke in favor of EPA's mercury and air toxic standards for powerplants.

This is very important to Rhode Island, as we are a downwind State-- as is a good deal of New York--and we are bombarded by Midwestern powerplants that, frankly, deliberately send polluted air into the atmosphere through high smokestacks so that it will land elsewhere. Guess what. We are the elsewhere.

We were about to vote on a resolution that would have avoided these standards and put Rhode Island at considerable peril. It would have gone so far as to bar the EPA from ever issuing a similar rule. It would have had a lasting, as well as damaging, effect. It was a reckless proposal. I am pleased we defeated it in the Senate.

During my remarks about this rule, I discussed the health hazards that mercury pollution poses for the people of my Rhode Island, the pollution that comes out of these tall smokestacks, very often with no scrubbers of any kind, and which spews right out and comes to Rhode Island in the form of ozone, which causes us to have ``bad air days,'' where children, people with breathing difficulties, and old folks have to stay indoors. They are basically kept prisoners indoors because of out-of-State polluters who won't clean up their act. The other thing is mercury and mercury poisoning, which is serious in my State.

The Rhode Island Department of Health warns that ``high-risk'' populations--pregnant women, women who

may become pregnant, and small children--should not eat any freshwater fish in Rhode Island because of the danger of mercury poison and mercury contamination. That is sadly correct. I also said that the health department warns that no one should ever eat any of the fish caught in three bodies of water in Rhode Island--the Quidnick Reservoir, Wincheck Pond, and Yawgoog Pond. That sadly is also true.

Finally, I said the health department suggests that anyone who catches freshwater fish in Rhode Island should limit their intake to one serving of this fish a month to protect their health from mercury contamination. In fact, it is more nuanced than that. The health department has issued different warnings for the general population depending on the body of water. So it is not always true that anybody who catches freshwater fish should limit it to one serving a month. I suggest Rhode Islanders consider consulting the health department's Web site, where the agency lists fish advisories by pond and river. That way they can make an informed decision for themselves and their families as to where and when fish are safe to eat.

It doesn't obviously change the larger point that mercury contamination is a continuing public health problem in Rhode Island, and one we can do little about without EPA defending us, because in these other States it is a great deal for them to be able to poison our State's water but get cheaper power in their States because they don't force their utilities to put scrubbers on and to keep themselves operating at appropriate levels of pollution control.

On that same front, this was a good news week from the EPA. They have fought hard to show that carbon dioxide is in fact a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. That case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Court agreed that could be the case if the EPA determined those greenhouse gases might ``reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.'' The EPA went forward and, in 2009, they made this endangerment finding. There have been delays along the way, but I won't get into the history of that rule under the Bush administration now.

The EPA made that endangerment finding and promulgated three additional rules, which are the tailpipe rule, which sets greenhouse gas emissions for motor vehicles; the timing rule, which clarifies when the stationary sources are required to meet pollution standards for greenhouse gases; third is the tailoring rule, which limits the application of this rule to the big polluters so that you are not going after small or inconsequential sources, you are targeting the folks who are putting out tons of pollution.

That was a very good day. The DC Circuit decision was quite strong. I will take a moment to read some of it into the Record:

Industry Petitioners also assert that the scientific

evidence does not adequately support the Endangerment

Finding. As we have stated before in reviewing the science-

based decisions of agencies such as EPA, ``[a]lthough we

perform a searching and careful inquiry into the facts

underlying the agency's decisions, we will presume the

validity of agency action as long as a rational basis for it

is presented.''

They went on to say this:

The body of scientific evidence marshaled by EPA in support

of the Endangerment Finding is substantial. EPA's scientific

evidence of record included support for the proposition that

greenhouse gases trap heat on earth that would otherwise

dissipate into space; that this ``greenhouse effect'' warms

the climate; that human activity is contributing to increased

atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases; and that the climate

system is warming.

