Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here to deliver my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, which I do every week that the Senate is in session. We have been out of session for a few weeks, so there is a fair amount to talk about that happened while we were gone.

One of the first things was a new study in my home State of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is a coastal State. We have considerable worries about sea level rise, and we have a State Coastal Resources Management Council that has done what is probably the best modeling anywhere in the country of

the effects of sea level rise and the risk of ocean storms on our shores. In conjunction with them, there has been a report from the Rhode Island Division of Planning--this is the State government--which has identified roads and bridges that are most likely to be underwater as the tides climb higher and as waves push farther inland.

The State's 10 roads most vulnerable to sea level rise are Hope Street in Bristol, which everybody knows--a beautiful, historical street; Memorial Boulevard in Newport; Wampanoag Trail in Barrington; Conanicus Avenue in Jamestown; North Road in Jamestown; County Road in Barrington; Beach Street in Narragansett, Main Street in Warren; and State Highway 24 South in Tiverton.

Throw in storm surge on top of sea level rise, and the 10 most vulnerable roads are County Road North in Barrington; Phillips Street in North Kingstown; America's Cup Avenue in Newport; Route 138 West onramp in Newport; Hope Street in Bristol; Highway 24 North in Portsmouth; Centerville Road in Warwick; Narragansett Avenue in Narragansett; Main Street in Warren; and Route 38 West in Jamestown.

The report goes on to identify the 10 bridges most vulnerable to sea level rise and the 10 bridges most vulnerable to a combination of sea level rise and storm surge.

Overall, Warwick, Narragansett, Newport, Barrington, and Providence are our top five municipalities most vulnerable to climate change- related road damage. So when I come to the floor to talk about this, this is not some hypothetical, liberal concern.

The Coastal Resources Management Council in my home State is predicting 9 vertical feet of sea level rise by the end of this century. As the Presiding Officer knows, Rhode Island is not a huge State. We don't have a lot to give back to the ocean. Nine feet of sea level rise is potentially catastrophic. And when my State Division of Planning is highlighting the roads and bridges that we are going to lose to sea level rise and to storm surge, don't expect me to sit idly by.

There is a larger context, of course, for all of this. I am pretty Rhode Island-centric, but, boy, are we seeing a lot going on.

Let's start off with what is going on out West. We have an extraordinary wildfire situation happening in the American West. I am reading a news story here:

Wildfires burned across hundreds of thousands of acres in

the American and Canadian West this week, fueled by scorching

temperatures that are breaking heat and fire records across

the region.

In California, at least 15 cities have seen record-breaking

heat. The State has experienced its hottest summer on record.

San Francisco hit 106 degrees over the weekend, breaking its

previous high ever by 3 full degrees.

By the end of the day Tuesday, there were at least 81 large

fires blazing across 1.5 million acres of the U.S. West, from

Colorado, to California, and north to Washington.

``These unprecedented extreme events are exactly the types of events that are more likely due to the global warming that has already occurred,'' say the scientists.

Studies find that a warmed global atmosphere with

increasingly clear human fingerprints will continue driving a

potent mix of heat and dryness that is projected to escalate

in the West.

The climate scientist at UCLA says: ``That's not a future projection, but an observational reality, and that is something that we expect to increase in the future. When we get these extremes, there is a human fingerprint.''

``The increased occurrence of severe heat and the role of global warming on the occurrence of severe heat, that is already happening,'' said a Stanford scientific researcher.

This is not a fluke.

Nine of the 10 worst fire seasons in the past 50 years have

all happened since 2000. And 2015 was the worst fire s in

U.S. history, surpassing 10 million acres burned for the

first time ever recorded. So far this year, wildfires in the

U.S. are at 7.8 million acres, but the fire season is far

from over.

Researchers have shown that human-induced climate change accounted for about half the observed increase in fuel aridity, or forest dryness, that has been setting off these fires in the Western United States since 1979 and that this had nearly doubled the area of the U.S. West affected by forest fires since 1984.

The conclusion:

We know that global warming has already increased the

probability of unprecedented high temperatures in the western

U.S., including in California. And we know--

``We know,'' the scientists say--

with high confidence that continued global warming will

continue to intensify those increases.

Last week in Montana, a 20-square-mile blaze burned the

historic Sperry Chalet, a hotel and dining room built in 1914

only reachable by trail.

It had been there for more than 100 years, but this is the fire that burned it down. This means a lot out at Glacier National Park.

``It's hard to think about the magnitude of what's

happened,'' the National Park Conservancy Executive Director

Doug Mitchell said.

One of the western fires even jumped the Columbia River to burn across into Washington--the Eagle Creek fire.

As the news said, in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge, a blaze known as the Eagle Creek Fire has jumped the Columbia River and is inching into the State of Washington, creating dramatic and dangerous scenes.

Another news report called this a devastating summer in which an area larger than a certain State has burned.

I would hate to have Rhode Island be used as the unit of measure, but that is what they said: An area larger than Rhode Island has burned this summer. And they are looking not just at the loss of the Sperry Chalet but potentially losing Lake McDonald Lodge--``a loss that would,'' says a historian who has worked at the lodge for years, ``be unimaginably devastating.''

``These are some of the most remarkable buildings anywhere in the United States and they are an integral part of the Glacier experience and the Glacier tradition.''

They are either burned or at risk of burning.

If you are in those Western States, it is not just in the high, dry forests; if you go down to the oceans, climate change is whacking away at them too.

The Oregon and Washington razor clam fisheries are currently closed due to high levels of domoic acid. Domoic acid is a toxin that is produced by algae--the algae Pseudo-nitzchia--and algae are associated with climate change. For instance, a record-breaking red tide in 2015 was likely linked to climate change, and we are going to see a lot more of that in the future.

Now, of course, the dry part of what is happening in our climate has really been drowned out by what we are seeing on the wet part.

The New York Times recently ran an article saying:

Climate change doesn't cause extreme events, it amplifies

them. On the climate side of risk, we have unambiguous

evidence that the hazards are changing. Our emissions of

heat-trapping gases have already increased the likelihood and

severity of heat waves, extreme rainfalls, and storm surges.

Scientists can now even evaluate how much climate change has

increased the odds of individual extreme events, including

rainfall and flooding. We certainly understand the

mechanisms. Put simply, a warmer atmosphere can hold more

water, increasing the potential for heavy downpours.

Storm surge now occurs on top of sea level rise, increasing

flooding risks.

We know by the law of thermal expansion why the seas rise when they warm, and we have measured that they are warming with a very complicated device called the thermometer.

Warmer oceans in turn produce more intense hurricanes.

We know that as well, as has occurred in the North Atlantic and the gulf.

The article continues that ``unprecedented is increasingly the norm,'' and it notes that ``up to 8 feet of sea level rise is possible in this century.''

Rhode Island is in a unique place, so we are riding higher than average, and we are looking at potentially 9 feet of sea level rise.

Harvey has been an astonishing monster of a storm. It was described in one article as 9 trillion gallons of water, a hydraulic cube over downtown Houston 4 miles square and 2 miles high. And then the author said: ``The cube doubled to become the most extreme rain event in American history.''

Harvey, by the way, is the third 500-year flood in the Houston area in the past 3 years. It dumped enough water in southeastern Texas to equal almost 20 times the daily discharge of the Mississippi River.

So while the wildfires are burning out West, this astonishing set of deluges is happening elsewhere.

Land temperatures, according to NOAA, were the hottest they have ever been in 1,651 months of recordkeeping. July also marked 384 months since the last colder-than-average month in NASA's database. So 384 months since we had a month that was colder than average, with July well warmer than average. The last 3 consecutive years--2014, 2015, and 2016--each set a new global record for warmth, according to NOAA.

Politico writes: ``2016 confirmed as planet's hottest year,'' with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documenting record- breaking global warming trends of 2016. The observed outcomes of swiftly rising temperatures include the highest sea levels ever recorded, extremes in rain cycles, and declines in global ice and snow cover, with last year the third in a row breaking global temperature records. ``Several markers such as land and ocean temperatures, sea level and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere broke records set just one year prior,'' the NOAA report said. ``The long-term climate change is like riding up an escalator over time, and things like El Nino and La Nina are like jumping up and down on that escalator,'' one of the NOAA scientists said.

So that is what we are seeing--the underlying trend of climate change raising temperatures, with El Nino and La Nina creating a variation like jumping up and down on that escalator.

Greenhouse gas concentrations are now higher than ever

recorded.

Global surface temperatures are the highest on record.

Sea levels are the highest they've ever been since record

keeping began.

Precipitation cycles are becoming more extreme.

Antarctic sea ice levels are lower than ever recorded.

Alpine glaciers have declined for 37 consecutive years.

There were more tropical cyclones. . . .

Something is going on, and that well-known far-left liberal outlet, USA Today, had its editorial board say the following:

Could proof grow any more powerful that humanity is

responsible for a dangerously warming planet?

It referenced the quadrennial National Climate Assessment:

Scientists from 13 federal agencies found that a rapid rise

in temperature since the 1980s in the United States

represents the warmest period in 1,500 years.

It quotes the report:

Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities,

especially emission of greenhouse gases, are primarily

responsible.

There are no alternative explanations.

Do you hear that? ``There are no alternative explanations,'' and it keeps coming down.

There was an article that came out while we were away on the great flood of 2016 in Louisiana: ``The worst rainstorm in a rainy state's history,'' the article called it.

In some places, more than 2 feet of rain fell over three

days. . . . Research has shown it was . . . clearly linked to

climate change.

There were two separate teams of scientists that linked Louisiana's great flood with climate change, and the State's own meteorologist, a gentleman named Barry Keim, a professor at Louisiana State University, said that aspects of the August storm were consistent with climate change, and that both of the climate studies so far have shown it likely that climate change likely had its fingerprints on that Louisiana disaster.

Indeed, in Louisiana, the State is mounting a massive battle against rising seas as well as floods. Along the coast, ``rising waters and escalating flood insurance rates,'' the article says, ``will drive thousands of families further inland, the state predicts, leaving behind homes''--these families are leaving behind homes--``they have known for generations,'' leaving behind ``places that have fundamentally shaped their identities.''

