Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 366, S. 1421.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion 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 the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 681, submitted earlier today.

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

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, November 18; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, there be a period of morning business for one hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time 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 following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, postcloture; and the Senate recess from 12:30 until 3 p.m., with the time during recess, adjournment, or period of morning business counting postcloture.

Mr. President, the postcloture debate time on the motion to proceed to the food safety bill will expire late tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, we will continue to work on an agreement to consider amendments to the bill. We wish to reach agreement so we can complete action on this important legislation this week.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I understand there are two bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.

Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading en bloc, and I object to my own request en bloc.

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 thank the distinguished Senator from Michigan for her eloquent words that try to bring into this institution some of the difficulties and anxiety and pain

families in our States particularly are feeling. Because while the national unemployment rate is at an atrocious above 9 percent, in our States it is considerably worse. In Rhode Island the unemployment rate hovers still around 12 percent. This has been a prolonged recession. For many Rhode Islanders, they have been out of work for as long as unemployment insurance benefits allow. Now they are coming to the end of the 99-week period under which they are allowed to recover. The plain, unvarnished fact is that the jobs aren't there. In a different economy, I might be less impatient with the argument that we have to cut off unemployment benefits on folks because, frankly, after a while they get lazy. And if we don't cut off the benefits, then they will wait around, collecting their unemployment, goofing off and not going back to work. That is the argument I hear made against this all too often.

When one is in a State where the jobs simply are not there, where the economy has not come close to recovering, then it is not logical, and it is heartless and wrong. There are now more than 65,000 Rhode Islanders out looking for work. By contrast, the economic recovery bill created 11,000 jobs in Rhode Island. It would be far worse were it not for the action we took. But when we compare 11,000 families who now have jobs and paychecks because of the Recovery Act to the 65,000 still wondering when is this economy coming back for me, clearly we have a lot of work to do. To extend unemployment benefits for those who have run it through is the least we can do.

I remember visiting not too long ago Network Rhode Island, a job placement agency in Pawtucket and speaking to a married couple, a middle-age married couple sitting side by side at one of the computer screens looking for something. They come in to look every day. They have filed hundreds of applications for jobs. They have been unable to find anything because of the job market. They said: We are anxious. We are running out of our benefits. This was one of those occasions when the Republicans had filibustered extending unemployment benefits, adding additional funding. I assured them that when we got back we would be restoring those benefits, and we would be protecting them because we had that commitment and we had that determination. They said: No, you can't help us. We are in the 99ers. We have come to the end of the duration for which you are allowed to collect unemployment benefits.

I felt helpless, that there was nothing we were doing for them. Senator Stabenow and I discussed this problem. She filed this wonderful legislation, of which I was an immediate cosponsor. It addresses a problem that at least in our States is very real.

Two of the Rhode Islanders who have written to us and contacted me about this have let me use their images. Just so we are not always talking about heartless, bloodless statistics on the floor, 12 percent, 65,000, there are real people behind those statistics. There are real families. There are those terrible late nights at the kitchen table trying to figure out how you keep the mortgage, how you keep the health insurance, what you cut, what you give up. Those are discussions that are being had by real families.

This is Michael Coppola. He lives in Smithfield. He was a truckdriver for the same company from 2000 to 2007. He was laid off in October of 2008 when his unit closed. This month Michael hits the current 99-week limit for unemployment insurance benefits. He has had to give up health insurance. He is trying to keep up with his mortgage payments so he doesn't lose his house and add to the tide of foreclosures sweeping across Rhode Island and the rest of the country. His wife is totally disabled. As a result, she receives Social Security benefits and that is helping them keep the family together. But he wrote me to say:

Any extension of benefits for people like me who have

exhausted their benefits would help allow me to stay in my

house, pay my taxes, and [allow me] to regain my health

coverage.

Michael actually took this picture for us so we could have a picture here to show on the floor and put a human face on this problem that is so often drowned in statistics.

Here is another Rhode Islander from Portsmouth. This is Nancy Babcock. Nancy is 59 years old. She lost her job about 24 months ago. She had worked for 15 years steadily in the insurance industry. Next week she hits her 99-week limit. She has been able to find a little bit of part-time work, but it has not been enough to pay her bills and keep her finances afloat. Rhode Island's WorkShare program has permitted her to supplement her unemployment insurance benefits with a small amount of part-time income. This is a woman who has worked essentially all her life, who while on unemployment insurance has tried to find what work she could find and was permitted and has continued to look for work. She has a bachelor's degree. She has several industry certifications. She has extensive background in sales and marketing. Despite the long drought of unemployment she has had to live through, so many Rhode Islanders have had to live through, she is still out there every day looking for work, hoping the economy will turn for her. She has been going through the classifieds, beating her feet against the pavement trying to get to places where she might get an interview. She has been reaching out to friends, doing all the things that families do in this circumstance, trying to reach out wherever she can, and still, after 99 weeks, to no avail.

I thank Senator Stabenow for her leadership. In a better world, this would be an easy thing and the unanimous consent to allow us to go to this bill and extend these unemployment insurance benefits would be uncontroversial. It should be clear to anybody that these people have lost their jobs and have been out of work for this lengthy period through no fault of their own. Michael was not fired for cause. Nancy didn't lose her job because she did something wrong. The people who did something wrong were in Wall Street, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, creating phony baloney securitization of home mortgages. Most of them got bailed out. The banks are back rolling, firing off the big bonuses, reporting huge earnings, not loaning much money yet but taking care of their folks, rolling in the paychecks and the bonus checks. They are back on their feet again. But for the people who got clobbered by the tsunami of economic catastrophe that the Wall Street implosion and the housing implosion set off, they are still being washed around. Nobody has bailed them out.