Based on this scientific record, EPA made the linchpin

finding: in its judgment, the ``root cause'' of the recently

observed climate changes is ``very likely'' the observed

increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

And they continue below:

Relying again upon substantial scientific evidence, EPA

determined that anthropogenically induced climate change

threatens both public health and public welfare. It found

extreme weather events, changes in air quality, increases

in food-borne and waterborne pathogens, and increases in

temperature are likely to have adverse health effects. The

record also supports EPA's conclusion that climate change

endangers human welfare by creating risk to food

production and agriculture, forestry, energy,

infrastructure, ecosystems, and wildlife. Substantial

evidence further supported EPA's conclusion that the

warming resulting from the greenhouse gas emissions could

be expected to create risks to water resources and in

general to coastal areas--

Such as my home State of Rhode Island, I will interject--

as a result of expected increase in sea level.

Industry Petitioners do not find fault with much of the

substantial record EPA amassed in support of the Endangerment

Finding--

Nor could they, I would interject--

rather, they contend that the record evidences too much

uncertainty to support that judgment. But the existence of

some uncertainty does not, without more, warrant invalidation

of an endangerment finding.

As we have stated before, ``Awaiting certainty will often

allow for only reactive, not preventive, regulation. This

language [in the Clean Air Act describing endangerment

findings] requires a precautionary, forward-looking

scientific judgment about the risks of a particular air

pollutant, consistent with the Clean Air Act's

``precautionary and preventive orientation.''

So here we have three judges of the rather conservative District of Columbia Court of Appeals throwing out all of the challenges to the endangerment findings--the ``tailpipe'' rule, the ``timing'' rule, and the ``tailoring'' rule--and recognizing that although there may be some doubt on the fringes, there is plenty of evidence for reasonable people to take sensible precautions and to do what is right.

As I have said before in other speeches, there is a strategy that is being pursued by the polluting industries, and it is to create enough doubt not to affect what is really happening out there but to affect public judgment; to put enough propaganda into the system that people think: Oh, maybe we shouldn't be so sure about this.

The context I put that doubt in is how prudent a parent would be for the care of a child. The statistics are that 97 percent of practicing climate scientists acknowledge climate change is happening, that we are causing it with carbon pollution, and we have to get serious about it-- 97 percent.

So translate that to your own life as a parent. Your child has symptoms, doesn't look right, and you go to the doctor. The doctors says: I am pretty sure she has this condition and she needs treatment.

The treatments may be a little unpleasant, a little expensive, so you want to be careful and you decide to get a second opinion. You go to another doctor, and the doctor says the exact same thing. But you have a friend who is a doctor, and so you decide to get a third opinion. You go to your friend and you get a third opinion. At that point most prudent parents would probably act.

What the polluting industry and the people who support them in this Chamber expect us to do is to act like that parent except go to 100 doctors, get 99 second opinions, and then, when only three of them say your kid is OK, don't worry about it, you don't need to do a thing, or there is some doubt about what the disease is, even though 97 percent of those doctors say, yes, she is sick, you better get her this treatment--and ignore the 97 percent. Listen to the 3 percent. No decent parent would do that. In fact, you would probably lose your right to continue to be a parent for your child in those circumstances if the child welfare agency became aware of the kind of risk you were putting your child in in those circumstances. But that is the way they want us to behave in this institution.

I am at a loss for a word to describe what kind of logic it is that would be appropriate to the dignity and decorum of this particular Chamber.

There is a magazine--a rather conservative magazine--called The Economist. It is hardly associated with liberal or environmental causes. It is a world magazine. They have just done a special that is called ``The Vanishing North,'' about what is happening in the Arctic. In the summary of the report, they say:

The Arctic's glaciers, including those of Greenland's vast

ice cap, are retreating. The land is thawing: the area

covered by snow in June is roughly a fifth less than in the

1960s. The permafrost is shrinking. Alien plants, birds, fish

and animals are creeping north: Atlantic mackerel, haddock

and cod are coming up in Arctic nets. Some Arctic species

will probably die out.

It is a stunning illustration of global warming, the cause

of the melt. It also contains grave warnings of its dangers.

The world would be mad to ignore them.

It is printed in England, so ``mad'' has the English sense of the word ``insane.''

The report continues:

The main reason appears to be a catalytic warming effect,

triggered by global warning. When snow or ice melt, they are

replaced by darker melt-water pools, land or sea. As a

result, the Arctic surface absorbs more solar heat. This

causes local warming, therefore more melting, which causes

more warming, and so on. This positive feedback shows how

even a small change to the Earth's systems can trigger much

greater ones.