One of the Louisianans living in the area in question said: ``This is the first time that I can remember that a group came in and said it's not going to be all right.''

But over the next two generations [flooding in Louisiana

along the marshes and coastal] will happen at an alarming

scale, as the twin challenges of sinking land and rising seas

overtake ancestral homes at breakneck speed. In 50 years, the

state estimates Terrebonne parish, whose name means ``good

earth'' in the French that some of its residents still speak,

will lose 41 percent of its land mass.

Areas are obviously going to lose their tax bases, the report says, ``as rising waters and increasing flood insurance rates drive most locals out.''

The Louisiana planners had a leg up, since the

environmental changes here have been so swift that many

residents have seen land lost in their own lifetimes.

When you are seeing it happen before your eyes, it is not so easy to deny it. Indeed, it is affecting local markets, and ``new-gated communities advertise `higher elevations' on bright [advertising] banners facing the highway.''

In Louisiana:

What had been the worst-case scenario for land loss when

the legislature passed its 2012 version of the master plan

became the best-case scenario in the latest version, approved

by the legislature in June, thanks to updated sea-level rise

estimates.

So we are in Louisiana. We are in a Republican-controlled legislature, and they pass a master plan to address flooding in 2012. That master plan is based on a worst-case scenario. Just in the 5 years since then that worst-case scenario, the legislature has now updated that to become a best-case scenario, with the worst-case scenario far, far exceeding what they anticipated just as recently as 2012.

``Climate change and water management practices could significantly alter the magnitude and variability of extreme flooding events, causing flooding to become nonstationary,'' said the article, ``Deciphering Deluges.''

We have to come up with new ways on how to cope with sea level rise, offshore storms, major tropical storms, downpours, and riverine flooding.

Right now, our colleague Bill Nelson has left us this afternoon after the vote to go back down to Florida because Hurricane Irma is steaming toward his State. Hurricane Irma is the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. Experts say Irma's strength is the result of unusually warm water for that part of the Atlantic.

Guess what global warming does. It raises ocean temperatures. Do you know how much of the excess heat created has gone into the oceans? About 93 percent--virtually all of it. Thank goodness for the oceans. Without them, we would already be baking in climate change. So 93 percent went into the oceans, but, of course, that raises ocean temperatures, and on go the storms.

If Irma stays on the forecast track and reaches the Florida Straits, the water there is warm enough that the already intense storm could become much worse, with wind speeds potentially reaching 225 mph, warned Kerry Emanuel, an MIT meteorology professor.

``For the Florida Keys, if you were to create the worst case scenario, that is what we are looking at,'' Monroe County Emergency Operations Center Director Martin Senterfitt told CBS Miami.

Even Tropical Storm Emily some time ago dumped enough rain on Miami Beach--7 inches of rainfall over several hours--that the pumps meant to drain the area went offline for nearly an hour because the power was interrupted. The mayor, Tomas Regalado, used the flooding to make a case for a proposed $400 million bond initiative to help pump the water out. We have infrastructure demands that come from this disaster as well.

A pretty good summary came, again, from an article in the New York Times, an editorial piece.

What is going on?

First, hurricanes arise from warm waters, and the Gulf of

Mexico has warmed by two to four degrees Fahrenheit over the

long-term average. The result is more intense storms.

``There is a general consensus that the frequency of high-

category (3, 4, and 5) hurricanes should increase as the

climate warms,'' Kerry Emmanuel, a hurricane expert at

M.I.T., tells me.

Second, as the air warms, it holds more water vapor, so the

storms dump more rain. That's why there's been a big increase

in heavy downpours. Nine of the top 10 years for heavy

downpours in the U.S. have occurred since 1990.

``Climate change played a role in intensifying the winds and rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey,'' says Charles Greene, a climate scientist at Cornell.

Last year was the third in a row to set a record for

highest global average surface temperature, according to

NASA. The 10 years of greatest loss of sea ice are all in the

last decade. Houston has suffered three ``500-year floods''

in the last 3 years.

So the author asks the question: Why can't we all respect scientists' predictions about our cooking of our only

planet? How is it that we don't listen to the scientists on this, particularly right here in this room, in this Chamber?

There are two very interesting articles that came out while we were away that addressed this. One is about a phony group called the Cooler Heads Coalition, whose job is to call climate science a hoax and denounce environmentalists as global warming alarmists. They write letters, blast out emails, pressure lawmakers, sponsor seminars, appear on television. They even made a documentary movie.

This article in the Washington Post told the story behind this coalition. Obviously, the coalition, this Cooler Heads crowd, is paid for. ``The Cooler Heads have received more than $11 million in donations over the years from coal and oil companies.'' Who knew? ``They've taken in tens of millions from nonprofit foundations, such as those controlled by the wealthy Koch brothers. . . .'' Guess what. There is more fossil fuel money. The Koch brothers run a fossil fuel empire.

The Cooler Heads Coalition . . . are allied with industry

trade groups, public relations companies and lobbyists, all

of whom are working to influence public debate about global

warming.

Climate scientists said there is no doubt about the reality

of climate change and its consequences, including melting

polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and the intensification of

storms.

Benjamin Santer is a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We are pretty proud of our National Laboratories, and we usually don't think people who are there are idiots or are fooling us or are part of a hoax. Dr. Santer, by the way, also received a MacArthur Foundation Genius award. He told the Washington Post that this Cooler Heads outfit is ``attempting to turn back the clock on knowledge and science.''

The history of this is rooted in a complex influence campaign that began in support of tobacco. The tobacco plan foreshadowed the tactics that Cooler Heads members would soon employ on climate change.

First, there were millions in contributions from affected industries, often laundered through front groups and through foundations. ``The same array of donors,'' the Washington Post reports, ``would help finance charities behind'' the fight against climate science.

They took the skills they learned, denying the health harms of tobacco, and moved that same technology of propaganda, influence, and politicking into climate change. The Competitive Enterprise Institute became the lead group in this Cooler Heads Coalition, taking over management of the coalition, joined by groups such as the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is really a classy group. They are the ones that put up billboards comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber. That is the quality of debate we get out of the Heartland Institute.

Americans for Prosperity is another influential nonprofit organization, which is a front for--guess whom--the Koch brothers and Koch Industries; i.e., the fossil fuel industry. They got particularly cranked up by the Kyoto Protocol, and the story continues:

The energy industry went on a spending spree to thwart

Kyoto, devoting at least $13 million to public relations and

information campaigns in 1997. . . . The Cooler Heads

Coalition was in effect a loose confederation of groups with

the declared mission of countering ``the myths of global

warming.''

In early 1998, this Cooler Heads group met with energy industry executives and lobbyists in closed-door meetings at the American Petroleum Institute and began to soak up more money, and here is what the plan was. I am quoting from the story in the Post.

One former Cooler Heads member, who spoke on the condition

of anonymity because of fear of a punitive backlash, said the

coalition's mission . . . was to . . . simulate a ``cacophony

of voices'' against climate-change science.

``There's a whole web,'' the former member said [out to do

this].

The ExxonMobil Foundation, of course, had given millions to Cooler Heads members.

A 2009 IRS filing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute--the group that took over the coalition and managed it--inadvertently made public a filing that disclosed their funding from two coal mining companies, Ohio-based Murray Energy and Richmond-based Massey Energy.

``Contributions to CEI during the Obama administration rose to $7.6 million in 2014.'' As the article continues, ``CEI and the Cooler Heads were just the tip of the spear. . . . [B]etween 2003 and 2010, energy companies, corporations and conservative foundations contributed hundreds of millions to 91 nonprofit `think tanks,' educational groups and associations involved in the fight against global-warming regulations.''

To put it mildly, as the expert who chronicled this concluded, ``This is a large-scale political effort.''

We have one last report from inside that large-scale political effort. This is the firsthand voice of the individual. His name is Jerry Taylor. Here is what he says:

I used to be the number two person at the Cato Institute.

The Cato Institute is one of this constellation of rightwing groups that foment and support climate denial and receives money from fossil fuel interests.

He continues:

I was responsible for building our resistance to climate

action. . . . I discovered that a lot of the scientific

narratives I was offering were really dodgy. . . . [O]ne of

the people that I trusted the most was in the business of

consciously misrepresenting the debate. This really rattled

me.

He goes on.

[O]nce I started looking closely at a lot of the

convenient, plausible talking points I was offering they

began to fall apart. [I then turned to look at] economic

arguments.

He says:

This is pretty hard. It's a very difficult thing . . . to

find that you cannot trust any of the scientists that are

being offered to resist climate action.

This is the guy who used to lead the anti-climate action effort of the Cato Institute, saying it is a very difficult thing to find that you cannot trust any of the scientists who are being offered to resist climate action, and then the economists whom you have been relying on to put cautious remarks about cost-benefit are now all walking away from the game.

He goes on to say:

We got to the point . . . where you could not find an

academic economist who studies climate change who argued

against climate action--not one single one.

Here is his conclusion:

Believe it or not, libertarians and conservatives and

Republicans were put on this earth with the perfect answer to

climate change--harnessing markets and price signals via a

carbon tax or a carbon tax-like mechanism to reduce

greenhouse gas emission. We're perfectly placed to do that.

[What is it that] keeps Republicans from coming to the

conclusion that climate change doesn't just threaten polar

bears in the Arctic, it threatens the global economy, it

threatens capital flows, it threatens capitalism. . . . It's

not the Republican base, let me tell you.

There is poll after poll, survey after survey showing that most Republicans believe in doing something about climate.

He continues:

What prevents Republican politicians from acting is that

there are significant members in the Republican Party

Coalition who are denialist demanders.

They are not just climate deniers themselves, they are denialist demanders.

They have outsized influence in the party.

He says:

[T]he Koch-controlled Tea Party movement [has] held the GOP

by the throat.

By the way, if you were somebody who was trying to find some comfort in the widely reported phenomenon that 97 percent of climate scientists conclude the global warming is real and problematic for the planet and has been exacerbated by human activity, if you are comforting yourself that maybe the 3 percent were right, that the really smart place to place your bet for the future of the planet and our economy and our standing in the world is on those 3 percent--not take the 97 percent bet; no, take the 3-percent bet--if that is the way you are thinking, you got bad news.