Let's extend the unemployment insurance they have been contributing to, that they are a part of. Let's help our fellow Americans weather this unique financial storm.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me first thank the Senator from Michigan who has worked so long and hard on this. We do, indeed, have in Rhode Island the distinction of being in the top three or four States for unemployment for month after month after month. Rhode Island is still hovering near 12 percent unemployment.

For a State that was once the manufacturing capital of the world, for a State that was once the place where the industrial revolution was sparked off, to be in this situation is very painful for a lot of Rhode Islanders, and it is particularly painful and frustrating to have that situation exacerbated by our country's tax and trade laws. At last we are getting around to doing something about it.

So I am here today in strong support of the Creating American Jobs and

Ending Offshoring Act. I wish to speak a little bit about the bill itself because one of the things I have noticed about my colleagues on the other side is that they have spoken about anything and everything. They have spoken about taxes. They have spoken about the deficit. They have spoken about wages. They have spoken about every economic issue they can bring to mind, but they haven't spoken about this bill. Nobody has said this is a bad piece of legislation; they just don't want to get to it. They want to give long speeches about macroeconomics rather than look at this bill and how it will help. It is a shame because we are just trying to get to this bill.

Last week, Leader Reid made a procedural motion that the Senate take up this legislation to address the epidemic of companies laying off American workers and moving their jobs overseas.

I was just in a facility in Rhode Island a few weeks ago and there were machines running and there were people working. But if you walked around the machine shop floor, you could see marks on the floor marked off in tape with holes where bolts had been taken out. Those were machines that had been taken out of a Rhode Island factory and shipped to South America so that South American workers could work those machines and sell the exact same products that had been made in Rhode Island back into America.

So this is a very real and practical problem we have to face. With the kind of unemployment we have still in this country, I hope every one of my colleagues, Republican as well as Democrat, will acknowledge that this is a topic that is worthy of debate in the Senate.

Senator LeMieux from Florida was just here. He is a very distinguished Member of this body, and I consider him a personal friend. He came forward with a great list of ideas he believed we should be considering in order to improve our jobs posture and move America forward. Those were all fine ideas, and every single one of them he could have offered as an amendment if he would vote yes to go to this bill.

Where we are is the Republicans saying we are not even going to discuss this piece of legislation. So every good idea or what they consider to be a good idea we have heard about tonight, bear in mind their votes will prevent them from offering amendments to implement those very ideas that they are claiming are good ideas.

This is a basic, smart piece of legislation. The Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act would close some really perverse loopholes in the Tax Code that, right now, reward American companies for moving American jobs overseas. The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever. Those machines that were unscrewed, unbolted from that Rhode Island shop floor and shipped to South America so that South American workers could run them--the cost of that was a tax deduction subsidized by the American taxpayer. That simply doesn't make sense.

If we want to send a message that we are tired of sending American jobs offshore, then giving people a tax deduction for doing that should be a practice that ends. We would end those taxpayer subsidies for the expenses of moving American jobs overseas.

That taxpayer subsidy is just the cherry on top--the big prize--for companies that are offshoring jobs. The real money comes from their ability to defer paying taxes on profits they earn overseas. Here is an example. Let's say a company manufactures a boat in my State of Rhode Island. That company pays taxes on its profits from selling that boat every year that it earns a profit. Let's say there is a company right across the street--a competitor--that also makes boats, and it decides that it is going to take its manufacturing and move it overseas to China. They will make the same boat but will make it in China and then sell it back to the same U.S. customer. They are identical except that one company moved its jobs overseas. The company that moved its jobs overseas is not obliged to pay income taxes on its profits from the overseas manufactured boat at that time. It can strategically defer and maneuver its taxing to pay it later and use the money in the meantime instead of having to borrow capital or pay it at a time when it has offsetting deductions. This deferral gaming can be quite lucrative for the companies that move jobs overseas, and it can be quite costly for taxpayers. So we close this loophole too.

These tax loopholes that reward shipping jobs overseas have served as powerful incentives for companies to do so, and the numbers bear this out. According to our Bureau of Economic Analysis, 1999 to 2008, the number of U.S. employees of multinational companies declined by nearly 2 million--1.9 million jobs--out of America from multinational corporations. During the same period, these same companies increased their foreign employment by 2.4 million--2 million jobs out of this country and into foreign countries by American multinationals.

Some people think that is a wonderful idea. These are our friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This is a letter they sent on September 23 to the Members of the Senate from the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America:

Replacing a job that is based in another country with a

domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance

the competitiveness of American worldwide companies.

This is our U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the same entity that is out running ads trashing candidates on behalf of Republicans, the same entity that represents all the big multinationals--Exxon, BP, the big insurance companies, the big banks, the folks charging you a 30 percent interest rate on your credit card. That is whom these people represent. Again, they bring this idea to the table:

Replacing a job that is based in another country with a

domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance

the competitiveness of American worldwide companies.

I will tell you what it does. It will enhance the heck out of the economic growth of the family who gets that domestic job. It will enhance the heck out of the economic competitiveness of a neighborhood that doesn't have a factory shipped overseas so that the company can move the jobs offshore. I don't know whom these people are interested in--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--but it is definitely not the American family, the American neighborhoods or the American worker. ``Replacing a job that is based in another country with a domestic job. . . .'' That is really astounding.

So we need to get to this bill, and we need to begin to reverse the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing. This cannot do everything, but it would be a first step.

When we were growing up, the vast majority of the clothes we wore, the cars on our roads, and the food on our tables was all produced in the United States. That time has passed, that time is gone, that time is no more. Today, you would be hard-pressed to find items in a department store that were made domestically. Just go to Walmart--it is China-mart.