The report continues:

The worry that needs to be taken most seriously is climate

change itself. The impact of the melting Arctic may have a

calamitous effect on the planet. It is likely to disrupt

oceanic circulation--the mixing of warm tropical and cold

polar waters, of which the gulf stream is a part--and thawing

permafrost will lead to the emission of masses of carbon

dioxide and methane, and thus further warming. It is also

raising sea levels. The Greenland ice sheet has recently shed

around 200 gigatonnes of ice a year, a fourfold increase on a

decade ago. If the warming continues, it could eventually

disintegrate, raising the sea level by seven meters.

The ocean State of Rhode Island could ill-afford a sea-level rise of 7 meters.

Many of the world's biggest cities--

And the Senator from New York, who is presiding, represents one of the worlds's biggest--

would be inundated long before that happened.

That is from the summary of The Economist report. If I go into the actual report itself, there are a few other compelling parts, speaking to the Arctic.

The summer sea ice is at its lowest level for at least

2,000 years. Six of the hottest years on record--going back

to 1880--have occurred since 2004. . . . The last time the

polar regions were significantly warmer was about 125,000

years ago. This transformation is in fact happening faster

than anyone had predicted. According to an authoritative 2011

assessment for the Arctic Council, ``it is now becoming very

clear that the cryosphere--

That is the frozen part of the Arctic--

is changing rapidly and that neither observations nor models

are able to tell the full story.''

This is not without cost. Further quoting from The Economist:

The World Bank estimates the cost of adapting to climate

change between 2010 and 2050 at $75 billion-$100 billion a

year; other estimates are higher.

Here is what they conclude:

Sooner or later such arithmetic is going to force

governments to get serious about dealing with climate change.

It is already clear what is required; policies to put an

appropriate price on carbon emissions through a tax or

market-based system, that is sufficient to persuade polluters

to develop and adopt cleaner technologies. These are already

available, and so is the ingenuity needed to force down their

costs and bring them to market.

But then, in a sentimental closing, the article concludes:

But the Arctic will nonetheless be radically changed. . . .

This much is already inevitable.

So the denial that continues in this body continues to have a high price. As I have pointed out, the science on this is neither new nor questionable. The scientist Tyndall, back at the time of the Civil War, first determined that a carbon CO2 blanket creates a warming effect. That was nearly 150 years ago. So there is nothing new about this.

The fringe scientists who are used by the polluters to create this doubt for propaganda purposes are indeed a fringe, as this resounding decision from the U.S. District Court shows. The perils our planet is facing are manifesting themselves now in the Arctic. As one of the scientists said in The Economist report--and I will have to paraphrase because I don't have the quote in front of me--when you get up here, Greenland, Norway, the Arctic, climate change is not a theory, it is an observation. It is what is happening around us. It is happening in the polar regions because they are more vulnerable, but we are seeing it everywhere.

Wildfires tear through the West, Florida is beaten under unprecedented levels of rainstorms, and insurance companies across the country are predicting even worse storms. The biggest insurers and reinsurers came to Washington to join with environmental Senators to say: You have to do something about this. This is really coming.

These aren't liberals, these aren't environmentalists, these aren't people from the Sierra Club. These are the flinty-eyed accountants of the major international insurance and reinsurance companies, and their warnings deserve listening to.

My time has expired, Madam President. I yield the floor at this point, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, earlier this month the Rhode Island Bar Association honored CPT Michael P. Jolin, Esq., with its Victoria M. Almeida Servant Leader Award. I am proud to join in congratulating Mike for this well-deserved distinction.

Mike Jolin has served his country and the people of Rhode Island with competence, courage, and compassion throughout his career. When I was Rhode Island attorney general, I appointed Mike as special assistant attorney general. He went on to serve as the deputy chief of Legal Services for the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation. In both roles he performed admirably, upholding the laws of our State and protecting our citizens.

Meanwhile, Mike worked with neighbors and local officials in Pawtucket to maintain standards in the city's rental properties and protect tenants' rights as chair of the Pawtucket Nuisance Task Force, and to promote broadly shared economic empowerment for the residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood as a member of the board of the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation. He also served ably on the board of City Arts, helping to bring art education to the children of Providence.