Researchers tried to replicate the results of those 3 percent of papers. Guess what. They found biased, faulty results.

Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University. She said this:

Every single one of those analyses had an error--in their

assumptions, methodology, or analysis--that, when corrected,

brought their results into line with the scientific

consensus.

If you are hoping that 3 percent was somehow going to bail you out from having to face this crisis, that just blew up. There is no 3 percent.

Broadly, there were three main errors in the papers denying

climate change. Many had cherry-picked the results . . . some

that applied inappropriate ``curve-fitting'' [to try to step]

away from data until the points matched the curve of their

choosing.

This is my favorite.

Sometimes the papers just ignored physics altogether.

It has been quite a month with the West ablaze, Houston underwater, the most powerful storm ever measured in the Atlantic is headed our way, heat and rain and other measures breaking records year after year, multiple departments of governments aligning to warn us, and how does the Trump Administration respond?

The Energy department asked scientists to remove the word ``climate change'' from a grant proposal.

I have been asked to contact you to update the wording in

your proposal abstract to remove words such as ``global

warming'' or ``climate change.''

Not just one fluke. In March, POLITICO reported as follows:

[T]hat staff at the Department of Energy . . . were told

not to use the terms ``climate change,'' ``emissions

reduction'' or ``Paris Agreement.''

The Department put out a power grid study that has been long delayed, and in the power grid study, the words ``climate change'' never appeared. Wherever they were in earlier drafts, they got scrubbed. The only reference to climate is a reference to ``rescinding energy and climate-related policies.''

The EPA has been scrubbing the word ``climate change'' from its website. It removed its climate change page and then got hammered with a series of Freedom of Information Act requests as to what is going on with that so they quickly scrambled and published an archived version but buried it back in the website.

The Department of Interior has also removed discussions of the effects of global warming from several of its pages. The Department of Agriculture has emails showing how staff in their Natural Resources Conservation Service was coached by managers to avoid the term ``climate change'' and instead use other language.

That is where we are--all of those facts, the motive behind it, the fingerprints of the fossil fuel industry, the confessions by participants in those schemes. Where are we? In this room, silence. Nobody will talk about it because the power of the fossil fuel industry is so strong, the threats are so bloodcurdling that nobody dares. We cannot have a grownup, factual discussion about climate change in this building either. Of course, over in the Trump administration, they have completely thrown in the towel to the fossil fuel industry, and now we are hoping to dodge the problem by forbidding people from using the words ``climate change.'' It is pathetic.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I am here to speak about President Trump's decision to shut down the DACA Program, the so-called Dream program that allows children who were brought here by their parents, often at a very young age, and who grew up here and are now, as far as they know, full Americans--this is their home--to not be thrown out of their adopted country and sent home to a place that they do not know, all because of what

their parents did when they were still children. We don't even hold children accountable for contracts they enter into. You have to be an adult to be held accountable for a contract you enter into. Yet, apparently, this President is willing to take these children, break up their families, and send them to a country they do not know, all because of a decision that was made by their parents, in some cases when these kids were infants.

I have spoken to these kids, who are generally called Dreamers, who have no memory of living anyplace other than this country. I don't know about the Presiding Officer, but it is hard for me to scroll back and come up with any concrete memories of when I was 1 or 2 or 3 years old. These are kids who grew up in American schools. They grew up in American families. They grew up playing American sports. They grew up as a part of our culture. But now, for reasons that really defy humane explanation, the President wants to cast a cloud over about 800,000 children--now turned into young adults in many cases and many more who are right behind them in the program--who were looking forward to this as something they could do when they came of age to get their full-on DACA permit.

We have over 1,000 people who are approved under the DACA Program in Rhode Island. We are pretty proud of them. They have served in the military. They have had jobs around the country.

Ninety-one percent of DACA recipients are employed, pay taxes, and contribute to Social Security. When we had the immigration debate, that is what we said we wanted people to do: Pay your taxes, get a job, pay into Social Security, support yourself, and support the system around you. Well, they have done that. But because of a decision they did not even make--a decision that under American law they would be incapable of making because they were not adults--this shadow of punishment and family disruption has been put over them by perhaps the least humane person ever to hold the office of President of the United States. And if this doesn't prove that proposition, there are plenty more that do.

I understand that our leader has urged Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell to get Senator Durbin's and Senator Graham's Dream Act up for a vote. I think it will pass. I think it will pass with more than 60 votes. I think we, at least--the decent Members of the Senate-- can lift that cloud of fear, threat, and anxiety. I think we should. I think we should do it soon. And if Majority Leader McConnell is not interested in bringing this to the floor, I understand that Senator Schumer has made it pretty clear that he is going to insist on attaching this bill to some other measure as we move forward this year. I completely support him.

This President said that he loves these kids and wants to approach this issue with a big heart. Huh. The White House, which, the last I heard, the President of the United States runs, put out talking points telling these kids to get ready to depart. Get ready for departure from this country. Really? That is the big heart--to threaten 800,000 kids who have played by the rules, who have done what the Government of the United States asked them to do, to get ready to depart? Because of what--some crime they committed? No. They committed no crime, but because their parents brought them here as kids.

Jean came here from Peru. He was brought to the United States by his parents when he was a few months old. He is 23 now. If he were to go back to Peru, he would have to move to a village where he has never lived, that is not in a safe area, that he does not know because he has been here for over 20 years--22 and change if he is 23 now.

Rodrigo Pimental came here from Portugal at 10 months old. Rhode Island has a very vibrant Portuguese community, of which we are really proud. His parents came to join that community, pursue a better life, start a small business, and succeed. Rodrigo doesn't even remember Portugal. He has a computer science degree--a college computer science degree. He says the United States is his home. What is the gain for our country in telling Rodrigo Pimental, with his computer science degree from college, that he needs to go back to Portugal because at 10 months old his parents brought him here in search of a better life? Where the heck is the justice or the decency in that?

These are all Rhode Island kids whom I am talking about. There are hundreds of thousands of stories around the country.

Lesdin Salazar from Guatemala was brought to the United States by her parents at age 7. We are going to break up that family and send her back to Guatemala because why? Because at age 7 she didn't successfully talk her parents out of bringing her here? Or maybe she should have left her parents then: Oh, parents, boy, it would be illegal to go to the United States without the proper paperwork. I can't be a part of that. I am staying in Guatemala. You go.

Is that the expectation we have for a 7-year-old, that we would now punish her with deportation and with breaking up her family? That is the big heart of this President?

I will tell my colleagues about one of her memories. She doesn't remember much of Guatemala, but she does remember sitting in her living room with her parents watching President Obama announce the DACA Program. She says that her family cried tears of joy when that happened--at last, a path forward from the problem that was not of her own making. She does not understand why the United States is giving so many children an education here and then sending them back to other countries, breaking up their families, and I don't, either. It makes no sense.

Krissia Rivera came to Rhode Island from El Salvador. She came when she was 8. Oh, so maybe that is old enough that she could have broken up with her parents back then or talked them out of coming here. She lived first in Maryland. Interestingly, she went to the same school the President's son now attends. She came to Rhode Island and graduated from college. She is currently in medical school at Brown University-- obviously somebody we want to get out of our country. She is scared. She feels exposed.

I would like to have one person come to the Senate floor and tell me what Krissia Rivera did at age 8 that was so wrong that we are willing to take somebody who will have a Brown University medical school degree and throw them out of our country for no reason. Explain that to me.

I will tell my colleagues, there is a lot that is embarrassing about the way our President behaves. This is pretty bad, particularly in the wake of the way he behaved after Nazi flags were paraded through Charlottesville, VA--the city of Thomas Jefferson's great university. He spent the next couple of days winking at White supremacist Nazi types, equating their behavior with the behavior of the protesters who came out. I would hope that if neo-Nazis were walking through Providence, I would go out and protest. Am I as wrong as the Nazis? I don't think so. But President Trump appears to think so--it was just two sides having an evenhanded dispute. I don't think so.

When the President reacted to Charlottesville the way he did, he was winking at the worst impulses in our society: bigotry, hatred, discrimination of people based on color and religion--things that we have fought back against for generations. Fighting back against those evils is part of what makes us Americans. But does President Trump fight back against those evils? No. Just a little wink, a little pat on the head along the way: Keep it up, boys; I don't mind that much. No difference between you and the people who come out because they are outraged to see Nazi flags flying in Charlottesville, VA.

And now this. And now this. Who the hell is President Trump talking to when he does this? Who gets the wink this time? If this isn't another wink to bigotry and hatred and discrimination, I don't know what is. No one can explain to me why an 8-year-old, who is such a good person that she will come to a new country and come all the way to Brown University's medical school, is to be punished for not having broken up with her parents at age 8 when they brought her to this country. It makes no sense.

I see the distinguished senior Senator from Illinois here on the floor. The battle for the DACA Program and for the Dream Act has been a cause of his political life. There is no person in this

Chamber to whom more credit is due for this program than Senator Durbin. So with great respect, as well as affection, I will yield the floor to him.

Mr. President, I recently received the sad news that Dr. Herbert L. Needleman has passed away. With Herbert's passing, we lost a great man--and the scientific community lost one of its best.

In the 1970s, Herb undertook groundbreaking studies that revealed the dangers of lead exposure in children. According to the Pittsburgh Gazette, Herb ``had been thinking about the impact lead had on children's cognitive abilities for nearly two decades before he finally came up with a way to test historic lead levels.'' He made powerful adversaries in the lead industry, but true to his research, Dr. Needleman found new and inventive ways to prove the toxic effects of lead exposure.

As a researcher at Temple University, he developed the ``Tooth Fairy'' approach: a method to test children's baby teeth for lead exposure levels. This method led to pioneering research that found that Black children living in cities had lead levels five times higher than suburban, White children. In the words of Herb's son, ``He just couldn't tolerate injustice and could not stop seeking the truth.'' The results of Herb's hard work and his dedication to seeking the truth today reach from the halls of science to the apartments of inner cities.