It is not just consumer goods either. Earlier this year, I had a meeting with an organization in Rhode Island that runs one of our major ports. Together with Senator Reed, we were able to argue successfully for one of the TIGER grants in the economic recovery bill to help support this port so that they can grow jobs and add to the business that comes to Rhode Island. Part of what they need to do is purchase and install a big cargo crane, a port crane to offload the goods that come in and stack them so they can go onto trains and trucks and off into commerce. Guess what we discovered. We discovered that the Rhode Island organization didn't plan to buy the multimillion-dollar crane from an American company. Do you know why that is? That is because no American company any longer makes a port crane. No matter how much you want to buy a crane for an American port from an American company, you can't do it. We don't make them any longer. Something has gone badly wrong when you go to the biggest retail outlet in America and you can't buy American-made products--it is 90-plus percent from China--and when you go to a port and the crane that is unloading the Chinese goods cannot even be made in America any longer.

So we need to get to work. We need to support our American manufacturing base, and we need to take the wrinkles out of the Tax Code that make it advantageous for a company to move those jobs overseas, with taxpayer subsidies and competitive advantage against a company that is struggling at home trying to do the right thing and keep jobs here.

All we are asking of our colleagues is that they allow us to go to the bill and have this debate. When they come to the floor and object to this procedural motion, and they have nothing to say about this bill but only general bromides--I have had so many bromides that I am ready for some Bromo-Seltzer. They won't talk about this bill. The reason is that it is a good bill, and it would help American jobs, and they don't want anything to pass now. I urge them to change their minds. It is too important to let this opportunity pass.

I yield the floor.

I see my colleague from Alaska.

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

Mr. President, I come because we are coming to the end of our workweek. Many of our colleagues are gone already, and others are preparing to go. Another week has gone by in which the Senate has taken no action whatsoever with respect to the continuing pollution of our atmosphere by carbon, which we subsidize by allowing our biggest polluters to do it without cost or consequence. The effects of that on our world continue to manifest themselves. This is one of those issues where we can come to an impasse in the Senate and the foes of doing anything about moving to clean energy jobs and requiring carbon polluters to actually pay a price for their pollution can stop all that. It may seem like a victory, but the problem is there is a real cost to continuing to pollute our atmosphere with carbon. It does trap heat. It does warm the planet.

Those are scientific verities that are unavoidable and the consequences continue to cascade through our world, through the environmental systems of which it is made up. The evidence of that continues to emerge.

Frankly, Mother Nature does not care about what happens in the Senate. She is not subject to our law. She is not subject to our opinion. She will continue to do her thing. It is up to us to be prudent and thoughtful caretakers of our planet and sensible men and women and take the appropriate steps so we can head off the disasters she is loudly signaling are coming our way.

I thought I would share just some of the continuing cascade of evidence and news that is coming out on this subject.

The first thing I will mention is a report from Science Daily that came out about a week ago. According to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Government agency's recent state of the climate report, the lower 48 States, as a whole, experienced the fourth warmest summer on record, with average August temperatures 2.2 degrees above the last century average.

The American Southwest experienced its warmest summer ever. The Midwest experienced its third warmest summer. The Northeast, where I come from, where my home State of Rhode Island is, experienced its fourth warmest summer ever recorded. Indeed, Rhode Island experienced its hottest ever July on record.

The increase of temperature in our weather systems has the effect of adding energy into those weather systems which suggests that storms are made more frequent and more powerful. Sure enough, the facts confirm that as well.

In 2007, Environment America analyzed rainfall data and determined in a report that came out more recently that extreme precipitation events had increased across the United States by 24 percent between 1948 and 2006. The region in which the extreme precipitation events--these major storms with extreme levels of rain or snow--faced the greatest increase was in New England, with a 61-percent increase from 1948 to 2006. Within New England, the State that faced the greatest increase was my home State of Rhode Island, with an 88-percent increase in extreme precipitation events.

One of those extreme precipitation events was the March flooding in my home State, in which our rivers--the Pawtuxet, Blackstone, and Pawcatuck--some of them went above 100-year floodplain levels. Some of them reached areas beyond 500-year flood levels.

Clearly, something is changing. Actually, there were two floods that happened back to back, just weeks apart. I visited homes in West Warwick, where the mud and the flooding had brought into people's homes and basements thick muck they had to dig out and clean up. As soon as they had dug it out and cleaned it up, boom, it happened again. It was absolutely heartbreaking for them. One can imagine how frustrating it is to go into your home, your basement, to see what used to be a nice area, what used to be clean, what used to be dry, where your children kept their photo albums, you might have kept old papers, things that were important to you, televisions, sofas, and now just a sea of filthy mud that you are going to have to figure out how to clear out and clean up, cutting out all the wallboard, cutting out everything that is wet, having to rebuild. The frustration of having to do that--people lead busy lives, they do not need that--and then, boom, to have it happen a second time as soon as it was done is unbelievably frustrating and disheartening.

Those are the kinds of extreme and unpredicted weather events that are associated with a warming planet and the heating of the atmosphere.

It also changes the way different animals can live and migrate. One of them is the bark beetle. Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service predicted that outbreaks of spruce and mountain beetles in Western States will increase in the coming decades because of climate change. These beetles historically had their range kept in check by cold winters, which basically kill off the larvae, and that limits the reproduction of the beetles and it limits their geographic range. As the winters become warmer, then the beetles have survived--because the winters aren't as cold--so they continue to go out and do their thing. Their thing to do is to kill pine trees. The beetles have already affected more than 17.5, I believe, million acres of Western forests.