In the U.S. Army Reserve and Rhode Island National Guard, Mike served as a judge advocate, performing critical legal, administrative, ethical, and regulatory operations and analysis. He was responsible for the creation of the Rhode Island National Guard's first full-time legal assistance program as well as the Rhode Island Bar Association's U.S. Armed Forces Legal Project. These two programs have provided high- quality and often free legal services to hundreds of Rhode Island service men and women, veterans and their families.

Even after deploying to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435, Mike remained closely involved with the Armed Forces Legal Project, working from abroad to help address the unmet legal needs of Rhode Island's military women and men.

Now back on American soil, Mike continues to serve Rhode Island, conducting outreach to the veteran and military communities in my Rhode Island office and helping constituents connect with resources of the federal government.

The creed of one of our Armed Forces' special operations units says, ``I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.'' Mike's work exemplifies this spirit, demonstrating the understanding that mission success absolutely depends on the individual successes of those around him.

On behalf of all the staff in my Providence and Washington offices, I commend CPT Michael P. Jolin, Esq.--in the words of the Victoria M. Almeida Servant Leader Award citation--for his clear demonstration of ``the principles and values of servant leadership'' and for being ``a beacon of light and hope to others by illuminating the path to greater justice for all.'' We are lucky to have him as part of our team--as are the people of Rhode Island.

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

Madam President, this is the week for the Supreme Court to release opinions from dozens of cases that it has been considering over the past term. In most of these

important cases, the Court followed its usual practice of allowing the parties to file detailed legal briefs and to present oral arguments to make their side of the case before the Court reached its decision. In one case, however, it decided an issue vital to the ongoing function of our democracy, and it decided that case without even allowing the parties the opportunity to write legal briefs on the merits and to argue their case before the Court.

In the Montana case, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, the Court's five-man conservative bloc doubled down on a historic error they made 2 years ago in Citizens United. Citizens United, I am confident, will mark one of the lowest points in the Supreme Court's history.

The case will ultimately stand alongside Lochner v. New York and other such decisions in the Supreme Court gallery of horrible decisions.

A telltale of these horrible court decisions is that they create rights of the powerful against the powerless, turning the very concept of ``rights'' inside out. Ordinarily, a right is something that stands against power. That is why it is carved out as a right; it is because it offends against the power structure, and yet we value it and we defend it. And our courts have as their very purpose in our system of government the purpose to be the guardians of those rights, the guardians of those rights against whatever the structure of power is in our society. That is why we give judges long or lifetime tenure. That is why conflicts of interest in the judiciary are so particularly concerning. That is why some decisions we take away from officialdom entirely and give them to a jury of our peers. That is why it is a crime to tamper with a jury. We do all of those because we want courtrooms insulated from power so that courts can do the essential work of protecting rights against the predations of power.

Look at the Lochner decision, for instance, and see how that Court turned the whole question of rights inside out. Seeking to defend the prevailing economic power structure, the Supreme Court held that bakers had a constitutional right--under a theory of freedom to contract--to agree to work whatever hours their employers wanted to make them work, without overtime, without rest, a right on the part of the bakers to enter into a contract where their employers could tell them they could make them work whatever they wanted. Looking back now, that seems almost silly, but if you were a judge affiliated with an economic structure that saw workers as essentially disposable, this question of workers' rights to work reasonable hours seems, well, unreasonable. And the Lochner decision justifiably lies on the junk pile of judicial history, a broken monument to the prejudice and error of that Court.

Citizens United and now the Montana decision join this gallery of judicial horribles. Here, the right they turned inside out is the right of free speech, and the power structure served is the vast and unprecedented corporate power structure that exists today.

Under Citizens United, under this inside-out right they have created, you now enjoy the free speech right to hear as much corporate speech as they want to bombard you with. If you are a regular human, you are on your own. If you are a CEO, you can access your corporate treasury to drown out the voices of all of your workers. If you are a massive multinational corporation or if you are a billionaire or a multibillionaire, you now have a right to dominate the paid media airwaves, and we have the free speech right to have to listen to all of that.