I got to see his determination first hand, working alongside him in fighting the lead paint industry in Rhode Island. When I was confronting the lead industry, over 35,000 Rhode Island children under the age of 6 had elevated levels of lead in their systems. His research was instrumental in the fight for the health of Rhode Island's children. I am deeply grateful for Herbert's help in my home State, and I know Rhode Island families are grateful as well.

America has lost a beloved pediatrician, psychiatrist, and brilliant scientist. I offer my condolences to the Needleman family and to the many people he taught and mentored through the years. He lives on as a lasting lesson in the power of science to help others.

Mr. President, I think we are waiting for Senator Grassley to come, and then we will be ready to proceed.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Grassley has been a wonderful colleague in this effort. It is the culmination of years of work, including multiple committee hearings, briefings at home in Rhode Island and elsewhere, and really working the regular order of the Senate to get this done. Chairman Grassley has been both patient and persistent, and I really appreciate his leadership.

I also thank our ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein, for her work. I thank Senator Rand Paul. He would have liked to have seen a stronger bill, but it simply--as would we have, by the way. He held on for a while, hoping we could strengthen it, but it turned out there was objection to that--and he was gracious about yielding--and now we are able to move forward bipartisanly and unanimously.

The history of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is a noble history. It is because of this law that children aren't locked up in adult prisons any longer. It is because of this law that children don't get placed in solitary confinement for extended periods or shackled when they are arrested for things like running away from home or not coming to school, but it had been a while since this bill was updated.

The last time it was reauthorized was 13 years ago, and we have learned a lot about adolescent development and the best practices for dealing with children in those 13 years. So we are moving forward today.

I look forward to working with my chairman on the broad-based criminal justice reform that he is championing in the committee, but there is no reason we shouldn't go forward with getting juvenile justice right while we move on to other areas.

I particularly want to thank him and recognize the groups involved for the patient work that was done over many years with all sorts of interested groups. We had to make this right. We wanted to minimize conflict. We wanted to maximize what we were able to accomplish, and the result is, we have over 150 organizations that have endorsed this legislation, from the ACLU to the national association that supports probation and parole officers, from Boys Town to the National Association of Counties and the National Center for Victims of Crime.

The bill focuses the way it should, on evidence-based and trauma- informed programs that have emerged in the last 13 years. It focuses on protecting juveniles who are held in adult facilities, making sure they are fully separated in sight and sound from adult inmates. It limits the narrow circumstances under which they may be confined in isolation, and it requires data-driven approaches to reduce ethnic and racial disparities.

We recognize that kids now are much more vulnerable to substance abuse issues and that they, too, face mental health challenges, and we try to bring this bill together so States have to provide appropriate treatment and recognition when the cause of what is going on in that child's life is substance abuse or a mental health challenge.

We make it a good deal harder to incarcerate for the status offenses. A status offense is an offense that wouldn't even be an offense if an adult did it. It is only because you are a child that it is even an offense at all--skipping school or running away from home and so forth. There are better ways to deal with those children than incarcerating them, and we steer in this direction, promoting the community-based alternatives to the tension.

For instance, we have community courts in Rhode Island that work really well, where the family is engaged, the child is engaged, and the community is engaged. They really learn a lesson from what they did. They have to do something helpful in order to kind of remediate themselves with their community. It has been very successful. So there are real things that can be done. Of course, separating a child from their family in order to try to improve their situation is usually something that backfires. You need to have the family engaged.

Consistent with Senator Portman's remarks, we also recognize that very often some of the times that children get in trouble is because they have been traumatized. They have been either the victim of violence themselves or witnessed violence in ways that have created trauma and, in many cases, are sadly the victims of child sex trafficking.

So we focus on States identifying and responding to those particular children to make sure, if that is what is behind what is going on, that those needs are met--simple things. We banned the use of shackles on girls once they are pregnant. It shouldn't be asking too much, and it is about time we stopped shackling girls, particularly pregnant girls.

Last, something near and dear to my chairman's heart, it improves the accountability and the oversight of the Federal grants program. I know that has been a goal he has pursued for a long time. The chairman is one of the most determined Members of the Senate when it comes to transparency and accountability, and so I am very pleased to be his partner in that particular piece of the bill.

With that, I yield the floor back to Chairman Grassley so he may take us through the formal steps of passing this law. It is a very happy moment for me, and I extend my appreciation to Chairman Grassley.

Mr. President, I am here to speak about something else, but let me take just a moment and thank my chairman for what he has done. I had the experience of serving on the HELP Committee with Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray when we did the Education bill last year.

Education is nearly as fraught a topic politically around here as healthcare is, and what we saw in a thoughtful, regular-order process that was developed under Chairman Alexander's leadership was a very considerable piece of work with real effect.

Sometimes we agree on something on both sides of the aisle in this body because there is nothing to it. It is ``National Peaches Week'' or something, and everyone votes for that. But when it is something big and something consequential, that is where difficulties begin to emerge, and what the chairman was able to work in the committee was something big and something consequential on healthcare. To the end of my days in the Senate, I am going to remember that closing vote, when the clerk of the committee called the roll, and every single member of the HELP Committee voted in favor of the measure. It came out of the committee unanimously, and with that burst of energy, it came through the floor fine, and it passed the House without too many changes. It was just a remarkable piece of work. So I have seen what the HELP Committee can do under Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, and I am filled with confidence that the process can be terrific there, and I am filled with goodwill toward a successful outcome.

I just think what the chairman has said is terrific, and I wanted to say a few words of appreciation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 17 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, what I would like to speak about is a new form of fossil fuel-funded climate denial spin that has just entered the climate debate. They are always up to something, and here is their latest. The Trump administration's two great scientists, Scott Pruitt and Rick Perry, the Frick and Frack of climate denial, have called for a science showdown, where climate denial and climate science can have it out for once and for all--red team versus blue team. ``Fossil fuel man'' Pruitt has even called for the showdown to be peer reviewed. Well, what is comical about that is that climate science has been peer reviewed all along. That is how it gets to be science--by going through and surviving the process of peer review by other scientists.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Administrator Pruitt from a wide range of scientific organizations pointing out to him this very fact, that climate science is called climate science because it has been through scientific peer review.

Climate denial, on the other hand, avoids peer review as if it were Kryptonite, so this call for peer review of the contest between climate science and climate denial is almost comical, except for the evil intent behind it and, of course, the stakes. How very risky and dangerous continuing to get this climate issue wrong is for our country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an op-ed written by John Holdren, until recently the President's climate adviser, called ``The perversity of `red-teaming' climate science.''

Mr. President, let's go back to the basics here. The basic fact is that the scientific truth of climate change threatens the business model of enormous industries that spew carbon dioxide, and it challenges the ideology of rightwing fanatics who spew hatred of government. That is what the background is to all of this, and there has been a scheme for years to protect the industry's business model and the ideology of its associated cohort of fanatics. That scheme from the industry and the rightwing fanatics has been to attack climate science. They have been at it for years.

If you are a huge polluting industry or a rightwing fanatic, how do you go about attacking science? Well, you can't win a real attack on the science, precisely because the polluter nonsense could not make it through peer review. Peer review is the most basic test to enter scientific debate, but they fail at peer review because their argument is bogus, phony, and it is a front. So the scheme has always been to avoid peer review because it is a test they would fail.

If you are going to fail the peer review test, what do you do? Instead of a direct attack through peer review journals, they attack science from the side. They create a phony parallel science, a simulacrum of science that doesn't have to face peer review. Their phony science doesn't even have to be true. In fact, they don't care whether it is true; indeed, I contend that some of them know it is not true and are engaged in deliberate, knowing fraud. But, in any event, getting to the truth is not the point of this phony parallel science. The goal is political, not scientific.

What they want is for government--us--to let them keep polluting. Polluting with their product makes them big, big money, and they don't want to stop. So the goal is not to enter the scientific debate on scientific terms. This is no quest for truth; this is a quest to influence public opinion. So the polluter nonsense doesn't have to be true; it just has to sound legitimate enough to influence an uninformed public. The goal is to fool the public and mess with politics. That is how they keep the political pressure off having to clean up their act. Their battlefield is the public mind, and their goal is to pollute the public mind with false doubts about the real science.

The climate denial apparatus that Pruitt and Perry serve just needs to create the illusion that there is still scientific doubt, and it just has to create that illusion in the minds of a nonscientific audience--the average voter, people who don't know any better and shouldn't be expected to. To do this, they have set up an elaborate con game to help them foment this illusion that there is a real contest here.

Their first trick, of course, is to hide the hand of the funders who back this scheme behind innocent or respectable-sounding names. If people saw the hand of ExxonMobil or Koch Industries behind this scheme, well, the jig would be up, so they have to back front groups-- dozens, indeed, of front groups. The front groups take nice, cozy words like ``heritage'' and ``heartland'' and ``prosperity,'' and they stick them on the front of the front group.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article entitled ``EPA is asking a climate denier think tank for help recruiting its `red team' '' in this effort at the conclusion of my remarks.

This article points out that they are actually recruiting one of these phony front groups, the Heartland Institute, comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber, so you know that is going to be a fair contest between climate science and climate deniers when the group involved is a fossil-funded group that has compared climate scientists to the Unabomber. Of course you want them in the debate, don't you? It is laughable, except for the fact that it is really not.

The other thing these groups do is they go down the shelves of American history and they grab the names of heroes and they slap these great names onto other phony front groups. Even the great GEN George C. Marshall has had his name slapped on a front group.

I am a big fan of General Marshall. He is a hero of mine. Winston Churchill called him ``the organizer of victory'' in World War II. The Marshall plan saved Europe after that war. He won a Nobel Prize, deservedly. But in General Marshall's life of dedicated service to our country, he had his share of sorrows, and one of those sorrows was that he had no children. So today, there are no living children or grandchildren to defend his name. Any rascal can put General Marshall's name on a bogus enterprise, and these rascals did. It is beyond low.

So that is the first trick: Hide the polluters' hand behind an innocent or respectable-sounding name.

