Floor Statements

Mr. President, the question I bring to the floor today is what is Scott Pruitt hiding? Last week, the Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on President Trump's nominee to the Environmental Protection Agency. Today, for my 155th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, I have unanswered questions about Mr. Pruitt's fitness for that role. His evasiveness at his hearing signaled nothing good about his ties to the industry he would regulate if confirmed, and the lack of curiosity about these industry ties from my Republican colleagues speaks volumes about the political clout of that industry.

One question stood out. Our new chairman, Senator Barrasso, posed the standard question of nominees to Mr. Pruitt in our hearing: ``Do you know of any matters, which you may or may not have disclosed, that might place you in any conflict of interest if you are confirmed?''

Mr. Pruitt answered: ``No.''

Scott Pruitt crawls with conflict of interest. He has conflicts of interest with the fossil fuel industry from his political fundraising. We just don't know how bad. He likely has conflicts of interest from confidential private meetings with fossil fuel companies at Republican Attorneys General Association get-togethers, but we just don't know how bad. There is almost certainly evidence of conflict of interest in his undisclosed emails with fossil fuel companies, but again we don't know how bad. He came clean on none of this in his confirmation hearing.

This chart is a simple, and a likely incomplete, representation of the many financial links reported between Pruitt and the fossil fuel industry. At the top are the companies and the entities that have supported Mr. Pruitt with political funding. Down below are the political organizations for which he has raised money.

Pruitt for Attorney General was his reelection campaign. The polluters gave to Pruitt for Attorney General. Oklahoma's Strong PAC was his leadership PAC, a separate political fundraising vehicle. The polluters gave to Oklahoma Strong.

There was another one here called Liberty 2.0, Mr. Pruitt's super PAC, but he closed it down so we don't list it. While it existed, his super PAC took nearly $200,000 in fossil fuel industry contributions. Mr. Pruitt served as the chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association in 2012 and 2013 and was a member of RAGA's executive committee through 2015. Between 2014 and 2016, RAGA received $530,000 from Koch Industries. It received $350,000 from Murray Energy. It received $160,000 from ExxonMobil, and it received $125,000 from Devon Energy.

Devon Energy, by the way, is the company whose letter Mr. Pruitt transposed virtually verbatim onto his official letterhead to send to the EPA as the official position of the Oklahoma attorney general.

During his hearing, Mr. Pruitt refused to provide details about any solicitations he made from regulated industries for the Republican Attorneys General Association. We know they got special attention from RAGA. Here is a confidential 2015 meeting agenda from RAGA when Pruitt was on its executive committee. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the meeting agenda page.

This confidential agenda mentions a private meeting

with Murray Energy. It mentions a private meeting with Southern Company, and it mentions a private meeting with American Fuel Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents a lot of these characters. Murray Energy, of course, is right there. Southern Company is right there, and the American Fuel Petrochemical Manufacturers organization, I am sure, represents the others.

This confidential meeting agenda is all we have about what took place in those private meetings. I asked Mr. Pruitt in our hearings about the content of these private meetings, and he wouldn't answer any questions. He doesn't want us to know what was discussed there with the big fossil fuel polluters--companies whose pollution he will oversee as EPA Administrator.

Pruitt was also a chairman of the Rule of Law Defense Fund. The so- called Rule of Law Defense Fund is a dark money political operation that launders the identity of donors giving money to the Republican Attorneys General Association. As the New York Times said, the fund is a ``legal entity that allows companies benefiting from the actions of Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general to make anonymous donations, in unlimited amounts.'' It is a complete black hole of political cash.

In the hearing, Pruitt refused to shine any light into the dark money he solicited or received from these fossil fuel polluters or others for the Rule of Law Defense Fund--not whom he asked for money, not who gave money, not what they gave, nothing. This is an organization that appears to have a million-dollar-a-year budget so someone was busy raising a lot of money. How much exactly, from whom, and what was the deal? Scott Pruitt doesn't want our committee or this Senate or the American people to know.

Colleagues and I sent letters to the Office of Government Ethics and to the Environmental Protection Agency's top ethics official. Their responses indicate that their ethics rules predate Citizens United and its torrent of dark political money. Their regulatory authority on government ethics has not caught up with the post-Citizens United dark money world. Since their ethics authorities have not been updated for these dark money conflicts, if Pruitt doesn't disclose any of this information before the Senate, no one will know, and even those government ethics watchdogs may end up blind to conflicts of interest.

That doesn't mean there isn't a conflict of interest here. What it means is it is a hidden conflict of interest. That makes it our duty in the Senate to examine those relationships, except for the fact that the fossil fuel industry now, more or less, runs the Republican Party, so there is a scrupulous lack of interest in this fossil fuel industry dark money.

How badly does Mr. Pruitt want to hide his dealings with his fossil fuel patrons? An Open Records Act request was filed with the Oklahoma attorney general's office--Mr. Pruitt's office--for emails with energy firms, fossil fuel trade groups, and their political arms, with companies like Devon Energy, Murray Energy, and Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute, which is the industry's trade association.

Let me share three facts about this Open Records Act inquiry: No. 1, the Open Records Act request was filed more than 745 days ago--over 2 years, 2 years. No. 2, Pruitt's office has admitted that there are at least 3,000 responsive documents to that Open Records Act request. Consider that fact alone for a moment. There were 3,000 emails and other documents between his office and these fossil fuel companies and front groups--3,000. No. 3, zero, exactly zero of those documents have been produced--745 days, 3,000 documents, zero produced.

Think how smelly those 3,000 emails must be when he would rather have this flagrant Open Records Act compliance failure than have any of those 3,000 emails see the light of day. Given the important financial interests of these groups before the EPA, do we really not think that 3,000 emails back and forth between him and his office and those groups might be relevant to his conflicts of interest as Administrator? Until very recently, Republicans had a keen interest in emails. Chairman Barrasso asked that important question: ``Do you know of any matters which you may or may not have disclosed that might place you in any conflict of interest if you are confirmed?'' Scott Pruitt answered: ``No.''

On this record, there is every reason to believe that his statement is false. Might having raised significant dark money from the industry that he would regulate create a conflict of interest? Let's say that he made a call to Devon Energy and said: I slapped your letter on my letterhead and turned it in as if it were the official work of the Oklahoma attorney general's office. Now I need a million bucks. And you can give it to the Rule of Law Defense Fund as dark money, without anyone knowing that it was you.