At least if you are a billionaire, you are still a human being. And I don't say this judgmentally; this is a legal fact. If you are a corporation, you have no soul, you have no conscience, you have no altruism. You have none of the characteristics that are special to humankind. You are a legal fiction. You are a financial mechanism created for the massing and the efficient use of capital. In the economic sphere, the value of that corporate structure is immense, there is no doubt about it. It has provided great value to our society. But in the political sphere, it is dangerous. But for these five Justices who constantly support corporate interests, to protect the power that comes from being able to provide or promise or threaten massive anonymous expenditures on political attack ads, well, that is just how you see the world.

One day the Citizens United decision will lie next to Lochner on the junk pile of judicial error and prejudice. There is too much wrong with it for it ultimately to survive. But, sadly, today is not that day, and the five conservative Justices have chosen, instead of correcting their error, to double-down on it.

The central and deeply flawed premise of Citizens United was the conservative majority's declaration that vast corporate independent expenditures ``do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'' They had no record on which to make that decision. None had ever run in an election before. They had no basis for making that decision, but that was the declaration they issued.

First, whether independent expenditures by corporations pose dangers of corruption or dangers of the appearance of corruption is a factual question that depends on the actual workings of the electoral system. Supreme courts aren't supposed to make findings of fact. So one of the first errors in the Citizens United decision was that they drove off the road of proper judicial procedure, across the rumble strip, and they started making findings of fact--and they did so in a very dangerous way.

The peculiar way the conservative Justices brought the Citizens United question before the Court deprived the Court of any opportunity to consider a record. Ordinarily, the Supreme Court has a record that comes up to it from the court decisions below. But, as my colleagues may recall, the parties in Citizens United did not ask the Court to consider the constitutionality of limiting corporate independent expenditures. That was not addressed below. What happened is that the conservative Supreme Court Justices took it upon themselves to ask a new question and to answer that question they themselves had asked. In doing it this way, the Justices simply declared, with no factual basis, that massive, independent corporate expenditures posed no risk of corruption to our elections. They were wrong, as is obvious to most people.

The case the Court decided today, American Tradition Partnership, created an opportunity for the Court to have dug itself out from the colossal mistake it made in Citizens United. It is an interesting background in comparison to Citizens United because the case came out of Montana, where there is an extensive record within the State of Montana of historical evidence of immense corruption created in that State by corporate influence and corporate campaign money dating all the way back to the copper barons who bought and sold Montana State government in the bad old days. The Montana court also found substantial evidence that Montana voters believe that corporate election expenditures lead to corruption and that this belief has contributed in Montana to widespread cynicism and low voter turnout. Those were findings of fact based on an actual record, and the Montana Supreme Court carefully reviewed those findings of fact. That is what it is supposed to do--not make findings of fact but review them. The Montana court concluded that the State had a compelling interest justifying the law based on the evidence in the record.

The corporations then came in and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the Montana Supreme Court's decision, arguing that it was inconsistent with Citizens United. At that point, I joined with Senator John McCain, who has long been a national leader on campaign finance issues, in filing a bipartisan amicus brief with the Supreme Court. In our brief, Senator McCain and I challenged that central premise in Citizens United--that phony premise about the corrupting potential of outside political expenditures being nonexistent. The extensive factual record developed in Montana and the facts that have developed since Citizens United on the ground nationally provided the Court with plenty of evidence--evidence that it lacked because of the way it had approached Citizens United.

Our brief showed that Citizens United stood on a pair of false and flawed factual assumptions about our elections. First, the Citizens United decision assumed that outside political expenditures were going to be independent,

that they were not going to be coordinated with political campaigns. Second, the Citizens United majority assumed that there would be disclosure of what special interests were paying for the ads. Both of these assumptions are demonstrably wrong. The ongoing Presidential and congressional races reveal close coordination between campaigns and these so-called independent expenditures. Wealthy donors, who have maxed out their contributions to the candidate, now can use candidate- specific super PACs as convenient proxies to make the functional equivalent of excess campaign contributions. Campaigns and their super PACs have closely connected staff, they have shared consultants, they openly coordinate on fundraising, and they work together on advertising, with super PACs acting, actually, as the successful surrogates for the candidates in States where the candidate has made few appearances or spent little money on advertising. Indeed, in the Republican Presidential primary a candidate-specific super PAC for Senator Santorum spent millions and won the Minnesota primary for Senator Santorum when the candidate himself had no money to spend.