I have traveled out West. I was in Idaho a few summers ago, and you could fly over the mountains of Idaho and see entire forested mountains, as far as the eye could see from the plane, and it was dead and brown and it was because the beetle had gone in there and killed them.

These changes are going to continue. I can't estimate what cost it was to the industry or to Idaho's economy to have that massive die-off of pine trees, but, clearly, it is no good thing.

The ocean continues to send us warnings as well. According to the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center--this again earlier this month--for only the third time in satellite history, ice has covered less than 5 million square kilometers of the Arctic Ocean. As a result of the trend that these researchers see, they warn that global warming could leave the Arctic sea ice free by 2030--20 years from now. Many of us will be around then to see that.

An ice-free Arctic Ocean has very significant repercussions for our world because it is the ice that reflects a great deal of the heat back out of the atmosphere in what is called the albedo effect--the reflection of it. If that is not there, instead there is a dark ocean absorbing the heat. It accelerates the warming and begins the feedback loop that makes the problem worse.

So it is significant that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to shrink and for only the third time in satellite history now has covered less than 5 million square kilometers.

If you go from the far north to the tropic seas, there are signs of distress there as well. On September 20, the New York Times reported that in 1998, 16 percent of the world's shallow water reefs died as a result of record warm temperatures. It is estimated that the die-off could be even worse this year. In May, more than 60 percent of corals off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh Province bleached and died after Andaman Sea temperatures reached 93 degrees Fahrenheit.

It may not seem significant that corals are dying. It may seem indeed insignificant to many of my colleagues. But these coral areas are the nurseries for tropical seas. Many species depend on them to basically grow and feed in their early stages, and if they die, it creates a cascading effect through the food chain that has potentially significant effects for our kinds of species--set aside the local economy wanting to be able to support snorkelers and people such as that who go to see these rare and special beauties.

Finally, the Scientific American reported earlier this summer that the average phytoplankton population in our oceans has dropped about 1 percent a year between 1889 and 2008, resulting in a 40-percent drop overall in phytoplankton.

What is a phytoplankton? It is one of the tiny plant--almost microscopic--species that grows in the ocean and floats free in the ocean. Is that important? It is important because zooplankton and phytoplankton--animal and vegetable plankton--represent the base of the oceanic food chain. They are what the little fish feed on, and the little fish are what the big fish feed on, and up you go.

We have never had a situation in which the bottom of the food chain began to collapse. But we have been seeing it over the past century, and we anticipate seeing a lot more because the carbon our polluters release into the atmosphere with impunity--subsidized by all the rest of us--ends up being absorbed by the ocean--80 percent gets absorbed, if I am not mistaken--and that changes the pH level of the ocean, how acidic it is.

The ocean, right now, is more acidic than it has been in 8,000 centuries, and 8,000 centuries is a long time. We are engaged in a chemical experiment with our oceans that has potentially vast consequences for them by just injecting all this carbon and waiting to see what happens. Now we are out, far enough outside the range of where, in human experience, there has been a pH that we are 8,000 centuries away from it being at this level. All that--the acidification of the ocean--makes it more difficult for these plankton to survive. So the crash we are seeing is consistent with the damage that carbon pollution does to our oceans.

I say this because I know we are not going to get anywhere with energy before the election. Maybe nobody cares. But again, we can be as ignorant as we please. We can be as pleased with ourselves that we have delivered for interest groups and special interests as we please. We can suggest to Americans that climate change isn't real or isn't happening. We can participate in the propaganda battle the big polluters are sponsoring to try to raise doubt about the established science. We can do all those things and we can claim victory and block legislation and we can serve our special interest supporters. We can do all those things to prevent any serious legislation from coming through this body for years and years and years and, you know what, the Earth will not care.

You cannot legislate our environment. King Canute could stand in the oceans and order that the tide not come in, and he could have all his courtiers and all his supporters around him. He could have all the people who keep him in office and provide campaign contributions and it wouldn't make a darned bit of difference. The tide comes roaring in.

Our job in this body is not just to represent special interests, not just to achieve temporary political victories, not just to block progress of bills that interests that support us disagree with. We have another job as well; that is, to look out for the welfare of our country and of the American people and to prepare when the Earth plainly warns us of coming dangers. It is in the service of that job that I intend to continue coming to the floor to remind my colleagues that no matter what their opinions are, no matter what their politics are, no matter what the interest groups that support them are, the facts continue to announce themselves, and the announcement they are making to us is a warning. If we are not smart enough--with our God- given intelligence and foresight--to read the warnings nature is giving us and respond appropriately before it is too late, then it will be on us that we failed to do so.

People will look back from 20 years hence, from 30 years hence, from 40 years hence--the young pages who are here in the well, when they are my age, will look back at this generation that sat in this Senate, in this year, on this occasion, at this time--and they will say: How could you have been so negligent? How could you have allowed the politics of the moment to put you on this march of folly that failed to protect us when you knew--when you knew?

So I intend to continue because this is an issue that will not go away. Nature's warnings to us are persistent, and I intend to be persistent as well.

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

Mr. President, I am honored to follow my distinguished colleague from Maryland, who has such great legislative and elective experience and speaks with such passion and energy about this issue. I share his concern, and I rise today to speak about a type of corruption in the political arena. What type of corruption in the political arena am I talking about?

I am talking about the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate forum and that have little or no correlation to the public support for the corporation's political ideas, wealth that can unfairly influence elections when it is deployed in the form of independent expenditures.

Sounds like tough talk to call that a type of corruption in the political arena and describe it in those terms. But those are not my words. Whose words are they? Those are the words of the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court said:

State law grants corporations special advantages--such as

limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of

the accumulation and distribution of assets--that enhance

their ability to attract capital and to deploy their

resources in ways that maximize the return on their

shareholders' investments.