Might such a quid pro quo create a conflict of interest in his ability to carry out the duties of EPA Administrator in matters affecting Devon Energy? It is impossible to say that it would not be a conflict of interest.

Let's say that at those confidential private meetings with Murray Energy and Southern Company, something went on. Might something that takes place in private meetings with Big Energy interests that he is going to have to regulate create a possible conflict of interest? They paid to be there. They wanted something. Might that not give rise to a conflict of interest?

And who knows what conflicts of interest would be divulged if his office were not sitting on 3,000 undisclosed emails with fossil fuel industries that he will be regulating as EPA Administrator?

I challenge anyone to come to this Senate floor and tell me with a straight face that there is nothing that those emails could reveal that might create a conflict of interest for the man discharged with regulating the companies on the other end of those emails. ``No'' just doesn't cut it as an answer from Mr. Pruitt when there is still so much that he is hiding.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Patrick Reilly, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, Mr. Milton Bronstein, a lifelong public servant, labor leader, and great friend to me, today celebrates his 100th birthday.

Milton served in many capacities during his more than three decades of service as an employee of the State of Rhode Island. In addition, he was an active workers' organizer, leading Rhode Island's AFSCME chapter, Council 94, as its first president and eventually becoming the retiree chapter's vice president until retiring just last year at age 99.

Those who have been fortunate enough to work alongside Milton during his State service or to benefit under his tenure at Council 94 describe him as a strong, dedicated leader and mentor. Current labor leaders say Milton's involvement helped strengthen

the labor movement in Rhode Island. It is his selflessness and commitment to seeing working Rhode Islanders succeed that so many of us admire.

Milton has been a tireless leader in the community. He has served on the board of directors of the Rhode Island Credit Union and the Touro Fraternal Association, the largest independent Jewish fraternal order in New England, for more than 50 years. He also was very active in the Rhode Island Democratic Party for just as long, working as president of the Association of Democratic City and Town Chairs. One of his proudest moments in politics was being a member of the 1992 Electoral College where he proudly cast his vote for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

I know Milton's family means everything to him. His love for his late wife, Claire, and his devotion to his children, Harvey, Andrew, and Cindy, are obvious. He has carried on his devotion to family with his seven grandchildren and his two great-grandchildren, with one more on the way.

Milton has been a close friend, supporter, and adviser to me throughout my political career. He is someone you can go to when you need help, and he is always there. He has helped so many people over the years, but you would be hard pressed to hear of him asking anything for himself.

Milton, I am lucky to celebrate you today. You are a great Rhode Islander. Thank you for everything you have done for me and for your dedicated service to the people of our great Ocean State. As your friend and Senator, please accept my birthday wishes for a wonderful 100th year.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the majority whip's remarks, I be recognized.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield to the majority whip.

Mr. President, the senior Senator from West Virginia has a very short time clock and has asked me to yield 2 minutes to him before I begin my remarks.

I ask unanimous consent that that take place and that then I be recognized at the conclusion of his remarks to speak in morning business for the duration of my remarks.

My pleasure.

Mr. President, in my ``Time to Wake Up'' climate speech--this is No. 154--I sometimes feel as if I am out here banging hopelessly against a tightly locked, barred, and soundproofed door. I make them anyway because, at a minimum, I want history to know what happened here when people look back and ask what the hell went wrong with American democracy. But I do admit that it can sometimes be discouraging.

However, last week something important happened. A public servant won a victory against a massive special interest. A court in Massachusetts allowed the attorney general of that Commonwealth to obtain files and records from the ExxonMobil corporation about its climate denial enterprise.

That is great news, and it is an important event. There is virtually universal scientific consensus--and even alarm--about climate and oceanic changes caused by burning the fossil fuel industry's products. In the face of that concern, the fossil fuel industry has gone to the mattresses to defend its business model. It is defending what the International Monetary Fund has described as a $700 billion--billion with a ``b''--annual subsidy just in the United States.

To defend a prize of that magnitude, the industry has set up an array of front groups to obscure its hand and to

propagate fake science designed to raise doubts about the real thing. With that fake science, they dupe the public and provide talking points for their political operatives. The front groups are a tentacled Hydra named after everyone from Cato to Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin, to George C. Marshall. The resemblances between this fossil fuel climate denial operation and the tobacco fraud scheme are profound, and these resemblances are noted often, including by the lawyer who won the tobacco case. Yes, the Department of Justice won that case.

At the same time, the fossil fuel industry has taken advantage of the political weaponry handed to them by five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. This industry has used the unprecedented political power bestowed on mighty special interests by the Citizens United decision to extirpate--root out--any Republican support for climate action. When I got here, there was plenty of Republican support for climate action, but after Citizens United that changed. They have seized that party like a hostile political takeover and turned the Republican Party into the fossil fuel industry's political arm. It turns out that you can do this on the cheap, compared to losing a subsidy of $700 billion a year.

This whole scheme reeks of mischief and self-interest, but in political forums the industry is such a powerful behemoth that it can block proper hearings, spout calculated misinformation, cloud up the truth, lobby to its heart's content, refuse to answer questions, pile up the spin doctors and front groups, buy and rent politicians, and threaten to end careers of anyone who crosses them--and they do. They made an example of Representative Bob Inglis and bragged of the political peril--their words--that would result to those who crossed them. That is how they play in the political branches. Truth doesn't matter to them. Truth is their adversary.

But you cannot play that way in court. That is why last week's victory was important. Court is different. In court you have to speak truthfully. Your lawyers can be sanctioned for lying in court. In court, your testimony is under oath, and you can be cross-examined. In court, evidence can be demanded and must be produced. In court, you cannot buy a judge's good will or bully a jury into compliance. Tampering with the jury is a crime. Judges cannot meet secretly with one side. No money can change hands, and biased judges must be recused.

Sir William Blackstone was the best-known jurist in England and America at the time of the Revolution. Trial by jury, he said, ``preserves in the hands of the people that share which they ought to have in the administration of public justice, and prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy citizens.''

No wonder powerful and wealthy ExxonMobil wants no part of that. This industry has gotten used to saying things with no accountability, dodging the truth, hiding the evidence, and using the massive weight of their political might to see to it that Congress has just the right bias wherever fossil fuel interests are a concern.