These vast expenditures are not just coordinated closely with candidates and campaigns, they are anonymous, with the special interests behind the ads keeping themselves secret from the American public. As everybody in this Chamber and every American who has a television set knows, the decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special interest money pouring into our elections. Using phony shell corporations, 501(c) organizations, and super PACs, outside groups can now spend--or, importantly, they can credibly threaten to spend because that can have a big effect in politics--overwhelming amounts of money in support of or against a candidate without any publicly disclosed paper trail.

Although the secretive interests behind the anonymous spending may be hidden from voters, they may be hidden from regulators, they may be hidden from prosecutors, they may be hidden from the media, they will not be hidden from the candidate. They will be well known to the candidate. That alone allows for an undetectable quid pro quo corruption, as the wealthy outside interests can award a candidate with massive, anonymous spending.

Worse than that is a type of corruption I touched on a moment ago when I talked about threats--a corruption made possible by the Citizens United decision that went completely unconsidered by the U.S. Supreme Court. They never even mentioned it. That is the ability to threaten large and secret expenditures without actually having to make them. A candidate could be quietly warned that if they don't take the right position on this issue, if they don't vote right when the amendment or the bill comes up, they will be punished with a large expenditure against them.

Now, how is that a threat under Citizens United? Before Citizens United, if a corporation wanted to threaten a politician, the threat would mean a $5,000 PAC contribution to the politician's opponent. It would mean maybe some fundraising and bundling by the corporate executives and by the corporate lobbyists. I suppose that is something a candidate wouldn't necessarily want, but it is not a very big deal. It happens all the time. And I don't think it throws much weight around here.

Today, after Citizens United, the threat isn't of $5,000 and a couple of fundraisers, the threat is of unlimited, anonymous corporate spending against you--enough to defeat or elect a candidate. And if this threat succeeds, the real danger is that there is no record whatsoever of the corrupt deal for regulators, prosecutors, and media outlets to track.

Sherlock Holmes famously talked in one of his decisions about the dog that didn't bark. In political corruption, we need to be concerned about the ad that didn't run--the ad that didn't run because the politician obediently did what he or she was told.

The brief Senator McCain and I authored laid all of this before the Court. We documented the close coordination between campaigns and this so-called independent spending. We detailed the tangled web of corporate 501(C) and super PAC relationships that allow wealthy interests, special interests, to hide their spending from the public, and we explained the various ways these forms of coordinated identity laundering by special interests create the real threat of quid pro quo corruption. As we said in our brief, ``The campaign finance system assumed by Citizens United is no longer a reality, if it ever was.'' And, frankly, I don't think it ever was.

Confronted with the actual facts on the ground in Montana and nationally, the Supreme Court's conservatives decided they were going to ignore the evidence. There is a blindfold on Lady Justice. But the blindfold on Lady Justice as she holds her scales aloft is supposed to be blindness to the parties who are before her. It is supposed to be blindness to what the interests are. It is not supposed to be a considered and deliberate blindness to the evidence and the facts. But in this case, that is the blindness the Supreme Court has deliberately imposed on itself--or at least the five conservative Justices have.

This conservative bloc has decided to perpetuate the error of Citizens United without considering the facts. Montana will not have an opportunity to file briefs on the merits, explaining the importance of its laws to protect against the corruption that is its historic experience. The attorney general of Montana will not have the opportunity to stand before the Justices to defend his State's law. Once again, the Court has kept from itself any relevant record that might present uncomfortable facts.

In Citizens United, the conservative Justices asked themselves to decide a major constitutional case without any lower court record. And now that they have a fully developed lower court record to proceed on that happens to show how wrong they were, they have no interest in even looking at that record.

We need to act now to fix our broken campaign finance system. The Supreme Court had the chance to correct its error. These five conservative Justices refused to correct their error. They doubled down on their error. They have ignored the evidence of their error that we all see around us, so we cannot wait. We know why they are doing it. We know what is going on. We know it is not going to happen from this Supreme Court, not from those five Justices, so we need to fix this on our own. Americans of all political stripes, whether you are an occupier or tea party, they are disgusted by the influence of unlimited and anonymous corporate cash pouring into our elections, and by campaigns that succeed or that fail depending on how many billionaires support the candidate.