That is what they are for, and that is what they should do. But the Supreme Court continued:

These state-created advantages not only allow corporations

to play a dominant role in the Nation's economy, but also

permit them to use ``resources amassed in the economic

marketplace'' to obtain ``an unfair advantage in the

political marketplace.''

That was the law of the United States of America. That law was precedent when our Chief Justice stood before our Senate Judiciary Committee and promised, under his oath before that committee, that he would honor precedent. Not only that precedent, but it relied on earlier Supreme Court precedent.

This Court, Justice Marshall writing, quoted the Massachusetts Citizens for Life decision, a previous Court, and said, as the Court explained in Massachusetts Citizens for Life, the political advantage of corporations is unfair because ``[t]he resources in the treasury of a business corporation . . . are not an indication of popular support for the corporation's political ideas. They reflect instead the economically motivated decisions of investors and customers. The availability of these resources may make a corporation a formidable political presence, even though the power of the corporation may be no reflection of the power of its ideas.''

When Chief Justice Roberts, under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised that he would honor the precedent of the United States of America, this was not only precedent, it was precedent within precedent. It was the established law of the United States of America, that corporate expenditure in elections was a type of corruption in the political arena.

But they could not resist. They could not resist, and by a 5-to-4 decision--one of an array of 5-to-4 decisions by which a narrow partisan majority of our Supreme Court has taken the law and moved it as far as it could--they changed the law of the United States. They knocked down this standing precedent in order to open the floodgates of American elections to corporate money.

Let me interrupt myself for 1 minute. When I say ``moved it as far as it could,'' I mean these decisions on these massive issues--issues of great importance to our country, issues of vast consequence in our elections--do not need to be decided 5 to 4. A Court that had a real interest in modesty, in conservatism, could look for a broader majority to try to build consensus for the rule that it was announcing. Of course, if they tried to build that broader consensus, they would not be able to take as big a political leap. This is a Court that over and over will take the big political leap at the cost of, I think in the long run, the Court's credibility, but in the short run of building a precedent that has lasting value because it has a significant majority behind it.

Other big decisions of the Court--Brown v. Board of Education for instance--were unanimous. Here, once they have their majority, that is all--that is enough. Then they are willing to move.

Who did they open the floodgates to when they did this? Let's see who has been opposing our bill to try to at least make public what corporations are taking advantage of. Roll Call reported back in July that ``the bulk of corporate outreach on the campaign finance bill''-- that is the bill we are trying to get to, trying to correct this Citizens United decision, trying to protect our elections from being flooded with corporate money--``the bulk of corporate outreach on the campaign finance bill was done primarily by companies based outside the United States but that have substantial operations here.''

That is great. The lobbying on whether corporations get to control our elections is being dominated by multinational corporations based outside of the United States. American citizens' voices are going to be drowned out by corporate money based on lobbying from corporations that are not even American corporations.

Roll Call continues: ``According to Senate filings, large international firms reported lobbying Members--or hiring others to do so--on the DISCLOSE Act''--the bill we are on--``in recent months. . . .'' They include Sony and Honda. How fortunate for General Motors to have the electoral process controlled by lobbyists for Honda. The financial firm, UBS, a Swiss bank--that is what we need. The views of a Swiss bank are clearly important to American elections and should certainly drive them and, therefore, let the corporate money flow. That makes great sense. A Swedish drugmaker, Novo Nordisk--that is where the money is behind this.

Where does it go? It goes to Karl Rove's group--like he has not already done enough damage to this Republic--American Crossroads, which hopes to spend $50 million in this election, according to the New York Times, supported by the American Action Network, which is planning to spend $25 million in concert with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is spending $75 million, all reported by the New York Times, along with other groups: Americans for Job Security, the American Future Fund.

Let me ask, if you see an advertisement on television that slams a political candidate, that trashes him on some issue, and it is brought to you by Americans for Job Security or the American Future Fund, you, as a citizen trying to evaluate that advertisement, what information does that give you? I suggest it does not give you very much information at all.

ExxonMobil could buy American elections. The entire Presidential election between President Obama and Senator McCain, adding up the spending on both sides, cost about $1 billion. ExxonMobil makes that every week.

These big multinational corporations can drown out American citizens' voices, and it barely makes a dent in their bottom line. They can buy American elections through what the Supreme Court said, until this active, radical group on the Supreme Court pushed this decision through 5 to 4, with the precedent of the United States, was a type of corruption in the political arena. That was the law of the land, not just in one decision but repeatedly. Now that can happen, thanks to that decision. And American citizens will be swamped by these big corporations.

Is it a coincidence that 85 percent of the spending so far in this election has been on behalf of Republicans? There is a phrase in politics: You are supposed to dance with the guy that brung ya. But I tell you what, when you take the oath as a judge, that principle should be dispensed with and discarded. You should take on new duties that go beyond loyalty to any political party.

Nevertheless, this Court has opened the corporate floodgates so that international corporations can come in, drown out American voters, buy up American elections, and what was law before, a type of corruption in the political arena and 85 percent of the spending by the big corporations is on behalf of Republicans--I am sure that is just a coincidence.

To the contrary, we often hear my colleagues on the other side say: Unions do just the same thing. When you see that advertisement on television attacking a political candidate, and it says at the bottom-- let's pick our most active union, the Service Employees International Union--it says

Service Employees International Union, you have a pretty good idea who that is. You can find them in the phonebook. You probably know somebody who is a member. They are active in the community. It is no mystery. But how about American Future Fund? The way this is set up right now, ExxonMobile could take its billions of dollars and start laundering that money through shell organizations and shell corporations. By the time the slammer ad gets put on television attacking a political candidate--it could be Americans for Peace and Puppies, as far as we knew--and nobody would have the time in the hectic last days before an election to figure out who it is who is really behind these attacks.