This Massachusetts ruling is a chink of light--and a welcome one--as darkness falls over an executive administration stuffed with nominees from the climate denial fringe, wrapped tight in the political tentacles of fossil fuel interests.

It makes the fossil fuel folks crazy to be called into court and to have to stand annoyingly equal before the law when they are used to being the big behemoth, able to tell everyone what to do or pay them or threaten them to do what industry wants. That is why they launched legislative subpoenas at attorneys general and what even Texas newspapers have called out as unseemly abuse of government power.

That is why they rush to the oil patch for judges who will interfere in investigations by attorneys general, even suggesting that attorneys general should not pursue cases against corporations whom they believe are responsible for misconduct because believing that is prejudicial.

Think of that. That is why the industry PR machine creates and propagates magical theories about the industry's First Amendment rights, when it is black letter law--admitted even by Senator Sessions in his Judiciary Committee hearing--that the First Amendment ends where fraud begins. Fraudulent speech, including fraudulent corporate speech, is not protected by the First Amendment. It is not now, and it never has been.

To clarify this point, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a June 2016 Washington Post op-ed by Yale Law School dean Robert Post titled ``Exxon-Mobil is abusing the first amendment.''

Mr. President, it makes this industry crazy to be in court and to have to tell the truth, so they will fight desperately on. The $700 billion a year in subsidies makes it profitable to ``lawyer up'' by the boatload for this fight and to litigate to their damndest. So this is not over, but this may be the moment when the truth finally found a path around the ramparts of our well-kept congressional indifference and began to find its way into the daylight.

That is one of the reasons the Founding Fathers gave us independent courts and juries. ``Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty,'' wrote John Adams. Independent courts and trial by jury were a big deal to the founding generation. The Founding Fathers had a keen sense of history and of politics and of the mischief of conniving men. They were deeply concerned about corruption--corruption of the body politic by interests and factions.

They knew the Bible and had read Isaiah's warning of how ``the faithful city has become a whore,'' with ``princes'' that are ``companions of thieves.'' They knew about abusive power. They could envision an interest become so powerful as to overwhelm the executive and legislative branches of government and bend those branches to its will. They could envision a special interest so powerful that it could buy its own presses and confuse or beguile the public with propaganda and nonsense. They could envision special interests so powerful as to abuse and distort the very democracy they were building.

So there stand the courts and there stands the jury, the places in our system of government where money has no sway and where evidence, testimony, and truth rule the day.

God bless America.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have crossed through and beyond 150 ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches. People sometimes ask me how I come up with the material. It is actually easy, even week after week after week, because it only takes reading the news. If we look back at the headlines and dubious milestones of 2016, we find plenty to talk about.

Last year was hot. NASA and NOAA are expected to certify later this month that 2016 was the hottest year in recorded history, exceeding the previous record set by 2015 and the previous record set by 2014. What this means is, 2014, 2015, and 2016 have each succeeded the last as the three hottest years on record.

The United Nations World Meteorological Organization found that the world was 1.2 degrees Celsius or over 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in 2016 than it was before the Industrial Revolution and the dawn of wide- scale fossil fuel use.

We are careening closer and closer to the 2-degree Celsius mark which scientists say brings, to quote Donald Trump in 2009, ``catastrophic'' and ``irreversible'' climate effects.

In 2016, climate change continued to make some places almost unrecognizable. Up north in the Arctic things got bizarre. Thermometers spiked in mid-November to almost 35 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, with a 37-year low in the nearby sea ice. The peaks were about 50 degrees above normal, and around Christmas it actually rose above freezing at the North Pole. Imagine, the snow was actually beginning to melt at the North Pole just as Santa was loading his sleigh with Christmas gifts.

In the tropics, undersea forests of once colorful coral stood bone white as the Great Barrier Reef experienced the greatest bleaching and coral die-off on record. What happens is that the superwarm water stressed the corals. That forces them to expel the tiny algae that lives symbiotically with the coral, providing them their food, and that is what gives coral reefs their beautiful color and their life. When the algae go, the coral structures turn ghostly white. They often do not recover.

It is not just the Great Barrier Reef. My clips today included a story from Japan, whose biggest coral reef has just been determined to be 70 percent dead.

The researchers in Australia found severe bleaching throughout the Great Barrier Reef. The Guardian reported in March that ``93 percent of the 3,000 individual reefs [had] been touched by bleaching, and almost a quarter . . . [had] been killed by this bleaching event.''

By November, around two-thirds of the northern portion of the Great Barrier Reef had died, with some atolls suffering complete devastation. Warming is at the heart of that catastrophe.

We also know from the physical laws of thermal expansion that as ocean water warms, it does something else. It expands. The oceans also are taking in melting water from our shrinking glaciers. Together, those factors are causing sea levels to rise worldwide. Last year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicted that at our current pace, over 90 percent of the world's coastal areas will experience almost 8 inches of sea level rise by 2040. Year 2040 is not that far away. On the Atlantic coast of the United States, it will be more than 15 inches. By 2040, a house that you bought on the coast today could be literally underwater before you paid off your 30-year mortgage. The real estate business is starting to take notice.

Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, has released a tool for users to show how potential sea level rise by 2100 would affect the over 100 million U.S. homes in its database. Around 1 in 50 homes in the United States, or just under 2 million properties, will find their ground floors underwater by 2100 if we don't get ahead of this. Thirty- six U.S. cities would be considered ``completely lost''--those are their words--``completely lost,'' and another 300 cities would lose at least half their homes. This doesn't even include commercial or public properties.

Government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac is girding for broad losses from climate-driven flooding. ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually,'' it wrote in an April 2016 report, ``but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.''

Let me say that again. The economic losses ``are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.''

The report says some of the effects of climate change may not even be insurable and, unlike our 2008 housing crash, owners of homes that are subsumed by rising seas would have little expectation of their homes' values ever returning and, therefore, little incentive to continue to make mortgage payments through the crisis, and that, in turn, adds to steeper losses for lenders and insurers.

Remember that Donald Trump signed, along with his children, this full-page ad in the New York Times in 2009. Here is what it said, speaking as Americans:

[W]e must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future

generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.

. . .

He said to the President in this advertisement:

We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective

measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge

facing the United States and the world today.

It went on:

Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it

is scientifically irrefutable--

Let me repeat his words--

scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic

and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.