The second trick is camouflage. They ape real science by setting up groups with names that sound like scientific organizations. So when the United Nations convenes the real Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they put up a Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

They ape scientific activities. If scientific organizations have conferences, they have conferences. If scientific organizations have colloquiums, they have colloquiums. If scientific organizations publish findings, they publish findings. The difference is, it is all phony. None of it is peer reviewed. It is not real science; it is a masquerade designed to give the appearance of science without any of the rigor of peer

review and the other attributes of real science.

They even ape the publications of real science. I don't have the chart with me, but there is a publication by the legitimate U.S. Global Change Research Program that is entitled ``Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.'' That is for real. It is real science. Then there is a look-alike publication called ``Addendum: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,'' which was cooked up by the Koch brothers-backed CATO Institute--same print, same text, same color. It virtually is a masquerade of the real item.

The first thing is to hide industry's hand behind the front group, and the second is to mask propaganda activities in camouflage that resembles actual scientific activity without having to pass any tests of scientific activity.

The last thing is to run the operation like a marketing campaign, since, well, that is what it is. You wouldn't market soap in peer- reviewed scientific journals, would you? First of all, the journals wouldn't publish it. Secondly, that is not your audience anyway. It is the same here. It doesn't do these scoundrels any good to be publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, even if they could get their nonsense published there. The people who read scientific journals know better. That is not their audience, and they know that they will lose in front of a scientific audience. They would shrivel up like the Wicked Witch. So they want to go right to the public with Madison Avenue-quality salesmanship and glossy messaging, marketing their dressed-up climate denial nonsense like you would market a new soap or spaghetti sauce. Go straight to TV, straight to talk radio, straight into the political debate.

The notion that the climate denial crowd now wants a scientific showdown--some ``high noon'' for climate denial--is ridiculous. First, they do not. We know they do not. They have been dodging away from peer review for years. They want peer review like the Wicked Witch wanted water.

So what are they up to?

Their gambit is yet another climate denial rhetorical trick to misdirect people to the thought that maybe climate science has not been peer reviewed either.

Climate science is nothing but peer reviewed--that is how it gets to be science--but this bit of trickery sets up in the unknowing person's mind the thought that climate science might not be peer reviewed. If our Frick and Frack of climate denial, Pruitt and Perry, had said outright that climate science is not peer reviewed, that would be a flat lie, and they would be caught out. Instead, they performed this rhetorical bank shot just to lay that suggestion out there, knowing perfectly well that it is false. It is a little like the old ``when did you stop beating your wife?'' trick. It lays out a false predicate by insinuation where the fact, itself, could not be properly asserted.

The purpose here, like the purpose of all climate denial schemes, is to buy more time for the polluters. Think how long this imaginary process of preparing for climate denial ``high noon'' will take. Oh, they could spin this out for years.

One thing you can bet is that game day will never come, but in the meantime, they have the craftily embedded lie out there that climate denial and climate science stand on an equal footing and just await peer review to decide between them, and now that lie can just hang out there, leaking its poison into the public debate.

I have to ask: Who thinks this stuff up? They have made a new art form out of propaganda. Think what a schemer you have to be to think this stuff up. That is the kind of people we are dealing with here, and in this bizarro world, Frick and Frack hold high office.

The problem is that there actually is a judge here. A real ``high noon'' will actually come. As the old saying goes, time will tell. When it comes to climate change, the laws of physics and chemistry and biology are at work. The things that CO2 concentrations do in the atmosphere are going to happen no matter what we say or believe about them. The laws of physics do not depend on political beliefs. The chemistry of what happens when seawater is exposed to more and more CO2 is going to happen, and it will follow the laws of chemistry, not our opinions or beliefs.

What we humans say or what we believe or what we have been conned into believing by the climate denial scheme will not matter at all. Our views--our opinions--are not part of the equation. Fill one room with climate deniers and fill another room with climate scientists, and the same chemistry experiment will have the same results in both rooms. Chemistry does not care about our opinions.

The way trees and animals and fish and insects and viruses and bacteria react to new temperatures and new levels of acidity and new environments we have no say in. The fossil fuel industry can cow westerners into silence or even con them into believing the industry's climate denial nonsense, and the bark beetle will not care. It will not even know that the con game is being run. The bark beetle will just keep eating its way up the warming latitudes and altitudes and killing pine forests by the hundreds of square miles.

What science does for us is give us the ability, as humans, to understand the laws of science so that we can predict what will and will not happen. Science provides mankind with headlights so that we can look ahead and see what the future portends, but turning off those headlights by denying the science or trying to distract the driver so that we are not even looking out the windshield will not change what is ahead. Whatever is coming at us is still coming at us. We just will not see it in time to steer around it in order to minimize the collision or slow down and soften the impact. We will not have time because we will have given that time to the polluters. Time is what they want--more time for the polluters to make big money.

All of this lying, all of this science denial is actually, truly, an evil thing, and the cleverer it gets with these bank shot, faux ``high noon'' showdown, tricky lies, actually, the more evil it is. The people who are behind this are doing a very grievous wrong. They are dishonorable, dishonest, and disgraceful. Time will tell us just how wicked they are.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this bill is the product of the most secretive and partisan process I have seen in my 10 years in the Senate. Who did the magicians who came up with this listen to? They obviously didn't listen to the doctors. The American Medical Association is opposed to this. The American Pediatric Society is opposed to this. The American Academy of Family Physicians is opposed to this. Certainly the doctors didn't get a chance to get heard in this process.

How about the hospitals? The American Hospital Association is opposed to this. Catholic hospitals are opposed to this. Rural hospitals are warning that this could end their very existence. Let's have a process that gives the hospitals a chance to be listened to.

The nurses in Rhode Island are opposed to this. I think nurses around the country are opposed to this. Why not have an open process that gives the nurses a chance to be heard?

Our community health centers are opposed to this. They have been to Washington to say: Please don't do this. You will be hurting real people whom we care for.

Illness advocacy groups--the people they are fighting for are stuck in this healthcare system with serious illnesses. Did we listen to the American Cancer Society? No. Did we listen to the American Lung Association? No. We didn't even listen to the hemophilia group, for Pete's sake. Addiction treatment groups are against this.

We have listened to nobody. We didn't even listen to the Republican Governors, let alone the Democratic Governors, like my Governor, who is telling me: We are working fine. We having people on Medicaid. Our exchanges are working.

Why fire this torpedo into perfectly working exchanges when we can be working on fixing the few where it is not working?

Why are we here? Who is behind this? Who was telling the little group of magicians in their secretive back room what to do? This is what happens when a party becomes beholden to a small handful of creepy billionaires and stops listening to the people. They are conducting a freakish social experiment on other people's health coverage, because you can bet those billionaires have all the coverage they need, but they have this ideology about taking coverage away from people by the millions. And our Republican friends are standing up in lockstep to march the billionaire march on a bill that everybody hates and that will cause damage in everybody's home State. And it doesn't matter because the billionaires have the dark money, the dark money floods our politics, and everybody marches to the tune of the anonymous billionaires.

We could be doing great things. We could be solving the known problem of end-of-life care and making sure people get their wishes honored at that precious time. We could be dealing with opioid and behavioral health issues that are bedeviling communities across this country. We could be helping doctors with payment reform that lets them treat people in a way that keeps them healthier, rather than having to wait to be paid until they do stuff to people--running up the cost of healthcare.

We could be dealing with hospital-acquired infections. How many people know someone who had a hospital-acquired infection, which brings enormous costs into the system as you have to treat it? Do we address that? No, because we didn't bother to listen to the hospitals.

We could do something about pharmaceutical prices. People in America are irate about jacked-up pharmaceutical prices, driven up by people who aren't even in the drug manufacturing industry but are just speculating on their ability to use monopoly pricing to drive up prices. But they put money into the system, so they get what they want.

This bill is a nightmare in and of its own, and it is a colossal missed opportunity to do something good for the American people that will actually help them. So let's support Senator Murray's motion to recommit and just try the regular order that the majority leader has proclaimed he was a champion of for year after year, until the creepy billionaires said to him: We are giving you the money; this is the bill we want. We don't care about those people or those hospitals. Shove it through because it suits our ideology.

This is no way to govern. Give the people, the hospitals, the doctors, the nurses, the community health centers, and the people suffering from illnesses at least a chance to be heard in some kind of open environment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the remarks of my friend.

I would simply note that nothing he has said explains why you would want to strip hundreds of millions of dollars out of Medicaid or why you want to deny coverage to elderly folks who get Medicaid support for their nursing homes, people who are in the throes of addiction getting medical support for opioid treatment, children are often born on Medicaid--why you want to do all that. Nor does it explain why you would want to give big tax breaks to the most well-off people in the country.

Fine, let's fix the markets, if that is the problem, but this isn't really about that. This is stripping money out of Medicaid to give it to very wealthy people who are doing quite well already, in my view.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, something else happened this afternoon in Washington that I wish to relate today on the floor, which is that the American Enterprise Institute hosted the launch of Senator Schatz's and my American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act. I am delighted the American Enterprise Institute did that. Their conservative credentials are rock solid, but they do not fear debate, and they were extraordinarily helpful and open-minded in allowing us to make the announcement and in hosting a discussion on the bill that followed.

Virtually every person on the Republican side who has thought the climate change problem through to a solution has come to the same place--a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable price on carbon. That means that all of the revenues are returned to the American people.

Former Treasury Secretaries Baker, Shultz, and Paulson--all Republicans--former EPA Administrators Ruckelshaus, Thomas, Reilly, and Whitman--all Republicans--and leading economists and former Presidential economic advisers Arthur Laffer, Gregory Mankiw, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin--all Republicans--along with many others, support a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee. Well, that is what we do.

You all know the phrase ``offering an olive branch.'' Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis described our proposal as an olive limb, not a branch, when pairing a carbon tax with corporate tax reduction. He said it provides what he called ``an opportunity for conservatives to show how free enterprise can solve climate change.''

When I first came to the Senate in 2007, this place was humming with bipartisan action on climate change for years--but, in 2010, a dead stop. The Republican Party disappeared from the field after the fossil fuel industry secured from five Justices on the Supreme Court the infamous Citizens United decision. The fossil fuel industry, as if it saw the decision coming, immediately launched a veritable Soviet May Day parade of political artillery and rocketry. No special interest had that kind of political muscle before Citizens United. The combination of this industry political weaponry, plus the proliferation of dark money, plus the shady science simulacrum of climate denial has been formidable.