That is no way to run an election. That is no way to run a democracy. That is not transparent. These corporations are not even humans. What they are doing, involved in these elections on this scale, is unimaginable. What it does is it amplifies the political voice of CEOs dramatically.

The great thing about American democracy is that you and I and the pages who are here, when they are old enough to vote, and the police officers outside and the fellow driving by in the taxicab on Constitution Avenue, every American has a vote that counts the same. If you are the CEO of a big corporation, not only can you do your own politicking, but you can take that amassed treasury of wealth with what the Supreme Court called ``the amassing of large treasuries warrants the limit on independent expenditures,'' and you can spend it to push your own views and to drown out your neighbors, your friends, people who oppose you--anyone--with immense amounts of anonymous political spending.

I do not think that is right. I think that is a mistake. Justice Stevens had it right in his dissent in the Citizens United case. He said this:

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the

common sense of the American people, who have recognized a

need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government

since the founding, and who have fought against the

distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering

since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.

Justice Stevens continued:

It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While

American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of

the court would have thought that its flaws included a dearth

of corporate money in politics.

So if you want the government of the United States of America--this great and sovereign Nation, this light of democracy in the darkness of this world, this government of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, of Roosevelt, of Lincoln--controlled by the same people who brought you a 30-percent interest rate on your credit card, well, the DISCLOSE Act is not for you because they will not be able to do it anonymously if this bill passes.

If you want the government of our country controlled by the insurance companies that took your child off the insurance when he got sick, that wouldn't provide coverage because he had a preexisting condition--if those are the people you want controlling the government--you don't want this bill because you want them to be able to fund these anonymous organizations with no consequence, with no transparency.

If you want our government controlled by the people who brought you the gulf oilspill and who are polluting our atmosphere with carbon day in and day out in ways that are changing our world as we watch it, this bill ``ain't'' for you because this bill wouldn't allow them to do it sneakily, anonymously, unlimitedly.

If you want this government controlled by the big corporations that are taking American jobs and making the American worker pack up the machinery they have worked on into shipping crates to be shipped overseas, where a foreign worker will be hired to make that same product, which will then be brought back into America--if they are the folks you want controlling our government, anonymously, through money and expenditure--the DISCLOSE Act is not for you.

But let me tell you, if you are a regular American, who thinks everybody should have a fair voice at election time, who doesn't want to see our American elections drowned out by lobbyists for international corporations, by huge corporate expenditures that aren't even traceable back to the corporation but that come through phony- baloney organizations with names that sound like ``The Make America Great Foundation''--if that is the kind of politics you want to put an end to--if you want to see real issues debated by real people, this DISCLOSE Act is important.

This isn't just about fairness in one election. This isn't just about a Supreme Court that handed to one political party a gigantic corporate checkbook that had previously been illegal and tells them: Get out there and spend, it is fine. Get out there and spend anonymously, it is fine. If you are an international corporation--if you are not even an American company--get out there and spend, we don't mind. Every day we make choices about whether corporations or people are going to have the upper hand in this society. Our Supreme Court just gave corporations the upper hand, and we have to fight back because it is not just about who wins this election, this is about a democracy that has been through over 200 years of stress and strain. This is about an idea the Founders put together that was unheard of at the time. It was radical, it was exceptional, and it created a society that has shown a light in this world that is brighter than any other government in the history of humankind.

This government has lasted through Civil War and world war, through depression. It has lasted through every kind of stress. Its value is, as probably our greatest President said, very simply, that it is a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' Our purpose is that it not perish from this Earth. This is not a government of the CEOs, by the big corporations, and for their shareholders. It is not an anonymous government where you don't know who is on the air with millions of dollars in advertisements slamming away. It is not a government where a candidate would be embarrassed to have a big corporation on their side that laundered their money through corporate screens so when it finally appeared in the waning days of the race it was all phonied up with a name such as ``Americans For Peace and Love'' or whatever the group is going to be called. That is not what America is all about.

So this may seem like a small issue about reporting of corporate expenditures, but I would submit that when corporations make more in a week than an entire U.S. Presidential election costs and they can throw that kind of money around, there is a lot at stake in trying to make sure American elections are honest and honorable ones. To allow the big corporations, even the international corporations, to continue to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections, with no reporting requirement, with the ability to launder through phony-baloney shell organizations before people see it, the risk of damage is very great.

So I know it is easy for me to say, because the money is coming in 85 percent against Democrats and for Republicans, and it looks like this is what that is about, but it is not. It is about making sure that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not perish from this Earth.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended until 6 p.m, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

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

Mr. President, this Saturday I will attend the 17th annual America's Cup Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Newport, RI. Today, I would like to congratulate this year's inductees: Simon Daubney, Warwick Fleury, Murray Jones, Dean Phipps, Mike Drummond, and Halsey Herreshoff. I would also like to say a few words about Rhode Island's connection with sailing and with the America's Cup.

I should call special attention to the Rhode Islander being honored, Halsey Herreshoff. Halsey has made numerous contributions to the sailing world. His four defenses of the America's Cup and his legendary naval designs continue the long and proud history of the Herreshoff family. His grandfather, Nat ``the wizard of Bristol'' Herreshoff, designed 27 years of defenders of the America's Cup, and that tradition was passed down through his father to Halsey. Halsey Herreshoff is the editor of the classic ``The Sailor's Handbook'' and has served his community as the Bristol town administrator for 8 years. He continues his service as president of the Herreshoff Marine Museum and as a member of the Bristol Town Council. He is a friend, a public servant, and a great sailor, and I congratulate him on this honor.