That is what Donald Trump and his family said in a 2009 ad, ``catastrophic and irreversible.''

We have been warned.

President-Elect Trump also pledged to ``drain the swamp'' here in Washington of corporate insiders and special interests. But we don't see that. We see an alligator pack of climate deniers, oil executives, and Koch brothers flunkies nominated to fill his Cabinet, his White House, and his executive agencies.

The Koch brothers, Exxon, and other special fossil fuel interests stand on one side. On the other side stand our military, our National Labs, and NASA.

Let me put in a little footnote on NASA. They have a rover driving around on the planet Mars right now. Do you think their science might be OK? And, on the other side, also, I think, is every university in the United States of America. That is the choice: The fossil fuel guys, led by the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil, and the whole array of phony baloney front groups that they have stood up to try to mask their hand, or the virtually complete science establishment of the world, every Nation, our military, our National Labs, and all of our universities. Who are you going to believe?

The ones with the huge conflict of interest or the people who know what they are talking about?

Well, too many people in this room have made the wrong choice, but we need to fix it.

In Rhode Island, some good things happened last year. After over 8 years of work, we have the Nation's first offshore wind farm. Thirty megawatts, five turbines came online in December 2016--the Block Island Wind Farm. I am proud of Deepwater Wind for getting it done. I am proud of Rhode Island for establishing a process for siting an approval that is now a national model. It is part of a transformation that happened, emphasized in 2016, and that was jobs in the renewable energy industry taking off.

At the end of 2016, we had 400,000 wind and solar jobs, and by 2020, that number is expected to be 600,000. As employment climbs in these industries, costs for renewable technologies continues to drop compared to fossil fuels.

Last year we saw new records for electricity generation from renewable sources. Texas wind generation hit a record 15 gigawatts in December of last year, meeting 45 percent of the State's power needs, with 18,000 megawatts installed and another 5,000 megawatts under construction.

In Iowa, MidAmerican Energy is planning to add 2,000 megawatts of new wind by 2019. Once installed, 85 percent of the energy MidAmerican generates will be renewable.

We continued to make real progress internationally in 2016 as well. Earth Day was the signing ceremony for the historic Paris climate agreement. Nearly 200 nations pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. By October, we met the threshold for ratification of that agreement, when over 55 countries officially joined, and the agreement was fully adopted in November.

Just this week, over 630 companies and major investment firms, with a combined 1.8 million employees and $1.15 trillion in annual revenue, called on President-Elect Trump, us in Congress, and global leaders to continue to participate in and implement the Paris Agreement to ``create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness.''

This is the business community saying that the Paris Agreement will create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness.

Signatories included food giants General Mills, Kellogg's, Campbell's Soup, and Mars; apparel companies VF Corporation, Nike and Levi's; and other corporate heavy weights like Monsanto, DuPont, Intel, and Johnson & Johnson.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the ``Business Backs Low- Carbon USA'' letter be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

I sure hope President-Elect Trump will heed this call from the leaders of the business community.

Closing word: Secretary of State Kerry, in addition to providing great leadership through this, has also started doing something that I know is precious to him and that is important to me and many of our colleagues; that is, to give oceans the global attention they deserve. In September, more than 90 countries convened here in Washington for the Our Ocean Conference. Nations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and big corporations all came together pledging over $5 billion for marine conservation and committing to protect more than 1.5 million square miles of ocean. Secretary Kerry secured the legacy of the Our Ocean Conference by locking in hosts for the conference for the next 3 years.

So 2016 was a year of worsening climate effects but also of heartening climate action. The dramatic changes taking place in the Earth's climate are now undeniable, but so is the growing spirit of action among men and women of good conscience across the United States and around the world. One can hope that 2017 will be the year when we in this Chamber finally wake up.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam Clerk, how am I recorded?

On behalf of 14-year-old Charlie, in Woonsocket, RI, who suffers from neurofibromatosis and can stay on his parents' policy until he is 26--

--and cannot be denied health care for his preexisting condition, I vote no.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Cristina Diaz-Torres and Elena Elkin, two fellows in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, with the permission of the chairman, I would like to ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 20 minutes.

I have no objection to that.

Mr. President, this is the 152nd time I have come to the floor for my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, warning about the perilous effects of climate change. I am going to continue this in the new Congress, continuing to present the latest and most compelling scientific evidence of the changes that are coming our way driven by carbon pollution.

Nobody should take my word for it. I urge my colleagues to listen to their own home State's climatologists, their own home State's university researchers, their own home State's public health officials, and their own constituents who are out there fighting to protect their communities from the changes that are already happening right before their eyes.

In Rhode Island, we have a lot of fishermen, just as Louisiana has, Mr. President. The president of the Rhode Island Commercial Fishermen's Association is Chris Brown. Just this past week, he was the subject of a New York Times article. ``Climate change is going to make it hard on some of those species that are not particularly fond of warm or warming waters,'' he told the Times. ``We used to come right here''--where he was on his boat, The Proud Mary--``and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10.'' But the whiting, the fish he was after, have moved north to cooler waters.

The Times reports that two-thirds of marine species off the northeast coast have moved from their traditional ranges into deeper and cooler water.

John Manderson is a biologist at NOAA's northeast fisheries science center, and he told the Times in that article that public policy needs to keep pace with the rapidly changing oceans, where species are shifting northward in response to warming 10 times as quickly as they do on the land. ``Our ideas of property rights and laws are purely land-based,'' he said, ``but the ocean is all about flux and turbulence and movement.''

In Rhode Island, fishermen are getting clobbered by that flux.

Captain Dave Monti is a member of the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council. He wrote in the Providence Journal this week:

I often think about the fish and how important it is to

grow them to abundance so there are more fish for all to

catch and eat. . . . In 2017 we need a fish-first agenda, or

someday there may be no fish left to catch. Climate change,

acidification, overfishing by world nations, and changing

federal strategies could make it the worst of times for fish

in 2017. . . . We need to make an effort to understand what

is happening to the environment and the fish, and then take

that second step of communicating it to others to affect

policy.

That is what I am being asked.