More and more, people in my home State of Rhode Island and around the country believe their government responds only to wealthy special interests. They see jobs disappear and wages stagnate and bailouts and special deals for the big guys and they lose faith that elected officials here in Washington are listening to them.

(Mr. MERKLEY assumed the Chair.)

For now we are left with one weapon in the fight against the overwhelming tide of secret special interest money, and that one weapon is disclosure. Let the sun shine in. At least let the American public know who is behind these massive expenditures.

Earlier this year I introduced the DISCLOSE Act of 2012. I had immense help from the Presiding Officer, Senator Merkley, in doing that work. We call it DISCLOSE 2.0. This legislation will shine a bright light on all of this spending by these powerful special interests.

With this legislation, which now has 44 Senators cosponsoring it, every citizen will know who is spending these great sums of money to get their candidates elected and to influence our elections. Passing this law would begin to remove the dark cloud of unlimited secret money that the Supreme Court has cast over our American elections.

The DISCLOSE Act includes a narrow and reasonable set of provisions. We have trimmed it down so that it should have wide support from Democrats and Republicans. A great number of my Republican colleagues in this body are on record that disclosure and transparency are essential in campaign finance, so we have made every effort to craft an effective and a fair proposal while imposing the least possible burden on the covered organizations.

As Trevor Potter, a Republican, former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said in a statement submitted to the Rules Committee: Disclose 2.0 is ``appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored, clearly constitutional and desperately needed.''

The same cannot be said for the conservative majority's holding in Citizens United, echoed again today in American Tradition Partnership. The conservative Justices' desire to maintain their error and to keep the corporate money flowing represents a sad, sad day in the history of the Court. It will, as I said earlier, one day be corrected. One day, Citizens United will lie next to Lochner v. New York and other decisions that have disgraced the Court in the past on the junk heap of judicial history. But until that day, it is up to all of us to work together to restore control of our elections, to restore control of our democracy, to put it back in the hands of the American people, to assure that we continue a government of the people, by the people, and for the people--not a government of the big corporations, by the big corporations, and for the big corporations.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will take a moment to go through the closing script, and in doing so I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to S. Res. 503, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to S. Res. 504, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 26; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the first hour of debate be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; further, that at 2:15 p.m. there be 6 hours 15 minutes of debate remaining postcloture on the motion to concur in the House message to accompany S. 3187, the FDA bill, with 2 hours under the control of Senator Harkin, 4 hours under the control of Senator Burr, and 15 minutes under the control of Senator Paul.

Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow and vote on confirmation of the Rosenbaum nomination at noon. We also hope to complete action on the FDA bill.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. President, I am honored to join my senior Senator to commemorate such an important milestone as he has described in American education.

It was 40 years ago this week that President Nixon signed into law the

Education Amendments Act of 1972, including a provision establishing for the first time the basic educational opportunity grant, which came to be called the Pell grant for its sponsor, Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island.

Over the next four decades, Pell grants would turn the dream of college education into a reality for millions of Americans. Today, more than ever, a college diploma is important to a young person's success. The unemployment rate for those 25 and older with a bachelor's degree is less than 4 percent and over 8 percent for those with only a high school diploma. The value of that college degree could not be more apparent. Higher education provides the skills and credentials that many employers require in today's economy.

In the decades following World War II, the U.S. Government made college and occupational mobility a reality for more Americans than ever before. Claiborne Pell was a veteran of that war, and he saw how the GI bill enabled millions of his fellow veterans to better themselves through education. He recognized that many of his Coast Guard shipmates had as much talent as his Princeton classmates but not the privilege or resources to go to college.

Given the opportunity, this Greatest Generation would not only provide a better life for their families with that access to college, but they would contribute mightily to the growth of this Nation, a growth we still enjoy today.

Claiborne Pell resolved then that all Americans should have such an opportunity, and his vision would become a reality for millions through the Pell grant. In 1976, the first year the Pell grants were fully funded, a full Pell grant paid 72 percent of the cost of attendance at a typical 4-year public college. Today, a full Pell grant covers just 32 percent of those costs, but still, for many, this vital assistance can mean the difference between being able to attend college or not.