In 1930, Newport hosted its first America's Cup race. For many decades, Newport and the America's Cup were so closely identified as to be virtually indistinguishable. Our excellent sailing waters and winds, our beautiful venue, our legendary hospitality, and a long string of successful defenses kept this link firmly forged.

It is thus no coincidence that this ceremony is held in Newport or that the America's Cup Hall of Fame resides in Rhode Island. People across the country closely associate our great Ocean State with our sailing culture. And nothing is more responsible for that association than our long connection with the America's Cup. Newport

hosted the Cup for over 50 years; its departure in 1983 left our State without one of its most cherished icons.

For Rhode Island, the Cup represented more than the pride of years of successful defenses: the Cup was a huge boost to our economy. San Francisco, the site of the next race, estimates that the competition will bring $1.4 billion in additional revenue, and a 2007 study estimated that Newport could see a $886 million boost if we were the host site. Imagine what that investment would do for Rhode Island with our nearly 12 percent unemployment rate. The Cup brings millions of dollars in construction, hospitality, boat maintenance, and media jobs--jobs our State sorely needs.

While the Cup may no longer be held in our Ocean State, Rhode Island continues its love for sailing and remains a great host site for national and international races. Efforts are underway to bring some of the America's Cup qualifying races to Newport--efforts I enthusiastically support. It would be heartening to see the Cup come full circle, to what we still consider its true home.

Mr. President, I intend to speak for a few minutes on climate change and the need for a new energy strategy for this country.

I will just note that if any of my colleagues intend to seek the floor to conclude the business Senator Schumer and Senator McCain were engaged in, they can just signal me and I will yield the floor to allow them to finish that business.

Mr. President, we are now at the end of this work period, and we will shortly be going back to our home States for our home work during the August recess from Washington. We are doing so without having done anything about our dependence on fossil fuels, the carbon pollution that we subsidize going into our atmosphere, the undisputed science of what is happening in our atmosphere as a result of that, and the consequences that are beginning to pile up on our planet as a result of our negligence in addressing this pressing issue.

It is easy when you are in Washington to think that this is the center of the universe and that the little fights and quarrels that happen here and the politics of this town are what is most important. In this Chamber, which is very often a hotbed of those politics, I think that problem is particularly severe. There are political situations where, if we don't get it resolved, then it just keeps going along and there is no real harm done. But nature doesn't give a darn about our politics. Nature doesn't give a hoot about our campaign contributions. Nature doesn't care about what motivates delay. Nature doesn't care whether you are lying or telling the truth. Nature just goes on about her business, driven by chemistry, biology, physics--the basic elemental forces of nature.

We are getting ourselves into a situation where by ignoring those forces we are beginning to imperil ourselves and future generations.

It is astonishingly irresponsible to be in the predicament we are in right now, with what is fair to describe as a looming global emergency that we can't get anything done on.

The big oil companies, the big coal companies, the big energy companies are able to drop into this particular Chamber their delay, their desire to have nothing happen on this subject, and that trumps the interests of all the people of the United States, all the people of the planet, their children and grandchildren, off into our future.

I want to read into the Record a few things that have come out in the press in the last few weeks. Here is USA Today, in the middle of last month:

The world is hotter than ever. March, April, May and June

set records, making 2010 the warmest year worldwide since

recordkeeping began in 1880. . . .

That is not some fringe group reporting this. That is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Government of the United States of America.

In my home State, back in Rhode Island, ``July was more than 4 degrees above normal,'' quoting from the Providence Journal on August 2, ``and the second hottest month on record for Providence; 4.2 degrees higher than normal.''

Here is a newsclip about what effect these temperatures are having on our oceans:

The rising temperatures have been particularly hard on

oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat

trapped by greenhouse gases over the past 50 years.

This was another NOAA report.

Oceans are taking in increasingly more carbon. The report's

analysis of global ocean uptake of carbon dioxide estimates

that the seas stored 33 percent more anthropogenic [man made]

carbon in 2008 than they did 14 years earlier. Oceans'

absorbsion of CO2 has caused rising acidity that

is damaging the ability of shellfish, crustaceans, corals and

plankton to build shells and skeletons.

You might ask, who cares about shellfish, crustaceans, corals, and plankton? Shellfish keep a lot of American fishermen busy and occupied and productive, and feed an awful lot of families. Ditto crustaceans-- the Rhode Island lobster in particular. Corals are the nurseries of our tropic seas. When they die, it has a pronounced effect throughout the oceanic food chain. And phytoplankton--all plankton--are the base of the oceanic food chain. When you have a collapse in the phytoplankton, you have a potential collapse of the entire oceanic food chain.

There have been massive die-offs in the historic record of the ocean and we are trending toward having another one, with an ocean that is more acidic now than it has been in 8,000 centuries. We are getting to the point where the small animals that form the base of the ocean food chain are becoming soluble in the water that is their environment.

Lobsters in particular--again from the Providence Journal of July 29:

Meanwhile, the water off our coast has been unusually warm.

Lobsters like cold water and in the colder waters east of

Cape Cod, the heartland of the fishery, the crustaceans seem

unaffected. No moratorium has been recommended there. The

lobstermen explain a decline in the local stocks by saying

there has been a general migration toward cooler waters.

So the warming of our waters is having a pronounced effect on Rhode Island businesses, on Rhode Island lobstermen. I was out the other day with Rhode Island lobstermen, hauling in pots, seeing what was down there, and the fishery has not been wiped out, but it is suffering, it is under pressure, and it relates to our warming planet and to climate change.