The Providence Journal also recently wrote about how in Rhode Island the sea is moving higher and farther inland, as it is in Louisiana, which is the State losing ground fastest to the ocean of all the 50. They reported on StormTools, a program developed by Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council director Grover Fugate and University of Rhode Island emeritus professor of ocean engineering Malcolm Spaulding. StormTools provides 3D maps of the potential flooding damage along Rhode Island's coast. The Journal described the project as ``one of the most sophisticated models developed anywhere to project future damage from storm surges and sea level rise.'' And we are taking the results seriously.

The Journal quoted William DePasquale, who is the director of planning in one of our cities, Warwick, RI. He said, ``When I saw some of those scenarios, my jaw hit the ground.'' That is what we are looking at, and Warwick is now using those maps to prepare for the future.

The Providence Journal has also recently written about Matunuck Beach in South Kingstown. Town manager Stephen Alfred warns that if the sea takes out Matunuck Beach Road, 240 homes will be totally cut off, without a water supply or access to emergency services.

The article features Kevin Finnegan, who owns the Ocean Mist, a renowned local establishment. The Journal said:

The Ocean Mist has occupied the same spot under different

names since Prohibition ended in 1933. But the ocean has

moved. Where once beach bathers had to plan a trek across

sand to reach the water from the Mist, waves now flood the

supports holding up the tavern's deck.

Finnegan and the town of North Kingstown are scrambling to build seawalls. Engineer Bill Ladd, who works for Finnegan and who the Providence Journal reports had his first beer at the Ocean Mist back when the drinking age was 18, estimates that the two walls may only buy Matunuck Beach 20 or 30 more years against the oncoming ocean. That is because, as The Independent--a local newspaper in the southern part of Rhode Island--reported in December, about 4 feet of Matunuck Beach is eroding every year. According to Director Fugate of the CRMC, that erosion will more than double by the end of the century. Rhode Island is not a big State. We cannot afford to have this much reclaimed by the ocean.

The Independent article quotes North Kingstown Town Council president Kerry McKay, who says that climate change threatens the property values of his community's coastal homes, which is a significant portion of the town's revenue base.

He said historical values ``will have to change'' as

coastal concerns rise, and residents ``have to be more

receptive'' to redoing building infrastructure, such as

through elevating houses.

He also said that homes ``may not be there'' in 20 years, resulting in a ``major revenue loss.''

Another Providence Journal article last week featured Tanner Steeves, a

wildlife biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which has to tear up roads and parking lots along the Sakonnet River as the seas rise. The Journal writes:

As the barrier beach just south of Sapowet Point has

narrowed--losing nearly 100 feet since 1939--the salt marsh

on the other side has become more susceptible to flooding.

The Independent made Rhode Island's case for climate action in a December editorial. They said:

The signs are clear, if not immediately visible to most.

There are the well-documented, widely publicized shifts

with global import, such as the loss of polar ice and the

growing frequency of extreme weather events. Locally, there

are changes in the ecology of Narragansett Bay, and locations

at which the effects of a rising sea level--sometimes subtle,

sometimes less so--may be plainly seen. . . . But we

encourage all Rhode Islanders, from coastal communities and

beyond, to remain attuned to the situation--in terms of both

what the sea is telling us and what is being proposed to

prepare for coming changes. The stakes are enormously high,

and the broadest possible effort is required to meet the

challenge.

That is the message to me from Rhode Island. That is why I give these speeches.

As I continue to push for honest debate on this issue in Congress, I also tour around the country to see folks on the ground in other States. I have now been to 15 States. In the closing months of 2016, I hit Texas and Pennsylvania.

In Texas, I joined Representative Elliott Naishtat, the advocacy group Public Citizen Texas, and Texas environmental advocates at a public event in Austin to call out Congressman Lamar Smith, Republican chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, for his abuse of congressional power to harass public officials and climate scientists, including subpoenas demanding that States attorneys general divulge their investigative materials relating to their inquiries into ExxonMobil's potentially fraudulent climate misinformation. The committee is also harassing the Union of Concerned Scientists, 350.org, Greenpeace, and various university scientists because they are exposing Exxon for years of misleading the public on its understanding of climate change. Texans are taking notice. The San Antonio Express-News, which had previously always endorsed Congressman Smith for reelection, decided not to endorse him in this latest election cycle. The paper cited his ``bullying on the issue of climate change'' as behavior that ``should concern all Americans.''

I joined a panel discussion with leading scientists from Texas universities to discuss their research into climate change in Texas. The panel included Dr. John Anderson from Rice University, Dr. Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M University, Drs. Charles Jackson and Kerry Cook from the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Katherine Hayhoe from Texas Tech University. They had a unified voice on the dangers of climate change.

Dr. Hayhoe said Texans are seeing changes all around them.

We get hit by drought. We get hit by heat. We get hit by

storms. We get hit by sea level rise. And we're starting to

see those impacts today. . . . Texas is really at the

forefront of this problem.

Dr. Anderson of Rice agreed that the Texas climate is already changing. He said:

Accelerated sea-level rise is real, not a prediction. Its

causes are known--thermal expansion of the oceans and melting

of glaciers and ice sheets--and it is causing unprecedented

change along the Texas coast.

Dr. Dessler from Texas A&M laid out what he called ``the fundamental and rock-solid aspects of climate science: humans are loading the atmosphere with carbon, this is warming the climate, and this future warming is a huge risk to our society and the environment. We should insist that our elected representatives rely on this sound science when formulating policy.''

I returned to Austin in November to speak to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. President David Dooley of the University of Rhode Island had invited me to join a panel that he moderated with, among others, Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State climatologist and professor at Texas A&M University.

The bottom line was simple: Climate change is real, and the scientists at our universities will be increasingly forced to defend good science, academic freedom, and climate action. University leadership will have to defend their scientists against the onslaught of FOIA requests and personal attacks that are the modus operandi for climate deniers and against the phony science fronts propped up by the fossil fuel industry to spread calculated misinformation. The American scientific community faces a real threat from that operation.

On to Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to spend a day traveling with my friend and colleague Bob Casey around southeastern Pennsylvania getting a firsthand look at the effects of climate change and hearing about the work Pennsylvanians are doing to address it. At the University of Pennsylvania's Morris Arboretum, leaders from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Community Asthma Prevention Program, Moms Clean Air Force, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other groups talked about kids with asthma and other conditions that worsen when temperatures and pollution levels are high.