As grant aid has fallen and tuition has soared, families have had to borrow to make up the difference to send their kids to college. The total amount of student loan debt carried by Americans has recently surpassed $1 trillion, more than Americans now owe on their credit cards.

I have talked to students around my State and I have read many heartfelt letters. It is clear Pell grants serve as a gateway to the opportunities available with a college degree, a gate that would be shut if not for Pell grants.

I received a letter from Phil in Wakefield, RI, the oldest of five children. Last year, Phil graduated from Cornell. Phil worked his way through college, including summers. His parents chipped in when they could. Phil's father is still paying off student loans, and Phil was lucky enough to earn private scholarships and receive grants from his school. He said:

But there's no way my education would have been possible

without Pell Grants. We just wouldn't have been able to

afford it.

I also heard from Anthony, who has been working as a waiter in Providence. Thanks to the Pell grant, he and his wife Jen have been able to go back to school at the University of Rhode Island for degrees in biotechnology. They say their education will enable them to build a better future together in Rhode Island's rapidly expanding biotech sector.

Leann is a single mother of two from Pawtucket, already carrying student loan debt, although she has not been able to finish her undergraduate program. Last year, Leann enrolled in the School of Continuing Education at Roger Williams University, and when she graduates with a bachelor's degree next year, she plans on opening her own small business. ``None of this would be happening'' she wrote, ``if I were not receiving a Pell Grant.''

The simple fact is this: Pell grants help millions of people achieve the dream of college and improve their prospects for employment. It is a wise investment in the future of our country. Congress has, in recent years, increased the buying power of Pell Grants, increasing the maximum grant from $4,050 in academic year 2006-2007 to $5,550 in 2012- 2013.

We also increased the minimum family income that automatically qualifies a student for the maximum Pell grant, a change that better reflects today's economic realities. Sadly, however, we are seeing a truly misguided assault on Pell grants.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal marked the 40th anniversary of Pell grants this week by printing claims about the Pell grant that, simply to be polite, do not withstand scrutiny. The Journal says the Pell grant is rife with abuse, with students engaging in ``creative accounting'' to qualify by feigning financial independence.

The most common way one gets deemed independent under the Pell Grant Program is by being 24 years of age or older. It is hard to imagine doing much creative accounting with one's date of birth. The other major proofs of independence are being married and having children. Maybe when they said ``creative accounting'' they meant ``procreative accounting.''

The Wall Street Journal implies that better off students can win larger grants by attending more expensive institutions. But the cost of tuition cannot increase the maximum size of a grant. The maximum Pell grant, as I said, is $5,550, regardless of the school one attends. As we all know, $5,550 is far from sufficient to cover the cost of most higher education.

Perhaps the most misleading claim from the Journal is to pick out the period when Pell grant costs rose significantly, between 2008 and 2010, due largely to the enactment of a funding expansion that has since been repealed and the fact that more eligible students applied for assistance as the economy worsened in those years. What they left out is that the Congressional Budget Office projects almost no average annual growth in program costs over the next 10 years.

The Republican budget in the House of Representatives slashes funding and eligibility for Pell grants and eliminates all mandatory funding for the program over the next 10 years. We all understand the need to find savings in the Federal budget. We all understand the need to make difficult choices. But of all the bad choices we could make, of all unintelligent choices we could make, failing to invest in Pell grants would be among the worst.

It is, frankly, shameful that Federal financial aid has not kept pace with the rising cost of college. It is truly misguided to roll back financial aid for a generation of young Americans preparing to compete in an evermore global economy. We need a highly trained workforce. Pell grants are very often the keystone in the arch that students must build to afford college, as Phil and Anthony and Jen and Leann all showed.

Rhode Island is a small State. But over the years we have had some towering and remarkable Senators. Claiborne Pell was one. Claiborne Pell believed, as he once told the Providence Journal, ``that government--and the federal government in particular--can, should, and does make a positive impact on the lives of most Americans.''

The Pell grant's positive impact is that people who cannot afford college have the chance to go to college, and it lifts off their backs a little bit of that burden of debt. That is something we want in this country, not just for the sake of the individual Pell grant recipient, not just for the sake of the next generation but for the sake of the good of our country.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

I yield to the Senator from Michigan.