Despite this, there is room for optimism. There are Republicans who are willing to work with us. They just need some prospect of safe passage through the political kill zone that the fossil fuel industry has created.

Over 1,000 American companies have voiced their support for the Paris climate agreement, including corporate powerhouses like Walmart, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, and Google. If American companies were to mobilize in

Congress just like they did for the Paris Agreement, that would be a game-changer.

But notwithstanding all of that corporate support, the big business trade associations and lobbying groups have lined up against action on climate change. The so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce--probably more accurately described as the U.S. chamber of carbon--is one of climate action's most implacable enemies, despite the good climate policies of so many of its member companies. How is it representing its members? It is incredible.

The American Petroleum Institute represents Shell, BP, Total, and Exxon--companies that claim to support the Paris Agreement and the Climate Leadership Council's carbon fee proposal--but API opposes anything getting done.

We all know here that corporate America commands extraordinary attention in our political system. If American corporations aligned their political engagement on climate change with their actual position on climate change, which should not be asking too much of them, we could get going.

So, in a spirit of hopefulness, Senator Schatz and I reintroduced at the American Enterprise Institute our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, a framework that I hope both Republicans and Democrats can embrace. The bill would establish an economy-wide carbon fee on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The fee would be assessed where it is easiest to administer, minimizing the compliance burden. Other greenhouse gases would be tied to their carbon dioxide equivalency with a bumper for fluorocarbons to account for their high greenhouse gas potency. Sequestering, utilizing, or encapsulating carbon dioxide emissions would earn you a credit. The market would begin to work in this space.

Our bill sets the 2018 fee per ton of carbon emitted at $49--the central range of the social cost of carbon last estimated by the Office of Management and Budget. That fee would increase each year at a real 2 percent until emissions fall 80 percent below 2005 levels, and then it would follow inflation.

Border adjustments for energy-intensive goods traded with countries that have weaker or no carbon pricing will make sure that we protect our industries at home. We took care to design the border adjustments in harmony with World Trade Organization rules.

This carbon fee would produce meaningful reductions in carbon emissions. The nonpartisan Resources for the Future projects a 36- percent drop by 2025, compared to the benchmark year of 2005, exceeding the U.S.-Paris Agreement commitment significantly.

In addition to the environmental value, of course, a carbon fee also generates revenue--in this case, nearly $2.1 trillion in revenue over 10 years. Our plan would return every dime of that to the American people. Here is how.

First, the bill lowers the top corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 29 percent--a longstanding goal of Republicans. This would cut American corporate taxes by almost $600 billion over the first decade.

Second, it provides workers with a $550 refundable tax credit--$1,100 for a couple--against payroll taxes. The tax credits, which would grow with inflation, would return almost $900 billion to the pocketbooks of American households over the first 10 years.

Third, it would provide a matching benefit to Social Security beneficiaries, veterans program beneficiaries, and certain other retirees. These benefits would total nearly $500 billion over 10 years.

Finally, the bill would establish a block grant program, delivering the remaining funds to our States--over $100 billion to help workers in coal country, for instance, or provide coastal protection for seaside States facing terrible threats of sea level rise, at the discretion of the State, to meet local needs and concerns.

I understand the suffering in coal country. Coal country will continue to decline as natural gas drives coal out of the energy market. There is now no mechanism to remedy that inevitability.

Remember Huey Long's old slogan, ``Every Man a King''? With a carbon fee, we could make every miner a king--a solid pension, retirement at any time, full health benefits for life, a cash bonus based on years worked, a voucher for a new vehicle, a college plan for their kids. These things become doable with carbon fee revenues.

It is not the miners' fault that the coal industry has collapsed. They worked hard. They did dangerous work. It is a rigorous occupation to be a coal miner, and they are entitled to respect. Give them their dignity. Make them kings. With a small fraction of the revenue from a carbon fee, we could assure every single coal miner a lifetime of comfort, security, and financial stability.

Senator Schatz and I extend an open hand, an olive branch. Give Senator Schatz and me a Republican to negotiate with. That shouldn't be too much to ask. Then let's talk about the economics. Let's talk about where the revenue should go. And because I know it is a part of the Baker-Schultz-Paulson proposal, let's talk about where we can get fact- based, scientifically rigorous analytics of which regulations might become unnecessary or duplicative of a carbon fee's emission reductions.

Let's restart the bipartisan conversation we had going until 2010.

Let me close with an appeal to our patriotic sense. America holds herself out as an exemplary nation, a ``City on a Hill.'' The tactics of climate denial and political menace the fossil fuel industry has deployed around here have degraded our city.

There is a remorseless functioning of the laws of physics, of chemistry, and of biology. Deny them all you want, but time will tell. And even now, everyone, from our Secretary of Defense to every single Senator's home State, State university, understands that climate change is real and urgent, is teaching the science of climate change in those universities, and is warning of the dire consequences.

When the Presiding Officer left the Environment and Public Works Committee the other day, I was talking about the Leopold Center at Iowa State University and the powerful language in which they describe the present effects on agriculture of climate change and the danger of disruption to the fundamental systems of the planet. That is the home State universities telling us what the facts are.

So one day there will be a reckoning, and the longer our American democracy lies incapacitated at the hands of the fossil fuel industry, the worse the outcome will be, and the worse the outcome, the greater the harm to the country we love that holds its example up to the world.

We are all extremely fond of John McCain. John McCain returned to the Senate yesterday and called our country ``the strong, inspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of dignity of all human beings.'' Some beacon, if we continue to get this wrong because of what one industry did to our politics, using political menace, dark money, and fake science.

America deserves better than what we are doing in this Chamber on this issue.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I intend to file the following motion to H.R. 1628 and I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record. The motion is supported by Senators Brown, Franken, Van Hollen, Cardin, and Feinstein.

Mr. President, let me open my remarks by saying that from the very beginning of this ill-starred healthcare misadventure the Republicans have been on, Democrats have over and over again offered to help and to participate. Over and over again, we have spoken to, for instance, Chairman Alexander on the HELP Committee, saying: Give us a shot. Try something. We can do this. You have talked all these years about regular order.

How many times have we heard the majority leader say that regular order is the way to go and talk about how important the Senate is because it follows regular order? It looks as though all of that was nothing but a lot of bunkum because when he had the chance to come here and actually trust the Senate to work through regular order, what did he do? The very first day, he jammed through reconciliation to open a purely partisan pathway to undoing ObamaCare.

Well, people have discovered that a lot of what they thought was their

good healthcare is ObamaCare. So people on Medicaid, people whose private policies now don't have preexisting condition limits, caps on how much can be spent in a year or in a lifetime, folks who will get their money through the exchange, suddenly they have all discovered ``Oh my gosh, that was ObamaCare. Don't take that away from me.'' That is one of the reasons we see all of the groups who come here concerned about healthcare lined up against this bill.

This bill, other than the creepy cabal of billionaires who are behind it, doesn't have a friend. And it just shows how narrow the Republican Party has now become that they will follow the creepy billionaires off the cliff against the advice of so many respected American organizations.

How about the American Cancer Society? The American Cancer Society says that the Republican bill would leave patients and those with preexisting conditions paying more for less coverage. They have come out against the bill.

I have a constituent home in Rhode Island, and her name is Patricia. She and her daughters live in a beautiful place in Rhode Island, Wakefield, RI. Like a lot of people I have heard from, Patricia is afraid. She is afraid that what this Congress is going to do is to repeal the Affordable Care Act and let health insurers go back to discriminating against people with preexisting conditions.

What is hers? Well, Patricia and her daughters have a genetic mutation, and that genetic mutation increases their risk of cancer. They would ordinarily be counting on the American Cancer Society to argue for them, and sure enough, the American Cancer Society has come out against the Republican health legislation.

Well, it got real for Patricia last year when her 34-year-old daughter was battling breast cancer. Fortunately, her health insurance covered her treatment, and it worked. She is now cancer-free. But because of their genetic mutation, Patricia and her daughters will need to be screened frequently for the rest of their lives. Under the Affordable Care Act, these potentially lifesaving screenings are covered, and Patricia and her daughters are not penalized for having a preexisting condition. Why on Earth would you want to go back to a world in which those two things weren't true?

Patricia wrote:

A genetic mutation is not caused by an unhealthy or

careless lifestyle, as some members of Congress seem to

think. You can do everything ``right'' and still end up with

cancer or another debilitating disease.

So she urged me to consider all the people who would be affected by the new healthcare bill, not just looking out for the rich and the healthy.

Another group who came out against this was the American Association of Retired Persons, the AARP. This bill may have changed, but the results are the same. The results are higher costs and less coverage for older Americans. Why would you want to do that? And this isn't just language from the AARP; it comes home again.

Lisa from Pascoag, up in northern Rhode Island--a bucolic, rural part of Rhode Island--wrote to share her experience with the Affordable Care Act. This is her and her husband's third year on their ACA plan. Like many Rhode Islanders, they qualify for financial assistance to help them afford their health insurance. You would think that would be a good thing. Lisa thinks it is a good thing. She wrote to me that she thanks God every day that they have quality health insurance they can afford.

Her husband is a welder fabricator--a job that takes a toll. He has had several blood tests this year and recently began seeing a hematologist. Lisa knows that this type of specialty care would have been out of reach for their family without their current coverage, and so she is worried. She is frightened by the Republican health plan.

She and her husband are 56 and 62 years old. They are within AARP's interests. And she understands that because of their age, under the Republican plan, their premiums could go up five to eight times what they are paying today--five to eight times what they are paying today-- and the tax credits that have been proposed, in Lisa's words, ``won't cut it.''

Doctors know a little bit about healthcare, and the American College of Physicians has come out in opposition. ``The BCRA . . . will not preserve and improve essential coverage, benefits and consumer protections, and access to care'' is their concern. Of course, why would you want to listen to the doctors about healthcare when you have a little pack of creepy billionaires who are telling you what to do? Never bother to listen to the doctors.