It is a global situation. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 400 oxygen-depleted dead zones identified by scientists in our oceans--oxygen-depleted dead zones in our oceans, 400 of them, covering an area of nearly 100,000 square miles of dead ocean because there is not enough oxygen in it to support life, as though it is on some alien planet.

Now a very recent study, July 29, reported:

Researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University say the global

population of phytoplankton--

Again, the basis of the oceanic food chain--

has fallen about 40 percent since 1950. That translates to an

annual drop of about 1 percent of the average plankton

population between 1899 and 2008. The scientists believe that

rising sea surface temperatures are to blame.

There is another side to this story and, frankly, most of it is phony baloney science. It is bought-and-paid-for mercenary science. It is not the real deal. It masquerades as the real deal, it is designed to fool the public, and it is designed to prevent us from taking action. Regrettably, for a while it is working.

Here is what Paul Krugman wrote the other day, looking at the variety of evidence that supports the need for us to do something about that for the sake of our planet, our children, and our grandchildren.

Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You

probably heard about the accusations leveled against

climate researchers--allegations of fabricated data, the

supposedly damning e-mail messages of ``Climategate,'' and

so on. What you may not have heard, because it has

received much less publicity, is that every one of these

supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud

concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into

by many in the news media.

This should be a win-win. This is an issue that is important to us as humans trying to live on this planet as dramatic changes begin to take place in our atmosphere and ecosystems. This should be a win for us economically as green jobs grow, as we compete with China and India, as we stop losing the race to China and India for this next economy, as we stop sending money overseas to people who do not care for us much, who fund our enemies, and who drain hundreds of millions of dollars a year out of our economy.

It should be a win on national security, protecting us from those circumstances. It should be a win across the board. But the special interests will not let go, will not step into the future. They know they control enough votes in this place to make this not happen.

I promise my colleagues this is a day that the future will look back at and look at this Senate, and this will be our day of infamy. This will be the day when all of the evidence was before us, we had every chance in the world to do

what was right, we in fact knew what was right, and we allowed lies and phony science, concocted evidence and the big money from big oil, from big coal, from the big polluters, to steer us away from our duty.

I hope when we come back in September we will take this back up, that we will take it up seriously. It is my strong belief that if we go at this with real diligence as a Senate--if we have the White House with us and behind us and fighting for us, if we have the environmental groups out there in the field doing their work, pushing this issue, and if we have the hundreds of thousands of Americans who work in green energy industries and who are green energy investors and who are going to grow into this green energy economy out there explaining the true economic value, and if we have our national security apparatus making the point as to how important this is, as all the national intelligence estimates have already said--we can push this over the top. Not the first time, because the lies and the money will trump the first time. But if we do it a second and a third and fourth time and force this issue, I think we can bring it home. I hope we will at least try. Some battles are worth the fight even if you are not sure you can win.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I understand there has just been an agreement reached and entered into the Record regarding a number of appointments that were on the Executive Calendar. I understand further that--in fact, I discovered just recently--there is a rule anybody who is pending on the Executive Calendar when there is a recess of longer than 30 days needs to be resubmitted.

There are a number of judges who, applying that rule and the order, would need to be resubmitted by the President. Two of them, as I understand it, are district judges. What I would like to do is ask unanimous consent regarding those two. I know there is nobody from the minority party on the floor of the Senate right now, so I am not going to ask that unanimous consent and take advantage of the lack of their presence on the floor. But I would like to ask that someone come to the floor so I may ask unanimous consent, as to district court judges who are pending on the Executive Calendar, that the application of that rule be waived for this recess.

These are names that are going to be resubmitted anyway. It adds nothing to the process other than just an extra, sort of deliberate and unnecessary hassle to require those submission and committee procedures to be replayed.

It is also my understanding there has been a tradition in this body that while circuit court nominees are considered what one might call, for better or worse, political fair game, there has been a tradition of courtesy and comity regarding district court judges who sit in the Senator's home State when both of the home State Senators have agreed to and accepted the President's recommendations and supported it, given their blue slip to the committee and so forth.

So I guess I will put the Senate back into a quorum call so that I can discuss this with my colleagues on the other side. But I hope very much that as a personal courtesy they would accept that amendment to the order that was just entered, which I believe is consistent with the traditions and practices of the Senate.

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

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

Mr. President, I am in an interesting predicament. I am informed there is no one from the minority party in town; this being the end of session, everybody has headed home. Therefore, there is no one around to respond to my unanimous consent request.

I will confess, I am inclined to take advantage of this moment by propounding the unanimous consent, which I would obviously win. The Presiding Officer would grant the order, since there would be no objection.

But I also believe that to do so would be inconsistent with the courtesies and the traditions of the Senate, and so I will not take that step at this time. But it is frustrating to be in this position of holding myself back out of respect for the traditions and courtesies of the Senate, when I feel that, at the moment, I am on the losing end of a violation of the courtesies and the traditions of the Senate.

So by the rule of what is good for the goose, my inclination to take advantage of this moment is reinforced. But I have great respect for this body, and I think the tradition that one does not propound unanimous consent requests without a member of the minority party present to object or otherwise respond or vice versa is one that merits respect.

Notwithstanding the predicament I find myself in, let me just say, in that absence of courtesy that has brought me here, I will yield the floor and we can return to this question when the Senate resumes. But for any who are listening, I think we are taking a step that some may regret, when the tradition of respect for the judgment of the home State Senators regarding a district court judge in their home State is disregarded in this way.

I will say no more. I will follow up when we return to session.

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