In Malvern, we toured the LEED platinum North American headquarters of Saint-Gobain, the world's largest building materials company. The company is demonstrating that green building materials and technologies can be married with stylish design to produce stunning results. With operations in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and around the globe, Saint- Gobain is developing innovative technologies to reduce pollution, generate clean energy, and improve air quality for millions of people.

From there, we visited the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, which is the Nation's first urban wildlife refuge and Pennsylvania's largest freshwater tidal wetland. Lamar Gore, the refuge manager, showed us how the refuge is at risk from the saltwater pushed in by rising sea levels. The refuge is adjacent to the Philadelphia International Airport, along the Delaware River.

As you can see from these graphics reproduced from the New York Times, at 5 feet of sea level rise, some of the city goes underwater and the refuge is in real trouble. Water encroaches upon the Philadelphia airport. At 12 feet of sea level rise, 6 percent of the city--including the refuge, airport, and parts of downtown Philly--is underwater. Projections that parts of Philadelphia will one day be uninhabitable due to sea level rise are one of the major drivers for forward-looking climate mitigation and adaptation policies of Philadelphia's Office of Sustainability. Senator Casey and I met with them too.

Being in Pennsylvania gave me a chance to connect with Dr. Robert Brulle of Drexel University. He is the scholar who documented the intricate propaganda web of fossil fuel industry-funded climate denial, connecting over 100 organizations, from trade associations, to conservative think tanks, to plain old phony front groups. The purpose of this climate denial apparatus is, to quote Dr. Brulle, ``a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public's understanding of climate.''

I will wrap up with a special thank-you to one of the folks who helped organize my Texas trip: Tom Smith, who has been director of Public Citizen of Texas for more than 30 years. Known by his friends and colleagues as Smitty and known for his signature straw hat, over his career he has testified more than 1,000 times before the Texas Legislature and Congress--Mr. Uphill Struggle indeed. He was successful, though, and central in creating the Texas Emissions Reduction Program, which led to wide-scale deployment of solar and wind across Texas. A true environmental champion, Smitty retires this year.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a recent tribute from the Texas Tribune entitled: ``Analysis: `Smitty,' a Texas Lobbyist for the Small Fry, Retiring after 31 years.''

Mr. President, in the article, he is quoted as saying: ``The thing that I learned time after time, story after story, is that people standing up does make a difference. It does change policy.''

Good words to end the speech by. Thank you, Smitty.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during quorum calls be charged equally to both sides.

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

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

Mr. President, I want to comment and say a few words about the use of the budget reconciliation process to facilitate an effort to repeal but not replace ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. I serve on the Budget Committee. During the course of multiple hearings during the previous year before the election, we heard the most adamant stories from the Republican side about how dire our Nation's debt situation was, how dire our Nation's deficit was.

Member after Member on the Republican side spoke as if the end of the Republic was at hand. Yet the policies from the Bush administration that kept driving that debt and that deficit they protect. They blamed President Obama for the effect of Bush policies that took place during President Obama's years, while defending those Bush policies the President had actually tried to correct. In many respects, their concern about the budget was a little ironic since they were defending the Bush policies that created this debt and deficit explosion in the first place.

Nevertheless, be that as it may, you had this phalanx of Republican Senators in a state of very high animation about our debt and deficit. You would think that in this Congress, with control both over the House and the Senate and a Republican President-elect looming, they might use the budget reconciliation process to do something about the debt and the deficit.

After all, there was a lot of big talk last year, and here is the budget reconciliation process. As we see, it is not being used to do anything about the debt or the deficit, it is being used to open an effort to repeal but not replace ObamaCare. The problem is, when you do that, you do some pretty bad things to the debt and to the deficit.

Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, Medicare officials projected out-year costs for Medicare in 10-year increments. After the experience of the Affordable Care Act, they went back and they redid those projections, and they dropped the cost of Medicare dramatically. Those outyear costs, dramatically reduced, are an important, valuable step toward lower debt, balanced budgets, and less of a national annual deficit. Repealing ObamaCare will undo that.

It was pretty clear from Budget Committee hearings that that reduction in anticipated Medicare costs in the outyears was related to the work that had been done in the Affordable Care Act as well as the changes in experience that we are seeing. That is one budget buster which shows that this reconciliation effort is going in the wrong direction.

In Rhode Island, I watched this issue pretty closely because I want Rhode Island to be a leader in delivery system reform. I want ours to be one of the most efficient health care systems in the country, and I worked very hard over many years to put the pieces in place in Rhode Island to help make that come to pass. So I talked to people like Dr. Kurose, who runs one of our largest primary care practices, and Dr. Puerini, who runs another very big Rhode Island primary care practice, and I saw that both of them had taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act to make themselves accountable care organizations, ACOs, and they have used the powers and they have used the shared savings under those programs to change the way they deliver medicine.

What they show is that their price, their annual cost of service per patient, is actually going down. They are delivering care more efficiently and they are getting to illnesses earlier. They are not just churning the wheel of bill and pay, bill and pay, bill and pay; they are actually managing their patients' health. We hit this wonderful sweet spot where the patients are healthier and the patients are way happier because they are getting better service, and the cost per patient in these practices is coming down. So if that is taken away, we reverse that effect. It is plausible to think that those costs will start going back up again. Why would we want to undo a method that has helped local practices improve the quality of care, reduce the cost of care, and serve their patients better? The ACO program is part of the Affordable Care Act.

The last thing is that around here, we try to defend Medicare. One of the achievements of the Affordable Care Act was that it extended the solvency of Medicare out to 2028. Undo this bill and there will be a direct hit on Medicare's solvency. It will come roaring back.

So when you put what the Republican Senators on the Budget Committee said with such vehemence and alarm about the debt and the deficit beside the use to which they have put the reconciliation process, which was designed to be used to reduce the debt and the deficit, and you look at how

that actually plays out through the health care system--increasing the costs of what would have been accountable care organizations, if that gets undone; lifting back up, presumably, Medicare costs that in the outyears were reduced because of this; and shrinking the time that Medicare stands as solvent--if that is not a hit on Medicare, I don't know what is.

The other piece in this process that bears on this is that during the period that these very dramatic concerns were being expressed about the debt and the deficit, the same party that was enunciating those concerns and those threats to our American society and solvency was defending all of the loopholes in the Tax Code. We tried and tried to find a loophole that our Republican friends would be willing to let go of, and we couldn't find a single one that I recall. Even President Trump is interested in trying to get rid of the carried interest loophole that lets hedge fund billionaires pay lower tax rates than brick masons, but could we get an agreement on that from our colleagues on the other side? No. They wouldn't touch it.