Well, Judith from Riverside, RI, is a doctor. She is a physician who works at a community mental health center in Providence. Judy told me that she sees the benefits of the Affordable Care Act every single day. She treats patients with serious mental illnesses, and they have what she called ``tremendous'' healthcare and social service needs. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, almost all of her patients were uninsured, and she spent her days scrambling to try to find different avenues to get them free care, to get them whatever they could scrounge. Since the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, she said, almost all of her patients have health insurance and they are able to get the medical care they need. As Judy put it, with all of their life challenges, at least they don't have to worry that they can't afford care.

Planned Parenthood is a favorite target of our Republican friends, and Planned Parenthood is strongly opposed to these measures. Women get a lot of their healthcare from Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood said: ``With this latest version of TrumpCare, women will pay the biggest price of all.''

Olive is a young woman living in Providence who shared her experience with me about how Planned Parenthood has been a reliable source of healthcare for her throughout her life. As a college student, Olive went to Planned Parenthood for birth control and well-woman care. She had a routine exam, and a doctor at Planned Parenthood found a lump in her breast. Twenty years old and far from her family, Olive said she was worried but never felt alone. Planned Parenthood connected her with the followup care and testing that she needed. She was treated by their doctors. Fortunately, the mass turned out to be benign, but Olive says she is forever grateful to Planned Parenthood for their help to her during a scary situation for a young woman.

Olive is still a patient at Planned Parenthood, and she even volunteers at their health clinic in Providence. She knows firsthand how important Planned Parenthood is for healthcare for millions of men and women across the country--particularly women--and, like the other people who have written to me, she is afraid of what will happen if Republicans succeed in defunding Planned Parenthood.

Small business folks have spoken to me about this. There is a lot of talk about how you need more freedom not to have insurance and freedom to be told you can't have insurance if you are sick. That is not the kind of freedom I think we really want to support around here. The freedom we want to support is for somebody to be able to follow their dreams, and over and over again, I hear from people who are able to get free of being linked to their employer healthcare plan and go out on their own because of the Affordable Care Act.

Laura is a small business owner in our capital city, Providence. She and her husband own an architectural design and construction firm that builds homes around Rhode Island. Construction is not a line of work you want to be in without health insurance. Well, because of the Affordable Care Act, Laura and her husband have affordable health insurance and dental coverage, and they have it for the first time. They can see the doctors they want to see, and their out-of-pocket costs are reasonable.

The Affordable Care Act has allowed small business owners like Laura and her husband to pursue their professional dreams, boosting our local economy and creating jobs for others without having to risk their livelihoods and life savings if an illness or an injury befalls them.

Just last night, I was in Narragansett, RI, and a woman came up to me to say: When you get back down there, please fight for us on the Affordable Care Act.

She said: The Affordable Care Act has given me two things. One, it has given me my freedom. Because of the Affordable Care Act, I was able to leave my employer-supported program and have the confidence to go out on my own and become an illustrator.

Her business is so successful that she has actually started hiring people to support her business.

She said: That freedom to be an entrepreneur, to succeed, would never ever have happened if I had been chain-locked to my employer program and did not have an affordable option like the Affordable Care Act provides.

Second, she said: Once I did this, once I started my business, I then went for checkups. I was able to get tests that I could not have gotten before, and what they found was a tumor behind my eye. Luckily, it was not cancerous, but had they not caught it, she said, I would have lost my sight.

If you are an illustrator, being blind is a very tough proposition. She said: I have my freedom, and I have my sight because of this law. Sheldon, fight for me.

Janice from Cranston is the last person I will mention tonight. She wrote in to share how important the Affordable Care Act has been to her and her husband and how important our Rhode Island marketplace has been for her.

She said: There may be marketplaces that aren't working in different places around the country. Fine, go fix those. Don't mess with mine.

It is working in Rhode Island, and Janice is one of the beneficiaries of it. She is now retired. She lives with her husband Bob in Cranston. Before the Affordable Care Act, she tried to buy health insurance in the individual market, and it was quoted to her at $800 per month--not affordable to her, not with limited income like that. So Janice and Bob have quality affordable insurance through Rhode Island's health insurance exchange, and they are happy about it. Don't disrupt their lives.

Janice actually told me that her health insurance premium actually went down this year, and so she splurged with the savings and bought dental insurance as well. That was a success. She wrote to me: ``I wouldn't have been able to afford healthcare if it wasn't for ObamaCare.''

Like so many of these other people who have written in, Janice says that she and Bob are scared to death that they will lose their insurance if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. She doesn't understand how some Members of Congress can claim to care about their constituents and still try to repeal their healthcare coverage. Janice said: ``They have money and they have good insurance, and they must not know what it is like for people like us.''

Well, we need to remember those real people out there who are getting the Medicaid benefit, who are getting affordable insurance through the exchanges and getting help with the premiums and the people who are on private insurance but no longer have to face lifetime caps or annual caps or preexisting conditions. Even people who are still on Blue Cross have gotten a benefit from this. Why would we want to take that all away?

The last thing I want to mention is this. Those are all personal stories, and it is really important to remember that behind this creepy billionaire effort to perform some kind of ideological experiment on people by taking away their healthcare, there are actually real people who are really going to suffer in their real lives, and it will have been deliberately done to them by people here who simply couldn't say no to the creepy billionaires.

There is another piece of this. It is a little more complicated, but I will close on this.

I love to use this graph. I use it all the time. This axis of the graph shows how long people live in different countries. The range is from 72 to 86. This part of the graph shows how much people pay in different countries for healthcare per year. Virtually everybody that we compete with is right in here--Japan, Greece, United Kingdom, Germany, and France. They are right in here. They do pretty well on life expectancy, and here they are in this cross of the $2,000 to $6,000 per year range. The most expensive other country in the world is Switzerland, at $6,000 per year. Look at where the United States is. We spend $8,500 per year--way more, double more than what the average is of the other countries we compete against. For that we get super killer life expectancy. I guess killer life expectancy isn't the right phrase to use. But do you get great life expectancy on that vast expenditure of healthcare? No. We compete with the Czech Republic. We compete with Croatia. Part of what the Affordable Care Act did was to try to focus on this.

Here is the punch line. One of the things we do in the Budget Committee is that we look at things in 10-year chunks. If you look at the 10-year chunk from 2018, which is this year right here, to 2027, here is a 10-year period. What this graph shows is that, back here in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office did a prediction of what the healthcare costs for the country was going to be in this 10-year period. They said this is how much we are going to have to spend on Federal healthcare.

What happened is that we passed the Affordable Care Act and costs started to go down. They came in below expectations. Around here, they rebooted the test, and they did a new projection based on the new information for this same 10-year period. As you will notice, the costs that we have projected for that 10-year period from 2018 to 2027, inclusive, have fallen. They have fallen by $3.3 trillion.

If you want to talk about savings on our debt and deficit, if you want to talk about savings in healthcare, this red line was projected before the Affordable Care Act, and the green line--the difference--was the projection after the Affordable Care Act was law and after the results began to come in.

I can't promise you that every single one of those $3.3 trillion in savings was a direct result of a provision in the Affordable Care Act, but when we have delivered $3.3 trillion in savings, why would we never want to talk about that? Why would we want to put any of that at risk? Why would we want to go back to the preexisting condition of this prediction and pile $3.3 trillion back into that out-year period? It makes no sense.

So whether you are a person who has constituents who are real and who are going to suffer, who are going to suffer in real life as a result of the decision and the vote that you cast tomorrow, or whether you are a propeller-headed budget hawk who just wants to figure out how you can reduce America's costs, why would you vote for a bill and put any of this at risk? Why the fear of your constituents? Why the $3.3 trillion in savings? It makes no sense.

I will end where I began. If people will come to their senses and want to do this in a bipartisan fashion, during regular order--boy, did we hear a lot about regular order until regular order wasn't wanted any longer--we are here. We want to work with you. There are tons of ideas out there. We can work to improve the healthcare system for the real people in the real world, and not just do what we are told by a cabal of creepy billionaires who are yanking the chain of the Republican Party.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, to the disappointment of the American

public, the world scientific community, and even to corporate giants like Goldman Sachs and Cargill, President Trump recently decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. He cited as justification a slew of alternative facts. Some of the most egregious of these alternative facts came from a National Economic Resource Associates--a group we will call NERA in this speech--report that was commissioned and promoted by a group that calls itself the U.S. Chamber of Commerce but fronts for the fossil fuel industry. ``U.S. Chamber of Carbon'' might be a better and more accurate name for it.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, so-called, is a heavy hitter in Washington. It was the second largest spender of anonymous outside money, or dark money, in the 2016 Federal elections, second only to the National Rifle Association. In addition to all that political election spending, it wields the largest lobbying force on Capitol Hill. In 2015, the chamber dropped over $100 million on lobbying.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of climate action's most implacable enemies, as everybody here knows, despite the good climate policies of so many companies on its board. Along with Senators Warren, Sanders, and others, I examined this inconsistency between the positions of the chamber and of its board members in our recent report, ``The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Out of Step with the American People and its Members.''

Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record excerpts from the report, ``The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Out of Step with the American People and its Members.''

When President Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, he used these alternative facts from that chamber- commissioned NERA report. Here is what Trump said:

Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the

onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United

States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by

2025. . . . This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs.

End of alternative facts quote.

This was another assertion:

By 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by

the previous administration would cut production for the

following sectors: paper down 12 percent; cement down 23

percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal--and I happen

to love the coal miners--down 86 percent; natural gas down 31

percent. The cost to the economy at this time would be close

to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs,

while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many

cases, much worse than that.

End quote of his alternative facts.

Countless reviewers, including PolitiFact, Scientific American--that known crazy, phony, liberal publication, Scientific American--CNBC, and Fortune magazine, fact-checked the President's speech. It did not fare well. PolitiFact warned us to ``take these statistics with a grain of salt.'' An analysis of the underlying report was done by Kenneth Gillingham, an economics professor at Yale University. He pointed out that the NERA study made up a hypothetical set of policy actions to reach those goals. Those policy actions may well never have been

taken by anyone to comply with the Paris Agreement, but that was what they used. Second, NERA only modeled the cost side.

You have heard the phrase ``cost-benefit equation.'' They only looked at the costs. They didn't ever look at the benefit side. This is phony accounting when you only look at one side of the ledger.

NERA, of course, has a history of producing misleading reports for its industry sponsors. In 2015, it released a report for the National Association of Manufacturers on the proposed ozone standard, claiming it would cost as much as $140 billion per year. On the cost side, EPA estimated it would cost a fraction of what NERA estimated, less than 12 percent. The economic consulting firm Synapse analyzed the NAM report and found it ``grossly overstates compliance costs, due to major flaws, math errors, and unfounded assumptions . . . these assumptions and other flaws led NERA to overstate compliance costs by more than 700 percent.''

That is just on the cost side. Once again, they didn't even bother to look at the benefits. It is a one-side-of-the-ledger-phony analysis. Of course, the chamber commissioned NERA to do the same thing for it on climate: overestimate the costs and ignore the benefits. In this world of climate denial, this is a classic maneuver.

Senator Ted Cruz cited the NERA report in his CNN op-ed urging President Trump to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement a day before President Trump cited these stats in his withdrawal speech.

Cruz, Trump, and the chamber ignored more than 1,000 companies that supported the United States remaining in the Paris Agreement, including several chamber member companies. Some of these have publicly distanced themselves from the chamber as a result of the President's decision. A recent Bloomberg news article was headlined, ``Paris Pullout Pits Chamber Against Some of Its Biggest Members.''

Citigroup said: ``We have been outspoken in our support for the Paris agreement and have had a dialogue with the Chamber about how its views and advocacy on climate policy are inconsistent with Citi's position.'' Similar distancing came from Dow and Ford.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a piece, ``Is the most powerful lobbyist in Washington''--that is the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce--``losing its grip,'' exploring this tension around climate in more detail. The article said: ``[P]erhaps the most nettlesome issue for the Chamber has been climate change.'' It calls out the chamber's claims to be neutral on the Paris Agreement, while actually providing ``ammunition for foes of the agreement.''

The article highlights the chamber's climate denial efforts, including its 2009 proposal to hold a public trial on climate science-- what it dubbed ``the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.'' New Mexico-based utility PNM Resources actually quit the chamber because that idea was so preposterous.

The Washington Post identified 8 of the 25 companies that signed an ad in the New York Times supporting the Paris Agreement as chamber members, including GE, Microsoft, and Walt Disney. The CEOs of these companies publicly criticized President Trump's decision.

Microsoft's Brad Smith said:

We're disappointed with the decision to exit the Paris

Agreement. Microsoft remains committed to doing our part to

achieve its goals.

GE's Jeff Immelt said:

Disappointed with today's decision on the Paris Agreement.

Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend

on government.

Walt Disney's Bob Iger said:

As a matter of principle, I've resigned from the

President's Council over the #Paris Agreement withdrawal.

The chamber is out of step with its own members on climate change, maintaining a scientifically untenable position as every one of our State universities knows. Who is pulling the chamber's chain? It is hard to tell since the chamber hides from the public who its donors are, but I suspect the answer is the same as to why the Republicans continue to revive the hated, zombie healthcare bill despite huge public distaste for it.

Mr. President, that brings me to the nomination of John Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The chamber's rigid anti- climate stance is part of a fossil fuel political program that holds this Chamber in a state of intimidation and inaction on climate change. As Congress cowers before this fossil fuel political presence, we are now advancing the nomination of a climate denier to the Federal bench.

John Bush was not nominated because of any track record of distinguished performance or demonstrated commitment to public service. To the contrary, his most notable achievements seem to be a series of wildly offensive blog postings and public statements, denying that climate change is real and mocking it, comparing a woman's right to choose to the evil of slavery, casually using vile slurs against gay people. On and on goes the list.

Bush has written a number of posts dealing with environmental issues in which he insists on placing the terms ``global warming'' and ``climate change'' in quotation marks, insinuating that they do not really exist. Tell that to your home State universities.

With this appalling track record, why was he nominated? It is not hard to figure that out. He is here because through those offensive blog posts and by flagging himself as a loyal climate denier, he signals himself as a willing foot soldier of the big special interests. These big special interests are intent on capturing our courts, just as they have captured so much of Congress.

Judicial nominees like Mr. Bush are exactly what these special interests want, to make sure they can, first, maintain their dark money influence. That is their most particular key. That is the mother ship off of which all the other special interest mischief they perform comes from and of course to see to it that these big interests are never held accountable to the American people. That is the signal he sends.

Bush has flagged that he will rule the right way for the big special interests that fund the Republican Party, and the special interests' big reward is his nomination and confirmation. He has shown that he is familiar with the recipes when it comes time to cook the decisions.

My Democratic colleagues and I respect any President's desire and prerogative to fill the vacancies in the executive and judicial branches. Even though I understand we will not see eye to eye with our colleagues across the aisle on every nominee, Senate Democrats have given the President's nominees a very fair shake. This is no normal nominee. This is a freak who lowers the bar on judicial nominees forever.

If Mr. Bush wants to exercise his First Amendment right to spout offensive, ignorant, and hateful nonsense as some kind of nutty Breitbart blogger, he is free to do so, but that is not the measure--or has not until today been the measure of a Federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Mr. Bush is patently unqualified for this position, well outside any version of the mainstream, and his appointment can reasonably be predicted to bring dishonor and preordained partiality to the judiciary. I regret we are at this point.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is a great pleasure for me to be here with Senator Heitkamp. We knew each other as attorneys general so I have admired the Senator from North Dakota for a long time. From my time in West Virginia, I remember Senator Capito's father who is a very formidable and renowned political personality in West Virginia. To be here with the two of them is a personal pleasure. Senator Manchin is also joining us, so I am very happy to be here.

I thank Senator Heitkamp, Senator Capito, Chairman Barrasso, and my friend Senator Graham for leading this bipartisan effort, and I thank Senator Manchin for joining us on the floor.

We have more than 20 other cosponsors so this is a bill that has broad bipartisan support and has a great coalition behind it. It has everything from my great friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council, many of our friends in the AFL-CIO, to nonprofits like the Clean Air Task Force, to moderating groups like Third Way and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, which are trying to pick their way through the divide, industry groups like Wyoming's Cloud Peak Energy coal company and West Virginia's Peabody, a coal company, and the ethanol industry. So we have really good, broad support. It is an unusual coalition, and I am excited by it.

There are ways to remove carbon dioxide from the air and from emissions, and we are seeing a lot of it. I went with Lindsey Graham up to Saskatchewan to see the Boundary Dam facility, where they basically put the output of the coal-burning powerplant through a cloud of amino droplets that strip out the carbon dioxide and pump it to a nearby oilfield where they can use the carbon dioxide to pressurize the oilfield and facilitate the extraction of oil. That is made possible because they have an oilfield nearby that will pay for that carbon dioxide to use in order to extract the oil. If I remember correctly, they were getting close to $30 per ton. That is a pretty real revenue stream, but a lot of our American coal facilities do not have the luxury of being next to an oilfield that will pay for the carbon so you have to look elsewhere for revenues to make it worth your while. What we have in America is a market failure in which there is nobody who will pay you for removing carbon pollution. The way our market is structured it just does not work.

The simplest approach, of course, would be to put a proper price on carbon and let the whole economy go to work in solving the problem of carbon pollution. Short of that, this bill takes an important step by putting a value on reducing carbon emissions by paying facilities with a tax credit for every ton of carbon emissions they can keep out of the atmosphere. If we can get this passed and if we can get this into the Tax Code so it is lasting, then investors can look at it and say: Hey, we can finally put some money behind these technologies, and we can get them going, not just in the power sector.

This reaches into industrial carbon capture, into technologies like carbon utilization, and into really exciting new technologies like direct air capture. Now, most of these are happening elsewhere. To look for the models, you have to go to Saskatchewan, like I did and like Senator Heitkamp has done, or you have to go to Iceland, where they are pumping carbon dioxide down into geological structures where it reacts and becomes stone, or you have to go to Switzerland, where they are taking direct air carbon capture technologies, because, there, their market

is not broken so there actually is a return on this.

We are seeing good work at our National Labs, I will say, which is funded by Congress and people like Dr. Julio Friedmann, whom Senator Heitkamp and I know and work with. We are doing exciting stuff. Yet to take it to a marketable level, there has to be a business strategy. You have to be able to make a business case to investors if you are going to put money behind building what could be a multi-hundred-million- dollar carbon capture plant. This will begin to do that, and it makes me very excited.

In particular, I thank my cosponsors for making sure we are not talking about CCS any longer and that we are talking about CCUS. It is not carbon capture and storage. It is carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration.

I have also been to Shenandoah, IA. Shenandoah, IA, has a big ethanol plant, and there is a company, called bioprocessH2O, that is in the exhaust stream of that ethanol plant. They pipe out their waste heat, their waste energy, their waste CO2, their wastewater all into a plant that grows algae, and the algae eats up the CO2. They take about 15 percent of it out of the stream, and it turns it into a product. They use it for feed, for cattle, for fish. They use it for makeup and other products. They use it for a whole variety of purposes. It is a new form of agriculture that is going to be very valuable, and the fact that you can make it efficient to strip carbon dioxide out of a plant's exhaust is a great thing.

This is a good way we can work together. It may be the first time I can think of that Senator McConnell and I have ever been on a bill together. He is not on it now in this particular iteration because neither he nor the Speaker want to get onto a bill that is a tax bill while they are looking at tax reform. Yet, clearly, we know where their hearts are from the fact that they were on it the last time. So there is a lot of welcomed political news around this, and I think it has the chance of really revving up American industry so it is not the Canadians and the Icelanders and the Swiss who are cleaning our clocks because we have not bothered to get our economic structure in order to make this a profitable undertaking. It is a great first step, and I am proud to be a part of it.

I yield to my friend, the Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Does the Senator know that, in Cumberland, RI, there used to be coal mining? In fact, there are still coal mines underground in New Cumberland, WV. Every once in a while, one collapses, so we have been there.