I hope that as we go forward, we can find a way to bring tax expenditures lined up with appropriated expenditures under the purview of the committee, but so far we have been unable to do that despite repeated bipartisan testimony that a tax expenditure is just the same as an appropriated expenditure in so far as it affects the debt and deficit--no difference--bipartisan testimony, clear on the record. The difference is that behind a great many of these lucrative tax loopholes that are baked into the Tax Code and that survive year after year after year is a special interest, whether it is somebody trying to depreciate their private jet more rapidly than an airline can depreciate passenger aircraft, whether it is the carried interest loophole that puts, very likely, the billionaire getting out of his limousine in front of his New York apartment in a lower tax rate than the guy holding the umbrella over his head, the doorman. How fair is that? But that is the status of the tax law. We couldn't get anybody to budge on that because there are obviously big, powerful interests who don't want to see that messed with. Why should they pay taxes like ordinary people when they are superwealthy immortals who can buy themselves politicians?

So the ironies of the party that declaimed about debt and deficit with such vehemence through so many hearings, with so much blame on President Obama even though it was carried-forward Bush policies they were defending that were driving so much of that debt--to have that group of people now come and use the reconciliation process designed and intended to address the debt and the deficit instead to try to repeal but not replace ObamaCare in ways that I think can be very fairly projected to raise Medicare costs, reduce Medicare solvency, and undo a good deal of the savings that doctors and taxpayers have shared from hard-working practices like Rhode Island Primary Care Physicians and Coastal Medical in Rhode Island, which have relied on the ACO provisions in the Affordable Care Act to get those savings--who wants to undo that? It makes no sense, and least of all, it makes no budget sense because those outyear health care costs will come home into the budget in those outyears. Of course, you compound that with the fact that no tax loophole is to be touched. No tax loophole can be addressed. No revenue can be generated by closing the carried interest loophole, closing the private jet deduction, closing the tax benefits for the fossil fuel industry, which is making more money than any industry has in history and hardly needs the support of the poor American taxpayer. But, no, big special interests have big tax breaks, and they are going to be protected at all costs. That is really where we are on this.

I understand we used reconciliation to move ObamaCare. It did, in fact, do the job of reducing the deficit, I believe. Undoing it goes in the opposite direction, but there is a certain ``what is good for the goose is good for the gander'' equivalence about using that to undo what we did. I get that. But if we are really serious about addressing the debt and deficit, then we shouldn't be using the reconciliation process, which is designed to reduce them both, to attack a health care program whose effect has been to reduce them both. That is where we stand right now.

In the months ahead, I hope we will be able to look at tax expenditures. More money goes out the back door through tax expenditures than gets spent on some of our biggest programs. It is a huge loophole, and within it are a lot of very unattractive special interest special provisions--loopholes in the worst sense of the word. We don't want to touch them because nobody dares to touch the special interests behind them.

So that is where we are. I hope we can make real progress on the debt and the deficit and stop defending private jet reductions, stop defending fossil fuel subsidies, stop defending billionaire special tax breaks, and actually put the debt and the deficit that America faces first rather than having conversations about that being window dressing until you get a Republican President, and then you go completely haywire, using the reconciliation process to undo health care laws, raise Medicare costs, and undo the ACO program that has been so effective in my State.

I see the junior Senator from Utah is presiding, and I know that Utah and Intermountain have some of the best health care work being done on delivery system reform, and it would surprise me very much if the leaders at Intermountain in Utah were excited about undoing the delivery system reform provisions of Obamacare. The Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare Services, the ACO provisions, the provisions for shared savings between doctors and the taxpayer when savings accrue because of better practices, the changes toward better models of payment--I would be very surprised if they were very enthusiastic about undoing those.

But, as I said, this is where we are, and I will close my remarks, and I hope that soon, once this exercise is over, we can actually get serious about closing loopholes and reducing the debt and reducing the deficit--the nominal cause of the Republicans on the Budget Committee.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be evenly divided between the two sides during the quorum call.

With that understanding, I suggest the absence of a quorum, with the time divided equally between the two sides.

Mr. President, today I wish to thank my friend Senator Bill Nelson for his support of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2014, S. 2839, which I introduced with Senators Portman, Klobuchar, Ayotte, and Leahy in the 113th Congress. Senator Nelson asked to be added as a cosponsor of the legislation in October, but his name was not recorded appropriately. I regret the oversight and wish to recognize Senator Nelson for his ongoing commitment to this important cause. I look forward to working together to address the Nation's opiate epidemic in the 114th Congress.

Madam President, I might point out that not only are Delaware and Rhode Island both small and mighty, but they are small, mighty, and coastal, which is relative to the topic of my remarks this afternoon. I am now here for the 89th consecutive week that Congress has been in session to urge the Senate to wake up to the risks of climate change and to address the carbon pollution that is causing climate change.

We have a particular context for this conversation this week. The Founding Fathers in article I, section 8 of the Constitution granted to Congress a sacred duty, as the Constitution says, to

``provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.''

To that end, we have built the world's greatest military and the most sophisticated intelligence and national security services. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we undertook the largest reorganization of the Federal Government in half a century to stand up the Department of Homeland Security. We trust these national security agencies and the dedicated professionals who lead them and serve in them to ascertain and prepare for the risks facing our country in an uncertain world. But the tea party wing of the Republican caucus has chosen to hold up appropriations for vital Homeland Security programs--programs that protect Americans from terrorism, programs that help our States prepare for disasters--all to have a quarrel with the President on immigration.

Well, when we get to immigration--if our friends on the House side ever get to immigration--we could certainly debate the merits of the President's action. Certainly, we should pass legislation to fix our broken immigration system so the President's Executive actions are no longer necessary. And, by the way, in the Senate we did our job and passed a strong bipartisan bill. But to deny the Department of Homeland Security the resources it needs to safeguard the Nation is foolhardy.

Now, it is precisely because of that duty to safeguard the Nation that we should take our homeland security and military professionals seriously when they take seriously the threats posed by climate change. I think we should have a vote on a resolution highlighting the fact findings of our national security, military, and intelligence services about the climate threat. This resolution would express the sense of the Senate that the conclusions of our security professionals are not products of some hoax or deception perpetrated on the American public and that they deserve our respect.

That ought to be something every Senator can get behind. Let's look at some of the information. Just last week the administration's 2015 National Security Strategy classified climate change as ``an urgent and growing threat to our national security.'' It is because this is serious that the United States is out there actively cutting pollution and strengthening resilience at home and leading the international community towards stronger carbon pollution standards.

The challenge that climate change poses to national security and to emergency preparedness is clearly laid out in the Department of Homeland Security's 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. It describes the effects of climate change as threat multipliers, with the potential to aggravate hazards to American safety and health. For example, higher temperatures may change patterns of disease and the spread of pests and pathogens.

Competition for resources can contribute to the kind of social destabilization that engenders terrorist activity all around the world.

You don't have to look far to see that today. Extreme weather and temperatures endanger the infrastructure that underpins our economy and way of life--from roads and bridges that now run too close to rising seas, to power and water treatment plants, to telecommunications and cyber networks.

As Assistant Secretary David Heyman of the DHS Office of Policy and Assistant Secretary Caitlin Durkovich of the Office of Infrastructure Protection explained to our own Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs just last year:

The projected impacts of climate change, including sea

level rise and increasing severity and frequency of extreme

weather events, can cause damage or disruptions that result

in cascading effects across our communities, with

immeasurable costs in lives lost and billions of dollars in

property damage.

Why would we not want to take that seriously?

We heard just the same message in the Budget Committee just last week from OMB Director Shaun Donovan.

Already, the annual number of costly weather-related disasters is going up. According to NOAA, in the 1980s--in that decade--if you look at the number of natural disasters costing $1 billion or more, in each year of the 1980s there were between zero and five. That was the range for the 1980s--between zero and five $1 billion weather events. In the 1990s that rate rose to between three and nine events each year. Then in 2000 it went up to between 2 and 11 events per year. Since 2010, in the category of $1 billion disasters each year, the range has been between 6 and 16.

So from the 1980s, it was 0 to 5, until this decade when it is 6 to 16. If people can't take that seriously, they are simply not meeting their responsibilities.

Superstorm Sandy caused tens of billions of dollars in damage, including terrible losses in my home State of Rhode Island. Across New England, Sandy destroyed thousands of homes, left millions without electric service, and caused more than 100 deaths across nine States. Of course, we cannot say this one devastating storm was specifically caused by climate change, but we do know that carbon pollution loads the dice for more and more severe extreme weather such as Sandy.

Sandy sure showed how vulnerable we are to this kind of catastrophic change. Climate change presents security challenges in every corner of the homeland. To the south, DHS predicts that more severe droughts and storms could increase both legal and illegal movements across the U.S. border--from Mexico, from Central America, and from the Caribbean.

My Republican colleagues insist that protecting our border is a top priority--fine. I hope that means they will take seriously the warnings from our national security professionals about the destabilizing effects of climate change and its effects, in turn, on our border.

If you move up north to the State of Maine, our former colleague, Olympia Snowe, has just written an article in Newsweek magazine. I will read the opening:

In late 2014, fishery regulators announced that for the second consecutive year there would be no shrimp fishery in the gulf of Maine this winter. The culprit: principally warming ocean waters caused by climate change.

She goes on to describe another phenomenon that scientists dubbed an ocean heat wave in the spring of 2012 that led to an early molt and migration of lobsters that caused a supply glut and subsequent price collapse. Now if you know anything about Maine, you know lobsters are pretty important to Maine. Senator Snowe's conclusion: ``The message here is clear: climate change is taking dollars and jobs away from fishing communities.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that her article be printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

To the far north, melting sea ice opens the Arctic for shipping, tourism, and resource extraction, but also for smuggling and illicit resource extraction and environmental disasters. It is a whole new frontier to be patrolled and protected by our Coast Guard, part of the Department of Homeland Security, at taxpayer expense.

Former Coast Guard Commandant ADM Robert Papp, Jr., is now the U.S. Special Representative to the Arctic Region. He has got the job to help manage risk in this remote but increasingly accessible region in the world, and he had this to say about managing the consequences of climate change. Admiral Papp said:

I am not a scientist. I can read what scientists say, but I

am in the world of consequence management. My first turn in

Alaska was 39 years ago, and during the summertime we had to

break ice to get up to the Bering Strait and to get to

Kotzebue. Thirty-five years later, going up there as

commandant, we flew into Kotzebue at the same time of year. I

could not see ice anywhere. So it is clear to me that there

are changes happening, but I have to deal with the

consequences of that.

The men and women of our homeland and national security forces deal in real-world consequences. They don't have the luxury of skirting the evidence or shrugging off serious adult risk analysis.

It is just as true at the Department of Defense as it is at the Department of Homeland Security. As ADM Samuel J. Locklear, III, the Navy Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, puts it, it is ``. . . not my venue to debate the politics of any issue. All I do is report what I see and what I think I see, and the implications.''

Admiral Locklear, our chief naval officer in the Pacific Command, has called climate change the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific, because as he sees it, ``it is probably the

most likely thing that is going to happen that will cripple the security environment.''

Our colleagues may think it is funny to ignore climate change in this body while they depend so heavily on funding from the fossil fuel that is behind the pollution. They should listen to admirals who are responsible for our security when they tell us it is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen to cripple the security environment.

Last May, the CNA Corporation released a report on the risks climate change poses to our national security. This report was led by 15 generals and admirals from all 4 branches of the United States military. Here is what they said:

The national security risks of projected climate change are

as serious as any challenges we have faced.

That is what they wrote. They continued:

We are dismayed that discussions of climate change have

become so polarizing and have receded from the arena of

informed public disclosure and debate. . . . Time and tide

wait for no man.

Our military intelligence and homeland security services have been warning Congress for far too long about the risks of climate change. It is a dereliction of duty for this body to continue to ignore this problem. It is time to heed the warning. It is time to responsibly prepare for the clear risk before us, and it is time to wake up.

I yield the floor. I see the majority leader is present on the floor.

Reserving the right to object, may I have one sentence to observe that there appears as yet to be no Republican plan whatsoever to answer the energy chairman's question on climate change-- what do we do--and with that noted, I do not object.

Mr. President, may I say how much I appreciate the open amendment process.

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